“And now the supporting cast,” Max said, into her ear.
“. . . will be assisted by Capital City attorney Max Cline . . .” A still of Max, younger and with a beard. “. . . former chief prosecutor and director of the homicide unit in the South Midland Attorney General’s office.” Alicia Barbara staring at the camera, talking fast. “. . . resigned after a dispute . . .” Another still of an older unbearded Max. “. . . over what were said to be lifestyle issues . . .”
Teresa clicked off the remote. “That’s enough. Any more surprises in it?”
“Just the usual Middle America crap,” Max said. “A rural community asks why. Brutal murder. Beloved victim. National attention. The president of the United States. J.J. Poppy. Johnnie Cochran. Jamaal Jefferson. And a wonderful last shot for our side.” Teresa waited. Max milked the silence. “Carlyle and her happy crew leaving the airport in three stretch limos. White. The kind kids use on prom night so they don’t drive down the wrong side of the road drunk and kill themselves and the family of five in the oncoming Dodge Caravan. With two SUVs to carry their luggage.”
She took a deep breath. “You want out?”
“I think we’re stuck with each other, Teresa.”
As Teresa stepped from the shower, she saw the red message light blinking on the telephone. She wondered who it was. Max was picking her up at ten-thirty to go to the Correction Center for their first interview with Duane Lajoie, so unless he was changing the pickup time, there was no one else she wanted to hear from. If it was Max, there was plenty of time to call him back. Deliberately, she wrapped herself in a towel, shook the water from her hair before wrapping it in another towel, then ran the back of her hand over the stubble on her legs. A quick leg shave with the disposable razor from the hotel gift pack, then a pass under her arms. She noted with satisfaction that she did not nick herself as she usually did.
A random thought: What is the physiological function, if any, of body hair? When did women first begin shaving their armpits as a fashion statement? Was Queen Victoria the first? Cleopatra? Marie Antoinette? Elizabeth I? Martha Washington? Sally Hemmings? Harriet Beecher Stowe? Emma Goldman?
She rubbed skin lotion into legs and face.
Why, she thought suddenly, am I taking such pains to pretty myself for Duane Lajoie? With all the care I’m giving this, I’ll be putting in a diaphragm next. No, thank heaven, if there is one, she’d left that back in Washington. It was an inducement to casual carnality that she did not intend to pursue in South Midland.
Although she had brought her pills.
There were only a half-dozen left. She would have to reorder. From her pharmacist in Cleveland Park. She did not believe it would go unnoticed that Duane Lajoie’s lawyer got a birth control prescription filled in Capital City. Or was that just paranoia? Maybe it was better to let the pills go, too. Another inducement she didn’t need. The diaphragm always seemed ludicrous to her now, anyway. On a planned holiday trip to Israel the summer before her last year in law school, an impassive El Al security guard in the Frankfurt airport had removed an earlier pessary— she loved that word, it was so old-fashioned, so Mary McCarthy and The Group—from its case and carefully held it up to the light as if it were a repository for Semtex or whatever concealable explosive El Al security thought might blow up a plane that summer. He held it as if it were a Frisbee and for a moment she had thought he might scale it to another guard. Then he had put it back into the case, and motioned her through the metal detector. Where she had promptly set off the alarm and found herself staring at three automatic rifles. The detector, it turned out, was pitched so high that the underwire stays in her bra had triggered it. Two El Al security women watched her remove the bra in the ladies’ room and returned it to her after she passed through the metal detector a second time without incident. In the departure lounge, she waited until the final call for her flight to Tel Aviv, and then as she was about to board, the last passenger, she turned instead and left the airport. She exchanged her ticket for a flight to Rome, and spent the next three weeks in a tiny Fiat wandering by herself, pensione to pensione, through Umbria and Tuscany. She never did put the bra back on, and in both Todi and Lucca the diaphragm had proved handy. Camillo and Frederic. Camillo was a Chicago policeman, recently divorced, with distant relatives in Montefusco he had decided he did not really wish to meet. He had tattoos on his arms and shoulders. One tattoo said Fickel. She wondered if he had spelled the word wrong, or if it was the name of someone once dear to him, but she did not ask. Frederic was a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute. He said his name was spelled like Lieutenant Henry in A Farewell to Arms. He said she reminded him of Catherine Barkley. One of the more repellent lines she had ever had foisted on her.
