When the Thrill Is Gone

26

June and Corinthia had the same port wine gene; half an hour after her initial fright June was seated upon a third folding chair at the bare table in that unadorned room. She was laughing and free.

I remember thinking that in years gone by those women would have been afraid of me because I (or, more correctly, my dark skin) represented a fear-inducing other. But now they felt that they were the other and I was somehow an envoy of the dominant people. They saw my friendliness as a kindness rather than the obeisance that my father’s sharecropper parents offered up with their smiles and deferential silences.

I paid one hundred dollars for the books and two hundred for the old light-brown leather satchel.

June kissed my cheek at the door.

It was a heartfelt kiss, sensual in its innocent placement.

Even though I was there under an alias, I felt I was experiencing a real connection with those women in that tomblike dwelling in the depths of the Upper East Side.

I called Mardi and had her tell Iran to meet me at Rudy’s, a small take-out restaurant on Avenue C.

“Tell him to bring me that special flashlight and the other stuff Bug gave me,” I added.

I got there first. There were three tables in the place. I sat toward the back, leafing through William Williams’ lost library. I hadn’t read some of the books but I was acquainted with all the authors. I liked Williams’ taste. He was a complex thinker who worried about a pedestrian world. He’d scribbled notes on almost every page.

Evolution makes better murderers, he jotted on the title page of The Descent of Man. Below that he scrawled, Darwin meets Dante in the sentiments of this title.

I actually grinned at some of his idiosyncratic jibes.

“Hey, boss,” Iran said, pulling me from my intellectual eavesdropping.

It’s funny how a phrase shines a light on what’s happening and then illuminates a path just up the way. Iran worked for Gordo but had been hired by me. Now I was using him as an operative in my evolving relationship to the world.

“You bring it?” I asked.

“Right here.” He placed a plain brown paper bag on the table and sat down opposite me.

“What you readin’?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. You eat?”

“Some potato chips and a soda.”

I handed him a twenty and said, “Go up to the counter and order us two of the specials.”

While he did this I turned a page on Darwin.

Evolution and politics are inextricably intertwined, Bill wrote. The question is, is it a science in the strict sense of the word? And also, can biology somehow replace the domination of Capital?

Who was this guy?

When Iran returned I put away the old hardback and turned my attention to the politics of crime.

“So explain to me this thing with Gorman,” I said.

“I already told you back when you gimme the job at Gordo’s.”

“That was when our lawyer called me and said you were in trouble,” I said. I used Breland to keep tabs on many of the people I had wronged. “He told me that you were in trouble with a man named Gorman but that was all.”

Iran sucked a tooth and said, “He just stupid.”

“Not so stupid he couldn’t find you and kick your ass.”

“Oh, man,” he whined.

“Tell me the story, Iran.”

“Me and Gorman’s brother—”

“What’s his brother’s name?”

“Alvin, but everybody calls him Leech.”

“Uh-huh. Go on.”

“Me and Leech—”

“Hold up,” I said because the cook, in his stained and, in places, singed apron was bringing our meat-loaf platters.

With no ceremony he placed the meals down in front of us, then headed back to his big grill.

“All right,” I said. “Go on.”

“So me an’ Leech was gonna boost these crates of iPads movin’ through this warehouse where a friend’a his was workin’ at.”

“Leech’s friend?”

“Yeah. Only Leech was hittin’ it with his friend’s girlfriend and the mothahfuckah told us where to get in but then he turnt around an’ called the cops.”

“Then why aren’t you in jail right now?”

The look on Iran’s face was perfect, a kind of nonchalant intensity that said, I will do anything to stay out of jail.

“We run, man. Shit. I jumped ovah a barbed-wire fence an’ almost ran up a wall. Them cops didn’t want any part’a that. You know, I was movin’ like I was in some kinda comic book.”

“Leech, too?”

“We both got away,” he said, “but Leech wouldn’t own up to what he did. He just told his brother that the cops come and he didn’t know why. Gorman blamed me and said I owed him six thousand dollars. Six thousand dollars.”

“Why would you owe him anything?”

“He was the fence and he fronted his brother some money. Now he blames me. Stupid, that’s what it is.”

“Did you know that Gorman was stupid before you took this job?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I knew.”

“So what does that say about you?”

Sometimes a good question from the right source is all one needs. Iran sat back on his bench and looked at me. I could see where he, for the second time in a long time, blamed himself for the trouble he was in.

We were just finishing our mince pie and French vanilla ice cream when I decided it was time for action. I took the paper bag and placed the leather satchel on the table.

“What’s this?” Iran asked.

“Sit here and have some coffee,” I said. “Watch my bag and I’ll be back in a bit.”

I stood up and he said, “I want tea.”

“Then have tea.”

The People’s Garden behind St. Matthew’s Church was only three blocks away. The property took up most of the block, and a good portion of it was hidden by a high wooden fence and deep foliage around a lovely, community vegetable garden.

I had been a regular visitor, when I was kid hiding from the juvenile authorities. The front door had always been open. It still was. I walked in, hoping to go unnoticed, and moved quickly to the front of the congregation hall and then through a door behind the pulpit.

The gardens were dark so I took the goggles and infrared flashlight from the bag Iran brought from my office. The flashlight and spectacles were a gift from a grateful Bug Bateman. Just the promise of love will turn the most irascible heart to gratitude.

The only reason the entire church wasn’t covered with yellow police tape was that either there was no body or the corpse of my faux client was hidden. I was hoping for the former as I approached the eight-foot mound of compost piled at the far corner of the lot.

Donning cloth gloves, I took up a spade from a wheelbarrel and began poking around the compost heap — looking for the give of fresh-turned soil. I worked my way up to the very top before coming across soft earth.

There I dug down until I came to an obstruction. Then I took a penlight from my pocket and pointed it at the satiny pink fabric. Under the makeshift shroud was Shawna Chambers’ dark, lovely, lying face. Maybe if she had told me the truth I could have saved her. Maybe.

Her hair was combed and her face composed. I couldn’t tell how she’d died, only that she was dead and that her undertakers had tried to make her look as good as a corpse can manage.

Somewhat contradictorily, death is the cause of anxiety. Hurriedly, I pulled the pink fabric over her face and then re-shifted the leaves and soil to hide her. I climbed down the huge pile and made my way quickly back to the street.

Two blocks away I made a pay-phone 911 call.

“Nine-one-one emergency.”

“There’s a dead body buried in the compost heap behind St. Matthew’s Church in the East Village,” I said in a husky voice.

“What is your—” the operator managed to get out before I hung up on him.

Back at the diner I found Iran reading a New York Post.

“You read the papers every day?” I asked.

“No, not really.”

“If you gonna come work in my office you got to read the paper, at least one paper, every morning.”

“Okay,” he said and the temporary deal was struck.

I sat down heavily and probably sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Iran asked.

“What you should ask me is, what’s right?”

“Okay. What’s right?”

“Nothing. Not one damn thing.”