When the Thrill Is Gone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY

  LEONID McGILL MYSTERIES

  The Long Fall

  Known to Evil

  EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES

  Blonde Faith

  Cinnamon Kiss

  Little Scarlet

  Six Easy Pieces

  Bad Boy Brawly Brown

  A Little Yellow Dog

  Black Betty

  Gone Fishin’

  White Butterfly

  A Red Death

  Devil in a Blue Dress

  OTHER FICTION

  The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

  The Tempest Tales

  Diablerie

  Killing Johnny Fry

  The Man in My Basement

  Fear of the Dark

  Fortunate Son

  The Wave

  Fear Itself

  Futureland

  Fearless Jones

  Walkin’ the Dog

  Blue Light

  Always Outnumbered,

  Always Outgunned

  RL’s Dream

  47

  The Right Mistake

  NONFICTION

  This Year You Write Your Novel

  What Next: A Memoir

  Toward World Peace

  Life Out of Context

  Workin’ on the Chain Gang

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3,

  Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell

  Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-

  110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa)

  (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2011 by Walter Mosley

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mosley, Walter.

  When the thrill is gone/ Walter Mosley.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-50301-0

  1. McGill, Leonid (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—

  New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

  4. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563. O88456W45 2011

  2010039098

  813’.54—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or thirdparty websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Gary Phillips

  The tenor sax of the noir genre

  1

  SOMEWHERE BEYOND my line of sight a man groaned, pathetically. It sounded as if he had reached the end of his reserves and was now about to die.

  But I couldn’t stop to see what the problem was. I was too deep into the rhythm of working the hard belly of the speed bag. That air-filled leather bladder was hitting its suspension plate faster than any basketball the NBA could imagine. Nothing in the world is more harmonizing than hitting the speed bag at three in the afternoon when most other workers are sitting in cubicles, dreaming of retirement, praying for Saturday, or finding themselves crammed-in down underground on subway cars, hurtling toward destinations they never bargained for.

  Battling the speed bag, first with the heels of your gloved fists and then with a straight punch peppered in for variety, you hone the ability to go all the way, as far as you can; getting in close but never allowing the bag to slap you in the face. Then, after that hard leather sack is moving more rapidly than the eye can follow, your hips and thighs, neck and head begin to move quickly, unexpectedly, like water, unerring in its headlong rush over and around any obstacle, wearing down your imagined opponent with the inevitability of time.

  And, as any boxer can tell you, time is always running out.

  Anybody you get in the ring with you is bigger and stronger, the worst problem you evah had in your lazy life, Gordo would say when I was a young man, sweating hard and thinking that I might be a professional boxer one day. The only chance you got is to wear him down, them fists like pistons and your head a movin’ target. You use your skull and shoulders, stomach and spit, anything you can to keep him off balance. And the whole time your fists is at him, they don’t even know how to stop.

  “Give me four more.” The words came, and then a whining groan of agony.

  “I can’t,” the bodiless voice pleaded.

  “Four more!”

  The strain audible in the ensuing grunt sounded like a man vomiting up his guts.

  “My chest!” he cried. “It hurts!”

  “You won’t die,” the torturer promised. It was more like a pledge of vengeance than any assurance of survival.

  Without looking in their direction, I lowered my shuddering arms and headed for the showers. Pain is of no consequence in a gladiatorial gym; neither is blood or bruises, broken noses or concussions, unconsciousness, or even, now and then—death.

  OF LATE I had been taking three ice-cold showers a day. Only that restorative chill, along with working the speed bag and a daily counting of breaths, kept me from going crazy. At fifty-five, I found that as life went on, the problems mounted and their solutions only served to make things worse.

  I didn’t have a case at that moment, which meant that no money was coming in. When I did get a job, that just meant somebody was going to come to harm, one way or the other—maybe both. And even then I might not collect my detective’s fee.

  A good friend was dying in my eleventh-floor apartment. My wife was having an affair with a man half her age. And those were just the devils I knew.

