I'll Sing for my Dinner (9 page)

He withdrew, and held me in his arms, tears running down his cheeks. It was the first time he had been able to let go, to give me what I needed.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “God, I love you, Jake.”

“Is that really what you want me to do to you?” he asked.

“Yes. You need to punish me sometimes. When I hurt you. I don’t mean to hurt you. I just can’t help myself. You can’t just let me hurt you and be silent. You need to punish me for it. You need to hurt me back and make things balance.”

“God, Cecily, I don’t know if I can do that again. I feel like ...”

“Shhh,” I said, putting my fingers to his mouth. “Love has many ways of expression. You don’t have to understand, Jake. Just know that you make me happy. And I’ll try, I promise I’ll try, to make you happy, too. I’ll try to be better, Jake. I’m trying to learn to be good enough for you.”

~~~

Chapter 9

Jake

Dave Thomas called me and asked if we could meet. I left Cecily at home cleaning the bathroom and singing along with an aria from one of my CDs. Since that day I came home and found her singing opera, she had opened up to admit that she’d had extensive classical training, both voice and instrumental. But she hadn’t told me much more than that.

We met at the bar before my staff showed up to open for the day. He handed me three CDs. The name of the artist leaped out at me, Cecille Buchanan. One was ‘Interpretations of Beethoven on the Celtic Harp’, the next was ‘Greatest Violin Solos’, and the third was ‘Operatic Arias’. The pictures in the liner notes confirmed that my Cecily and Cecille Buchanan were the same woman. I hadn’t known her full name before, never thought to ask.

“Jake, I’m sorry if you think I’m sticking my nose in where it’s not welcome. Something about the way Cecily acted that night didn’t make sense. Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean that I’ve lost my instincts.”

I met Dave when I was still in the Marines. It was right after I came back from Afghanistan the last time. A young Marine in my company was murdered, and the FBI agent assigned to the case was Dave Thomas. He found the two men who were to blame.

We became friends, and when he retired the next year and moved to Colorado, we reconnected. In his youth, he was in a rock band that cut one album and had some momentary fame. When the band broke up, he went to college and then joined the FBI. In retirement, he wanted to get back into the music business and became a booking agent.

“Jake,” he said, “the FBI and the Baltimore police are looking for your girl.”

My head snapped up. A cold, numb feeling spread through my mind. “What did she do?”

“As far as I can find out, they aren’t sure she did anything. The official line is that she’s being sought as a material witness in a murder investigation.” He shrugged. “That could be a smoke screen. I didn’t inquire too closely, because I didn’t want anyone to know I might have too much of an interest. Jake, I’m not an agent anymore, and I don’t plan on talking to anyone else about this. You’re my friend, and I figured I’d tell you what I know.”

“Who was murdered?”

“A fairly high-level cocaine dealer was killed in Baltimore. The cops think Cecily was living with him. They also think that she might know who killed him, maybe even witnessed it. She disappeared before his body was found, and some inside the Bureau think she’s dead as well. Their interest is in following the distribution chain and trying to nail the suppliers above him. His name was Edward Jimenez, known on the streets as Fast Eddie. He was selling quantities in the ten to twenty kilo range. Big bucks.”

I looked at the CDs. “How did she get involved with someone like that?”

“A quick google of Cecille Buchanan turns up a wealth of information. Child prodigy, Carnegie Hall debut at twelve. Featured solo gigs with the New York Symphony at sixteen. Graduated high school at sixteen and enrolled at the Peabody Institute. She graduated college at twenty and had a solo world tour scheduled. And then, it was abruptly cancelled and she dropped out of sight. Almost nothing since then.”

“I would have been in the service then,” I said. “And when I got out, I wasn’t paying much attention to the classical music scene. I had other concerns.”

He handed me several sheets of paper. Leafing through them, I saw they were performance reviews from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and London Observer. The one from the Times was four years old.

Saturday evening, New York was treated to a performance at the Met by the foremost operatic voice to debut in this century. Cecille Buchanan defies the stereotypes. For those expecting a rotund diva, the diminutive teenager walking on stage was a surprise. But when she opened her mouth, she silenced the audience and firmly established herself as a force for decades to come. Her power is extraordinary, her range unprecedented. During the evening, she sang arias in the soprano, mezzo and contralto ranges without missing a note.

“When she dropped off the map two years ago, she had a contract with the foremost agent in the classical field. As far as I can determine, that contract is still valid.” Dave said. “No wonder she gave me the cold shoulder. If she hit it big in popular music, we could have found ourselves on the wrong end of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.”

“What you’re showing me means money. I know opera singers aren’t rock stars, but the top performers make millions,” I said.

“Her parents control her wealth. Or at least they did until she turned twenty-one. As far as I can tell, she’s very rich, and she hasn’t touched it.”

“Dave, what am I supposed to do with all this?” I felt lost.

“I can’t tell you that. I do know that as long as the Bureau has a material witness warrant out for her, potentially you could be charged with either harboring a fugitive, or obstruction of justice. I think you need to figure out what she really knows, and then either contact the authorities, or find a way to smuggle her out of the country to a place without an extradition treaty.”

He placed a hand on my arm. “Jake, even if she’s innocent of everything except having bad taste in men, if the drug lords think she’s a danger to them, I don’t blame her for hiding.”

When I left in the morning, she was singing along with
Salome
