Stone 588

by Gerald A. Browne

  "Want me to stick around here?"

  "Where's Lucille?" The receptionist.

  "She came in for an hour. I think the police and everything rattled her. Probably out looking for another job."

  "Someone ought to be here."

  "I'll stick around."

  Springer went out to Detective Fahey. "We need your fingerprints," Fahey told him. "We got everybody else's."

  "Why?"

  "Just so if we come across a print that shouldn't be here we'll know it." Fahey was tolerant, detached and possibly friendly. While the specialist inked Springer up and took his prints, Fahey said of course no Marcie Newkirk worked at Smith Barney. Nor did she live at that high-rise on 78th Street, had just made it look as though she did by walking in and out. The Scottsdale, Arizona, stuff was all a lie too. The only helpful thing was the cleverness of these people. They had something good going and they would probably keep working it until they slipped. That was how it usually went. The bastards could have a closet full of money and suitcases crammed with flash and still go out and try for another score. The stealing was what they needed, Fahey said. He also recited the litany about not getting hopes up of recovering any of what had been stolen. Goods were goods. For a final routine consolation he promised they'd keep on it.

  Springer went into his office and sat with his back to the safe. His anger wouldn't let him look at it. He had never stolen anything in his life, and, although that was no reason to expect dispensation, it did make robbing him seem unfair. Fortunately he had insurance. He telephoned his broker. Bob Steiner.

  "I just got through talking to the company again," Steiner said.

  "There's a problem?"

  "At this stage they call it a consideration."

  "They don't want to pay."

  "They never want to pay. Who the hell wants to pay?"

  Springer blew. "For twenty years we pay their fucking premiums. We don't even bitch when they raise their rates . . . and now when something happens they're reneging."

  "They may settle. I'm trying to work out a figure with them."

  "Fuck that! I want what our policy covered. We had it all covered, every carat."

  "Insurance is a tricky business."

  "Yeah . . . now it's tricky."

  "The way the company sees it there's negligence. If they can prove negligence they're not liable."

  "What negligence?"

  "Mal wasn't conducting proper business when it happened. He brought it on himself, as much as admitted so in his statement. That's what they're basing it on."

  "A loss is a loss."

  "It's an out. They thrive on outs."

  "I have to sue?"

  "Blame Mal. He should have talked to me before he said anything. He didn't have to go into it like he did. It was a big mistake."

  "Four million," Springer said bitterly.

  "Four million three is what I put the claim in for. I assume you've got the books to back it up."

  "You do a lot of business with this insurance company, don't you, Bob?"

  "Springer, I understand what you're implying, and because I like you and know you're under a lot of stress right now I won't take it as an insult."

  Springer apologized.

  Steiner accepted.

  "So, what comes next?" Springer asked.

  "They'll make an offer to settle. Not today or tomorrow, but eventually."

  "How much of an offer?"

  "I'm begging for half."

  "Jesus."

  "Depends on how much they want to lay out to keep their credibility in the district. That's what I'm betting on, bad word getting around."

  Springer held back from erupting again. "Bob, don't let the bastards stiff me."

  "I'll do what I can and a mile extra. Know that."

  After hanging up. Springer sat there silently for a while. Perhaps it was the voltage of his anger; he had a strong sense of his father's presence in the room. His father was everywhere: on the other side of the desk, over by the safe peering into it, even crowding to occupy the same chair Springer was in. Sympathies and reproaches buzzed Springer's ears.

  He phoned Danny.

  They arranged a meet.

  And a few minutes later Springer was walking west on 47th. The row upon row of diamonds in the display windows taunted him. He loathed them, every one of those hard little hunks of shit. He tried not to look at them, put on mental blinders all the way to the corner of the Avenue of the Americas, where he crossed and turned north. He was never comfortable on Avenue of the Americas. The black and glass corporate buildings loomed oppressively, each reflecting the might of the next. It certainly wasn't an avenue for losers, and Springer was sorry now he'd chosen it for the meet. At 49th was the Exxon Building. It had a perfectly engineered waterfall in front to testify to its altruism. Springer stopped there, sat on the raised edge of polished black granite that felt slippery hot to his haunches. He glanced up. The sun ricocheted off Exxon and pitilessly struck his eyes shut.

