For my own peace of mind, I would like to think I would have felt the same way even had the casualties not been so prohibitive.
BOOK TWO
SURVIVORS
PART ONE
ANGKOR WAT
20:54.16. She opened her purse and scooped out three coins. The camera zoomed close and paused on the bag. He made out the F clasp. F for Fendi, he supposed.
She dug in the purse. No more coins except the three she had in her hand. She removed the cigarettes and snapped the bag shut.
Hold on the cigarettes, please.
Come in tight, please.
Gauloises. French and unfiltered.
Why not.
She slipped the cigarettes into a blazer pocket and then pumped the three quarters into a twenty-five-cent slot. The third quarter brought a return of six more.
She gathered the coins and quickly dropped three into one slot and three more into the adjoining machine. This time no return from either slot.
A delicate Asian cocktail waitress materialized at her side, holding a bamboo drinks tray. The woman in the dark blazer and the white blouse and the dark pleated trousers shook her head no. No complimentary soft drink, no beverage at all. The Asian waitress was wearing a white bustier and a long skirt that clung to her legs.
The waitress looks like Princess Tuptim, I said to the chief of security.
Who’s Princess Tuptim? the chief of security said.
From The King and I.
That’s the general idea, the chief of security said.
Of course. The dealers and croupiers were dressed in pantaloons and silk shirts, their hair shorn to the skull, like King Mongkut. Actually more like Yul Brynner. When Rex Harrison played King Mongkut, he had a full head of hair. Midgets in exotic dress scurried around the casino floor. The keno runners were all Asian, sloe-eyed, the brochure said, the waiters and the bell-mendressed in the orange robes of Buddhist monks. The sound system played “Shall We Dance?” and “Getting to Know You.”
It was definitely erotic.
Like a very expensive whorehouse.
Or a male brothel.
Everything is authentic, the promotional video in each room said. Down to the smallest detail. Verified by a panel of world-renowned Asian scholars. Silk spun from privately owned silkworm ranches.
Except that Angkor Wat is in Cambodia, and Mongkut ruled Siam. There was no reason to explain this to the chief of security. One does not argue with a world-renowned panel of Asian scholars.
It’s a long way from Jim Hogg County, I said to the chief of security.
Say again? the chief of security said.
Just thinking out loud, I said.
She was at the front door now. She seemed to appear and disappear like Zelig. A male dwarf in silks from the privately owned silkworm ranches o fered her a scented towel.
We’re going to lose her for a moment, the chief of security said. Until she gets to the pedestrian bridge.
She seemed to be laughing.
I’d like to send her home, the chief of security said.
CHAPTER ONE
Raw interviews conducted by print and electronic journalists with Alice Faith Todt, aka Carlyle, after the events herein described played out to their logical, illogical, and in some instances unexpected conclusions. They were edited, elided, and rearranged into a seamless monologue. The questions of the various interlocutors have been excised in the interest of narrative clarity. Every word, however, is hers, picked up from audio or video recording devices obtained or made available to the narrator.
