Nothing Lost

by John Gregory Dunne

  Earnest Wonder. The backstory no one had thought to consider.

  Wonderman. The flip side of Gar.

  Wonderman could short-circuit the buzz. Blow the fuse.

  Teresa looked tired. Well, she had said when I told her about my hours at Sunflower, you had a more interesting day than I did.

  Clyde Ray had testified and was no more forthcoming about how he had happened to be on County Road 21 after midnight on the night of the murder than he had been when Teresa and I had talked to him at Auntie Pasto’s. Judge Tracy had chastised Teresa for pursuing the matter, and said that whatever Mr. Ray’s reasons for being out that night, those reasons were not the business of the court.

  Merle Orvis had also testified. Merle Orvis had tried to have Boy sit on her lap while she was on the stand, but Judge Tracy had ordered him removed. Boy had begun to scream pee-pee! and titty! when a female deputy sheriff carried him out of the courtroom and placed him in the custody of Children’s Aid. Judge Tracy then called for a fifteen-minute recess; in the corridor outside the courtroom, Marjorie Hudnut, the librarian, and Claude Applewhite, the Methodist minister, seemed embarrassed by the episode. Both said these people did not represent the finer elements of Regent. It was as if they wanted to say, and were loath to say it, that the glare of the spotlight, the spotlight focused on Regent, Loomis County, South Midland, had lost its transient appeal; the thrill of recognition had paled. The accused and to some extent the victim had contaminated the upbeat ordinariness the community had prized, even raised into a virtue. Being interviewed on the way into court and on the way out was like being caught in a bear trap; there was no escape.

  Alicia Barbara had asked Marjorie Hudnut and Claude Applewhite to define “these people” and “finer elements.”

  Marjorie Hudnut said these people weren’t from here.

  They were just passing through, Pastor Applewhite said.

  Not gone soon enough, Marjorie Hudnut said. We don’t mean Gar, she added.

  We definitely don’t mean Gar, Pastor Applewhite said. Gar was like an old shoe, wasn’t he, Marjorie?

  Just a vagabond, Marjorie Hudnut said.

  Neat as a pin, Pastor Applewhite said.

  Teresa said that J.J. had called that night from Cap City.

  What did he say? I said.

  He said it would be over soon.

  Teresa, I have to ask you something.

  Max, no. Not a word. I wouldn’t do that. I have a professional obligation to Duane Lajoie. That takes precedence.

  It was the kind of speech I gave to my law students. I usually said it with all the gravity of Oliver Wendell Holmes or Felix Frankfurter.

  Duane Lajoie said, “I told you my story.”

  “Tell it to me again,” Teresa said.

  “Bryant was driving,” Duane Lajoie said.

  “He said you were driving,” Teresa said.

  “He’s fucking lying.”

  “He said Edgar Parlance was walking by the side of the road and you passed him, then you jammed on the brakes, backed up and nearly ran him over.”

  “You’re going to believe me or believe him. You’re my fucking lawyer. I want Alice in here. I want you fired. I want a new lawyer. Alice told me all about you.”

  Exactly what Alice Todt had told Duane about Teresa did not seem at that moment a profitable area of discussion. Time was the enemy. Bryant Gover would begin his testimony the next day, with J.J. leading him through it, point by point, as if it had been scripted, which indeed it had. Judge Tracy had already arrived from Kiowa, and she would call the morning session to order in less than two hours. In the middle of the three holding cells adjacent to the courtroom, Duane was still dressed in the CCCC orange jumpsuit he had been wearing when he was transported that morning from Cap City to Regent. His court clothes were folded on the table where Teresa and I were sitting, hands folded, files in front of us, like hearing officers at a parole hearing. Duane Lajoie stared venomously at us through the bars of the center cell. If he could have grabbed Teresa, I think he would have. Without expression, she listened to his stream of profanities.

  It was time for me to jump in.

  “Tell me about McAlester,” I said suddenly.

