Cut and Run

by Carla Neggers

  “So you remember me,” Hendrik said, although there had been no question in his mind that Johannes would. “I’m honored.”

  “Don’t be.” The old cutter set down his sandwich. “None of the memories are good ones.”

  “Then perhaps your mind isn’t as sharp as it once was. We used to skate the canals of Holland together in the winter, before the war, and race bicycles in the summer. Remember, Johannes?” Hendrik was surprised by the sadness in his voice. “Those were fine days, ones not to forget.”

  Johannes shrugged. In all the years he had known him, Hendrik had never seen Johannes Peperkamp show fear. He would today, unless he was a fool. That was some consolation, Hendrik decided, for this miserable predicament. As much as they’d been friends, a part of him had always wanted to make Johannes sweat.

  But for now, the old man continued to chew his lunch, and not even his fingers shook. It was as if he believed there was nothing left Hendrik de Geer could do to him.

  “Do you know why I’m here, Johannes?”

  He sipped his tea, swallowing. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  There was that tone of cool superiority once more, and moving deeper into the shop, Hendrik recalled fewer moments of friendship and more those of indignation. He’d never been good enough for the Peperkamps. When he was a boy, his mother had tried to tell him that that was all in his head, but he knew better.

  Catharina…

  Yes, she was different. The others had expected him to fail, and yet they’d put their trust in him—and he’d done what he’d had to do. As he was now.

  He said without drama, “I must have the diamond, Johannes.”

  The old cutter gestured to his shop. “As you see, I have many diamonds—not so big, perhaps, as in the past, but some fine stones. Take what you want. It makes no difference to me.”

  “These diamonds don’t interest me.”

  “They don’t interest me, either, but they’re all I have. I’m an old man, Hendrik. Not very many people bring me the big diamonds anymore.” He held up his large, bony hands. “They don’t trust these.” Then he pointed to his eyes. “Or these.”

  Johannes spoke without self-pity and shrugged as he resumed drinking his tea. Hendrik moved closer, but the old man looked at him without interest. If he hadn’t known Johannes Peperkamp better, Hendrik might have panicked, thinking he’d come to the wrong place.

  He took the teacup from the old man and set it down. Nothing in Johannes’s expression indicated fear or anger—or even curiosity. I am nothing, am I, old man? Hendrik thought, but he refused to let his frustration show. “You know what I want, Johannes.”

  “To be honest, no, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do, damn you!”

  The old cutter sighed patiently. “Why don’t you just tell me, Hendrik?”

  “The diamond,” Hendrik said. “The Minstrel’s Rough.”

  Johannes laughed derisively and sucked something from his teeth, as if he had nothing better to do. “Don’t be ridiculous, Hendrik. I no longer have the Minstrel.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Even if you don’t have it, you know where it is,” Hendrik said, fighting to regain the upper hand. Damn Johannes Peperkamp and his smugness! “You’ll get it for me.”

  “Why would I do that?” With the stubborn self-righteousness that had always infuriated Hendrik, Johannes looked into the younger Dutchman’s eyes. “Only once in my seventy-three years have I ever been indiscreet. Never again, Hendrik. Never. It doesn’t matter what I know or what I don’t know: I will not cooperate with you.” He picked up his tea, pursed his thin lips, and took a sip. Peering over the rim of the cup, he said, “You must kill me first.”

  “Then I wouldn’t get what I want, would I?”

  Hendrik spoke in a mild tone, pleased with how unperturbed he sounded, and he slowly spun Johannes’s swivel chair around. Holding its wooden arms, Hendrik leaned over and searched the beady blue eyes. There was superiority there, all right, and hatred. He’d expected that. But there was also anguish. Sadness. That Hendrik hadn’t expected. Had Johannes hoped he’d changed? Shaken, Hendrik almost turned away.

  “Exactly so,” Johannes said. “You wouldn’t get what you want. Kill me if you must. It makes no difference. I will not give you the stone.”

  “You have family, Johannes. What if their lives were in danger?”

  “My wife is dead.”

  Ann. Intelligent, beautiful. She’d been a Jew married to a Gentile, but she’d survived the war—only just. Hendrik had put her out of his mind for forty years. Once more he shoved aside the thought of her, and as he did so, he straightened up.

