When the Thrill Is Gone (2 page)

OF LATE I had been taking three ice-cold showers a day. Only that restorative chill, along with working the speed bag and a daily counting of breaths, kept me from going crazy. At fifty-five, I found that as life went on, the problems mounted and their solutions only served to make things worse.

I didn’t have a case at that moment, which meant that no money was coming in. When I did get a job, that just meant somebody was going to come to harm, one way or the other—maybe both. And even then I might not collect my detective’s fee.

A good friend was dying in my eleventh-floor apartment. My wife was having an affair with a man half her age. And those were just the devils I knew.

AFTER THE SHOWER I was so spent that it was all I could do to sit upright and naked on the little oak stool that had somehow made its way into the locker room. The groaning from the gym was constant as my muscles still quivered from the exertions of the midday workout session.

Rising to my feet was an act of faith. I had the feeling of being the last man left standing after a lifelong battle in a meaningless war.

THE CHUBBY, café au lait-colored young man was in the middle of failing at executing a sit-up. He looked like a giant drunken grub that had lost its sense of balance, writhing and then falling back with the impact of a heavy mattress on the concrete floor.

“Three more and you’re through,” Iran Shelfly said.

Tiny Bateman, dressed in a gray T-shirt and shiny aqua trunks, let his arms fall to the side looking to the world like a fat drunk lowered to the ground on the curb in front of his favorite bar. Above him stood a well-built copper-skinned young man with a shaved head and a perpetual grin on his lips. His mirth seemed more predatory than happy, but Iran was really trying to help Tiny out.

“Three more,” Iran commanded.

“That’s enough,” I said.

Tiny sighed in relief.

“He only been at it a half-hour, boss,” Iran complained.

“Tomorrow he’ll make thirty-one minutes,” I said. “Isn’t that right, Bug?”

I held out a hand and Tiny “Bug” Bateman grabbed for it twice before making contact. I pulled him to his feet and he genuflected, putting his hands on his knees, blowing hard.

“Hit the showers, young man,” I said to him but it was all he could do to keep upright and gasp.

So I turned to Iran.

The thirty-two-year-old had on navy sweatpants and a white T-shirt that molded his well-defined physique like melted wax. This was the body that a stint in prison sculpted for you: either you were ready to kick ass or you got it kicked. He was five ten—four and half inches over me—and tense in spite of his lying grin.

“How’s it goin’, Eye Ran,” I said, pronouncing the name as he did.

“It’ll be eleven years before I put him in the ring,” the brightskinned young thief opined, “with a girl half his weight.”

“I mean you. How you doin’?”

“Gym’s goin’ great,” he said evasively. “Everybody’s paid up and keepin’ to Gordo’s routines. Somebody gimme shit, I pretend to call you. And me, personally, I’m keepin’ my head down like you said.”

“Tell me if you have a problem,” I said, “in or out of the gym.”

He gave me a quizzical look, crinkling his nose like a wolf wondering at the hint of a scent of something strange.

“What?” I asked him.

“Why you wanna be helpin’ me, Mr. McGill?” Iran asked. He had to. Suspicion was the primary lesson that any halfway intelligent convict learned.

A DECADE BEFORE, a man named Andrew Lodsman put on a ski mask and robbed a jewelry courier in Midtown at midday. The problem was Amy, an ex-girlfriend who hadn’t been an ex when he planned the rip-off. Amy talked to the cops and they were after Andy. The gems were marked with a laser imprint, invisible to the naked eye. And so Andy gave me a small one that I dropped into Iran’s sock drawer when he was down in Philly committing a robbery of his own.

Someone made an anonymous call about the Philadelphia robbery and the cops found the three-caret diamond mixed in with the socks—among other things. Doubt was thrown on Andy’s involvement in the robbery and Iran was put away for two crimes—one which he did and the other he didn’t.

That was a long time ago and I am no longer that kind of man. I was trying to make amends for my misdeeds by helping young Mr. Shelfly out. He was just one of a dozen private projects that I’d taken on.

He didn’t know that I was the cause of his six-year incarceration. He didn’t need to know.