For fuck’s sake, Alicia, everyone blames me for what happened, like it was my fault, and it wasn’t. No, no, no fucking way was it my fault, I was not responsible. You want to start blaming, start with my agent, my former agent, I’m going to own her fucking business by the time I get through with her, I’ll even take her plane, it’s her husband’s plane, a G-4, you mark my words, I’ll get that, too. The way she foisted that lawyer off on me, when all I was trying to do was keep my brother Duane out of the hot seat, I never even knew they ever called it that. The hot seat. It’s cute in a way. I bet you could make a lot of money out of it, you know, a toy like a whoopee pillow, instead it gives you a little shock instead of blowing a fart. At least that’s what Alex said. Alex’s got a good head for business. It was his idea for me to go after Three V, he’ll want a piece of it, of course, Alex wants a piece of everything, it’s from growing up in Washington Heights, he thinks he’s the only person in America that grew up poor. I’ve seen that Washington Heights of his on the way to Teterboro. I don’t fly commercial anymore, it’s too much of a hassle, people want my autograph and ask me questions about Jacquot and Yo! Carlyle, I don’t have time for all that shit. I always ask the driver to slow down, the windows in the limo are smoked, but you can see out and it’s not so bad, Washington Heights, try a mobile home in Cap City, me on the couch, and my mom grinding away in the sleeping area, it was from my mom I learned you’re supposed to go “Oooo” and “Ahhhh,” like it’s some kind of big deal. Everyone thinks I was getting off with Alex, but you know, we never did it. Except for that time at the Gritti, we were there for a Jacquot shoot, I hate Venice, all that water, it makes me sea-sick, it was only twice anyway, I think a model of my stature should stay away from photographers, they’re just people who work for you. Except for Irving what’s-his-name, shoots the flowers and fruit and shit. Anyway, he’s been married twice, Alex, first to someone from the hood on West 153rd, the second time to that Jap model, maybe she’s Chinese or something like that. His first wife’s married to a dentist in Riverdale now, and the second wife, the slope, she’s in rehab, Hazelden this time, she’s tried them all, Silver Hill, where Billy Joel went, Promises in Malibu, Charlie Sheen’s home away from home, Alex always picks up the tab for her, he should tell her to take a hike back to Tokyo, but he never will.
So what I mean is, I got my own troubles, without taking the blame for those four people dying. I mean, who shows up in Regent but my mother. She’s got a little red dot in the middle of her forehead, like they wear in India and shit, she’d told me she wasn’t coming to the trial, it was too painful, they were going to try and say her baby Duane did those awful things, and I know my baby Duane didn’t do them, and she puts her two hands together like she’s praying, and she says, Call me Shehnaz. In a pig’s ass I’ll call her Shehnaz. Alex says I should call her Dot for that little red dot. It was the Roshi, she said, who’d sent her to Regent. Roshi Gurjanwaia, or however the fuck you pronounce it. She said she was so happy at Amritsar University, remaking her life according to the Roshi’s five principles, and I say, What principles are they? And she says the Roshi’s five precepts for living are to abstain from killing, stealing, lying, and intoxicants. And I say to her, That’s four, what’s the fifth? And she says to abstain from all sexual activity, and I said to her, You got to be fucking kidding, and she says to me, bowing and pressing her hands together and closing her eyes, like she’s praying and shit, I am here on a mission from the Roshi, and the Roshi asks if you would make a small pledge to Amritsar University, and I said, What kind of pledge, and she said, A small fraction, and I said a small fraction of what, and she says, Life has been good to you. Then I get it, and I said, It hasn’t been all that good, and no matter how good it is, I’m not dumb enough to get hustled by some Roshi with his mitts out, thinking I’m going to shake the money tree in his direction. You are an ungrateful child, she said, and I said, You better believe it, and while you’re at it, you can take you and your red dot back to Amritsar and abstain from balling.
Anyway, so I get in to see Duane after my mom leaves. I’m feeling kind of bad we had this fight and stuff, so I say I’ll go see Duane, I’ll leave out the Shehnaz part. My fucking lawyer doesn’t want me to go, and I say to her, Listen, you’re here on my tab, don’t you forget it. I know all about prisons, I was at Riker’s Island, you know, doing that Prada shoot that all the assholes got so pissed off about, prison’s not so
bad, they had some good-looking dudes at the Prada shoot, you know black guys and Spanish guys, Alex could speak Spanish to them, Quien sabe and stuff like that. There was this guy at Riker’s, Alex knew his brother, him and the brother had gone to school, he’d been shot or something, by the cops or something, or another dealer, they thought Alex was great, these guys. Anyway, Duane comes in, and I say, Hi, Duane, but shit, I thought he’d look like those guys at the Riker’s shoot, but he’s like he crawled out from under a rock, he’s got this breath, I nearly fainted. I had some Binaca, and I tried to give him the Binaca, and this guard takes it away from me. You can’t pass contraband to the prisoner, he says, and I say it’s not contraband, it’s fucking Binaca, and he says, He’ll drink it. I felt so sorry for him, and he tells me his story, it’s the other dude that did it, what’s-his-name, Gover, well, you know what happened, everyone knows it, how the fuck was I supposed to know. No one else did either.
