Nothing Lost (6 page)

“Gas Station Gordy,” Charley Buckles suddenly said. He seemed to have been sleeping. Gordon Sunday was on his mind. Even more than Percy Darrow. The past was an infinitely more interesting place for Charley Buckles than the present. “That's what they called him. First four people he shot ran convenience stores out on the Interstate. I swear, all by himself he shut down every gas station in the state. From the Big Muddy to the Wyoming line. Must've passed through Parker County. Walter ever mention it to you?” J.J. shook his head. “Probably before your time. Might've shot Walter, he stopped off there. Then I guess you wouldn't be here, if he had.” A spittled laugh. “Funny the way things work out.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nobody dared get in their car. Your grandma died, they kept her on ice until it was safe to plant her. Gordy and that little bit of fluff he drove with. Sue something.” He searched his memory. “Sue Carol Hayes. Convenience-store Bonnie and Clydes was what they were. I mean, they shot eleven people in nine days. The only reason they got caught was because there was nobody on the highway, and they just run out of gas.”

Another rumble of phlegm, some of which Charley Buckles caught in the palm of his right hand. He wiped it off on a trouser leg. “Sixteen months from the day he got caught to the day he got the juice. They knew how to do things those days. Of course Sue Carol said she was Gordy's prisoner, she hardly knew him. No way he'd been porking her. She was a good girl. Shit. Cowboy Collins ever got into her, he wouldn't have touched the sides.” Cowboy Collins was another South Midland luminary, the star of a thousand porno films, now retired to anonymity and cattle ranching somewhere in the state, the immense weapon that had serviced two generations of adult cinema actresses now only unholstered, it was claimed, for his male companion. “So anyway, I was there. July 14, 1959. They wanted to do the job right, so they set the generator so high Gordy sizzled like bacon in a pan. The room stank, a greasy smell like fatty pork when it catches fire in the oven, and those were the days when there were no air fresheners. My stethoscope sunk into him like he was a goddamn swamp.”

Charley Buckles pulled the blue bandanna from his pocket and mopped the sweat from his face. “That smell of pork still upsets my stomach. You take care of that, Harold?”

Harold Pugh ignored the question.

Charley Buckles motioned J.J. to come closer. “I hear the Cowboy contributes to Poppy's campaign,” he said confidentially.

“I wouldn't think so.”

It would have been political nitro for Poppy to accept a contribution from Cowboy Collins. But then, Charley was plugged in all over the state; he could've heard something.

“You might have her check out if she got something from the Loomis Cattle Company.” Charley Buckles's whisper was like a shout. “That's the Cowboy. She might think about returning it if she did.”

His face contorted into another explosive cough.

“You okay, Charley?”

“Just let me catch my breath.” He gulped air. It was a moment before his breathing evened out. “You going to indict Jocko Cannon?”

“Privileged information, Charley.”

“It'll knock the shit out of that dance down in the Orange Bowl, you do. That big son of a bitch is a number one draft choice, he plays and the Rhinos win the national championship.” He pronounced it “champeen-ship.” “Three hundred pounds of mean. Those Rhino boosters will be all over the Worm's ass he indicts Jocko. He must be squirming on that one. Those boosters can raise a lot of money.”

For Poppy as well as Wormwold.

“How big was that little girl anyway?”

“What little girl?”

“The little girl Jocko dragged down three flights of stairs by her hair.”

“ ‘Allegedly' dragged.”

“If that's the way you want it, J.J.” Another coughing fit. This time some of the spray landed on Harold Pugh's desk. Harold Pugh jumped back, nearly falling from his chair, then examined his shirt with distaste, looking for residue.

“The one with the fractured skull and all her teeth rearranged is the one I mean,” Charley Buckles said without looking at Harold Pugh. “They sure got some strange idea about consensual sex these days over there in Rhino Land. That's his defense, right? Me Tarzan, you Tiffany.”

“Brittany.” J.J. knew he would have to recuse himself if Ralph Cannon could not buy off Brittany Barnes. An unlikely scenario if, as he did not doubt, Allie had read the situation correctly. Poppy was simply too tight with Ralph Cannon. He was not only the finance chairman of the state Republican Party, he had also developed shopping centers with her father.

