The Last Goodbye (25 page)

Standing there outside the library with bruises all over my body, I had to admit something that pissed me off greatly: no matter how hard I put the radar on Michele, she resisted analysis. She was impenetrable. I was making decisions on the basis that she was a legitimate victim, the innocent recipient of undeserved pain. For that version of her, you moved heaven and earth. It's the little dream that hums in every lawyer's optimistic brain, right until life starts to strangle it out of him:
Make the bad thing right.
She had made a bad mistake as a mere child, and now was trapped in a world that would be utterly unforgiving of that kind of indiscretion. But it was also possible that she was a trauma magnet, a woman who lived at a high pitch of anxiety and who sucked everyone near her into her suffering. The diva. These were the clients Judson Spence taught us to avoid at all costs. The truth was, I still didn't know in which category Michele belonged. Which was slowly driving me crazy, because making the wrong choice about that could have serious repercussions. You could spend your life fixing people who weren't going to deserve it and weren't going to appreciate it, and, in the end, were going to get you covered up in their special neuroses to the point that you couldn't breathe. I knew that because I had defended scores of them. They were the ones who—having received my best legal defense on my best days—had copped their old attitudes before they made it out the courtroom door.

I got in my car and looked at myself in the mirror. It wasn't the bruises that stopped me. It was the indecision. If I was going to the wall for her, I needed to know the reason.
Why
, it was time to wonder,
did I feel myself falling in love with her?
Was it the power of her artistry, the ineffable quality that made you feel she was baring her soul every time she sang? Or was it—and I didn't want this to be true—the beautiful wound she carried, so vulnerable, so needing of mercy? Because if that was it, then I could just rename her Violeta Ramirez, and drive my car off a cliff.

I stared at my swollen face in the mirror, ground to a halt.
No
, I thought,
before I drove off the cliff I would have to extend my deepest, most sincere condolences to Mr. Charles Ralston: first, for screwing his wife, and second, for the exasperated hell he had gotten himself into. Yes, he was sophisticated and well-educated, and by reputation, something of a snob—which wasn't a crime, after all—but maybe he had fallen for her, just like Doug. Maybe he had seen her performing at Juilliard, and his little scientist's heart had been pierced and now he was attached to a beautiful, talented crisis. Hell, they don't call them divas for nothing. Maybe if there was one day in his life he could undo it would be that day, the day he wandered into Lincoln Center and poked his head inside the auditorium door and saw her: young, brilliant, and lethally high-maintenance.

Maybe, given enough time, I could have come to a conclusion. If I had only been given ten or fifteen minutes of silent contemplation, I might even have made choices with different endings. But I didn't get those minutes, because my phone, snug inside my coat pocket, went off, shocking me back into reality. I flipped it open and found out that the next several hours of my life were going to be anything but contemplative. While Nightmare and I had been breaking into the electronic ether of Grayton Labs, Sammy had been exacting his very personal, very efficient revenge on Derek Stephens. As usual, the story begins with a woman crying.

BLU WAS TRYING TO TALK
through gasps of air, and it wasn't working too well. “Mr. Stephens . . . Derek . . . very upset . . . Sammy . . .”

“All right, baby. Just sit down.” I had driven hard over to my office, wringing out whatever performance was left in the Buick's engine on my way across town. When I walked in, I saw my secretary sitting in my office chair, her mascara ruined, her eyes puffy and red. “What's this all about?”

“He just called,” she said. “Derek. He called and he was yelling.”

“About what?”

“I don't know. It was something about Sammy, and somehow he was upset at me, and I don't know why.”

“But what happened with Sammy?”

She sniffled. “I don't know. But he did something to make Mr. Stephens angry.”

“Why would Stephens connect that to you?”

“Because he knows Sammy has a crush on me.”

“How does he know that?”

“I told him.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

“I met Mr. Stephens down at the courthouse, and Sammy walked by us. He gave Mr. Stephens a look, and a couple of minutes later we could see Sammy spying on us from behind a column.”

“God.”