That first day in court, everyone was ganging up on me, right from the start. I’m waving at Duane, you know, during jury selection, and I say, Hi, Duane, and he’s giving me an over-the-shoulder wave, he’s got these chains and shit around his ankles and he can’t turn around, and Alex has this little camera, it’s about the size of a goober, and he’s snapping away, great pictures, you’ve seen them, when this fat guy in a uniform, he’s some kind of bailiff or shit, whatever the fuck a bailiff is, he says I can’t wave at the prisoner. And I say that’s my brother, and he says, real smart, Well, that’s your tough luck, isn’t it. Sweetie? Fuck him, I bet he doesn’t make a hundred thousand dollars a year even. Then that midget judge, she wouldn’t let me use my beeper in the courtroom, it rings with the first few beats of the Jacquot commercial, you know da, da, da-da-da, it’s really cute, Alex’s Jacquot video won the Eddie Award, and when I accepted it with him, the strap on my dress broke, the Jean-Paul Gaultier print, and I showed a little tit on the tube, but it was only cable, so it didn’t matter that much. Anyway, the beeper goes off that first day, I want to keep in touch, keep my dates straight, I got Milan coming up, and I want to do Giorgio and Donatella, but they overlap you know, Giorgio wants my hair one way, Donatella wants it another, we have to work that out, and this judge, she’s got a mustache, she goes nuts, she asks whose beeper it is, and I’m not going to tell her, no way. So she closes the courtroom, she won’t let anyone out, and there’s this stink of sweat and shit, everyone in the courtroom could use a shot of Jacquot Skin Pearls, you ask me, and she has this spade sheriff and his fucking deputies pat everyone down, like it’s some kind of big criminal deal your beeper going off.
So that’s how I met Jocko. He’s one of the deputies working the courtroom, and he comes up to me, he’s about the size of the Intrepid, you know that aircraft carrier on the West Side Highway, I did a shoot there once, some pansy French photographer, not Alex, I got him fired, this frog, he thought out of focus was arty, and I said to him, Get lost, go back to France, where you from Nancy, that’s a town in France, I bet you didn’t know that. Anyway, Jocko brings me outside in the corridor, and he says to me, Put your arms over your head and let me pat you down, a real Mr. Smooth act, and I say, No fucking way are you going to touch me. And he says, Well, give me the beeper then, and I say, How do you know it was my beeper, and he says, Come on, everybody in the courtroom knows, the people around you were pointing at you, just go up and tell the judge you thought it was turned off, fuck her over a little bit, Your Honor this, Your Honor that, my brother’s on trial for his life, I am so upset, she’ll give you a warning, she’ll take the beeper, make it the property of the court, don’t worry, I’ll get it back for you, she’ll never even know it’s gone. So to make a long story short, Brutus, that big black sheriff, he makes Jocko my bodyguard, it’s part of the community service he was doing, like there was so many people around when I was shooting, and Jocko, he was like a one-man crowd control, no one’s going to fucking mess with him, and those pals of his, Tater and Bobo and the rest, and I get to ride around in his air-conditioned Benz, he had this red light he puts on the roof, he even had a siren in it, he comes to a light or a stop sign, forget it, the siren is blaring, the red light is going round and round, he is the law. Jocko. His name sounds exactly like my cosmetics line, Jocko, Jacquot, it’s so cute, I thought it was, like, fate. Some fucking fate.
CHAPTER TWO
MAX
I talked earlier about the rich seam of chance that governs events.
The coinage of coincidence.
Or is it a skein? Or does it matter what you call it?
So much happened that first day in the Loomis County Courthouse, so much that seemed at the time no more than the commonplace maneuverings of the judicial system. Whatever else one calls coincidence, call it implacable.
Begin with Harvey Niland. Gray, ectoplasmic, failed Harvey Niland.
