The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  The clocks were disappointing. Some goon nearby started expounding about the 1820s being the peak of London’s longcase clockmakers—the nerk called them “grandfather”clocks. He would. This sort of thing’s often quoted from the slithery catalogue spiel of auctioneers. You have to arm yourself with truth to counteract it. London clockmakers let longcase clocks alone after about 1804 or so, when the provinces took over. There was a bonny archtop bracket clock in mahogany I would have found room for under my jacket if I’d been the only visitor (only kidding) and a pearlware Wedgwood jug with that priceless yellowish tinge they couldn’t get rid of until they discovered that a little touch of cobalt made all the difference.

  “For myself,” I was saying as we left—it shut at teatime—“I’d rather have the lemonish tint.”

  I ignored the glimpse of the elegant woman to one side of the entrance, because what did it matter? Her sister was overprotective. So what?

  We shared a gentle meal in a self-service place and said so-long. Rose suggested we meet some time. I agreed because it’s my only response with women. I waved her off near Columbus Circle, started walking.

  I’d gone a hundred yards when I was taken in custody by a couple of plainclothesmen who flashed badges at me just like on the pictures and bundled me inside a motor the length of a cathedral. I was made to believe that any attempt at discussion would be ill received.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  « ^ »

  IT WASN’T a police car, not like I’d seen. Some special division, arresting me for being an illegal alien? From gaol I’d write to Rose, c/o Fredo’s nosh bar, or her bookshop… We’d driven into an enormous tunnel.

  “Excuse me, please. Where are we going?”

  Neither answered. My mouth was already dry, but it dehydrated some more. My anxiety gelled into fright. This was no arrest. At times like this I’m even more pathetic than usual, lost, helpless, every neuron on hold.

  Emerging, daylight showed me signposts. New Jersey? Wasn’t that vaguely in Los Angeles? Or not? TV late-nighters, hitherto my sources on America, are never precise on geography. Here was New Jersey, stuck right onto New York, as pretty as the rest of the place. Why I should be so astonished by trees, colourful gardens, chalets and imposing dwellings, handsome architecture, I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never been to France or Tibet, yet I’ve read quite a bit about them. But here I was in the United States and ignorant as sin. Maybe it’s that we suppose we know, when really we don’t. Guilty, of wilful ignorance.

  The grand house we stopped at was familiar even in daylight. And the frantic girl who came to wring her hands on the steps. She was pale as death, though bonny in her taupe sheath dress. I had the feeling that somehow Jennie wasn’t quite the same status by daylight. She’d been the catering manageress; now she was no more than a gofer. Terror still showed. I hoped mine didn’t.

  MR Granger conducted me and Jennie across acres of carpet, modern crud attractive as an oil slick. For the same price they could have had a lovely Edwardian or Mesopotamian. It’s the same with people who buy new dinner services or with household lace, late decorative glassware. Folk never listen.

  Nicko was seated between two people. One was his wife. The other was Orly, erstwhile my off-table boss only now much less camp and very solemn. Daylight altered status all round. I prayed it didn’t change mine too much. Mrs. Nicko sat in an apple-green afternoon dress, emeralds picking light from everywhere. Lovely. Nice to see a woman choosing the right colours for once. I honestly do believe they make more mistakes in colours than in hair styles, dress, fashion, textures of materials, food menus…

  “What’s with him?” somebody was asking.

  “Lovejoy. Tell Mr Aquilina what you said last night.”

  I dragged my eyes from Mrs. Nicko, licked my dry lips. My voice came out a croak. “Er, well, Sheraton —”

  Nicko gazed obliquely past me, still as a stoat.

  “No. The lady, Lovejoy. Mrs. Sophie Brandau.”

  “Blue velvet? Yes. I saw her do it.” Suddenly I really honestly didn’t want to be guilty of marking their frigging table. I wanted to prove my innocence to the hilt. “Orly saw her. You served her the glass, Orly.”

  I swear my knees were quivering. Sometimes I disgust me.

  “He said zircons, Gina,” Nicko told the wall.

  Mrs. Nicko did a woman’s meticulous non-smile that speaks volumes. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her, either. She said, “Truly, Lovejoy?”

  Odd that bosses have first names in America. Was it the custom? Chat and fright are immiscible, the way chat and love are not.

