The Last Goodbye Page 4

  “So if you think it’s . . .”

  “If you think that, it’s over before you get the hypodermic emptied. Billy told me he had personally seen some very dead, very rigid, bodies with the needle still stuck in the arms.”

  “You think that’s what happened to Townsend?”

  I shook my head doubtfully. “I don’t buy it,” I answered. “He’d never done heroin before, so why start now? Doug had turned his life around. He’d been clean for months. And anyway, he was terrified of needles.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he had a pathological fear of them. So nobody is going to tell me that he did that to himself.”

  Sammy picked up his glass of whiskey. He stared into the amber liquid thoughtfully, turning it in the dim light of the restaurant. “Jack,” he said quietly, “your buddy got messed with.”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Damn right.”

  I showed up at work early the next day, determined to find what I could about Doug’s last few days. To me, the issue of intentional suicide was almost incidental; break it down far enough, and nobody takes fentanyl who doesn’t, somewhere in his damaged subconscious, want to die. And obsessed or not, I didn’t believe it about Townsend. I was no expert on suicidal tendencies, but Doug had been more upbeat the last few weeks than I had ever seen him. And besides, I knew enough about depression to know that the biggest impediment to killing yourself is fear. Doug would have chosen another way, rather than try to conquer his lifelong phobia of needles at the very moment he was working up the courage to end his life. So when I got back to the office, I knew I was going to find out more about Michele Sonnier. Not that I thought she had anything to do with Doug’s death. She was about as far away from fentanyl and the Jefferson Arms as scented candles. But that didn’t change the fact that she was all I had.

  I looked over at Blu, who was staring intently at a magazine. It seemed unfair to disturb her. She appeared perfectly content and still, filling her head with horoscopes and articles like “When Sisters Want the Same Man.” For a while, I was going to just let her indulge herself at ten bucks an hour. It seemed glorious, in a way, making someone happy at such a small cost. But after a while I said, “Blu, do me a little research, will you?”

  My secretary looked up at me, all shiny hair and perfect skin. “About?” she asked.

  “About an opera singer. Michele Sonnier.”

  Blu tilted her head. “I don’t really picture you at the opera.”

  I blinked several times to prevent myself from staring. The truth is, I could never tell if she was secretly a genius, or a spectacularly beautiful kind of blank slate. Sometimes, I pictured her walking out of my office, lighting up a cigarette, and saying to herself, Damn, I was great today. “Okay,” I asked, “where do you picture me?”

  Blu scrunched up her face in thought. Even scrunched, it was still beautiful. “More like at a baseball game,” she said.

  “Baseball game.”

  “Yeah. Eating a hot dog.”

  We lapsed once again into silence. Blu, satisfied with her contribution, looked back down at the magazine and flipped the page. I watched her for a moment, started to speak, shrugged, and walked into my office. I flipped on my computer and typed Sonnier’s name at a search site. The page disappeared, and after a few seconds I saw the results: 639 matches. Mrs. Charles Ralston definitely gets around. I glanced over the lead lines until I saw what I assumed was the singer’s home page, MicheleSonnier.com. I clicked on the URL and watched a photograph of the singer scroll down across my screen. It was one of the photographs I had seen at Townsend’s apartment, Sonnier in a long, flowing, lamé dress, very elegant. I flipped down the screen to the bio and started to read. Michele Sonnier is the most exciting female voice to have emerged in the opera world in the last ten years. The only child of a doctor and a teacher, she demonstrated her prodigious talent at an early age. After graduation from the Juilliard School, she debuted by winning the Metropolitan Opera Competition at 21. The prize, a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, began her storied career. Her operatic premiere a year later with the San Francisco Opera was a triumph. In defiance of her age, she has performed principal roles at the Metropolitan, La Scala, and the Kirov. In a recent European tour she was compared to her idol, Marilyn Horne.