From the parking lot, the lights on the TV satellite trucks reflected off the windows of the warden's office. Harold Pugh fiddled with the remote, then as if in a fit of pique clicked on the TV. I knew he couldn't resist, J.J. thought. The appeal of Poppy power. On-screen the cameras panned over the crude handmade signs in the prison parking lot. A line drawing of Christ on the cross over the words MAYBE THE DEATH PENALTY SHOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED A LONG TIME AGO. Then the balance: MURDERERS SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH. NUMBERS 35:16‒21. Anti: THEY'RE DYING TO GET US ELECTED. Pro: GOD SAYS, “YOU SHALL NOT PITY HIM.” DEUTERONOMY 19:11‒13. And another: ELECTRICITY—A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM. It's like a minstrel show out there, J.J. thought. It's as if the signs and the demonstrators are shipped from death row to death row, another opening, another show. Then from his studio in Washington, Ted Koppel. It struck J.J. how much he looked like Alfred E. Neuman. He turned to share the observation with Charley Buckles, but Charley was dozing in his chair, his chin resting on his chest. Perhaps dreaming about Gordy Sunday sizzling like bacon. Anyway, he doubted that Charley would know who Alfred E. Neuman was. Or had even heard of
Mad
magazine.

“Next,” Ted Koppel said, “we go to the state penitentiary in Capital City, South Midland, where . . .”

Cut to Poppy in the prison parking lot. A vision in a black leather Jil Sander shearling-lined duffel, her high cheekbones and the mane of raven hair from the Ochoa Reyes gene pool flecked with snow. She was hemmed in by demonstrators, many of whom, like Poppy herself, were wearing large white campaign buttons with orangey letters declaring POPPY POWER.

“Now Congresswoman McClure . . .”

“Ted, let me interrupt.” J.J. wondered if the thick wet snow and condensed breath clouded her view of the monitor on which Koppel was appearing. No. Nothing would get in the way of Poppy and live air. “You can call me Poppy or Congressman, but not Congresswoman, I hate gender specificity, it's part of the social dry rot that is undermining . . .”

“Congresswoman, let's cut past the rhetoric, we're here tonight to talk about the death penalty . . .”

“Excuse me again, Ted, but I'm here to wish good riddance to Percy Darrow, a pedophile child murderer.” She waved documents at the camera. “I have right here in my hand the autopsy reports on little Patrick and little Lyman . . .”

J.J. swore silently. Poppy must have taken the reports from the duplicate files he kept in his office at home. There was no point in losing his temper here. Not for the benefit of Harold Pugh. He would have this out with Poppy later.

“ ‘Their nude bodies were found buried in the woods,' ” Poppy was reading. “ ‘Soil at a temperature of fifty degrees preserves that which is buried in it.' ” Poppy stared at the camera. “Which is why their little bodies were not in an advanced state of decomposition, Ted.”

Charley Buckles's eyes were still closed, his heavy breathing punctuated by irregular quiet snorts. Thank God, J.J. thought. Charley had done the autopsy reports on the James twins. It would offend his sense of professional propriety that so many years later they were being used to make points on a television interview show.

“Congresswoman, you seem to be using the bodies of those two children to troll for votes,” Koppel said. “I noticed you passing out campaign buttons. You even tried to pin them on our crew.”

Poppy was not dismayed. “You know what I say, Ted.”

“I have no doubt that you'll tell me, Congresswoman.”

“I'd sweep the system clean.” The James twins had served their use. Now back on message. “No more getting off on technicalities. Didn't read Miranda, didn't have a warrant, didn't this, didn't that. I say no more plea bargaining, no more Miranda, give the accused one day in court, one day only, then a no-return ticket to the penitentiary, and to death row . . .”

“Everybody?”

“We don't need less death penalty offenses, Ted, we need more. That's the best way to stabilize the inmate population.”

“Congresswoman, will that be your campaign theme if you compete against Attorney General Wormwold for the Republican gubernatorial nomination? ‘Poppy will execute more than Gerry.' Are you going to put a moving sidewalk from death row to the electric chair? Open up a death-row gift shop?”

