West 47th

by Gerald A. Browne

  Really, where was Ruder? Mitch asked.

  Wandering mindlessly, a blank among the scribble, a someone whose identity had sprung a leak and drained?

  More to it than that, Mitch suspected.

  A dog came along, a black and white of an oriental breed with a pushed-in face. Its walk had some proud prance in it, not at all a lost walk. It stopped at the water main that protruded from the exterior wall of the Sherry just above street level. Gleaming brass, double-headed pipe, diligently kept polished. The dog appraised it with several discriminating sniffs, then lifted his right hind leg to it.

  No piss.

  He was out of piss from having dispensed on the many corners, posts and such he’d encountered along his way.

  He glanced in under at his genitals, as though to say he was doing his part, they should cooperate. He sidled into perfect position, lifted. Failed again. Sniffed at the brass to make sure he had or hadn’t and continued on up the east side of Fifth.

  Mitch watched the dog go. When it reached the intersection of 61st it was lost to the legs of pedestrians and cars making the turn. Mitch regained sight of it mid-block to 62nd. By then, the rear-end view of it at that distance was no longer a dog shape.

  Smart little guy, Mitch thought, the way he accepted being on empty and headed nonstop for his bowl and probably the lap of a Scalamandre covered sofa chair.

  Within a split second of his having made that opinion, Mitch saw the receding creature break from its straight course and revert to a dog shape in profile as it veered to the left, to the curb, to the hubcap of a Bentley.

  Mitch went inside. He stopped at the lobby newsstand for a magazine and just did catch an elevator that was closing to go up. There were two other passengers: a man and a woman. That was the extent of what Mitch made of them, no special regard, no reason to take particular notice, just that swift impression: a man and woman. The upward ride began. Mitch minded his elevator manners, faced forward and kept his eyes fixed ahead on the grain of the walnut paneling. To stare or even to briefly glance aside at a stranger in the confines of such a cubicle might be considered, according to unwritten New York law, an invasion of person, a potential nosiness.

  The woman got off on twelve.

  During the minor commotion of her exit Mitch happened to glance down at the shoes of the man.

  Black and white wing-tipped oxfords.

  It registered immediately, when and where Mitch had recently noticed someone wearing black and white wing-tips. They weren’t shoes one saw every day, not even twice in two weeks. He was ambivalent about turning and taking an obvious look at the man, and by the time he’d decided he would, the elevator reached the thirty-second floor, leveled and opened.

  Mitch stepped out onto the landing.

  So did the man.

  There was no doubt about it now. The black-banded panama hat, the impeccably groomed appearance. Not a gray-vested gabardine suit today, a vested black one of equally fine quality and cut. Bushy brows. It was definitely the man Mitch had practically collided with entering Visconti’s office the week before last. The man Mitch had then thought from appearance was one of Visconti’s wealthy foreign clients.

  “I believe you must be Mr. Laughton,” the man was amiably saying now. “Mr. Mitchell Laughton?”

  “Yes?” Wary as usual.

  “Might I have a word with you?”

  “Depends on the word.”

  The man produced a calling card from out of a black alligator leather card case.

  Mitch expected it would be a business card; however it had only the man’s name tastefully engraved on it. Centered in small letters.

  Manonchehr Djam.

  What kind of name is that? Mitch thought.

  The man pronounced it for him. He was always having to pronounce it. “I’ve been trying to reach you at your office since last Thursday afternoon,” he said. “I was beginning to fear that you might be away on vacation.”

  “How did you find out where I live?”

  “I inquired,” Djam said as though that was plausible and sufficient. “I apologize for the intrusion but the matter I wish to discuss with you is most pressing.”

  “Couldn’t it hold until tomorrow?”

  “Yes, of course …”

  Mitch had his key out, was finding the cylinder hole with it. What he’d had in mind was an old movie night. A certain channel he and Maddie often turned to had a triple feature of Thin Man’s scheduled and such a dose of Loy and Powell solving crimes between martinis would be just the palliative he needed. He and Maddie would get naked and hunker down among the pillows with an exorbitant bottle of vintage Graves and, as usual, he’d narrate the action for her between the lines of dialogue.

