When the Thrill Is Gone

44

Johnny and I exchanged numbers before he accompanied Luke down to the basement where the men spent most of their time. Luke’s pool hall was one of the most exclusive on the Eastern Seaboard — intended for a rarefied clientele. The greatest hustlers in the world came to play on his perfectly balanced tables. Millions of dollars changed hands in that room each year, and seven percent of that went to the house.

Before leaving, I went back to the sick room to see what shape Tally was in. He looked dead but I knew he wasn’t because Sister Juanita was still dabbing his forehead with alcohol.

I made a sound and Juanita looked up and over, pinning me in place with eyes that had seen more death and suffering than many a mercenary. She was still beautiful in spite of the sixty-some years spread across acres of death.

“Did he say any other names?” I asked.

“Only the ones you already heard.”

“What’re his chances?”

“I seen worse. Much worse. But you know, Leonid, some people die from a cold, others lived through Hiroshima.”

I smiled, and she did, too — for a brief instant.

“I hear you got Gordo up at your place,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“How is he?”

“Stomach cancer. Doctor doesn’t see much hope.”

“What about Gordo?”

“You mean, how does he see his chances?”

She nodded.

“You know ole Gord, he believe in fightin’ till the last round.”

She smiled and said, “He would have survived that A-bomb, unless they dropped it right on his head.”

Going down the stairs, it came back to me, the year-long affair between Gordo Tallman and Juanita Horn. She’d been called to the gym one day because a Dominican boxer with questionable documentation had fallen badly while sparring. He refused to go to the hospital and Juanita was brought in to set the broken ankle.

For the next twelve months Gordo and Juanita were just about inseparable. And then Gordo shut her out. I was working the heavy bag the day she’d come crying from his office. The gossip was that Juanita had spent a weekend with an old friend of Bell’s, that Gordo found out and cut her off. I never knew for a fact. I didn’t want to know.

Angelique Arabesque’s white Cadillac stood in front of Luke’s place. She was Luke’s driver on the rare occasions he left the pool hall.

A black woman with short bleached white hair and eyes that were gray, naturally, Angelique owned her own limo company and served almost every important personage in the Bronx.

She was leaning against the back door in her white pants suit, watching me. Angelique has a handsome face and a sleek figure, a nasty scar on her right cheek and inelegant hands. Seeing her, you got the feeling she could take care of herself. I’ve heard that she married an accountant but still kept her own books.

“Mr. McGill,” she said as I approached.

“Ms. Arabesque.”

“Mr. Nye asked me to take you wherever you needed to go.”

I’d ridden the subway out there; probably would have taken it back. Angelique was a gesture on the part of Luke. He was saying that he was my friend and he could see by my situation that I needed help.

The drive back to Manhattan didn’t take long. Angelique knew every shortcut. While she drove, I closed my eyes, counting breaths from one to ten and back again, attaining a fragment of bliss by the time the car stopped in front of the Tesla Building.

I’d breezed past the front desk and was halfway to the seventy-second floor when I finally looked at my cell phone. There was a text message from Mardi. cio it said. Client in office.

The peacefulness from the meditation was gone in an instant. My heart was thumping while my conscience kicked me in the butt.

For years I wanted a receptionist. I felt that if some innocent young woman was sitting at the front desk, greeting my clients, that I would no longer be a criminal but an upstanding citizen providing a service for John Q. Public. That fantasy was dashed by three simple letters — cio.

I banged my fist against the elevator doors, multiple times. When they finally slid open I ran down the hall, keys in hand.

I blundered into the room like a bison crashing a garden party only to find Mardi sitting behind her desk, tapping away at her keyboard. He was sitting on the wooden bench set there for clients, hands clasping a crossed knee.

I was nearly panting, wild-eyed.

“Hi, Mr. McGill,” Mardi said. “Mr. Peters has been waiting patiently.”

The last word was to tell me that everything was all right and I needn’t be worried about her safety. She could read me like a book — a very long tome containing a thousand and one tragedies penned in the blood of as many victims.

Mardi was wearing a simple dress made from a material the color of goldenrod. It might have been hand sewn — she was that kind of girl.

My hand was on the pistol in my pocket, there was a high whining sound in my ear, the room felt as if it were hurtling through space, and I stood there unable for the moment to move either forward or back. I was the condemned man waking from a dream in which he’d forgotten his death sentence, a fireman jarred to consciousness by a five-bell alarm.

Mr. Peters was wearing cowboy boots, brown jeans, a gaudy caballero shirt that wanted to be violet but settled back into tan, and a straw hat that seemed to be lacquered.

I hate cowboys, hate them.

“Mr. McGill?” Mardi asked when I refused to act like a normal human being.

I took in a deep breath through my nose.

“Huh?”

“Is anything wrong?”

I exhaled and took in another deep breath.

“Um,” I said on the long journey back to sanity.

I released the pistol and withdrew the hand from my pocket.

I blew out the last breath and said, “Isn’t it time for you to go on home, Mardi?”

She didn’t answer the question. I knew this was because I didn’t sound like myself yet. I had decided to bring my agitation into the conversation.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Lamont,” I said. “Follow me.”