She still had not been to Israel.
She wondered if there was any method of birth control she had not tried.
Abstinence.
Although it makes the heart fonder. Or so they say.
Rhythm.
I got rhythm, I got music. What the just-menstruating girls at St. Pius V would giggle to each other in the school bathroom. She did not even know what rhythm was.
Still.
Duane.
She felt as if she had slept with him last night.
Not exactly with him. With his paper trail. The familiar product of discovery. Every reading bringing fresh discoveries. Rap sheets, probation reports, psychiatric evaluations, IQ tests, medical examinations, witness statements, character appraisals, and sentencing documents. The only history available to someone like Duane Lajoie.
Since birth an object of public and institutional scrutiny. There are two types of people, she used to think when she was in criminal practice. The scrutinizers and the scrutinized. The great divide in American life. She had always been on the right, or at least the safe, side of that divide, and wondered what it would be like instead to be in the cross-hairs of authority. The examinee rather than the examiner. These were the thoughts that came with rereading the entire case file last night and into the early morning. How many times now had she done it? How many times had she questioned Max? How late was it when I finally fell asleep? she wondered. The sun was just coming up. But then the sun is always dramatically just coming up in these reflections. Lending the romance of dawn and its early light to their coloration.
Her father had always found the reading of these dark histories comforting and instructive. Throw everything up in the air, Teresa, and let it drift to the floor like the autumn leaves. Don’t try to put it all back together, this with this, that with that. It defeats the purpose. Read it in the order you pick it up. It exercises the mind. Allows you to make connections. A little trick of the trade.
She would need more than a few tricks of the trade to mount a defense of Duane Lajoie. Even Brendan Kean, GRHS—God Rest His Soul, in the Pius V Sunday announcements—could not provide all the tricks she would need on this one.
Forget Pius V.
Think Duane.
Age 21. Height 5 feet 7 inches. Weight 136 pounds. Which would make him approximately five inches shorter and maybe fifty pounds lighter than Edgar Parlance.
Max, who actually knew Edgar Parlance?
Marginally retarded. Presumably from breech-birth oxygen deficit.
IQ 87, first test. IQ 84, a year later. IQ 91, most recently.
I’ve known judges with an IQ of 91. Or so I thought. Certainly politicians.Meaning mental incapacitation is a no-go defense.
Albion County, two counts residential arson. Convicted. Awaiting sentence.
No permanent address.
No permanent employment.
Had only met Bryant Gover two weeks before Edgar Parlance’s murder.
Thirteen days. Maybe fourteen.
She could hear her father’s voice: It’s not how long they knew each other, Teresa. In the country of crime, two weeks is a lifetime. What’s important is what they did together when they knew each other.
Okay.
They skinned Edgar
Parlance alive. One of them did. Or both of them did. Bryant Gover got his story together first.
Could Bryant Gover be the soft spot?
It was a start.
A straw to clutch.
Max, who actually knew Edgar Parlance?
If there is an answer, neither of us has been able to find it.
She spread out the Gover files.
Father (unk). Mother: Maude (?) Gover (Grover? Tovar?). Education: Nathan Hale Juvenile Vocational & Detention Farm, Loomis County, SM; one yr HS (inc) Northeast HS, Lincoln, NE. Occupation: Food Treasure bag boy, Pratt, KS; day laborer, car wash attendant, etc., various venues. U.S. Army. Desertion, dishonorable discharge, three months confinement, Fort Sam Houston, TX. Involuntary manslaughter, Darwin, AK, convicted, one to three years, served thirteen months. Carnival rough-neck, Galveston, TX, assault w/deadly weapon (knife), charges withdrawn. Beston, OK, accused domestic A&B, case dismissed. Questioned not charged homeless homicide, Loup City, NE. Assaulting a peace officer, thirty days, Paradise, NM. Drunk and disorderly, fifteen days county workhouse, Dedman, Wyoming, once called Dead Man until the town fathers changed the name to attract the Wind River & Western Railroad, which never came.
