Stone 588

by Gerald A. Browne

  Naturally, in such an atmosphere any rumor of misfortune is quick to spread. Those men in pairs or threes seen huddled on the sidewalks of the street aren't always in the course of making pocket-to-pocket deals. More often than not what they're up to is putting downside rumors in one another's ears.

  One such rumor had been along the street for several weeks. Springer & Springer was going to fold, it was said and heard and said. Springer & Springer couldn't recover from the nearly total loss it had recently suffered.

  Such a pity. See what could all at once happen to even a solid third-generation firm? Kaput

  Springer, by merely tearing the comer off an eight-by-ten manila envelope, squelched all that tattle. Out of the envelope and onto his white desk pad poured some ten million dollars' worth of goods, a mix of colored stones and diamonds. A fourth of what Audrey had dropped from her stocking yesterday afternoon. On his way to the office today Springer had stopped at his bank and put the rest of the goods, worth thirty or so million, into his safety deposit box. He had decided to feed the goods into the firm in reasonable portions, so never at any one time would there be more than ten to twelve million in his safe. Then, if he got hit again (an increased possibility, now that he and Danny weren't on good terms), at least he couldn't be wiped out. Not only that. There were taxes. A sudden forty million into the flow of the firm would be a bit much. No need to rub the IRS's nose in it. Business just reasonably better than usual was how things should appear, and, as usual, like everyone else on the street: one set of books, but another in his head.

  The goods made a pretty pile on Springer's sorting pad. It wasn't right for them to be in a haphazard mixture like that. Agitated, the diamonds might bully the not-so-hard rubies and sapphires and especially the even softer emeralds, scratch or fracture them. Springer would feel better when they were all sorted and graded and folded away in their individual briefkes. He and his assistant, Linda, would do that together.

  When Linda saw the goods pour from the envelope her legs went. She had to sit. In keeping with the code that the right to handle goods belonging to another is never assumed, she asked, "May I?"

  Permission granted by Springer with a casual gesture.

  Linda used the side of her tweezers randomly to separate some of the goods from the main pile. By lightly running the tweezers back and forth she spread them into a single layer, then isolated several sapphires, intense pinks and Burma blues in the six- to ten-carat range. With professional deftness, she flipped the sapphires over onto their faces so, one at a time, she could more easily get a pinching hold on their girdles and bring them to her eye. While she examined them through her ten-power loupe the sounds that came from her were similar to those usually drawn out by physical ecstasy. She was too loyal and too knowledgeable about the ways of the trade to ask where Springer had gotten these fine goods or how much he'd paid for them.

  "We're going to expand," Springer said.

  "Looks like we already have."

  "From now on you're in charge of all colored goods."

  "I'm what?"

  He told her again, explained that Springer & Springer would no longer be dealing exclusively in diamonds. She would make sure that was known by all the major dealers of sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. She would be calling on the buyers at Cartier and Tiffany, Van Cleef and whoever, charming orders out of them. She would establish sources in Bangkok and be going there at least once a year, and to Bogota, and probably even more frequently to Paris and Geneva.

  It hit Linda's dream so squarely on the nose she had to tell herself it would be awful if she cried. She always looked as though she had an eye infection when she cried. Now was a moment to be at her best.

  "Regarding salary," Springer said. "Triple what you're making, and we'll work out some sort of commission."

  Linda knew graduate gemologist assistants such as herself who felt trapped in the trade, who had practically given their eyesight, and in some instances much more, to their jobs, and in return received only twenty-five-dollar raises and a spritzer of Estee Lauder for Christmas. This was her break, the helping hoist over the hump. "I'll still be answering to you, won't I?"

  "Only when I ask," Springer said lightly.

