When the Thrill Is Gone (6 page)

And my lying was always the best. I could tell you something that was ninety-nine percent truth, but the way I told it would be completely misleading.

“A woman came to my office this afternoon, Mr. Tyler. She said her name was Chrystal Chambers-Tyler and—”

“Chrystal?” he said, at a perfectly normal volume.

I nodded and continued. “She said that she wanted me to work for her. It seems she’s missing a valuable piece of jewelry and is afraid to tell you about it.”

“Afraid? I don’t understand,” he said, his eyes darting around the room as if there was some strange sound coming from behind the brown walls.

“I didn’t either,” I said. “She was obviously a rich and successful woman, the wife of a very wealthy man. Why would she be worried over a necklace that cost less than a million dollars?”

Tyler stood up—unconsciously, I thought.

“Where is she, Mr. McGill? And what do you mean, ‘afraid’? What did she say about me? About us? What was she wearing?”

There was nothing commanding or dominant about the billionaire. He wasn’t far from fifty but looked younger. There was something boyish about him that the years had not worn away. Tyler was the classic milksop who happens to be a billionaire but reads adventure stories so that he can imagine himself a hero in a world where deeds and not money mattered.

I liked him.

“An off-white dress and a gold chain with a single pearl,” I said, remembering the picture Bug’s program showed me. “She said that the missing necklace could be the last straw on the back of an already strained relationship. That’s a quote.”

“What strain? There’s nothing wrong between us.”

My lie was gaining momentum.

Even though I liked the man, I had no desire to let him get ahead of me. I took in a breath through my nostrils and held it three times as long as normal. I did this because I was beginning to lose myself to a feeling more dangerous than anger. I was becoming distracted by the puzzle of the man and woman, and maybe the woman and man pretending to be them.

“You know women, Mr. Tyler,” I said. “They get squirrelly at the strangest moments. Maybe she’s worried about you kicking her out if she lost something so valuable . . .”

“Never.”

“Or maybe,” I surmised, “maybe she’s knows what’s happened to the necklace and is afraid of what will happen when you find out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There might be a lover involved.”

“No. No. Never.” He sat down again. “And even if there was, she could still come to me.”

I gave him a skeptical look.

“You don’t understand, Mr. McGill. Chrystal is my life. I’d be lost without her.”

“That may well be,” I conceded, “but life and love are often more complex than they at first seem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“People often react to fears that are in their minds and not the real world around them. They are reacting to the ways that they were raised, and maybe . . . abused.”

“Chrystal had a perfectly normal childhood,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that there was,” I said. “But it is possible that she feels guilty and has put that guilt on you.”

“That’s ridiculous. I love her,” he said, and I almost believed it. “I would never do anything to cause her pain.”

“Be that as it may,” I said quoting a phrase my father used again and again in my radical homeschooling. “This woman did come to me, and she told me what I’m telling you.”

“Where is she?” he demanded. “I need to talk to her myself.”

“She told me that you might ask that question. She said that you’d offer me money to reveal her whereabouts and therefore she would not tell me where she was staying or how to get in touch. She said that she’d call me to find out what I had learned.”

“Why did she think you’d talk to me if you were hired to look for the necklace?” he asked. He might have been weak but he was not a stupid man.

“She was worried that I would come to you for a better paycheck. She said that keeping her location a secret would assure my . . . fidelity.”

“But you
could
find her for me,” he insinuated.

“Probably. But I won’t.”

“Then why come to me? Why don’t you do what she hired you to do?”

“I believe that she hired me to save her marriage,” I said. “I also think that she’s confused about the necklace. She gave me a lead or two, but those seemed to be dead ends. The best way to solve the problems, as I interpreted them, was to come here and lay out the scenario for you.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said. “What use can you be if she doesn’t trust me?”

“I’ve met with you. I can tell her that. I can say that I confronted you about the necklace. Maybe that will convince her to come clean.”

“You think that she’s lying to you?”

“No one tells the whole truth,” I said, “even to a stranger.”

“I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars to find her, Mr. McGill.”

For a few seconds there my mind went as pink as the hallway walls outside the shit-brown door.

I had to clear my throat before saying, “No.”

“Why not?”

“You aren’t my client.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“Is her ruby and emerald necklace missing?”

“I don’t keep track of her belongings.”

“Is
she
missing?”

He paused before answering, “For six days now.”

I unlaced my hands and used them against the chair’s arms to sit up straight.

“It would be a definite conflict of interest to allow you to pay me to betray her whereabouts to you,” I said. “But . . . but I would take ten thousand to deliver a message.”

“A message?”

“Anything you want me to tell her . . . or maybe a note.”

Cyril Tyler’s face hid nothing. He was confused and worried, hopeful, even though he suspected that I wasn’t being completely honest.

“I need her, Mr. McGill,” he said. “Things
have
been strained lately, but it has nothing to do with our relationship, with her.”

“Maybe you’re the one having the affair,” I said. “Maybe that’s what drove her to make her own mistakes.”

“Me? An affair? Never.”

“I want to help you but I’m working for your wife,” I said, telling two lies in one sentence. “I’ll deliver a note for ten thousand. Take it or leave it.”

“Will you take a check?”

“No.”

He sighed and stood, walked to the door I’d entered through, and passed out into the riotous gallery/hallway.

After he was gone, I let my eyes nearly close and counted breaths until he returned, maybe ten minutes later. He handed me a white envelope, sealed, and a stack of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

“I expect something from this,” he said.