It was a life spent on the road, thumb out, and always the possibility of grand theft auto in the next car speeding down the empty endless strip of two-lane blacktop. Where you going, son? A dangerous question on the open road. Always leading to the same alibi. The faggot made a pass at me. D&D. B&E. Concealed weapon. Indecent exposure. Charges filed, cases dismissed. Fairholm, Colorado. Clifton, Utah. Jaco, North Midland. Theo Cummings, Idaho. Ewing, Missouri. Wilsonmeer, Montana. Mifflin, Kansas. Towns named after initial settlers long since vanished, along with their descendants. Bryant Gover was the sort of road rat who automatically attracted the highway patrol in whatever jurisdiction he happened to be moving through on his way to someplace else. A slowdown, a U-turn, red lights blinking, the officer slowly emerging from his cruiser, belly stretching the buttons of his beige polyester shirt with the sewn-in creases, the car door acting as a minishield in case the vagrant suddenly produced a weapon. May I see some identification, please, sir. It was a demand, not a question. A night or two in the local lockup while the sheriff skimmed the unsolved-crime file, and then he was on his way again, deposited by a deputy at the county line, no official apologies given and none expected. Leaving behind prints and front and side views for future reference.
Would he have ever met Edgar Parlance in his travels?
Possible. They were traveling men.
Where were the intersects?
None, Max had said.
None the SMBI had found.
None Teresa could find.
And yet.
Max, who actually knew Edgar Parlance?
The message light was still blinking insistently. Teresa dropped the towels and searched her body in the mirror for ripples and wens. She felt her breasts and remembered Marty Buick once telling her that if you found a lump in your tits, it was already too late, it might seem like a bing cherry pit to you, but to the oncologist it meant get your estate in order, sign the will, say goodbye to the near and dear, bury the necessary hatchets, take the chemo, go to the good wig-maker, real hair makes all the difference, keep a stiff upper lip, what you want them to say is, God, she was so unflinching at the end, so brave, so unafraid, what you don’t want them to say is, You want the honest truth, she was such a pain in the ass, like nobody else had ever had it.
Better to punch the message button. “You have two unplayed messages,” the computer voice said. “One, eight-oh-nine a.m.”
“It’s like the fucking Ponderosa down here,” Carlyle’s voice said. “I thought it was going to be some kind of dude ranch, but they got pigs and chickens and that shit. Not even any trail mix. No wonder Hoss Cartwright died. The smell got him. Listen, get me and Alex suites at that hotel up there, will you? And bed-and-breakfast places for . . .” Her voice trailed off as she talked to someone in the background. “Alex, how many people we got with us?” There seemed to be an argument. “That’s too fucking many, Alex, that’s all I’m saying. You’re paying for yours, right?” Then back to Teresa. “Yo, Teresa? I want to see what’s-his-name, Duane, you know, my bro . . .”
Teresa pressed the discard-message button and began brushing her hair. The computer-generated voice said, “Second message: eight-thirteen a.m.”
“Teresa . . .” Martha Buick’s voice, talking too fast. “It’s Marty. You’re not there. I guess you must be at the health club. Listen, I just heard from Carlyle. Has she called?” You know she’s called, Marty, she called you as soon as she left the message for me. “She wants to see Duane, I mean meet Duane, since she’s never actually met him . . .”
Teresa hung up.
She felt her breasts again. No tangible growths or bumps or cysts. Nothing to excavate her from the case upon which she was about to embark.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VERBATIM AUDIOTAPE TRANSCRIPT
DATE: 5/8
VENUE: CAPITAL CITY CORRECTION CENTER,
CAPITAL CITY, SOUTH MIDLAND
PRESENT: Duane Lajoie, South Midland Dept. of Corrections No. 914609CCCC (hereinafter called DL); Teresa Kean, Atty-at-Law (hereinafter called TK), counsel for Prisoner No. 914609CCCC; and Max Cline, Atty-at-Law (hereinafter called MC), also counsel for Prisoner No. 914609CCCC. The record will reflect that Duane Lajoie was wearing the orange jumpsuit that is standard attire for inmates at the Correction Center and was in arm and leg restraints because of an incident with a Correction Officer as reported to prisoner’s counsel by George Hennican, Warden.
