Nothing Lost (3 page)

I thought I could, too.

Begin with his appearance.

You can pick up things there.

He was a forty-two regular, high-end off-the-rack, nothing Italian, of course, I doubt there was a single Armani in Cap City, maybe Blass or Hilfiger with the designer label removed, he would be scrupulous about that, he wouldn't want people whispering at the office Christmas party that he bought the basics on Poppy's ticket, and although he wasn't tall, five-ten or so, but definitely under six, he did a very good languid. He seemed born to put his feet up on a desk or a conference table, kicking first one shoe off and then the other, loafers usually, never lace-ups, they were for the five-hundred-an-hour corporate boys, he would say, sometimes black Mephistos for the common touch, and he made his feet on the table seem an act of grace. He didn't work out that I knew of, no jogging, no aerobics, no StairMasters, exercycles or treadmills, no gym membership, but he didn't carry weight either, and his hair always looked as if it was the day before a cut, not long, not short, no discernible after-forty loss, no scalp desert and definitely no comb-over; he had a private way of pointing out to a jury when opposing counsel was wearing a hairpiece, he'd keep running his hands through his hair at a lawyers' sidebar with the judge, he thought wigs were funny, wigs were untrustworthy, a bad piece might tip a juror toward a guilty verdict, and a defendant might be remanded to Durango Avenue in part because of his court-appointed attorney's unfortunate head ornament.

Women thought he was attractive. Which is why he tried to stack juries with them.

J.J. knew I had known his father, probably even that I wasn't sold on Walter's relentless bonhomie, but his name never came up. It was as if he had no family. After Walter's suicide, I wrote J.J. the usual platitudes, and on the bottom of the printed card I received in return—THE FAMILY OF WALTER MCCLURE APPRECIATES YOUR EXPRESSION OF CONDOLENCE—he had scratched three words,
Max—Thanks—J.J.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that J.J. did not encourage intimacy, but then who among us does. Christ, I wouldn't want anyone poking around my memory closet.

Take his brother, Emmett. A very complicated story, that. As it turned out. But first the day that Percy Darrow was executed.

I think I can put together a plausible narrative.

CHAPTER THREE

J.J.

J.J. closed the door of the conference room, checked his digital Casio, then took his seat at the head of the empty conference table. The sandwich Allie had bought sat on a paper plate in front of his chair. Along with a plastic knife and fork and split of bottled water. Lunch. He took a bite and a swallow. The water was room temperature, the sandwich ice cold. He picked up the remote and clicked on
News at One.

Poor Percy Darrow. Probably the last day of his life, the first man to die in the state's electric chair in over forty years, and the poor son of a bitch didn't even lead the news. “Holding on to life is like holding on to a handful of sand,” Percy Darrow had said in his NewsFront interview the night before, hands and feet shackled, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. Not bad as last-day quotes go. Manufactured by one of his New York and Los Angeles pro bono death-penalty lawyers. Probably Elsie Brand. She had a gift for the telling phrase, befitting an entertainment lawyer from Century City. And a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, she had taken pains to tell him. While posting signals that she might be available for a prairie interlude.

A mistake he did not make.

Parlance was still the big story. How often does a Republican president come to an unemployed black man's funeral in a state he won with 61 percent of the vote, and hug Jesse Jackson in the bargain? On the screen there was film on Duane Lajoie and Bryant Gover. Both in shackles, both in prison orange, both slight, feral, shifty-eyed. They could have been twins. One had a receding chin, the other reddish-blond hair, a few strands of which he had twirled into what looked like a shoulder-length rat's tail. A bugger grip, the hacks at Durango Avenue called that effect. As the prisoner would find out soon enough. J.J. shook his head. He knew what their rap sheets and probation reports would say. Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field. To make up for mobile homes, public housing, foster parents, grungy rentals, domestic abuse, deficient IQs, sexual molestation, juvenile detention, substance abuse, paternity tests, unpaid child support, petty crime, felony convictions, and penitentiary hard time, probably with a little buttfucking thrown in. The bumper sticker on Lajoie's pickup said FUCK THE TELEPHONE COMPANY. It might just as well have said ARREST ME. A witness remembered seeing the bumper sticker the night of the murder, on an '89 Ford 4x4 with a four-pin trailer-tow harness, driving at a high rate of speed on County Road 21 a mile east of the field where Parlance's body was discovered two days later. In the ranching counties, people knew pickups and trailer tows better than they knew their own children. “Helped me change a tire once,” a woman of indeterminate age and hair that looked as if it had been combed with a rake told a TV reporter about Duane Lajoie. Or was it the other one? They had once been residents of the same trailer park. “Pretty much of a loner, though. A drifter, like.”

The loner and the drifter. Twin carbuncles on the body politic. J.J. wondered which one would dime the other out first. It was going to happen. Bet the house, break the bank. The Worm won't give me this one, thank God. Too much ink for Poppy's husband. And ink for Poppy's husband meant ink for Poppy. The last thing the Worm wanted.

