The Last Goodbye

by Reed Arvin

  “Yeah,” I said cautiously. “I was doing research on a case.”

  “Word is she not from around here.”

  “She’s from Bowen Homes,” I said. “She’s helping me on something.”

  “Bowen? So I guess I wouldn’t know her.”

  “No, probably not.” Pope looked at me, a shallow smile on his lips. It was obvious he knew I was lying. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell what else he knew. What I needed to do was get the hell out before he could ask me any more questions.

  “What her name?”

  Damn. Lemme go, Pope. And let her go. Let all of us go, you merciless bastard. Let us all just live our lives without all this shit. “T’aniqua,” I said. “T’aniqua Fields.”

  Pope’s face was implacable. “Well, I guess you right,” he said. “I don’t know her.” He walked over and put his hands underneath me. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll help you find her.”

  “Uh . . .” Words were forming, but the pain of straightening out my body turned them into a low moan.

  “Easy,” Pope said. “You all right. Stand up, now. Get yourself together.”

  I leaned on Pope, reorienting myself to an upright world. When the spinning stopped, I felt better. My head was clearing. I took a step, then another. “I can make it,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah,” Pope said. He picked up some keys. “Let’s go find T’aniqua. I hear she fine.”

  “Really, Pope, I don’t want—”

  Pope’s grip on my shoulder, which had, until that second, been friendly and supportive, turned subtly painful. The change wasn’t dramatic, but it was exquisitely communicative. The message was clear: You are completely in my world. I have ways for you to lose this argument you can’t imagine. I looked up at Pope, whose smile hadn’t wavered. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe she’s still around.”

  “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her,” he said. “It gets dangerous around here at night.” Then more pressure, moving me inexorably toward the door. We walked outside, me limping but finding my balance again. A couple of boys appeared from out of nowhere; one of them was Rabbit, Pope’s son. “What up?” Pope asked.

  Unlike the first time I had seen him, Rabbit was living up to his nickname. He was a lean bundle of nervous energy. “I ain’t seen her,” he said. “Word’s out.”

  Pope turned toward me. “Looks like your friend’s playing hide-go-seek. We better go help her out.”

  Pope led me toward his car. Here, at last, was an expression of his real income. A beautiful black Mercedes sat waiting on the street. He had resisted any tacky moves toward the pimp world; it was bone stock and exquisitely polished. Even in the streetlights, it glowed. A boy materialized out of the ether around me; first Pope’s door was opened, then mine. I sat down on expensive leather, feeling my bones ache with the impact. Pope took his seat and lowered the windows. “We find her,” he said. “We just gotta ask around.”

  “I’m sure she would have walked out hours ago,” I said. “She’s got no reason to hide.”

  Pope started the car and we glided down the main street of the Glen. Within blocks, I learned what respect meant in the projects. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Pope was treated like a head of state. We couldn’t get thirty yards without someone glad-handing him, kissing his ass. Some were storing up favors against an unknown future offense; others were angling for work or a break on product. He greeted them all by name, receiving them into his royal court for a moment’s blessing.

  McDaniel Glen at midnight was alive. There were even small children sitting on stoops, playing and laughing. Nobody looked scared. They were having fun, mostly. Sticking close to their stoop, playing by the rules, but having a hell of a time. There it was, in all its glory: society. People just being people, chatting and laughing. It almost made me smile, except that threading its way through all that goodwill was a black Mercedes paid for with human misery. No one, it appeared, had seen Michele. Pope’s questions got more pointed as we drove, and I could feel his wheels turning, wondering who this T’aniqua Fields was, and what she and the white lawyer were doing in his world.

  It took about twenty minutes to cover all of the Glen. As we pulled back up to his apartment, he got a phone call. Pope grunted into the phone a couple of times, then looked at me. “She ain’t here,” he said. “Somebody thinks she left couple hours ago.”

  “Figures,” I said nonchalantly. Bullshitting Pope was essentially a waste of time, but I was hoping that if I didn’t grind my lying in his face he’d give me a break. It was, like everything else in his world, merely a question of respect. And to my eternal gratitude, Pope pulled out an umbrella for the shit storm.

  “You better get goin’,” he said, looking at me. “She probably lookin’ for you.”

  There was a moment’s recognition between us, and I was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SO SHE MADE IT OUT, probably hours ago. She’s safe. Pope believed it, and one thing was certain: nothing happened in the Glen without him knowing about it. That assurance, however—and I knew, at least intellectually, that it was absolute—failed to stop me from driving every block around the edges of the Glen for at least an hour, looking for her. But eventually, there was no way around it: Michele had vanished. I turned my car toward my house, and by the time I got there, it was nearly two. There was no way to check on Michele; the only number I had was her cell phone, which was now resting on my dining table. I considered calling the police—even though to do so would have revealed her identity—but discarded the idea. I had been overreacting, which was pretty understandable, considering my last few hours. It had been less than fifteen blocks from where I left Michele to the edge of the Glen, and she had certainly made that walk often enough as a young girl. There was no reason to believe she couldn’t have simply vanished under the gates into Atlanta.

