Einaudi sat and pushed the tea tray to one side, lifted the potted plant down to the floor, then laid the cloth over the center of the table. He opened the little bag and shook out the contents.
Perhaps a dozen stones rolled onto the velvet. To Jesse’s uneducated eye, they looked like pieces of quartz she could pick up off any country road or field, except they were lighter and more translucent. But they still looked like pebbles, to her.
Aran lifted his hand. “May I?”
“Of course.”
Aran moved the stones around with his forefinger, then rested the tip on one barely the width of a pencil, an odd, misshapen thing. “This one.”
Einaudi beamed. “Indeed. Your eye for potential is no less than mine, Mr. Gallagher. This is the one I was thinking of.” He pushed the other rocks to one side and picked up the one Aran had pointed to. “Clear and without flaw, as far as can be seen. With careful cutting, it will be a thing of beauty. An excellent choice for the centerpiece of an heirloom.” He handed it to Aran, who turned it over and peered at it closely.
Einaudi cleared his throat and held a folding magnifying glass out. The case was engraved brass.
“Thank you,” Aran said. He unfolded the glass and peered through it at the stone. “It is a nice enough piece, and the size I’m interested in.” His tone was flat. “But there is a flaw on the edge.”
He lowered the glass.
Einaudi didn’t stop smiling. “A flaw that can be removed by a skilled cutter.”
“That will reduce the final size.” He put the stone back on the velvet. “What else do you have?”
They went through the rest of the rocks on the velvet, while the first sat to one side. Jesse watched, her thoughts racing. She knew Aran’s flat tone was faked. He did like the first stone. Yet he was going through this sideshow of examining the others and looking less pleased by the minute.
Jesse stayed silent and sipped the tea and tried to keep her expression neutral. Even bored.
Finally, Aran sat back and tugged down his waistcoat and rubbed his jaw. “This is…disappointing.”
Einaudi spread his hands upon the table, on either side of the velvet mat. “That upsets me deeply, Mr. Gallagher. How can I make amends for one of my most valued customers?”
Aran sat forward once more. “This one here.” He touched another of the stones, a smaller one than the first. “It is somewhat milky, but I might be able to work with it.” He stood. “Let us not bore the lady with numbers, Einaudi.”
“Of course, Mr. Gallagher.” Einaudi got to his feet and both of them moved over to the counter and began to speak in low tones.
Jesse tried not to let resentment shift her expression. She would have liked to have heard the negotiation. She supposed ladies of these times didn’t sully their minds with boring business, even if they would have enjoyed such discussions.
Which meant that women couldn’t step into just any store and buy anything for themselves. They had to have their husbands do it. Or servants, perhaps. Or a father, or brother or uncle. Especially for a high value item like a diamond.
You’ll understand.
She still didn’t really understand why they were buying a diamond at all, but she was beginning to guess. And now she did understand why Aran had to parade as her husband. Einaudi would no more stoop to dealing with a woman, than the lady he’d just served had deigned to speak to him directly.
Einaudi returned to the table.
“And that lumpy one,” Aran said. “If that was included, then what…?” He let his voice trail off, as Einaudi picked up the glass and the “lumpy one” and took them back to the counter.
They hunched closer together, still talking.
Jesse realized what Aran had done. He’d lowered the perceived value of the lumpy stone, making Einaudi think he wasn’t interested in it. Now he was dangling the purchase of two stones and would drive the price even lower as a result.
Einaudi didn’t even seem upset about the haggling.
Where had Aran learned it?
Her memory supplied that answer. Ancient Rome. Ancient Greece. Medieval Europe. Victorian England. Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Take your pick.
She made herself stay seated, while Aran reached into his jacket for the suede bag and drew it open. He withdrew folded notes that looked a lot like US dollar notes and extracted one of them and held it curled up in his hand.
