Stone 588

by Gerald A. Browne

  Pugh was glad to know it was all so nicely arranged. He was encouraged enough to think that learning to lip-read wouldn't be difficult. Then, for a while, he thought it impossible.

  He kept at it, sought out a school for the deaf in Alexandria, and talked his way into being permitted to attend classes. For homework he watched television with the sound off. As he gained confidence he plugged his ears with the sort of malleable wax plugs that light sleepers use to shut out noise and tried to carry on conversations.

  He got better and better at it.

  After two years he let his superiors at Langley in on it. He claimed he was the best not-deaf lip-reader around. To demonstrate he had them listen with earphones to that day's episode of Days of Our Lives while he lip-read the dialogue.

  He didn't miss a syllable or sob.

  His superiors were professionally amused. He was given several other tests. His accuracy impressed them. He indeed had a specialty. It would, he was assured, be put to important use. For his incentive he was upped a grade.

  Pugh's first assignment after that was in Santiago, Chile. It involved snooping on a troublesome leftist leader. The setup was ideal for Pugh. From the vantage of the building across the street he could see into the apartment where the leftist and his key people met. Powerful binoculars brought their faces close enough for Pugh to easily see the movements of their lips. However . . .

  The fuckers were speaking in Spanish.

  Pugh didn't know Spanish.

  Nor for that matter did he know Russian, German, French, or Arabic.

  Thus he was only a limitedly useful lip-reader.

  On some of many tedious afternoons he would accompany his Langley bosses to Bowie racetrack over in Maryland. Before each race Pugh hung around the paddock area where the trainers gave last-minute instructions to their jockeys. He read the lips of the trainers and reported to his Langley bosses what had been said. Knowing the various strategies of a race gave them an edge. At the very least they would never waste a bet on a horse whose trainer had him running merely for the conditioning or experience.

  Often the information lip-read by Pugh practically guaranteed a sure thing: when two or more horses were being sent out to try to go wire-to-wire with their speed, and in the rest of the field there was only one legitimate closing horse—hopefully a long shot. The front-runners burned up their energy staving off one another, the closer came on strong in the stretch, and the Langley people cashed in their winners.

  Pugh resented having to put his hard-learned talent to such playful, luster-less use.

  So in 1979, when George Gurney went over to the State Department to head up its Intelligence and Research Bureau, Pugh went with him.

  That bureau was, of course, not as large or limelighted as the CIA. Never would be. However, Gurney intended to make up for lack of weight with shiftiness. His would be a cadre of people gifted with abundant sleight and little, if any, conscience — which was, after all, what intelligence work was all about, what had been lost under the years and years of politicking and the pile-ons for power. Ambitious to the bone, imaginative enough to put stock in leads others might dismiss as ridiculous, Gurney foresaw a time when his outfit would no longer be seated below the salt.

  Fred Pugh liked working for Gurney. He felt Gurney honestly gave a damn, appreciated him. Gurney found consequential ways to utilize Pugh's lipreading, and at the same time he encouraged another dimension out of Pugh.

  Pugh had never done any wet work, any killing. His psychological tests when he was indoctrinated into Central Intelligence had indicated he wasn't suited for wet work. However, under Gurney he'd killed five times, and after the first, as Gurney had predicted, he'd been hardly bothered.

  In fact, Pugh was looking forward to the next.

  Chapter 21

  There was Moe Bandy on the stereo:

  "He's a rodeo Romeo,

  Cowgirls and bulls are his life,

  He loves what he does

  And he does what he loves every night ..."

  Audrey sang along with it and two-stepped improvisingly around the room. A crisp bob of her head, a reaching ghde, a tight turn — and, often, a stumble when the high heels of her maribou-covered mules caught in the pile of the rug. Other than the mules she had on only a pale green silk charmeuse teddy, loose and fluid, and a pair of briolette-cut emerald earrings.

  She wasn't quite dancing alone. Her extended hands held a Brigette Deval doll that she had bought a month or so ago at Ludwig Beck. For $2,500. Not only the price made the doll more than a plaything. With its genuine ringleted hair, hand-stitched empire-style dress, and walkable patent leather shoes it was the closest thing to an adorable breathing two-year-old. Especially convincing was the poise of its lifelike fingers, the astonished expression on its paradoxically waifish, little-rich-girl face—and the lovesome way Audrey danced it.

