to a cabinet at the end of the living room. After some consideration, she selected a disc from the rows of tightly packed CDs.
“Take Tosca home. I sing Floria. It may give you a headache the first time you hear it. Keep playing it until it doesn’t hurt. Don’t sleep, read, eat, or talk through it. You can glance at the libretto. But only at the Italian. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand every word. Just sit and listen. Then call Mr. Holloway, if you still want to do this.”
A GENEROUS KILL FEE.
By early afternoon the tying-up of the Señora’s affairs is in full progress. Earlier, Perla made phone calls, wrote a report, filled in her last time sheets. Lockwood collected his notes and then went through the stuffed file wallets the Señora had always kept at her side to search when his questioning made her want to reach beyond her memory into the interviews, letters, photos, reviews she had saved through the years. On impulse, he hastily stuffed the folders into his leather satchel. It had taken only moments for the now unmoored Lockwood to reach a decision: He would finish the project they had started together.
Perla came up behind him as he buckled the satchel. “Ladronzuelo,” she teased. Little thief.
“I’ve still got her book to write,” he explained.
“I won’t tell.” She pressed a finger to her lips.
Dr. Velasco and Hank Holloway arrived at the same time to take care of the two sides of the Señora, the body and the legend. The two men studied each other discreetly in the elevator, one in a smoky-gray suit and starched shirt, armed with a leather medical bag, the other in lime-green pants, black linen jacket, carrying an alligator attaché case. They finally acknowledged each other, one through Ray-Bans, the other through tor-toiseshell bifocals.
“Quite a tragedy,” they murmured when they realized they were both going up to the twenty-eighth floor. “Yes, indeed.”
“The passing of an era,” said Holloway, also known as Hollywood Hank. “A wonder for the ages.”
“Death by drowning,” the doctor decided ahead of his examination. “According to the ancient Mexicans, it’s the passport to the happiest of all heavens. To the realm of Tlaloc with no detours or side trips. It’s the only happy place in the afterlife, where the Señora will become like a child again to sing and dance and chase butterflies in a rain as soft as mist. I can see her, you know, truly happy for the first time.”
“Are you some kind of writer?”
“No, you can trust me. I’m her doctor.”
“I knew her well, too. I’m her agent.”
They shared parallel objectives. Dr. Velasco would deal with a police report, sign the death certificate, and let the nurse go. Hollywood Hank would do his best to get rid of the writer amicably. Settling accounts with the nurse of a dead patient presented no ambiguities. The matter of the book-in-progress would be awkward.
As soon as he’d heard of the Señora’s accident, Hollywood Hank had placed a call to Alonzo Baylor with an offer to do the life story of the famous diva. The celebrated author had shown, with his highly intrusive Salvador Dalí and Martha Graham biographies, that he was good with the passions of art and flesh, the longing of the old and the regrets of the famous. Alonzo Baylor might not know anything about opera, but then, Hollywood Hank was sure he hadn’t known a whole lot about modern art either, before he’d taken on the great Dalí.
Dr. Velasco was in the business of life—as opposed to death. He held the Señora’s wrist, his fingers feeling for her pulse even though anyone could see that it was too late for such ceremonies. Gazing down on her face in the water, as accustomed as he was to the placid expression of death, Dr. Velasco was nevertheless moved to observe, “Ah, those are pearls that were her eyes!”
Standing before the naked floating Señora, Hollywood Hank could only muster a solemn nod or two, a requisite sigh. Waiting beside him was the writer he had sent to Mercè Casals to help her pour her heart out. At the time, Lockwood had been what was needed, a proficient wordsmith who knew how to crank out the prose and deliver a manuscript on deadline with a minimum of fuss. After sending his client five other writers, this was the one that Mercè Casals had decided she liked, and trusted. “He’s a listener,” she had said.
The agent took Lockwood by the arm and gently, almost seductively, pulled him away from the bathroom and into the parlor, as if the tenor of the conversation that would follow might disturb the dead Casals.
Things were different now. Hollywood Hank envisioned royalties for all eternity and special commemorative editions and tributes to the fallen star. La Casals was a gift for the ages, her book in the hands of someone more marketable than Lockwood would sell for as long as her voice was on CDs. The agent tried to be reasonable: A ghostwriter was no longer required. What was needed was a famous author, a name comparable to the dead queen’s. It was a dog-eat-dog publishing jungle and only a major Big-Game Book Gun would do.
But I’ve got the recordings,” Lockwood explained patiently. “Five hundred hours’ worth. I will tell her life in her words. It will be her final aria.”
“Listen to me, Lockwood. I want a brand-name writer to tell her story. A real wonder boy for the wonder singer.” Holloway raised his hand to signal there was nothing else to discuss. “You’ll receive a generous kill fee. For the time you’ve spent on the project.”
“This is not about time,” Lockwood protested, weakly because Hollywood Hank had already made a grab for the project, and he didn’t know how to stop him. “It’s all about the story. Don’t you see? This a really great story I’m telling.”
“Give me directions so I can send someone to schlep your files.”
Lockwood bristled. “ ‘Schlep’? Is that agent talk for scooping up, grabbing, stealing, and surrendering?”
“Where can I pick up the interviews?” Hollywood Hank repeated in a steely tone.
“I’ll mail them to you,” Lockwood evaded.
“I’ll send a courier to your house in Anaheim.”
“I need to listen to them. Do some editing.”
“I’ll take care of the editing.”
“Some of the stuff is personal. Strictly between the Señora and me.”
“Your secrets are safe.”
The two men faced each other from opposite sides of the parlor, Lockwood standing, the agent sitting back on the red velvet couch, his arm extended along the back, his fingertips lightly caressing the upholstery. Hollywood Hank dangled one boot over the other; his foot twitched nervously. He masked his increasing frustration by breathing out a long sigh. “Do you really think Alonzo Baylor gives a shit about your secrets?”
“It’s not my privacy that is at stake here. I was entrusted by Mercè Casals with her life. Her life became my life. It was going to be her book, in her own voice. I made promises. Nothing would go into it that she did not choose to reveal. Alonzo Baylor, the Hemingway throwback, ham-fisted, bare-knuckled, coulda-been-a-contender, monosyllabic, semicolon-impaired, cliché-rich typist would like nothing better than to be able to pick over her lifeless bones.” Lockwood paused to catch his breath.
Across the glass table, Hollywood Hank slouched into the folds of the plush sofa. He looked wiry and small in his black-and-green Armani ensemble, his feet sweating inside the Tony Lamas, a blue amoeba expanding under the leaking Mont Blanc in his shirt pocket, his face reddening as if he were resisting a dark impulse to spring out like a snake. “We’ll need to talk again,” Holloway sighed. “Stay in touch.”
I SAW WHAT YOU DID.
Days after Mercè Casals’ death, Lockwood has nowhere to go. He rises later than usual, for a moment disoriented that he’s not, as on