Einaudi did not look at the money. He instead busied himself with putting the two rocks into a small bag, while chattering about diamond cutters he knew who would provide an exemplary service if Mr. Gallagher’s usual cutter was not up to the challenge presented by the two stones, and he would be happy to introduce Mr. Gallagher to them.
For a cost, no doubt, Jesse guessed. She sipped the tea instead. Now it had cooled a little it was excellent.
Aran strode over to the table. “Come, my dear.” He gripped the back of the chair.
Jesse immediately put the cup upon the saucer and rose to her feet, trying to make the motion look elegant. “Thank you for the tea, Mr. Einaudi. It was very good.” She pronounced her words clearly and fully.
Mr. Einaudi’s eyes widened a little, then he bowed—properly. “You are most welcome, Mrs. Gallagher.” He again shook hands with Aran, then hurried over to the front door of the store to open the door for them.
Another round of farewells and they stepped back out onto the pavement and the steady hum of early twentieth century New York.
Aran offered his elbow once more and Jesse took it without protest. He turned and headed back down Canal Street, away from the Bowery, while street cars clanged their upbeat note and horses clopped by, their wagon wheels groaning.
The air was tinged with nothing more offensive than horse crap, but even that seemed to Jesse’s jaded senses to be refreshingly simple.
For a short while they walked in silence, but Jesse couldn’t hold in all her questions for later, the way Aran kept putting her off. “You’ll understand” wasn’t good enough now. “You bought two uncut diamonds for, as far as I can tell, about fifty dollars. That was a fifty dollar note you gave him, wasn’t it?”
“It was. A 1904 fifty dollar note, which was merely a partial payment.”
“Partial?”
“Mr. Einaudi understands that I will be coming into my inheritance when my ailing father dies. He is prepared to wait for full settlement, especially as the balance keeps growing.”
“That’s…generous of him.”
“He’s charging three percent.” Aran’s tone was dry.
“Is that a lot?”
“For here and now, very much so.”
“But you keep going back to him?”
“He has good diamonds.” Aran glanced around and behind them. He made it look like he was looking for a building number, but she knew he was looking for eavesdroppers or anyone paying them too much attention. “I keep going back to Mr. Einaudi because not only does he have good quality diamonds, but in six month’s time he will be murdered at the back of his store. The whole store will be burned to the ground to hide that all the jewelry and money had been taken. In fact, the whole building was destroyed and no one remembered that the little jewelry store at street level was also gone. Einaudi was thought to have died from the fire.”
“Then how do you know he didn’t?” Jesse murmured.
“Because I jumped to that time and watched it happening, from the roof across the street. I wanted to be sure he really was in deep with the Mob before I started using him.”
“The Mob killed him?” she breathed.
“Payback for holding out on them. Einaudi only looks like a pleasant and amenable fellow. He’s a crook and con artist and he swindled the wrong person, in the end.”
She shivered. “If the building burns down, there are no records of your transactions with him, or the money you owe him…” She frowned. “Then we take the diamonds forward and you sell them at current market prices, yes?”
“No
w you see it.”
“I sort of had it figured when I saw the diamond store,” she admitted. “But this seems way too simple, Aran. This is really how you can afford a cottage in the Cotswold and your car and an apartment in Georgetown?”
“And a great many other things besides,” Aran said. His tone was calm. He wasn’t boasting. “This simple thing…” He gave a soft laugh. “I paid fifty dollars for two nearly perfect uncut diamonds. Careful cutting will make them flawless. The lumpy one—”
“The one you really wanted,” she slid in.
“Yes. Twenty-five dollars in 1906 terms is about…perhaps seven hundred. How much do you think the lumpy diamond will sell for? Even if I didn’t have a jeweler on tap who doesn’t try to stiff me because he thinks long term and wants my busines to continue.”
“You mean, if someone like me walked in cold, put it on the counter and asked how much?” She laughed. “I couldn’t even begin to guess. A few thousand?” His talk of seven hundred dollars for a fifty-dollar bill made her scale up her guess. A near fifteen hundred profit per diamond would add up steadily over the long term, and Aran had clearly been doing this for a while.
