When the Thrill Is Gone (15 page)

“Maybe not,” I told the security man. “Hello,” I said into the phone.

“There’s a couple’a guys here hasslin’ Iran,” the elderly Firpo said.

“I’ll be right there.”

GORDO’S GYM WAS six blocks from my office. A cab would have taken too long, so I ran. Really, full-out ran. I bumped into people, veered into traffic, ran against red lights, huffing heavily as I went. I didn’t stop at the front door, either. I took the stairs two and three steps at a time until I was closing in on the fifth floor.

There I found two men dragging a slightly bloodied Iran Shelfly into the stairwell. The young ex-con wore the same clothes he’d been in the last time I saw him. The men were dressed in dark clothes that were not business attire or blue collar—more like thugland leisure wear. They were coming onto the landing while I was still two strides down. There was no time to get fancy or even try to fight. Iran was a good scrapper and they had obviously bested him.

So I reached into my pocket and came out with the revolver.

The two towering white men noticed the gun. They paid extra-close attention when I cocked the hammer.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking that I needed to get to my calm place, that my violence was escalating at an alarming rate.

But the gun was out, so I had to go with the script as it was being written.

“Do I have to say any more?” I asked the man who was right there in front of me.

The ugly white man smirked. He moved as if he were going to take a step down.

“Gorman,” the other guy, who was standing behind Iran, said. “That’s LT McGill.”

Gorman’s eyes shifted, reflecting the knowledge that he was far too close to death.

“This ain’t none’a your business, McGill,” he said.

“Get the fuck outta here or make your move, man.” I’ve found that bad dialogue often accompanies stupid situations.

The standoff was no more than twenty seconds old, but it felt as if I had enough time to recite the Book of Genesis.

The guy behind Iran put up his hands and moved to the wall. I backed my way up around them, my gun leveled at Gorman’s chest.

“This is a mistake,” the headman said.

“Yours,” I agreed.

The toady started down the stairs, leaving Gorman alone with Iran and me. Even without a gun we could hurt him.

Realizing his untenable situation, the one named Gorman took a step down, hesitated, and then took another.

“I’ll be seeing you around, Iran,” he said before turning his back and picking up speed.

24

“LEAN YOUR HEAD back, boy,” Firpo—the tuba-playing, mopwielding, sometimes cut man—commanded.

Iran was seated in Gordo’s office chair while Firpo ministered to the wound over his left eye.

Firpo was small and wiry, with shiny black skin and eyes that see without looking. He had a full head of hair with less gray than one would have expected of his advanced years.

“I coulda taken ’em if I saw ’em comin’,” the younger man complained.

I was standing guard over them, the .41 in my hand.

“If a man sees a club swingin’ at ’im, he duck and run,” Firpo said, dismissing the young man’s bravado.

“I coulda taken ’em,” Iran repeated.

“Put your head back.”

In an odd way I appreciated this disruption of my case. The rough-and-tumble of brutish men and their misplaced confidence is just the kind of forum for my talents. Figuring out who’s who among siblings and billionaires was challenging, if not out of my league completely. Lost children and their murdered mother set off an echo in my heart like a depth charge dropped on a submarine that ran silent but got found out anyway.

“Lay back, Iran,” I said. “We got to get outta here before your friends decide to find some balls.”

THERE WAS a back stairwell that led to a blocked-off alleyway. Across the alley was the door to an office building on Thirty-fifth Street. I had the only key to that door because I’d changed the lock for Gordo some months before; insurance policies aren’t all paper and ink.

We made our way to the street and I gave Firpo a twenty to get home.

“I’ll call you when we open the gym again,” I told him.

“I need that job, LT,” he said.

“You’ll keep getting a check while this shit works out.”

IRAN AND I headed toward my office from there.

“I coulda taken ’em,” Iran said again as we entered the Tesla’s elevator.

“So what?”

“Huh?”

“So what if you coulda? So what difference does that make? The fact is they got you. The fact is, if Firpo didn’t call and I didn’t come, your ass would be dumped in some alley and roaches would be crawlin’ in your mouth.”