TK: Mr. Lajoie . . . is it Laj-wah or La-joe-a?
DL: You’re my lawyer, you can’t even get my fucking name straight, what good are you, for fuck sake, women are pussy, they’re not lawyers, it’s La-zhoe-a, and you there, the other one, I heard about you, big-deal prosecutor, there’s people he put in here, pussy, he gave them time because they wouldn’t cop his dick, he’s a Jew fag is what he is. . . .
MC: Good morning, Mr. Lajoie—
DL: Fuck you.
TK: Mr. Lajoie, may I call you Duane?
DL: I didn’t even know I had a fucking sister, then she finds you, she’s paying you a million, it says on the TV, shit, she gave that million to me, I wouldn’t be in the shit I’m in now, fuck her, long gone, over the hill to grandmother’s house, except I never had no grand-mother, I never had nothing my whole life, I see my lawyers, they put me in leg irons like I’m guilty or something, what kind of impression does that give—
TK: Mr. Lajoie.
DL: I thought you were going to call me Duane. That’s Doo-ane, not Dwane, Doo, that’s what my friends call me, you can call me Doo-ane.
MC: About the leg irons. The warden said you stuck a correction officer—
DL: They ever find the fucking shank? No.
MC: Actually they did. It was the wire holding the straw together on a broom in a utility closet.
DL: It was only a fucking puncture then, man. And how do they know it was me—
TK: You’ve had previous incidents with this correction officer, Clarence Detroit—
DL: What kind of fucking name is Clarence anyway? You ever know anyone named Clarence wasn’t a nigger? And Detroit? The capital city of Nig Nog from what I hear. Never been there, never going to go.
TK: These incidents—
DL: Every time he sees me, Clarence Dee-troit, he goes, “Bzzzz, that’s what the electric chair sounds like, it’s the last sound Percy Darrow heard, it’s the last you’re going to hear, Bzzzz, I’d pull that switch and hear the sweetest sound this side of heaven, Bzzzz, I’ll have it with chitlins and greens. Bzzzz.” I’m going to tell that Dee-troit nigger something, I ain’t going to no electric chair, fuck him and his Bzzzz.
MC: So that’s why you shanked him.
TK: Let’s move past Clarence Detroit. I don’t think he’s really part of our charter.
DL: What’s a charter?r />
TK: In this instance, Edgar Parlance.
DL: I didn’t know that motherfucker.
MC: You never met?
DL: I don’t hang with niggers.
MC: Never met him?
DL: How many times I got to say no?
TK: Then it was Bryant Gover who knew him.
DL: I’ll gut that—
MC: So we’ve heard.
TK: You and Bryant Gover were friends.
DL: He never was no friend.
TK: But you knew him.
DL: I only know him for a week. I just met him. He killed that nigger and now he’s trying to blame me. I was just along for the ride, he’s a fucking animal, he said he’d kill me I didn’t go along, he had this .38 Detective Special, it makes a hole in you like a fucking cannon, he likes to off people, that’s what he likes to do, then he snitches me out, he doesn’t want to hear no fucking Bzzzz, I got friends up at Durango Avenue, they’ll fucking take care of him.
MC: How’d you meet?
DL: How come you ask all the questions? You getting paid the million or is she? Who’s in charge here?
TK: Duane, how did you and Bryant Gover meet? We have to establish a time line. Did you just run into each other? Were you just hanging out?
DL: What do you mean “hanging out”? You mean “doing a little weed”? That kind of pussy stuff people like you do? You know what they do in here? The fat girlfriend comes in here on visitors’ day with little plastic bags of smack or shit in her panties or her brassiere, or maybe she stashes it in her brat’s shitty diapers, that’s the best place, no hack’s going to go fishing through a whiny kid’s crappy Pamper, and she flushes the stuff down the crapper. And the guys in the sewer plant, they know it’s coming, and they swim through the shit and piss like fucking scuba divers and fish out the skag or the crack or the crystal meth, whatever it is. It smells a little rank, but, fuck, it gets you up, it gets the job done. I’d like a piece of that action, I’d be a fucking rich man in here, my so-called sister wouldn’t have to put up no million.
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