When the Thrill Is Gone

5

Getting off the phone with Zephyra, I turned back to the pictures and articles offered up by the Net. I liked the name — the Net — because it made me a fisherman on the shores of some great electronic sea. I’d throw in my meshlike web and pull out treasures such as a series of eleven six-by-four-foot canvases of what at first seemed to be rusted-out and discolored plates of steel. But, as I looked at them, these marred slabs slowly transformed into landscapes and life studies cobbled together by the judicious and crafty application of corrosives, intense heat, and specially made epoxy-based acrylics. There was a lot of stippling and pointillism, very few bold strokes or pools of color.

There was life in these pieces of art that matched the wildness of the woman who called herself Chrystal Tyler; matched but did not equal. The execution of these paintings was subtle and deft, defiant of the supposed European and Asian hegemony while replicating these forms’ grace and even their sense of history. The woman I’d met had no notion of this subtle and violent challenge to the so-called civilized world’s domination of aesthetics.

These arresting works were of junkyard landscapes, of yellow and brown streetwise nudes made from what only seemed like rot and decay. I found myself wondering at the woman I had not met. Was she in as much trouble as her imposter claimed?

And why would anyone come to me pretending to be another in distress? Were they working together, or was this a plot against the real Chrystal Tyler executed by a murderous husband and a jealous cousin? Tyler’s first two wives were both dead — that was a fact. Was I being set up for a patsy in yet a third murder?

The smile on my lips did not bode well for anyone attempting to dupe me.

I was sitting there, contemplating the nature of my own perverted mirth when the direct line to my office rang.

“Yes, Zephyra.”

“You have a seven p.m. appointment with Cyril Tyler,” she said, adding an address I already knew.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. It was some kind of assistant. I told him what you said and he asked me to hang on. A few minutes later he got back on the line and gave me the seven o’clock option. I took it.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“And Charles is not my boyfriend,” she added.

“Maybe not, but you won’t ever find another man take the kind of pain he’s swallowing over you.”

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“A whole universe,” I said, and then Bug’s search program chimed again.

“Call me if you need anything work related,” Zephyra said.

We both disconnected and I pressed the enter key.

An image filled my eighteen-inch screen, a close-up of the blood-streaked face of Pinky Todd. Bug’s system must have found its way into some newspaper’s files to come up with that graphic image. Her eyes were wide open and a deep gash in her temple had allowed a rivulet of blood to travel down between those unseeing orbs.

This photograph sharpened my attention to another level of intensity. Blood is the mainstay of my particular branch of the PI profession; hot blood, spilled blood, common blood with a grudge. There wasn’t always violence attached to the cases I was drawn to, that were drawn to me, but there was always an underlying pulse and at least a predisposition toward a bloody outburst.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the half-aware insight that this was the life I had chosen, that not everyone was prone to this way of being. I wondered, half consciously, if I could change gears and be another kind of man.

Who knows how far I might have gone down that avenue of thought if the intercom buzzer hadn’t shocked me back to awareness, Pinky Todd’s picture still glowing brightly on my screen.

“Yes, Mardi?”

“Harris Vartan, sir.”

I had almost forgotten him.

“Show him in.”

I logged out of Bug’s program, sat back in my worn office chair, and laced my already large hands into one big oversized fist. I could bash through a length of four-by-four hardwood with that cudgel, but that meant nothing next to the power wielded by the man coming down the hall.

I stood up when the door swung open and Mardi stepped in, leading the modern-day mobster in the pale pearl-gray suit. His shirt was a wan yellow cinched by a maroon tie with flowing skyblue highlights. He had silver hair and olive skin with eyes that rendered black a watery second cousin. Standing five nine, he was seventy-three but could have passed for somewhere in his fifties. He did push-ups and sit-ups every morning and could hold his own with any man, or woman, half his age.

Mardi stopped at the door while Vartan advanced toward me and held out a hand. He didn’t shake hands with everyone. You had to reach a certain level in the hierarchy of sin to even see Vartan, known as the Diplomat to law breakers and police officials alike.

Until I was fifteen I called him Uncle Harry because he had been a close aide to my father when my father was a union organizer and Vartan was, too. The unions brought Tolstoy McGill to revolution and the violent overthrow of the capitalist dogs, while Vartan took the organized-crime route that labor sometimes offered.

Though they had taken different paths to their damnations, both men had one overarching philosophy in common: they saw all men’s deeds as acts of fate and therefore were never plagued by guilt or remorse.

A man’s actions are defined by history, my father had told me a hundred times before he went off to be swallowed whole by the Struggle. Men are bullets shot from an unpredictable and inexhaustible Gatling gun. You may not be able to foresee where they’ll end up, but they are always on their way there.

“You’re looking fit, Leonid,” Vartan said with half a smile, the most he ever gave.

“Have a seat,” I replied.

Mardi exited and Vartan sat, crossing his legs and sitting back like a southern European on a New York vacation.

In actuality Harris lived in Chicago. From there he ran a syndicate the size of which Al Capone couldn’t have even imagined.

“How’s business?” he asked.

“Just took on a new client.”

“Still on the up-and-up?”

“More like the up-and-down,” I said, “but, yeah, I’m trying to keep it legal.”

“Really? It has been mentioned that you have developed a relationship with a man named Hush.”

“What is it you want, Mr. Vartan?”

“You used to call me Uncle.”

I shrugged.

Vartan waited a moment, to see if I’d show some heart — but he knew better.

“I came here to ask you to find a man for me,” he said. “A man named William Williams, a former associate.”

“Why me?”

“New York was his last address, and you’re known to me.”

I took a moment to pretend to consider his request. Then I said, “I will not, under any circumstances, work for you, Mr. Vartan. Not for any amount of money.”

“I wasn’t intending to pay you,” he said. “I thought that you would do it as a favor for an old friend of the family.”

“No reason for us to mince words here,” I said. “I’m out of the life, and that means I won’t go back even if someone as dangerous and powerful as you tries to make me.”

Vartan sat back so comfortably you might have thought he was at home in his den, sitting in his favorite chair. He held his hands palms up and raised his eyebrows.

“I respect your decision, Lenny,” he said, using a nickname that only he dared use. “But this request has nothing to do with my business or anything illegal that I am aware of. This man is an old friend from my youth. I promised someone that I’d find him — for friendship, not business.”

I had never known Vartan to out-and-out lie. His trade was solving problems, not deception.

“And if you do me this service I will be in your debt,” he added.

I’d burned quite a few bridges in the past few months. A friend of Vartan’s stature would certainly come in handy.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with your business?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“There’s no crime, no vengeance involved?”

“Correct.”

“Your word?”

“If you need it, it’s yours.”

“I’ll think about it and call you tomorrow. Just give me a number.”

“I’ll call you.”

I gave him as hard a stare as a gnat can give a lion and then nodded, accepting his terms.

“Have you been up to your mother’s grave lately?” he asked.

“Why?”

“It’s just a question, Lenny.”

“There’s questions I could ask you, too, Uncle Harry,” I said. “Questions just as tough.”

Instead of continuing, the Diplomat stood up and went to the door.

“I can see myself out,” he said.

That was fine by me.