Aran shook his head, smiling. “You’re not a diamond girl at all.”
“Not even close,” she said, taking no offence. “I don’t get women who go gaga over diamonds. It just doesn’t compute.”
“You drool over the Wilson Combat 9mm Classic semi auto, but jewelry baffles you.” He laughed.
Jesse was a little surprised he even knew what a Wilson Combat Classic was. They were gun porn—luxury, super expensive embellished handguns that started at mid four figures. She tried not to let her feelings be ruffled. “And you think D.C.—the seat of western world power—is the minor leagues. Everyone’s tastes run different.”
A streetcar rolled past, the overhead wires hissing and the wheels making the tracks groan.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” Aran assured her. “I was…well, never mind. The two uncut diamonds I just bought, I paid…let’s say I paid five hundred each for them. They’re uncut, but I have cultivated a diamond cutter in Amsterdam. Actually, I didn’t have to cultivate him at all. He’s an artist at heart and loves the challenge of bringing out the best in the big stones I bring him. He takes a small flat fee for expenses and a percentage of the sale in return for the cutting and arranging certificates for them. Then I sell them in New York. Or I could just sell the uncut diamonds, but they’re almost worthless in comparison to a well cut stone with a certificate.”
Jesse said uneasily, “How much more is a cut stone?”
“Depends on the cutting. An unskilled cutter can reduce a diamond to the value of glass. A great cutter, though…” He shook his head.
“Okay, you’ve dangled it long enough,” she said shortly. “I’m ignorant about diamonds. I get the point. Hit me.”
“Prices vary,” he said flatly.
“You’ve been doing this a while. You can guess how much you’ll get. The lumpy one that caught your eye. How much?”
He hesitated, then gave a tiny shrug. “Fifty thousand, perhaps. I’m being conservative.”
She realized she had come to a halt on the pavement when her fingers tugged at his arm and fell away. She stared at him, her heart thudding in her ears. “Fifty thousand?” Her voice was hoarse. The tea in her stomach churned uneasily.
Aran turned back to her. He didn’t seem to be concerned about her shock. “The second one won’t get nearly that much. Maybe fifteen or twenty thousand.” He paused. “This is what I wanted to show you,” he added, his tone kind. “And this is just one way to use time. It’s complicated, because of the cutter and the certificates, but it’s more straightforward than gold, or coins and currency. Although even those are good for quick cash, when you need it.”
Her hearing was muffled. Seventy thousand dollars. He was walking around with seventy thousand dollars in his jacket pocket. That was three times what she had earned last year, before taxes. “Why don’t you just stick the fifty dollar note in a bank and let compound interest do all the work? Why do it this way?”
“Like Far and Athair do?” Aran asked. He gave a slight shake of his head. “They live through the years the interest compounds. They can shepherd it and become the inheritors of their own accounts when their current IDs get too old. I don’t have that option.” He didn’t sound upset about it. But she remembered what he’d said when he’d been sobering, about the Hobson’s choice he faced.
This, then, was one of the ways he was compensating for what he saw as a bitter choice.
Aran’s gaze shifted over her shoulder and his eyes narrowed, as a man behind them said in a thick Italian accent, “A moment of your time, signore.”
The hairs on the back of Jesse’s neck, beneath the high lace-edged collar of her shirt, prickled hard. Her hearing restored itself instantly. Cold calm dropped over her.
Aran didn’t signal by so much as a twitch that he was also suddenly wary, but Jesse knew he was. She could feel it.
Aran smiled pleasantly. “I apologize, sir. We were obstructing the footpath. Please, continue on.” He drew Jesse to the street side of the sidewalk, which also put him between her and the small man in a rumpled suit, who had come up behind them.
