The drive back to Manhattan didn’t take long. Angelique knew every shortcut. While she drove, I closed my eyes, counting breaths from one to ten and back again, attaining a fragment of bliss by the time the car stopped in front of the Tesla Building.
I’d breezed past the front desk and was halfway to the seventy-second floor when I finally looked at my cell phone. There was a text message from Mardi. cio it said. Client in office.
The peacefulness from the meditation was gone in an instant. My heart was thumping while my conscience kicked me in the butt.
For years I wanted a receptionist. I felt that if some innocent young woman was sitting at the front desk, greeting my clients, that I would no longer be a criminal but an upstanding citizen providing a service for John Q. Public. That fantasy was dashed by three simple letters — cio.
I banged my fist against the elevator doors, multiple times. When they finally slid open I ran down the hall, keys in hand.
I blundered into the room like a bison crashing a garden party only to find Mardi sitting behind her desk, tapping away at her keyboard. He was sitting on the wooden bench set there for clients, hands clasping a crossed knee.
I was nearly panting, wild-eyed.
“Hi, Mr. McGill,” Mardi said. “Mr. Peters has been waiting patiently.”
The last word was to tell me that everything was all right and I needn’t be worried about her safety. She could read me like a book — a very long tome containing a thousand and one tragedies penned in the blood of as many victims.
Mardi was wearing a simple dress made from a material the color of goldenrod. It might have been hand sewn — she was that kind of girl.
My hand was on the pistol in my pocket, there was a high whining sound in my ear, the room felt as if it were hurtling through space, and I stood there unable for the moment to move either forward or back. I was the condemned man waking from a dream in which he’d forgotten his death sentence, a fireman jarred to consciousness by a five-bell alarm.
Mr. Peters was wearing cowboy boots, brown jeans, a gaudy caballero shirt that wanted to be violet but settled back into tan, and a straw hat that seemed to be lacquered.
I hate cowboys, hate them.
“Mr. McGill?” Mardi asked when I refused to act like a normal human being.
I took in a deep breath through my nose.
“Huh?”
“Is anything wrong?”
I exhaled and took in another deep breath.
“Um,” I said on the long journey back to sanity.
I released the pistol and withdrew the hand from my pocket.
I blew out the last breath and said, “Isn’t it time for you to go on home, Mardi?”
She didn’t answer the question. I knew this was because I didn’t sound like myself yet. I had decided to bring my agitation into the conversation.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lamont,” I said. “Follow me.”
45
I led the way to the inner sanctum, toward my office. Lamont followed silently. After I’d seated him in a blue visitors’ chair, I settled behind the ebony desk and smiled. The blood in my brain was still thrumming.
“How you know my name?” he asked, the drawl a bit more evident than in our last conversation.
“Trade secret,” I said, hunching my shoulders and at the same time leaning back in the reclining office chair. “What can I do for the bastard half brother of Mr. Cyril Tyler?”
“I was born in Cincinnati,” he said, as if I had asked about his origins. “Moved to Texas when I was a kid, though. I worked as a cowboy outside’a Dallas, but I gave that up eight years ago to come to New York. Lookin’ for the easy life, I guess. You know, if you can make it in the rodeo, you can make it anywhere.”
There was an aspect of violence in Lamont’s words. I guess he expected me to be insulted by his putdown of my city, and afraid of his obvious physical superiority. You could see by the way he held himself that it was a foregone conclusion that I’d be intimidated by his natural force.
I wondered if his assumptions were based on anything other than bucking broncos.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“You told the faggot that you had information about Chrystal,” he said, another scattershot attempt to rile me. “Cyril sent me over to find out what you know.”
“Like they say in Hollywood,” I said, “I only speak to the talent.”
It took a moment for the meaning of my words to filter through to the cowboy’s understanding. I watched as his bland visage turned to something a bit more sour. He sneered, glanced at the door behind and to his right, and then turned back to me.
“You’ll talk to me,” he promised.
It was an admirable thing, the sinister turn Lamont was able to get into his words. I almost wanted to be scared. He was used to having the upper hand in situations like this, but I didn’t have time to dance with him.
The case was getting away from me. Every step I took toward conclusion got me further away from solution. The only thing I knew for certain was that three women were dead, that these women were either married to Cyril or pretending to be. I was pretty sure that Cyril hadn’t committed the killings himself, at least not all of them, and so there was a man out there who might have accomplished the assassinations — possibly a man named Bisbe.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Lamont,” I said. “Cyril Tyler has not told me that I should report to you.”
“You don’t have a choice, Mr. McGill.”
That was when my thoughts took what might have been considered a non sequitur detour. When I first moved into that suite I had my office completely soundproofed by a music studio professional. Walls, door, ceiling, and floor — even the windows were specialized two-ply for sound reduction.
“We always have a choice,” I said.
On top of the noise-reducing insulation, I had a dozen extra-large, extra-thick plastic bags in the small supply alcove to my right.
“So you tellin’ me that I have to climb over this here desk and beat the answer outta you?” the cowboy asked.
“I’m tellin’ you to cool your horseshoes and chill, my brother. All Cyril has to do is call me and I will tell him what I know.”
Boxing is a wonderful art. It teaches you to move inside of violence while keeping your wits about you and ignoring the potential for harm. You learn to love your enemy more than you would from any Christian sermon, because in the ring your enemy is always a clear reflection of yourself. Ira Lamont’s threat was no more than an opponent in the opposite corner, waiting for the bell. There I was, on my side, anticipating his attack, loving him.
I wanted a fight, but that wasn’t going to solve anything. I wasn’t a boxer but a detective. This wasn’t my battle, it was my dead client’s last request.
“I ain’t your nigger brother.” Ira Lamont was filled with epithets. He came from a place where language was an invitation to violence.
Not so me.
My problem was much more complex than some contest between combatants. What Ira desired was simple, straightforward. He wanted me to kneel before him, to declare him master, and give him the words I kept close. But my needs were convoluted. I had to have Ira go back to where he came from with his dignity intact but still wary of my power. That way he would feel that he could come at me with a chance of victory.
He was to me no more than a ball in play.
“Heavens,” I said, feeling that this was an appropriate response to his insult.
“Are you gonna talk to me?” he said with a note of finality to the twang.
“I don’t think so.”
Ira half-rose from his chair.