When the Thrill Is Gone by Walter Mosley Page B

she said, not as a correction but as a fond memory. “It’s been a long time. More than fifteen years certainly. More than that. He was such a nice man, your uncle.”
    “I hardly remember.”
    “How did you come across my name?” the disembodied, elderly voice asked.
    “I ran into an old friend of the family,” I said. “Harris Vartan. He said that he remembered Uncle Bill mentioning your name.”
    I’d agreed to do this job for Uncle Harry. Usually when anyone worked for the Diplomat of Crime they never spoke his name. But I wasn’t working for that man. I was doing a favor for an old family friend and so his name was not taboo or forbidden—at least it should not have been. If it was, then he was lying and Miss Highgate had the right to hang up in my ear.
    “Vartan, you say?” she asked.
    “Harris Vartan.”
    “I don’t know that name. Did he say I knew him?”
    “No, ma’am, not really. He just said that Uncle Bill knew you some time ago.”
    “It’s been years. What ever happened to him?”
    “I was hoping you could tell me that, Miss Highgate. Losing my mother three years ago, and now my stepfather, I felt like I should reach out to him.”
    “I wish I could help you, Mr. Thurman. I really do. Bill moved to New Jersey a long time ago and we lost touch. I don’t even have his number anymore. Anyway, I’m sure he moved from that address. I remember calling one day and a woman, I forget her name, said that he had gone away.”
    “That’s too bad,” I said. “Can you tell me anything else that might help me find him?”
    “No. All I know is how smart he was and that he’d laugh at the strangest things.”
    “Like what?”
    “One day we were walking through Central Park and a young woman asked him to sign a petition against cruelty to animals. Lee looked at her like he was surprised and then started laughing out loud. He kept saying over and over, ‘Cruelty ... to animals,’ like it was the punch line to a joke.”
    Odd, certainly, but no help.
    “Thank you very much, Miss Highgate. Maybe I could give you my number—”
    “Wait a minute,” she said, cutting me off. “I remember something, Mr. Thurman.”
    “What’s that, ma’am?”
    “Lee left a box of books with me. He said that he was going to come get them but he never did. You know, he used to read and reread those books over and over. I think that they were very important to him.”
    “What kind of books are they?”
    “I don’t know. Books about real things. I tried to read one once and I didn’t even know what it was saying.”
    “Is it in English?”
    “Oh yes. I knew the words but I didn’t know what they were saying.”
    “Would you like to sell me those books, Miss Highgate?” I suspected that she could use some cash.
    “I suppose so. You know I held on to them for so long because they were all I had left of Lee. But I guess he’s gone now . . . and you’re family.”
    She gave me her address and I promised to drop by the next afternoon.
     
     
    AFTER TALKING TO Miss Highgate I walked on, counting my breaths in Zen fashion. When my thoughts became tangible I found myself thinking about Shawna and her mother’s description: a wild creature lost in civilization . This portrayal of the young woman, who looked so much like her sister, had a resemblance to me and my life, also to Twill and his. We were, the three of us, outsiders who found ourselves trapped in a world of conformity. We pretended to belong. We acted as if we accepted the laws and regulations, but really we ignored any rule of conduct that got in our way. We were why law-abiding citizens were uneasy about the notion of freedom; because true freedom brooks no interference and pays fealty only to desire.
     
     
    AN HOUR OR SO later I realized that I had walked eight blocks past my street. Something had thrown me off my game, but it wasn’t clear, as yet, what that something was.
    I looked at my watch and realized that the appointed hour, four P.M.,