  Which was all bullshit, because for the next five hours I slept about ten minutes. Saturday morning came, and the weekend loomed like an eternity. I prowled my apartment for most of the day, frustrated at the impossibility of reaching Michele. I stared at my phone, thinking that at least she would call me. I paced. I slept in fits and starts, feeling the nervous energy that comes from exhaustion. I looked at myself in the mirror, watching the topography of my face pass through an inflated black and blue, until by Sunday afternoon, the swelling was beginning to recede. But two days to imagine everything bad that could have happened to her was at least one day too many; by early Monday morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something, so I called Nightmare. At least it was better than staring at myself in a mirror.

  Once again, I was speaking to the beep on Nightmare’s answering machine. “Wake up, Michael. We’ve got to move.” Nothing. I was not in the mood. “Dammit, it’s Jack,” I said. “They’ve stolen Doug’s computer.”

  Nightmare picked up the phone. I could hear him breathing, slowly coming to consciousness. “What?” he mumbled.

  “Doug’s computer. It was stolen out of my office a few nights ago.”

  Nightmare’s voice cleared. “Who stole it?”

  “Whoever doesn’t want us to find out what’s going on.”

  There was silence, as Nightmare thought over the preceding few sentences. Apparently, he didn’t like their meaning. “That is not good.” Then, a dial tone.

  It took me a moment to realize what had happened: I had been ditched. I called back. Nightmare picked up, but he didn’t speak. “Don’t lose your nerve, partner,” I said quietly. “I need you.” More silence, but I could feel the tension climbing up Nightmare’s skull. “You and me. Jackie Chan.”

  “They stole Killah’s desktop?”

  “Yes, Michael.” I didn’t mention the trouble with Michele and my getting thrashed by emissaries of Folks Nation; more tension was the last thing Michael needed.

  Nightmare’s voice dropped to a whisper, as though someone was in the next room, eavesdropping. “Dude, you are so completely busted.”
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  “Probably.”

  “It means they know we were on the site. They know where the hack came from.”

  “The call came from my office. There’s no connection to you.”

  “I’m pretty sure I want to keep it that way.”

  “Explain this to me, Michael. I thought you said all the data was on Georgia Tech’s mainframe.”

  “It is. But the access was on Doug’s. I figured if they sent a ping out, it would stop at Tech. But they got to the other side and located you.”

  “How could they do that?”

  Another long silence. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? I thought you were king cyber god or something.”

  “You are dead shit, dude. Seriously.”

  “Don’t overreact, Michael. If somebody wanted to kill me, I’m an easy enough target. What they wanted was the computer, and they got it. They probably wanted to make sure we can’t get back on.”

  “In that case, they’re screwed, because I can get back on anytime I want.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Are you serious? You can get back on?”

  “Sure, no problem. If I were nuts, that is.”

  “Michael, we have to get back on the site.”

  “Yeah, dude, we’ll just hack right back on there, and then sit and wait for them to come kill us. Gotta go now.”

  “Just tell me how we can get on.”

  “I can emulate Doug’s access.”

  “Wouldn’t they know that?”

  “Duh.”

  “So what good was taking Doug’s computer?”

  “Like you said, they don’t know about me. At this point, they probably just want to find out how you got in.”

  “Will they be able to?”

  “Just because they have Doug’s PC, that doesn’t mean they can get through his security. If you hadn’t come up with that Italian stuff, we’d still be staring at the screen.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Reasonably.”

  “Okay. Then we have to get back on, and we have to do it without getting detected. There has to be a way. Think about it, Michael. Come up with something.”

  Silence, another long stretch of it. I half expected him to hang up again, in which case I was prepared to drive over to his apartment, bang on his door, and wring his neck until he agreed to help me. “Where is this Grayton Laboratories, anyway?” he finally asked. “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know. Hang on.” I looked Grayton up in the phone book. “It’s on Mountain Industrial Avenue. I know where that is. It’s off 285. It’s two exits past Stone Mountain.”

  Another pause. “All right,” he said. “Meet me at the Sandy Spring branch of the public library. You can find the address in the phone book. Be there at eleven.”

  “The library?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not telling you on the phone. Just be there.”

  The Sandy Spring branch of the library was in north Atlanta, about forty-five minutes away. By the time I got there Nightmare was pacing outside of the building, looking hunted. When he saw my face, he practically folded up on the pavement.

  “You look like shit,” he said.

  “A minor disagreement,” I said. “The swelling will go down in a few days.” Nightmare looked at me for about five seconds, then started walking toward his car. “Stop right there,” I said.

  Nightmare turned. “Whatever happened to you needs to stay far away from me, dude.”

  “Listen to me, dammit,” I said. I was getting exasperated, and I wasn’t in the mood for Nightmare’s waffling. “I have just had a lousy couple of days. I have had the hell beat out of me trying to protect somebody. I have had my office broken into and been burgled. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been falling in love with the wrong woman. The least you can do is turn on a damn computer and type some commands. Now haul your ass in there and help me out, or I am going to go completely nuts.”

  Nightmare stared, eyes wide. “You’re losing it,” he said.