  Together with Ralston, they would make a hell of a power couple. Ralston’s money would give them entrée to the new social elite, while Sonnier’s artistic endeavors would give them entrance to the old. I flipped down the screen to Sonnier’s schedule. I scanned down the list of concerts for that year, comparing the dates with the plane tickets I had found at Doug’s apartment. January 17, Portland, Oregon. I riffled through the tickets, eventually landing on a Northwest flight from Atlanta to Portland. I checked the date: January 17. I went through several other dates—two in February, the first in New York, the second Miami. Both corresponded to Townsend’s tickets. After confirming a handful of others, I leaned back in my chair. What the hell is this? I scanned Sonnier’s schedule into the future; one date in particular caught my eye: June 15, Atlanta Civic Opera. It was four nights away. After the Atlanta date there were some scattered concerts, but all far away. I called the contact number. A nice-sounding woman answered, very polite and educated. “Atlanta Opera.”

  “You’ve got a concert with Michele Sonnier coming up, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. Bellini’s The Capulets and the Montagues.”

  I paused. “Like Romeo and Juliet?

  “Yes, sir.”

  That sounded promising. At least I knew the story. “In English?” I asked.

  A slight pain crept into the woman’s voice. “No, sir. In Italian, with English supertitles.”

  “Is Sonnier singing the part of Juliet?”

  “Ms. Sonnier will be singing the part of Romeo.”

  I paused, playing back the sentence in my mind. “Romeo?”

  “That’s correct, sir. It’s a trouser role.” The voice on the phone explained, “In certain operatic scenarios the roles of men are sung by women. Bellini’s opera is one such scenario.”

  I paused, thinking about how much I didn’t know about opera, and how little interest I had in changing that fact. I don’t have anything against heartache music, but I don’t see why it has to be two hundred years old. Give me a beat-up John Prine cassette and a full tank of gas, and my musical needs are pretty much met. “How much are tickets?” I asked. “In the lower range, I mean.”

  “Well, the less expensive seats are sold out.”

  That could be a definite problem; I was scraping by as it was. “So what’s left?”

  “The least expensive seats available are forty-six dollars.”

  I did some quick math: ninety-two dollars, plus parking and dinner, that was a couple of hundred bucks for an evening. There was a time when spending two hundred bucks on a night out was something I did just to remind myself I could afford it. Those days had never seemed so distant. But just going to the opera wasn’t enough; I wanted some personal contact. “Will Ms. Sonnier be signing any autographs?” I asked.

  “Sir?”

  “If somebody wanted to get his program signed. Ask her about opera, that kind of thing.”

  “We are offering a special opportunity for serious fans of Ms. Sonnier.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you a serious fan of Ms. Sonnier, sir?”

  I looked down at my screen and read out loud, “Ms. Sonnier is the most exciting female voice to have emerged in the opera world in the last ten years.”

  The voice seemed pleased. “Excellent. Ms. Sonnier has been kind enough to agree to a private reception after the concert for a select group of her most devoted admirers. It’s a fund-raiser for the opera company. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres will be served. I feel certain she would agree to sign your program.”

  “What does something like that cost?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars per person,” the woman answered. “However,
this price does include premier seating for the concert.”

  “Two-fifty. Each.”

  “That’s correct.”

  I very nearly thanked the woman and got on with my life. If I had, everything would be different. Life can turn on a dime. But I had just found out that what looked like the most important thing in Doug Townsend’s world had been a woman I didn’t even know existed. Looking at Sonnier’s schedule, she wouldn’t be appearing in Atlanta again for at least a year. I made a snap decision. “Hey,” I said, “you guys take Visa?”

  The first thing to do was to get a date. I needed a foil, someone who could help me blend into conversation. You can’t go to a high-roller opera event alone. My social life at that point consisted of drinks with Sammy Liston. The reason that I hadn’t dated anybody since losing my job was simple: there was nothing in my life that I needed to keep more completely under control. I learned that lesson the hard way, because it was letting my feelings go that had cost two people everything they had.