Score one for Koppel.

J.J. wondered exactly what Poppy would do next. Something off the wall, he was sure. It was like a programmed gene when someone was trying to pin her against the ropes. Fingers through her thick black hair, framed now by a tiara of snow. A dazzling smile. The power of her sexiness setting up the unexpected curve ball.

“Do you read George Bernard Shaw, Ted?
Pygmalion
?
St. Joan
?”

“Congresswoman McClure, I'm not sure what George Bernard Shaw has to do with the first execution in . . .”

“Ted, are you telling me you are not aware of Shaw's attitudes on the death penalty? Even as soft on Communist Russia as he and the Webbs were?” Koppel hesitated. “Beatrice and Sydney Webb,” Poppy added, as if Koppel might not have known. The killer Poppy smile. J.J. knew that Willie Erskine had been surfing the Internet again. Willie Erskine was Poppy's chief of staff. The Internet was made for a poisonous idiot like Willie Erskine. And for a magpie intelligence like Poppy's. Not just Shaw, but the Webbs, too. Poppy's parlay. “Let me quote GBS for you, Ted. From a letter to
The Times
of London in 1947, when socialist England was debating whether or not to quit hanging murderers. ‘The public right and power of civilized states to kill the unprofitable or incorrigibly mischievous in self-defense is a right that can never be abrogated.' ”

Willie Erskine's browser would have been working overtime as soon as Poppy got the call from
Nightline,
and she would have committed the quote to memory, ready to pop it at the opportune moment. Her captivating capriciousness and her unfailing memory were what made her in such demand as a guest talking head.

Ted Koppel changed the subject. Shaw had not been on his agenda. “Congresswoman McClure, Mr. Darrow is going to die in your state's electric chair, perhaps before the end of the program. Many states have instituted more humane . . .”

“Killers don't deserve humanity, Ted. Which is why I am absolutely opposed to lethal injections as a means of ending their lives. Sodium pentathol to put them to sleep. Why let them snooze? Go right to the potassium chloride, I say. Down in Texas, at Huntsville, a killer began to snore on the gurney from the sodium pentathol. That's an outrage. What you call humane is just a way of insulating our way into a liberal feel-good cocoon. Garrote them, as the Spanish used to do. The guillotine, like the French did before they got all squishy. Faceup, eyes taped open, so their last look is the blade coming down. Death for the likes of Percy Darrow should be as horrible as the death he inflicted on his victims . . .”

“You are aware that in Florida a few years ago the electric chair malfunctioned, and the condemned man's head burst into flames—”

“You know what I say to that, Ted?”

“I can't wait, Congresswoman.”

“If people don't want to burn up when they're electrocuted, then they should commit their capital offenses in some other state . . .”

The telephone on Harold Pugh's desk began to ring.

“Hold that thought, Congresswoman,” Ted Koppel said on the TV screen. “I'll get back to you and our other guests, but first we have to go to a commercial break.”

Harold Pugh straightened his shoulders, clicked off the remote, picked up the phone, and announced officially, “Warden Pugh.”

J.J. looked over at Charley Buckles. The wheezing had stopped. He still appeared to be napping. J.J. tapped him on the shoulder. “Charley.” Again. Louder. “Charley?”

Harold Pugh hung up. “It's time. The governor's faxing over the order. We can bring in the witnesses and proceed with . . .” His voice trailed off. “I'll get Darrow; you and Dr. Buckles—”

“I think Charley's dead,” J.J. McClure said.

CHAPTER FIVE

Poppy blew J.J. a kiss from her perch on the bed when he opened the bedroom door. She was resting against a wall of pillows, as always in black—black lace slip, black stockings, and black Manolo Blahnik slingbacks—and as always a cell phone was plugged in to her ear. “Willie, can we fit in the Rural Caucus brunch Thursday at nine.”

Willie Erskine, sitting cross-legged next to her on the bed, punched up Poppy's calendar on her laptop. “No. The issues-and-answers coffee is at nine. And there's also the Republican mayors' pancake breakfast.”

