The Last Goodbye (13 page)

“It's a beautiful name.”

She nodded, her crying subsiding. She walked softly to where I was sitting and stuck out a trembling hand. “T'aniqua Fields,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

I stood, taking her hand in mine. “T'aniqua.”

“Not exactly opera material, is it?”

I had seen my share of tortured psychology in my time at Judge Odom's court, but this was as dark as any. If people knew how their madness rained down hell on their children, they might have the grace to clean themselves up. “You had the baby,” I said quietly. “What happened next?”

“I couldn't go back to foster care with Briah. I had just turned fourteen a few days before. So they took her.” She looked at me, pleading in her eyes.
“They took her.”

“Then you didn't abandon her. She was taken away.”

“I did. I didn't fight. I didn't say a word. I just lay in the bed and closed my eyes while they carried her off.”

“You were overwhelmed. You were only fourteen.”

She turned on me suddenly, her eyes flashing anger. “Don't you get it? I
wanted
them to take her.” She turned away and began to sob again. “I hoped it all would disappear, like it never happened. I would have my little girl dreams back. I wanted to be the child I had created. Just a child.” She caught her breath, choking on tears. “Two nights later, I escaped. I stole money from one of the social workers and got on a bus. I did certain things—”

She stopped, unwilling to go on. There was a final pause—a silence as the storm gathered strength—and she fell completely apart. Whatever armor she had developed to keep her secret was now utterly, finally in pieces. Or—and I had too much experience to eliminate this as at least a possibility—I was watching a superb performance, even better than what I had seen on stage. I leaped up and steadied her, taking her arm. “Easy now.”

“Where is she, Jack? I left her in—”

“I know,” I said.
You left her in hell.

“And suddenly Doug comes to me. He says he will do anything to help me.”

“He found out?”

“Everything,”
she hissed. “How could he do that?”

“There would be records somewhere. It's Social Services. If someone were determined, he could unravel it. Doug was brilliant with computers.”

“Damn him.”

“He only wanted to help.”

“I had this all worked
out,”
she said. “He woke up all the emotions, the regret. I see her body carried away from my bed. I truly think I'm going to lose my mind.”

“Take it easy.”

“I've made a new life, Jack. It started out as survival, a way to keep from falling apart. But now it's my
real
life.”

“I take it,” I said softly, “your husband didn't think he was signing up for this?”

She gave a derisive laugh. “My husband went to Groton, Jack. Then to Yale, then Harvard Medical School. He gave money to
Bush
, for God's sake. Charles believes the ghetto is the inevitable consequence of a culture of dependency.” She shook her head. “Have you ever been to Horizn's offices?”

“No.”

“It gleams, from ceiling to floor. There isn't a speck of dust in the entire building. Even the air is filtered and cleaned. It's perfect.” She walked to the bar, putting distance between us. “My husband's world is very orderly,” she said. “Mine, unfortunately, is rather a mess.” She opened a bottle of Armagnac and poured herself a drink. “Men from Groton don't marry runaways with drug-addicted mothers, Jack. And don't marry women who have had their illegitimate children taken away by Social Services. It hasn't happened once in the history of the world.”

I paused, stopped by the logic of her statement. It was patently true. “You're certain he doesn't know?”

She shook her head. “By the time I met Charles, I had been living my new life for more than seven years. God, I believed it myself. I had worked out all the little details of my past, filling in the holes. It was seamless.”

I paused, thinking. “How did you meet your husband?”

“Charles came to hear me sing, early in my career. I had only sung some small roles, but it was clear I was being anointed for something bigger. Charles was gorgeous, and clearly ambitious. I fell in love instantly. I was overwhelmed that a man of his distinction would be interested in someone like me. It was the validation that my new life was real. How could he love me if it wasn't? I was home, I was free. I would marry the great Charles Ralston, and the past would never be able to touch me again.” She paused. “It took me some time to understand what was actually going on.”

“Which was?”

“I had no real experience in the world, and it was inevitable that he would become disappointed in me. But I could sing. That was the one thing that was real. And Charles played it to the hilt. I was like a performing dog, trotted out to do my tricks. For a while, I thought it meant he cared. But eventually, I understood my career has given him some needed social cachet. There are those who aren't impressed with the nouveau riche, particularly in a black man. The arts open those doors.” She drained her glass. “Ironic, isn't it? At last, I've become a social asset.” She set the glass down on the bar, filling it half-full again. “In exchange for not raising a fuss, I am granted a certain latitude in my life. Charles and I lead separate lives, but we do not disturb each other's world. Especially now.”

“You mean the IPO.”

She nodded. “The stock offering is the culmination of everything my husband has worked to achieve. You were right when you said he hadn't signed up for this. I feel nothing for him as a wife. But I have no right to destroy him because of my sin. The fact that he is emotionally incapable of anything as a husband isn't his fault. He's simply wired that way.”

“Maybe you should wait until it all blows over.”

“I'm not going to wait one more minute, Mr. Hammond. My daughter is alive, and she is somewhere in Atlanta.”

“What do you mean? Did Doug tell you something?”

“His last email to me. He must have been in a hurry, because it was only a few words. Or maybe he didn't trust the security.
She's here, and we need to move now.
That's all he said.” She walked back to the window, taking her drink with her. She peered out into the glimmering night sky of Atlanta. I could feel her searching the darkness, looking for a solitary, unknown girl in a city of millions. “A message like that is impossible to ignore. But where is here? Somewhere. Anywhere.”

“You don't think he had her with him, do you?”

“I don't know. I only know I see my daughter in every waking moment now. I can think of nothing else. So I am going to find her, somehow, some way.” She turned and looked at me with a pleading expression.

“You want my help,” I said.

