The Killing Song, page 5
A trickle of sweat made its way slowly down his spine. He hadn’t slept in two days and he knew he needed to stay sharp. He hoisted his case and Vuitton duffel and headed off in search of the men’s room. Inside the stall, he opened his leather ditty bag. He popped a vial and gulped down a large oblong pill, the second one he had taken in the last three hours. He hesitated, then shook out a third round white tablet.
The two Provigils would keep him alert for at least forty hours. The third tablet, the GHB, well, he would keep it ready in his pocket until he was on the plane and could give in to the deep drugged sleep he so desperately craved.
Outside at the sink, he splashed water on his face, straightened his tie and picked up his duffel and case. He went back to his gate and patiently took his place in the long line of surly passengers. As usual, he hadn’t eaten much, so by the time he got to the counter, the Provigil had kicked in.
The fog had lifted. He was in control again.
The young woman behind the counter barely looked up at him as she stabbed at the buttons of her computer. Her hair had come loose from its ponytail and her lipstick had long ago vanished. Her Air France name tag, hanging on her limp blouse, read CLAIRE.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said.
She gave a snort and brushed her hair back.
“So what are my chances of getting to Paris by tomorrow?” he asked.
“You’ve heard of snowballs in hell?” she muttered.
He ground his teeth but kept his smile. “There’s nothing you can do? Maybe see if there’s another airline that—”
“Look,” she said, staring at him with tired eyes. “All flights going east are on hold because of the storm.”
“I have to get out of Miami,” he said.
She shook her head, still punching buttons.
“Claire,” he said.
She looked up.
“I must get out of here,” he said softly. “Now.”
Her pupils were moving like tiny black pinballs, and he knew that people had been screaming at her all day, pushing their ugly faces across the counter, breathing their Cinnabon-and-stale-coffee breath in her face, making her feel small and angry and ugly.
“Je suis désolé que tout le monde ait été si méchant avec vous aujourd’hui.”
“What?”
“Oh, I assumed you spoke French,” he said with a smile. “You look French.”
She brushed her hair back. “No, I’m not French.”
“Then that was rude of me. I said that I am sorry that everyone has been so mean to you today.”
Her smile almost touched him.
“It goes with the job, I guess,” she said. Her eyes held his for a moment then drifted over his shoulder. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding.
He put a hand on the black case. “It’s a cello.”
“Wow. You’re a musician?”
He nodded, smiling. The Provigils were giving him a sudden rush of energy. He had an image of taking Claire up to the Marriott and bruising those thin colorless lips back to life.
“I have a concert tomorrow in Paris,” he said. “A very important concert. Can you help me?”
She hesitated, then held out a hand. “Let me see your ticket and passport.”
He handed them over. She punched some buttons, frowning. The man in line behind him was pressing close, his body odor coming off him in waves.
“I can get you to Dallas,” Claire said, looking up. “There’s a flight to Charles de Gaulle from there at six thirty.”
“Dallas?” he said.
“The only flights out are going west because of the hurricane.”
He nodded. “Then I will go to Dallas.”
She hesitated. “I only have first class.”
“That is fine,” he said with a smile. “Do you have two seats available?”
“Two?”
He nodded to the cello case.
“Oh,” she said softly. She punched more buttons, then looked up. “Yes, but it will be an additional eight thousand dollars onto your current fare.”
“It is worth it,” he said.
The setting sun was a red streak outside the window. He reached across the cello, strapped into the window seat, and pulled down the shade. Reclining his seat slowly back, he closed his eyes. The Provigils were still humming in his blood. He needed to silence them.
He opened his eyes and watched the stewardess as she unclasped her seat belt and started moving in the galley. He caught her eye and motioned her toward him.
“What wines do you have?” he asked.
“If you’ll give me a few minutes, sir, I can—”
“No, I need a glass of wine now. What do you have? A Bordeaux preferably.”
She glanced toward the galley. “I’ll check, sir.”
“Never mind. Just bring me a glass of whatever is back there.”
He closed his eyes again. His veins were jumping, as if there were a current running through them. He needed to come down.
The woman came back with a glass of red wine. He waited until she was gone before he took the pill from his pocket. Washing it down with the wine, he closed his eyes and waited.
He let his mind drift. Back to Miami. Back to the blond girl in blue. He wondered what it felt like for her, if it had felt different for her than it did for him. Of course it had. He had been taking the GHB for years, using it to summon sleep when it was nowhere near. But she, well, he was certain she had never taken anything stronger than the white wine she had been drinking that night. So when he had taken her in his arms on the crowded dance floor, eased her away from the black man and plunged the needle into her arm, the effect had been immediate. She had become pliant, disoriented. That was the beauty of liquid gamma hydroxybutyrate. The victim looked only as if she were drunk.
The black man? Well, it had been easy enough to convince him that the girl was his sister and that she needed to sit the next one out.
