The Last Goodbye Read online

  It was a long ways between that opera and where I grew up in Dothan, Alabama. I admit I have no idea what I was supposed to feel, sitting there watching actors in painted faces and Renaissance costumes sing to each other. At first, hearing Romeo sing like a woman was disorienting, but after a while, I started to think about him in a new way. That high voice made him sound like a kid, which is what he was in the real play. For some reason he’s never played by sixteen-year-old boys. Usually there’s some guy in his twenties or even thirties up on stage. That makes a big difference. Because listening to this high voice come out of Michele Sonnier’s exquisitely fine, delicate face, I started thinking that Romeo was just a victim of the system, powerless and naïve. He wasn’t any stronger than Juliet, really, because they were both just children. He was fighting forces a lot bigger than he was, and he didn’t even know it. Every time he opened up his mouth you realized right away that he was doomed. They gave the part of Romeo’s dad to a big man with a booming, low voice, which made it worse. When Romeo tried to argue with him about how stupid it was that the Capulets and the Montagues were always fighting, it was like watching a pebble bounce off a wall. There was no way in hell Romeo was going to get Juliet. It was the perfect story, as far as I was concerned. All that misery—they endured every bit of it just because they couldn’t let things go. If they had stripped things down, probably something else would have come along. They would have hurt like hell for a while, but eventually married somebody else and got along fine. But they couldn’t do it, so two people died.

  Even though everybody knew the story, a lot of people broke down when Romeo drank the poison. Sonnier was more than just a singer; she was a brilliant actress. Her Romeo was so fragile and vulnerable that it was like watching a real person face his moment of death. There were no histrionics, no ham-fisted overacting. She was singing with deadly seriousness, her voice a candle flame in the hall. She was facing the sober realization that there are times when so much has gone wrong that life is no longer worth living. That’s the real point of that story, in my opinion. Even when the cost of believing is everything, some people just can’t help themselves.

  Then it was over. Blu had completely broken down, so I gave her a couple of minutes to collect herself. Most of the crowd was moving back out into the lobby, except for the people like us with the expensive tickets. We were led out a private exit to the parking lot. I led Blu in the dark to the car, and we drove over to the Four Seasons for the reception. It was only fifteen blocks, so we got there in about five minutes. At that point, I did Blu a favor: we didn’t valet park. I didn’t want to shortchange her, because she looked fantastic. It would have dampened her entrance for everybody to see her climbing out of my dented LeSabre.

  We followed the crowd up a big staircase, and I could feel Blu getting excited looking at all the rich guys. They were looking at her, too, I can tell you that. You never saw so many men casually looking over the tops of their drinks in your life. We moved off into the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns.

  Everybody is very polite at these kinds of soirees. They’re also cliquish, but not necessarily from bad intentions. It’s more an inevitability. The people in that room were the financial backbone of Atlanta, so they had a lot in common. You could feel it when they greeted each other. A million golf games, cocktail parties, and bank loans were silently implied with every handshake. The wives—about ten years younger than their husbands, on average—didn’t fit the trophy girl stereotype, either. They seemed gracious and accomplished. But I wish you could have seen the McClendon effect that night. It was magical, let me tell you. I never had so much small talk in my life.

  Even though I had nothing against it, I wasn’t there in order to present Blu to Atlanta society. What I really cared about was finding out everything I could about Michele Sonnier. It was surprisingly hard to get the conversation onto that topic, mostly because the women wanted to know about Blu’s dress and the men were working out how to get it off her. All I could pick up was that Sonnier was big stuff in the opera world, groomed for success from her earliest beginnings. She had grown up in Manhattan, entered Juilliard as a prodigy, and left two years early to pursue her singing career. She had been a star from the second she set foot on a stage. There was one hell of a lot of conversation about something else, though, and that was Charles Ralston and Horizn. The men were talking strategy about how to get in on the Horizn IPO at the offering price, something only the true insiders could pull off. The consensus was that getting in early was going to be richly rewarded. They all had their brokers poised on quick-release triggers.

