The Last Goodbye (15 page)

Michael eyed me warily, but I could see he was still scared. “So helping you makes me a good guy, is that it?”

“Yes, Michael. And helping Doug. They both make you a good guy.”

“Killah's past my help. That deal's done.”

“Whatever happened to Doug, it has something to do with what's on that screen right now. What did you think we were doing here? Just snooping around about Doug out of curiosity?”

“I didn't care what you were doing, dude. I owed you, and now we're even.”

“Come out of the cave, Michael. Do something that matters. Be my partner.” Silence, while Nightmare's wheels turned. I could see him trying it on, comparing it against his fear. “Be a man, Michael. Be a man instead of a shadow.”

We sat silently for a while. At some point, something clicked in Nightmare. Maybe he was afraid that if he didn't take this chance, he'd never come out into the sunlight. Maybe he saw himself, pale and forty, going slowly insane in front of a flickering computer screen. All I know is that minutes passed, and at last he quietly said, “Okay, we'll be partners. Like in those movies. Like Jackie Chan and that black guy.”

I exhaled, relief flooding over me. “More like Abbott and Costello,” I said under my breath.

“Who's that?”

I looked at him. “A couple of dead guys.”

THE MUNDANE IS WHAT
separates life from the movies. Michael left around two, mostly because I had paperwork for Odom that couldn't wait. If I didn't fill it out, I didn't get paid. This was followed by a meeting with a forty-seven-year old repeat-offending client who proved that drug abuse isn't just for the young. The man had wobbled into my office looking every day of seventy, but apparently, his appetite for chemical destruction had yet to be sated. Taking his case was my contribution to the revolving door that is the American judicial system. It was after three before I could call Michele. She answered immediately. “It's Jack,” I said. “Can you talk?”

“It's fine,” she answered. She sounded better than when I had left her, nearly restored. “I'm in my car.”

“Okay. I wanted to ask you some things. We can talk now, or—”

“Did you find out something?” Her voice was full of anticipation.

“I got in Doug's computer,” I said. “I didn't find anything about ... what we discussed. Not yet.”

Her voice deflated. “What did you find?”

Images of Doug's obsession flashed across my memory. Those I would keep to myself, if only to protect Doug's privacy when he could no longer protect it himself. Grayton, on the other hand, was fair game. “A lot of things,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“I'm on my way to a rehearsal.” I could hear the sound of traffic in the background. “It's very tight right now.”

“Maybe we can meet later.”

“No,”
she said, firmly. “Meet me at the hall around five. I should be finished by then.”

“Is it private?”

“There's no one there but my accompanist. You know the Emory campus?”

“Like the back of my hand.”

“Good. You remember the little chapel, the one by the Callaway Center?”

“Sure.”

“You'll see a sign that says, ‘No Admittance.' Ignore it.”

“That's fine.”

It was too early to drive over to Emory, so I made the fifteen-minute drive home. I checked the news, which was the usual compilation of human misery, so I turned it off. I thought awhile about Michele, and found myself putting up my guard. There is a kind of woman who attracts drama, whether consciously or unconsciously, and the same magnetism can make a man stick to her, metal against metal. That, I reminded myself, I did not need. What I needed was information, and I was willing to help her in exchange for that service. If it reunited mother and daughter, all to the good; unlike her husband, I had spent enough time among the lost of the underclass to understand what had happened, and her determination to make amends now, when it might cost her so much, seemed admirable. But I wanted to keep my focus on Doug.

I rolled over to the rehearsal hall a little early, tired of pacing my apartment. I parked and walked to the front door. I pushed through the entry door, slipped into the darkness at the back, and confronted the power of a perfectly trained vocal instrument in full song. There were only about a hundred seats, and I was less than forty feet away from the edge of the stage. She was in street clothes, in black pants, a blood-red top, and little makeup. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her voice filled the small hall, the air vibrating with her power. What she was doing was nothing less than astonishing. A middle-aged, balding man was hunched over a piano to accompany her, but he was irrelevant. With effortless, graceful ease, Michele was defying the laws of physics with her voice. There was no strain, no harshness. Just the flow and power of someone three times her size.

I slipped into a chair in the darkness to listen. There was something ravenous in her singing, something desperate and physical. I had seen it in her Romeo—the wrenching despair, the utter commitment to character. Her words came back to me:
I sing to justify my life. I sing so that God does not condemn me to hell.
Those words, then so stark and mysterious, came to life before my eyes. There was no longer any question of the source of her artistry. Why was it impossible to look away when she sang? Because under every note was her indefinable, but utterly real, sadness. She was tortured, and she was turning her pain into something precious.

She sang for twenty minutes or so, starting and stopping a little, occasionally saying something to her accompanist. I could see her looking out into the darkness for me, so at a break I stood. She squinted, caught my face in the dim light, and smiled. That smile, set within the deeply etched sorrow of her performance, seemed as fragile as china.

I had expected her to finish up once she saw me, but instead she paused, turned, and whispered to her accompanist. He gave her a quizzical look, but rummaged through some music. She stepped quietly to the center of the stage and stood, an ebony statuette, eyes closed and motionless. After several seconds she minutely inclined her head. The pianist began to play.

What can a boy from Dothan say about such music? I grew up on my father's recordings of Buck Owens and Waylon, and I kissed my first girl to a worn-out cassette of Guy Clark. That was music built to tear down whatever lies between a human being and his sorrow. I have no use for the stuff coming out of Nashville these days, because it has no heart. But listening to Michele sing that day, I learned that all heartaches are one, and the style is just window dressing. Rich and poor, white or black, none of it matters. Whether it's sung in the celestial tones of an opera or ground out through the gravel voice of a bar singer, the heartache stays the same. It's the common human experience, and when we hear it coming back to us in music, it stops us dead. I stood there listening, knowing that one of the greatest singers on earth was singing for me alone, and I will not pretend to have been immune. I have no doubt that in order to possess a power like the one Michele displayed in that moment, there are those who might even choose to endure her nightmares. If true art comes from pain, then her art ran in stained rivers through her soul.

