Stone 588

by Gerald A. Browne

  Strand was allowed to take the pieces upstairs to the work floor where he could better examine them. He returned within a half hour to report that indeed quite a number of the stones that were supposed to be fine diamonds were cubic zirconium. Someone, one of the setters perhaps, must have switched those stones. Strand could offer no other explanation.

  The actress threatened to sue.

  But not only to sue.

  She would, as she so graphically expressed it, drag Townsend's reputation through shit six feet deep. She would expose the entire affair to the press, appear on every news and talk show. She detested fakes of any kind, she said pointedly.

  Townsend knew how to handle her. This was the man who had charmed treasured tiaras off imperial heads. He commiserated, as though he himself bore no blame. He soothed her with unctuous sympathies accompanied by perfectly timed compliant nods, shrugs, little distressed coos. He told her that of course he would personally see to it that her missing stones were promptly replaced.

  Not enough, she told him.

  And, he added, for her trouble she might want to choose any emerald bracelet from those he had in stock.

  She was a lioness at feeding time.

  He threw her Strand's head.

  It didn't have to be Strand's. A lesser head would have pacified her, but Townsend wanted to give himself plenty of margin. It didn't matter that Strand had had nothing to do with the stone switching, Townsend let him go.

  Ruined him.

  Townsend saw to it that word of Strand's dishonesty was smeared throughout the trade, here and in Europe. He could have played it down, dismissed Strand quietly and squelched any rumors, but he must have been harboring a jealousy of Strand all along, felt his own spotlight threatened. Townsend even went so far as to invent the slander that other instances of such stone switching had been brought to light, that evidently it was something Strand had been doing for years. Thank God, Townsend said with an air of blessed relief, the rotten spot had now been pared from the fruit.

  Strand's good standing was knocked flat. It made no difference how exceptional his work was, no one would hire him. It was said no stone was safe in his hands. That those in the trade so easily believed such things about him, that many were even smugly delighted by his fall, was additionally disillusioning for Strand.

  He considered taking up a different line of business and floundered for a while trying to decide on what it might be. Jewelry was all he knew. There was no room in his head for anything else. An opportunity came up for him to get into the illicit underside of the trade.

  Strand didn't jump at the chance, but he soon reasoned that he might as well live up to the unfairly imposed level of his reputation.

  He bought the team of swifts. Scoot and the other two, from a fence with a suddenly bad heart who wanted to move to Fort Lauderdale. It was not an unusual transaction. Fences often sold their teams of thieves for one reason or another, as though they were chattel.

  The arrangement between Strand and his newly acquired team was traditional. The swifts would sell whatever they stole only to Strand. In turn, Strand agreed not only to buy all their swag but also to look after the team in other ways. Advance them fucking-around money when there was a dry spell, see that they had a good lawyer on their case should they ever be caught, and, while they did time, provide for their dependents.

  As deviative as the underlife was for Strand, in some ways he was well suited for it. He was an expert at removing stones from settings without damaging them, could pop them out in seconds. He was also experienced at handling precious metals. For a few hundred dollars he set up a portable electric smelter in the kitchen of his apartment. After he stripped a piece of all its stones he tossed the setting into a crucible and melted it down. A setting was identifiable, incriminating, but transformed into a lump of gold or platinum it was salable by the pennyweight without risk.

  Other aspects of the underlife were not so easy. It took quite a while for Strand to learn the people and how they expected him to deal with them. There were codes held as inviolable as federal statutes, and certain cautionary measures it was assumed for everyone's sake he would adhere to. On the whole, in Strand's opinion the underlife people were no worse than many of the straights he'd formerly dealt with, particularly Townsend.

  The hours were another thing.

  The team made their hits at night, but at any time of night. Usually around 3 a.m. they would call from a pay phone and say they were on their way to him. When they arrived they dumped their flash in a pile on his kitchen table. Their part done, it was up to him to say what it was worth. They wanted the swag gone and cash in their hands as quickly as possible. Sometimes they were in such a hurry they accepted his approximate estimate of the entire package. Other times they weren't satisfied until he'd weighed every tiny gold chain, calculated every five-pointer, listed and gone over the package with them piece by piece. It could take several hours.