  Eventually, I felt obligated to cut Blu loose. She couldn’t really troll with me around, and she’d done everything I could have asked. So I patted her arm and she moved off, smiling like a fisherman who’s just discovered a stocked bathtub.

  The food table wasn’t bad; there was a nice spinach pasta in pesto, stuffed mushrooms, and little shapes of things wrapped up in tortilla. I milled around for a few minutes, then grabbed another glass of champagne. After a while I spotted an impeccably dressed man circling Blu. He was plainly working up an approach to speak to her. I started counting down from ten. When I got to seven, the man slickly sidestepped a slow-moving waiter; on five, and I have to admit he did it beautifully, he picked up two glasses of champagne without breaking stride; on one, he touched her arm and handed her one of the glasses. Touchdown. Something about him looked familiar; I had the vague recollection I had read about him in the newspaper, and that he had been doing something unpleasant to someone, but I couldn’t remember what. What wasn’t in question were his intentions toward my secretary: he was a player, in every sense of the word. I could see it all over him as he stood chatting amiably with Blu. He was smart, and he was probably a hell of a businessman. But no matter what else was going on in his life, it was less important to him than getting laid.

  I stood watching them for a while, fascinated. Even though I figured Blu could pick up on the guy as well as I could, context is everything. Here, at an opera party wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit, he came off like a slightly miniaturized James Bond. Millions of dollars have that effect. Without the money, he was just a guy in khakis with a five-year-old Corvette hitting on girls at an airport bar. I gave Blu a couple of minutes to be adored and walked up beside them. The man’s smile transformed itself into plastic. “Jack Hammond,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Derek Stephens,” the man answered. He was about forty-five and smelled vaguely of cigars. “I was just talking with your—”

  “Cousin,” I said. “Blu McClendon, my dear cousin from Arkansas.” Stephens narrowed his smile and moved incrementally closer to my secretary.

  “Mr. Stephens here was just telling me he’s an attorney, like you, Jack,” Blu said. “He works for Horizn Pharmaceuticals. They’re sponsoring Ms. Sonnier’s tour.”

  “So this is a big night for you,” I said.

  “It’s a big night for the Atlanta Opera, Jack,” Stephens answered. I could feel him sizing me up. “So you’re a lawyer as well.” The accent was New England, upper crust. “Which firm?”

  There were only about four correct answers to that question for a guy like Stephens, and Jack Hammond and Associates wasn’t one of them. “Solo practitioner,” I said. “Criminal law, mostly.”

  At that moment, I could feel Stephens starting to work out how to get Blu away from me with the minimum of fuss. People can look right at you, acting like they’re interested, but if you look deep into their eyes, you can see wheels turning while they work out some completely different problem. Even though he didn’t give a damn what the answer was, he asked me, “Are you a fan of opera, Jack? Or of Michele in particular?”

  “New to both,” I answered. I was actually sort of enjoying talking to the guy. He had so much fast track all over him he smelled like a race car. “How about you?”

  “I serve on Atlanta Opera board,” Stephens said. “Which is amusing, since I know nothing about oper
a.”

  “Apparently, you had other qualifications.”

  Stephens reluctantly pulled his gaze off Blu and put it back onto me. “A redneck hillbilly could get on the board of an opera company, Jack, if he was willing to write a sufficiently large check.”

  He looked over at Blu’s glass, which was not quite half full. Time’s up, I thought. “Ms. McClendon,” he said, “let me get you a refill.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Blu said, beaming. “I’m dying to try those little squares with cheese in them.” And like that, they were gone.

  I felt protective over Blu, but I didn’t, strictly speaking, know enough about Stephens to worry. And I had never discussed Blu’s dating life with her, mostly because it was more pleasant to imagine she didn’t have one. But I didn’t get a chance to think about either, because at that moment, the atmosphere in the room was disturbed.