  “Your sisters are still alive.” He tried to sound cold and determined, as Senator Ryder had in the car on Saturday night, but he felt the uncertainty churning deep inside him, just as he knew the handsome Ryder had. They were not so different, the foolish senator and himself. They hid their fears behind an air of competence. Would Johannes see through his one-time friend? Hendrik warned himself he was thinking dangerously and went on steadily, “Wilhelmina lives in Rotterdam, and Catharina is in New York. Juliana, your niece, has an apartment on Central Park West. I know where they are, Johannes. I can find them.”

  Now, he thought. Now the fear would come. Hendrik waited, but the old diamond cutter merely wiped his mouth with his napkin and climbed slowly to his feet.

  “Catharina you would never harm, and Wilhelmina would cheerfully welcome the opportunity to slit your cowardly throat.”

  He sounded slightly amused at the thought, but Hendrik couldn’t contradict him—they both knew Willie Peperkamp. If her older brother cooperated with Hendrik de Geer to protect her, she would only be annoyed.

  “And Juliana’s too famous,” Johannes went on. “There’d be so much publicity if you touched her. Too risky. However—” The old man took his jacket from a peg on the wall next to his desk and shrugged his bony frame into it. “However, it’s been a long, long time, Hendrik. You could have come for the Minstrel anytime, but you didn’t. That means there are others involved. Someone else has guessed you’ve seen the Minstrel and is twisting that arm of yours that twists so easily. To whom did you promise the stone this time? Never mind, it makes no difference.” Johannes gestured politely toward the door. “Shall we go?”

  Catharina’s Bake Shop had closed for the evening. In its gleaming kitchen, its proprietor rolled out pastry at an island counter. She patted the dough carefully, lovingly with the strong, broad hands, their cuticles and lines caked with flour and drying dough, the nails blunt and tough.

  Juliana watched silently from the kitchen door. She’d come straight from the Club Aquarian and had used her key to enter the quiet, darkened shop. It was silly to be thinking about her mother’s hands, but she couldn’t stop herself. They were so unlike her own. Juliana had long, slender fingers, and although she kept her nails cut short, they were always manicured. Twice a day she massaged a European cream into them. They were strong hands. To be a pianist, they had to be. But suddenly she envied her mother’s wide palms and thick fingers. If Juliana had been born with Peperkamp hands, everything might have been different.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Catharina didn’t look up. “Yes.”

  She hissed the yes, clipping it off. Usually she just said, “Yaa,” drawing out a long, broad a. She pounded the dough, her usual care and gentleness abruptly gone.

  “Mother, is something wrong?”

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “Mother, talk to me—please. Look, a reporter’s been asking me about your friend Rachel Stein. I know she was with Senator Ryder on Saturday at Lincoln Center. Ryder was also supposed to meet with a Dutchman by the name of Hendrik de Geer. Have you ever heard of him?”

  Catharina sprinkled flour on the wooden rolling pin and slammed it down on the dough. She had yet to glance up, to see her daughter in her lavender hair and raccoon coat. She was
the rock of Juliana’s existence, her stability, the one thing she could count on in her frenzied life not to change, and something was desperately wrong. More than a visit from a friend she hadn’t seen in a long time, more than a daughter asking too many questions. Juliana had never seen her mother so withdrawn and uncommunicative.

  “Mother?”

  “You should be in Vermont, Juliana. You need rest.”

  “I wish you’d talk to me. Look, don’t I have a right to know what’s going on?”

  Still not looking up, Catharina banged the rolling pin on the counter.

  “Mother, what is it?”

  “Rachel,” she said at last. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh, my God—I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  Still Catharina didn’t look up, still she continued to work. “She fell outside Lincoln Center and hit her head and died. It was in the papers this morning.” The words came out machine-gun style, but more heavily accented than was usual for her. “The police say it was an accident. That Rachel slipped on the snow and ice.”

  Juliana worked at controlling her breathing, a relaxation technique she often used before a performance. “How awful,” she said. But something inside her told her not to believe it. Did Stark know? Had the bastard been playing games with her?