  “Well, the setting was a bit too much for the style,” I began helpfully. “The ring stone was about J/K colour, Edwardian cut, put into platinum.” Faces blank in my pause for breath. Was Nicko going to go spare if I said I didn’t like the setting? “Er, I thought the mount crap — sorry, not well designed. There’s a limit to what a slender Edwardian mount can get away with…”

  Nicko’s attitude had changed. Jennie jumped in. Fright makes a woman ugly, as if it scars her soul. Odd, because excitement makes them more attractive. I wonder why.

  “Zircons, Lovejoy? Not diamonds?”

  I eased. Was that all? Had I been brought all this way and scared witless just for society gossip?

  “You mean am I sure? Zircon shows a double edge. Diamond doesn’t. You need a handlens to make certain, so I…” I glanced worriedly at Orly “… filled her water glass, handed it to her.” Into their silence I explained that parts of a filled glass can magnify.

  “This zircon,” Nicko asked infinity.

  “They’re old-fashioned now, really,” I said, cheering by the second. Home ground. “They were the favourite diamond lookalike once. Now there are superb cheaper manmakes.”

  “How cheap?”

  “Peanuts.” I spoke my Americanism proudly. “Some cubic zirconias and whatnot you can buy for virtually the cost of cutting them. Even amateur jewellers turn them out.”

  “So?”

  I wished he’d raise his voice, give it some inflection now and then. Maybe it wouldn’t put the mockers on me quite so badly. I shrugged.

  “She should have had a synthetic.” This was none of my business. “Some manmakes are red hot. I mean cubic zirconias usually won’t chip, which natural zircon sometimes does — not as hard, you see, though nothing’s quite up to diamond. And finding a big natural zircon can be a pig because they’re usually pretty small.”

  More silence, everybody looking. I cleared my throat, running out of facts.

  “Ceylon exports them. People used to call colourless zircons Matara diamonds, after a town there.” Pause. That was my lot, unless they got me a good library. “I like natural zircon. Mrs. Brandau’s were terrific, though not worth much. Zircon,” I bleated on desperately, “gets a bad press. Like colourless sapphires. You can’t give them away nowadays, yet they’re beautiful stones.”

  No response. I began to sweat, casting about in my mind for more bits gleaned from my sordid past. Mrs. Aquilina crossed her legs, driving me mad just when I wanted to concentrate. Jennie and Orly were intent, Nicko gazing off somewhere. His wife was nearly smiling, hard eyes on me.

  “The woman,” she said softly. I swallowed.

  “The only reason women wear natural zircons nowadays is if it’s their Zodiac thing. Or if the setting’s complicated and old and it’d take too long to have replicas made.” I gave a stiff grin. End with a joke. “There’s a lot of thieves about. So I’d use the antique phonys because the setting’d convince even if the gemstones wouldn’t…”

  And I wished I hadn’t, because suddenly it was no joke. I learned that when Nicko moved. His head swivelled, but so slowly it was like waiting for a salvo. His eyes stilled me. Black as coal. I felt my feeble smile fade.

  “Try him out,” he said.

  THEY took me to a small room a mile down some corridor. God, but white corridors daunt your spirits, don’t they. What’s wrong with a bit of col
our, for God’s sake?

  For an hour Orly and Jennie showed me stones of varying sorts, including zircons in various cuts, spinels and colourless stones, mounted and unmounted. I was worn out, but becoming less scared as I worked through the gems in their plastic envelopes. Mrs. Aquilina came in to watch from time to time, smoking her head off but graceful with her cigarette and giving submerged looks. An elderly man called Sokolowsky had brought the gems. He sat by, saying nothing. Presumably the jeweller. He’d brought the instruments every antique dealer knows and hates—they tell whether a dealer’s speaking the truth. You can put the fear of God in a jeweller by simply asking for a handlens, a microscope, a refraction gadget. (Don’t let him tell you he hasn’t got these essentials handy—notice that all jewellers have a little dark alcove behind the counter?) I was nearly thrown by a synthetic turquoise; the sod had treated it with paraffin, as if it were a natural stone, so I had a bad minute with the microscope. The most valuable instrument is an old pair of Polaroid sunglasses, but I shelved that dealer’s trick and did it all properly, for show.

