Nothing Lost

by John Gregory Dunne

  CHAPTER THREE

  From the unedited interviews of Alice Faith Todt, aka Carlyle.

  Well, for fuck sake, of course I put it on my Web page. Usually I don’t see those loony e-mails from Nobody in Nowhere, I got people who handle that shit, but someone sees the one from this dude at the Step Right Inn—can you fucking believe that?—and one way or the other it gets to me and Alex sees it, and he says it looks like Duane’s lawyer and the D.A. were balling their way across the whole state. Higginsville or Higginsport or whatever the fuck it’s called is like five hundred miles from Regent, maybe even a thousand, why didn’t they hire a chopper, a small plane, or something, I get carsick if I drive thirty miles, and what were they doing except cooking up some deal for Duane while they were bouncing up and down on some motel bed, those fucking beds are like trampolines, I remember from when I was a kid, you know with me and Waylon and me and Kile. I bet Duane’s deal was going to be some kind of parole or shit in thirty years and stuff, that’s not bad, I don’t want to see him that much anyways, thirty years is about right. Alex hires a chopper, it goes out to Higginsport and picks up Rudy, or Randy, and Randy’s got the dupes of the surveillance tapes when they’re checking in, you can’t see them all that clear, but they look all shifty-eyed and shit. Alex says those tapes are gold, everyone’s going to want them, they got to pay to use them, one-time use only. He’s always thinking business, Alex. You got to maximize, he says. Always maximize. Whatever maximize means, it’s going to put money in Alex’s pocket, bet your ass on that. Anyway, this old lesbian, Alicia, she must be forty or something, hears about it, and we negotiate, and you know that cunt never told me what she had about Teresa’s mom, typical, you can’t trust them. You know, I know a lot of gay chicks from the shows, you’re changing backstage, and you see them casing your box, don’t get me going on that. Anyway. Alicia goes on the air in her nightly wrap-up with the tape and Blue Tyler and that gangster and shit, and it’s like a zoo the next morning at the courthouse, they even got camera teams from the Today show and Good Morning America. It’s pissing rain, Alex got some terrific shots of me with my hair all mussed to shit and my clothes plastered against me like with glue, and it’s just that fucking rain, and Duane is there and that other fucker, Bryant, he was supposed to start testifying that morning, and nobody knew what was going to happen, and I talk to GMA and that perky one on Today. . . .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Willfully indiscreet, Ellen Tracy said that morning. She stalked her office in the courthouse, her face contorted with rage. Willfully arrogant. Willfully this. Willfully that. I remembered what Teresa had said Sunday afternoon—was it only four days earlier?—when she returned to the DeLuxor. Don’t say willful, Max. She hated willful. I stared straight ahead. Patsy Feiffer seemed afraid to blink. J.J. and Teresa sat side by side in the chairs placed in front of Judge Tracy’s desk. The judge was walking behind them, as if straining at a leash, talking to the backs of their heads. Judge Tracy. Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hep-burn had once been in a movie in which he had been the prosecutor of a woman accused of murder and she was the defendant’s attorney. Adam’s Rib. They were married. They called each other Pinky. He was a Republican, she was a Democrat. Or vice versa. Presumably they had not taken a vow of celibacy during the course of the trial. Move away from there. Adam’s Rib was not a productive line of rebuttal.

  In violation of every known ethical precept. Tracy had caught her breath and was starting over again.

  I have examined my options, she said. We could continue the trial we began last Monday, but in my opinion this case has been irretrievably compromised by the willfully unprofessional behavior of counsel for the defense and counsel for the people.

  It was as if Tracy were already marshaling the case she would present at a disciplinary hearing.

  She would declare a mistrial and dismiss the jury. The indiscretion of counsel had become a matter of public debate and would taint any further proceedings. The defendant would be returned to the Capital City Correction Center, and the witness, Mr. Gover, to the state penitentiary in Cap City. Counsel was advised that the court’s gag order was still in effect. After reading the record and the precedents, the court would recommend an investigation by the disciplinary committee of the state bar.