in Italian. Returning, I found a Grateful Dead album blasting through the house. I turned it down to a background music level, and almost immediately heard her bounding down the stairs.

With a leap, she flew into my arms, landing on my chest with her arms around my neck and her legs wrapping around my waist. I staggered, and the kiss she planted on my mouth almost made my legs give out.

“I love you, Mr. McGarrity,” she said with a smile. “Guess what? I’m getting as fat as a pig. Will you still love me if I’m fat?”

I had to laugh. “I doubt that anyone would use the word fat to describe you.”

“I weighed myself. A hundred five pounds. I’ve never weighed that much in my life.” She pursed her mouth and looked down, then back at my face. “You would think that some of that would end up in my boobs. But I guess it’s all landing on my ass. Will you still love me when my ass is so big it won’t fit on a barstool?”

Since I was holding the anatomical part under discussion, I squeezed it. “I think you’ve got a long way to go before we have to worry about that. You’re beautiful, Cecily, and I’m very happy that you’re filling out. You were way too thin when we met.”

“Yeah, not eating for a few weeks will do that for you,” she said. “But still, I don’t think it’s normal to gain twenty pounds so quickly. Does good sex make you gain weight?”

I carried her to the couch and sat down, with her straddling my lap. “We need to talk, sweetheart.”

She sobered. “Okay. You look so serious. What’s going on?”

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the CDs. She stared at them as though I held a snake. Her hands pushed against my chest, and she tried to get up, but I held her firm against me.

“Cecily, I found out a lot of things about you today. I know about Edward Jimenez.” She tried to get away again, her face twisting in pain. “No, wait. Listen to me. I love you. None of this changes that. Do you understand me? I’m not leaving you, and I’m not letting you leave me. If you’re in trouble, we’ll deal with it together.”

She searched my face, and I guess she decided she liked what she saw there, because she kissed me. Slowly and tenderly.

“You’re too nice for your own good,” she said. “How did you survive in a war zone?”

“By being as tough as nails and faster than the guys who were trying to get me,” I answered. “Cecily, we’ll get through this, but it’s time for you to be honest with me.”

Nodding, she said, “Let go. I can’t talk like this.” When I gripped her tighter, she said, “I’m not going to run away, but I can’t think when I’m this close to you.”

I let her go, and she paced around the room, a look of intense concentration on her face. Stopping in front of the window, she asked, “How much do you know? What kind of trouble do you think I’m in?”

“I was told the federal authorities are looking for you. And that maybe some drug dealers are looking for you, too.”

“Shit. I’ve checked, and I couldn’t find that an arrest warrant had ever been issued. I hoped that maybe I’d gotten away with it.”

“There isn’t an arrest warrant. The FBI has a material witness warrant out for you. It was issued under a seal. In other words, it’s secret. They seem to think that you know who killed this Jimenez guy, maybe even saw him killed.”

She stood with her back to me, still staring out the window. “When I was in my last year at the Peabody Institute,” she began, “I started having this suffocated feeling. I never had control over my own life. I started performing professionally at eight. A violin prodigy, they called me. I played Paganini at ten. There’s something about my fingers and my ear that’s different from most people. They measured me once. A neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins saw me play, and asked me if he could wire me to some machines. It seems my reaction time is about half of what’s considered normal. I can move my fingers faster than other people. And I only have to hear a piece of music once to be able to play it.”

She chuckled. “That really interfered with my development. It took me forever to learn to read sheet music. Anyway, when I went through puberty and my voice changed and settled, we discovered that I had an amazing range. My parents and my teachers were ecstatic. And I was excited at first. It’s such a high to hit the notes of an aria exactly, and to be able to sing almost every female part is supposedly unprecedented. I spent almost every waking hour eating, drinking and breathing music.”

She turned from the window and sat in the chair across from me with her hands clasped in front of her, staring at the carpet. “But that’s not really healthy for a kid. I lived in an insular world almost completely populated by adults who pushed me to please them. And the more I worked, the more I accomplished, the more accolades I received, the more they always wanted from me.”

For the first time, she looked at me. “I met this guy. I didn’t know he was a drug dealer, but he paid attention to me, not to what I could do. He wasn’t interested in music at all. His idea of music was rap. He told me I was beautiful and desirable. He took me home with him and fed me cocaine and a roofie and took my virginity. I thought I fell in love with him. I barely managed to finish my degree.”

Looking me in the eyes, she said, “I didn’t know what love was. Until I met you, I had no idea what it meant to be loved. All the drugs he fed me ... I get higher than that just seeing the expression on your face when you look at me.”

Taking a deep breath, she gestured toward the CDs. “I had a tour booked after graduation. A thirty-stop, worldwide tour. New York, London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Tokyo, Sydney. I would have made millions. Eddie said he didn’t want me to go, and I cancelled it and moved in with him. He used to throw these big parties. Sugar bowls full of coke all over the place. He liked the way people looked at me when I performed for his friends. He was proud that he owned me, that he could show me off. That’s the first time I played guitar in public.”

She bit her lip. That was always a sign that she was making a tough choice and was afraid of what she was going to say next. “This is hard to say, Jake. You know, it isn’t worth much to own something if you can’t sell it. He used to trade me to men for a night, in exchange for drugs or other favors. Jake, I think you know I wasn’t pure when you met me. I was pretty sure you’d forgive me for getting raped. I don’t know how you feel about sleeping with a whore.”