  There were times when in their eyes a piece was worth more than he'd quoted. For instance, a single-stone diamond ring.

  "How the fuck much did you say?"

  "Three five."

  "No fucking way, man. Not this time."

  "Three five is fair."

  "Any asshole can see it's the pick of the package."

  "It's a spread."

  "The stone will go five carats."

  "It's just cut to look five. Thin table, large crown. A spread."

  "We don't need you teaching us about stones, man. We know stones."

  "A dealer down on Canal will give seven for it."

  "You shopped it?"

  "We think you're fucking us, man. You been fucking us an inch at a time."

  "Yeah, and it's starting to hurt."

  Such friction was more dramatic than crucial. Eventually it was always Scoot who leveled off first and brought the others around to being reasonable. Strand realized it was merely their way of confirming that he was sharp and strong enough to keep them in line, but at four or five or six in the morning it was nonsense.

  Month after month of such indeterminate routine took its toll on Strand. His circadian clock refused to be reset. He never adjusted to having to sleep during the day, and a night when he got four undisturbed hours was an event. He was so run down that every flu bug passing through New York called on his body.

  Well, he'd certainly caught up on his rest while in Danbury prison.

  Now, on the morning of his release day, he returned to sit on the concrete bench by the side of Route 37. An engine began growling: a trusty was power-mowing the grass of the prison's slopes. Strand couldn't make out who the trusty was at that distance. Most likely, Strand thought, it was one of those politicians doing a token year for what would be a hundred years for anyone else, and whose grass at home was being tended by a well-paid gardener. Strand ignored the noise. If there was one thing he'd taught himself while inside, it was how to cut out noise.

  He held up the tomato he'd bought.

  Not to admire it but to determine where he would bite into it.

  He wet the tomato with his tongue so some of the pinch of salt he sprinkled on it stuck. He felt the taut, tissuey skin puncture under the pressure of his front teeth. Like some not entirely helpless creature retaliating, it squirted juice and seeds, spoiled the taste of Strand's first bite by staining his shirt cuff.

  At that moment a BMW 745i pulled up.

  Strand assumed it was the one but he waited until he heard his name asked by the man on the passenger's side. He placed the mortally wounded tomato on the bench where birds were sure to see it. Did a quick study of the man in the car while he wiped his hands on the paper towel. Taking up his satchel from beneath the bench, he got into the rear seat.

  When the car was under way Springer introduced himself and Audrey. The situation was awkward. There was common ground for conversation, actually a lot to be said, but Springer felt it would be wrong to get so quickly to it. What should he say? How was it in prison? How does it fee
l to be out after three years? What?

  Strand wasn't about to take the initiative. He gazed out at the Connecticut countryside, which along there wasn't all that attractive: split-level houses with moats of pine-bark chips.

  "Ever been up this way?" Springer asked. They were headed north on 37.

  "No," Strand replied conclusively.

  Springer was at a disadvantage because Strand was seated directly behind him. There could be no eye contact unless Springer strained around and looked over his shoulder. Just as uncomfortable for Springer was having the eyes of this stranger fresh out of prison fixed on the back of his neck. No matter that Danny had thoroughly briefed him on Strand's background, Springer didn't believe anyone could spend that much time locked up and not come out angry.

  Concerned with that he hadn't noticed that Audrey was driving, as usual, too fast. The blacktopped road was unshouldered and excessively patched where each winter had heaved it up. The BMW skittered on a curve and grazed the turbulence of an oncoming twenty-ton Mack truck loaded with gravel. Actually it wasn't as close a call as the whirled air made it seem. Springer gestured to Audrey and she let up some. The last thing they wanted was to give Strand the impression that they were foolishly reckless.

  Going slower accentuated the lack of conversation, but after a mile or so they were passing through a town and that helped.

  "What's this place called?" Strand asked.

