When the Thrill Is Gone

52

I walked into the fourth-floor apartment on Thirty-first Street for the first time. It was a small two-bedroom with bare, pitted oak floors and smudged, unadorned walls. I moved quickly down the tiny foyer, turning the corner into the living room. The only furniture there was a heavy walnut desk and chair set against a window. A big black phone sat on the desk, and blondish-green Venetian blinds were pulled down over the window behind it. To the left there was a closet door. I dragged the heavy desk across the floor until it was away from the window and facing the closet.

“Home again, home again, jiggety jig,” I said aloud before sitting in the chair on the right side of the desk.

I took in a deep breath and entered a number on the phone.

“Hello?” Chrystal Chambers-Tyler said, answering on the second ring.

“Hold on,” I said.

I pressed a button and entered another number.

I didn’t even hear the ring before Cyril Tyler answered, “Chrystal?”

“Cyril?” she said.

I could hear them both without the aid of the receiver because the loudspeaker was automatically engaged.

“How are you?” the creampuff, maybe killer, asked.

“How are you?”

“I miss you, Chris.”

“Mr. McGill told me that you had cancer, that that’s why you were on the phone every night and why you lost weight.”

“I was afraid to tell you. Even after the chemo worked, I was scared to say the words.”

“I’m your wife, Cyril. We should be able to share our hard times.”

“I know, honey. Can I still be your baby boy?”

Cyril and Chrystal probably expected privacy on their call, maybe even deserved it, but I wasn’t going to sacrifice any opportunity to do my job for something as meaningless as civility.

I listened, without blushing, while the estranged couple talked about what they’d been going through in their solitudes. Less like lovers and more like lifelong friends, they sounded silly and childish. But for three dead women it might have seemed charming.

I was still carrying around William Williams’ satchel and took out one of the largest books — Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Napoleon from their eleven-volume masterpiece, The Story of Civilization. So while the lovers, one of whom might have been a bona fide serial killer, whispered silly nothings to each other, I read about France.

I had no idea that in 1780, France was the most populous nation in all Europe, including Russia; that Paris was the largest city, with the most-educated populace. My father had taught me a lot about the French Revolution, but he took a definite Marxist slant that left out all the romance and pedestrian contradictions.

In the background, Cyril and Chrystal chattered on about places they’d gone and things that had gone wrong. He apologized, and she held back forgiveness.

And then a chill. Not a lowering of the temperature of the room, which was pretty warm on that summer’s eve, but a breeze that shouldn’t have been. I cut off the loudspeaker with a finger and looked up.

Instead of green he now wore all black, and he looked all of his forty years, but this was still Fledermaus, the Artful Dodger, community friend of the East Side commune where Shawna Chambers met her end.

“Bisbe?” I said and he smiled. Grinned actually.

The gun was in my pocket and my hands were on the desk.

I wondered.

“You’re like the little boy who runs after bumblebees every day for the whole summer,” he said in a dreamy voice. “Finally, one day just before the fall, you catch one in your little hand, more because the bee made a mistake than you did something amazing, but now you got an angry stinger up against your flesh.”

Instantaneously a knife appeared in Bisbe’s hand. It was like some kind of magic trick. His speed and the fevered intensity in his eyes reminded me of a fighter I once battled, a skinny middleweight named Joe Dudd. I should have been able to beat Joe into early submission, but he was insane, living on a whole other level of violence. After only four rounds he had me on my knees, unable to rise.

I looked at a spot on the floor midway between the entrance, where Bisbe stood, and the desk where I sat. I knew that once Bisbe crossed that line I’d be either lucky or dead.

In order to get to my pistol I’d have to pull my hand back and plunge it into the pocket, pull out the gun without it snagging on the fabric, aim, and fire before my throat was cut. Either that or somehow evade his first lunge and grab him. From his speed, I doubted I could complete either maneuver.

Bisbe took a step.

I kept my eyes on his chest to keep him from guessing my real strategy.

He took another step, crossing the line of my unavoidable demise.

I made to rise.

“Stop!” Johnny Nightly, the arrogant fool, said.

Bisbe turned with amazing quickness. I grabbed at my pocket. Johnny fired his silenced gun, but not before Bisbe threw his knife. Johnny grunted and fell back into the closet from where he came. Bisbe was struck in the middle of his chest with a soft-nosed bullet. He should have been dead but wasn’t.

Out of reflex I hurried to Bisbe’s side. I checked him for weapons while he stared, amazed, at the ceiling. There was nothing — no gun or even a backup blade. He was as much a fool as Johnny.

The pool hall killer lay on his back, half in and half out of the closet. Luckily Bisbe missed by two or three inches and got Johnny just below the left shoulder. His lungs and heart were okay. I didn’t pull the knife out but tore off Johnny’s shirt to expose the wound and for him to use as a bandage.

“I told you not to give him a chance,” I said.

“I never imagined anybody movin’ that fast,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry, LT.”

“He didn’t perforate me,” I said, pressing around the wound.

Bisbe moaned.

I put Johnny’s hand on the makeshift bandage and said, “Can you hold on to this for a minute?”

“Do what you gotta do,” he said.

Bisbe was trying to rise but the wound in his chest was final. He was never getting up again.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

“Can I do anything?” I asked.

The question seemed to give the killer and idea.

“Forgive me.”

“For what?”

“I killed people,” he said. “Men and women. Kids, too. If somebody got in the way or they were too close. I, I, I see now, right now, it was all wrong. I had no right...”

He coughed and blood came up out of his lungs. He swallowed as if this were just some minor impediment.

He said, “I never even once worried or thought about who I killed. I just did it like Mama used to do chickens and Daddy did hogs. I never cared, but now I feel it, that it was wrong. I feel it.

“Forgive me.” He grabbed my forearm with surprising strength.

“I forgive you.” What else could I say? “But you know that confession frees the soul. Maybe you could help me.”

“How?” he asked. His eyes were looking beyond me into an empty future.

“Who paid you to kill Chrystal?”

Bisbe chose that moment to die. His last breath butted up against my face and the aspect of life fled.

I waited a moment to give the proper gravity to his passing and then I returned to Johnny Nightly.

“Sorry about this, Johnny.”

“You told me how dangerous he was and I didn’t listen,” Johnny said. “The more fool me.”