  She thanked him. Three times. Was tempted to get gushy about it. She sent him her most purely grateful look and then, to ease the earnestness of the moment she added a smack of her usual dalliance. "Damn that Audrey," she declared, smiling, which, of course, expressed all the otherwises. She pincered up one of her new charges, a six-carat ruby that she would get no less than twelve thousand a carat for. While momentarily lost in the ruby's blood-red atmosphere, she told Springer in a by-the-way manner, "Mal's here."

  "Here in the office?"

  "Came in about an hour ago. To get something from his desk, so he said. He's been just sitting in there."

  "Do me a favor. Go in and let him know I want to see him."

  "Want to or would like to?"

  Within a couple of minutes Mal appeared in the doorway, his eyes avoiding Springer's.

  "Come on in. Sit down." Springer had never seen Mal's hair so in need of a trim. His sideburns were bushed out, uneven. He had on a fresh shirt but it was missing the second button down. No tie. His suit was badly creased in all the places a suit creases when it's been worn for several days straight. This was Mal but not the same Mal, Springer thought. Different in the eyes and the set of his mouth. That Marcie had stolen more than gems.

  "How was the retreat?" Springer asked to begin.

  "It was okay."

  "Just okay?"

  "The food was bad."

  "The no-talking part must have been worse."

  "Truth is I didn't get there."

  "Oh?"

  "I was in Pennsylvania but not there. I was in New Hope."

  "Great name for a place. Does it live up to it?"

  "For some people, maybe."

  "What did you do in New Hope?"

  "Nothing. Went for walks, tried to sleep a lot. Nothing." It was evident that Mal was ambivalent about being there, facing Springer. He kept glancing in the direction of the door, even had one leg out favoring that side of his chair, ready to take the first exiting step. "What's happening with Jake?" Mal asked.

  "He goes in for his second chemotherapy tomorrow morning."

  "Poor kid." Just two words but with a lot of caring in them.

  The sorting pad on Springer's desk was bare now. Springer had hurriedly scooped up the goods and put them away, only to eliminate the distraction. He sat back, studied his uncle for a long moment, noticed that he'd cut himself while shaving and there was a trace of styptic powder, paler than his complexion, where he'd stopped the bleeding. "Mal," Springer said evenly and with plenty of voice, "what you did stunk."

  "I'm sorry. I'll always be sorry," Mal mumbled, hanging his head.

  "Sorry isn't enough."

  "What can I say?"

  "I don't know." A noisy sigh from Springer conveyed exasperation. "But . . . to just up and leave me here to take care of the business the way you did was no fucking way to treat a partner."

  "Huh?"

  "Maybe you've forgotten how much there is to do. People have goods out on memo and need a nudge, people owe us, clients are in from out of town, there are sights to go to London for, there's always something." Springer's words were harshly angled.

  "I thought—"

  "What it looks like is you want a free ride. Well, let me tell you, there isn't going to be any free ride. Not on my back."

  It was like pumping up a person. Mal sat taller. His chest filled out, and so did his neck and face, visibly recovering.

  Springer kept on. "And now, after weeks of fucking off, you show up, but do you show up ready to carry your share? No, you come in a mess, looking like you've been on a train for five days and nights. Christ."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  Springer sat forward, got Mal by the eyes, told him calmly, softly, "I want you to go home. I want yo
u to stop kicking the shit out of yourself, have a relaxing long weekend, and come in Monday fresh and all set to deal. Can you manage that?"

  Mal nodded. Even his eyes had regained some of their former spark. Possibly some of that was because they were welling.

  "Did you find what you were looking for in your desk?" Springer asked.

  "Yeah. I . . . uh, I just wanted to get my loupe and a couple of personal things. Nothing important."

  Springer got up and went to the safe.

  "Maybe you should have the combination changed on the safe," Mal suggested, thinking Springer might have already done that.

  "Why? Only you and I know it." Springer returned to his desk with a black alligator-covered book: Mal's most recent address and number book with hundreds of active entries in it, from Adele to Zelda. "I figured this was too valuable to just leave there in your desk drawer," Springer said.

  Mal accepted the book self-consciously.