Poppy's husband. As he would always be identified. There were worse fates.

Maybe.

Percy Darrow finally got airtime after the Frito-Lay commercial, his rapidly diminishing future hanging on the decision expected any moment of an en banc meeting of the Twelfth Circuit in Chicago. DECISION DAY was the slug line over a still photo of Percy Darrow, a Bible clutched to his chest, a WWJD tattoo displayed on his left hand, one letter on each knuckle. WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? Not for the first time it occurred to him that Jesus found a lot of converts among the constituents detained by the Department of Corrections. At least the parents of the murdered James twins would not be in attendance at Durango Avenue for the festivities. The seven-year wait for decision day had taken its toll. Mother dead of breast cancer three years earlier, father lost in a twister in Phil Sheridan County the following spring. The only other living relative was the mother's sister, a Carmelite nun in Oregon who had taken a vow of silence. So there would be no bullshit about closure. That terrible feel-good word. There is no end to grief. It's there, a constant, layer upon layer over the years. Like barnacles on a sunken ship.

Is it grief I feel about Emmett? Or guilt?

It was thirty-five years since it happened, but now he was dreaming about it again. It. Never a more specific designation. The dream was not exactly a nightmare. Just something that woke him up. Not every night. But more nights than he wished. Often enough so that he came to anticipate it. And to feel relief the nights it didn't wake him. The dream was like instant replay, viewed from every angle, slo-mo and super-slo-mo.

Back to the present. The past was too dangerous.

A live update of the crowds already beginning to picket outside Durango Avenue. There was a thin blanket of snow on the ground, with more promised, and the cameras picked up the frozen breath of the picketers. And the tinted plastic masks of the Capital City riot police who were already in place. He hoped for a blizzard. A blizzard wouldn't cancel the execution, but snow and below-zero wind chill meant thinner crowds. Thinner crowds might mean no Ted Koppel. And no Ted Koppel meant no Poppy. Poppy, who was going to Durango Avenue to represent the James family.

The weather was not cooperating. Clear skies, temperatures not expected to drop below freezing.

Poppy would not be there yet. Poppy was prime time only. Poppy would have a few words to say about what Jesus should do to Percy Darrow. In her role as the representative of the James family. Bringing closure.

God, Poppy could be a pain in the ass!

A thought that was constantly percolating beneath the impenetrable imperturbability that J.J. chose to present to the world.

Another commercial. Then a still of Jocko Cannon in studious black glasses holding three Cap City kindergarteners on his lap at the annual Reach Out Festival the university sports information department conducted at the end of spring practice every year. Followed by a clip of the Reverend Hardy Luther in wire-rimmed aviator glasses leading the Rhino football team in a pre-game locker-room prayer. A second clip of Jocko Cannon in full pads and Rhino black and silver doing a sack dance over the crumbled form of K-State quarterback Kareem Cox. A cut to Dr. John Strong holding a candle at the campus vigil he had organized, protected by a phalanx of Rhino linemen, all holding candles. A head shot of Brittany Barnes circled in a photo of the women's swimming team, then stock footage of her last-place finish in the backstroke at the conference championships.

It was as if finishing last justified what happened to her.

Allegedly happened to her.

The presumption of innocence must be maintained.

As Gerry Wormwold had stressed within the hour.

That investigator of yours is off the reservation, the A.G. had said.

Miss Vasquez is not my investigator, General. She represents the department. Over which you preside.

Are you blaming me? She works directly for you.

I'll talk to her.

Call me when you do.

A weather update, another commercial, then Nathalie Hubbard, as always looking as if her clothes were two sizes too small. Nothing but violations of the penal code on
News at One
today. J.J. raised the volume slightly. “We're outside the Criminal Courts Building, Des, where local nightclub owner Bobby Toledo”—film of Bobby Toledo entering the courthouse, head hidden under a raincoat—“accused of the murder of convicted drug dealer Tone Vaccaro . . .” A traveling shot of Murray Lubin scurrying down the courthouse steps. Known as Not-to-Worry Murray, Murray was Bobby Toledo's lawyer. “You know what I like about murder cases?” Murray Lubin liked to say. “One less witness to worry about.” Murray Lubin said he had no comment, he would try the case in a court of law, not the court of public opinion. “No comment” meant Not-to-Worry Murray was worried. And maybe ready to deal. Tone Vaccaro was no loss. Back to Nathalie Hubbard: “This morning in Department Thirty-three, lead prosecutor J.J. McClure, with his usual flair for courtroom pyrotechnics, ridiculed the defense contention that Mr. Toledo was trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Carmen Capote.”

