When the Thrill Is Gone (5 page)

“Then either this is your first day on the job or you’re stupid.”

He took one step down the granite stairs.

“Why spill blood and teeth when you could just pick up the phone, brother?” I asked.

A friendly voice is often the most threatening.

He looked at me and pointed. “Wait here.” And then went to his little vestibule to make the inquiry.

I wondered if Cyril had a private exit; if he had ever walked in or out the front door.

I took a deep breath, and then another. Events had been tumbling down too fast and I was losing the grip on my temper. And, as any fighter can tell you, while you have to stay hot in a fight, you can’t let yourself burn out of control.

“Take the elevator to floor nineteen,” the doorman said, breaking into my reverie. “Turn left when you get out, walk down the hall to the other car, and take that up one floor.”

“That’s one more floor than you got,” I said.

Big Red’s reply was to step aside and allow me entrée.

WHEN I GOT into the tiny vestibule-lift the button for nineteen was already lit. This gave me the impression that not just anyone was allowed access to the top floor. I rode up without interruption and emerged into a hallway of apartments with doorways but no doors; no furniture or ornaments or tenants either. It was a floor full of vacancies in a neighborhood where the rent on a one-bedroom ranged from three to five thousand dollars a month.

Fake-Chrystal wasn’t lying when she sneered about Tyler’s wealth.

The light-green paint on the second set of elevator doors was cracked and peeling in places. Underneath, the metal was beginning to rust. This reminded me of Real-Chrystal’s steel canvases.

There was no button but the doors opened for me when I arrived and closed after I got in. The trip upward was little more than the distance between the floor and ceiling and when the doors came open I found myself standing at the edge of a broad, bright-green suburban lawn.

One the other side of this verdant expanse was an oversized ranch-style house with a glassed-in porch and a red-brick chimney.

“Mr. McGill?” The voice came from my right.

The young man was slender and would only be called African-American by an American with a fixation on race. His skin was lighter than many a Mediterranean and his hair was curly but light brown. His features marked him as one of my people: broad nose and generous lips. His expression told me, however, that we had nothing in common.

“My name is Phil,” he said, somehow making even this bland statement condescending. “You’re here to see Mr. Pelham?”

I took a moment before answering, my momentary silence a reply to his attitude.

Phil was wearing a pale lavender suit and gave off the scent of violets. I wondered what he might smell like if the suit was strawberry red.

“My appointment is with Mr. Tyler,” I said at last.

“Come with me,” Phil replied as he turned and made his way across the lush lawn.

Tyler’s building was the tallest for quite a few blocks and so no one nearby could guess at what was up there. If you were in the middle of that lawn, reclining on a chaise lounge, you could easily believe that you were in Westchester or Beverly Hills. It was Dorothy’s house dropped by some twister on that Manhattan rooftop.

Phil moved swiftly but I kept up with him. We got to the glass door of the veranda behind which was a perfectly proper office replete with a blond desk, dark-green filing cabinets, and a computer.

Next to the desk stood a man somewhere in his sixties who was defined in various shades of white: light-gray suit, off-white shirt, an opal ring on the baby finger of his left hand, and crystalline eyes that barely hinted at blue.

The man raised his ringless right hand and gestured for me to enter. At this sign Phil opened the door and waved me in.

From up close I could see that there was a scar, whiter than his skin, just above the boss man’s left cheekbone.

“Mr. McGill,” the white-on-white man said as a greeting. “My name is Arthur Pelham.”

“Interesting scar,” I said.

“Fell out of a canoe in some unexpected rapids,” he said. “That was back in my college days.”

“Oh?” I feigned. “Where’d you go to school?”

“Cambridge,” he said, and then, as an afterthought, “Massachusetts. Have a seat, Mr. McGill.”

There was a simple wooden folding chair there in front of his desk. He used the same style seating for himself. There was something I liked about that. I guess it was a little, barely conscious lesson learned from my father about the equality and simplicity possible in a modern life so filled with pretense and hierarchy.

