Teresa examined the pictures. Merle Orvis naked on a sheet doing herself with her finger. With a dildo. With a banana. There was a small boy lying naked on the corner of the sheet, which seemed to have some shit on it. Teresa replaced the snapshots in the envelope and handed them back. “How did you come by these?”
“A friend.”
“A useful friend to have.” She didn’t press it further. When the time came, I would tell her about Allie, but at that point in the preliminaries we both understood it was not yet a done deal, we were still feeling each other out, it might still go south. She also refrained from asking who took the pictures. Considering what I now know about Teresa, it would be surprising if the unexpected exposure to this primitive home pornography had not bared some residual uneasiness about the disposition of the film and video library maintained by her late second ex-husband.
That was later. And not the course I was on that morning. That morning I was in my former prosecutor mode. “Are you doing this for the money?”
It was as if I asked her what time it was. “No.”
“I’ve heard five hundred K.”
“Less the ten I gave to Earle Lincoln.”
“That’s more than Earle’s seen in a lifetime. Or will ever see.”
“Less expenses. That leaves about four hundred.”
“What were you planning to offer me?”
“What do you want? Half? More?”
It was as if money was of no interest to her. There was something deep down that I did not yet understand, something I am now quite sure that Teresa did not understand either. Something it took me a long time to dig out. I stalled. “If it wasn’t for the death penalty, this wouldn’t be such a big deal.”
“Right.”
I tried again. “You think Alice Todt would hire you if her brother Duane was only up for rape or armed robbery or vehicular homicide?”
“No.”
I felt as if I were talking to myself. And could not stop. “Not a chance. No coffee-table book in that. Who needs a case like this? It takes so much time it destroys your private practice . . .” Her eyes seemed fixed on the two copies of John Grisham in my aluminum bookcases. So much for the exigency and profitability of my private practice. I plunged on. “. . . he’s going to be found guilty anyway, we both know that, so then there’s a penalty phase, death or LWOPP, that’s another chunk of time, you have to explain away his sheet, you have checked his sheet, haven’t you?”
She would not be insulted. “Yes, Mr. Cline, I have checked his sheet.”
“Arson, assault . . .” There was something about her. I was blustering.
She picked up the litany. “Dealing. Pimping. Burglary . . .”
I persisted, though she had obviously studied Duane Lajoie’s copious rap sheet as assiduously as I had. “Auto theft in Oklahoma. Hijacked an eighteen-wheeler, that takes doing.”
“He rolled it over on Interstate 35, that didn’t.”
“And landed it on top of a VW van.”
“Full of German tourists.” Her voice was mild. “I wonder what they were doing in Oklahoma.” She caught the look of surprise on my face. “The German tour group. They were from Düsseldorf.”
The seemingly nonresponsive comment from a totally different direction was something I would come to expect from Teresa. I don’t think it was entirely conscious—notice the qualification of “entirely”—but it served the useful purpose of deflecting hostility and lowering the temperature. J.J. had the same ability. It might have been one of the things that put them on the same wavelength. Not that there weren’t others. That said, it was disconcerting in her at first until I got used to it. And even later, after I learned how to translate. I thought I knew her, but I was never truly fluent in her many internal languages.
I considered the Düsseldorfers. “I don’t think they were figuring on spending the next three or four months mending their bones in the Okmulgee County Hospital in Henryetta.”
She was of course by now off the Germans. “Why do you steal an eighteen-wheeler?”
This at least was familiar ground. “Because it was something to steal.”
“A whim.”
“He did thirteen months in McAlester. That’s a tough joint for a whim.”
She shrugged. “Most prisons are.”
We stared at each other across the desk, a couple of chess players plotting the next move.
“Look,” I said finally. “A successful defense on this one means LWOPP, you don’t get it, then there’s an automatic appeal, you get fired, the new appellate attorney, some pro bono guy from a civil firm downtown who wears hundred-dollar suspenders says you gave your client incompetent representation, and that and that alone is why Duane Lajoie got the death penalty.”
That cool look. As if I was telling her something she didn’t already know. “Right.”
