The Last Goodbye (8 page)

“Nobody is going to put me in jail over five bucks.”

“Michael . . .”

“Nightmare,” he corrected.

I sort of leaned on him then. I wasn't angry, I was just in a hurry. If the case was called and we got before Odom, it would be too late. “Okay, Nightfuck, I don't really care what your name is, you need to listen to me now, because I'm old economy, and that's whose house you're in right now.” I took out my billfold, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and pressed it into Nightmare's hand. “Come here,” I said, “and do exactly what I tell you for a couple of minutes.”

Nightmare shoved the bill into his pocket and followed me across the hallway. The dark-haired man glowered. “That's him,” the man said. “That's the little snitch that stole from me.”

“You?” Nightmare sneered. “Radio Shack is a multinational corporation that doesn't know you exist. They spend more on toilet paper than your annual salary.”

I took Nightmare's arm and squeezed it hard. He winced, which didn't surprise me, since he was about as muscular as a toothpick. I nodded hello to the DA, then turned toward the dark-haired man with a smile. “And you are?” I asked.

“Vincent Bufano,” he said. “I'm the manager of the Radio Shack.”

“Mr. Bufano,” I said, “Mr. Harrod here has something he wants to give you, and something he wants to say.”

Bufano looked at Nightmare, who was squirming under my grip. “Give him the money, Michael,” I said. He started to speak, but I pressed my middle finger into the center of his bicep so hard he almost wilted. He reached his free hand into his pocket, took out the bill, and handed it over to Bufano. “And now Michael has something he wants to say,” I said. “Tell the man you're sorry, Michael.”

Nightmare started to pull back, but I had my grip on him. He muttered something under his breath, and the man just sneered. I dug my thumb into the side of Nightmare's arm, getting the nail right in there between the tendons. Then I started to work my thumb back and forth. Nightmare straightened up. “I'm sorry,” he said clearly. I pressed harder. “Terribly, terribly sorry.”

“And it will never happen again, isn't that right, Michael?” I moved my thumb slowly, filleting the muscle.

“No,” he said. “Never again. Not ever.”

Bufano looked at Nightmare for a while, eyes peering out above his ample cheeks. He folded the bill, put it in his pocket, and said, “Don't come in my store again, boy.” I looked over at the DA, who had watched all this with a bemused smile. She wasn't any more interested than I was in dropping a couple of hours on the case.

“I suppose the state can drop the charges,” she said, “if Mr. Bufano has no objection.”

Bufano looked at Nightmare, obviously enjoying his penny-ante justice. “He can go,” he said. “But like I said, he don't come back in my store.”

“So our business here is concluded?” I asked the DA.

She laughed. “Yeah.” She looked at Nightmare. “You can go.”

I didn't release the grip on Nightmare's arm. “Say thank you to the old economy, Michael,” I said.

“Thanks,” he muttered. With that, I let him go. He walked back across the hallway, rubbing his arm. I shrugged at the DA, shook Bufano's hand, and walked back over to Nightmare. He looked up at me, grimacing.

“That hurt, dude,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “Which economy is jail in?”

“Nobody was going to jail. Not over five bucks.”

“You might be the future, Nightmare, old pal, but you don't know much about the Georgia legislature.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that a lot of good old boys decided that the judges were a little lax around here, and they made sentencing mandatory for petty theft. You would have got a five-hundred-dollar fine, plus court costs.”

“I don't have five hundred dollars.”

“Plus costs.”

“I don't have that, either.”

“In that case, you would have got ten days, and served six.”

“For five bucks?”

“Ain't the old economy a bitch?”

I could see the wheels turning in Nightmare's head. Gratitude was a relatively new concept for him, so it took a while. “Hey, man,” he said after a few moments, “thanks.”

“No problem.”

“No, really. That would have sucked.”

“I agree.”

“Look, I don't have the ten bucks.”

“You can pay me back another way.”

Nightmare's face covered itself in detached indifference. “Payback,” he said. “You suck, man.”

