Tyler’s building was the tallest for quite a few blocks and so no one nearby could guess at what was up there. If you were in the middle of that lawn, reclining on a chaise lounge, you could easily believe that you were in Westchester or Beverly Hills. It was Dorothy’s house dropped by some twister on that Manhattan rooftop.
Phil moved swiftly but I kept up with him. We got to the glass door of the veranda behind which was a perfectly proper office replete with a blond desk, dark-green filing cabinets, and a computer.
Next to the desk stood a man somewhere in his sixties who was defined in various shades of white: light-gray suit, off-white shirt, an opal ring on the baby finger of his left hand, and crystalline eyes that barely hinted at blue.
The man raised his ringless right hand and gestured for me to enter. At this sign Phil opened the door and waved me in.
From up close I could see that there was a scar, whiter than his skin, just above the boss man’s left cheekbone.
“Mr. McGill,” the white-on-white man said as a greeting. “My name is Arthur Pelham.”
“Interesting scar,” I said.
“Fell out of a canoe in some unexpected rapids,” he said. “That was back in my college days.”
“Oh?” I feigned. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Cambridge,” he said, and then, as an afterthought, “Massachusetts. Have a seat, Mr. McGill.”
There was a simple wooden folding chair there in front of his desk. He used the same style seating for himself. There was something I liked about that. I guess it was a little, barely conscious lesson learned from my father about the equality and simplicity possible in a modern life so filled with pretense and hierarchy.
I took my seat and Pelham did his. Phil closed the door behind me. I was neither in the house nor outside it. This realization made me smile.
“What can I do for you, Mr. McGill?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you here?”
“To see Cyril Tyler.”
“About what?”
“That’s private.”
“I’m his personal lawyer,” Pelham assured me.
I had no answer to this statement.
“Mr. McGill.”
“Yes, Mr. Pelham?”
“Why are you here?” His tone hardened just a bit.
“We’ve already completed that circuit of the merry-go-round,” I said.
“I am Cyril’s conduit to the world, Mr. McGill. Anyone wanting to speak to him has to go through me.”
“And here I am.”
“If you can’t give me a compelling reason why you should see Mr. Tyler, I will have to turn down your request.”
I stood up, reached into my back pocket, and produced my decades-old, fat, red-leather wallet. From this I took a business card that had my real name and number on it.
I placed the card on the edge of the white desk and smiled.
“You tell Mr. Tyler that if he ever wants to talk to me he can use the number on the card.”
I turned and almost took the first step.
“Hold on, Mr. McGill.”
“Yes?”
“We are not the kind of people that you can bully.”
I turned around to see that Pelham had also risen to his feet.
“We?” I asked.
“What do you want?”
“If I have to turn around again I’m walking all the way out of here,” I said. “If you want to stop me you’re welcome to try.”
My temper still needed tending.
Pelham tried to smile, failed at the attempt, and then said, “Take the door behind me. Walk down the hall in front of you until you get to a cream-colored door.”
7
IT WAS LIKE any hallway in any suburban ranch house—nearly. The ceiling was too low and the walls too close, like most American dwellings, but the hall was longer than usual. The rugs seemed to be composed of some kind of pale fur, and the claustrophobic walls were hot pink in color, accented by a lime-green trim.
Now and again, to this searing background a huge steel painting was secured. Up close you could see both the subtlety and the brutality of the work. They were informed predominantly by earth tones, like great rotting swamps made into human subjects by some capricious, primitive god. I liked the paintings and felt a certain kinship to the artist. I didn’t stop to appreciate Chrystal’s work, however. There were other pressing concerns on my mind.
Because I was having anger issues I tried to bring my thoughts to a calmer place in preparation for my meeting with a man who might be a murderer. There wasn’t time to do a walking meditation so I decided to think of someone who gave me the feeling of tranquility. I realized, or maybe re-realized, that there are few islands of serenity among my relations.
I thought of Twill, but was reminded of his bloated bank account lying there like a fat grub on dead flesh. There was Katrina, my wife of twenty-four years, who was having an affair with my other son’s school chum. Thinking of Katrina reminded me of my ex-girlfriend, Aura—I definitely didn’t want to think about her. Finally I achieved my quest for equilibrium by considering Harris Vartan. At least he was clear and stable. He was my Uncle Harry, asking for a simple favor from the son of a good friend.