  "He'll hit the dance halls. Flashing the girls his best smile. He's burning both ends of the candle. Rodeo Romeo style. "

  Springer appreciated Audrey with his eyes but his ears loathed her. Not even all that country-western twanging and picking could make up for how off-key she was. Why the hell didn't she leave the singing to Moe? Springer was tempted to convey as much by sticking his fingers in his ears. He didn't only because she was trying so to cheer him up.

  She had tried all through their early dinner at Lutece. Ordered a bottle of Bollinger Tradition RD 1973, kissed his glass with hers, and said brightly, "To having been robbed." When he grunted, annoyed, she'd told him that she thought being robbed was probably the next most exciting thing to robbing, and anyway it didn't happen to one every day so it was sort of an event.

  Springer begrudgingly drank to it.

  He wasn't interested in his dinner, poked at it. They skipped dessert and coffee and went back to her apartment at the Trump. She urged him quickly out of his clothes and got him into a vinegar bath. Two cups of apple cider vinegar added to the bath water. To get rid of all the negative energy he'd picked up, she explained, and, by balancing his acid-alkaline ratio, put his body in a healing state.

  Springer went along with it. He didn't say so but he felt bloodlessly wounded, in need of healing. When he was immersed up to his chin the vinegar fumes made his eyes run and stung the inside of his nose. To get thoroughly detoxified he had to soak for at least twenty minutes, Audrey said. For good measure she poured in what vinegar remained in the quart bottle, ignored his protesting moans. She didn't tell him time was up until a half hour had passed.

  While they were both drying him off with big towels he remarked that he felt better after the bath because he was no longer in it. Audrey didn't rise to that, except to increase the pressure of her rubbing from brisk to harsh.

  She had a lightweight cotton robe laid out for him. And a pot of peach-pit tea. Whenever they ate fresh peaches she saved the pits. Even when either of them had a peach out at a restaurant she'd wrap the pit in a napkin and tuck it in her purse. She placed the precious pits incongruously on her elegant window ledges to dry in the sun. With them she brewed up a vile-tasting tea that she claimed was a sure way to purify the blood and thus increase one's sense of well-being.

  Over the months Springer had surreptitiously poured gallons of miraculous peach-pit tea down the sink or the toilet. This day he didn't give a look to the cup on the bathroom counter, went downstairs to the mirrored bar for some Usquaebach Scotch, neat, in a double old-fashioned glass. Usquaebach was his Scotch of choice. Very few bars stocked it, and Springer didn't like to ask for it out because he thought it sounded affected. Usquaebach ran about $60 a fifth and came in a glazed earthen jug, which was probably why it seemed to taste better.

  Three Usquaebachs nailed Springer to the roomy chaise longue diagonally opposite Audrey's bed. For nearly an hour he salted his wounds with the pages that listed lot by lot what had been stolen.

  Moe Bandy was through now.

  Audrey sat the doll in a comfortable position importantly among the antique cry
stal and silver jars and atomizers on her dressing table. She dabbed some of Libby's personal Guerlain (doled out to her) at the back of each knee before going to the stereo to replace Moe Bandy with Brahms. Tender French horns at the start, woodwinds meeting them midair. Piano Concerto No. 2.

  She had the urge to go over and give Springer a rough, emphatic hug. Instead, she flopped down onto the puffy heap of elegantly shammed pillows on the floor at the foot of her bed. Her usual flopping place, preferred by her over the chaise. She fell right into an unintentionally alluring pose, the long dips and rises of her enhanced by the various swellings of the pillows beneath her weight and the way they served as soft backdrops. Her right arm was extended. The lower half of her face was concealed by the round of her bare shoulder. Over that shoulder her eyes vamped Springer, willed his attention. When he looked her way she playfully overworked her eyelashes, trying to draw at least a small smile from him.

  He remained glum, but he winked.

  "Did they steal that special stone?" she asked.