  He stopped in mid-tirade, as if struck dumb. He seemed to be analyzing what I had said, and with the con cunning that is like a reflex in professional criminals, he was looking for a way to lie his way past it. “I don’t know no McAlester.” And then: “Yeah, wait a minute, I know fucking Kenny McAllister. He had this girlfriend Mitzy, she was a whore in Mobile, Galveston maybe, she had a tattoo of her cunt on her boob, the left one, I think, no, the right one, I remember now. Kenny wanted to join the army, he wanted to be a paratrooper, the crazy bastard, fuck that, what this country ever do for him.” The words were tumbling out of his mouth, one on top of the other, the fabrications mounting up like corpses on a particularly bloody battlefield, vagina tattoos and place-names adding what he thought was authority to his demented barker’s spiel. “Anyway, he goes to this air show in Ponca City, I was there, Casey was there, Casey was his new bitch, Casey worked both sides of the mountain, you ask me, and Kenny, he’s wearing this hat like a fucking football player, you know, with the buckle under his chin, and he puts on his parachute, and he goes up in this fucking plane, Mitzy was clapping and pissing away, no, it was Casey, the new one, the dyke, and Kenny goes up in this fucking little airplane, and he jumps the fuck out, and his parachute don’t open, it’s what they call a Roman candle, I don’t know why they call it a Roman candle, I never seen a Roman candle, except once at a Fourth of July fireworks in Dothan. Kenny hits the fucking ground, splat, he hits it so hard, it’s like a bomb, it must’ve shook every house in Ponca City.”

  He stopped only because he had run out of breath. “Kenny McAllister. Shit, I haven’t thought of Kenny in a long time. Whatever happened to Casey, I wonder.”

  “No, not Kenny,” I said.

  His face turned sullen. “I don’t know no other McAllisters.”

  “McAlester. It’s a place in Oklahoma. You spent some time there. Thirteen months and twelve days. To be exact.”

  Duane Lajoie said he did not understand what the time he had spent at OSP had to do with anything anyway. He was like a deflated balloon. He knew where I was going, he knew Teresa knew, he had exhausted his bluster, there was nothing he could do, and there was no way he could attack us physically.

  “Albert Curwent,” I said. “He was there when you were there.”

  Duane sat on the steel bunk. His foot tapped the floor of his cell in a staccato fashion.

  “He went by the name of Tugboat. He’s about the size of one.”

  “I never seen no tugboats.”

  “Akimbo Thorne. Another big guy. Huge guy. Black guy. Akimbo’s name in the yard was Queen Kong. The Kong was a big favorite there.”

  Duane curled up on the steel bunk and turned away from us.

  “Wonderman.” I opened my briefcase. The candle was there. The candle I had been sure was going to affect this trial since the day I first saw it in Edgar Parlance’s cell-like room over the garage. Don’t show it yet. Play it out. “I have some pictures of him here. Earnest Wonder. Prisoner number 83992-1. You want to see them? They’re just mug shots, but it should jog your memory. He pretty much ran things at OSP, didn’t he?”

  Duane did not move.

  “You might say Wonderman scouted talent,” I said. “And then he had Tugboat cut the deal.”

  Teresa put her hand on my arm. “Tugboat told Mr. Cline here that you were a good earner,” she said quietly. “When Mr. Cline saw him. Yesterday.”

  “Actually, Teresa,” I said, interrupting her, “what Tugboat said was that Princess was one of Wonderman’s best earners.”

  Duane Lajoie said he would kill Teresa and he would kill me if we exposed Edgar Parlance as Wonderman and himself as Princess. Duane Lajoie said he had the resources to have us killed if he was not able to do it himself.

  Teresa very patient
ly tried to explain to Duane Lajoie that life without the possibility of parole was not in the cards without the Earnest Wonder evidence. Very patiently tried to explain that without that evidence Duane Lajoie would go to the electric chair.

  Duane Lajoie said he would rather go to the electric chair than have it introduced in court that he was a prison whore. That he wore thong underwear and a bra and eye shadow and lipstick. That he was forced to insert a candle into his rectum to keep it pliable for the tricks he would service.

  Duane Lajoie was enough of a jailhouse lawyer to know that this evidence could not be introduced without his permission. Enough of a jailhouse lawyer to know that attorneys were obligated to abide by the wishes of their client.

  We could only hope to persuade him to change his mind.