“When I saw you tonight, I realized I had to take a chance. You said you were Doug's friend, so I'm going to trust you. I have to trust someone. It's impossible for me to search for her without arousing suspicion.”

“I want something in return,” I said, quietly.

She smiled grimly. “Of course you do. How much will it cost me?”

“Not money. Just your help with Doug. I can't forget what I'm doing here, and that's trying to find out what happened to him.”

“What can I do?”

“I'm going to want to know everything that happened between you. Everything.”

She nodded in assent, then looked back out into the city. Neither of us spoke for a long moment. At last she quietly asked, “You saw me sing, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think of it?”

“I thought it was magnificent. You broke the heart of everyone in the room.”

The edge of her mouth curled slightly upwards. “That's something, at least. It gives me a reason to live another day.” She drained her glass. “I sing to justify my life, Jack. I sing so that God does not condemn me to hell.” She turned back to the window and stared listlessly at the city. “I'm tired,” she said. “I can't remember being so tired.”

“We can talk again tomorrow, if you like.”

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “That would be better.”

After a moment she walked toward me and reached out her hand. I took it, and she led me back through the suite toward the door. She stopped at a small desk and wrote down a number. “This is my cell phone,” she said, pressing the slip into my hand. “It's private, and we can speak freely.”

“I'll call you tomorrow, when we've both had some sleep.”

“I doubt I'll sleep much, not for the time being.” She opened the door, but put her hand on my arm as I walked through. “You're carrying a little bomb inside you now, Jack. Be careful it doesn't go off.”

I nodded, and stepped into the hall.
The great Michele Sonnier
, I thought, turning away from the sound of a closing door.

THE NEXT MORNING,
I could feel her skin on my fingertips, smell her scent on my clothes. Maybe it was imagination. I looked at the bedstand; there was the crumpled paper, with her number written on it. I sat up in bed, pulling myself together.
My God, Doug never had a chance.
She was fantastic, that was certain. She was beautiful, more beautiful than anyone I'd ever seen. She was exotic, she was sophisticated, she was . . .
Damn it, get a grip. This is about Doug, and that's all.

No. Not just that, not now. You took on her sorrow, and now you have to deal with it.
Somewhere, presumably in Atlanta, there was a fourteen-year-old girl who didn't know her mother. It was an open question whether or not she wanted to know. She could be one more victim of a broken human services system, calloused and indifferent. She could be one of the few success stories. But thoughts of Michele and Doug pulled me back to the beginning, to how Doug died. I tried once again to fit two words together: Doug and suicide. I let them rattle around in my mind awhile, trying them on. I knew why Billy Little believed they fit: it was easy, and it got Townsend off his desk. Billy was good people, but he was overworked. If Doug killed himself, Billy's load got lighter.

Doug Townsend, for me, was not workload. He was a brave, romantic, and lost man, and at one time, my friend. So when I got to my office the next morning about nine, I was glad to see Nightmare sitting in my waiting room. He was in a funk, because Blu wouldn't let him in my office. The sight of the two of them looking at each other was a collision of cultures, like the model Gisele showing up at your high school prom. A hell of a lot of new economy would have to happen before Nightmare had a shot at Blu. I said hello to Blu and led Nightmare into my office. He had on the same T-shirt, the same black jeans. It was the same everything, actually, but minus the smirk. Hackers might be freaks, but they're among the most persistent people on earth. It's nothing for a hacker to stay awake for two days to crack a particularly secure site. The second I saw Nightmare, I could tell that sometime during the night getting inside Doug Townsend's computer had changed from a payback to me into a passion for him. Late in the night, apparently; he had a worn look that made me think he hadn't slept much, if at all. I was glad to see him, because now I wanted in Doug's computer more than ever.

Nightmare wasn't much for pleasantries. He set a book bag down on the floor and pulled out a zip disk. “This,” he said darkly, “was obtained by blood. It's like a code buzzsaw.”

“Where did you get it?”

Nightmare didn't smile. “From Satan,” he answered.

I decided not to push it; coming from him, I had no idea what that meant. And I didn't care. All I wanted was to get inside that box. Four hours later he kicked me out of my own office, and I couldn't blame him; I was being a pain in the ass. So I gave Nightmare my cell phone number and walked down Poston for a while, the street in front of my office. I got some coffee at a convenience store, paced for a while in front of the body shop across the street, and eventually circled back, just because I couldn't stand to be away. Nightmare wasn't happy.

“What's the problem?” I asked.

Nightmare scowled. “I've run the thing down a million times. Nothing works. What the hell is this?”

I looked at the little asterisks on the screen that stood for something Nightmare couldn't figure out. “And these stand for letters, right?” I asked.

“I was pretty sure, but maybe I'm wrong about the whole idea.”

“What made you think that in the first place?”

“It's Killah's style.”

“Let me get this straight. Doug was well enough known that you studied his style?”

Nightmare nodded. “It's a small community. But yeah, I knew Killah's thing. He liked that kind of irony, like the time he reset an eBay administrator's password out of the letters for
evilhacker.”

“He hacked eBay?”

Nightmare shrugged. “For about ten minutes, yeah. Killah was the premier cypherpunk in the Southeast, dude. Maybe the whole U.S.”

“Cyberpunk?”

“No.
Cypherpunk.
As in code-breaker.”

I sat back in my chair. “You must be kidding.”

“No way. Killah got major props around the community. But that's what makes this such a bitch. A guy who breaks code is also gonna be pretty good at creating his own. And this ain't my deal.”

“What is?”

“Me? Phone phreaking. Cracking phone lines, rerouting, that kind of thing. I'm the greatest the world has ever seen, probably.” He stared at the screen. “No word combinations in the English language open this system. Which pretty much leaves us with random combinations, and I'm assuming you don't have a few hundred years to wait.” He paused. “What are we looking for, anyway?”