Free I'll Sing for my Dinner by BR Kingsolver Page A

he said, “the FBI and the Baltimore police are looking for your girl.”
    My head snapped up. A cold, numb feeling spread through my mind. “What did she do?”
    “As far as I can find out, they aren’t sure she did anything. The official line is that she’s being sought as a material witness in a murder investigation.” He shrugged. “That could be a smoke screen. I didn’t inquire too closely, because I didn’t want anyone to know I might have too much of an interest. Jake, I’m not an agent anymore, and I don’t plan on talking to anyone else about this. You’re my friend, and I figured I’d tell you what I know.”
    “Who was murdered?”
    “A fairly high-level cocaine dealer was killed in Baltimore. The cops think Cecily was living with him. They also think that she might know who killed him, maybe even witnessed it. She disappeared before his body was found, and some inside the Bureau think she’s dead as well. Their interest is in following the distribution chain and trying to nail the suppliers above him. His name was Edward Jimenez, known on the streets as Fast Eddie. He was selling quantities in the ten to twenty kilo range. Big bucks.”
    I looked at the CDs. “How did she get involved with someone like that?”
    “A quick google of Cecille Buchanan turns up a wealth of information. Child prodigy, Carnegie Hall debut at twelve. Featured solo gigs with the New York Symphony at sixteen. Graduated high school at sixteen and enrolled at the Peabody Institute. She graduated college at twenty and had a solo world tour scheduled. And then, it was abruptly cancelled and she dropped out of sight. Almost nothing since then.”
    “I would have been in the service then,” I said. “And when I got out, I wasn’t paying much attention to the classical music scene. I had other concerns.”
    He handed me several sheets of paper. Leafing through them, I saw they were performance reviews from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and London Observer. The one from the Times was four years old.
    Saturday evening, New York was treated to a performance at the Met by the foremost operatic voice to debut in this century. Cecille Buchanan defies the stereotypes. For those expecting a rotund diva, the diminutive teenager walking on stage was a surprise. But when she opened her mouth, she silenced the audience and firmly established herself as a force for decades to come. Her power is extraordinary, her range unprecedented. During the evening, she sang arias in the soprano, mezzo and contralto ranges without missing a note.
    “When she dropped off the map two years ago, she had a contract with the foremost agent in the classical field. As far as I can determine, that contract is still valid.” Dave said. “No wonder she gave me the cold shoulder. If she hit it big in popular music, we could have found ourselves on the wrong end of a multi-million dollar lawsuit.”
    “What you’re showing me means money. I know opera singers aren’t rock stars, but the top performers make millions,” I said.
    “Her parents control her wealth. Or at least they did until she turned twenty-one. As far as I can tell, she’s very rich, and she hasn’t touched it.”
    “Dave, what am I supposed to do with all this?” I felt lost.
    “I can’t tell you that. I do know that as long as the Bureau has a material witness warrant out for her, potentially you could be charged with either harboring a fugitive, or obstruction of justice. I think you need to figure out what she really knows, and then either contact the authorities, or find a way to smuggle her out of the country to a place without an extradition treaty.”
    He placed a hand on my arm. “Jake, even if she’s innocent of everything except having bad taste in men, if the drug lords think she’s a danger to them, I don’t blame her for hiding.”
    When I left in the morning, she was singing along with Salome in Italian. Returning, I found a Grateful Dead album