  I turned, feeling something behind me; there was a round of applause, and then the seas parted. Sonnier and Ralston entered the room like royalty. Ralston was tall, at just over six feet, with a lean, athletic build. A slight peppering of gray in the hair was the only clue to his age; I had heard he was in his early fifties, but he looked considerably younger. His skin was dark but smooth, a gift from spending most of his life indoors. His wife, however, had been transformed. The tragic figure of Romeo had revealed herself to be an absolutely gorgeous woman who was ignoring the dress code with sublime indifference. She was dressed in the ersatz-ghetto fashion favored by twenty-something designers looking to make a name for themselves: in other words, in two thousand dollars’ worth of clothes designed to look like twenty. Surrounded by tails and evening gowns, Sonnier appeared in the ballroom of the Four Seasons in tight, low-rider black pants, a tight-fitted tangerine top cut low to show a modest but perfectly formed cleavage, bare arms, and a thin slice of midriff. Her hips were encircled by a silver chain belt, each link carefully given an aged, dull patina. Her belly button was pierced, and her left ear had three small hoop earrings, all the same distressed silver as the belt. The effect was edgy, but she pulled it off with so much insouciant confidence that everyone else in the room seemed overdressed, as if she alone had read the invitation correctly. And her skin: my impressions from her photographs at Townsend’s place had been right. She was chocolate and luminous in the lights of the ballroom. Standing on black platform shoes, she couldn’t have made more of an entrance if she had ridden into the Four Seasons on a Harley.

  Ralston was instantly waylaid by a bunch of suits; the money in the room was the hungry variety, always ready to attach itself to a rising tide. Ralston shook hands with a vaguely interested expression, clearly aware of his position. This was the new black elite: the wife, nonconformist and artsy, the husband, impeccably dressed in Armani, playing the white games to perfection.

  The couple separated quickly: a handler led Michele into the crowd, while Ralston headed in the opposite direction. The crowd near her fell on her in that polite way rich people have who are in awe of artists, especially when they’ve paid two hundred and fifty bucks for the chance to demonstrate they have good enough taste to deserve being wealthy. I let Ralston go; I was there for Sonnier. I followed from a distance, watching her greet people who were loving her safe, calculated funkiness.

  Of course, from my perspective, that of the Fulton County Criminal Court system, Michele Sonnier was about as street as Girl Scout cookies. Nobody who sings opera is going to carjack you, if you see what I mean. And being black, I figured she knew that as well as I did. Which made me figure that what I was watching was a little bit like opera itself. She could have broken out into song right where she stood, something about liberal white guilt and a mule and forty acres. But instead, she just worked the room, letting her new best friends tell her how great she was.

  I watched her for a while, wondering about Doug Townsend and his obsession. In her shoes she seemed tall, but I estimated she was only about five-six without them, with slender but well-defined arms. She had fine features, delicate and precise, with dark brown eyes, and spectacular hair—brunette, with reddish-auburn highlights—swept back into a ponytail. My God, I thought. Poor Doug never had a chance. Finally, she made it around to where I was standing, and she stopped in front of me. Her handler was speaking to someone a few yards away; for the moment, we were alone. She put out a beautiful, smooth hand. I took it and introduced myself. “Jack Hammond.”

  “Hello, Mr. Hammond.” Her voice was cultured, educated.

  “Quite a soiree they put on for you.”

  She smiled. “I hate all this fuss.”

  “At least it’s in your honor.”

  Her smile softened. “I suppose.”

  “So how do you like playing a man?”

  “A challenge, but well worth it in this case.”

  “Because of the music?”

  She shrugged. “The music’s alright.”

  That was a little bit of a surprise. “Just all right?”

  Sonnier leaned forward. I couldn’t place her scent; it was citrus, subtle and clean. “I’ll let you in on a secret, if you promise not to tell,” she said.

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “This particular opera’s not one of my favorites. I do it for another reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The rather delicious irony, obviously.”

  “I’m a little new to the opera thing,” I said. “Maybe you could paint me a picture.”

  She leaned closer. She was being confidential as hell. I had to remember to ask Blu what that scent was. “That surprises me, Mr. Hammond,” she said. “You have the air of an expert.”