“For that little fuck. He’s been in deep shit since seventh, eighth grade. At Johnny Page Junior High School in Kiowa. You know who Johnny Page is?”
She looked as if she did not care who Johnny Page was, but was too polite to yawn.
“A Rhino wide receiver and punt returner. All-American. Heisman finalist. That’s who they name high schools after in this state.”
That almost-smile of hers I would come to know so well. She was letting me ramble. “Eighth grade your boy shows up two days. That’s it. Two days. Not even two whole days. The first day he hits an English teacher, a woman, she wants him to take a reading test, so he belts her and gets suspended for the rest of the term. Then the first day of the winter term, back to school, Welcome back, Kotter. Except there’s this gang bang in a stairwell. Duane, four buddies, and a retard ninth-grader. Black. Tits like watermelons. They stuck a broomstick up her vagina. They’re juveniles, so the court record is sealed, but I’ve still got friends over there, and I got a copy of the transcript. Granted my knowledge of what women want is not encyclopedic, but I’d bet most women would hesitate to put a broomstick at the top of the charts when it comes to foreign objects they would like introduced into their person. It was consensual, they all say. The juvie judge, he says there are inconsistencies in the retard’s story, he finds for the defendants. My own feeling is a broomstick might lead to inconsistencies, but what do I know. Duane gets thrown out of school again, big deal, that’s all he wanted anyway. Never went to school again.”
She did not take her eyes off me, even as she eased the skin on her face back toward her ears. It was that thing I had often seen women of a certain age do, a subliminal sense that a wrinkle might be taking shape, push it away until lotions and potions and balms could be applied and the telltale signs of encroaching years momentarily arrested.
“You know,” I said slowly, “I never did a gang bang when I was a prosecutor. There was one question I always wanted to ask the fourth guy or the fifth or sixth or seventh guy who popped his wad in her. I wanted to get right in his face, nose to nose, and I wanted to say What was it like being last in line? A little gooey? A little slippery?”
Teresa reached over the side of her chair and picked up her bag. It was black and braided, probably a thousand dollars’ worth of leather.
“Am I boring you?”
“No. Just looking for some moisturizer.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’m going to stay awhile. I like watching the way your mind works. You know all the reasons you don’t want to do this, and I want to hear them all, but I know—even if you make the most convincing case for not doing it, and so far your reasons are on the money—” She concentrated on unscrewing the cap on the small plastic jar of Visible Difference, then looked up. “But end of day, you’re going to do it.”
She was a quick study. She didn’t back off. And of course she was right. I knew it was bad business ever to let the personal intervene in such a situation, but I knew it was a relationship that would work. I chose my words carefully. “I may have . . .”
My voice trailed off. She completed the sentence. �
�A foot in the door.” When I hesitated, she said, “The foot that wants to kick the A.G.”
I gave in. The nod said yes.
“And the foot outside the door?”
“I want to know why . . .” I hesitated as I never would have if I had been prosecuting. “I want to know why . . . you . . . are involved in this.”
It was a logical thing to wonder. She had already been semi-anointed by the fame accruing even to those residing at the county line of the national political landscape, and been granted a visa into the green rooms of people in the loop. She was the voice of victims’ rights, a not-inconsiderable portfolio for chatterers in the know. Then she agreed to defend Edgar Parlance’s accused murderer. Her green room visa was canceled. She had sold out, her thirty pieces of silver a cashier’s check for $500,000. Drawn on the ready reserves of a teenager. A teenager who had done a fashion shoot on Riker’s Island. Yo, Carlyle.
It took a long time for me to find the answer to my question. There was never anything definitive. Her life was like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces spread all over the table. Occasionally she would say things, and I would add the new pieces to those already on the table, joining them together if they fit. I knew she had come to detest Washington, its self-regard and the indifference that people in the loop had for perceptions other than their own, but there were other more amiable places for her to go than Cap City. This was deliberate, she wanted to find out something, and it took a long time before I could intuit what it was.
Teresa never really did respond. She was not ready to admit why she chose to defend Duane Lajoie. If she even knew at that point. It was a simple reason, really. Once all the pieces were on the table.