“So I told Mr. Stephens about how Sammy had this crush on me, and we laughed about it. I think Sammy might have seen us laughing.”

“Not good.”

“And now something terrible happened, but I don't know what.”

“All right. Stay here, baby. I'm going over to the courthouse to find Sammy, if Stephens hasn't killed him yet.”

The drive toward the courthouse gave me plenty of opportunity to imagine hellish scenarios where Sammy—overweight, lungs exploding from years of aerobic underutilization, reflexes slowed by several emboldening shots of Seagram's—suddenly discovers that Stephens, in addition to being a brilliant lawyer, is, unfortunately, a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I pictured Sammy flat on his back on the highly polished linoleum of the courthouse floor, careening in surprise and humiliation, his body in a nearly frictionless recoil from a perfectly executed karate kick to his solar plexus.

These concerns, it turned out, were a waste of my already depleted supply of adrenaline. I didn't have to wait long to find out exactly how Sammy had extracted a pound of Stephens's flesh for having the temerity to be rich, handsome, and in possession of the affections of Blu McClendon. The courthouse was humming with it like a shorted electrical circuit.

I like to think the elegance of what Sammy did emanated from deep within his southern soul, but maybe that's romanticizing things a bit. Probably spending all day in the Fulton County Criminal Court system had taught him a newly devious way of thinking. Wherever it came from, it was a textbook example of everything revenge should be: simple, effective, and scrupulously legal.

Ever since I told Sammy about Stephens, Sammy had juggled the case of a certain Burton Randall, getting the timing exactly right. Burton was a courthouse legend, a true object-specific kleptomaniac, and Atlanta's most prodigious car thief. The consensus was that Burton couldn't help himself. He loved to steal cars, he needed to steal cars, he lived to steal cars. And he had, like the true connoisseur, exquisite taste. The better the car, the more desperately he wanted it. He would walk right by a beater with the keys sitting in it, but he would take ungodly risks for something he really wanted. Burton had been ready for his court date for days, but Sammy—the scheduling power of the clerk of the court being absolute—kept blocking the legal arteries, keeping him in limbo. His lawyer was getting pissed, but, since taking an antagonistic attitude toward the clerk is certain to have unpleasant repercussions, Sammy had his way. Sammy was waiting for two very specific planets to align: first, for Derek Stephens to be in court doing damage for Horizn Pharmaceuticals, and secondly, for the weather to be absolutely perfect. Stephens had been in court all week, but the weather hadn't cooperated. This morning, however, had dawned so bright you could cut diamonds with it, and Sammy made sure that Judge Odom's early schedule was magically cleared for the long-delayed case
of Georgia v. Randall.
Simultaneously, Sammy just happened to make it clear down in the basement that the good judge was not pleased at the preferential treatment a certain lawyer was receiving regarding parking privileges. The car would be moved upstairs, or Odom would see that it was towed.

So it was that the bright red Ferrari 360 Modena of Derek Stephens was sitting, exposed and unprotected, in the side parking lot of the Fulton County Courthouse when Burton Randall was, having been bound over for the seventh and far from final time, released under his own recognizance, pending a future court date. The fact that Sammy had pointedly mentioned to no one in particular the car's type and exact location as Burton walked out of the courtroom was, it's fair to say, intentional.

When Derek Stephens's Ferrari was found three hours later, it had around two hundred very fast, very hard miles on it. But the mileage hardly mattered. The extensive body work it now required—the result of a short but spectacular contretemps with the Atlanta Police, continuing to an exit-ramp guardrail, and finally and most conclusively, a large, heavily bolstered street sign—meant that Stephens would never, ever be able to advertise the car as a “Ferrari 360 Modena, mint condition.” More appropriate would be, “Ferrari 360 Modena, parts car.”

I looked for Sammy for the next few hours, but it wasn't until five that evening I found him, holed up at Captain's, a bar about fifth down our list of hangouts. He was sitting, smiling pleasantly to himself, a row of empty glasses arrayed triumphantly before him. I walked up to his table, and he tilted his head up at me. “Jackie boy,” he said, his smile widening. “You've come to share in my hour of triumph.”