  AFTER THE SHOWER I was so spent that it was all I could do to sit upright and naked on the little oak stool that had somehow made its way into the locker room. The groaning from the gym was constant as my muscles still quivered from the exertions of the midday workout session.

  Rising to my feet was an act of faith. I had the feeling of being the last man left standing after a lifelong battle in a meaningless war.

  THE CHUBBY, café au lait-colored young man was in the middle of failing at executing a sit-up. He looked like a giant drunken grub that had lost its sense of balance, writhing and then falling back with the impact of a heavy mattress on the concrete floor.

  “Three more and you’re through,” Iran Shelfly said.

  Tiny Bateman, dressed in a gray T-shirt and shiny aqua trunks, let his arms fall to the side looking to the world like a fat drunk lowered to the ground on the curb in front of his favorite bar. Above him stood a well-built copper-skinned yo
ung man with a shaved head and a perpetual grin on his lips. His mirth seemed more predatory than happy, but Iran was really trying to help Tiny out.

  “Three more,” Iran commanded.

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  Tiny sighed in relief.

  “He only been at it a half-hour, boss,” Iran complained.

  “Tomorrow he’ll make thirty-one minutes,” I said. “Isn’t that right, Bug?”

  I held out a hand and Tiny “Bug” Bateman grabbed for it twice before making contact. I pulled him to his feet and he genuflected, putting his hands on his knees, blowing hard.

  “Hit the showers, young man,” I said to him but it was all he could do to keep upright and gasp.

  So I turned to Iran.

  The thirty-two-year-old had on navy sweatpants and a white T-shirt that molded his well-defined physique like melted wax. This was the body that a stint in prison sculpted for you: either you were ready to kick ass or you got it kicked. He was five ten—four and half inches over me—and tense in spite of his lying grin.

  “How’s it goin’, Eye Ran,” I said, pronouncing the name as he did.

  “It’ll be eleven years before I put him in the ring,” the brightskinned young thief opined, “with a girl half his weight.”

  “I mean you. How you doin’?”

  “Gym’s goin’ great,” he said evasively. “Everybody’s paid up and keepin’ to Gordo’s routines. Somebody gimme shit, I pretend to call you. And me, personally, I’m keepin’ my head down like you said.”

  “Tell me if you have a problem,” I said, “in or out of the gym.”

  He gave me a quizzical look, crinkling his nose like a wolf wondering at the hint of a scent of something strange.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Why you wanna be helpin’ me, Mr. McGill?” Iran asked. He had to. Suspicion was the primary lesson that any halfway intelligent convict learned.

  A DECADE BEFORE, a man named Andrew Lodsman put on a ski mask and robbed a jewelry courier in Midtown at midday. The problem was Amy, an ex-girlfriend who hadn’t been an ex when he planned the rip-off. Amy talked to the cops and they were after Andy. The gems were marked with a laser imprint, invisible to the naked eye. And so Andy gave me a small one that I dropped into Iran’s sock drawer when he was down in Philly committing a robbery of his own.

  Someone made an anonymous call about the Philadelphia robbery and the cops found the three-caret diamond mixed in with the socks—among other things. Doubt was thrown on Andy’s involvement in the robbery and Iran was put away for two crimes—one which he did and the other he didn’t.

  That was a long time ago and I am no longer that kind of man. I was trying to make amends for my misdeeds by helping young Mr. Shelfly out. He was just one of a dozen private projects that I’d taken on.

  He didn’t know that I was the cause of his six-year incarceration. He didn’t need to know.

  The cell phone in my pocket vibrated and so I took it out rather than answer Iran’s question.

  ? Client IO was printed across the screen of my phone: possible client in office.

  I texted back 20, meaning that I’d make it there in that many minutes.

  “Just workin’ on my karma,” I said to Iran, feeling the pain of those words.

  He didn’t understand what I meant but he was superstitious enough to accept the words. In prison men learned first to be suspicious, then fearful, and finally respectful of a higher power.

