When the Thrill Is Gone

50

Even with dropping the locket off at my neighborhood locksmith I still made it to the Harvell Club by two p.m.

“Good afternoon, Mr. McGill,” the young Korean receptionist said.

She was wearing white. All the employees of the club dressed in white. The walls on each floor were a different hue. The entrance, for instance, was all red, fire-engine bright, and loud. The fourth-floor library, where they served cognac, was sky blue from the ceiling to the floor. You had to look out of the window and down on the street if you wanted variety, either that or bring in a color wheel under your coat.

“Hi, Jeanie,” I said. “I have a guest coming in later on. He’ll be asking for a Beat Murdoch, that’s me.”

Jeanie had a long face that managed to exude beauty without being pretty; the kind of face that told you to put up or shut up. She smiled briefly and nodded. Members paid a lot of money to be idiosyncratic. I was who I said I was, and that was that.

There was a phone booth on the library floor. I used it to call Aura’s cell.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“What phone is this?” she asked. “It came up all sevens.”

“Harvell Club.”

“Oh.”

“Did you get the phone turned on in that apartment?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t use your name, right?”

“As far as they know Jasper Real Estate wants that line.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes,” she said, barely perturbed. “Do you want the number?”

“Can we get together for dinner tomorrow?” I asked, in some way hoping for another day.

“Maybe we should let things cool down for a while.”

I let those words settle for a moment and then said, “Let me have the number.”

I should have been happy that Aura was jealous of Chrystal. After all, that meant she wanted something, that she hadn’t stopped feeling for me. But that was weak consolation. This being the case, it was hard for me to ask the next question.

“Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

“May I, um, speak to Chrystal?”

There came a few seconds of muffled silence and then, “Hello? Mr. McGill?”

“Do you trust your husband?”

“I want to.”

“I don’t see how what happened to your sister happened without his involvement. Shawna sent your brother to try and get money out of him, I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Where’s Tally? I’ve tried his cell phone but it just goes to voicemail.”

“He’s sick, jaundice. They got him in a hospital in the Bronx.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I really don’t know. I’ll be happy to take you to him, but first I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I’m going to call you this evening...”

The next call rang once before it was answered.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Tyler.”

“Mr. McGill.”

“Chrystal has agreed to talk to you.”

“Where is she?”

“It’s not that easy. You got two dead wives and her sister was murdered. She’s going to call you sometime this evening.”

“When?”

“When she calls.” I liked giving powerful men a hard time. But it also made sense to keep him off balance. If he was the bad man I suspected, he might make a mistake.

“Why should I trust you, Mr. McGill?”

“What does trust have to do with it? All you got to do is sit by your phone from six to midnight and wait for a call.”

I hung up on him. That felt good.

After that I went to a little alcove that allowed me a view of pretty much the whole library floor, including the elevator entrance, from a half-hidden vantage point behind a corner and a potted fern.

Usually I like lying in wait. That’s what detectives do, they sit and watch and wait. If you spend enough time in any one spot you begin to notice patterns. After mapping out the geometrical design of the activity of any room or street you start to see where the model breaks down. It is at this point that your job begins.

But that afternoon I was nervous, antsy. Not one connection in my life felt easy. My children and wife, Gordo and Aura, even my client didn’t fit in her proper place. There was a killer on the loose and I didn’t know what he looked like, nor was I certain about his relationship to the crime. Rather than setting a trap, I felt as if I were in hiding, afraid of some monstrous consequence to my helplessness and stupidity.

Such were my thoughts when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, the slender and yet elegant profile of my son.

Twill was wearing dark slacks and a light-green T-shirt. His shoes were also dark — fabric, not leather. He hadn’t taken the elevator. He’d probably charmed Jeanie into showing him the stairs. This maneuver would allow him to slip into the room and look around in much the same way that I might have.

I smiled because Twill was good, very good; but I was still better.

I watched him move around the periphery trying to suss out who might be the mysterious Beat Murdoch.

After moving forward with no real plan, Twill went to one of the small round pine tables in the center of the room and sat. From there he slowly and meticulously scanned the entire room. Toward the end of this intense study he came across my smiling face.

“Pops?” he mouthed.

I got up and sauntered over to his post.

Taking a seat, I said, “Hey, Twill, what are you doing here?”

“Meetin’ somebody. A friend. What about you?”

“Me too.”

“Who?”

I smiled and put my left palm down on the table.

“This shit is gonna have to stop, boy.”

“What?” he said, still looking for a way out.

“You know what I’m talking about. Those MetroCards.”

Twill bit the right side of his lower lip, squinted with that eye, and let his head tilt to the right. It was something like the reaction I used to get from an opponent after delivering a good left hook to the body.

“Damn, Pops,” he said. “How’d you get on to me?”

“Twill,” I said, “I love you, son. I would do anything to protect you, even from yourself. But you got to straighten up. I’m not gonna be around forever.”

Twill sat back and shook his head. I was the only person in the world who could still amaze him.

“What did you think you were doing?” I asked.

“Poor people need to ride the rails, Pop,” he said. “It’s not like I’m takin’ all that much, and I’m providing a service for them that’s under the poverty line. I see this more like a political statement than anything else.”

“A political statement?”

“Yeah. Like Joe Stalin. You know, he was a bank robber before he became the king’a Russia.”

The events and characters of the past are never in control of their own historical commentary, I remembered my father once saying.

I laughed — way too loudly for that particular room.

“Son,” I said.

“Yeah, Pops?”

“Please.”

“What?”

“I need you to take a period of four years to be guided by me. Four years where you take my lead and don’t break any laws without conferring with me first. It’ll be like a college education, with the exception that you’ll be the only student in your class.”

“How does that work?”

“I don’t know. I don’t, but I’ll figure out something.”

“Okay, Pops. I’ll wait for your lead.”

“You have to give up this counterfeiting business now.”

“Okay,” he said as easily as if I had asked him to pass the gravy.

“What about your partners?”

“I did the whole thing online. They don’t know who I am — or at least they don’t know that they know. I’ll just say I’m turning the business over to them. I got the read/write stripe machine and Internet interface in a basement in Queens.”

I ordered a cognac and Twill had green tea. We talked for a while longer. I promised to hold the money he’d made thus far and he accepted my custodianship. He told me again that he didn’t see what was wrong with what he was doing and I told him to believe in me for the time being.

When I suggested that it was time to leave he got a little cagey and said, “Let me go out there first, Pops. Gimme five minutes and then you go.”

“Why?”

“I got these four dudes out there layin’ for Beat Murdoch. You know, with guns an’ shit.”