I looked him over, checking for signs of insanity. His suit coat was draped on the chair opposite him, as though he had a friend coming back from the bathroom. But I knew he was alone. He was always alone, when he wasn't with me. His tie was loosened, and his top shirt button was undone. “Come to save your ass,” I said, sitting down. “You've pissed off a very powerful man.”

Sammy's response was sublime in its precision. “Fuck him,” he said, and then he smiled, sitting heavily and contentedly in his chair. After a moment, he grew thoughtful, and amended his comment. “Fuck him,” he added, “all the way to hell.”

“Sammy,” I said, “you are disturbing the elemental forces of the universe. Derek Stephens is going to crush you.”

“How?” Sammy demanded. “I did nothing, Jackie boy.
Nothing.
I scheduled a court date. So let him sue me over that.”

For a moment, it seemed possible that Sammy might get away with it. That feeling only lasted a few seconds. “But listen, Sammy, Stephens isn't the kind of guy who necessarily plays by the rules. He's going to take this personally.”

“Let him,” Sammy retorted. “He knows where I work. I'll smash his face in.”

“I'm not talking about a fistfight.”

“Jackie,” he said, “you have me confused with somebody with something to lose.”

I looked at him warily. “What does that mean?”

“It means I have nothing, Jackie boy. I rent an apartment. My car's got a lien on it. I've got a decent stereo, and five suits. I earn thirty-six thousand dollars a year. And for one beautiful moment, I kicked the ass of one of the richest and most powerful men in the South. Do you think for one minute that I care what he thinks he's going to do about it?”

I sat watching Sammy, feeling a moment of illumination. Just when I needed it, he was reminding me where I had gone wrong. Sammy had arrived at the place of perfect, existential freedom, namely, not giving a damn. I felt watched over, as though the universe were looking out for me and mine. Me, Nightmare, and Sammy. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We were all on a collision course with something, and we all had our individual lessons to learn. A kind and benevolent universe had just made sure I didn't miss a thing. It was true I didn't know whom to believe. It was true that I wasn't even completely sure I wanted to find out the truth about Michele Sonnier. But Sammy had once again proved the validity of the one pure philosophy of living:
strip it down, and let it go.
Once you get that free, you become as dangerous and unpredictable as a daisy cutter bomb.

Sammy, moved by the profound philosophical lesson he had found at the bottom of a bottle of Seagram's, looked at me, smiling. “So leave it, Jackie boy,” he said. “I stood up to Derek Stephens and I did it for the woman I love. I'm happy.”

In that moment I decided that whatever else happened in this mess, Sammy was going to survive. He might be an ineffectual drunk, but he knew what the hell he was doing when it came to a catfight. I almost felt like praying. Instead, I decided to buy Sammy a drink. “Sammy,” I said, “tonight is your night.”

“Damn right.”

I paused. “He's probably going to kill you for it.”

Sammy nodded. “Probably.”

I held up my hand, and the waitress came over to take our order. “Whatever he's having,” I said, “and bring the bottle.”

TUESDAY DAWNED BRIGHT
and unwelcome, birds and traffic and human activity unpleasantly clanging through a well-deserved hangover. I opened an eye and looked at the clock: a quarter till nine. I called Blu, just to see how she was holding up. “You okay, baby?” I asked. “What kind of torture has Stephens been dreaming up for Sammy?”

There was a slight pause before she answered. “I haven't spoken to Derek since yesterday,” she said.

“As in, ‘He's not taking my calls,' or as in, ‘We just haven't had the chance to talk'?”

Another pause. “The first one,” she answered, a catch in her voice.

“Baby, it's going to be okay. You realize he's scum.”

“Don't say that, Jack. You don't know him.”

“Hope it stays that way,” I said. “But right now I want to know how you are.”

“I'm fine. Michele Sonnier called.”

She said her name casually, as though I hadn't been thinking of it every second since the last time I saw her. “She called? What did she say?”

“She said, ‘Tell Mr. Hammond I'm fine, and that I'll be in touch.'”