  With the top of a bent wrist, Catharina brushed wisps of white-blond hair off her pale, sweaty forehead. A bit of flour stuck in her eyebrow. The tight anger seemed to disappear all at once, and Juliana watched the pain and grief descend, filling the soft eyes with tears and drawing out the lines in the attractive face. Her lower lip began to tremble, and then her hands. She quickly began to smooth the flattened, ruined dough with her fingers.

  “Go to Vermont,” she said. Finally, she looked at Juliana but didn’t even see the hair or the coat. “Please.”

  “Mother, what aren’t you telling me? I wish you’d be honest—”

  “I am being honest!” Her head shot up, and more curls fell into her face, but the tears hadn’t spilled out from her eyes. They shone in the dim light. “I’ve lost a good friend, Juliana. I don’t want to burden you with my sadness.”

  “That’s bullshit, Mother,” Juliana said quietly.

  Catharina picked up the rolling pin.

  “You just want to get rid of me. You don’t want me in town. Why not? Is it because of what happened to Rachel?”

  “Don’t be silly.” Catharina tried to smile, but there was too much fatigue and sadness—and terror—in her face. “Rachel’s death was a tragic accident.” Her voice cracked. “She was a childhood friend, Juliana, my friend. I know I’m not being myself, but—her death has nothing to do with you.”

  “Why did she come to New York?”

  Catharina sighed. “To see me.”

  “And Senator Ryder?”

  “I know nothing about that. Rachel knew many powerful people, including senators. Now she’s dead. Whatever business she had with Senator Ryder is none of our affair. Take your vacation, Juliana. You look tired.”

  “You hadn’t seen Rachel Stein in a long time, and she shows up in New York just like that?”

  “It’s easy to lose track of people as you get older.”

  “Mother—”

  Catharina abandoned her ruined dough. “That’s the end of it, Juliana. It’s finished. Did you see I made chicken pies today?” She brushed back a fallen curl. “Something new. Take one with you to Vermont.”

  “Mother, dammit.”

  But under the best of circumstances Catharina Fall was closemouthed—discreet, she called it. At the moment, however, Juliana wasn’t sure she had much room to criticize. She had never told her mother about Uncle Johannes’s visit backstage seven years ago, about his gift—if one wanted to call it that—of the Minstrel’s Rough. Her mother knew the Minstrel existed, knew the four-hundred-year-old tradition. All the Peperkamps did. But Uncle Johannes had advised her not to mention the Minstrel to her mother, and she never had.

  My God, where will this end?

  “What about Father? Does he know any of this?”

  A dumb question, she thought. Catharina Peperkamp Fall told her husband as little as she did her daughter—unless he’d been feigning innocence all these years.

  “Know any of what?” Catharina countered. “There’s nothing to know.”

  “Well,” Juliana said in a falsely cheerful voice, “I suppose the Dutch don’t have their reputation for stubbornness without foundation.

  “Go to Vermont,” her mother said. “And wash your hair first.”

  Of course she wouldn’t ask why it was lavender to begin with. Juliana said goodnight. On her way out, she didn’t take a chicken pie.

  Ten

  Matthew took the shuttle back to Washington and headed straight to the Gazette. It wasn’t the first time he’d shown up in a newsroom after hours, but his colleagues on the Gazette didn’t know that. He ignored their curious looks and went over to Aaron Ziegler’s desk.

  “Burning the midnight oil, Ziegler?”

  The young reporter looked up at Stark and nodded, his expression betraying a mix of eagerness and nervousness. “I’ve got your information. I didn’t tell Feldie, but she knows I’m doing some research for you.”

  “She around?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Give me what you’ve got.”

  “I haven’t written anything up yet.”

  “That’s okay. Just spit it out.”

  Ziegler, his rep tie loosened, consulted a steno book on his neat desk. Stark remained standing. He didn’t know what to do to make the kid less nervous, so he didn’t do anything.

  “The world’s largest uncut diamond naturally varies from time to time because it doesn’t stay uncut for very long—unless you’re talking about the Minstrel’s Rough.” He glanced up, his eyes questioning Matthew.