I took my seat and Pelham did his. Phil closed the door behind me. I was neither in the house nor outside it. This realization made me smile.

“What can I do for you, Mr. McGill?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you here?”

“To see Cyril Tyler.”

“About what?”

“That’s private.”

“I’m his personal lawyer,” Pelham assured me.

I had no answer to this statement.

“Mr. McGill.”

“Yes, Mr. Pelham?”

“Why are you here?” His tone hardened just a bit.

“We’ve already completed that circuit of the merry-go-round,” I said.

“I am Cyril’s conduit to the world, Mr. McGill. Anyone wanting to speak to him has to go through me.”

“And here I am.”

“If you can’t give me a compelling reason why you should see Mr. Tyler, I will have to turn down your request.”

I stood up, reached into my back pocket, and produced my decades-old, fat, red-leather wallet. From this I took a business card that had my real name and number on it.

I placed the card on the edge of the white desk and smiled.

“You tell Mr. Tyler that if he ever wants to talk to me he can use the number on the card.”

I turned and almost took the first step.

“Hold on, Mr. McGill.”

“Yes?”

“We are not the kind of people that you can bully.”

I turned around to see that Pelham had also risen to his feet.

“We?” I asked.

“What do you want?”

“If I have to turn around again I’m walking all the way out of here,” I said. “If you want to stop me you’re welcome to try.”

My temper still needed tending.

Pelham tried to smile, failed at the attempt, and then said, “Take the door behind me. Walk down the hall in front of you until you get to a cream-colored door.”

7

IT WAS LIKE any hallway in any suburban ranch house—nearly. The ceiling was too low and the walls too close, like most American dwellings, but the hall was longer than usual. The rugs seemed to be composed of some kind of pale fur, and the claustrophobic walls were hot pink in color, accented by a lime-green trim.

Now and again, to this searing background a huge steel painting was secured. Up close you could see both the subtlety and the brutality of the work. They were informed predominantly by earth tones, like great rotting swamps made into human subjects by some capricious, primitive god. I liked the paintings and felt a certain kinship to the artist. I didn’t stop to appreciate Chrystal’s work, however. There were other pressing concerns on my mind.

Because I was having anger issues I tried to bring my thoughts to a calmer place in preparation for my meeting with a man who might be a murderer. There wasn’t time to do a walking meditation so I decided to think of someone who gave me the feeling of tranquility. I realized, or maybe re-realized, that there are few islands of serenity among my relations.

I thought of Twill, but was reminded of his bloated bank account lying there like a fat grub on dead flesh. There was Katrina, my wife of twenty-four years, who was having an affair with my other son’s school chum. Thinking of Katrina reminded me of my ex-girlfriend, Aura—I definitely didn’t want to think about her. Finally I achieved my quest for equilibrium by considering Harris Vartan. At least he was clear and stable. He was my Uncle Harry, asking for a simple favor from the son of a good friend.

As I came to the promised cream-colored door I decided I would find William Williams, just because the gangster was the only one I could think of who didn’t trouble me.

I knocked.

“Come on in,” a rough voice called from the other side. There was no discernible accent, but the words seemed to yearn for one.

I pushed open the door and came upon what I can only say was a shit-brown room. The curved lines of the huge mahogany desk made it seem like a dark hippopotamus squatting on the stained oak floor. The bookshelves behind the desk were planed from ebony wood and the books upon them were each specially bound in dark-brown leather and fitted in a case of the same hide and hue.

The man behind the desk had once been very tan, now not so much. His hair and eyes and suit were brown. He was rotund in a muscular way and, like the woman who came to my office earlier that day, he strongly resembled another.

“How can I help you, Mr. McGill?” the man asked.

“May I sit?”

I indicated with a gesture of my head a large-bottomed pine chair that might have looked white against all those deep browns if it had not been burned by dozens of different cattle-brands. These sigils and signs gave the chair a darker hue and made it seem almost alive.