  I STUCK MY HEAD in the showers before heading down to the street. Bug was standing under the water with one hand holding on to the nozzle above his head.

  “Is Zephyra worth all this pain?” I asked from far enough away not to get splashed.

  It took him half a minute to gather enough wind to say, “Anything.”

  THE BIGGEST ENEMY of the revolution, my crackpot Communist father used to say, is a man’s love for a woman. He will turn his back on his comrades in a heartbeat if that heart beats for some señorita with dark eyes and a sway to her butt.

  I chuckled all the way down the stairs to the street and then half the way to my office, headed for the question mark of a client waiting therein.

  2

  I PRESSED THE buzzer to my office on the seventy-second floor of the Tesla Building, the most exquisite example of Art Deco architecture in all New York. A loud click sounded and I pushed the door open, entering the reception area of the large suite.

  Mardi stood up from behind the big ash receptionist’s desk that had gone untenanted for most of my professional life. She usually stood when I came into the room, her way of showing deference and gratitude. Pale and slender, blue-eyed with ashblond hair, Mardi Bitterman was born to be my Passepartout. Her coral dress had a lot of gray to it, to tamp down the passionate under-layer of red. She wore no jewelry or makeup. What you saw was what you got.

  “Mr. McGill,” she said, “Mrs. Chrystal Tyler.”

  To my left, rising as I turned, was another, not quite so young, woman. This lady was brown like a shiny pecan and curvy, not to say voluptuous. Her hair was set in gaudy ringlets and the cheap silk of her dress was a carnival of blues and reds sprinkled over with flecks of confetti yellow. Her makeup was heavy but somehow not overdone. Her high heels and glossy leather purse were the same yellow as those flecks.

  In those heels she equaled my height. Our skins were the same hue, if not tone. She smiled, recognizing something in me, and held out her hand, knuckles up as if she expected me to kiss them.

  “So glad,” she said.

  I knew instantly that this was a lie.

  But I took that hand and shook it, saying, “Come on back into my office and we’ll talk.”

  As I ushered my potential client through the door, Mardi and I made eye contact. Her brows rose and she shrugged slightly. I smiled and gave her a wan wave of my hand.

  THE YOUNG WOMAN and I strolled down the long aisle of open and empty cubicles toward the door of my sanctum. I steered her in and got her settled into one of the two blue-and-chrome visitor’s chairs that sat before my extra wide ebony desk.

  I sat and fixed my eyes upon her.

  Chrystal Tyler was a handsome specimen—very much so. Her eyes had a delicate, almost Asiatic, slant to them, and her nostrils flared when she looked out of the broad window at my back.

  From that vantage point I knew that she was looking down the Hudson, all the way to where the World Trade Center used to stand.

  We both took a moment to appreciate our different views.

  “I need help, Mr. McGill.”

  “In what way, Mrs. Tyler?”

  She held up her left hand and twisted it at the wrist—a gesture of speculation or, maybe, pretend hesitation. I noticed that her nails were painted in three colors: blue at the base and red at the tip with slanting lines of gold separating the two.

  “It’s my husband,” she said. “Cyril.”

  She wore no wedding ring.

  “What about him?” I asked.

  She looked me in the eye and held my gaze long enough to make a normal man uncomfortable or maybe excited.

  “He’s havin’ an affair.”

  “How did you end up coming to me?” I asked. It was an honest question. Her clothes and makeup, nails and elocution presented a mystery in themselves.

  “I heard about you from a man named Norman Close,” she said.

  They called him No Man because of the way he’d introduce himself, swallowing the “r” when he spoke. No’man Close was a muscleman who rented out his fists and biceps for a daily rate. He would pummel and batter, intimidate and possibly even decimate for anyone who made his three-hundred-dollar nut. He was very good at what he did—until the day he ran into somebody better.

  “Norman Close is dead,” I said.

  “He wasn’t when he told me about you.”

  Chrystal might have been street, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “What is it you need from me?”

  “I already told you,” she said. “My husband’s havin’ an affair.”

  “What does this husband do?”