  Stark said, “I don’t know if I am or not. Give me what you’ve got.”

  “Well, it sounds pretty farfetched.”

  “Don’t worry about that. If it’s not what I’m looking for, I’ll just keep digging.”

  “All right. Supposedly ‘the world’s largest and most mysterious uncut diamond’ is the Minstrel’s Rough.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “That’s just it: no one’s ever been able to verify the thing even exists. It’s been rumored to exist for the last four or five hundred years, and there have been a number of unconfirmed sightings of it. Nothing can be substantiated, but I gather it’s not supposed to be. Part of the legend—the mystery—is that the Minstrel can never be proven to exist. That way no matter how big the current biggest uncut diamond is, people will always wonder if there’s one bigger.”

  “The Minstrel.”

  “Right.”

  “Sounds like a lot of bullshit, Ziegler.”

  “I know. But the mystery surrounding the Minstrel adds to its symbolism. Supposedly it’s in the hands of caretakers who’ll never cut it, in remembrance of those who have suffered persecution and hatred. In other words, it’s a reminder that no story is more important than human life. Which brings me to the Minstrel’s ‘alleged’ potential as a cut and polished stone. Not only is it huge, but it’s an ice white.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The highest grade of diamond, as close to pure and colorless as possible. If the Minstrel does exist and ever is found and cut, it could be worth millions. Over the centuries there’ve been countless sightings and loads of attempts to track it down, but still no Minstrel. But the material I’ve read treats it strictly as legend.”

  Matthew’s thoughts were already racing. Just who the hell was Sam Ryder planning to buy off with those millions? Because Sam, of course, was enough of a dumbass to go after a mythical diamond. The Weaze was right about that, no doubt. “Shit,” he muttered, then sighed. “Okay, Ziegler, thanks. Anything on the other business?”

  “That was considerably easier,” Aaron said, looking more relaxed, if not at ease. “Rachel Stein came from Amsterdam;
she was a member of an old diamond-cutting family that was wiped out during the Holocaust. She and her brother Abraham were the only survivors. Pretty grim stuff. I have a lot on her life in the U.S., but you were just interested in the Dutch connection, right? There wasn’t much. They were hidden by a Dutch family through much of the war but were discovered in its last months and deported to the death camps. As I said, there wasn’t a lot of detail. As for Juliana Fall—there was a nice, fat folder on her in the library.”

  “I’ll bet,” Stark said.

  “As you said, the Dutch connection comes from her mother, whose maiden name was Peperkamp. She grew up in Amsterdam. There was a file on her—a review of her bakeshop. I went ahead and checked under Peperkamp. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a diamond cutter named Johannes Peperkamp.”

  Here a Peperkamp, there a Peperkamp. “Go on.”

  “There wasn’t much recent stuff. He started out in Amsterdam and moved to Antwerp after World War II, and he’s cut a number of famous large diamonds, including the Breath of Angels, which is now in the Smithsonian. He’s the last of the Peperkamp cutters, who apparently got into the business in the sixteenth century when they provided safe haven for Jewish diamond merchants fleeing the Inquisition in Antwerp and Lisbon, which until that time were the principal diamond cities.”

  “Any relation to Catharina or Juliana Fall?”

  “None mentioned, but that’s not surprising. Juliana would have been just a kid when most of the material in the folder was published.”

  “Any mention of Hendrik de Geer?”

  “No. I couldn’t find anything on him.”

  “Any connection between this Johannes Peperkamp or Juliana and Catharina Fall and Rachel Stein?”

  “None that I could find.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate it.”

  Ziegler beamed. “Should I keep stalling Feldie?”

  “By all means.”

  Matthew went for coffee, pure rotgut but hot, and sat in the cafeteria for an hour talking sports with a couple of reporters. The Caps were playing the Bruins at home and losing in the third period. He wondered if Juliana Fall had ever been to a hockey game. They could go together, and she could get up on the organ and play the national anthem. Hell, that’d kill her reputation faster than getting caught as J.J. Pepper. Did she even know what the inside of a hockey arena looked like? He doubted it. Had she ever eaten a hotdog from a concession stand? Had she ever eaten a hotdog at all? Probably called them frankfurters.