The Last Goodbye Read Free Page A

own magnetic powers to be considerable. Not that this has made me rich. My law offices are utilitarian, beginning with the location—a mostly vacant strip mall in a spotty part of southwest Atlanta—and continuing to the furniture, which is cheap, leased, and unsupportive. The paint scheme of the walls—a semigloss eggshell with an unfortunate tendency to reflect the harsh overhead light onto the linoleum floor—is so uniform across doors, walls, and ceilings as to give a visitor vertigo.
    There is a sign on the constructor-grade, single-frame door that says, “Jack Hammond and Associates.” This is an embellishment, since other than myself, the firm’s only employee is Blu McClendon, my secretary. Having associates makes the phone listing look better, so I do it. This is not the time in my life to be overly scrupulous about details. This is the time in my life to survive.
    To be honest, describing Blu as a secretary is itself a kind of embellishment. Although she is nearly devoid of skills, she is happily provided with both a living wage and a very comfortable chair in which to sit and read Vogue and the catalog for Pottery Barn. How can I describe her? She is the love child of Marilyn Monroe and somebody who doesn’t speak English that well, like maybe Tarzan. Her hair—dark blond with highlights, although only at the moment, this is an ever-evolving thing—frames a face of mystical symmetry. The way the gentle, downward curve of her back meets the rounded uplift of her backside is capable of cutting off a man at the knees. Only one pair of knees is essential for the survival of Jack Hammond and Associates, however, and those are the knees of Sammy Liston, the clerk of Judge Thomas Odom.
    The words that enable me to pay three dollars more than minimum wage to the beautiful Miss McClendon are these: “If you cannot afford an attorney, the court will appoint one for you.” Although the drug problem in Atlanta is thoroughly equal opportunity, the criminal justice system is not. It specializes in low-income, black defendants. Because the court of Judge Thomas Odom—the very cesspool where I destroyed my once impressive career—is overwhelmed with such cases, the good judge is forced to utter that beautiful, rent-paying phrase several times a day. He leaves the actual appointments to Sammy Liston, his trusty clerk, and the unrequited lover of my secretary. Sammy and I have a deal: I am unceasingly available, I am affably predisposed toward plea bargaining, and I look like I believe him when he tells me he has a chance with Blu. Sammy’s love for her is all-consuming, impressively one-dimensional, and utterly hopeless. Blu McClendon wouldn’t date Sammy in a post-nuclear holocaust. In exchange for ignoring this fact, I am free from the burden of putting my face on bus stop benches, and I will never have to figure out how to make my phone number end with h-u-r-t. Let me put it plainly: when the phone rings at Jack Hammond and Associates, I always hope Sammy is on the other end. A phone call from Sammy is worth five hundred bucks, on average.
    At about ten o’clock in the morning on a day in May hot enough for July, the phone rang. Blu twisted her perfect torso and said, “It’s Sammy, down at the courthouse.”
    I opened my eyes, left behind my memories, and came back to reality. “Our regular delivery of government cheese,” I answered. I picked up the phone and said, “Sammy? Give me some good news, buddy. I got Georgia Power and Light on my ass.” Other than the fact that Blu thought he had a face like a horse, I kept no secrets from the clerk of Judge Thomas Odom.
    Liston’s southern-fried voice came across the phone. “You hear the news?”
    â€œNews?”
    â€œSo you haven’t heard. It’s one of your clients. Actually, he’s more of a former client. He’s dead.”
    I have a mantra that I repeat to