  I looked out at the golden expanse of hair that was the back of Blu McClendon’s head. Notlikely.com, I thought. Although she would be perfect. Young, gorgeous, and certain to wear the kind of dress that made women over forty nostalgic for their better days. I thought about a girl who worked down at the courthouse; not bad, but lacking a certain ability to impress ... I looked back at Blu.

  Although I was almost as deeply enamored by looking at Blu McClendon as Sammy Liston was, I had never laid a hand on her. I called her “baby” and “sweetie” on occasion, Neanderthal epithets that she accepted with utter aplomb. The great thing about Blu was she understood that kind of thing. Calling a woman like her “baby” kept me alive in a way, while I figured out that I was still a man, even though I was starting my life over. Nevertheless, asking her out on a date was new territory. It would be confusing, out of character. I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea. Although I’d never seen her out, I had to assume that if I wasn’t rich I would at least need to be a bodybuilder. Of course, in the back of my mind I also thought that if she got the wrong idea and said yes, that would be even worse. A love affair between the two of us would devolve into a soap opera by lunch the next day. But the truth was I needed her. My days at Carthy, Williams and Douglas taught me that a girl like Blu is the definitive ice-breaker. You can walk up to any group of men you want, and they are certain to open their little circle, smile, and immediately start to figure out what the hell you have going for you. I sat there and worked on the problem for a little while, until the obvious hit me, and I thought of an invitation for the gorgeous Miss McClendon so perfectly conceived it could have come from Michelangelo’s chisel. “Blu,” I asked, “how would you like to meet a lot of very rich men?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE DAY BEFORE THE OPERA, it suddenly occurred to me that something like a private reception for a famous diva was probably a black-tie affair. Thanks to an unfettered ability to spend during my days at Carthy, Williams and Douglas, I possessed a nice Hugo Boss tuxedo, which I had worn exactly twice. I put it on and stood in front of the mirror in my bedroom. I always dressed up well, which is a genuine asset for a lawyer. Some guys put on a suit and still look as if they just got back from recess. But in the halls of Carthy, Williams and Douglas, it was look sharp or get lost. I resolved on the first day to look like I’d never heard of Dothan, Alabama, much less grown up there, and I was fastidious about getting my off-the-rack suits tailored to perfection. I stood there gazing at myself, but it was a long ways from narcissism. It was more a deep sense of the incoherence of the moment. If I closed my eyes and suddenly opened them again, I could almost believe I was still at Carthy, Williams and Douglas. I looked just as rich, just as successful, and just as dangerous.

  About six o’clock I drove over to Blu’s place, Hunter Downs.

  Hunter Downs is the kind of apartment complex that is full of people who aren’t rich yet but have good enough credit to create a reasonably convincing facsimile. It’s a gated complex, and all the buildings are built on a grand scale, like divided-up southern mansions. The parking lot was a sea of shiny, waxed, depreciating debt.

  I knocked on Blu’s door, and after a few seconds, she opened it. Something transforming happens to a woman when she dresses up, even to one who starts out looking like Blu. Her gorgeous hair was up, little wisps of blond falling down onto her smooth neck. She was wearing pearls, which tapered down into the most perfect, restrained view of mother Mary’s cleavage you ever saw in your life. And the dress—if you can imagine rich, azure satin painted on the ideal woman to cut your hair, especially if she did a lot of leaning over you when she did it, you get the idea.

  At dinner she prattled on about Romeo and Juliet, which pleased me. I didn’t even lament her insistence on a thirty-four-dollar bottle of wine that I had seen two days earlier for twelve bucks in a liquor store. Refusing her would have upset her world-view, and I didn’t want to do that. “I just love Romeo and Juliet,” she was saying. “It’s the most tragical thing ever.” She sipped her thirty-four-dollar wine. “Why can’t people just let other people love the people they want?”

  “I know, baby. How’s your fettuccine?”

  “Yummy.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Jack, don’t you just love Romeo and Juliet?” Blu asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose?” She seemed offended by my indecision.