He hadn’t really planned this one. It had been an impulse. But that afternoon on the beach, when he had spotted her at the band shell, he knew he had to have her. There had been no one for the last nine months, not since that horrible girl he had invited to his concert last January. The urge was coming more often now. And the girl in Miami had been so very lovely and so very blond.
He had followed her, watching her and the man carefully. He was very protective. But that had only made things more intriguing. How was he going to get her away from him?
He took a sip of the red wine.
Last night, he had followed them to the restaurant and then to the dance club. He had sat at the bar, watching her, waiting. He knew that when the black man asked her to dance that third time, he would have his chance.
The stewardess came by and refilled his wineglass. The alcohol was mixing nicely with the drugs.
Again he wondered what it had felt like for her. The GHB granted him rest. For her?
He smiled. Rest of a sort, he presumed.
She had been alive, of course, when he took her to the old hotel. Alive enough to be warm but dead enough to do nothing to stop him. It was dark and the rain had swept the streets clear of people, so no one was there to see him carry her from the alley up into the old hotel. He had found the place beforehand, drawn to the decrepit ballroom by its neglected beauty. And there, under the shattered chandelier and upon the dusty terrazzo star, he had killed her. After, as her body was growing cold, he had gone back downstairs to the rental car. He brought the cello up the stairs. He sat on a broken chair and played the Kodály sonata. The wolf came when summoned, the notes carried away with the rising wind.
He arrived in Paris to a cold pearl-gray morning. The taxi driver had balked at the sight of the cello case, but a quick twenty-euro note to his palm kept him quiet. Then, the address—a grand apartment on the east end of Île Saint-Louis near the old Rothschild compound—brought a raised eyebrow from the driver, who now anticipated a very good tip.
The maid had readied the apartment for his arrival. A bouquet of white roses, a neatly folded copy of Le Monde, fresh grapefruit juice in the refrigerator and a brioche from Hédi’s, its butter bleeding through the wrapping paper.
He dropped his duffel in the center of the floor and stowed the cello in the hall closet. He hit the button on the espresso machine as he passed through to the bedroom. He stripped quickly and showered. The GHB he had taken on the plane had left him lethargic but he knew sleep was still impossible.
He was sitting at the table in his robe, staring down at the fast-moving green Seine, when the door buzzed. He shut his eyes. It buzzed again and again. He knew it was her and that she would not give up.
At the intercom, he hit the button to open the door downstairs. He heard the grind of the elevator and left the front door open before going back to his place at the table. He was reading an article about the global warming summit when she came in.
“Laurent?”
“Here,” he called out.
She came in, a jangle of bracelets and strong perfume. He resisted the urge to pull away as she planted a kiss on his cheek.
“You shaved,” she said. “Nice.”
“There’s coffee,” he said, gesturing toward the kitchen.
“None for me. My kidneys are floating.” She sat down across from him. He turned the newspaper to the sports page.
She was quiet and he could feel her eyes on him but he didn’t look up.
“So,” she said. “How was Miami?”
“Hot. Exhausting.”
She reached over and ran a hand through his thick black hair. “You’ve let your hair get too long.”
He pulled away and she smiled. “But I guess that is what the women like now, right?”
She shrugged out of her coat and draped it on the chair. “You look tired. Did you manage to have any fun while you were there?”
“Fun?”
“I suspect not,” she said with a smile. “No ancient cathedrals or ruins in Miami for you to prowl, right?”
“They have some lovely old art deco hotels.”
But she wasn’t listening. She was digging in her briefcase and finally produced what she was looking for. She slapped the faxes on the table. “The reviews were brilliant,” she said.
“Put them in your scrapbook.”
She sat back in the chair. He could feel the hard stare of her dark eyes but didn’t look up. “Why do you have to be such an asshole?” she said.
He was silent, sipping his espresso. “You know I don’t read the reviews, Maud.”
“Then I will read them to you.” She pulled out her reading glasses and squinted. “‘His playing rises from the innermost recesses of his soul.’ That was the Miami Times. ‘He recalls a young Rostropovich.’ And here is the Palm Beach Post. ‘With the Rachmaninoff, he demonstrated himself to be an artist of great promise—’” She looked at him over the glasses. “I thought you hated the Rachmaninoff.”
He didn’t answer. Maud set the fax sheet down with a sigh and took off her glasses. “You’re not my only client, you know.”
He rose suddenly. “No, but I am your best.”
He went to the kitchen to refill his coffee. When he came back, she was sitting there, hand under chin, staring out at the river. He sat down across from her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t look at him.
“I am not sleeping,” he said. “I am not myself.”
She finally looked over at him. “What are you taking?”
He shrugged. Maud pulled over his espresso and took a drink. He turned the fax sheet around and read it. “ ‘An artist of great promise,’ “ he said wryly. “I’m thirty-six years old.”
“Vous avez commencé tard dans la vie.”
He hated it when she tried to speak French. Her Manchester accent made it sound especially ugly. “I know I started late,” he said.
Maud was quiet. They had had this argument before. He wanted her to book him into better concerts, more prestigious venues. She kept telling him he had to be patient. He was tired of being patient.