Harvey Niland was originally meant to be J.J.’s number two. He was safe, he would not open his mouth, he knew the case law, he would take care of the errands and the menial assignments without obvious complaint, and most importantly he would not pull focus away from J.J. But then, mirabile dictu, the Committee on Judicial Appointments, after a decade of waffling and passing him over, graded Harvey as “very qualified” for the bench (“very qualified” means that anything above traffic court is a stretch for the nominee), and the judgeship that Harvey so devoutly desired was at last his. I would guess that the committee took his age into consideration—Harvey was within three years of mandatory retirement—and could view his accession as a kind of tombstone promotion to a position where he could do no real harm.
This is where it began to get complicated. J.J. wanted to pick a younger assistant prosecutor from the Homicide Bureau to be his backup, but Gerry Wormwold insisted he use Patsy Feiffer; she had worked with Maurice Dodd on the case before he died, she was familiar with the details, and she had been present when Maurice debriefed Bryant Gover. All sound arguments. The only case J.J. could make was that Patsy was both bone-stupid and legally inert. It was a case, however, he declined to make. He knew the Worm could not be budged, and he knew why. It was Poppy. Poppy McClure had let it be known that whenever the press of business in Washington allowed her to do so, she would attend the trial. Poppy’s capacity for agitation could not be underestimated. She had not yet declared if she would challenge the A.G. in the Republican gubernatorial primary, but she knew her presence in Regent would make him jumpy. Hence the Worm’s intransigence about Patsy Feiffer. He wanted someone in Regent who would report to him on every detail of what happened in and out of the courtroom, and Patsy was too much a creature of ambition, however limited her talents, not to provide this service.
Duane Lajoie arrived from Cap City shortly after sunup, a ninety-minute trip in a high-security unmarked police van, wearing leg irons and handcuffs and guarded by two marshals. I had seen him for a moment in the holding cell adjacent to the courtroom, and ignored his imprecations about my Jew faggotry while Brutus Mayes oversaw the exchange of the orange jumpsuit Duane wore at the Correction Center for a white shirt, khaki pants, and sandals without socks. Every evening during the trial, he would change back into his jumpsuit and his leg irons and be returned to Capital City. Bryant Gover, when he was called to testify, would travel in a second van from Durango Avenue. They would occupy cells on different floors of the courthouse, and when Gover took the stand, Duane Lajoie would be shackled in his chair and guarded by two deputy sheriffs so that he could not try to wreak physical vengeance on the witness. These security arrangements had been negotiated by Maurice Dodd and Duane’s previous attorney and there was nothing Teresa or I could do to change them.
The press was everywhere; satellite trucks had taken every available parking space around the courthouse. There were rumors that Jamaal Jefferson was on his way, and a bailiff told me he had heard that Jack Nicholson was in town to get the feel of the courtroom. Lorna Dun and Alicia Barbara were making do with Eugene Hicks and Marjorie Hudnut, in her Sunday best, until Jam
aal and Jack and Carlyle and Poppy showed up. On the courthouse lawn, special correspondents once more recounted the hideous scene off County Road 21, milking every shocking detail with all the attendant pieties on how the murder of Edgar Parlance had forced a reconsideration of the unresolved role played by race in the heartland. I had taken samplings on the black-and-white TV set in the tiny office Teresa and I had been assigned in the courthouse basement. In the absence of real news, everything was fodder: the crop-management and weed-control pamphlets in the wire racks on the ground floor of the courthouse, the plaque honoring Loomis County’s war dead—sixty from World War II, five each from Korea and Vietnam, the promotional brochure published by the Regent Economic Board that said, “The crime rate is low, the standard of living high.” Arched eyebrow and sign-off: From the Loomis County Courthouse in Regent, this is Brent Baker, Acme 1, all news, all day, every day.
“Hello, Max,” J.J. McClure said when I walked into the courtroom and placed a legal pad and three pencils at my place at the defense table. Some lawyers are neat, others are always scurrying through documents and transcripts, looking busy. I was one of the neat ones. I thought the busy bees tended to distract the jury when they should be concentrating on the witness being examined. J.J. smiled, the kind of smile that did not affect the laugh lines, but he did not offer his hand. “Long time.”
“I’ve been around.”
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