When the Thrill Is Gone Read Online Free PDF Page B

I was losing the grip on my temper. And, as any fighter can tell you, while you have to stay hot in a fight, you can’t let yourself burn out of control.
    “Take the elevator to floor nineteen,” the doorman said, breaking into my reverie. “Turn left when you get out, walk down the hall to the other car, and take that up one floor.”
    “That’s one more floor than you got,” I said.
    Big Red’s reply was to step aside and allow me entrée.
     
     
    WHEN I GOT into the tiny vestibule-lift the button for nineteen was already lit. This gave me the impression that not just anyone was allowed access to the top floor. I rode up without interruption and emerged into a hallway of apartments with doorways but no doors; no furniture or ornaments or tenants either. It was a floor full of vacancies in a neighborhood where the rent on a one-bedroom ranged from three to five thousand dollars a month.
    Fake-Chrystal wasn’t lying when she sneered about Tyler’s wealth.
    The light-green paint on the second set of elevator doors was cracked and peeling in places. Underneath, the metal was beginning to rust. This reminded me of Real-Chrystal’s steel canvases.
    There was no button but the doors opened for me when I arrived and closed after I got in. The trip upward was little more than the distance between the floor and ceiling and when the doors came open I found myself standing at the edge of a broad, bright-green suburban lawn.
    One the other side of this verdant expanse was an oversized ranch-style house with a glassed-in porch and a red-brick chimney.
    “Mr. McGill?” The voice came from my right.
    The young man was slender and would only be called African-American by an American with a fixation on race. His skin was lighter than many a Mediterranean and his hair was curly but light brown. His features marked him as one of my people: broad nose and generous lips. His expression told me, however, that we had nothing in common.
    “My name is Phil,” he said, somehow making even this bland statement condescending. “You’re here to see Mr. Pelham?”
    I took a moment before answering, my momentary silence a reply to his attitude.
    Phil was wearing a pale lavender suit and gave off the scent of violets. I wondered what he might smell like if the suit was strawberry red.
    “My appointment is with Mr. Tyler,” I said at last.
    “Come with me,” Phil replied as he turned and made his way across the lush lawn.
    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