“I think this is a good time to talk about what’s coming up,” Maud said. She dug into her briefcase again and pulled out her BlackBerry. He watched her in irritation. He hated all the little technical things everyone was using now. He kept track of all his appointments in a bound book from the Corto Moltedo boutique in the Palais Royal. The only reason he had a cell phone was because Maud had insisted. She had also bought him a small notebook computer so he could get email. He hated getting the emails from her; it was like being on a leash. But once he discovered he could use the notebook to download music or even watch videos of performances, he didn’t mind it so much.
On the plane from Dallas, he had spent an hour watching a grainy black-and-white video from 1954 of Casals playing the Bach Suite No. 1. Just the man and his cello alone in the stark shadows of an ancient Catalan monastery.
“They want you to teach a master class at the Forum de Vioncello in Madrid,” Maud said.
He looked up. “I don’t teach.”
“Laurent—”
“It’s useless. They are all idiots. No, tell them no.”
She scrolled through the BlackBerry. He watched her, drumming his long fingers on the table.
“That is all you have?” he asked finally. “I need things to do.”
“The season is ending, Laurent.” She paused. “Well, there is that invitation from I Solisti Veniti in Padua. Three concerts. But you told me you didn’t want to travel after Miami.”
He was staring out the window at the trees. The leaves were losing their gold color. Winter was coming, and with it would come the closed-in feeling he always got this time of year. The sky turned the color of pewter and he could almost feel its weight. And now, in the last few years, it had become even worse, this claustrophobia, as if everything were tightening around him, choking off his air. That girl last January, the one he had garroted in a rage—that was the first time he had lost control. She had been a mistake; it had been a mess.
It hit him in that instant. That was why he had killed the girl in Miami. It had been a signal. It was his instincts telling him he needed to get back in control. And perhaps he needed to find new grounds again. Too much blood had been spilled in Paris. It was too close to home. He had to go somewhere else.
Italy.
“Tell them yes,” he said.
Maud looked up from her BlackBerry and smiled. “I’ll email them today.”
“And Spain,” he said.
She stared at him. “What?”
“I want to go to Spain as well.”
“But you said you won’t teach,” Maud said.
He looked out the window at the green water of the Seine. “I need a change of scenery.”
7
As I watched him walk toward me, I was struck for the first time with an image of myself thirty years into the future. While it was obvious from the day she was born that Mandy was the beneficiary of my mother’s fair beauty, I seemed to be a slowly emerging replica of Dr. Martin Lowell Owens.
At sixty-three years old, he was a large man with unruly white hair and a ruddy face that most people read as good health. I knew, though, that it came from his love of fine brandy and the stress of being the South’s most renowned cardiac surgeon.
Anxious to be where he needed to be, Dad was walking a few feet ahead of my mother, Ginny. She was clutching a Chanel bag and looking like a woman stranded in a war-torn country. I knew my father loved her deeply, but I couldn’t believe that at this moment he was not right by her side, supporting her as they took this long walk down the crowded Miami airport concourse.
I remembered a time when I was thirteen and I had struck out at the Little League championships to end the game, causing my team to lose. On the way back to the car, I wanted his arm, but he rushed on ahead. Every Saturday, he made time to see my games, but he was always in a hurry afterward, always busy running off to repair someone else’s heart.
My father stopped in front of me, taking note of my disheveled appearance but saying nothing. He turned briefly to bring my mother up to his side, then looked back at my face. His expression was a mixture of grief and shock. And I thought I could also see a faint, underlying current of blame. Somehow that didn’t surprise me.
My mother leaned against my father as if all of her strength had been left back in North Carolina. Her honey-colored upswept hair was perfectly styled, as it had been for the last twenty years. She had managed a coat of lipstick but nothing else about her was as I remembered. It was as if she had died a small death in the space of one day. I gave her a long hug, then faced my father.
“We should get our bags,” Dad said. “I’m sure there are many things to take care of.”
“There isn’t anywhere you need to be at the moment, Dad,” I said.
He looked beyond me, across the crowded terminal. Gray light from the high windows caught him full in the face, bringing into vivid focus every wrinkle, whisker and eyelash. Tears filmed his red-rimmed eyes. I had never seen my father cry and I didn’t want to now.
“I’ve reserved a room for you at the Bayfront Hotel, in Coconut Grove,” I said. “It’s not far from my place. I can take you there now and you can settle in, get some dinner.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
Dad reached back to take Mom’s arm and, with his briefcase clutched in his other hand, stepped around me and started toward the baggage claim area.
The lower concourse was worse than upstairs. People were everywhere, delayed by the hurricane. I stared at the slowly circling carousel and finally closed my eyes to calm my pounding headache.
“Matt, how long will this take?” my mother asked.
I looked down at her. “A while, Mom. Do you want to sit down?”
Mom looked around but if there was an available bench, I was sure she couldn’t see it. She was only five-three.
“Come on, I’ll find you somewhere,” I said.
“She’s fine where she is,” Dad said.