The cell phone in my pocket vibrated and so I took it out rather than answer Iran’s question.

? Client IO
was printed across the screen of my phone: possible client in office.

I texted back
20,
meaning that I’d make it there in that many minutes.

“Just workin’ on my karma,” I said to Iran, feeling the pain of those words.

He didn’t understand what I meant but he was superstitious enough to accept the words. In prison men learned first to be suspicious, then fearful, and finally respectful of a higher power.

I STUCK MY HEAD in the showers before heading down to the street. Bug was standing under the water with one hand holding on to the nozzle above his head.

“Is Zephyra worth all this pain?” I asked from far enough away not to get splashed.

It took him half a minute to gather enough wind to say, “Anything.”

THE BIGGEST ENEMY of the revolution,
my crackpot Communist father used to say,
is a man’s love for a woman. He will turn his back on his comrades in a heartbeat if that heart beats for some señorita with dark eyes and a sway to her butt.

I chuckled all the way down the stairs to the street and then half the way to my office, headed for the question mark of a client waiting therein.

2

I PRESSED THE buzzer to my office on the seventy-second floor of the Tesla Building, the most exquisite example of Art Deco architecture in all New York. A loud click sounded and I pushed the door open, entering the reception area of the large suite.

Mardi stood up from behind the big ash receptionist’s desk that had gone untenanted for most of my professional life. She usually stood when I came into the room, her way of showing deference and gratitude. Pale and slender, blue-eyed with ashblond hair, Mardi Bitterman was born to be my Passepartout. Her coral dress had a lot of gray to it, to tamp down the passionate under-layer of red. She wore no jewelry or makeup. What you saw was what you got.

“Mr. McGill,” she said, “Mrs. Chrystal Tyler.”

To my left, rising as I turned, was another, not quite so young, woman. This lady was brown like a shiny pecan and curvy, not to say voluptuous. Her hair was set in gaudy ringlets and the cheap silk of her dress was a carnival of blues and reds sprinkled over with flecks of confetti yellow. Her makeup was heavy but somehow not overdone. Her high heels and glossy leather purse were the same yellow as those flecks.

In those heels she equaled my height. Our skins were the same hue, if not tone. She smiled, recognizing something in me, and held out her hand, knuckles up as if she expected me to kiss them.

“So glad,” she said.

I knew instantly that this was a lie.

But I took that hand and shook it, saying, “Come on back into my office and we’ll talk.”

As I ushered my potential client through the door, Mardi and I made eye contact. Her brows rose and she shrugged slightly. I smiled and gave her a wan wave of my hand.

THE YOUNG WOMAN and I strolled down the long aisle of open and empty cubicles toward the door of my sanctum. I steered her in and got her settled into one of the two blue-and-chrome visitor’s chairs that sat before my extra wide ebony desk.

I sat and fixed my eyes upon her.

Chrystal Tyler was a handsome specimen—very much so. Her eyes had a delicate, almost Asiatic, slant to them, and her nostrils flared when she looked out of the broad window at my back.

From that vantage point I knew that she was looking down the Hudson, all the way to where the World Trade Center used to stand.

We both took a moment to appreciate our different views.

“I need help, Mr. McGill.”

“In what way, Mrs. Tyler?”

She held up her left hand and twisted it at the wrist—a gesture of speculation or, maybe, pretend hesitation. I noticed that her nails were painted in three colors: blue at the base and red at the tip with slanting lines of gold separating the two.

“It’s my husband,” she said. “Cyril.”

She wore no wedding ring.

“What about him?” I asked.

She looked me in the eye and held my gaze long enough to make a normal man uncomfortable or maybe excited.

“He’s havin’ an affair.”

“How did you end up coming to me?” I asked. It was an honest question. Her clothes and makeup, nails and elocution presented a mystery in themselves.

“I heard about you from a man named Norman Close,” she said.

They called him No Man because of the way he’d introduce himself, swallowing the “r” when he spoke. No’man Close was a muscleman who rented out his fists and biceps for a daily rate. He would pummel and batter, intimidate and possibly even decimate for anyone who made his three-hundred-dollar nut. He was very good at what he did—until the day he ran into somebody better.