  "Here's something else," Springer said.

  A briefke, no coding or any designation on it.

  Mal unfolded it, saw that it contained a dozen diamonds of assorted grades and cuts from a half carat to two carats. With his old practiced hands, Mal shifted the diamonds about, made them show their all, tilted the briefke one way and then the other so the diamonds ran up and down its inner crease. He looked questioningly to Springer.

  "A starter kit for your personal use," Springer explained, keeping a straight face.

  After Mal left, Linda came back in and she and Springer got started on the new goods. Each stone had to be weighed to the hundredth of a carat, measured to the millimeter, classified, given an appropriate coded identity, placed into its briefke, and itemized on a confidential master list. It was a painstaking task, even for two experienced professionals. It would take days.

  They went hard at it, working systematically, doing the colored stones first, not deciding on any prices for those until Linda had a better, longer look at them and the current market. There was more latitude, more room for personal appreciation and opinion in determining the value of colored goods. On the other hand, the value of diamonds was about as fixed as a monetary system. A well-cut two-carat E-graded diamond of WSl quality was worth specifically so much on any given day.

  Springer told the receptionist to hold all calls except one. That one came in at five o'clock.

  "It's been such a long day," Audrey said.

  "What have you been doing?" Springer asked.

  "Mainly?"

  "Mainly."

  "Loving the presence of your absence for one thing."

  "What else?"

  "How about yearning you?"

  "Nifty."

  "Are you looking out your window?"

  "I am now."

  "Can you see this?"

  On a high corner of Trump Tower nine blocks up Fifth Avenue Springer made out a little on-and-off flash, as if the building itself was scintillating in that one spot.

  Amused, he asked, "Is that your smile?"

  "It's the light in my eyes for you, lover. Telling you to get your ass home."

  Audrey was at one of the downtown facing windows of her apartment catching and reflecting the late-day sun with a silver-framed hand mirror.

  "You're a compulsive flasher," Springer told her. "That's what you are."

  "You'll be forever discovering such colorful things about me."

  Springer liked the forever.

  "When will you be finished there?" Audrey asked.

  "Another hour, hour and a half."

  "That's ages. I'll have cobwebs between my knees by then."

  There was in her voice the quality that Springer had come to recognize meant if he were to say he'd be there in a few minutes, upon arrival he'd find her supine, waiting.

  "What is it you're doing that's so important?" she asked.

  He told her what he was doing.

  "If you absolutely had to, you could leave there in ten minutes?"

  "If."

  "Good. I'll also leave here in ten minutes. I'll walk down the shady side of the avenue, you walk up, and we'll meet halfway. We'll shop some windows and you can buy me a triple-dip Haagen-Dazs to get me to do something ingeniously lewd later."

  She clicked off before he had a chance to turn down or agree with her suggestion. He knew if he called her back she'd just let it ring. He gathered up the goods he and Linda had processed and those they had yet to do and locked them in the safe. They would continue with them tomorrow.

  On the hook on the back of his office door was his suit jacket. Also, hanging there by the strap of its holster harness was his .451 magnum automatic pistol exactly like the one Audrey had fired at the Town and Country faces pinned to the old bam in Sherman. Ever since the Townsend robbery, Audrey wouldn't let Springer go anywhere without it. Each time he was leaving the apartment she frisked him to make sure. He tried to kid her out of it but she was adamant, repeated that club-and-sword reasoning of hers, and reminded him again that the world was more violent than ever, merely cloaked in controls.

  Disagreeing with her was always such a disagreeable thing for him that he just went along with her on it. It was only a phase, he told himself, probably some temporary offshoot of that craving she had for danger. Would pass.