“Suit yourself,” the second imposter told me.

The chair had wide arms for the elbows. I used them.

“Well?” the man asked.

The only color divorced from the brunette family was the fading blue sky filling the window behind him and to the left. I considered the relief of the atmosphere and said, “Well what?”

“How can I help you?”

“I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

“You’re the one who asked for this meeting,” he said, a slight twang making its way into the words.

“Not exactly,” I replied, appreciating the accuracy of the hazy phrase.

“Are you not the private investigator—Leonid Trotter McGill?”

The fact that he knew my middle name meant either that I had been inquired about or that Phil made a report as soon as he was out of earshot.

“I am,” I said.

“And did your secretary call to arrange a meeting with Cyril Tyler?”

“Zephyra, yes, she did.” Maybe the TCPA had given my whole name.

“Then how can I help you?”

“You can bring out the real Mr. Tyler and hang up this sham.”

The brown white man did not like me. His sudden glare was very clear on that fact.

I crossed my right leg over the left and sat back comfortably. It was a relief to be with someone else who had problems with anger management.

He stood up and for a moment I wondered, idly, if he might have a gun somewhere on his person.

Instead of shooting me, the angry man with the subdued accent strode from the room, slamming the door behind him.

I remained seated, staring at the darkening blue sky. This was the respite I had needed. I took a deep breath and then let it go. I did that again and allowed my eyes to close. Solitude is a dear friend to anyone in my profession. Most people I meet I cannot trust, believe, or believe in. The only thing that separates the majority of the people I work for from the targets of my investigations is the fact that my clients pay for the privilege of my attention. There are few people I come across that I can bank on, or even feel friendly toward—and so, sitting alone, even in that unpleasant color scheme, was a balm for me.

After five or six minutes of breathing I got up to examine the odd books lined up like so many dominoes in their box. The first volume I cracked open was a pulp novel about some warrior woman named Zarra the Magnificent. The next book was one of the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I must have looked into a dozen of those cheap novels in expensive bindings. There was
John Carter of Mars, Doc Savage,
a volume in the Fu Manchu series,
The Shadow,
and other, less memorable, characters.

It must have cost thousands of dollars to rebind and case those worthless fifties reprints of the adventure magazines from the thirties. But what did that mean to a man who could dream of someone’s death and have it become reality?

There came a small sound like the sigh of a toy trumpet. I turned to my left to see that the plain brown wall had concealed a door that was now open. In that doorway stood a slender white man who looked very much like the rotund imposter and maybe a bit more like the chubby man in the photograph posing with the woman who looked like his wife.

“Mr. Tyler?” I asked.

The man hung back, not passing through the secret doorway immediately.

“Mr. McGill?”

“That’s right,” I said brightly.

He rested a finger on the door frame.

“I’ve been looking through your books,” I said. “I don’t think there’s another collection like this in the whole world.”

He brought his hands together and came through into the brown-on-brown-on-brown room.

“Have a seat, Mr. McGill,” he said. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

8

I FELT AS if I were at an audition where a scene was being reenacted by successive thespians going out for the same role. The new aspirant shook hands with me before going to the chair that the previous actor sat in.

Cyril Tyler, if this was indeed Cyril Tyler, had a fleshy and moist handshake. He went around the big brown hippopotamus and sat, moving with exaggerated gestures as if he were a much larger man. This more than anything inclined me toward believing that he was who he said.

I returned to my branded chair, put my elbows back on its arms, and made that big fist with my hands.

“How can I help you, Mr. McGill?” he whispered.

I could barely hear him but resisted the temptation to lean forward.

“Come again?” I said loudly.

He smiled and then gave a slight grin.

“How can I help you?” he repeated only slightly louder than before.

I smiled and nodded, not for him but for myself. The reason I was in this dissembling profession was that I lied as much as my clients, not to mention the subjects of my investigations. I couldn’t trust them, but they couldn’t trust me, either—whether they knew it or not.