“Norman Close is dead,” I said.

“He wasn’t when he told me about you.”

Chrystal might have been street, but she wasn’t stupid.

“What is it you need from me?”

“I already told you,” she said. “My husband’s havin’ an affair.”

“What does this husband do?”

“He’s rich,” she said with a disdainful sneer. “And not just your everyday millionaire kinda rich. Cyril’s a billionaire. His family built half the buildin’s over there in New Jersey.”

“His name is Cyril Tyler?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If he’s so rich why haven’t I ever heard of him?”

“He likes to keep things quiet. If you don’t need to know about him, you don’t.”

“And you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“What do you do?”

She speculated a moment too long before answering.

“I paint,” she said, “on steel.”

“Steel?”

“Uh-huh. Big steel plates. That’s what I do. That’s how I met my husband. Cyril bought five big ones. They weighed more than a ton.” Her sneer was a work of art in itself.

“And you two made a connection.”

“You could call it that.”

“And now he’s having an affair and you need ammunition for the divorce.”

“What I need is to not get murdered.”

Almost everything you know or ever hear is a lie. Advertisements, politicians’ promises, children’s claims of accomplishments and innocence . . . your own memory. Most of us know it’s so but still cannot live our lives according to this solitary truth. We have to believe in something every moment of our lives. Losing this illusion invites insanity.

I knew that the woman sitting in front of me was lying. Maybe everything about her was a falsehood, but under that subterfuge there was something true. The fact that I wondered about this underlying reality is what makes me a good detective.

The intercom buzzer sounded just then.

I pressed a button on my desk phone and said, “Yes, Mardi?” to the air.

“Harris Vartan on line five, sir.”

That’s when I knew it was going to be one of those weeks.

I held up a finger to hold the place of murder, picked up the phone, and pressed line five.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Leonid.”

“I’m with a client.”

“I’ll be dropping by at around five.”

The phone clicked in my ear but I didn’t lower the receiver immediately. I sat there, listening to my own counsel. Like Iran, I was superstitious. There was something wrong with Chrystal Tyler. If I needed proof of this fact it was that one of the most dangerous men in organized crime had just warned me of his approach. I should have excused myself, given Mardi the week off, and taken a fast jet to the Bahamas.

At the very least I should have sent the handsome young woman away, but I was distracted by the mystery of time.

Many and most moments go by with us hardly aware of their passage. But love and hate and fear cause time to snag you, to drag you down like a spider’s web holding fast to a doomed fly’s wings. And when you’re caught like that you’re aware of every moment and movement and nuance.

I couldn’t tell who was caught, me or Chrystal, but Vartan’s call, rather than warning me off, only pushed me in deeper.

3

“IT’S A BIG jump from an affair to murder,” I said after hanging up the dead line, “even for a billionaire recluse. Has he threatened you?”

“That’s not how Cyril do things.”

“Then why do you think he might kill you?”

“Allondra North and Pinky Todd,” she said, as if this should mean something to me.

“And they are?” I asked, jotting down the names on my thick gray paper blotter.

“They were both his wives and now they’re dead.”

The young woman fixed me with a stare that laid claim to a truth that even an old cynic like me would have a hard time denying.

“Murdered?”

She looked to her left as if maybe there was someone there next to her, urging her on with the story.

“Can I smoke in here?” she asked, turning back to me.

“Sure.”

She had a ritual approach to opening the bag, producing the red package, and teasing out the cigarette, then the unhooking of a bullet-shaped lighter from a chain, hitherto hidden by the thin silk of her dress. When she lit up I hoped she didn’t notice the widening of my nostrils. Tobacco smoke brought out desire in me. Desire is an emotion that any good detective needs to hide.

“Murder?” I said to keep our minds on the subject.

“One night about two years ago I made some sangria spiked with a little red wine but mostly vodka. It was strong and tasted sweet so Cyril drank more than he usually does. That’s what got him talkin’.