“Say what?” Iran challenged. He needed to fight.

“Those men were gonna jack you up, Eye. There’s no lie to that.”

“But—”

“Tell me sumpin’, boy.”

“Wha?”

“If I was your trainer and sent you out against an opponent, a skinny little dude no one ever heard of before, and the first thing he does is throw a wild punch that sets you down for the ten count. If that happened, what would you say to me?”

The dawning of truth on the younger man’s face was a comfort to me. Just the idea that someone, somewhere, could learn even just a single line of truth meant that there was hope.

“Yeah,” he said. “I get you.”

The doors slid open and we headed down toward what might very well have been a whole new set of problems.

CARSON KITTERIDGE was seated across the desk from Mardi, chatting happily, when Iran and I walked in. Carson stood up immediately because, in spite of any familiarity between us, we were, in the end, enemies—and you get on your feet when an enemy walks into the room.

We’re the same height, more or less, both of us under five six, at any rate. He’s balder than I am, and that’s where the similarities end. Carson is a white man, pale. He’s a featherweight where I’m a light-heavy. His eyes are the color of an overcast sky on a bright day. His suit and tie were machine washable, not the only indication that he was unmarried.

“Lieutenant,” I said.

Mardi rose behind him.

“Mr. Shelfly,” the cop said. “You been in a fight?”

“I work in a boxin’ gym, man. Of course I been in a fight. You should see the other guy.”

“Have a seat, Iran,” I said. “Get him whatever he needs to keep up his strength, Mardi. Boxer gets hit that hard, might need some coffee or something.

“Lieutenant,” I said then, “shall we go back into my office?”

WALKING DOWN the long aisle of empty cubicles, followed by the detective whose primary job it was to see me in the dock, charged with a raft of felonies, I felt at ease. Life is nothing without its challenges and only the dead are truly peaceful.

“I could tell that boy how he got convicted,” Carson suggested before we’d gotten half the way to my office.

I stopped and turned to face his threat.

“That’s the way you wanna play, we don’t have to go any further than right here,” I said.

“What?” he said. I think he was truly surprised at my anger.

“My father always told me that there’s a line you need to have that people can’t cross. I might one day be your prisoner, Lieutenant, but I will not be your bitch.”

The policeman stared at me. It was the look that had broken down many a confident thug.

“What’s with you, LT?”

“You want to drag me downtown? I can call my lawyer right now.”

“Who’s talkin’ about arrest?”

“If you want to go tell Iran some fancy guesses you got, then get on with it.”

Kitteridge put up his hands in false surrender. This reminded me of the man called Fledermaus: an emerald piece in an otherwise black-and-white jigsaw puzzle.

“I’m sorry,” the cop said. “Let’s start over. I’m here to tell you something—something you want to know.”

I turned back, leading the way to my office and wondering how long a man with my kind of temper could survive. By any sane reckoning I should already be dead and buried.

This realization in itself made me a survivor. Maybe I could start my own reality TV show. I smiled as we entered my office.

“Have a seat, Lieutenant.”

I got behind my desk while he sat down and crossed one leg over the other. The lines between us had been drawn years before. We were no longer the same men we were when we met, but we were still fighting the same war.

“A complaint has come in on you, LT,” my nemesis said, his hazy eyes reflecting a faraway, hidden sun.

“What kinda complaint?”

“Cyril Tyler says that you forced him to hire you by making accusations about his wife that he now knows are false.”

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the visitor’s chair.

I just sat there, blinking like a suburban housewife whose insurance-salesman husband just brought home a two-hundredpound dead stag and threw it down on the dining room table.

“So you just waltz in here and warn me about an active police investigation?”

“I owe you a favor,” he said with a pout and a shrug.

“Uh-uh, no. You too much of a cop for that. You might tell the other cops I’m no good for this, but that wouldn’t extend to you warnin’ me. No. Not the Carson Kitteridge I know.”

“Maybe I’ve changed,” he said, unable to hide his smirk.