  Teresa and J.J. left the room without looking at each other. Patsy Feiffer’s cell phone suddenly began to ring. She stopped as if she had been shot, then fled through the door, slamming it in my face.

  I was going to ask you to remain behind anyway, Max, Ellen Tracy said. It was the first time she had ever called me by my first name. She sat down heavily in her desk chair and stared at me for a moment. Could you have stopped that? she said finally.

  Am I speaking to a potential witness against me at a disciplinary hearing?

  Ellen Tracy’s face froze. No, she said.

  Then I couldn’t have stopped it. I didn’t know until Saturday. And then I took a leap. You were the only one who could have stopped it, Judge. That four-day recess. When you went home to Dead Center. If we’d started last Thursday . . .

  Are you blaming me?

  No, Your Honor. I’m just saying that indiscretion cannot occur without opportunity. That recess was opportunity.

  You can leave now, Mr. Cline.

  The vehicle that was meant to deliver Bryant Gover back to Durango Avenue had developed a crack in the engine block and could not be driven. Because of the rain, it would be impractical to bring another secure police transport down to Regent until the next day. The state marshals assigned to Bryant Gover declined the offer from Brutus Mayes of a Loomis County sheriff’s van to replace the van with the cracked engine block. The marshals assigned to Duane Lajoie said they could deliver both men to their respective destinations in Capital City, and after many discussions over who would be in charge of the vehicle, it was decided that one of Gover’s marshals and one of Duane Lajoie’s marshals would escort the two convicts. The two other marshals would have no problem catching rides back to the capital. Both prisoners would be in leg restraints; their hands were cuffed and duct tape was wrapped around the mouth of each to stop the stream of invective that each shouted at the other in the parking garage under the courthouse. Piece of cake, the marshal driving the van said as he prepared for the trip. Two pansy boys, no problem, the second marshal said. They would take the river road. No traffic, good time, the driver said. Duane Lajoie was in the back seat with his guard, Bryant Gover in the front with the driver.

  No one is quite sure what happened just short of the Albion Bridge nineteen miles south of Cap City. What is known is this. There was a shank in the car along with the four bodies. The shank was a nail file that had been melted into a toothbrush; the toothbrush was the handle, the nail file the business end. Whether the shank belonged to Gover or to Lajoie was unknown. I would assume it was Duane; when his body was pulled from the car he seemed to have slipped from his iron restraints. He was slight; perhaps the rush of the river as he was drowning might have aided his escape from the irons. Perhaps he thought he could escape from the car. Perhaps he thought this was his last opportunity to kill Bryant Gover, sticking him through the mesh screen separating front seat from back. Perhaps the driver saw him in the rearview mirror and took evasive action.

  Perhaps the driver was the target.

  Or perhaps the shank was Bryant Gover’s last best chance for escape. Or settling a score with Duane Lajoie.

  Something he used because he liked to hurt people.

  Did it matter?

  The car went into the river, and floated downstream until it was stopped by an uprooted tree.

  Bryant Gover was still wearing the duct tape over his mouth.

  What had been a sensational mistrial was now a sensational mistrial that had resulted in the death of four people, two of whom were members of a South Midland law enforcement agency.

  Film at six. Supermodel Carlyle—Larry King Live! “Solved at Last: The Mystery of Blue Tyler!” Killer
’s lawyer in seclusion. Poppy McClure: no comment. Wormwold: now clearly in the lead for Repub nomination for gov. Film at nine. CNN: “Blood on the Prairie—a Report!” Rush: What kind of lawyer defends scum like this?

  Film at eleven.

  The fact is, we will never know what really happened the night Duane Lajoie and Bryant Gover ran into Edgar Parlance on County Road 21. We can make certain surmises. We can surmise that Duane Lajoie was driving the Ford 4x4 pickup. We can surmise that Edgar Parlance was walking by the side of the road. We can surmise that the headlight beams on the 4x4 picked up someone Duane Lajoie recognized as Earnest Wonder. We can surmise that he backed up to make sure the man walking by the side of the road was the man he had known at OSP as Wonderman. Earnest Wonder. We can surmise that when Edgar Parlance saw himself caught like a deer in the headlights, he began to run. We can surmise that when he was run down he might not even have remembered Duane Lajoie.