  As it turned out, we never got the opportunity.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The narrow two-lane river road between Albion and Capital City is lightly traveled except on weekends, when the teenage drag racers appear after midnight with their girlfriends and hangers-on and by the beams of their headlights try to survive speed runs without crippling or killing themselves. I-63 gets most of the heavy traffic that runs from North Midland through South Midland and into Kansas, three lanes in either direction, straight as a plumb line, for trucks and passenger vehicles, no posted speed limits. I-63 has view lookouts and weighing stations and truck stops offering the best coffee in three states and full-service gas stations with eight pumps and diesel fuel and Best Western and Howard Johnson, off-the-road home living.

  The river road then, following the configurations of the Albion River, some gentle, some not so gentle. Rain slants down. The sky is unpolished pewter. No thunder, no lightning, just sheets of rain, like panes of storefront window glass, exploding onto the river road and onto the hood and roof of the black van with the smoked windows that is moving smartly north at a high rate of speed, probably eighty, or faster, maybe a hundred. There is a road sign that says DANGEROUS WHEN WET that the driver no doubt ignores as most drivers in South Midland ignore highway admonitions. The driver makes no allowances for the rain. Water shoots from under the wheels as if from a high-velocity spray. North of Sherlock, the driver appears to lose control of the van. It slipstreams from the northbound lane to the southbound, and back again. Ahead is the Albion Bridge between Sherlock and Roscoe. CAPITAL CITY 19 MILES. The driver seemed to apply the brakes, according to the Highway Patrol’s accident report. The accident report said it appeared that the van had fishtailed onto the bridge. It appeared to crash into the railing of the southbound lane, then appeared to turn completely around and crash through the railing of the northbound lane. The hood of the black van appeared to hit the water first, because it was largely crushed. The river was in full raging flow and apparently flipped the van over onto its roof and swept it downstream. It was two hours before a highway lineman on emergency duty discovered the breach in the Albion River Bridge between Sherlock and Roscoe, and two hours after that before the wheels of the upended black van were seen being pushed steadily down-river by the Albion’s floodwaters. By late afternoon the rains finally abated. The black van was righted, and deputies from the Loomis County Sheriff’s Department removed the bodies.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Do you remember that four-day recess before the trial started? Alicia Barbara said a long time later. She had stopped off in Cap City for an hour-long special she was doing for Fox 5 News—“The Peace Lobby: What Are Its Secret Ties to the Military-Industrial Complex,” or something like that, and she had called and asked me to lunch. She wanted to talk, she said. Chew the fat. Old times. Talk about the Angkor Wat.

  I’ve never been to Angkor Wat, I said.

  Have it your way, she said, I’ll buy you lunch anyway, Fox 5 ’s not chintzy about expenses the way Courthouse Square was, Courthouse Square wouldn’t okay a tip of over ten percent, and even that was a fight. Why do you have espresso when regular coffee is cheaper, that snooty cable crap, is that how you sneak drinks onto your bill?

  It was just a matter of knowing where to look, Alicia Barbara said the following Friday when we met at the Rhino Carlton-Plaza restaurant. She had an expensive haircut, an Armani jacket, and good makeup, but she was gaining weight around the face and the chin, not bloat, but impacted. She plowed into her Chicken Caesar Salad like a field hand, pushing every bite down with a piece of bread. My love life was a mess that weekend, and so I worked, didn’t go home. You ever had a weekend like that, you didn’t want to see your . . . She let the sentence trail off.

  There was no reason to reply.

  I drove all around Loomis County, she said finally, I went out to where Parlance’s body was discovered, I read everything I could find on the Net. Open and shut. Your client was going to the chair. Check the fuse box, you don’t want a short when they turn on the fire. Still. There was something that bothered me. Waiter, can I have some more bread?

  The waiter brought another basket of bread. There was a rhinoceros embroidered on his white jacket. Alicia Barbara tore off a piece and sopped up the dressing and the few remaining croutons. Where was I? she said.

  Asking for more bread, I said.