  I shrugged. “These days Romeo and Juliet would just go to Vegas and get it over with. They’d tell their parents to go jump in a lake.” Blu looked crestfallen, and I started to feel bad I had popped her romantic balloon. “Your hair’s beautiful tonight,” I said. “How do you get it to do that?”

  She smiled and forgave me. “So why the opera?” she asked.

  “A case,” I said. “We’re here to learn about the main singer, the great Michele Sonnier.”

  “The one you said is singing Romeo.”

  I nodded. “Listen, Blu, you’ve got a lot of men asking you out, right?”

  “Um hmm.”

  “Let me ask you something. What would you think if you went into some guy’s bedroom and discovered a bunch of pictures of you?”

  Her expression clouded. “How many pictures?”

  “Maybe, like, twenty.”

  She grimaced. “I wouldn’t like that.”

  “But wouldn’t a part of you be flattered?”

  She shook her head. “Two or three, maybe. Not twenty.”

  “How about those guys who have seen Cats four hundred times? They’re harmless, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to talk to somebody like that. There’s got to be something wrong in the head.”

  We talked through dinner, Blu sharing her insight into male obsession, which was probably a topic she knew something about, judging by the attention she was receiving at the restaurant. We finished up and I paid the bill. Then we made the short drive to the opera, which was at Atlanta’s grand old theater, the Fox. There was a group of impeccably dressed people milling around outside, mostly smokers getting their fix before the three-hour show. I gave my $250 tickets to the usher, and he led us down the long aisle toward the front.

  The Fox is an Atlanta landmark, a tribute to the whimsy of people who can afford to pay artists to adorn their world. Walking into the hall, you are transported to a Moroccan castle, and the stage is surrounded with turrets and stone walls as high as the ceiling. Above you stars twinkle, as though you had come upon the place in the midst of an Arabian night. In other words, describing the distance between the world inside that theater and what was happening on any given night in the worst parts of Atlanta was a problem for a theoretical physicist. I’m not saying it was wrong to spend so much on making a place like that beautiful. I’m just saying that if you grew up in the projects and somehow, lost in that desert sunset, you found yourself inside the Fox, you would have had your worst fears confirmed about what life was like on the other side.<
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  Thinking about Doug at an event like that bothered me, in a way. I didn’t mind my junkies hard and pissed off; you pled them down, they did some time, life went on. But opera was rich people’s music, and I figured Doug would have been as enamored with that whole cultured life as he was with Sonnier. I pictured him at all those concerts, dressed up, in the one decent jacket he owned, walking through the lobby, taking his seat, feeling for a couple of hours like he didn’t live in the Jefferson Arms. In my mind I could see him trying to engage somebody at intermission in one of those concerts, saying, “Isn’t it thrilling?” It made me want to weep.

  Blu and I sat down in red velvet seats and waited for the show to start. In view of how little I could afford the evening, I was hoping at best not to be bored out of my mind. But for two hundred and fifty bucks you get to sit so close to the stage you can almost feel the air vibrate from the singing. The orchestra played an overture, and suddenly there were a lot of people on stage in beautiful costumes. The set—a villa in Italy, represented by faux structures and enormous background paintings—was effective, too. I settled in for the performance.

  It was a few minutes before Sonnier walked on stage, and when she did, she got a huge ovation. She didn’t acknowledge it; she was locked into her character. This was my first chance to look her over, and at least for this role, she seemed very different from her pictures. For one thing, she was dressed like a man, with her hair combed back, wearing pants, and a vest to hide her breasts. To my surprise, she had it down; even the walk looked real. Most women, when they try to walk like a man, fall into some exaggerated John Wayne swagger. But Sonnier understood the nuance of it: acting like a man isn’t sticking out your chest. It’s subtler, and comes from below the waist. So I could almost buy it, until she opened her mouth. Then she just started making the most beautiful, most spectacularly female sound you can imagine. Bellini didn’t even try to write low notes for the character to make her sound more masculine. So Sonnier just sang away, making love to Juliet, but sounding like the most beautiful woman in the world.