As I came to the promised cream-colored door I decided I would find William Williams, just because the gangster was the only one I could think of who didn’t trouble me.
I knocked.
“Come on in,” a rough voice called from the other side. There was no discernible accent, but the words seemed to yearn for one.
I pushed open the door and came upon what I can only say was a shit-brown room. The curved lines of the huge mahogany desk made it seem like a dark hippopotamus squatting on the stained oak floor. The bookshelves behind the desk were planed from ebony wood and the books upon them were each specially bound in dark-brown leather and fitted in a case of the same hide and hue.
The man behind the desk had once been very tan, now not so much. His hair and eyes and suit were brown. He was rotund in a muscular way and, like the woman who came to my office earlier that day, he strongly resembled another.
“How can I help you, Mr. McGill?” the man asked.
“May I sit?”
I indicated with a gesture of my head a large-bottomed pine chair that might have looked white against all those deep browns if it had not been burned by dozens of different cattle-brands. These sigils and signs gave the chair a darker hue and made it seem almost alive.
“Suit yourself,” the second imposter told me.
The chair had wide arms for the elbows. I used them.
“Well?” the man asked.
The only color divorced from the brunette family was the fading blue sky filling the window behind him and to the left. I considered the relief of the atmosphere and said, “Well what?”
“How can I help you?”
“I don’t know. What do you suggest?”
“You’re the one who asked for this meeting,” he said, a slight twang making its way into the words.
“Not exactly,” I replied, appreciating the accuracy of the hazy phrase.
“Are you not the private investigator—Leonid Trotter McGill?”
The fact that he knew my middle name meant either that I had been inquired about or that Phil made a report as soon as he was out of earshot.
“I am,” I said.
“And did your secretary call to arrange a meeting with Cyril Tyler?”
“Zephyra, yes, she did.” Maybe the TCPA had given my whole name.
“Then how can I help you?”
“You can bring out the real Mr. Tyler and hang up this sham.”
The brown white man did not like me. His sudden glare was very clear on that fact.
I crossed my right leg over the left and sat back comfortably. It was a relief to be with someone else who had problems with anger management.
He stood up and for a moment I wondered, idly, if he might have a gun somewhere on hi
s person.
Instead of shooting me, the angry man with the subdued accent strode from the room, slamming the door behind him.
I remained seated, staring at the darkening blue sky. This was the respite I had needed. I took a deep breath and then let it go. I did that again and allowed my eyes to close. Solitude is a dear friend to anyone in my profession. Most people I meet I cannot trust, believe, or believe in. The only thing that separates the majority of the people I work for from the targets of my investigations is the fact that my clients pay for the privilege of my attention. There are few people I come across that I can bank on, or even feel friendly toward—and so, sitting alone, even in that unpleasant color scheme, was a balm for me.
After five or six minutes of breathing I got up to examine the odd books lined up like so many dominoes in their box. The first volume I cracked open was a pulp novel about some warrior woman named Zarra the Magnificent. The next book was one of the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I must have looked into a dozen of those cheap novels in expensive bindings. There was John Carter of Mars, Doc Savage, a volume in the Fu Manchu series, The Shadow, and other, less memorable, characters.
It must have cost thousands of dollars to rebind and case those worthless fifties reprints of the adventure magazines from the thirties. But what did that mean to a man who could dream of someone’s death and have it become reality?
There came a small sound like the sigh of a toy trumpet. I turned to my left to see that the plain brown wall had concealed a door that was now open. In that doorway stood a slender white man who looked very much like the rotund imposter and maybe a bit more like the chubby man in the photograph posing with the woman who looked like his wife.
“Mr. Tyler?” I asked.
The man hung back, not passing through the secret doorway immediately.
“Mr. McGill?”
“That’s right,” I said brightly.
He rested a finger on the door frame.
“I’ve been looking through your books,” I said. “I don’t think there’s another collection like this in the whole world.”
He brought his hands together and came through into the brown-on-brown-on-brown room.
“Have a seat, Mr. McGill,” he said. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”
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 s
he’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.”
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