When the Thrill Is Gone

4

Tiny “Bug” Bateman was not only seriously out of shape, he was also one of the world’s great minds when it came to computer technology and technique. He had created tools for me that I’m sure generals in the Pentagon would have drooled over.

All I had to do was set up search templates that he’d developed to interface with his private Internet access system. After seeing Chrystal to the front door, I filled in the names and relationships of the people I was looking for and the system did an in-depth search using logic that Bug had culled and stolen from a thousand different systems.

I set up queries for Cyril Tyler, Chrystal Chambers-Tyler (she’d left me with her husband’s contact information and the correct spelling of her name), Allondra North, and Pinky Todd.

Chrystal had refused to give me her address or phone number because “Cyril got pockets so deep he could hide the state of Georgia in ’em. So I know he could buy a couple’a numbers. I’ll call you tomorrow at about four.”

The search system was thorough and so never took less than fifteen minutes to work. To fill the time I decided to log on to the shadow account that Bug had fitted for me to eavesdrop on my youngest, and favorite, son — Twill.

Since his juvenile authority social worker, Melinda Tarris, had signed his release from probation, Twill had dropped out of high school and become quite busy.

“School just not for me, Pops,” he’d said when informing me of his decision. “I know how to read and write, think and do push-ups already, man.”

“You know one other thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“How to get in trouble.”

Not quite eighteen, Twill was slender and dark, handsome like a minor demon on a day pass from hell. When he smiled, you smiled; you had to.

“Don’t worry, Pops. I learned my lessons.”

He had dropped out of school, but his education — and my trials — were just beginning.

Among other things I had gleaned, through Bug’s shadow-Net, was that Twill now had an account with an online Panamanian bank owned by an Eastern European concern. He started the account with a two-hundred-fifty-dollar check that Gordo had given him for doing work in the gym. This sum hadn’t changed for three months. But that afternoon Twill’s online account showed a balance of $86,321.44.

Going into his Twitter account, I found that he’d received, in the past week, 1,216 messages. Each message had a dozen or more return addresses to them. Each address deposited eleven dollars into Twill’s online money-receiving account.

Twill’s problem had always been that he’s too fast, too good, too smart. Without limitations set on him, a man like that can get deeply into trouble before there’s ever any warning. Men need trouble to gauge their success and temper the extent of their actions.

I was Twill’s only real problem.

I was wondering how to figure out the nature of my son’s latest scam when a chime sounded. The Internet search was over.

I was presented with a variety of online reports and images for each search. Allondra North’s death had been ruled an accident by a Florida judge, while a distraught Cyril Tyler was exonerated of any foul play.

“This is a tragedy, not a crime,” Lon Fledheim, Tyler’s attorney, said to the Miami Herald. “It is a private heartbreak.”

The photograph of Allondra proved that she was biracial, but I couldn’t tell her specific ancestry. There was some white and brown in there, maybe some Asian and black.

Pinky Todd, a white woman, was killed by a berserker homeless man who all of a sudden went crazy on Fifth Avenue and hit her in the head with a chunk of concrete. The bearded homeless man fled, lashing out at anyone who tried to stop him, and disappeared in the crowd. He was never found.

Odd.

Things really got tricky when Bug’s program presented me with an image and a bio of Chrystal Chambers-Tyler. She was indeed an up-and-coming artist who had attended Pratt Institute and produced paintings on highly polished steel canvases. She had reviews from all over the country and her work hung in a few of the smaller museums. Her marriage to Cyril was covered on the society page, and no one criticized her diction or ghetto sense of style.

Actually it was the lack of this latter style that made me take a second look at the digital likeness of her. At first it looked fine, but then, on closer examination, I was left wondering at the shape of her eyes and their slant toward the bridge of her nose. It was as if my streetwise client had had plastic surgery in order to look... a little different.

I tapped into the photo system that engaged automatically when someone came in the front door of the reception area. For a period of eight seconds three cameras took a dozen photos each of the new guest.

The images of the Chrystal Chambers who had come to my office were very close to that of the woman Bug’s program presented to me — but not quite a match. The woman who came to my office was shorter, for starters. On the Net there was an image of Mrs. Chrystal Tyler standing next to her husband in shoes that didn’t have heels. They were equal in height, whereas the photograph on my desk clearly showed that the woman who came to my office was the shorter of the two; not much shorter, no more than an inch.

Owing to my own stature, nearly five six, I’m oversensitive to height.

Both women had posed with Cyril. They were definitely related but were not identical twins. Sisters, half sisters, first cousins maybe. But why would one come to my office posing as the other? Especially with such a wild claim.

There was also a little article on an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar necklace that Cyril’s mother had given to Chrystal. The piece was old and had a name — Indian Christmas. This referred to the country, a source of fine rubies and emeralds for centuries.

The case was beginning to interest me. Much of what the woman who came to my office said was true. She knew Cyril Tyler, and well, according to the photograph. She knew intimate details about the real Chrystal Tyler’s life and the deaths of Cyril’s previous wives.

If all this was true, then maybe someone’s life was in jeopardy. The question was — whose?

For nearly an hour I sat in front of that screen, trying to come up with scenarios that might explain what had transpired in my office: the street girl with the pretend billion-dollar husband taking the place of another black woman who was the real article.

Common sense told me to turn away, but ninety-nine dollars an hour said differently.

Finally I picked up the phone and entered a number.

Somewhere deep in Queens a woman’s voice answered, “Leonid McGill’s line. Hello, Mr. McGill... or Mardi.”

“It’s me, Zephyra,” I said to my TCPA, my self-defined Telephonic and Computer Personal Assistant.

“How can I help you, boss?”

“I just came from watching your boyfriend spill sweat on Gordo’s floor.”

“Charles Bateman is not my boyfriend.”

“Charles?”

“That’s his name. Didn’t you know?” she said. “I hope you don’t think that his mother and father christened him Tiny, or Bug.”

“Charles thinks he’s your boyfriend. Why else would he be working out in a grimy gym for the first time in his life?”

“Did you call for some other reason, Mr. McGill?”

“I need you to try to get me an appointment with a reclusive billionaire named Cyril Tyler.”

“Okay. I’ll get right on it.”

“Don’t you need any other information?”

“No, sir. One of my clients is a masseuse, very popular among the wealthy. She’s willing to make house calls and travel. Three times she’s been to see Mr. Tyler. Is there any special reason I should give for the visit?”

“Tell him that it’s an Indian Christmas in July.”