The collection of consonants she sang could only be Russian, so I understood none of it. It didn't matter. The music alternated between grand sections of strong melody and delicate, soulful phrases. I stood facing her in the dark and let her voice pour over me.

When she finished, she looked down tentatively, as though exposed. She kissed her accompanist on the cheek and stooped to pick up a couple of shoulder bags. She walked gently down the little stairs, stage left. I stepped from my seat into the aisle and moved across another row to meet her. We met with a single row between us, and she leaned across a chair and bussed me, European style, on both cheeks. “Do you mind if we sit in my car to talk?” she asked. “It's more private.” She reached into a bag, pulled out some wire-rim glasses with pale green lenses, and put them on. She was wearing the same citrus scent she wore at the Four Seasons.

I nodded, and we started walking toward the door at the back of the hall. “The last thing you sang. What is it?”

She smiled. “I sang it to please you.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because you think opera is nothing but stodgy melodrama for rich people, and you're wrong about that.”

I opened the back door from the little auditorium, and we stepped out into the hallway. “Nobody who hears you sing could think that.”

She smiled, obviously pleased. “The story is from Pushkin,” she said. “Do you know him?”

“Not personally.”

“Oh, my God. He's—”

“Yeah, I know him. Patron saint of Russian misery. What do the words mean?”

She stopped walking and paused before answering. “A woman is torn between two lovers,” she said. “The first she loves passionately, but he's poor and defeated. He has nothing.”

I nodded. “And the other lover?”

“He's a rich and powerful man. He has everything she wants. But she doesn't love him, not like the other.”

“Let me guess. The rich guy is evil, and the poor one is good.”

She shook her head and started walking again. “It's Pushkin, not some TV show.
Krasoyu, znatnostyu, bogatstvom, Dostoinomu podrugi ni takoi, kak ya.”

“Which means?”

“It means life is a lot more complicated than we want.”

“I agree.”

“She doesn't think she's worthy to be the wife of a great prince,” she said. “That's what's pushing her towards the poor man. It's the fear of marrying above her station and not living up to it. It's a little bit of a psychodrama.”

We reached the exit onto the street, and walked through. “So what happens?”

“She decides to trust the poor man. She risks everything for him.” She took a few steps, stopped, and turned toward me. “In return for which the poor man sells her out. He betrays her to win at a lousy game of cards.”

“You're kidding.”

“So much for your clichés.”

“But the prince rides in to save the day, right? It's got a happy ending.”

“She throws herself into the Winter Canal. The end.” She gave a sad, ironic smile. “It's called
Pikovaya Dama.
The Queen of Spades.” She held my eyes a second—just long enough for the irony of the title to sink in—then turned smartly on her heel and started walking down the sidewalk toward her car, leaving me standing. I watched her back, gazing at the gentle swing of her hips. I followed, and when we reached her Lexus she unlocked the doors. We got in and sat, the engine idling. “So tell me what you found out,” she said.

That our friend Doug Townsend was broken inside, and that the bending revolved around a titanic, sick adoration of you.
“Let me ask you something first,” I said. “Do you believe that Doug was capable of loving you? Of something more than just obsession?”

She stared through the windshield. “Who knows? Turandot, Tosca, Romeo. All of them, obsessed. And we call them the greatest lovers in the world. I live in a world of obsession.”

“They're characters in stories,” I said. “They're not real.”

“To Doug they were,” she said. “He could live in those worlds. Maybe he was just broken enough to live like he was in a play.”

“Then tell me this. Would a character in any of those stories just quietly go off and kill himself without a word to anyone?”

She looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“You say Doug lived in this operatic world. But if I'm going to off myself, I sure as hell would want the woman I loved to know about it.”

“The woman you loved?”

“You
, Michele. Doug was in love with you. You must have recognized that fact. A man doesn't fly all over the United States for a woman unless he loves her.” She looked away. “Maybe you think he killed himself because he knew he could never have you, not in the way he wanted.”

Her voice grew quiet. “It's not impossible.”

“Let it go,” I said. “It didn't happen.” The gratitude on her face told me I had hit a nerve. “A guy doesn't kill himself over a woman without letting her know,” I said. “It's too pathetic. He wants that woman to feel his pain down to her toes.”

“He got his wish, if that's what he wanted.”

“You're being theatrical,” I said gently. I didn't say it to hurt her, but I had seen enough real grief in my life to know that what she was feeling wasn't in that category. She was upset, but she wasn't broken down, not like she was about her daughter.

She started to speak, then checked herself. “All right,” she said. “I accept what you're saying. It's better than the alternative.”

“Good.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Have you ever heard of a company called Grayton Technical Laboratories?”

She shook her head. “No.”

I hid my disappointment. “Then answer me this,” I said. “Were you paying Doug for what he was doing for you?”

“He wouldn't accept anything. Not a penny.”

“Then I think we have a winner.”

“What does that mean?”

“Doug was amassing a huge amount of information about this Grayton Laboratories. I figure a competitor hired Doug to spy on them. It would have been illegal, so the money was probably good.”

“Spying? Doug?”

“Our picture of Doug as a simple victim of life was a little off,” I said. “He wasn't just good with a computer. He had a serious reputation in the underground hacker world.”

She looked shocked. “I thought he was an amateur, like those kids who stay up all night writing emails to each other.”

“Those kids, as you call them, can do a lot of damage. Doug was very, very talented. And in my experience, talent goes where it's rewarded, either above ground or below. His skills would be worth a fortune to the right person.”