  Who he knew as Princess.

  We can surmise that Duane Lajoie was not an innocent bystander in the death of Edgar Parlance. We can surmise that Bryant Gover was equally culpable.

  We can ask if it is worth caring about.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Teresa did not contest the proceedings against her conducted by the disciplinary committee of the South Midland Bar Association. Nor did she appear at the hearing. She also chose not to be represented by counsel. The committee, however, insisted that an attorney representing her interests be present, and so she designated me. Your only instructions, she wrote, are to make sure that my name is spelled right and in verbal testimony that it be pronounced correctly. The proceedings were brief, and the unanimous written verdict of the committee was that Teresa Kean, LLC, be herewith and forever barred from the practice of law in South Midland. Her disbarment only applied to South Midland, meaning that there were forty-nine other states where she could practice law if she so desired, although when she applied for a license in a state where she was not already licensed she would have to make known the action taken against her by the state of South Midland.

  James Joseph McClure was reprimanded by the disciplinary committee and his license suspended for four months. He had already resigned as chief deputy prosecutor in the office of the Attorney General of South Midland. In a written statement, he said that the committee had acted properly and with dispatch and he would like to thank the committee for taking into consideration his years of service to the state of South Midland.

  Oh, fuck him, Allie Vasquez had said.

  Poppy McClure said she would give up her seat in Congress when the current session ended and would not run for governor. Neither she nor J.J. would comment on the future of their marriage. Poppy moved permanently to Washington, and is still in demand, preaching the conservative sermon on talk radio, where, she says, she is not frustrated by the moral cripples and mental defectives in the Democratic Party who run both houses of Congress and seek to stifle the wishes of true Americans who worship flag and country. Stanley tells me that in the gay underground, stories occasionally flourish about Poppy and Lorna Dun. He hears the stories in the clubs he visits from time to time.

  Gerry Wormwold won the Republican nomination for governor. In the general election, however, to his great surprise and the surprise of all the Sunday prognosticators, he was trounced by the incumbent, Guy Kennedy, whose moribund candidacy was revived by the slogan VOTE FOR A WORM, GET A WORM.

  Merle Orvis tied up briefly with Randy from Higginson.

  Edgar Parlance’s reputation remains more or less intact, but iconic black men are no longer much in demand as a story line, nor is the evil that men do to each other. Martin Magnin had put the Edgar Parlance story on hold, back burner (Jack didn’t want to play you anyway, he told me over the telephone), and he was throttling up the Blue Tyler story, did I know how to get in touch with Teri Kean, I’m working up a whole new approach. I suppose that Albert Curwent is still out there, hopeful that he can sell his tale to someone, but it is devalued currency. Every now and again, I look at the mug shots of Wonder, Earnest, Prisoner Number 83992-1, Oklahoma State Penitentiary, McAlester, OK.

  I am told that a gun cannot appear in the first act without its going off in the third. I don’t know who said that or even if it is true in real life. I have been around guns my whole life and never felt the need to shoot anyone. Stanley sometimes, but never to the point of lifting the weapon for heft and seeing if there was a bullet in the chamber.

  And yet.

  Case in point: The Manurhin 7.65 with which Alice Faith Todt aka Carlyle accidentally shot herself in the arm at a Donna Karan AIDS benefit in Miami Beach. Jocko Cannon of course made a move on Alice in the back seat of his Mercedes-Benz S-600. Tater was driving. Jocko pinned Alice to the back seat and grabbed at her underwear with one hand, taking his dick out with the other. Alice did not fight him. He outweighed her by two hundred pounds. She groped in her bag and located the Manurhin 7.65. The first shot caught Jocko in the stomach, the second smashed the front windshield. No charges were brought against Alice, because Brutus Mayes forgot to remove the film from the two hidden video cameras in the S-600, one in the driver’s sun visor, the other in the back seat reading light above the rear window, both of which recorded the assault. By the time he attempted to confiscate the film, it was already in the hands of the lawyer from Chicago that Alice had retained, and who himself drove that same model Mercedes. Jocko recovered. He now wears a colostomy bag. He never reported to the Miami Dolphins.

