When the Thrill Is Gone

8

I felt as if I were at an audition where a scene was being reenacted by successive thespians going out for the same role. The new aspirant shook hands with me before going to the chair that the previous actor sat in.

Cyril Tyler, if this was indeed Cyril Tyler, had a fleshy and moist handshake. He went around the big brown hippopotamus and sat, moving with exaggerated gestures as if he were a much larger man. This more than anything inclined me toward believing that he was who he said.

I returned to my branded chair, put my elbows back on its arms, and made that big fist with my hands.

“How can I help you, Mr. McGill?” he whispered.

I could barely hear him but resisted the temptation to lean forward.

“Come again?” I said loudly.

He smiled and then gave a slight grin.

“How can I help you?” he repeated only slightly louder than before.

I smiled and nodded, not for him but for myself. The reason I was in this dissembling profession was that I lied as much as my clients, not to mention the subjects of my investigations. I couldn’t trust them, but they couldn’t trust me, either — whether they knew it or not.

And my lying was always the best. I could tell you something that was ninety-nine percent truth, but the way I told it would be completely misleading.

“A woman came to my office this afternoon, Mr. Tyler. She said her name was Chrystal Chambers-Tyler and—”

“Chrystal?” he said, at a perfectly normal volume.

I nodded and continued. “She said that she wanted me to work for her. It seems she’s missing a valuable piece of jewelry and is afraid to tell you about it.”

“Afraid? I don’t understand,” he said, his eyes darting around the room as if there was some strange sound coming from behind the brown walls.

“I didn’t either,” I said. “She was obviously a rich and successful woman, the wife of a very wealthy man. Why would she be worried over a necklace that cost less than a million dollars?”

Tyler stood up — unconsciously, I thought.

“Where is she, Mr. McGill? And what do you mean, ‘afraid’? What did she say about me? About us? What was she wearing?”

There was nothing commanding or dominant about the billionaire. He wasn’t far from fifty but looked younger. There was something boyish about him that the years had not worn away. Tyler was the classic milksop who happens to be a billionaire but reads adventure stories so that he can imagine himself a hero in a world where deeds and not money mattered.

I liked him.

“An off-white dress and a gold chain with a single pearl,” I said, remembering the picture Bug’s program showed me. “She said that the missing necklace could be the last straw on the back of an already strained relationship. That’s a quote.”

“What strain? There’s nothing wrong between us.”

My lie was gaining momentum.

Even though I liked the man, I had no desire to let him get ahead of me. I took in a breath through my nostrils and held it three times as long as normal. I did this because I was beginning to lose myself to a feeling more dangerous than anger. I was becoming distracted by the puzzle of the man and woman, and maybe the woman and man pretending to be them.

“You know women, Mr. Tyler,” I said. “They get squirrelly at the strangest moments. Maybe she’s worried about you kicking her out if she lost something so valuable...”

“Never.”

“Or maybe,” I surmised, “maybe she’s knows what’s happened to the necklace and is afraid of what will happen when you find out.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There might be a lover involved.”

“No. No. Never.” He sat down again. “And even if there was, she could still come to me.”

I gave him a skeptical look.

“You don’t understand, Mr. McGill. Chrystal is my life. I’d be lost without her.”

“That may well be,” I conceded, “but life and love are often more complex than they at first seem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“People often react to fears that are in their minds and not the real world around them. They are reacting to the ways that they were raised, and maybe... abused.”

“Chrystal had a perfectly normal childhood,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that there was,” I said. “But it is possible that she feels guilty and has put that guilt on you.”

“That’s ridiculous. I love her,” he said, and I almost believed it. “I would never do anything to cause her pain.”

“Be that as it may,” I said quoting a phrase my father used again and again in my radical homeschooling. “This woman did come to me, and she told me what I’m telling you.”

“Where is she?” he demanded. “I need to talk to her myself.”

“She told me that you might ask that question. She said that you’d offer me money to reveal her whereabouts and therefore she would not tell me where she was staying or how to get in touch. She said that she’d call me to find out what I had learned.”

“Why did she think you’d talk to me if you were hired to look for the necklace?” he asked. He might have been weak but he was not a stupid man.

“She was worried that I would come to you for a better paycheck. She said that keeping her location a secret would assure my... fidelity.”

“But you could find her for me,” he insinuated.

“Probably. But I won’t.”

“Then why come to me? Why don’t you do what she hired you to do?”

“I believe that she hired me to save her marriage,” I said. “I also think that she’s confused about the necklace. She gave me a lead or two, but those seemed to be dead ends. The best way to solve the problems, as I interpreted them, was to come here and lay out the scenario for you.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said. “What use can you be if she doesn’t trust me?”

“I’ve met with you. I can tell her that. I can say that I confronted you about the necklace. Maybe that will convince her to come clean.”

“You think that she’s lying to you?”

“No one tells the whole truth,” I said, “even to a stranger.”

“I’ll pay you a hundred thousand dollars to find her, Mr. McGill.”

For a few seconds there my mind went as pink as the hallway walls outside the shit-brown door.

I had to clear my throat before saying, “No.”

“Why not?”

“You aren’t my client.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“Is her ruby and emerald necklace missing?”

“I don’t keep track of her belongings.”

“Is she missing?”

He paused before answering, “For six days now.”

I unlaced my hands and used them against the chair’s arms to sit up straight.

“It would be a definite conflict of interest to allow you to pay me to betray her whereabouts to you,” I said. “But... but I would take ten thousand to deliver a message.”

“A message?”

“Anything you want me to tell her... or maybe a note.”

Cyril Tyler’s face hid nothing. He was confused and worried, hopeful, even though he suspected that I wasn’t being completely honest.

“I need her, Mr. McGill,” he said. “Things have been strained lately, but it has nothing to do with our relationship, with her.”

“Maybe you’re the one having the affair,” I said. “Maybe that’s what drove her to make her own mistakes.”

“Me? An affair? Never.”

“I want to help you but I’m working for your wife,” I said, telling two lies in one sentence. “I’ll deliver a note for ten thousand. Take it or leave it.”

“Will you take a check?”

“No.”

He sighed and stood, walked to the door I’d entered through, and passed out into the riotous gallery/hallway.

After he was gone, I let my eyes nearly close and counted breaths until he returned, maybe ten minutes later. He handed me a white envelope, sealed, and a stack of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

“I expect something from this,” he said.

“I’ll deliver the note. That’s all I can promise. Do you have anything else to tell me?”

“Like what?”

“Like why she left? Maybe... what she might be afraid of?”

“It’s not of me, if that’s what you’re saying. I love Chrystal.”

“I love hamburger,” I said. “But when lunch is over the sandwich is gone.”

“Chrystal is not a plate of food.”

We parted in the brown library. I walked past Chrystal’s paintings and into the glass office, which was now empty. I ambled across the lawn to the private elevator, then down the empty floor to the other.

The light-brown doorman ignored me as I passed out into the street.

Two blocks away I tore open the envelope and read the poorly scrawled note. Chrystal, I love you and would never be upset about anything having to do with your actions or oversights.

I was amazed at the legal quality of the message, but that didn’t matter. I’m not an editor or a life coach. My job is, has always been, to take money from people either to assuage their fears or to fan the flames of their rage.

And there are worse elements to my profession.