  "Yeah." Lot number 588. He'd noticed it designated and described that way on the list. But he hadn't considered its loss as important as other lots. Such as twenty-six internally flawless D- to F-quality round-cuts totaling fifty-eight carats.

  "That's a shame." Audrey sat up abruptly as though reacting to a call. "Whoever has it may never realize what it is."

  The Brahms was now tempestuous.

  Springer allowed the pages of listings to drop to the floor. It wasn't the loss of stone 588 that made him say, "I think I'll quit the business, get into something else."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know."

  "Sloth seems to have a future. I know many who've done conspicuously well at it. Could you get into sloth?"

  "Possibly." He grinned.

  As though considering it she cocked her head and studied him. "You don't have any experience," she decided.

  Continuing seriously, he said, "At least what I might do is close the office. Get all that shit off my shoulders." The blasphemy caused a shiver in him. He defied it. "There'll never be a better time to do away with the office."

  "Better excuse?"

  "Better time," he maintained.

  "Where would you do business?"

  "Out of my pocket and in my head. I'd freelance around, build up a private clientele."

  "Like Libby."

  "Sure, why not."

  "If she threw you just a few of her sparkling friends you'd have it made. Incidentally, Libby invited us up to Penobscot again."

  "When?"

  "She called me today at the store."

  "Call her right now, tell her we accept."

  "You really want me to?"

  "No."

  Audrey reached for her carryall shoulder bag on the floor nearby. From it she brought out her pendulum. And a bag of strawberry licorice whips. She separated one of the three-foot-long candies from the rest, put just the end of it in her mouth. From then on it required no hands. She fussed with the pendulum while the pink sweet went into her inch by inch.

  Springer was in no humor to indulge her pendulum crap. He squinted to eliminate everything extraneous, to be seeing only the aspects of her and what she was about. Audrey, his love, sitting there cross-legged amid the pillows, preoccupied with a toy and chewing up a make-believe snake. He reassured himself that she was as mature as her body, not retarded. Maybe, he thought, that was one of his reasons for loving her—because she was so foie gras and Baby Ruth. He certainly wouldn't be as attracted if she were entirely foie gras. Oh, well. . . .

  Audrey finished with the pendulum. She dropped it in her bag. She'd also had enough Brahms. She got up and put on Aretha Franklin's "Sweet Bitter Love."

  Springer thought that Audrey, now she was up, would come snuggle on the chaise with him. But she returned to her pillows and selected a couple of books from those stacked on the floor by the bed. Wild bird feathers that she'd found served as her bookmarks, so she was able to turn right to her place in The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, Anthropogenesis by H. P. Blavatsky. She'd been nibbling on it for well over a year and was about two thirds of the way through, on a section that was headed "The Law of Retribution."

  After intense concentration on a page and a half Audrey resurfaced, said without looking up, "We're going to get it back."

  "Get what back?"

  "Stone Five eighty-eight."

  "So says your pendulum, 1 suppose."

  "It was very definite about it."

  "Did it mention the rest of my goods?"

  "Pendulum doesn't mention, it answers. You know that. Anyway, I only asked about Stone Five eighty-eight, would we or wouldn't we."

  Springer exhaled some of his peeve. Part of the rest of it came out with "You are a fucking whacko."

  She hard-eyed him. "Want to fight?"

  He really didn't. "Not with you."

  "We ought to have some knock-downs and drag-outs once in a while," she said. "Fights are the bread and jelly of a relationship."

  "You ever wanted to punch me out?"

  "Sure."

  Springer wondered when those times had been. Whenever, he must have sailed unaware right through them. Was he that insensitive? "Why didn't you?" he asked.

  "I didn't want to hurt you," she said, and closed the subject by closing Blavatsky and spHtting open another book to any page. After a moment: "If you were on your own there'd be less or more time for us?"

  "You'd like more?"

  She felt anything so obvious didn't deserve an answer. "Libby adores you," she said. "She'd go out of her way to help you get a running start."

  The old time-fighter traipsed across the front of Springer's mind, waving her hands. "I guess Libby's okay," he said.

  "We should make a point of getting together with her . . . often."

  "I don't want to be such a user."

  "There are users and losers," Audrey cautioned.

