He walked to the corner of Fifth Avenue, entered the Corvette Building and had one of the elevators all to himself up to the fourteenth floor to the corner office with his name on one of the two of its doors.
Shirley, his secretary, was at her desk not doing anything nor trying to appear that she was.
“You made it back,” she said. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t.”
“Any calls?”
“They’re on your desk.”
Mitch went into his inner office. Shirley following along, saying: “I lose the money I put down to layaway a pair of boots at Lord & Taylor if I don’t pick them up today.”
“Too hot for boots.”
“It won’t be soon enough.”
“How much?”
“I put down twenty, I owe ninety.”
“You’re impossible.”
“Otherwise I wouldn’t be so ardently sought.” Shirley arched as she accepted the hundred Mitch extended. Her smile thanked him. She had miraculous, rather large teeth, so white and even they looked a bit vicious. Her last name was Crowninshield. She was British but had been in America for half of her forty-two years. There was still considerable London in her manners and her manner of speaking and she could turn it on thick when she thought it advantageous, for herself or for Mitch. Guile she had, was smart as a skinned knee. She’d never been married, claimed she wouldn’t be ever because why put an end to enjoyment.
One of Shirley’s most apparent shortcomings was her weakness for layaways. At any given time she’d have small amounts of money deposited on things at Saks, Gallerie Lafayette, Bendel’s, Bloomie’s, wherever. All sorts of things that had spontaneously struck her fancy. She kept track of them on her calendar and nearly always waited until the final day before forfeiture to resort to having Mitch give her an advance.
After a number of such so-called advances she’d present Mitch with a detailed accounting, a printout showing she was a month or two behind in her salary. He’d keep it for a few days for effect then tear it up and drop it in her wastebasket where she was sure to discover it. Nothing said. She’d worked six years for Mitch. There’d been maybe a half dozen periods when she’d managed to resist layaways. Those times, Mitch noticed, coincided with hopeful love affairs.
Now, she’d already freshened her makeup, smoothed her pantyhose and was in the starting gate for Lord & Taylor’s. “Anything you want done before I leave?”
“Nothing that won’t keep.”
“I’m all caught up with the Hyperion file.”
“Good girl.”
“Ta then,” she said brightly to him and the whole place, grabbed up a soft leather tote that had, in its turn, once been a layaway at Bendel’s and was gone.
Among the considerable number of pink Called While You Were Out slips on Mitch’s desk were three from Maddie, the most recent only a half hour ago, two from Keith Ruder of Columbia Beneficial and one from Furio Visconti.
The latter caused Mitch to turn and look in the direction of the 580 Fifth Avenue building located diagonally across the intersection on the northwest corner of 47th. As coincidence would have it Visconti’s place of business was also on the fourteenth floor.
Often, while gazing out merely to give his thinking more room, Mitch would catch on Visconti over there dealing away. Sometimes all he could see was the back of Visconti’s head above his office chair. Other times, when Visconti had swiveled to face out, he and Mitch would peer across at one another, and once, Christmas week two years ago, Visconti had waved. Just a single, hand-up motion, and Mitch had responded rather automatically with the same.
That remote exchange across a city gorge was by no means the extent of what Mitch and Visconti saw of one another, although in Mitch’s opinion both would have been better off had they let it go at that.
Seldom was Mitch on the street that he didn’t run into Visconti. It wasn’t altogether happenchance. In his particular way, Visconti was 47th. It was his allocated portion to chew on. Anyway, half his.
There he’d be, on the sidewalk outside an arcade or a jewelry merchant’s window, talking to one of his minions or a fence. He’d stop talking or listening to make a point of saying hello to Mitch or sometimes more:
“How’s it going?”
“Fine.”
“Want to ask you something.”
Mitch raises his chin, looks receptive.
“That a real Rothko I see over there on your office wall or just a print?”
“Real.” A fib.
“That’s funny. Thought I saw that one at the Museum of Modern Art a while back.”
“I lend it out.”
“You’re a classy guy, Mitch.”
Mitch agrees.
But this was the first time Visconti had ever phoned, wanted to be called back.
Mitch pressed the speaker button of his phone. He speed-dialed Maddie.
“Well, at last, there you are,” she said.
“What’s up?”
“No cassoulet tonight, darling. The inspiration deserted and left me lazy.”
Mitch enjoyed the reprieve. “I’ll pick up something on the way home.”
“I’d rather go out,” Maddie told him. “Maybe to Lespinasse or someplace.”
She didn’t mean the someplace. When she said Lespinasse Mitch knew she meant Lespinasse. His watch told him almost six. “Shall I come home first, or what?”
“Why don’t you fiddle around there and I’ll come by for you at seven.”
“How did your day go?”
“Maybe I won’t bother with putting on any makeup.” She had this way of abruptly taking unrelated conversational side roads. Mitch had become used to it. “Would you mind terribly if I were bare-faced tonight?” she asked.
“I’ll make reservations,” he said.
“I already have. Are you okay? Your voice sounds a bit strange, sort of hollow.”
She had hypersensitive hearing but he doubted she could pick up his empty, complaining stomach. “I’ve got you on speaker phone.”