“Shoes off the bed, Willie,” J.J. said.

Willie Erskine looked at Poppy. She glanced quickly at J.J., then motioned Willie off the bed.

“I'll make all three,” Poppy said into her phone as Willie Erskine slid into the chair next to the bed. “Meet and greet, the basic ‘Hello, how are you, Bud. Randy. Phyllis.' No pancakes, no brunch, no bagels, just tea with lemon, forget the sugar, then out of there, ‘Good to see you all, I'll nail all those Washington do-gooders, count on it, count on Poppy,' and on to the next stop.”

She dropped the cell phone into her lap. “So what happened?”

J.J. contemplated himself in the mirror. Poppy's mastery of political choreography still impressed him. It confounded him in equal measure. Most things about Poppy did. He ran his nails over his stubble. He needed to shave, shower, and change his clothes. No time for a catnap. He had promised Wormwold he would have the Toledo package in time for the Worm's noon press conference. Involuntary manslaughter, three-to-six, out in eighteen months with good time. The Worm would hate it. Murray Lubin would think he had died and gone to heaven. Think of the upside, he would tell the Worm. A guilty plea and Tone Vaccaro is in the ground. What he would not say is that it might deflect questions about the Darrow fuckup. In the mirror he saw Poppy waiting for an answer. “He died.”

“What of ?”

“Being seventy-three years old. A hundred pounds overweight. Heart disease. Five packs of cigarettes a day. Emphysema. Maybe he hated George Bernard Shaw, too.” Willie Erskine looked up quickly, as if his handiwork had been challenged. “Charley didn't much like anyone from out of state. And maybe he just didn't want to see another execution. He was at the last one. I didn't know that. It's funny what you learn about someone a half hour before they die.”

“What did you learn about Percy Darrow?”

“Electricity kills. It takes a long time. In this case two and a half minutes.”

“That doesn't seem long,” Willie Erskine said.

“Maybe you had to be there,” J.J. said. “Put your finger in a light socket, Willie. See how long you can keep it there.”

No one spoke.

Poppy's cell phone broke the silence. “Congressman McClure.” She listened for a moment. “You tell him if he's still interested in keeping his seat, he'd better get his ass home from Maui and start dialing for dollars. While's he's learning the hula, his numbers are heading for single digits.” She rang off Poppy style, without a goodbye. “Willie's got something to ask you.”

“As long as you're here, J.J., can I say you're running with Poppy tomorrow?”

J.J. looked at him.

“Hispanic Circle's Winter 5-K Fun Run. You and Poppy. It's a natural. She's a Reyes, and you, you're a . . .”

Willie Erskine's voice trailed off.

“The poster boy for the electric chair? The prosecutor who put the juice back into the system?”

Willie Erskine concentrated on his shoes. He rubbed first one, then the other, on the back of his trouser legs.

“I think I'll take a pass on the Fun Run, Willie.” J.J. was suddenly very tired. He knew he should not say what he was going to say, but he did not care. “I also want you to get the fuck out of our bedroom.” Willie Erskine turned toward Poppy. “Don't look at Poppy.” His tone was deliberate. “Just get out of here.”

Willie closed Poppy's laptop carefully, placed it on the bed, and slipped silently past J.J. Poppy watched him without comment. As he opened the door, she said, “Willie, ink me in for the Fun Run tomorrow.” Willie nodded without looking back. “And Willie, it's Ochoa Reyes. Not just Reyes. Things like that matter to the Hispanic Circle.” When the door closed, Poppy regarded J.J. for a moment. “That make you feel better?”

“Absolutely.” J.J. stretched out on the bed. “That autopsy report you read on
Nightline
last night . . .”

“It was on your desk.”

“And what's mine is yours?”

“And vice versa.”

An allusion to her substantial fortune. Always a sensitive subject, never out in the open. He switched tracks. “You stick around after the cameras left?”

Poppy was back on relatively unmined ground. “What took so long?”