“More likely the pope became a Unitarian—and married his sister.”

The cop squinted. This was a bad sign—for somebody. The good lieutenant was one of the smartest cops the NYPD had to offer. He was also honest to a fault. That was bad news to evildoers like myself. If Carson was on your tail, you were bound to go down, sooner or later—bound to.

“Look, LT,” he said, all pretense and banter gone. “This Tyler has two dead wives in his wake. One, a New Yorker, fell off a boat in Florida, and the other was murdered by a crazed homeless man who somehow miraculously avoided capture. I was thinking that the information you had might get me closer to understanding these deaths.”

“I did not extort the man,” I said. “I told him that a woman claiming to be his wife had come to me afraid that he might intend her harm. He said he wanted me to bring him to her. I said that that would break client confidentiality. He offered me money to deliver a message. I took his money.”

“What was the message?”

“You’ll have to ask him that question.”

“Did you deliver it?”

“Not as of yet.”

“You need me on this, LT. I’m sure that this woman really is in danger.”

“That might be true, but have you ever known me to take the easy road?” I stood up then. “I think it’s time I got back to my business, Lieutenant. If I come across something that’ll help you with these killings I promise I’ll give you a ring.”

He stayed in his chair another dozen seconds and then rose, slowly.

“Don’t take too long,” he said. “All Tyler has to do is raise his voice and you will be thrown down into a hole that even Alphonse Rinaldo can’t dig you out of.”

25

WHEN THE GOOD LIEUTENANT left I pulled open the bottom drawer of my desk and fiddled with the controls until the four monitors there showed him passing down the aisleway, and then through Mardi’s office. I didn’t have to watch him. Kitteridge was a straight arrow. He wouldn’t perform an illegal search or plant any bugs on the premises. When he brought me down it would be on the strength of his police work, not the devious ways of people like me.

Iran jumped up when the cop entered. I liked that. The kid knew how to act. Mardi smiled sweetly and nodded at some blandishment Carson uttered.

When he was gone from the offices I closed the drawer.

The words “Alphonse Rinaldo” reverberated in the room as if Carson was saying them over and over. Rinaldo was the most powerful man I had ever met; the self-styled Special Assistant to the City of New York had helped many times when I found myself in the rarefied atmosphere of billionaires and high-end politicos. But the downtown ringmaster had cut me off for doing a private job too well. Losing Rinaldo’s support was like blowing up the George Washington Bridge.

Oh well.

I got to my feet, a boxer to the end, and walked the same route that Kitteridge had just taken.

“IRAN,” I SAID and he stood up again. “There’s a row of eight desks and cubicles in here. Pick one and stay there until I come back or call.”

He stuck out his bottom lip and nodded.

“If Mardi needs anything, do what she asks,” I continued. “And, Mardi.”

“Yes, Mr. McGill?”

“If Iran wants to set himself up with a computer or something, you give him what you can.”

“Where you going, sir?” she asked.

“To make a mistake most likely.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m going to do a favor for a friend.”

CORINTHIA HIGHGATE LIVED in the slums of the Upper East Side. It wasn’t a ghetto, just a block of poorly maintained brownstones with tiny one-bedroom apartments and few running elevators. To the north and south, east and west there were fancy blocks where rich people traveled in upscale limos while on this street the denizens wore tattered sneakers and pulled rickety wheeled carts.

“Hello?” she said through the crackling building intercom.

“Miss Highgate?”

“Yes?”

“This is Ambrose Thurman.”

“Who?”

“I called about William Williams.”

The lady took a moment for recollection.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh yes. You, you wanted his books.”

“I wanted to buy them from you,” I reminded her.

“Oh. How much were you willing to pay?”

“I’d have to see them first, ma’am.”

“Who are you again?”

“Bill’s nephew-in-law.”

“Yes . . . that’s right.”

The buzzer sounded and I strode up to the fourth floor, to 4C, where the buzzer board told me that C. Highgate lived.

“Hello?” she said to my knock.