“I know, but that’s not it. I did say seven, didn’t I, precious?”
“If you want to make it sooner or later it’s okay with me.”
“No, just be out front. Billy already has the glove compartment crammed with parking violations and you know how he loathes having to circle the block.”
She clicked off and was again up the avenue thirteen blocks away. But safe up there in the high apartment at the Sherry, way above the city’s ordinary level and its dangers.
His Maddie.
Hung on the wall to his left were three framed, enlarged photographs of her. Ten years ago, five years ago, and last month. Any of the three were capable of causing him to lose his train of thought. Right now he was lost in the most recent, her pleasant, reassuring expression.
Mitch knew she ventured out more often than she admitted. He also knew she kept that from him to save him worry. Allowing her to take care of herself had from the start been part of their deal. For him it was the hardest part.
He dialed Keith Ruder, doubting that Ruder would still be in. The offices of Columbia Beneficial Insurance were located on Park in the twenties, in an imposing but spiritless building from which the drones of insurance stampeded out of each weekday at precisely five o’clock.
Ruder was there, said his last name instead of hello. He got right to it. “The file I had messengered to you, have you looked at it?”
“I was just going over it. I’ve been in Boston all day.” Mitch reached for the oversize manila envelope bearing Columbia Beneficial’s logo. He slit it open with the larger blade of a two-bladed Buck pocketknife that his father had given him because it had been his grandfather’s.
As he removed the contents of the envelope he noticed the name Kalali but it took a moment for him to recall where he’d seen it before.
The files, besides Ruder’s perfectly typed covering letter, consisted of a four-page itemized and numbered list of various pieces of jewelry, twe
nty pages of detailed descriptions and appraisals and a corresponding photograph of each insured item. Professionally taken photos. The appraisals were in order, done by Yavitz, a respectable upscale retail jeweler on Madison Avenue.
Mitch went to the bottom line. Replacement value for the entire lot came to six million one hundred thirty thousand. He purposely read the amount aloud, heard a disquieted grunt from Ruder.
“How long has the policy been in force?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Never know.”
“Believe me, Mitch [usually it was Laughton], I’ve gone over and through every clause and all correspondence at least ten times today. It’s tight.”
“I’m sure if there’s a way out you’ll find it.” Mitch was also sure Ruder would take that as a compliment.
“Our coverage began eight years ago,” Ruder informed. “Before then Lloyds had it.”
“Columbia is the sole underwriter?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Smart bookies lay off heavy action,” Mitch recited as though it was something from the Bible.
Ruder resented the bookie implication but let it pass. “From the start our coverage of the Kalalis was a package. Dwelling, cars, liability, the works. They tacked on the personal property coverage, which, of course, was their option.”
“All these jewelry items right off?”
“No. To begin with the jewelry rider was for three million something. As they acquired additional pieces they let us know, complied with our requirements and we covered.”
“Who paid the premiums?” At thirteen dollars a thousand, about eighty thousand a year.
“For the first five years the husband paid. After that the wife.”
“Wonder why. Why do you think?”
“I don’t see that it matters. The fact is the beneficiary is the wife. Columbia has the usual ninety days to settle with her.”
“Maybe she won’t live that long.”
“No matter, somebody will pop up demanding to be paid. Of course, if we were to recover …” The prospect of that drew a long, full sigh from Ruder. “God, would I ever be grateful if we recovered.”
Grateful would be nice for a change, Mitch thought.
Columbia Beneficial was one of his regular clients. He was on retainer to Columbia and to several of the other major insurance companies. Any one of them would have preferred having him on staff. At one time or another each had approached him with an offer, attractive numbers and numerous perks. Possibly he gave one thought to their propositions but never a second. At any price being among the tight asses in the gray atmosphere and paper pile of insurance didn’t appeal to him. He was heart and soul a freelancer.
For the insurance firms that was an innovation.
Prior to Mitch, whenever cases came up that involved West 47th—robberies, usually, but often a robbery with a distinctive diamond district twist—the companies had no choice but to draw from their staff of claims adjusters. These fellows, capable as they might be in handling claims in the everyday world, were out of their element on 47th.
They got blinded by the sparkle, left behind by the vernacular, spun by the milieu to the point of vertiginous confusion.
Mitch, on the other hand, could hardly have been more streetwise. For years, actually most of his life, without being conscious of it, really, he’d been stoking up on the workings of 47th. His was not merely a familiarity with the street, nor was he like someone-come-lately hoping to be accepted, needing to earn a place. The street had already conditioned him to its ways and confirmed him. It had even exposed for his awareness the cunning peristalsis of its underbelly.
He was not to be fooled. The street liked that about him. His expertise of gemstones was equal to nearly anyone’s. He could take a bare-eyed look at a stone, an emerald, say, and not only tell in which part of the earth it had been taken from but, as well, which part of that part. In many instances, even which mine.
He was just as adept when it came to finished jewelry. After a brief examination of a piece that bore no hallmark or signature, something that would stymie most people, he more often than not was able to date it within a few years and, from its style and the quality of workmanship, say where it was made and by whom.
