The Last Goodbye

by Reed Arvin

  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.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “An acquaintance,” I said. “Someone from that world. And he says Doug was well known there.” I paused. “Listen,” I said, “it isn’t rocket science to imagine your husband as a possible employer. Horizn is in the same business.”

  She looked stricken. “Charles? He doesn’t know anything about Doug.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “As sure as I can be. Anyway, Doug would have told me if Charles had approached him.” She sighed, suddenly tired. “I have to go out of town tomorrow,” she said. “It’s what I was rehearsing for. It’s in St. Louis.”

  “Will you be gone long?”

  “No. It’s a quick turnaround. It’s very casual, just one night. We’re doing La Boheme.”

  “A casual opera?”

  She smiled. “It’s a festival. The crowd doesn’t dress, not like what you saw. No tuxedos. People come in shorts. Stripped-down staging. Complete chaos backstage.” Suddenly, she brightened. “Come with me,” she said. “I’m flying alone, and I hate that.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Of course I am.
A couple of hours up, the same back. Can you?”

  Not for so many reasons. “I don’t actually shop in the last-minute-ticket price range,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m taking the Horizn jet.”

  “Jesus.”

  “We can talk about Doug.”

  “Doug.”

  “Yes. We’ll be . . . friends.” She paused. “I need that right now, Jack. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone to talk to who knows everything. It’s like air.”

  I looked away, just to give my eyes somewhere else to land than her extraordinary, caramel skin. “I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” I said.

  “Come with me, Jack. I’m singing something so beautiful it will break your heart.”

  “That’s the last thing I need.” The second I spoke, I knew I had made a mistake. God help me, she’s going to want to know everything. She’s not going to rest until she knows what happened to me, how the guilty pain of what happened to Violeta Ramirez makes me understand her so well.

  “I knew there was something,” she said. Her eyes were looking into mine, and I prepared for an assault onto my private history. But to my surprise, she released me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. “It always comes to the same thing.”

  I looked up at her. “And what’s that?”

  “L’amore non prevale sempre. Love does not always prevail.” She smiled softly, her mouth warm and glossy. “Think about tomorrow,” she said. “I want you to come. We’ll be ... friends.”

  The merciless traffic of late afternoon Atlanta was in its conspiracy against movement, so there was no point in trying to get home for a while. The area near the university plays host to a variety of cheap, decent restaurants, and I pulled into one for an early dinner. I was three forkfuls into something cheap and forgettable when my cell phone rang; it was Sammy, telling me Odom had let out court early, and asking me to meet him at The Rectory. Thanks to his previous employment there, Sammy has a very tolerable arrangement with the bartender that puts Chivas in Sammy’s glass at Seagram’s prices. When you drink in sufficient quantities, such niceties add up. By the time I finished my dinner and made the drive over, he was several glasses deep into his special privileges. For Sammy, the perfect night was one in which his credit card limit and his capacity to drink converged in a perfect x-y axis. It was early, but at the rate he was going, tonight was going to be a math teacher’s dream.

  “He took her to Nikolia’s Roof,” he said, before I sat down.

  “Who took who?” I asked, pulling out a chair.

  “He did,” Sammy hissed. “To Nikolia’s.”

  “The one on the top floor of the Hilton?”

  “For God’s sake, Jack, there’s only one Nikolia’s. And he took her there.”

  Recognition flickered; Sammy was talking about Blu. “Damn it, Sammy, how did you know that?”

  “A guy owed me a favor,” Sammy answered. “It’s his line of work.”

  “Don’t go over the edge on me, Sammy.”

  Sammy stared into his drink. “The first rule of revenge is to know your enemy.”

  “I know, but having the guy tailed . . .” I trailed off, wondering again if I had made the right decision telling Sammy about Stephens’s designs on Blu. But it was too late now. “Look, Sammy, Nikolia’s is pretty public,” I said. “Maybe he’ll get busted. Somebody will see him and tell his so-called girlfriend.”

  “Naw,” Sammy said, shaking his head. “I asked around. He had a little private room. He’s pals with Nikolia or something.”

  “Listen, the guy’s not married. So technically he’s in the market.”

  “Yeah. He’s going to technically get his ass kicked, too.”

  “Sammy, I’m begging you, don’t go psycho on me. Keep it reasonable.”

  Sammy looked at me, his eyes bleary. “You know what’s annoying about you, Jackie old pal?”

  “I assume there’s a list. You can start with the As.” I caught the waitress’s eye and ordered a scotch.

  “Wrong,” Sammy said. “There’s only one thing wrong with you. You ... how’s it go? You cast your pearls before swine.”

  “Do tell.”

  Sammy set his empty glass down hard on the table. He tried unsuccessfully to make eye contact with the waitress for a refill, then turned back to me. “Look at you, Jackie boy. You’re a genius, and you spend all day down in Odom’s court.”

