When the Thrill Is Gone

49

There was an awkward moment after the end of our conversation. Cyril looked as if he wanted more. I attributed this expectation to the fact that he probably always had people falling over themselves to placate his every whim.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Tyler?”

“Um, I guess not.”

“Do you need me to see you out?”

A cold steeliness entered his gaze. The corners of his mouth turned down.

“Certainly not.” He got up with as much decorum as he could muster and opened the door all by himself.

Through the doorway I watched him amble past Iran and on toward the exit.

I suppose that I should have been thinking about how to wrangle Tyler into a confession, or at least set a decent trap. But instead I was remembering Mardi saying, He was waiting at the door when Iran and I got there.

“Huh.”

I had some time to kill, pretty much the whole day. Cyril needed to stew and maybe contact his confederates. I was sure, when not faced by the milksop, that he had caused the deaths of his wives and Shawna. His talk about extra-psychic abilities was just flummery designed to give the police and the courts excuses to forgive him.

I shaved and brushed my teeth in the little toilet. On the way back I noticed that Iran had earphones on and an iPod on his desk.

“The music good?” I asked.

He didn’t hear the question but noticed that I’d stopped next to him and so pulled off the headset and said, “What?”

“The music. It is good?”

The young man smiled, handing me the headset. I put it on.

“...Mr. Martins is still sitting in his chair, reading,” I said in my ear. “Just like he was doing an hour ago...”

“Mardi’s been putting your cassette notes on this iPod so that all the cases would be easy to get to,” Iran said. “She told me that I should listen to a few of ’em in case I was thinking about taking a job here.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m thinkin’ that if I wanted to be bored to death I could go back to prison.”

On the way out I stopped at Mardi’s desk.

“I didn’t know that you were moving my tapes to MP3 format.”

“Should I stop?”

“You think Iran would make a good operative?”

“I’m not going out with him,” she said. “You don’t have to worry.”

How did she do that?

I went over to the Thirty-third Street PATH Station and jumped a train to Hoboken. Chalker Road was just nine blocks from the exit. Number 243 was about five blocks on from there.

I should have called first but for some reason I wanted to get the element of surprise into our meeting.

It was a ranch-style home, smaller and yet similar to Cyril Tyler’s abode, painted dark blue and bright red. There were two concrete walkways, one leading through the middle of the ragged lawn to the front door and the other at the far-right side next to a divider hedge and running down to a destination beyond the house.

I pressed the nacreous, rectangular button and waited patiently. After a while the door came open and a young woman, in her early thirties, glided up behind the screen in a sleek, brand-new, state-of-the-art wheelchair.

“Yes?”

“Leonid McGill,” I said. “I called about Mr. Williams.”

“Oh yes,” she said happily. “Come on in. Come in.”

She rolled the chair back from the doorway with obvious skill and I pulled open the screen door.

The hall would have been wider if there weren’t bookshelves on either side. The lower ledges were crowded with books, knickknacks, and papers, while the higher ones were nearly empty. This told me that Fawn David lived alone, though this had not always been the case.

She led me down the hall, through an austere-looking living room and into a solarium where three of the walls were made from sectioned glass. The tiered metal shelving on all sides was filled with various shades of greenery. There were little flowers now and again, baby green tomatoes, and crawling vines. Two cats, one white and the other calico, stalked me from the underbrush.

“Sit down, Mr. McGill,” Fawn said and gestured.

There was a small, cast-iron chair that had been painted white set next to a violet iron table. I sat, comfortably cushioned by some fat and a lot of muscle. Fawn’s heart-shaped face was white like porcelain and yet seemed so soft that I had to hold myself back from reaching out and touching it.

She smiled and I felt a clutching in my chest. This disturbed me but, I reminded myself, I wasn’t there for self-analysis.

“You have a beautiful house, Miss David.”

“It’s really all my mother’s doing. She added on the sun room and paid off the mortgage. I just inherited it.”

“Is your mother here?”

“She died six years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This house is all her doing.”

“Still, it’s yours,” I said, “and beautiful.”

She smiled brighter and moved her right shoulder in my direction.

I noticed the multicolored cat gazing at me from the depths of vegetation and thought about the artist — Bisbe. It struck me that if I made any error, this sunny room and beautiful, crippled woman might be my last moments of sensual pleasure.

“You remind me of him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Bill Williams, as you call him. He lived in a room my mother had in back. He helped to build this greenhouse.”

“And how do I remind you of him?”

“You use logic to bring happiness. William always looked at the world the way it was, but he didn’t let that get him down. He used to tell me that my paralysis would help me hone my attention down to the point where my life would make more sense than most other people’s ever would. He was right.”

“You could tell that from one thing I said?”

“You look a little like him, too,” she said. “I mean, he was tall and slender and his face was long. He had a full head of hair at sixty but your skin color, it’s just about the same.”

“William Williams is black?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“No. All I had was a name.”

“You must be a very good detective.”

“Either that or a really bad one.”

“I don’t know how much help I can be, Mr. McGill. I was just twenty the last time I saw William. He moved out and we never heard from him again. He’d be in his late seventies by now.”

“I suppose you’ve had a lot of tenants since then.”

“No. Mother got sick not long after William moved and I couldn’t really manage an apartment. I suppose whatever was there when he moved out is still in there. It’s not easy for me to get down there, so I don’t go.”

“Would you like to try now?”

“I have no idea where the key is.”

“Locks are my specialty.”

First I Carried a bamboo chair down the slender tree-flanked path to the door of the small rental unit, then I went back up and cradled Fawn David in my arms. After installing her in the chair, I returned for her wheelchair. Only then did I use a special metal tool I carried around in case I encountered a simple lock.

“You’re strong and innovative,” Fawn said when the lock slid open.

“And I used to be young and handsome, with a full head of hair.”

“You’re still handsome,” she said. “I like mature men.”

The room was dusty — very much so. The mattress and sofa chair had been infested by mice, but the table lamp still worked and everything else was more or less unaffected by the passage of time.

Bill Williams had a very austere lifestyle. There was a small table that stood in for a desk, the stuffed chair, the bed, an empty bookcase except for a milk-colored plastic pitcher and cup, and a trunk placed at the foot of the headless bed.

“William would sit at that desk writing all night long,” Fawn said. “Back then we had a ramp set up so I could come down. He always stopped working when I came. We talked for hours sometimes.”

“Where was he from?”

“He never said. I asked him and sometimes I used to try and trick him into telling me. But he’d always say that he had no history before he came here. It seemed like some kind of joke.”

“Or a man who was hiding from something.”

“I used to think that,” Fawn agreed. “He was very secretive, but then he was generous, too.”

“You mind if I crack open the trunk?”

She shook her head. I got the feeling she was just happy for the company. I was, too.

The lock on the trunk was easier than the door but at first glance it hardly seemed worth the bother. One brown shoe, a wife-beater undershirt, and a frumpy old pair of green gardener’s pants was all the treasure it held.

I pulled up the desk chair and sighed.

“It was worth a try,” I said.

“William used to take me down to a café not far from here sometimes,” Fawn said. “He’d tell me that I could do amazing things if I put my mind to it. I’d have been happy if you found some clue that led to him.”

She reached over and plucked out the solitary shoe. Shaking it, a metal locket fell out.

It was at least a hundred years old, made from bronze and silver. The girl tried to pry it open but it didn’t want to come.

“Let me try,” I said.

It didn’t work for me, either.

“Corroded,” I said sagely. “There’s a Swiss locksmith in my neighborhood. Want me to take it there?”

“Does that mean you’ll bring it back?”

“Yes.”

“And can we go to that café and have coffee?”