  "Also sinners and winners," was his cynical retort.

  Audrey considered that, agreed with a nod, and went to her book. In her splendidly accented Foxcroft and Wellesley French she asked, "How does Lievre farci d la Perigourdine grab you?"

  "What is it?"

  "Stuffed hare." She spelled the homonym.

  "Ever had it?"

  "Not that I was ever aware of. Listen." She read. " Take care to collect all the blood when drawing the hare; break the bones of the legs that they may be easily trussed; clear the legs and the loins of all tendons, and lard them. Chop up the liver, the lungs, the heart' . . . God, it's gory!" The book was The Escoffier Cook Book for Connoisseurs, Chefs, and Epicures. She flipped to any other page. "Supremes de volaille, " she read and raised her eyes to Springer. "Chicken breasts. The French have about two million different ways to fix chicken breasts."

  He realized what, in a roundabout way, she was saying to him. Up to now a tuna salad sandwich had been an accomplishment.

  "Next you'll probably be thinking I want to get pregnant or something." She laughed. "Anyway, there's a self-serving motive in my wanting to learn to cook."

  "Oh?"

  "I figure, hell, I can't expect you to keep up your sexual hardihood for the next fifty or so years on a diet of Almond Joys and pepperoni."

  Springer told himself if it hadn't been for the robbery and all the uncertainty it had caused, he would have at that moment asked her to marry him. He met her gaze, told her, "You're a lulu of a lady."

  ''Your lulu of a lady," she said courageously, not letting out any of the feeling that she'd just been turned down. She returned to Escoffier, pretending to read.

  Springer stood and went across the room to one of the windows. The view it gave was down Fifth Avenue. The traffic, mainly a scattering of taxi yellow, appeared Lilliputian. Beyond the reflection on the window glass, out there in the perpetual aura of the city, he saw the 580 Fifth Building. Nine blocks away and oddly inconsequential from this vantage. He picked out the windows that were Springer & Springer easily beca
use he'd done it numerous times before from that spot. What would it be like, he wondered, to never again feel obligated to that space and all the proprietary pride that had occupied it? How absurd, even bizarre, that its reason for being was particles hardly larger than specks clawed up out of the earth and declared precious? We hadn't come much of a way from the grunting prehistorics who bludgeoned one another to a pulp over certain prettier pebbles and animal teeth, had we?

  Springer used his wrist to rub away a little itch on the side of his nose. The pungent smell of his skin surprised him. His rancor seeping out? He remembered the vinegar bath.

  He had spoken of closing Springer & Springer, of going it alone. He'd thought his words were merely words, empty threat to whatever power was determining his circumstances. (Smile upon me or else.) However, now the idea was taking the shape of an earnest alternative. Audrey was right. With only a few of Libby's friends as clients he could do better than ever. He might even become another Winston or Townsend. Townsend had built his business with social stones, using charm and regretted confidences for mortar. Townsend had always dealt a highly lucrative few notches above the wholesale level. For Townsend the divorce or death of a client invariably meant money to be made.

  The safety deposit box was registered to a corporation so it would not be included in her personal estate. The day after the funeral the primpily attired eldest son, who had authorized access, went to the bank, emptied the contents of the safety deposit box into a Mark Cross shopping bag, and proceeded directly to Townsend's. He didn't have an appointment but Townsend was expecting him.

  "Sell these off for me, Gilbert. "

  Bracelets, necklaces, rings, tiaras: diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds. Dumped upon Townsend's desk like so much junk.

  "On the Q. T, of course."

  "Do you have prices in mindP"

  "Whatever's fair."

  Springer might become what Townsend appeared to be.

  But never what Townsend was.

  Those Russian diamonds for Libby would be a nice beginning, though Springer doubted that deal even more now that he was back on familiar ground. The so-called Igor Bitov and his brief visit in Paris seemed a figment. The man had been so casually agreeable to delivering the diamonds in New York because he knew the whole thing was impossible. And Libby—perhaps she'd invented the opportunity in the first place just to make Springer jump and fail. When Igor didn't come through, that fifteen million would go back to Wintersgill, keeper of the great green funnel. Interest too.