  He had the apartment door unlatched and open a crack. His curiosity hadn’t really been oblivious. Now, at the last moment, it jumped up to ask: “What’s it about, this matter of yours that’s so important?”

  “It concerns the Kalali jewels,” Djam replied.

  “Come on in.”

  Mitch took Djam’s panama and showed him to the study. The aviary door was open but all the birds were perched inside. One, a lady finch, came winging out as though dispatched by the others. It circled three times around Djam like it was on a reconnaissance mission. Djam didn’t know quite what to make of it. He finally decided he should be amused, stopped ducking and broke out into a wide grin that exposed large, tea-stained teeth.

  The lady finch’s return to the aviary caused a lot of bird chatter.

  Djam accepted a chair. He crossed his legs somewhat gracefully. A waste because he immediately stood up as Maddie entered the study.

  She was fresh out of a shower, had washed her hair. The blonde of it was darker wet. She hadn’t yet toweled it, so it was a mass of short tendrils.

  Nor had she belted the full-length white terry cloth robe she had on. It hung open.

  Djam respectfully averted his eyes. Maddie sensed there was someone other than Mitch in the room. She insouciantly sashed the robe, exercising her contention that one of the advantages of being blind was it forgave most immodesties.

  Mitch introduced Djam, mispronounced his name three different ways.

  Would Djam care for something to drink?

  “I’d thoroughly appreciate a glass of tea,” he said.

  That was more bother than tossing some ice cubes into a glass and sloshing in vodka or whatever; however Mitch managed to be hospitable. “Any preference to the kind of tea?”

  “Black tea, thank you. Any good kind of black tea.”

  “I don’t think, in fact, I know we’re all out of black,” Maddie said. A fib because they never drank it. “But I believe we have some jasmine.”

  “That will do fine,” Djam told her. Actually, he deplored such fragrant teas, considered them too feminine for his taste.

  “And I should warn you,” Maddie added, “we do our tea with bags. We used to ritualize. You know, preheat the pot, measure exactly and steep and all that but lately it’s been merely bags.”

  What bullshit, Mitch thought. There’d never been any steeping.

  “Any way you fix it will be fine,” Djam assured.

  “Did I understand that you wanted a glass of tea?”

  “Yes.”

  “Iced tea?”

  “No, hot, thank you …” Djam regretted that he hadn’t declined. Now he was going to have to suffer a glass of dreadful, prissy jasmine that was not even correctly prepared. Oh well.

  Mitch excused himself, left Djam seated there and went into the kitchen to help Maddie make the tea. He looked into the cupboard while she put water on to boil. “I don’t see any jasmine,” he said.

  “We don’t have any. I only said we did in the hope that he wouldn’t want it and settle for an easier scotch on the rocks. Who the hell is he, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I just met him.”

  “That’s not like you,
bringing home a total stranger.”

  “Here’s some tea bags.”

  “What’s got into you? He’s not British you know.”

  “Not with that name.”

  “Nor that accent.”

  “He doesn’t have an accent, other than British I mean.”

  “Hell he doesn’t. Most of it’s been schooled out of him but it’s there. Cambridge probably.”

  She was always hearing things most people missed.

  “Anyway, he said he wanted to have a word with me,” Mitch said.

  “What about?”

  “The Kalali jewelry.”

  “Oh?” Maddie had an instantaneous rise in interest. In place of the ordinary glass for the tea she got out a Waterford goblet, Celia pattern, and wrapped one of her best linen napkins around it so Mr. Djam wouldn’t burn his fingers.

  Mitch carried in the tray.

  Maddie announced: “No jasmine I’m afraid but some scrumptious lemon zinger.”