  The film library of Furlong Budd Doheny did turn up on Famous Flesh and Boobs & Pubes. Or some of it did. There was no footage of Teresa, nor was the man identified by name. The only woman I recognized, in a remarkably clear still photograph, was Martha Buick. She was naked, kneeling on a bed, talking to a man I took to be Budd Doheny. She was laughing, he was smiling. They were prepared for whatever they were going to do. What struck me was the room where this coupling would take place. There was a riding helmet on the bedside table, the kind worn in dressage, trimmed in black velvet. There was a lithograph over the bed, an Ocean Park by Richard Diebenkorn. There were photographs in silver frames and a silver baby cup filled with sharpened pencils. The pillow slips were patterned, perhaps Porthault, and the bedspread looked as if it might come from Pierre Deux. In other words, it was an upscale venue, not the seedy Motel 6 room of most pornographic photographs. Someone had taken this picture. Someone engaged as a photographer, one with professional skills, and who perhaps was also meant to be a participant in the revels clearly about to begin. I wondered if Teresa knew that her best friend and her second husband were or had been so engaged.

  Does it matter? Teresa had said to me the day we walked into a mini-riot outside the Cap City Correction Center.

  I think now she meant does anything matter.

  It was, needless to say, Alice Todt who found the photograph, in her daily perusals of Famous Flesh and Notable Nookie.

  She used it as a bargaining chip against Martha Buick.

  Allie Vasquez passed the bar and is an immigration lawyer in San Diego, where I suppose she will never run out of clients. She is also married, to a widower, a retired navy rear admiral with grown children who don’t like her. Allie’s daughter Rhea is thirteen. She runs the hurdles for her school track team and is an aspiring ballet dancer. Her ballet teacher wants her to give up the hurdles and her track coach wants her to give up the ballet.

  Fuck them, Allie said. It’s her choice, I’ll let her make it.

  Allie and I talk every now and again. Just checking in, she will say.

  How’s the admiral? I will say.

  Happiest gringo you ever saw.

  I find it difficult to imagine Allie at the officers’ club in Coronado. The wives in teased hair must hold their husbands in hammerlocks when she is around.

  You play bridge with the wives?

  I learned how. Anson taught me. Anson was her husband. Rear Admiral Anson Cunningham, USN. I was very good.
<
br />   That’s past tense, Allie.

  I wanted to play for money. They didn’t. It’s against club rules, they said. So play for matches, I said. It’s still gambling they said. All very pissy. So Anson and I go to Del Mar instead.

  Mrs. Cunningham, I said.

  How’s Stanley?

  Stanley and I stagger along. We’re used to each other. I think we’ve even come to like each other. At least more often than we dislike each other. Stanley has this lecture he gives. The title is “Offal,” and it, and Stanley, have become big hits on the Midwestern lecture circuit, helped along by the fact that Stanley is an M.D. as well as a professor of medicine at the SMU Medical School. It is Stanley’s theory that people in long-term relationships have three subjects they talk about more than anything else. The first (or the second) is sex. The second (or the first) is money. And the third is shit. Shit is the public unmentionable. Did you go? When did you go? Can you go? Why can’t you go? What does it look like? Stanley claims that the world is divided up into two kinds of people—those who look at their body waste in the toilet bowl, and those who don’t. Most people claim they don’t, which is a lie, because most people do. By this point in his lecture, Stanley has his audience rolling in the aisles. Color. Consistency. Shape. Odor. Farting. Laxatives. Softeners. Enemas. Constipation. Diarrhea. Strain. Couples will never admit how much they talk about this, Stanley will say. Then he names famous people, historical personages, royals, and current favorites. Do you think the president or the queen or the diva or the movie star does not talk about this? Get real. The lecture began to catch on. At one point Stanley was invited to be on a nightly talk show in New York. He was greeted at the airport by one of the show’s bookers who said he was delighted to meet Dr. Poindexter, or as the show’s host had called him in that morning’s storyboard meeting, Dr. Dump. Stanley took the next plane back to Cap City. He did say that he thought the booker was cute.