  Make a million, lose two, he thought.

  He glanced to his left where, seated on the same hot granite edge just a few feet away, a secretary on an early lunch hour was bringing a marijuana roach to her lips with her cerise-enameled fingernails, so short a roach and so much of a toke Springer caught the smell of lacquer burning.

  He spotted Danny on the other side of the avenue, watched him cut across through the killer taxis like a matador. A different Danny Rags in work clothes: worn-shiny cheap black gabardine slacks, white shirt unbuttoned two down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His hands. Springer noticed, were dirty from acid and gold. With his eyes and a slight flick of his head Danny asked what was wrong.

  Springer told him.

  Danny's expression went cold, the same icy anger Springer remembered of Just John. "Anybody hurt?" he asked.

  "Four million hurts."

  "Fucking thieves."

  Such hypocrisy was typical of the Street.

  "I figured you might have heard something," Springer said.

  "Wasn't around this weekend or I might have. Took my kids to the Jersey shore. What was it, a break-in?"

  Springer let him read Mal's statement.

  "They were put onto Mal by somebody," Danny said. "Some other broad who'd been with him, knew his pitch."

  "From Mal's descriptions do you make anyone?"

  "Not right off."

  "How about this Marcie?"

  "Sharp the way she didn't lead with her cunt."

  "Either way Mal would have gone for it."

  "Easier to trust a beautiful broad like that, though."

  "Maybe somebody will be around offering my goods."

  "Could be in-and-outers, came into town just to make this hit."

  "That's possible."

  "None of the people I do business with were in on it," Danny said. "At least none of my regulars."

  "What makes you sure of that?"

  "They wouldn't take from you."

  "Why not me?"

  "You've got immunity."

  "Oh?"

  "As a favor to me you've got it."

  "Otherwise I would have been hit before now?"

  "Probably." Danny looked away to get off the subject. "What say I buy you lunch?"

  "I'll pass today."

  "Got to be getting back anyway. You should see what a guy brought me. A statue of a cat, like a real cat, that big. A swift on one of his teams swagged it from a house in Westbury. On the way out just because it's sitting there and looked good. Turns out it's solid eighteen K, almost five thousand pennyweights. A pair of matching chrysoberyls for eyes that'll go at least twenty-five carats each. Fucking statue's got to be worth a hundred large. Shame to melt it."

  Springer wasn't in the mood for stories. "Find out what you can for me," he said glumly.

  "Look, if these people were sharp enough to pull off such a finesse they won't suddenly turn into assholes. They'll deal out the goods a little at a time here and there. Shit, some of your
diamonds may come in to me an hour from now, but how am I supposed to know they're yours? Goods are goods."

  Again goods are goods. Springer thought bitterly.

  "And even, let's say down the road a way, we make these people and get on them. All you'll get is the satisfaction of breaking their bones. That what you want?"

  No reply from Springer.

  Danny went on. "As a matter of fact, if you can see it from their side it's not easy to blame them. For them it was nothing personal. They were just taking care of business. Think of all the trouble they had to go through to set it up, the chances they had to take to make the move. Understand what I mean?"

  "Not yet."

  "Okay," Danny said. "I'll ask around." He smiled, hoping it would prime the same in return from Springer. It didn't.

  They went in opposite directions. Springer continued on up the avenue, realizing along the way how dimensionally off-register he, now a major victim, felt toward everything and everyone. He had a tinge of the delusion that he could walk right through things, and several times people had to dodge aside at the last moment because he wasn't about to give way.

  He told himself it would wear off.