They weren’t yet.
“You’re not going to answer?” I said finally.
She dropped the jar of moisturizer into her bag.
“Shit is coming down.”
“I have an umbrella.” As quietly as if she were talking about a spring shower. She stood up. She was too well bred to stretch after such a long sit, but years of exercise, I was sure with a trainer, had taught her to unkink her muscles in a ladylike way. “By the way. Carlyle’s rented a big old place outside Regent. A ranch, she said. Owned by some cattle company up there.”
“Down there.”
“Down there then. She and Alex will stay there when they’re in town. Plus her assistants. And his assistants. Gofers. Camera loaders. Technicians. Location scouts. Household help. Cook. The place must be huge. She suggested that . . .” It was as if it were a thought she wished not to suggest. “. . . that her legal team might like to stay there, too.”
“Over my dead body.”
She smiled. “I guess that means you’re in.”
PART FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
Fast-forward—J.J.’s dream:
Thinking of Emmett, dreaming of him. Emmett, Emmett, Emmett. Push me, Jamie, pushmepushmepushme. It never changes. I always do what he wants, my hand on his head, counting the seconds, going the limit, stretching the limit. At the last minute, I lift my hand. Always. And he shoots to the surface, gasping for air, laughing, this hysterical kid laughter. Do it again, Jamie, doitagaindoitagaindoitagain, running the words together. Then Walter looks up. Sitting in his wheelchair on the rise that sloped down to the dock and the pond, the brakes set, that floppy white Panama hat protecting his bald head from the sun, I used to wonder if I’d get bald, and that book in his lap.
It was always the same tattered paperback. About a barrister at the Old Bailey. Not Rumpole, just some old Brit like that. Black robe and periwig, M’Lord this, M’Lord that, can you imagine that? The most important case Walter ever handled was a farmer who sodomized a neighbor’s ewe. That’s what he called it. A ewe. To differentiate it from a ram, I suppose. He was always such a goddamn didact. It’s funny what you remember. I mean, I still remember the farmer’s name. Ed Snedd. I don’t know why Walter even bothered to prosecute him. He wasn’t the first farmer in Parker County to fuck a sheep. Kids used to do it to learn how. No, not me. Walter didn’t even win the fucking case. The ewe wouldn’t testify. Ed Snedd walked. The first thing he did was he dumped a truckful of sheep dip on Walter’s driveway.
The dream, she said.
I put that goddamn paperback in his coffin. In his hand. Barrington, Q.C., that was the book’s title. It was a series. Barrington Takes Silk, that was another one. I tried to get a periwig, but the costume shops in Kiowa and Cap City didn’t have any, and there wasn’t time to order one. I don’t know why I wanted it there, I don’t think I had his best interests at heart.
The dream, she said again.
I found him. Sunday lunch with Walter and Emily. I’d make it maybe once a month or so. Actually less. Three times in the year before he died. It’s a hike from Cap City to Hamlet. Two hundred fifty miles due west across that goddamn table of a plain, the speedometer nailed to ninety, not even a shiver; then the same two-fifty back. Three and a half hours there, three and a half hours home, it’s a chunk out of the day when you have to be in court the next morning. No, that’s not the real reason. I didn’t even spend that much time in court, most everything was pleaded out. We just didn’t have that much to say to each other. What do you have coming up? he’d say. That should be interesting. Don’t get many hostage situations in Parker County. Keep your eye on the sparrow. He was always saying some asshole thing like that. What fucking sparrow?
The dream, she said a third time.
Always underdone roast chicken. Pink goddamn chicken. Is there anything worse than underdone chicken? Fifty-two Sundays a year. He’d go to the coop, pick the chicken out, and whack off its head with the hatchet he kept in the barn, then he’d bleed it, my mother would pluck it, and then undercook it. It was pink. Rare. Rare goddamn chicken.
You said that.