  All the while I was thinking, a brilliant-cut diamond of six carats isn’t much less than half an inch across, if the proportions are about right. Sophie Brandau’s zircons had been way above that diameter, from what I could remember. So her real ones must have been worth a king’s ransom. Yet what did it matter if she’d decided to wear el cheapo copies? Women often do that for security, leaving their priceless tom in the bank. Sweating less, I handed Jennie the list of the forty gems they’d given me, and waited while the old bloke ticked them off, nodded, packed his stuff and departed with a wheeze.

  Orly sat with me, talked animatedly and with open friendliness about last night’s party, being witty about the guests, making me relax.

  Then I was sent for by Nicko, who told the middle distance, “He’s hired.”

  “Hired?” I glanced from Nicko to Jennie, to Orly, to Gina who by now had worked up into a genuinely frank actual smile, and very lovely it was.

  “Well, thanks, er Nicko, I’ve already got a job. I honestly think I’d better stick with it.”

  The world iced.

  “Is he real?” Nicko asked, passing a hand in front of his forehead.

  Jennie wasn’t so pale now. She gave a hand flap. Two suited blokes lifted me off my feet and flung me out, along, down into a limo. All the way I was thinking: Hired? Hired for what? I mean, what good was I to a man like Nicko? To Jennie, Orly? To New Jersey, even, now I’d got it pinpointed on the world map?

  I had a headache, my freedom, two jobs, and a growing terrible notion that I suddenly knew far too many people in America.

  Thank goodness I hadn’t told Nicko’s lot quite everything about the blue velvet lady. Like an idiot, I actually thought I’d got away with something.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  « ^ »

  THAT Monday started so odd that I began to wonder what I was doing wrong. Or right. I had a visitor, discovered a familiar face, and got yet another job.

  The minute I arrived at Manfredi’s I got an envelope. The place was hardly open when in came a Suit. It was the huge truncated man who’d sat beside the limo driver the previous night. He gave me a thick manila, asked for coffee.

  “I’m Tye Dee, Lovejoy,” he said without blinking. He sat on a stool like a cartoon elephant, overflowing all round. “I bring the word. Capeesh?”

  “Sure, sure.” The word?

  He watched me pour coffee, then left without touching it. Lil was close by and gave a phew.

  “Ya got him for a friend, Lovejoy, ya gotta friend.”

  Well, hardly a friend. I opened the envelope, found it stocked with money. Hastily I hid it and hoped nobody had seen. Josephus and Jonie were busy, and Delia was in Fredo’s office signing on a new waitress. Maybe this was my pay for my extra unknowable job. The speed of America was bewildering. Should I tell Fredo? Was there a message in with the gelt? I was scared to look, with Manfredi’s starting to fill with breakfast customers. I gave Fredo the envelope to stick in his office safe.

  That day, I started taking an interest in the bar’s television. We always kept it on. As the hours slid by in a cacophony of talk I kept watch, throwing in the occasional comment about politicians, bankers, showbiz personalities as they showed on screen. I wasn’t being nosy, you understand. Just human. Fredo had been blunt: I should say nothing about the special job he’d sent me on. I understood that. Us illegal immigrant workers love anonymity. But there’s nothing wrong with learning about a city, is there?

  By evening I started activating the customers. I’d got nowhere with the telly.

  “Hey, man,” I responded to one enthusiast who’d challenged my supreme ignorance about New York. “I’m from the West Coast. What do I know?”

  He was a regular, a cheery early-nighter from Brooklyn. I got him onto local politicians, easy with so many news bulletins on the million TV channels they have.

  “See, N’York’s a kinda special case,” he told me, well into his third manhattan. “This city’s the world’s business leader. The Federal Government should help, ’stead of trying to tax us out of existence.”

  A lively debate struck up. Everybody seemed to be from somewhere else, but with know-all opinions about running New York.

  The elegant lady—she of the Belgian gold handbag —the far corner soon after six, silently reading, but listening.

  “Look at the way Washington treats N’York…”

  “Mmmh,” I went, polishing glasses, serving. “Sure does.”

  Background was my role in life. Get enough money for the fare homeward. Until then, be silent as wallpaper, your friendly barman.