“It’s a sweet little bracelet, quite nice. Done by someone in Carlo Giuliano’s shop. I’d say in the early 1880s, but not by Carlo himself. It’s not that sweet. Besides it wasn’t in Carlo’s Neapolitan nature to overlook signing.”
Such was the extensive know-how, know-where and know-who Mitch offered the insurance companies when eight years ago at age thirty he decided to sell them his services. They didn’t snap him right up. Typically they pretended to be mulling it over for a month or two, tried to negotiate with him, claimed he was too costly and not really needed.
Mitch stuck to his conditions, sure they would come around. Fidelity Eastern was the first to retain him. Within a week all the others fell into line.
He’d done well by them. Columbia Beneficial especially. He’d worked ten of Columbia’s major jewelry theft cases, made three total recoveries and two partials.
That wasn’t to imply that his association with Columbia was close.
Anything but.
There was a bitterness towards Columbia in him, a personal thing that refused to be swallowed and digested by time. In Mitch’s opinion all insurance companies were arctic-hearted, egregiously slick and one-way, but Columbia was the champion fine-printer of the bunch.
As for Keith Ruder, the person at Columbia he mainly dealt with, Mitch managed to keep him remote. He’d broken and parried so many luncheon invitations from Ruder that they’d finally stopped being extended, were reduced to the automatic and unmistakably insincere suggestion that they get together sometime soon.
At this moment there was Ruder on the other end of the line trying to sound buddy-buddy, forcing it, flavoring his tone with what he hoped was coming across as amiable conspiracy. It made Mitch think that this Kalali case, for some reason, was personally crucial for Ruder. Perhaps too many such large losses had piled up in Ruder’s corner; maybe he was feeling the cold of an early, less compensating retirement hot on his neck.
“I assume you want me to get on this Kalali loss,” Mitch said.
“I’d appreciate it.”
“By now these pieces may have gone first-class carry-on to London or anywhere.”
“Think so?”
Mitch really didn’t but told Ruder: “Could be.”
“Well …” A resigned sigh from Ruder. “… I suppose there’s only so much to hope for. Can’t expect a miracle.”
“That’s what it would take.”
“Nevertheless you might as well sniff around a bit.”
“What if I recover?”
“That would certainly be a blessing.”
Blessings and miracles, Mitch thought. “I mean what would be in it for me?”
“Your usual percentage, of course. Three percent.”
A hundred and eighty thousand. Fair enough, but out it came, pushed out by that old score that could probably never be settled by any amount: “I’ve raised my percentage to five.”
“Since when?”
“I notified you. Surely you received my letter.” There’d been no letter, but there would be.
Ruder reverted to type, got huffy. “Five is exorbitant.”
“Not when you consider …”
“Five is out of the question!”
The money would be from Columbia’s deep pocket, not Ruder’s. Mitch figured that would come to Ruder in about ten seconds.
It took twelve.
Chapter 4
“Do you see him, Billy?”
“No, Mrs. Laughton. Wonder what color suit he put on this morning.”
“It felt to me like one of his grays. Don’t drive fast.”
“I’m crawling.”
“You are over on the left aren’t you?”
“All the way.”
“He shoul
d be there. What time is it?”
“I’ve got ten of. The car says twelve of.”
“We’re early. Go around.”
“I could wait near the corner with the motor running.”
“Do as you want but I’m not going to pay your damn tickets.”
“They’re as much yours as mine, Mrs. Laughton.”
True enough, Maddie silently admitted. Billy got most of the tickets because he was so conscientious about waiting in no-standing zones for her.
They were now on Fifth Avenue in the black Lexus EL400. Only leftovers of the rush hour now. Lots of buses, though. One after another like elephants tusks to tails.
Despite the warm July night, Billy had on his uniform. Dove gray twill. Trousers and fitted, high-neck jacket, matching visored cap and gloves. His choice because he’d be doing some waiting out front of the St. Regis with other drivers. Otherwise he’d have worn regular slacks and shirt.
He committed the car to 46th Street and saw the way was clogged.
“Want some radio?” he asked.
She didn’t want any radio.
He made conversation. “Which are you for, Mrs. Laughton, timber or owls?”
“Owls, of course.”
“That’s because you’re not in need of any timber just now.”
“Nor at the moment do I have occasion for an owl.” Then, in the same breath: “Bet he was there and we missed him.”
For her sake Billy held back saying he didn’t think so. Billy knew when and when not to say things. He’d been Uncle Straw’s driver for years.
Maddie made herself sit back. She measured her anticipation. Frequently at times like this she felt as though there was a sort of device in her, in her head or belly or pelvis, with which she was able to gauge how intensely she was looking forward to being with Mitch. It had been installed during their earliest time and now, after ten years of marriage, it was still there and she believed it always would be. Tonight it seemed to be on a cross circuit, arcing from her head to her pelvis, lingering at the latter.
Early. It would have pleased her if he’d been early, waiting on the corner of 47th and Fifth, his eagerness shifting him, making it impossible for him to stand still, his eyes searching up the avenue for her being brought to him. Him, her precious love, trying to hurry time, pacing, trying to bear the edge of his anticipation with pacing.
West 47th Page 4