  When he got to 58th he went east. About mid-block he paused to be a deliberate audience of one for a just-up hooker who was curbing her Great Dane. She had a clear plastic sandwich bag like a mitten on her right hand, used it to grab at the mound of grainy turd the huge dog dropped. Didn't get it all but as much as she could. She inverted the bag so it contained the turd, spun its neck, and secured it with a wire tie.

  Love, Springer thought.

  He resumed moving along the street, which was shadowed and dingy because the buildings were high on both sides. There was the sour smell of garbage where it came daily from the service entrance of the Plaza Hotel. Near the end of the block the street opened and assumed an appropriate Manhattan air. Flying from poles above the entrance to the Plaza were the flags of France, Japan, and Sweden, acknowledging the dignitaries of those countries who were staying there. Limousines were triple-parked.

  On the corner was Bergdorf Goodman. Its display windows were covered on the inside by stretches of unbleached muslin, except for a six-inch space along the bottom and the area above eye level. Springer bent down and peeked in through three windows before he saw any living feet, and still another before he saw the toes, arches, and ankles that he recognized as surely Audrey's. He tapped on the window with a fingernail, a code of three fast and two slow so she'd know it wasn't just anyone.

  Audrey depressed the upper border of the muslin and looked down at him.

  Because he didn't have a smile she lost hers. She removed the muslin. With a playful bow and a flourish she presented her work.

  It was four female mannequins in an indigo environment. Three were adorned with summer-white party dresses: a silk organza, a crepe de chine, and a silk faconne. Layered, bloused, sashed. The manipulatable forms of those three were situated to the left. Their similar attitudes conveyed conspiracy. Each possessed a weapon, identical nickel-plated ivory-handled .32 caliber automatic pistols. Thus, to the frolic, the frou-frou, the almost promlike innocence, there was a touch of devastation. A gleaming pistol was not quite concealed up a sleeve, another was insouciantly inserted in a sash. The mannequin in the silk faconne was most prominent. She'd been put into a wide stance, chin up, arms at her sides. A pistol hung resignedly from her limp grasp. A wisp of something that resembled smoke, probably that Christmas stuff called angel's hair, trailed upward from the muzzle of the pistol. Scattered and gleaming around the mannequin's white sling pumps were several spent cartridges.

  The fourth mannequin was in a black dress. She was on the floor off to the right sprawled in a contorted position, her back to the street, her face not visible. Thousands of tiny faux rubies streamed from beneath her, creating an irregular crimson pool that spotlights made the most of.

  Springer supposed the statement Audrey sought to make had to do with innocence and competition. She looked out to him for approval. He mimed applause. Having tried before, they knew it was impossible to hear through the window glass, so now Audrey exaggerated her lip movements, hoping he might be able to read her words. He couldn't. She gave up on it, resorted to a black felt-tipped Flair pen that she had in one of the deep pockets of her work apron. No paper handy, she printed directly on the window glass, printed backwards and in so doing made a few childish-looking errors.

  WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? her letters asked.

  Springer replied with sign language, said he was up to above the wanting-to-breathe level by indicating the bridge of his nose with the edge of his flattened hand.

  YOU LOOK PISSED shc printed.

  Springer scowled, nodded.

  AT ME?

  He smiled a fraction, shook his head no.

  From another deep pocket of her work apron Audrey brought out one of those shiny .32-caliber pistols. She offered it grip first to Springer.

  That broke him. He had to laugh. He pointed his first finger to his temple and worked his thumb several times like a pistol hammer.

  Audrey printed hang on another hour.

  The antics of this speechless conversation were disregarded if not unnoticed by those who happened to be passing by. Not because as New Yorkers they were blase or uninquisitive. Rather, they believed it was safer to give as little eye as possible to any stranger in the throes of acting strange.

  There were, however, two men who were especially interested in Springer's every move. Across the street near the perimeter of the Plaza fountain, standing in the dapple of a plane tree. They'd been on Springer since that morning, when he'd entered the 580 Fifth Building. They had followed him to his meeting with Danny and would be staying on him.

