When the Thrill Is Gone

46

I’d just stood back to appreciate the yellow-and-tan woman with the long neck and almond eyes when the office phone rang. I let the bell make its six cycles before coming to rest at the answering machine up at Mardi’s desk. The painted lady seemed to be winking at me from her paper canvas.

My heart was still throbbing with vehement anticipation.

The cell phone on my desk made the sound of a harp being strummed by Harpo Marx — the savant, comedian, and maybe patriotic American spy.

“Hey, Mardi.”

“Are you okay, Mr. McGill?”

“Peachy.”

“Did Mr. Peters, I mean, Mr. Lamont give you any trouble?”

“He tried but I dissuaded him.”

“Are you okay?”

“You already asked that.”

“Can I come back to work?”

“It’s late. Go on home.”

“But—”

“Go home, Mardi. I’m fine. Really.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me something before we get off.”

“Yeah?”

“Was Iran in today?”

“He was in at eight and there was nothing to do so I sent him home at four. He said that he was going to a downtown gym to work out with Bug.”

I took the next forty-five minutes to shepherd myself back to normalcy, or at least what passed for being normal in a life like mine.

I had a job to do, a few jobs, and I still wasn’t making any solid headway. Humiliating a cowboy in an eastern high-rise wasn’t going to help. Having sex with a client while investigating her husband wasn’t doing much for me, either.

Cyril Tyler was a billionaire. He had a full-time, six-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer sitting on collapsible furniture on his front porch. I couldn’t get at him the way I took on petty criminals and thieves. His brand of crime came with city, state, and federal seals of approval. He could shoot me between the eyes at midday in Times Square and never see one minute of jail time.

The cell phone growled. Not a bear but a suspicious pit bull.

I grinned and picked the thing up.

“Hey, D.”

“Pops.”

It had been years since he called me that. Twill had picked up the habit from his older brother, but Dimitri dropped the term when Oedipus took up residence in his heart and soul.

“Where are you?”

“Paris.”

“That’s something I never thought I’d hear you say, boy. My son in Paris. Damn.”

“Twill told me that I better call you. I used the special number you said we could call to make the connection. I hope you don’t mind.”

“You in trouble?”

“No.”

“Tatyana in trouble?”

“Not right now. Her boyfriend, Vassily, was in with these smuggler guys. They grabbed him but Tatyana got away. She called me and I met her at the airport and we flew here.”

I closed my eyes and wondered. Was there a celestial bull’s-eye on the top of my bald head?

“Do you speak French, son?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Tatyana there?”

The phone made a rustling sound and then a lovely young voice said, “Hello?”

“Tatyana.”

“Mr. McGill.”

“I thought I told you that I didn’t want you to get my son killed.”

“I was alone and broke. I only asked him to send money.”

“What was your boyfriend into?”

“Army weapons. He was selling them in North Africa.”

“Were you a part of it?”

“I didn’t even know about it until we moved here.”

“Were you a part of it?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me now, girl.”

“I was not part of it. I went out to drinks with him and his friends. I knew the men he worked with but I did not do anything about selling weapons.”

Family, I once read, the gateway to disaster.

“I’m gonna give you a number,” I told the femme fatale who had somehow become like blood to me. “The man’s name is Eric Pardon. I did him a favor once. He owes me. Call him in one hour. He will do what has to be done and send you guys home when the time is right. You understand?”

“Thank you, Mr. McGill.”

“Don’t thank me, girl. You know I’m only doing this because of Dimitri.”

“I know. You’re a good man.”

“I’m a fool.”

Eric Pardon was an old friend. One of the few I had from my days on the other side of the proverbial tracks. He was French but worked for the United States government for a while. He employed me more than once to plant false information on threats to U.S. security. When he was compromised I helped him restructure the evidence so that he was deported rather than shot and planted in an unmarked grave.

I left Eric a voicemail and trusted that he’d do right by me.

Talking to Dimitri, and helping him somewhat, lightened my heart a little. He was in too deep with Tatyana, but there was nothing I could do about that. Hell, I couldn’t even solve my own lady problems.