  It was her. Teresa Kean. Why was she doing this? She was a big deal. All the right schools, law review at Yale, Harvard, whatever. You must’ve asked her. Why was she defending this mutant? You, I understand. You wanted to get back in the game. It wasn’t the money. She had enough. I checked. I went to all the places. The house in Washington was free and clear, her father had left her something, those Mob guys he defended, and the white-collar Wall Street crooks, they all paid top dollar, usually in cash, the IRS was all over him, but he reported every nickel, the Feds couldn’t lay a hand on him, and then there was this trust fund, she was the beneficiary, I did a D&B, I did a Bishop. . . .

  She was showing her mastery of the process. To people like Alicia Barbara, the process was more important than the conclusion. Her words washed over me like a wave.

  . . . Brendan Kean . . .

  . . . you open up one hole, you get to another.

  . . . Jacob King. You know about him?

  . . . Blue Tyler. You know about her?

  . . . imagine what 24/7 would have made of those two if it had been around then.

  . . . and all roads lead to this Broderick guy, the guy who was humping her when he died . . . he knew the whole story, he fit all the pieces together, what do you think they talked about that night he was . . .

  . . . you put two and two together. You hope it adds up to four. Maybe four and a half. Five even. Close enough.

  . . . and so by the end of the weekend, I was fairly certain she was the daughter of Jacob King, the guy who gave us Las Vegas, and Blue Tyler, the wanker’s Shirley Temple . . .

  . . . I could make an educated guess . . . that’s all it’s about, really . . . it was the biggest story I ever had. An Alicia Barbara exclusive. I don’t share this with anyone. I’m already counting the zeroes in my new contract. I just had to get her alone and ask her . . .

  . . . all I had to figure out was a way to get past that gag order.

  . . . do I want to spend thirty days in the can for freedom of the press . . .

  . . . that was the tricky part.

  . . . I sit on it until I could spring it . . .

  . . . I thought I knew everything about her . . .

  “You were wrong,” I said.

  Somebody always knows, J.J. had said that Friday afternoon when he and Teresa took the turnoff into Hamlet, past the water tower where someone had painted that Linda Kronholm put out.

  J.J. had called that one right. He had conjugated the possibilities. The narcotic of twenty-four-hour television. Shows repeated at midnight and 3 a.m. for the insomniacs and the lonely and the night people. Handheld video cameras. Security checkpoints. The availability of websites. Shock jocks. Talk radio. Share your thoughts with. E-mail your remarks to. Randy from Higginson. Yo! Carlyle.

  Some
body out there, J.J. had said. A Lotto shot. The winning ticket bought in a Wal-Mart in Ottumwa.

  You can’t worry about it.

  It happens.

  It wasn’t the Wal-Mart in Ottumwa.

  It was Randy from Higginson.

  Randy from Higginson was the night manager at the Step Right Inn. The graveyard shift. Eleven p.m. to 7 a.m. Randy from Higginson toned his abs with Carlyle’s exercise tapes as a way of staying awake. Randy from Higginson had twenty-seven Carlyle postcards. He had a Carlyle do-rag. He e-mailed Yo! Carlyle every night after midnight. Yo! Carlyle. What’s going down? That judge had some nerve. Hang in. You got a pal in Higginson. Yo! Carlyle. You and Jocko. He’s my favorite Rhino. Your pal in Higginson. The first thing Randy did when he reported for work each evening at the Step Right Inn was check the number of cars in the parking lot. If there were more cars than there were rooms occupied then Randy knew that someone was piling extra people into a room without paying extra for them. He would get them in the morning. Five in a room was the limit, but that included two kids. At 1 a.m. he turned on the NO VACANCY sign. A house rule. Step Rite Inn management took the position that anyone who tried to check in to a motel after 1 a.m. was probably up to no good. Better safe than sorry. No room at the Inn. Then he would rerun the surveillance tape from the camera over the desk so he could put faces to the names of the people who had checked in before he came on duty. A habit of his in case a room was busted up or sheets were stolen. Yo! Carlyle. People will steal anything. Randy from Higginson. T.M. Kean had signed in at four-thirty that afternoon. The gentleman who accompanied her was J. McClure. J. McClure paid for the room with a hundred-dollar bill. Thirty-three dollars and eighty-four cents change. Yo! Carlyle. I didn’t recognize them until they were checking out the next morning. I mean, they’d been all over the TV last week. I mean, that’s cool. My bud Tommy said he could copy the tape. Your pal, Randy.