  Fred Pugh and Jack Blayney.

  They were State Department, two of George Gumey's men.

  Blayney was the taller and heavier. His round face and splotchy complexion gave him the look of a career bartender, the sort who might be pouring and drawing at P. J. Clarke's or O'Neal's. A couple of weeks ago Blayney had turned forty. That bothered him. His legs felt different, not as strong or dependable, and it occurred to him that the spots on the backs of his hands weren't actually freckles. He was nagged by the numerical recognition that he was no longer on the count up but the count down. Such thinking did cause a change in him. Made him meaner. The morning that Blayney woke up forty, at the very instant when he'd opened his eyes to forty, he felt something click sharply in him. His meanness was being turned up. He'd always been a bully during all his fifteen years with State, a lethal one; was now all the more so. He didn't look it, though. Surely didn't, standing there by the Plaza fountain sucking the syrupy flavor from a paper cupful of Italian ice he'd bought from a street vendor.

  Pugh was more distinguishable.

  Less than slight, Pugh's shoulders hunched inward, hollowing his chest, exaggerating his narrowness. He had an elongated face, very close-set eyes, and a sharply bridged nose. His meager mouth had a natural purse to it, seemed on the verge of whistling. All in all Pugh looked as though he'd been forced to suffer many of his thirty-eight years squeezed in a press.

  Today Pugh was wearing a blue-and-white striped seersucker suit, a lemon-colored necktie and new, black, wing-tipped shoes with thick soles. There was nothing in bad taste about the shoes as far as he was concerned. The sales clerk at Florsheim had suggested white loafers with little fringed tassels and Pugh had tried them on and almost gone for them but decided they were faggoty.

  "What's the asshole saying now?" Blayney asked.

  "He's got his back to me," Pugh replied, as, like any tourist, he sighted through the viewfinder of the Canon 35 mm camera that hung from his neck by a woven plaid strap. The lens on the camera appeared normal, but it had been internally adapted to the telescopic power of a 500mm. Thus it served Pugh as well as a pair of binoculars while allowing him to focus unobviously on his subject from a distance.

  Pugh read lips.

  S
eventeen years ago, when he'd started with Central Intelligence, he'd noticed that most of those people who were kept on for any serious length of time had things they were best at. Best at Middle Eastern disguises, inducing authentic heart attacks, Cambodian geography, things like that. Just being generally trained and loyal wasn't enough. Even the most nerveless sorts came and went.

  What Pugh's specialty would be came to him in 1970 in Marbella, Spain. His assignment there was to snoop on an American NATO diplomat who had taken up with a limp-wristed Rumanian political strategist. The two men were suspected of selling secrets through one another and having a luxurious affair with the pooled proceeds.

  That appeared to Pugh to be the case, though he'd observed nothing solidly incriminating, just the exchange by the two men of barely perceptible thrown kisses across their dinner table and, while on the beach, all-done pats to one another's ass cheeks after applying suntan lotion.

  On the beach one afternoon Pugh watched them rise from their spread towels and walk to the surf. They waded out to deep water. Only their heads were visible, bobbing in the swells like a couple of children's playballs. Pugh sighted them with his binoculars and believed, according to the proximity of their heads, they were within easy reach of one another. No telling what their hands were busy at beneath the water. He'd probably know if he were able to hear what they were saying at that moment. He could see their lips moving. What an advantage it would be to know how to read lips!

  It struck him.

  A few days later the American and the Rumanian must have had a rending tiff. They took somber breakfasts at separate tables and that afternoon flew in different directions. Their case was placed in the inactive file and Pugh was ordered home.

  He went right to developing his specialty. Spent every spare hour and all the time he could steal from Langley at the Library of Congress. He found numerous illustrated volumes that dealt with the positions of the lips and the corresponding facial muscles during speech. There was, he learned, a science of sounds in language called phonology, which, depending on dialect, included thirty to forty contrasting sound units. These units gave each word its particular shape.