  "New Fairfield."

  A one-stoplight town. Strand observed to himself. Takes a certain kind of person to settle for a one-stoplight town. A lot of people, like Patricia, who were wrong about themselves thought it was what they wanted. Half dying early was really what it was. Fuck that. But what did he want in the long run? The three years in limbo hadn't clarified that for him. If anything, all the thinking he'd done had depleted his possibilities.

  One thing for certain. Strand thought, he wasn't ready for these people. Danny had said. Just listen to what they have in mind. As a special favor to me, Danny had said, special implying a due bill. Honest to himself, Strand doubted that he would have consented had he been getting out with someone to go to. In a way these people were surrogates, all he had, and that was a hell of a lonely thing to admit. A couple of straights with a scheme, that's what they were. They were a ride to the city.

  Audrey glanced into the rearview mirror and into Strand's eyes. She smiled at him in a way that Springer couldn't.

  Strand smoothed his cowlick.

  Springer turned to Strand. "What I thought we might do is stop someplace for lunch. There are a couple of nice places over on New York Twenty-two."

  "I want to get into the city." "Okay. We can talk on the way."

  An hour and twenty minutes later the BMW pulled up where Strand said he wanted to be left off, a prewar apartment house on East 75th Street between First and Second Avenues.

  "I'll give you a call," Strand said.

  "You can reach me day or night at one or the other of those numbers," Springer told him.

  "We'll be waiting to hear from you," Audrey promised.

  Strand slammed the car door harder than necessary and entered the apartment house.

  Audrey went east on 75th. As she approached the comer of Second Avenue, Springer had her pull over into a hydrant area. From there they looked back at the apartment house Strand had gone into.

  "You were really selling," Audrey commented.

  "I overdid it?"

  "I don't know if you had to go into it as much as you did. Maybe to him it sounded like a sob story. Anyway, what do you think of him?"

  "He's a good listener," Springer said sardonically.

  "I'll pendulum him when we get home."

  The two minutes they waited there at the curb seemed longer. Possibly even longer for Strand. He came out with his satchel still in hand, walked to the comer of First, and hailed a cab.

  Chapter 28

  For the next five days Springer was as edgy as an actor waiting word about a part he'd auditioned for but wasn't entirely sure he wanted.

  Audrey helped him cope with his ambivalence.

  Drawing from her enthusiasm in favor of the robbery, she bolstered Springer's reasoning that it was the only choice left open to him. She neglected to say how much it appealed to her own penchant for putting everything on the line, as Springer had expressed it. In her mind there was not a grain of doubt that the robbery was possible, would be pulled off by them without a hitch. After all, the pendulum told her precisely that, every time she asked it. She looked forward to all the chancey moments, the stomach-hollowing, the adrenaline-rushing the robbery would involve. Surely it would put to shame such dabbling things as placing phony automatic pistols into the hands of store-window dummies.

  To offset Springer's restlessness she kept him occupied. She asked Wintersgill to get video cassette copies of all the current films. Wintersgill contacted a bootlegger who for a premium price regularly supplied well-offs with such copies even before the films were released.

  Audrey and Springer went through the stack of cassettes, watching triple features until they'd used up half a bottle of Visine. Only a few of the films were worthwhile. Included were a couple of somewhat attractively soft hardcores Audrey had requested. They served their purpose but really weren't needed. In that area Audrey dipped into her wellspring of artifices and came up with some variations. Not elaborate, obviously staged productions but such feasible things as having a shipment of lingerie coincidentally arrive from Paris at the very same hour that Ferragamo delivered two dozen of their latest spike-heeled evening sandals for her selection. She needed Springer's opinion, she said, and had him get comfortable while she did quick change after quick change.

  Camisoles sans panties, panties sans camisoles, chemises, step-ins, teddies —and her, striding and turning about with the detached insouciance of a Givenchy runway star.

  Needless to say it took Springer's mind off all else.