  “Probably.”

  “Falling in love with the wrong woman?” he repeated.

  “That’s right. And it puts me in a bad mood. Now do what I tell you, before I take out my frustrations on you.”

  Nightmare reluctantly turned toward the library. “I hope you left some marks on whoever did this to you.”

  “None that I can remember. Now get a move on.”

  I followed Nightmare into the library, a nondescript, single-story brick affair tucked into a woody neighborhood. The place was relatively empty, except for the staff of four or five. Nightmare led me to a row of computers in the back of the building. “They’ve got broadband here,” he said. “And it’s unregulated. In a few minutes you’ll see some geezers in here downloading porn.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” I said. “Our rather mine, since you probably don’t pay any.”

  “Damn right,” Nightmare said. He sat at the last computer, took out a small plastic gadget no bigger than a key chain, and pushed one end of it into a port on the front fascia of the computer. “Flash memory,” he said, beginning to type. “Just keep an eye out for anything weird,” he said. “Other than you. Have I told you that you look like shit?”

  “Yeah. Now tell me what you’re doing.”

  “I’m going to Tech from here. The library system has its own routers, and it’s impossible to locate one computer on it. If they ping back, they’ll figure out it’s coming from the library, but they can’t pinpoint which one. There’s about thirty branches, spread out all over town. And anyway, this branch is as far away from them as possible. Just in case.”

  “Nightmare, you’re a genius.”

  “I know. Now watch for creeps. This could take a while.”

  I sat a few tables away, letting Nightmare work. The morning edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was lying on a table near me, and I searched through the business section for any news about the Horizn IPO. A couple of pages in I saw a picture of Charles Ralston with the headline, TAKING HIS WINNINGS TO THE STREET. I skimmed the article; the consensus was, a week from now a lot of people were going to get rich, with Ralston and Stephens richest of all. The initial offering price was thirty-one dollars a share, but expectations were that price would last about fifteen seconds. If you weren’t an institutional trader or a part of the firm, you had no chance. The reporter thought it would close the first day over forty, with a one-year target price of fifty. The SEC paperwork said Ralston and Stephens held five and a half million shares each. While I was doing some staggering math, Nightmare came over to my table. He looked rattled, but he was holding it together. “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We’re on. What am I looking for?”

  I paused. “Briah,” I said. “Briah Fields.”

  Nightmare worked for about five minutes, then came back shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said.

  “You’re sure?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, pretty sure. So that’s what this was all about? I can go home now?’

  “One more thing,” I said. “LAX.”

  “Like the airport?”

  “Just the letters. LAX. It was on a notebook in Doug’s apartment.”

  Nightmare shook his head in disbelief. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “No. Just look for it.”

  “I’ll give us twenty minutes,” he said. “Then I’m cutting the connection.” I followed him back to the terminal. Nightmare began searching files, coming up with nothing.

  “What are the big sections?” I asked. “Is the site partitioned in any way?”

  “Yeah,” Nightmare said. “There’s financials, communications, clinical trials—”

  “Clinical trials,” I said. “Try that.”

  Nightmare shrugged and started his search. For a long time there was nothing, but suddenly Michael said, “Damn.”

  “What?”
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  “Here it is.”

  The screen revealed two columns, each with four names. Each name was coupled with an address and phone number. At the top of the page the heading read: Test 38, LAX: a double blind clinical trial of Lipitran AX. A treatment for the cure of Hepatitis C. CRO: Atlanta Mercy Hospital. Supervising researcher: Dr. Thomas Robinson. I stared at the screen. “LAX. It’s got nothing to do with the airport. It’s some drug. Lipitran AX. These names must be the people on the trial.” I ran down the list, looking for anything familiar. At that moment, the world stopped. Third down the right column was Doug Townsend’s name, with his phone number. I blinked, thinking the name would go away.

  Nightmare broke the spell. “Killah,” he said. “He was takin’ this drug?”

  Lights went on all over my brain. Hepatitis, source of all things profitable for Charles Ralston. Maybe Grayton is trying to cut in on Horizn’s action. “Hepatitis? I don’t think Doug had that.”

  “Maybe he did and never told you.”

  “Maybe,” I said hesitantly. “But surely with him dead, the people doing the test would want to know what the hell was going on. He would have just disappeared off the study.” We sat thinking for a moment, when it suddenly hit me. “There’s one way to find out what’s going on,” I said. I looked around; there weren’t any people near us. I pulled out my cell phone and called the first number on list. A subdued female voice answered. “Is Brian there?” I asked.

  The only answer was a low moan. “Brian Louden?” I asked. “May I speak with him?”

  “Brian’s dead,” the voice said, choking. “My sweet baby died a week ago last Thursday.”

  I felt my stomach tighten. “I’m very, very sorry,” I said. “Honestly. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.” I hung up.

  “What did they say?” Nightmare asked.

  “Give me the second name.” Chantelle Weiss, 4239 Avenue D. I called the number. A man answered. “May I speak with Chantelle?” I asked.

  “Who is this?” the man said.

  “This is Dr. Robinson.”

  “The hell it is.”