So I was there that Sunday. What do you have coming up? Don’t have much conspiracy to commit securities fraud in Parker County. Keep your eye on the sparrow. The chicken was a triumph, Emily. As always. Jamie saw a sign driving down here, Emily. PROTECT BEEF—RUN OVER A CHICKEN. That’s one way to protect our economy. You follow through on that, though, you could call it a violation of private property, seek redress, might even have a case unless the driver of the vehicle could prove it was an accident. I think I’ll go down to the barn, Emily, rinse the blood of our lunch off the hatchet. Tends to rust, you don’t rinse it off. You stay here, Jamie, entertain your mother, she loves it, you come to visit.
The dream, she repeated.
You want to watch the game, my mother said. What game? I say. There’s always a game on Sunday, she says, I thought you might want to watch. No, I don’t want to watch the game, I think I should be getting back. Well, then, she says, and I look at her and she looks at me, and then I heard the shot. Correction. We heard the shot. You better go down to the barn, she says. Very quiet. Matter-of-fact. No excitement. Your father is so careless sometimes. He’s getting old, Jamie. (He’s not even sixty, he’s fifty-five, fifty-six, and she says he’s getting old.) I’ll go down and take a look, I say. And I walk out the door and out to the barn, walk, not run, as if I thought a car on the road had backfired, as if I had never heard a gunshot before. When I was a kid, I used to shoot at a fence-post with that old Colt, my hands were so small I could hardly reach the trigger, and it had such kick it gave me a bone bruise in my palm. Some days when it rains I can still feel that bruise. I got to the barn and there he was, in the wheelchair, his head leaning over into the tub where he kept the scrub brushes, as if he didn’t want to splatter the blood, and here’s the thing, before he did it he ran water over the axe he used to kill the chicken we had for lunch, scrubbed it clean with a wire brush, and then hung the axe on the nail over the sink where he kept it. First things first. That was Walter.
Finish the dream.
What dream?
About your brother.
Emmett.
Yes.
His voice was a monotone.
Pushme, Jamie
, pushmepushmepushmepushme, the pier jutting into the pond, blocking Walter’s view. Pushing him, holding him down, calibrating the seconds, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all the way to fifteen, maybe twenty, twenty-five, even more, I can’t remember, Emmett’s capacity for holding his breath stretched to the extreme, and beyond. Then he was free, but he wasn’t gasping for air, no laughing, no againagainagain, just floating there facedown, and Walter, stretched on the rise, he’d fallen out of the wheelchair, he was grabbing tufts of grass, trying to pull himself down to the dock, it’s not your fault, Jamie, it’s not your fault, he kept on saying.
CHAPTER TWO
From Teresa Kean’s journal:
M flossed his teeth with L’s pubic hair.
Teresa’s journal was full of odd, quirky items like this, entries that seemed on superficial first reading to reveal only some ill humor or private sexual gratification, but as I read deeper into the journal and as my translation became more fluent, these random jottings would usually end up making a point, illuminating something or someone, and the someone was often herself. It was here that doubt would make an occasional appearance and the chilly conviction usually on display would melt a bit. It was as if she needed to get something down before she lost it, something she heard or overheard, or suddenly remembered about M or L, if those were indeed their initials, something that pinned one or the other, like a butterfly onto cork. Or perhaps not M or L at all, but an attitude of her own toward them or what they represented. I had a similar experience once when I was in the Caribbean with Stanley (my only trip ever in search of the sun). In the house we rented on a white sand beach inhabited almost exclusively by naked young men whose bums were as tanned as their shoulders and faces (Stanley’s nirvana), I found a moldy copy of Scott Fitzgerald’s notebooks, left I supposed by some previous weekly tenant (along with twenty-three ribbed and lubricated Trojan-Enz condoms and two tubes of K-Y jelly), and I was more absorbed by the cryptic shorthand of “Erskine Gwynn,” say, or “The war had become second-page news,” or “He has a dark future, he hates everything,” than I was by the latherings of Bain de Soleil or the silver reflectors beaming rays evenly onto the faces of the sunbathers on the beach outside our perfect six-thousand-dollar-a-week bungalow (four of Stanley’s, two of mine, although I did the cooking). As I burrowed through Teresa’s laptop, I sometimes had that same sense that I had reading Fitzgerald’s notes that I needed an Enigma machine to decode exactly what she had on her mind.
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