  Djam was on his haunches examining the underside of a corner of the room’s main carpet. “A very pleasing Tabriz” was his opinion of it. “I assume you realize that other carpet over there, though much smaller, is the better of the two.” He was referring to the prayer-size carpet near the bookcase.

  “You must mean Killer,” Maddie said. She’d named the carpet that because of the numerous times it had tripped her. She’d often verbally admonished it for its behavior and even threatened to throw it down the trash chute.

  “A fairly fine nineteenth century silk Heriz,” Djam said. “It deserves to be hung rather than trampled on.” He had resumed sitting with legs crossed, the glass of tea resting on his knee. Lemon zinger. He glanced down at it. It appeared insipid, attenuated. Perhaps he could get away with a single sip and then place it aside and forget about it.

  “Is that your metier, carpets?” Maddie asked.

  “In part,” Djam replied. “My responsibilities require it. During the two or three years that preceded the revolution, especially when the revolution became imminent, a great number of our finest carpets were shipped to the West. Planeloads went by way of Syria, others were sent overland by truck to Germany and Switzerland. I regret we shall never recover the greater part of those national treasures; however we continue to do what we can. Only last October I spotted a pedigreed sixteenth century carpet in the exhibition prior to sale at a major auction house in London. The reserve on it was ninety thousand pounds. You can imagine how delighted I was that it had come out of hiding, so to speak. I proved provenance and the carpet is now back where it belongs.”

  It sounded to Maddie that Djam expected applause. “And where’s that?” she asked.

  “In the Bastan Museum. Of course.”

  “Did you say Boston?”

  “No, Bastan,” he said, his long A’s making it sound as much like Boston as it had before. “In Teheran,” he added.

  The lemon zinger was on its way to his lips when suddenly something occurred to him. He placed the glass on the side table next to his chair. “How remiss of me,” he uttered sharply, “I haven’t yet introduced my professional self.” From that same elegant black case he slipped out another card, identical in quality to the first but bearing, along with his name:

  Committee of Cultural Reclamation

  Islamic Republic of Iran

  Mitch read the card aloud for Maddie’s benefit. Now they realized with certainty which revolution Djam was talking about.

  “So you see,” Djam said. “You and I, Mr. Laughton, are involved in the same sort of business. We are both bent on recovering precious things. You for your reasons, myself for quite another.”

  Mitch saw the comparison but what was the point? Whatever it was, if this Djam got to it quickly enough, there might still be time to catch the Thin Man triple feature. Anyway, two-thirds of it. “You mentioned the Kalali jewelry,” Mitch prompted.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your interest in it?”

  “Substantial,” Djam replied. “What are your chances of making a recovery?”

  A shrug from Mitch. Evidently Djam was unaware that the recovery had already been made. Rather than inform him of that, Mitch decided he’d take this a little further. Not far, just enough to get some of the intrigue out of it. He told Djam: “I guess you feel the same towards the Kalali jewels as you do about those contraband carpets you spoke of.”

  “Even more strongly.”

  “They once belonged to your government and it wants them back.”

  “Exactly.”

  Mitch had known about the Iranian hoard for many years. At various times he’d read about it in trade articles and books on gems. There had been photographs illustrating the extent of this treasure. Tray after tray on shelf after shelf piled with precious stones. Chests filled to the point of overflow with emeralds, sapphires, rubies, diamonds. It infected the mind with fantasy. It was the stuff of impossible fables, and yet, there it was, as real as could be, causing more than mere fascination, an ache to get one’s hands into it, to fill one’s pockets, a lusting that just about anyone, but especially a dealer in gemstones, would be susceptible to.

