When the Thrill Is Gone

43

The four-story Victorian house was painted white with blue-and-green trim and had a slanting roof of layered tar paper coated with dark-red sand. The windows sparkled and the shades and curtains were all purchased at the same time, making the uniformity picture-perfect. Down the concrete pathway that led to the entrance a little boy was pulling a blue wagon that contained an even littler girl, while two young brown women watched them and chatted from the porch.

The boy was making the sounds of a great engine.

The girl alternately giggled and screamed.

The women were speaking in Spanish.

They were all happy and at home.

Less than a year ago the nineteenth-century home-turned-apartment-building had been a self-contained slum. The paint was peeled away and most of the windows had been broken. Crackheads and other druggies crawled into the empty rooms to nurse their highs or service their johns. Once a week the deadly handsome, black-as-tar Johnny Nightly would come up from the illegal pool hall basement and chase away the riffraff.

Then one evening I was visiting with Johnny’s boss, Luke Nye. For some reason, probably the bourbon, I told Luke about the recurring dream I had of escaping from a burning skyscraper by busting out a window and jumping from the highest floor.

“What that feel like?” the man who most resembled a moray eel asked.

“You’d think it would be quiet and peaceful,” I said, feeling a shudder, “like a baseball sailing out of the park. But it was loud, like a battlefield soldiered by screamin’ monkeys fightin’ through a hurricane.”

That very night Luke dreamed that some junkie had set fire to his building, causing the whole structure to cave in on his exclusive club. He sent Johnny out to hire a team of illegal laborers and they refurbished the building in four months’ time. Now working families live over the pool hall and Johnny comes up to collect rent and to make sure there are no fire hazards.

I walked up the steps past the women.

“Good afternoon,” I said politely.

“Hola,” one of them replied, while the other gave me a smile laced with concern.

I’m a scary-looking guy, especially if you know what to look for. From the width of my shoulders to the scars on my knuckles, anyone who lived in a part of town where people worked with their bodies knew that I dealt in trouble.

So, not allowing the women’s unease to upset me, I passed on to the front door and pressed the button for 4A.

“Yeah,” a voice rasped.

“It’s me, Luke.”

“Come on up, LT.”

The door buzzed and I pushed my way in.

I took the stairs three at a time because when you’re not a professional athlete you have to pick up your workouts where you can.

The first three floors of the building were single units designed for larger families, but the top level was divided into studio apartments that Luke’s friends and guests occupied from time to time; 4A was the unit that Theodore “Tally” Chambers was given.

The door was ajar so I didn’t knock.

It was a sunny room painted mostly white. There were four occupants. Tall and slender Johnny Nightly, whose glistening blackness was a thing of art; Luke, who was of medium height with brown skin that seemed to be seen through a blue-green filter; an old woman the color of a pecan shell; and Tally, who must have lost a dozen pounds since I’d seen him last, only a few days before. The boy’s skin looked like it had a layer of yellow webbing laid over it.

The men were standing around the bed where Tally lay. The woman was seated beside that bed, applying a compress to the ailing youth’s forehead.

“Luke,” I said.

The serpentine face regarded me and nodded to Johnny.

“LT,” Johnny said. “This here is Juanita Horn. She’s—”

“How are you, Juanita?” I asked to show that the introduction was unnecessary.

“Mr. McGill,” she said, not turning away from her charge.

Juanita Horn had been a nurse in Trinidad. She had been young and quite beautiful. Her man, Bell, was a rough-and-tumble sort of guy who had trouble with the law and so came to New York. Juanita followed and they partied until Bell was stabbed in the back by a woman who didn’t want him going back home to Juanita.

Nurse Horn attended to him as she had all of his friends when they had wounds, bruises, and breaks. Bell died from his injury and Juanita stayed on, the visiting nurse to those who couldn’t afford the exposure of an emergency room. She was as good as most general practitioners, and better because she knew when the wounds and maladies were beyond her abilities.

“The kid uses needles,” Nightly said in a subdued tone. “Got hep and who knows what else? Fever’s bad. We were going to take him to the doctor but Juanita said that he won’t die right away, and he’s been saying things that you might want to know.”

I bobbed my head to show that I understood and moved next to Sister Juanita. She understood the gesture and stood so that I could hunker down next the boy.

“Tally,” I said as if calling into anther room.

When he opened his eyes I recoiled at the bright yellow beaming from them.

“She sent me to meet with him,” Tally said, almost out of his mind with fever. “Sent me to tell them that Chrystal needs money, lotsa money if they want her to let up on her share of the inheritance, if they didn’t want her to go to the cops.”

“Chrystal said that?” I asked.

“What?” Tally was looking in my direction, but it was a toss-up whether he saw me or not. “What you say?”

“Chrystal said to ask for the money?”

“No, man. Chrystal loves that murderin’ fool. Chrystal’s crazy. Don’t even know what’s good for her.”

“Shawna?” I asked.

“I’m sick,” Tally said, looking into my eyes with sudden awareness. “Am I dyin’?”

“Did Shawna ask you to ask for money for Chrystal?”

When the boy exhaled it sounded like a last breath. It stank, too. The disease was deep in his blood and lungs, skin and eyes. He passed out and Juanita shouldered me aside. She poured alcohol on a white towel and dabbed it on his face.

“He’s a sick puppy,” Luke Nye said. “I’m scared just to look at him.”

“Rich man killed his sister, and if he’s saying what I think, he might be next on the list.”

“If somebody wants to kill him,” Johnny said, “he better hurry up before the kid does it himself.”

“Did he mention any names?” I asked Luke.

“No, just said a guy killed his sister. Said it was in the paper. I thought you might wanna know.”

“Thanks.”

“Let’s go across the hall,” Luke said.

Johnny and I followed him out.

Room 4C DOUBLED as an office. There was a cedar desk and chair next to the window and a round maple table with five chairs in the middle of the room. Carpeting was burgundy and the walls champagne. Luke and I sat while Johnny brought out glasses and a crystal decanter filled with fifty-year-old bourbon.

“What you want me to do, LT?” Luke asked.

This was one of those rooms scattered around New York and the world where anything could be decided. If I wanted them to let Tally die and then to be buried somewhere where he’d never be found, that would be it.

“I’d like to talk to him but I’m afraid it’d kill him,” I said.

“Juanita probably could do somethin’ bring him around long enough to get some answers,” Johnny said before sipping at his glass.

“No,” I said. “No. Call an ambulance and say you found him at the door. Say he came to the place and collapsed or something. Take his ID if he has any and let a doctor see to him. By the time he wakes up, if he ever does, the whole thing’ll be over.”

“So that’s it?” Luke said, straightening his shoulders to get up and go.

“One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Johnny works for you, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So what do I have to do to ask him to come do a job for me?” It was a difficult question. People like us had certain protocols when it came to business relationships. Betrayal was the worst sin anyone could commit, and so I asked the question with both Luke and Johnny at the table.

“Johnny’s a free agent,” Luke said, giving me that prehistoric smile he has.

“What you need, LT?” Johnny Nightly, a killer almost as dangerous as Hush, asked me.

“It might be a little risky.”

“And here I thought you wanted a babysitter.”

All three of us grinned and Johnny poured another round.