  “Hi, Lovejoy. Remember me?”

  “Hi, Rose.” It was a careful greeting. She’d cautioned me yesterday about saying “Howdy’. I was narked, but she’d said it’s cowboy. “What can I get you?”

  “You have to ask, Lovejoy?”

  Tunafish salad, sliced eggs, coffee, glass of white wine. And her usual end stool. I served as Brooklyn’s argument heated up. Lil chipped in. It was all so friendly. Lovely, innocent, and so American.

  Still no recognizable faces on the news. Good newscasters, a hundred times better than ours back home. One up for USA.

  Maybe it was preying on my mind, but by now I was almost certain I’d seen two of the faces before. I could only have seen them on the news. I’m hopeless with names, but I love faces. The trouble is we disguise ourselves with posh speech, fine clothes. We go about hoping everybody thinks we went to a better school than we actually did. Or that we’re richer. Anything but truth. Faces are often the only way in to the real person beneath. I wish I’d remembered that. It might have saved a life.

  Rose spun out her meal for well over two hours. By then Manfredi’s was quiet, the cheerful arguers reduced to sports grumblers. She put it to me as I passed her the chit.

  “Lovejoy. Moira wants to know if you’ll call. Maybe come round for coffee after work?” She smiled at my hesitation. “She’ll pay the taxi to your hotel.”

  “I’m not good with relatives, love.”

  “A paying job, Lovejoy. Antique stuff.”

  She was speaking confidentially. Nobody else within earshot.

  “Fine.”

  She slid off the stool. “You remember the address?”

  “It’s the only one I know in New York.” She left a tip, to my embarrassment, but Delia barked at me when I demurred.

  “We’re taxed eight per cent of our salary, Lovejoy. Refuse a tip, you’re subsidizing Uncle Sam.”

  “Thank you, miss,” I called after Rose. A minute later, the elegant woman in the corner also left. No coincidence, not any more. She was Moira all right. But why the secrecy?

  What harm could a third job do? I’d already got two. I joked my way towards closing time. Fredo quietly told me he was pleased I’d done well at Mr Aquilina’s, and to leave an hour earlier that night. He looked rough and tired, so I said I’d stay. He insisted. I obeyed.


  NINEISH on a wet New York evening isn’t beautiful. I walked carefully, keeping to the well-lit areas as Rose had told me. I saw some old geezer preaching God is Love and was coming to exterminate us. Two blokes were brawling on the pavement with drunken sluggishness. People in doorways start soliciting an hour after dark, demanding change and offering packets of God-knows-what. Taxis always seem to be heading the opposite way.

  Odd, but the dozy old man on the hotel counter gave me a greeting, his first ever. Really unnerved, I climbed up to my grotty pad, and found Jennie there. Now, I always keep the room key whenever I’m in a hotel, so she was a surprise.

  She didn’t move, just pointed to the chair opposite. No smile. I exhaled, having had some ludicrous notion of asking what the hell but deciding the better of it. Where Nicko’s catering manageress was, various goons wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Zircons, Lovejoy.”

  I was beginning to wish I’d never mentioned the bloody things. “Did I get some wrong, then?” I meant the jewel tests they’d made me do.

  “No.” She was eyeing me like I was a curiosity. For women this is nothing new, but I’d thought America would be different. “Hundred per cent. Even the mounted gems.”

  Oh oh. I knew what was coming. There’d been a piece of beautiful amber in a Balkan wooden carved mount. I’d loved it. These votive pieces are religious objects, nothing truly valuable in themselves but exquisite antiques. (Take care. There’s a zillion forgeries about, usually copal resin with carved walnut wood, mostly made in Italy.) It had chimed warmly at me. It was authentic all right. At the time, I’d vaguely wondered about the coincidence. Rose’s amber, now this.

  “One of which you didn’t even touch, Lovejoy.”

  “Miss one, did I?” I said brightly. ”Well, get the old soak to drop it by and I’ll —”

  “Sokolowsky says you didn’t. A wooden-cased amber pendant. Yet you scored it genuine.”

  “He’d nodded off, Jennie,” I lied quickly.

  “We video everything at Brookmount.” She stood, walked the one pace and twitched the curtain. It shed dust over her. “You’re some sort of divvy, Sokolowsky tells us.”