When the Thrill Is Gone

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.