  I smiled, I was also slightly annoyed, because even though I knew she was playing me, I couldn’t help falling for it. She knew that I knew, too, and it didn’t make any difference. Really beautiful women get to break all the rules. I couldn’t take my eyes off her glossy, soft mouth. She was actually starting to piss me off, until I realized it was Charles Ralston I was hating, simply for being the guy who got to kiss her. “In Shakespeare’s time,” she said, “Juliet was played by a man. All the roles were. Women weren’t allowed on stage.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard that. So that balcony scene . . .”

  “Two Englishmen pretending to be Italians making love.”

  “Right.”

  “So naturally Bellini, who really was Italian, evened the score. He wrote Romeo played by a woman.”

  “You’re saying it was some kind of art-world revenge?”

  Sonnier laughed, and the pure loveliness of her voice sent a shiver up my spine. She leaned closer and whispered, “Mr. Hammond, if you’re going to understand anything about opera, there’s something you should remember. No matter what else is going on, the theme is always revenge.”

  Before I could respond, her handler appeared. He took her arm and started to lead her away. It was now or never as far as Doug Townsend was concerned, so I put out my hand and stopped her. For a second, she was suspended between the two of us, an arm extended in each direction. “Yes, Mr. Hammond?” she asked.

  “I was just wondering if you had heard the news about a mutual friend of ours.”

  She looked surprised. “Who’s that?”

  I knew this was it. If the name didn’t register, it was back to the office with nothing to show for my five hundred bucks but some crab cakes, a night of Italian music, and my first crush on a black woman. I looked her in the eyes and said, “Doug Townsend.”

  Nothing altered in her face. Not a muscle moved. Her smile was just as inviting as ever. “I don’t believe I know anyone by that name,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I answered. “Actually, it’s a good thing.”

  The guy pulled on her again, but I could feel the muscle in her arm tighten. It was subtle, but it’s the kind of thing you pick up on when you’re surrounded by liars every night and day. At least for the moment, she wasn’t going anywhere. “And why would that be?”
/>   “Because he’s the former Doug Townsend,” I answered. “Sort of a messy drug overdose, four days ago.”

  Her smile, which one second earlier had been warm flesh and blood, was set instantly in concrete, freeze-framed into a pleasant deadness. She knew him, alright. The great Michele Sonnier knew Doug Townsend just like I did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER TWO YEARS IN Judge Thomas Odom’s court, I can state one thing with utter certainty: people do not lie to hear themselves talk. They lie because there’s something they don’t want you to know badly enough to trade a little bit of their integrity to keep you from finding that thing out. So when I showed up at work the next day, the central question on my mind was what that thing was for Michele Sonnier, and exactly how much of her integrity was she willing to exchange to keep it private. Of course I hit an immediate wall, namely, that Doug’s life and Michele Sonnier’s were separated by an insurmountable cultural and financial gulf. She spent her time with European-born conductors who spoke four languages, and Doug spent his living next door to hell, trying to avoid jail. But the fact remained that more than twenty times he had crossed that gulf with plane tickets, each one paid for in cash. That, combined with my absolute certainty that Sonnier had lied about knowing him, was more than I could ignore.

  Wanting to unravel the connection between Sonnier and Doug would not, however, find me the money I needed to pay Blu’s salary at the end of the month. So in spite of how much I wanted to spend time finding out what happened to Doug, the fact was I was grateful to head to the office to get ready for court. Thanks to the largesse of Sammy Liston, I had two cases on Judge Odom’s docket that morning.

  As usual, I met both clients shortly before trial. The first, a second offense for simple possession, earned the girl—twenty years old, pretty, with the nearly ubiquitous sad eyes of most of my clients—time served and a stern lecture from Odom, which consisted of such classic lines as “I don’t want to see you in my courtroom again, Miss Harmon” and “If I hear that you’ve missed one of your drug tests, I’m going to have to send you away.” All sleepwalking stuff.