I got a faraway look in my eye. “I can just picture you in the county lockup, where they sleep in cots, thirty to a room. Young skinny white kid like you would be really popular about two
A.M.”

Nightmare trembled involuntarily. “All right, what is it?” he said. “But don't make it suck.”

“It's right up your alley,” I said. “I want you to break into a computer, and I want you to keep your mouth shut about it.”

Nightmare's expression transformed itself from insolence, through surprise, and stopped on a crafty, thin smile. “Hell, yeah,” he said. “I can do that.”

LIKING DEREK STEPHENS
would never have been easy. His particular brand of effete arrogance was never my cup of tea. It's nothing personal; it's just that back in Dothan, we would have kicked his ass a little bit, to give him perspective. Then he could still run off and rule the world, but without feeling quite so entitled. So I didn't really want to see flowers from him on my secretary's desk when I got back to the office around noon. Blu played it off, saying he was just being sweet, and besides, for a guy like him, they cost practically nothing. She probably had no idea how true that was; if he was rich now, it was a safe assumption that he held stock options in Horizn that were about to make him fabulously wealthy. But in my experience, thirty-six roses is a pretty big statement, whether or not they're yellow.

She did look happy, though. Atlanta is full of women living papier-mâché lifestyles, a thin copy of the life they mysteriously expected to become real at any moment. They looked like millionaires, they acted like millionaires, they hung out around millionaires whenever they could, only they didn't actually have any money. To women like that, guys like Derek Stephens had the approximate value of plutonium. He was priceless.

Which was not, frankly speaking, my own current value in that world. Lawyers who have fallen from grace and barely hung onto their licenses trade somewhere in the penny stock range. I watched Blu smell her roses for a while; then I went to lunch with Sammy at The Rectory, the bar where he used to pour drinks but now buys them.

Sammy's life has proved an unlikely theory to be true: if you are miserable, try killing what you want. You'll probably discover you are much happier. It was like that with Sammy. After spending a few years serving drinks to lawyers and eavesdropping on their conversations, he determined to join their ranks. In other words, he started hoping. He got dreams. Unfortunately, the only law school that would accept him met at night in the basement of the YMCA. Considering the academic flotsam and jetsam with whom he studied, he might have taken the fact that he graduated nineteenth out of a class of nineteen as a bad omen. During his first year after law school he failed the bar three times. In desperation, he took a job as the clerk of Judge Thomas Odom in the Fulton County Criminal Court. Within one week he made a startling discovery: all he had really wanted in the first place was to wear a decent suit and have a little power. In other words, he was happy as a clam. See what I mean? It's like my mantra: Strip it down and let it go. Sammy holds in his Seagram's-stained hands the destiny of several hundred actual lawyers, which pleases him greatly.

By the time I showed up at The Rectory, Sammy was a couple of drinks ahead of me. It didn't do his appearance any good. He had the kind of relaxed body that was passable in high school, but which was gradually relocating to less attractive places. He was getting the frat-boy fifteen-years-later look, which was exactly who he was. He still had a quick smile, but you could see a hundred or more drinking nights that had somehow turned into mornings in the widening face, the short brown hair starting to thin, the pale shine in the cheeks. He had partied hard for about as long as the human body can absorb, and unless he took immediate action, he was going to look middle-aged in about six months.

The first thing I did was buy him a drink. He was going to drink anyway, and I try not to make value judgments on what people call recreation. I was going to pump him for information and then ruin his day, so the drink was the least I could do. Sammy, oblivious to the bad news I had for him, was dividing his attention equally between staring at the ice melting in his glass and the waitress who was working the opposite side of the bar.

“Sammy,” I said sitting down, “you and your imagination should get a room.”

“All I have are dreams, Jackie. Don't take those from me.”

“Well, if you'd get out more, maybe get a little exercise.”

“Yeah, I'll do that.” He took a swallow. This was going to be a three-drink conversation, unless I hurried things along. “You ordering anything?” he asked.

“Yeah, I'm getting the club on rye,” I said. “Listen, I need to ask you a couple of things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, who's running McDaniel Glen these days?”

Sammy paused, thinking. “That would be Jamal Pope.”

