CHAPTER NINE
MAX
The Magnin character called me that night, too.
Teri loves the Jessica idea, Max. Jack's never played one of you people.
One of what people?
He's always looking for ways to stretch himself.
For his art.
Whatever. But first, you'll talk to Teri, right? Get her on board. We sign Jack, we sign Jess, then you bid a fond adieu to Cap City, you're off to the land of milk and honey. You like Malibu?
There's a trial I have to take care of.
If Teresa still wanted me.
Absolutely. We'll be in touch.
So.
Now to Stanley. Who always said that separate bathrooms were the secret of a happy marriage. Fat lot he would know about that. I wondered if Stanley considered our connection a marriage. Or even happy. He had usurped the large bathroom off the master bedroom. No reason why not. He was paying for most of the upkeep. Even as senior prosecutor with the A.G., I was not exactly rolling in clover. And less so now as defender of the odious and their right to be judged innocent until proven guilty. In any event, nothing I really believed, however much I prattled to my students, who believed it even less than I did.
My bathroom, half the size of Stanley's, was down the hall, off the small bedroom I had turned into a home office. Stanley had a tub, but I had the newer shower, three showerheads pounding water at me front, back, and side, with one of those handheld attachments I could use to wash the soap off my genitalia and out of my eyes. Stanley craved my shower, and was constantly talking about putting a new one in his bathroom. Which meant he would have to use mine during the construction. Not so fast. We had an implicit agreement. His bathroom and mine were like tabernacles. Stanley's word. Not to be violated by the other. A place of secrets. The place we kept things we preferred the other not see.
Like the candle I had left on my sink. I lay down. I could hear Stanley finishing up on the treadmill in the alcove where he kept his barbells and workout paraphernalia. He liked to be sweaty when he got into bed. He thought it was an aphrodisiac.
That damn mangled candle. Which Stanley was holding in his hand as he stood in the doorway. His abs were glazed with perspiration.
“What is this?”
“Stanley, you were in my bathroom.”
“I saw it on the sink. I thought you left it there because you wanted me to see it.”
“It's evidence.”
“Someone was naughty, was someone?”
“I'm under a gag order.”
“You are so professional, Max. Did Ms. Kean see the candle? Or is that under the gag order, too? And how could you be under a gag order? You haven't been to court yet.”
“Put it back, Stanley.”
“Does she know how it got twisted into this interesting shape?”
“Good night, Stanley.”
“You are going to introduce me to Ms. Kean, aren't you? âI'm Stanley, you're Teresa, Max has told me soooo much about you.' ” He disappeared down the corridor. A moment later he was back, toweling himself vigorously. “She won't call me Stan, will she?”
CHAPTER TEN
Teresa picked up the phone on the sixth ring.
“Teresa.”
“Max.” Was he in or out? She was supposed to meet Duane Lajoie at the Correction Center today. Without Max she would have to re-schedule.
“Seven-nineteen. You watching TV?”
“I'm not awake yet.”
“Channel Twenty-three. That'll wake you up.”
She groped for the remote. She heard the sound first. “. . . The teenaged supermodel arrived last night from New York in a chartered jet . . .”
Alicia Barbara on-screen. In the background the chartered G-5. “Sources say that the cost of chartering a Grumman G-5 for a flight from New York to Capital City would be no less than forty thousand dollars . . .”
Carlyle wearing jeans, boots, a jean jacket and an oversized woolen cap with the peak turned backside front.
“She wasn't supposed to come until next week.”
“Did she call?” Max said.
“No. Of course not. I don't want her here before I even see my client.”
Alicia Barbara: “. . . was accompanied by a covey of assistants and prize-winning photographer Alejandro âAlex' Quintero . . .”
Alex Quintero in a khaki camera jacket shooting Carlyle on the tarmac, his assistants reloading his battery of cameras and handing him a new one after every few shots.
Alicia Barbara: “. . . refused to speak to this reporter or say if or when she would see her half brother, Duane Lajoie . . .”
A still of Teresa. “. . . whose defense attorney is Teresa Kean, the well-known Washington victims' rights advocate and talk-show regular.”
Jesus Christ.
“. . . former colleagues at Justice for All, the advocacy firm headed by Ms. Kean, refused to comment when asked if it were true . . .”
“. . . for a fee said to be one million dollars.”
A shot of Carmen Furillo, her secretary, no, her former secretary, exiting the Justice for All offices with her hand over her face as if she were doing a perp walk. And behind her Lois Bercovici, her chief litigator, same mode, straight ahead, no stopping, no eye contact. In fact, Lois Bercovici had said plenty, but only to Teresa. Dishonest. Hypocritical. Contemptible. Judas. Four of the more measured words Lois Bercovici had used when Teresa had told her staff that she was leaving the firm and that she would defend Duane Lajoie.
“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 pessaryâ she loved that word, it was so old-fashioned, so Mary McCarthy and
The Group
âfrom 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, GRHSâGod Rest His Soul, in the Pius V Sunday announcementsâcould 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.