  Another sort of therapy was what she called centering him. As Springer understood, it was a way of keeping his body and spiritual self well balanced, very important especially in times of stress. All it took was his cooperation and her hands. He lay supine and nude on the rug. She poked around until she located this or that contact point. (Evidently she knew one when she felt it, but when Springer asked her how she changed the subject.) Maintaining contact with slight finger pressure, she closed her eyes and allowed healing white light to course through her and into him. So she claimed.

  Since the wonderworkings of stone 588, Springer was ready to believe just about anything was possible. He told Audrey that he felt considerably better, stronger, clearer-headed after one of these centering sessions. Only because it made her happy to hear it.

  Audrey also had him take bhasmas.

  Without Springer knowing, she located an Ayurvedic physician who had quite a number of patients in the East Indian community in Queens.

  Dr. Shayama Chakravarty.

  He suggested that in order to ensure the medicine he prepared for Springer was of superior quality Audrey should obtain several fine rubies, the finer the better, and a thirty-inch braid of 15 millimeter natural oriental pearls. He had Audrey observe while he burned the rubies and pearls and stirred the ashes (the bhasmas) into a mixture of alcohol and glycerine and a drop or two of red cake frosting coloring. He transferred the mixture to an 8-ounce medicine bottle. Wrote shake well and pitta/kapha on the label.

  Dr. Chakravarty, a soft-spoken man with two unfortunately placed purplish moles below his left eye, explained to Audrey that Pitta and Kapha were two of the three known Doshas, the three forces of energy, inertia, and harmony that are in every cell in our bodies—in fact, in every atom of all other existences as well.

  Audrey asked why the doctor hadn't prescribed the third Dosha. Why only two?

  "From what you have told me, there is no need for Vayu."

  "What's Vayu?"

  "Harmony," the doctor replied matter-of-factly.

  Audrey did
n't see how anyone couldn't use a bit more harmony.

  Before Springer would take the bhasmas, Audrey had to tell him what it was and how she'd gotten it. She told him honestly that she'd bought the rubies at Cartier's and the pearls at Seaman Schepps.

  "What will it do for me?" Springer asked.

  "All sorts of good things," Audrey said with a tinge of innuendo.

  "Is this an indirect complaint regarding the quality of our sex life?"

  "Hell, no."

  To patronize her Springer gave the bottle a vigorous shake and took a swig of the syrupy stuff now and then. Often he stuck his tongue in the neck of the bottle and pretended to be swigging. If it had been prepared as Audrey claimed, it was the most precious (though not necessarily efficacious) potion of all rime. Springer thought. He suspected that the procedures of Dr. Whateverhisnamewas were faster than Audrey's eyes and that the ruby and pearl ashes he was now supposed to be quaffing were not from those Audrey had supplied. Rather than upset her, he never mentioned the possibility.

  Frequently during those five days of waiting Springer stood at the south-view window of Audrey's apartment and looked down upon Townsend's place of business. Because it was on Fifth Avenue between 55th and 56th streets, which was almost directly below, Springer, on the thirty-fourth floor, had to press close up to the window glass to see it. From that height the five-story buildings below, including Townsend's, looked like miniatures modeled to scale. Sometimes Springer felt as though he could crush them by taking a single step.

  On the afternoon of the sixth day of waiting. Springer decided he needed a more realistic perspective. He had about three quarters given up on Strand, believed Strand would have gotten in touch by now if interested. Anyway, Audrey would be there in case Strand called. Springer went down to Fifth Avenue and across 56th Street to the sidewalk in front of the Steuben Glass showroom. It was a horribly humid Friday. The tourists were hurting. They roosted hip to hip on the short ledge around the reflecting pool outside Steuben. The pool was still as glass, the black bottom of it scattered with coins. Mostly pennies but quite a few quarters and half crowns and francs. Springer wondered how it started, this paying for wishes. One night a couple of summers ago he had happened to be passing by there when the police were having a hard time apprehending a panhandler who was up to his crotch in the pool, diving to get enough for a bottle in a bag. The panhandler claimed he was merely baptizing himself.