“Pope, huh? I thought he was—”

“Nope. He's at large, as we say. Doing a brisk business, so I hear.” He took another sip. “You still got that Doug Townsend thing on your mind?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I want to find out where he got the fentanyl, maybe get a lead on his state of mind.”

“I don't believe Mr. Pope is the talkative kind.”

“Safe bet. Anything I can use to leverage him?”

Sammy leaned back in his chair. Thankfully, he hadn't had enough Seagram's to cloud his thinking just yet. “Maybe,” he said after a while. “You got that scrawny bastard Keshan Washington off a couple of months ago, didn't you?”

“Look, Sammy, it's not my fault a busted taillight doesn't give a cop the right to strip-search a motorist.”

“Yeah, and your clients are all just misunderstood. But the point is, thanks to you Mr. Washington is once again free, walking the streets of Atlanta. Care to guess what he's doing with his time?”

I looked at Sammy. “Working for Jamal Pope?”

“Bingo,” Sammy answered. “So the way I see it, the king of the Glen owes you. He'll probably buy you dinner.”

“Thanks, Sammy,” I said. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Get the Bill of Rights repealed? We got bad people to put away.”

“I'll work on it.”

Sammy took another big gulp, draining his glass. “Listen, Jack,” he said, “if you're going over there, why not have Billy Little send a uniform with you?”

“Sure, Sammy. That'll open up Mr. Pope like a sieve.”

“All right, go get yourself killed. See if I care.” Sammy flagged the waitress down, and she walked over to our table, all short skirt, long legs, and emphatic breasts. She looked about twenty, in contrast to Sammy's thirty-five. I ordered my sandwich, and Sammy said, “Two more,” holding up his fingers like a peace sign. “And one for yourself, sweetheart.”

To her credit, the waitress didn't roll her eyes. She just smiled and glided off, probably thinking about her lifeguard boyfriend. But Sammy was about thirty seconds away from forgetting about her, because that's how many seconds it was before I dropped my bomb on him.

“Listen, Sammy,” I said, “tell me what you know about Derek Stephens.”

Sammy shrugged. “Stephens? Why do you ask?”

“Just tell me.”

“Spends his time up in federal court, destroying people for Horizn Pharmaceuticals. It's mostly intellectual property stuff, people encroaching on Horizn patents.”

“Yeah, that's getting sticky these days.”

“He's not around much, but there's a buzz when he comes in the courthouse. Mostly because everybody hates him.”

“Because?”

Sammy raised his eyes. “Classic asshole. Treats everyone like shit, and gets away with it because he's so brilliant. That's the kind of thing that gets annoying after a while. Hits on everything that moves, too.”

“So he's not married?”

Sammy shook his head. “He's got a girlfriend, though you'd never know it to watch him operate. But I've seen her three, maybe four times. Real sophisticated. I think she's a college professor or something. Anyway, she walks like she's got a Ph.D. up her ass.”

“Uptight?”

“Oh, yeah. Walks on tiptoe, like she doesn't want to get her feet dirty. She's got a ring, too.”

“You mean they're engaged?”

“Guess so. But she's high-maintenance, lemme tell ya. That's probably why Stephens likes slumming at the courthouse for secretaries.” Sammy took a drink. “Even though they know he's a jerk, they still follow him around like puppy dogs. Then comes the crying.”

“Maybe he's a challenge. You know, tame the beast.”

“Yeah, and maybe it's because he's rich. Do you know he actually got somebody to give him an underground parking pass so he wouldn't have to expose his damn Ferrari to the elements?”

“He drives a Ferrari?”

“Only on perfect days without a visible cloud. But that's not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“The point is that Derek Stephens can basically talk anybody into anything.”

I nodded, picturing him putting his powers of persuasion to work on Blu. I shouldn't have interfered. At least I had no specific right to do so. But opportunity so perfectly aligned rarely presents itself. When it does, you almost feel obliged to take advantage of it. Having done my due diligence, I opened the bomb-bay doors. “Sammy boy,” I said, “you have a new reason for living.”