Then J.J. trying to push his way past the cameras. Nathalie Hubbard blocked his way. She knew he would stop for her. The legacy of a long-ago post-midnight entanglement in the back of her Volvo station wagon after a department Christmas party. He had bumped his head on a child's safety seat, and there were Fruit Loops stuck to the soles of his shoes. “J.J., would you characterize this as a good morning or a bad morning for the prosecution, up or down, who was today's top scorer.” Stop. To the camera. “This is a murder trial, Ms. Hubbard, we don't keep a running score . . . now if you'll excuse me.” Over his shoulder: “. . . a drug deal gone bad, no more no less.”

“J.J., will you be involved with the Parlance case?”

“I have no comment on pending cases.”

“J.J., a question about Percy Darrow, will you be at Durango Avenue tonight . . .”

Unfortunately, yes. But not an answer he was willing to share with the viewers of
News at One.

He had never seen anyone die. Scratch that. He had seen Emmett drown.

The door to the conference room opened suddenly. J.J. quickly clicked off the remote. Not quick enough.

“Don't you ever knock?” J.J. said.

MAX

Allie enters the story here. Allie Vasquez. An investigator in the A.G.'s office. I had hired her when I was still there, and J.J. kept her on, even though the Worm had wanted him to get rid of all my people. Allie was also a student of mine. At Osceola Community Law School. The night division. Allie was bright. If she hung in, she would pass the bar. It might take a couple of tries, but she wouldn't back off, she'd keep taking the bar exam until she got it right. She was thirty-three, and a single mother. I hate that phrase. She got drunk, she got laid, she got knocked up, she had a kid, she couldn't tell you who the father was, and so she was a single mother. Or maybe she wasn't drunk, she forgot to wear her diaphragm or take the pill or the guy didn't want to wear a rubber. Or maybe the father was a shit or a one-night stand and she didn't want him around. Her daughter's name was Rhea. Rhea was six.

I liked Allie. She could be a bit of a cunt, but she would keep me up on things at the A.G.'s. The gossip. What was going down. Nothing that would compromise a case. Just a touch here, a shading there, a peek at the computer records, if I asked, or a phone call. Sometimes she would say no. Fair enough. She had a kid to support, she needed the A.G. job. Getting fired was not on her agenda. She didn't expect a break on her grade, and I didn't give her one.

She was also a special friend of J.J.'s. Or had been. Anyway, that's what people said. There were not many secrets in a place as incestuous as the courthouse.

Some of them were even true.

“Don't you ever knock?” J.J. said to Allie.

“Why? You might find something interesting. You can always say excuse me, you walk in on something you shouldn't have walked in on.” He doubted she had ever said excuse me about anything. “Watching yourself on the tube?”

“No,” J.J. said. He straightened his tie and slipped on his shoes. “Of course not.”

“The remote's by your hand.”

“So?” Of course Allie would have noticed the remote. And of course she would have called him on the pointless prevarication. Little escaped her. It was what made her a good investigator. Her in-your-face style had antagonized both her superiors and her male partners when she was a detective in the Cap City P.D. It was why the commissioner was so willing to unload her when the A.G.'s office requested another investigator. And no doubt why Max had hired her. Now the Worm was on her case.

J.J. stared at her for a moment, then pointed to the sandwich. “What in the name of Christ do you call that?”

“A tuna on rye, hold the mayo, hold the lettuce.”

“It tastes like tuna-fish sherbet.”

“J.J., I'm an investigator, I'm not your fucking waitress; you want somebody to nuke your tuna on rye, get yourself a sandwich babe. Patsy maybe.” Patsy Feiffer was the most junior of his attorneys, just a month or two out of arraignments. “She's so good with the precedents and the case law and all that shit, she shouldn't have any trouble keeping your order straight.”

“You don't like Patsy, do you?”

“What's there to like? She's a babycake.” Babycake was the name the nonlawyers in the office called the junior assistant state's attorneys. Always out of earshot. Except for Allie. She wore her class resentment like a wound stripe. “I forgot. Babycakes don't do sandwich orders.”

“What I like about you, Allie, is your gift for holding your tongue.”

“What you like about me is—”

J.J. cut her off. Change the subject. Work up to the Worm. “How's Rhea?”

“A pain in the ass.”

“She's six years old.”

Allie reached over and scraped away a dab of tuna he had not realized had adhered to his chin. “The only thing you know about kids is you don't have any. So if I say Rhea's a pain in the ass, buy into it.” She licked the tuna from her finger. A simple gesture she could make seem salacious. Conversation with Allie was like hand-to-hand combat. Blade to blade. The trick was not to engage. Rhetorical argument led nowhere. “Look, I'm due back in court in an hour, then I've got to head out to Durango Avenue.” Be matter-of-fact. Cool. An afterthought. “Bring me up to speed on Jocko Cannon.”

“He's a fat fuck.”

A predictable response. “That's not an indictable offense.”

“All right. He's a three-hundred-pound All-American nose-tackle, fat fuck.” Allie scratched her cheek. “What's a nose tackle anyway?”