The man had grey-shot black hair, olive skin and jowls dark with growth above a grimy white collar. His brown hat was a bowler, Jesse thought, although it was worn on the brim and had a bald spot on the crown. He didn’t smile at Aran’s apology. “I need you to both walk with me. Just a little way. Up there.” His arm moved slightly, the thick fingers gesturing along the sidewalk. The movement sent a wash of stale garlic and tobacco over them.
Jesse didn’t let her gaze flicker to her left to check what was “up there”. She knew it would be an alley, or a building the man controlled.
“I don’t think so,” Aran said softly. “It’s time for you to move on,” he added. His tone was so cold that Jesse shivered.
The little man’s eyes narrowed. “No, you don’t understand.” His tone hardened. “It is not a question I ask, see.”
“My answer is still no,” Aran replied. “I would suggest you let this go. You will only regret it, if you insist.”
Jesse realized she was trembling. It wasn’t fright, or anger at Einaudi for sending his goon to retrieve the two stones that Aran had bought in good faith, or even that Einaudi was apparently as crooked as Aran had implied.
It wasn’t a repressed memory dinging at her, or even an old memory of too many times like this, in the past.
She didn’t remember being shot in an alleyway in New York, but she had written about it so that she would remember when the correction in time Aran had made to save her life replaced the memory with the events of her new, altered timeline. She could recall the words she had written with complete clarity because she had re-read them so many times, usually while wishing she had written in far, far greater detail about how she’d felt, what she’d seen. Why hadn’t she captured the moment in the alley with cinematographic precision, so that she could get the memory back?
But now, she had the moment back. It was this moment, right now. This was a mirror moment to that moment in the alley when she had nearly died, when she would have died. Aran had been just as he was now—a tall, implacable pillar of power. Dangerous, in the way that only those who dealt in danger would recognize. To the people shuffling past them on the sidewalk and sending them irritated glances, Aran would look like any other man out for a stroll with his wife.
The little man, though, failed to read the moment correctly. He thought he had the power. He thought he had control. He grinned at Aran’s mild suggestion that he move on. He fingered the front edge of his grubby jacket and pulled it open just enough to show them the butt of what looked like a nickel-plated Colt revolver hanging in a holster under his arm. “Walk,” he said flatly.
Her breath shortened. Jesse recognized the panic pooling in her middle. Now she understood what she had meant in her e
ssay to herself, when she had spoken of being used to conditions that no longer applied.
The last time she actually remembered being threatened with a gun, she’d had an AK under her arm, and a backup on her ankle, a knife in her boot and one hanging down the back of her fatigues on a string. She wore combat boots and a helmet, and a sniper laid a half-mile away, watching them through her scope, her rifle covering their asses if this went sideways.
None of those conditions existed here. That was why she had got shot. That was why Aran had thrown her pistol into the Columbus River and told her to learn to live without a gun.
This was the reason why. This moment right now, when a stinky man who thought he was the king of the street was reaching for his pistol right here on Canal Street.
“Very well,” Aran said, lifting one hand in a gesture of surrender that was utterly fake. He glanced at Jesse. “Come along,” he told her. He didn’t offer his elbow. He wanted her to have both hands free.
They turned and walked along the sidewalk and the little man followed them. His footsteps told her he was several paces behind them—too far to spin and take him out. He could fire before she reached him. The bastard was practiced at this.
Jesse could see the little alleyway just up ahead. It wasn’t the one they had arrived in, but it would do. They couldn’t do anything about the man out here on the street, even though he was free to gun them down if he wanted to.
Her spine tried to crawl up into her skull.
She put one foot in front of the other, trying to unfreeze her brain. She didn’t have a gun, so what else could she do?
Nothing came to her. All her combat training involved having at least one weapon at her disposal. All she had was lace-covered hands.
Moving slowly, she slid the gloves off and pushed them into her pocket.
“Into the lane,” the man behind them said, as they reached the alley.
“Good god, it stinks in there,” Aran protested.
Kiss Across Chaos Page 10