This last thought made me laugh. At the same moment the office buzzer sounded. Something about the synchronicity of the chuckle and the electric hum made me wary. I waited until the buzzer sounded again before opening the drawer in my desk that contained the monitors for the various cameras in and around my office.

Pale as ever, and even shorter than I, Lieutenant Carson Kitteridge stood looking up at the one camera watching him that he knew about. He was wearing a dark-gray suit that he bought in the late eighties.

He pressed the button again.

I got up from my desk and made it all the way to the front before he troubled the buzzer a fourth time.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” I said upon opening the door.

“LT.”

“You comin’ in or am I under arrest?”

“Somebody heard something,” he said. “They thought that it might have been a shot.”

“Yeah,” I said speculatively, “I heard something myself about an hour or so ago.”

“Can I come in?”

“Why? I already implied that I have no firsthand knowledge of a firearm being discharged.”

“Business.”

I shrugged and stepped to the side.

Kit walked in and we took that long familiar walk.

“Smells a little like gunpowder in here,” he said when he was seated in the chair next to the one Ira Lamont had inhabited.

“I don’t smell anything.”

The good policeman was looking around the floor, for blood spatter no doubt. Then he raised his gaze.

“Is that painting new?”

“Mardi made me put it up. Said that my office was too austere, something like that.”

Lieutenant Kitteridge could smell a lie better than a discharged weapon but he had other business to transact — lucky for me.

He sat back and crossed his right gray leg over his left.

“There was a body found buried in the compost heap in the People’s Garden behind St. Matthew’s Church,” he said, looking into my eyes.

“Down in the East Village?”

“Alphabet City.”

“So?”

“It was Shawna Chambers-Campbell,” he said, “the sister-in-law of Cyril Tyler, the man who sent the police after you on that extortion charge.”

“Whatever happened to that investigation?”

“I’m it.”

As a rule I don’t share information with the police. Cops have an unerring tendency to turn whatever you say against you. Silence is always the best defense. Kit was a good cop and therefore my enemy despite any comfort we had with each other. No matter how much I helped him, no matter what he might have owed me, Carson Kitteridge would see me in prison if he could.

Regardless of this, I had a case to solve and did not believe I could do it on my own.

“Do you have a picture of the deceased?” I asked.

He took a morgue photo from his pocket and handed it across the desk.

I noted once again how much more natural she looked in death.

“Someone looking very much like this woman came to my office a few days ago and said that she was Chrystal Chambers-Tyler. She wanted to hire me.”

“For what?”

“She said that her husband wanted to kill her, that he’d probably murdered his previous wives.”

“Her or her sister?”

“If this is who you say it is she was using her sister’s name.”

“Did she have proof?”

“No.”

“Why did she think he wanted to kill her... or her sister?”

“I don’t know. Believing her story, or at least the money she paid me to believe her story, I went to her husband and asked why she’d be afraid of him.”

“What did he say?”

“That he wanted to hire me to find her for him.”

“Did you?”

“No. She didn’t tell me where she was staying, and I wouldn’t have done that anyway. So instead I agreed to tell her that he said he loved her and would never hurt her.”

“Did you deliver that message?”

“No. I never saw her again.”

“Where’s the real Chrystal Tyler?” the cop asked.

“Obviously she left Cyril. That’s why he wanted me to find her.”

“You think she’s dead?”

“Possibly somebody wants her that way. Maybe they’ve succeeded. I don’t know.”

“So what do you know?”

“I just told you. The woman you call Shawna most likely came to me saying that she was Cyril’s wife. She said that somebody wanted her dead. And now you tell me that she is.”

“I want this motherfucker, LT.”

“Yeah,” I said, standing up from my chair. “Good luck with that.”

“Aren’t you gonna help me?”

“You just informed me that my client is dead. What else can I do?”

“You can come down to the station for a debriefing.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Now.”

“I have to do something right now, Lieutenant.”

“I could arrest you.”

“Go right ahead.”

Kitteridge stood up.

“Are you making this hard just ’cause I’m a cop?”

“That’s part of it,” I said. “But the other thing is that I have things to do. You want to question me, and I’m telling you that I’ll come down tomorrow.”

Kitteridge shook his head and turned away from me.

I followed him toward the exit.