  Djam relaxed his gaunt face and did a slight smile to help the impression that he was a pleasant-natured Iranian. While inwardly he was annoyed by having just noticed a scuff mark on the white area of his right oxford. It was tantamount to a bruise. He looked to Maddie, who was comfortably situated in the corner of the deep sofa across from him. Her legs doubled up so the soles of her bare feet were directed right at him. He’d been informed that Mitchell Laughton’s wife was blind and, thus, he’d expected that would be apparent in all the ordinary ways. Up to now, however, Mrs. Laughton seemed able to get about as well as any sighted person. No uncertainty in her walk, no hesitancy in her hands. Nor did her eyes have a fixed functionless quality. Her eyes appeared to be involved with whatever was taking place, reacting reflexively as normal eyes do to what was being said and who was saying it, and, somehow, incredibly, to what was being done and who was doing it. Djam believed it was probably an affect she’d perfected. It and the affront of the bottom of her feet caused him to be uneasy.

  He redirected his attention to Mitch. “Imagine, if you will, what a temptation the Iranian treasury must have been to a certain privileged few in nineteen seventy-eight. By then it was inevitable that the Shah would be ousted. Various members of the Shah’s family had already fled, were residing in France, Switzerland, this country and elsewhere. Many prominent government officials had done likewise. Not to feel sorry for them. Hundreds of millions in currency had preceded their departures.

  “For those of the elite who remained in Iran but knew they would soon take flight, the national treasure was impossible to ignore. It couldn’t be merely left behind. At least not all of it. Such a trove of precious stones. Worth billions, was the guess. How accommodating that it had never been properly inventoried and appraised. The task would have taken five, maybe ten years, and then been obsolete. The attitude had always been no need to know more about it other than that it was there.

  “During those final months of the Shah his relatives and close associates discreetly pilfered the treasure. They were allowed to get to it and take nibbles and bites of it every now and then. A handful of diamonds wouldn’t be missed, nor would a pocketful of rubies, sapphires or emeralds. Abundance covered up each little ransacking.

  “Abbas Kalali and his wife, Roudabeth, were among those who paid such visits to the vault in the Central Bank where the treasure was kept. Not that the Kalalis were high in favor with the Shah or within the coterie of the elite. Kalali was never more than a mid-level official assigned to one bureau or another. His well-being was dependent on a remote and tenuous connection: the wife of one of his uncles happened to be the cousin of General Nassiri, the head of Savak, the Shah’s secret police.

  “Perhaps the most accurate measure of Abbas Kalali’s standing was his bribery price of only a million dollars. Only? you say. Remember, this was
at a time when the going rate for influence by a member of the Shah’s family was a hundred million. Prime ministers were slipped fifty million, generals went for thirty.

  “You might wonder, then, how it was that Abbas Kalali got to dip into the treasure, what was it about him that gave him access? Why him? Well, Abbas Kalali was the apotheosis of sycophancy. He knew when to laugh and when to commiserate, when to take a side, which side to take, when to lose, when to appear or disappear. Thus, it was often agreeable for the coterie of the privileged to have him around. You know the sort.”

  Yeah, Mitch thought, he knew have-arounds.

  “Kalali was obviously willing to be used and use him they did. Especially during the final months of the Shah when it was dangerous to be making trips to the vault at odd hours. They enlisted Kalali to go for them. He was their designated thief and carrier.”

  Nothing so unusual about that, Mitch thought.

  “No doubt,” Djam went on, “they expected that while Kalali was at it he would help himself to a helping. That didn’t matter to them as long as it wasn’t too much and he didn’t embarrass by letting them know about it. And, as long as he brought from the vault whatever it took to satisfy them.”

  Djam paused. Evidently he had more to say. He shifted his position in the chair and transposed the cross of his legs.

  “Your tea must be cold,” Maddie said.

  Djam wondered how she could know he hadn’t drunk it.

  “I can heat it up for you.”

  “No, please, don’t bother,” Djam said. “I prefer it lukewarm.”

  A nearly inaudible grunt of disbelief from Maddie.

  “So,” Mitch said, “according to what you say, I gather you believe the Kalali jewels are made up from gems that were taken from the Iranian treasury.”

  “Mainly they are, yes,” Djam replied. “Of course there was more, much more, loose cut stones and quite a bit of rough. Diamonds and rubies mostly. Kalali sold those in various lots over the years. He must have realized plenty for them, plenty.”