  To accommodate the wearing of her own .451 automatic, Audrey had bought quite a few new things by Giorgio Armani and Perry Ellis. How she wore the weapon depended on what she happened to be wearing. With an opaque and roomy top she wore it in a shoulder holster. With the new looser-legged slacks she wore it in an ankle holster. When neither was the case she tossed it into her carryall. One night when they were dining at La Grenouille she had on a regular-length dress with a rather fitted top. Springer believed she had to be sans her .451. She'd given up on it, he thought, gladly assuming that he would no longer have to go everywhere with death under his wing. When he broached the subject she guided his hand beneath the table to her inner thigh, and there it was.

  Now, Springer flexed his shoulders to get the elasticized straps of the harness comfortably situated. Attached flat to the face of the straps were three extra clips, loaded. The holster was compact, especially made for the .451. The snubby silencer was attached. Springer shifted the holster slightly to make sure of its position. It fit close against his upper side. He had gotten somewhat used to the hardness of its being there.

  He put on his jacket, adjusted his shirt cuffs. The receptionist had gone but he heard Linda on the phone in her office. She would lock up. He reached in under the receptionist's desk and pressed the button to let himself out. While he was in the corridor awaiting an elevator, his watch showed he had one minute to spare of the ten Audrey had specified.

  The instant he stepped out of the 580 Building he saw the brown Daimler limousine at the curb. Audrey was in the rear seat and Groat, the chauffeur, was attending the open rear door. Springer's immediate thought was there had been a change of plans that involved Libby. He was disappointed. The walk and intimacies Audrey had proposed were far more to his liking.

  Springer was halfway across the wide sidewalk when he sensed something wasn't right. He paused, took everything in. There was another man, a driver or whatever, in the Daimler's front seat. The man had his back to Springer, was half turned to Audrey. The glass partition between the driver and passenger compartments was down. On the opposite side of the Daimler, double-parked parallel to it, was a black Cadillac limousine, two men in its front seat. All but its front windows were tinted dark. The thing about the Cadillac that struck Springer as a bit strange was how close it was to the Daimler, within a couple of inches. It gave him the impression that the two cars were related. Then came the realization that the Cadillac, positioned as it was, would prevent anyone from getting out of the Daimler on the driver's side, and yet Groat was out. Groat was standing there with his hand on the rear door handle, the corners of his mouth unwillingly pulled up to appear pleasant, as if he were trying to coax a bird into a cage.

  A
udrey was up on the edge of the rear seat, leaning out to him, her hand extended to him. She was smiling, but not with her eyes. Distress in her eyes, Springer thought. "Hello, darling!" she greeted loudly.

  The giveaway.

  They never said hello or goodbye to one another.

  Springer continued on across the sidewalk to the car door. He reached in to accept Audrey's welcoming hand, seemed to be getting in, when he stepped back and pulled. Yanked Audrey out past a surprised Groat.

  As soon as there was sidewalk beneath Audrey's feet she began to run. Springer still had her by the hand and she was practically towing him. But now that she was out of the Daimler and on the crowded street, shouldn't they stop so he could find out what this was all about?

  Springer glanced back. He saw three men and then another getting out of the Cadillac. They stood tall, scanned the moving crowds on the avenue. They were heavyset men, the Libby sort, the type that constantly cordoned her with their physical efficiency and expert lethalness. But why, Springer wondered, were they so aggressively concerned with him and Audrey? He glanced back at them again, saw they were in pursuit, keeping to the curb and the gutter so not to be impeded by the sidewalkers.

  The traffic light at 48th Street was in its warning do not walk phase. Springer and Audrey just made it across before the cars got the green and shot eastward. Not many private cars at this hour, mostly taxis contending possessively for every inch of their right-of-way. Yellow after yellow in fast tandem, they prevented anyone from crossing 48th now. Those four men of Libby's were among the pedestrians who had to wait.

  Midblock between 48 th and 49th Springer slowed Audrey to a mere hurry. Out of breath, she told him, "They were going to take us for a ride." There was high color in her cheeks, and her expressive eyes were showing more of their whites than usual. "They had me at gunpoint. Just a squeeze and I would have been a goner."