“I’ll deliver the note. That’s all I can promise. Do you have anything else to tell me?”

“Like what?”

“Like why she left? Maybe . . . what she might be afraid of?”

“It’s not of me, if that’s what you’re saying. I love Chrystal.”

“I love hamburger,” I said. “But when lunch is over the sandwich is gone.”

“Chrystal is not a plate of food.”

WE PARTED IN the brown library. I walked past Chrystal’s paintings and into the glass office, which was now empty. I ambled across the lawn to the private elevator, then down the empty floor to the other.

The light-brown doorman ignored me as I passed out into the street.

Two blocks away I tore open the envelope and read the poorly scrawled note.
Chrystal, I love you and would never be upset about anything having to do with your actions or oversights.

I was amazed at the legal quality of the message, but that didn’t matter. I’m not an editor or a life coach. My job is, has always been, to take money from people either to assuage their fears or to fan the flames of their rage.

And there are worse elements to my profession.

9

CYRIL TYLER’S HIDDEN MANSION was only nine blocks from my place. The fact that it wasn’t the gossip of the neighborhood proved that he had extraordinary clout—and was willing to use it.

I made it to my building in nine or ten minutes and then climbed up the ten flights to the apartment at a good clip. A man in my line should at least be able to run up some stairs if the situation called for it. Somebody might be after me, or me after him—either way, I needed the edge.

I got to our big black door and stopped. The blood slamming through my veins had reminded me of something and I knew that once I was in the house that detail might fishtail away. Taking out my phone I entered and transmitted a text message:
Mardi, download pic of woman who came in today. Said she was Chrystal Tyler but wasn’t. Look up last bug-search I did and see if you can identify her. Probably a relative, likely a sister. Thanx.

I could have called Mardi. She would have answered and promised to do the job. But the best way to talk to young people is on the tiny screen. They remember, save, and pay closest attention to the texts of their lives. That’s how they stay connected, coincidentally avoiding the overexcitement and the inherent inaccuracies of aural memory. Maybe one day all of our memories will be contained on little devices in our bags and back pockets. People like me will make their money looking for lost and stolen electronic recollections.

“Who was I, Mr. McGill?” the potential client would ask my descendant.

“I’ll get right on that, Mr. Doe. Just transfer the dollars into my Panamanian account.”

I USED the special electronic key on the lock, and two bolts—one at the knob and the other in the floor—slid open.

The place was deceptively quiet. You might have called it peaceful if you weren’t aware of the problems festering therein.

I walked down the hall toward the sanatorium that once was my office. I opened the door to see my wife and my best friend in the bed.

He was bare-chested, lying back on three pillows, while she sat at his side, feeding him soup with an antique silver spoon she’d inherited from her least favorite aunt—Gertie.

Gordo, boxing trainer extraordinaire, was dying of stomach cancer, and my philandering wife was nursing him.

The room was spotlessly clean and my friend was as comfortable as a man can be when he’s recovering from his third course of aggressive chemotherapy in a strange bed, on the eleventh floor, with nothing in his future except a hole in the ground.

On the other side of the bed sat the nurse, Elsa Koen, a forty-something red-haired, mild-mannered, German woman. She was speaking softly to Gordo. He swallowed hard, as if attempting to gulp down a spoonful of crushed glass.

They didn’t notice me at first. The women were concentrating their full attention on Gordo as he was experiencing the pain of dying slowly.

I took a step in and he became aware of me. That was Gordo—he caught every movement, in and out of the ring. He leaned forward as if trying to genuflect. Elsa placed a hand on his chest and one behind his head to help him. Gordo was one of the most independent-minded men I knew but he accepted the German’s help stoically, maybe even with a hint of gratitude.

Katrina turned her beautiful, only slightly worked-upon, face in my direction. She tried to smile, but she loved Gordo almost as much as I did. Our differences hadn’t dimmed her compassion.

“Leonid,” she said, rising from the rented hospital bed.

“Hey, Gordo,” I said. “What I tell you ’bout gettin’ in bed wit’ my wife?”

Elsa smiled as she placed another pillow behind the old man’s back.

“She told me you wouldn’t mind,” he rasped. His sandpaper voice wasn’t caused by the disease, or its treatments, but simply a tone left over after fifty-plus years yelling for his boxers to shape up or fall down.

Elsa stood and both women walked toward me.

You couldn’t see where Katrina had her face-lift, or even tell that her lustrous blond hair color wasn’t completely natural. If someone had told you that she was fifty-one years old you would have been surprised, but these were the least of her secrets.

She kissed my cheek, bending down slightly because I’m only five five and a half. Elsa touched my shoulder as she went past.

The women didn’t talk to me because the ritual was solidly in place by then: I’d come home in the evening and Gordo and I would have our powwow. The women saw to his physical needs, while I reminded him of who he was and why he struggled when he could have given up.

I pulled up a chair that was always there in the corner, next to the window.

“How’s it goin’, old man?” I asked.

Gordo tried to sigh but merely let go of a breath. He had always been slender but now he was nearly emaciated, sallow skin sagging on clearly defined bone.

“Poison doin’ its job all right,” he said. “Now we got to see if I could do mines.”

When I asked the oncologist, Dr. Ives, what were my friend’s chances, the physician said,
Little to none.
That was seven months before.

“Savin’ your strength for the later rounds, huh?” I said.

Gordo showed his teeth in a grimace that was meant to be a grin.