“It took three hours to certify that Charley was dead. The paramedics tried to revive him, and then they had to load him on a gurney and cart him out of there. He weighed two hundred seventy-five pounds, for Christ's sake. On five feet five inches. It was like he was glued to that goddamn chair. Then his next of kin had to be notified. I thought his wife had died. She had. The first one, that is. Four or five years ago. Turns out he got married again last summer.”

“To whom?” Of course she would have met Charley Buckles. Pressed flesh with him at some event or other. He was—or had been—a constituent, and she wanted to know and file every piece of information about a constituent. Even a dead one. You never knew when it might be useful.

“The hostess at the Safety Blitz. The sports bar. Downtown.”

“Across from Rhino Stadium?”

J.J. nodded. “Where every bookie in town lays off his action. That's where Charley did his drinking and placed his bets.”

“And the widow Buckles?”

“Forty years younger than Charley is. Was. With two little kids. And, I gather, a taste for older men. She dropped a couple of husbands along the way. Gentlemen of some considerable years. One in South Carolina, one in Kansas. Her name's Darlene.”

“A waitress name.”

It struck him that you can take the girl out of Foxcroft, but you can't take the Foxcroft out of the girl. “I like your common touch, Poppy.”

Poppy paid no attention. “You can see it on those little plastic name tags they wear pushing trays in coffee shops. Crystal. La Verne. Darlene.”

All of whom would vote for her, J.J. thought. Thinking she was one of them. “I guess Charley was embarrassed. He never told anyone. Except his two grown children, and they stopped speaking to him. They told me about her, but flat out they refused to call her. Wouldn't even give me her telephone number.” He had got it from Allie. No reason to mention that to Poppy. He woke Allie up, and she called back with the number in five minutes. Even at 2 a.m.

“How'd you break it to her?” The logistics of personal tragedy had always absorbed Poppy.

“ ‘Hi, I'm Deputy State Attorney James J. McClure, sorry to call you at this hour, but I thought you'd like to know your new hubby Charley beat Percy Darrow to the end zone.' Sports talk. The kind you hear at the Blitz. ‘Did you have the over or the under?' Betting lingo. Cut the pain. And you know what ‘Hi, I'm Darlene, I'll be your hostess tonight' said right out of the box, she was so cut up by the call?”

“She said, ‘Did Charley leave a will?' ”

J.J. propped himself up on a pillow. “How'd you know that?”

“It's what Darlenes would do. And LuAnnes. Elisabeths tend to be straight.”

Sometimes Poppy was good value. More often than he liked to admit. “Well, I don't think Charley left her in hog heaven, but maybe she won't have to cadge tips at the Blitz anymore. Or put up with all those Rhino boosters trying to cop a cheap feel.” He noticed a faraway look in Poppy's eyes. Her interest in Charley Buckles's family situation was beginning to fade. He was, after all, dead, and Darlene would move on. “The bright side is he didn't have to watch Percy Darrow die.”

Poppy was on safer ground. “You're not getting all bleeding heart on me, are you? Percy Darrow was a bad guy.”

“I know he was a bad guy, Poppy. I convicted him, I knew all the sad stories about what a tough life he had.” He held up his hand as a caution not to interrupt. “I suppose there's a lot of guys out there who watched their sisters suck off their old man, and these guys didn't end up killing two twelve-year-olds and then jerking off in their faces, like Percy did. They might even have turned into solid citizens, these guys. Internet tycoons. Venture capitalists. IPO specialists. Contributors to Poppy McClure's campaign fund. Foursquare with Poppy for the garrote, the gallows, and the guillotine. Auto-da-fé. Decollation. Defenestration. Drawn and quartered. Disemboweled. Noyade. Bastinado. Lapidation. Impalement. Firing squad. Buried alive. Burned at the stake. Or maybe that's auto-da-fé, I'm not all that up-to-date on the Inquisition.”

Poppy let him ramble. He felt as if he were talking in his sleep, free-associating, trying to find the thread. Then he had it again.