  “Pays the bills,” I said.

  “I’m down there watching you every day, and I ask myself, what’s a guy who talks like a million bucks, looks like a million bucks, knows more about procedure than anybody I ever saw ... I mean, shit, Jack. You win ninety percent of your cases.”

  “I plead more than half of them down, Sammy,” I said quietly. Great. Now Sammy is giving me the speech I gave Nightmare. Beautiful.

  “Yeah, but they’re all guilty.”

  “They’re not all guilty, Sammy.”

  “They’re all fucking guilty, and you know it.”

  “All right. They’re mostly guilty.”

  “And you get them off, you bastard genius bastard.” Sammy looked at me blankly. He was a couple of drinks past fine distinctions in language.

  “What is this, harass Jack Hammond night? I got a lot on my plate already.”

  “My point,” Sammy said, gathering his thoughts, “is that compared to you, I’m a moron.”

  “Sammy—”

  “No,” Sammy interrupted, “I’m a moron. And even with my limited fucking capabilities, I am going to extract a revenge on Stephens so beautiful it would make a grown man cry.” He looked down at his empty glass. “Him, hopefully.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. A worried feeling was growing in my gut. Stephens was way, way out of Sammy’s league.

  “None of your damn business,” Sammy said.

  “Sammy—”

  “Leave it, Jackie boy,” Sammy said. “It’s gone beyond you now. All you need to know is this: I see a very bad day coming for Blu’s new boyfriend.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NICOLE FROST WAS NOT aptly named. She was, for a securities broker, remarkably human and warm. She and I had gone to college together, although she hadn’t known Doug. She had flown in different skies, the elite group of pretty people who did acceptably academically but even better socially. It was a foregone conclusion she would be successful, and she hadn’t disappointed anybody. She had managed my modest investment account in happier days, until I was forced to withdraw every penny just to survive. I called her the next morning after talking to Michele, looking for information about Grayton Laboratories. “Hello, Jack,” she said in her unflappably cheerful voice, “great to hear from you. What’s new?”

  “I’ve got a big pile of money to invest,” I said. “It’s all twenties, and you might find a little residue on some of the bills. Hope that’s okay.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I could take a walk on the dark side. You never know.”

  “Just defending those people is bad enough, Jack, but that’s another story. Since you’re not going to make either of us any money, what do you need?”

  “A little information.”

  “You’re broke.”

  “Thanks, I already knew that. Anyway, it’s not about me.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  “What do you know about a company called Grayton Technical Laboratories?”

  There was a pause, while Nicole riffled through her immense mental Rolodex. “Small biotech company, haven’t made a lot of noise. I probably wouldn’t know anything about them if they weren’t local.”

  “Nothing spectacular in their pipeline?”

  “Maybe,” she answered. “I don’t follow biotech much.”

  “Any idea who runs it?”

  “Umm, I think the family members are on the board now. Grayton himself is more a figurehead. The stock doesn’t do much. Just sits there, mostly.”


  “All right, next topic. How about Horizn?”

  She laughed. “What about them? They’re about to make a lot of people a lot of money.”

  “Going to be big?”

  “Huge. The hepatitis patent is going to pay off for decades.” She paused. “It’s the perfect disease, you know. Not to be heartless about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have to take dear Dr. Ralston’s medicine for the rest of your hopefully long life. Fantastic, from an investment point of view. Which is funny, really.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you know how Ralston made his millions?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “A mere ten years ago, Ralston was a lowly human like you or me. He was heading a research team at Columbia.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard he was a scientist.”

  “His team came up with Horizn’s treatment of the disease,” Nicole said. “Naturally, the university claimed the patent. Ralston was acting as an employee. He had the standard percentage, but he wanted it all.”

  “He disputed?”

  “Right. Nobody gave him a prayer, of course. That kind of contract is usually airtight. But that was before he hooked up with some lawyer—”

  “Derek Stephens.”

  “Yeah, Stephens. Supposedly he’s some kind of intellectual property genius or something. Nation’s leading authority. He’s always getting quoted on Wall Street Week. Anyway, thanks to him, Ralston walked out with the patent, and they were both millionaires.”

  “Both?”

  “Ralston didn’t have any money, so Stephens got paid with a percent of the patent. So he closed his practice, and they more or less ran off to run the world together.”

  “Very enterprising.”

  “Yeah, and now the price of that drug is three times what it would have been.”

  “Screw the little people, that’s what I always say.”

  “It’s a cruel world, darling.” Nicole paused. “Listen, Jack, why the sudden interest?”

  “Just something I’m working on.”

  I could hear Nicole’s wheels turning. “Jack, you wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something brewing on the street that you somehow discovered through your colorful friends.”