“It's now three o'clock in the morning, and no pathologist wants to get out of his warm bed and come down to Durango Avenue to preside at the execution of some pansy psycho in an electric chair they don't know if it's going to work or not. When chances are the stiff is going to smell like overcooked fatty pork. That's a little piece of information Charley passed on to me before he cooled. And there's going to be a little puddle of piss around his feet. That's something else I discovered. The governor's having a shit fit, the warden's afraid he's going to lose his job, as if he's responsible for Charley's death, plus the Worm's pissed off at me, which means he's really pissed off at you, because of that lesson on Shaw you got to give on
Nightline
—that was really smooth, Poppy, Willie earned his pay on that one.”

J.J. took a deep breath.

“And then there's Percy Darrow. He was ready to go at eleven. Made his peace with his maker, he'd pay the penalty, he even offered his organs. Eyes. Liver. Kidneys. I thought the chair would microwave them. Guess not. Then he has to wait for eight hours. That's a long time to wait for the man with the hood.” Poppy waited for him to continue. “He did not go gentle into that good night.” J.J. smiled wearily. “Another Celtic play-wright heard from. After this one, Poppy, I think I might I exit public service.”

“I'm not sure you have a private-sector personality.”

He supposed she meant a gift for solvency. Count on Poppy to shoot from the lip. He was an expense on her tax return. A depreciable item.

Poppy's cell phone rang again. “Congressman McClure.” She listened. The caller seemed to irritate her. Or more probably I had, J.J. thought. Poppy carefully enunciated every word, as if in disbelief. “The Rhino boosters want an advance copy of my remarks. Since when.” The impertinence of the request turned her voice edgy. “It's the red-meat speech. ‘You elect Poppy McClure, you elect a flat-out, unashamed, unabashed sworn foe of the federal government. You send a message to the welfare bureaucrats. To the fascist in-your-face environmentalists. To all the do-gooder something-for-nothing boys who don't know an honest dollar when they pick it from your pocket' . . . blah, blah, blah. And no, you don't get a copy.”

Poppy tossed the phone away in disgust.

“You know what I like best about the red-meat speech?” J.J. said after a moment.

Poppy eyed him carefully. “What?”

“The blah, blah, blah.”

She reached for the mirror she kept on the bedside table, the mirror he often said would fall and break in the middle of the night and bring her seven years of bad luck, but she did not pick it up. “Do you vote for me?”

“We get our picture taken at the polling booth on Election Day. Then I pull the curtain shut behind me and exercise the franchise.”

“And?”

“I have never voted against you.”

Poppy chose not to pursue the point. “You don't like politics.”

J.J. stretched and put his hands behind his head. “Every time I think I might weaken, I run into Willie Erskine. He pulls me back to reality.”

She did not come to Willie's defense. He worked for her. Performed the necessary unpleasant services with relish and always with her benediction. When the zeal for the unseemly diminished and he had outlived his usefulness, as it would most certainly would, he would be dismissed without a thought. “I do like it. In fact I love it. It's like I grew up and got to join the circus.” Poppy stood up and smoothed her slip. It clung to her angular figure. Small breasts, small waist, small hips, prominent hipbones. My Dolores Del Rio look, she called it. “I'm good at it. It's the only thing in my life I did get really good at. All by myself.”

“All by yourself?” He let the statement sink in. He knew it was difficult to get under her skin, but he saw no reason to stop trying. It was like cross-examination. It sharpened his skills. This was payback time. The appreciation of the depreciable item. “That's one way to put it.”

Poppy wet a forefinger and checked a possible flaw in her panty hose. Good legs. Trim ankles. “How would you put it?”

“I might say that the last will and testament of Jim Ford might have helped get the ball rolling.”

Her answer was equable. “You're a real pain in the ass this morning.”

“It's not every morning I've seen two people die the night before. One I didn't get all that choked up about. The other was a bit of a surprise.”

“And you're feeling sorry for yourself?”

J.J. closed his eyes. “Just tired.” After a moment, he heard water splashing in the bathroom sink. “By the way, Poppy. You ever hear of the Loomis Cattle Company?”

A piece of information that the bizarre events of the evening had not jarred from his memory drum. Precipitating a second call to Allie from Warden Pugh's office as the sun rose over Durango Avenue. Check the property taxes of all the major landholders in Loomis County, he had told her. Why? she had said. Just do it, he had said.