Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “Then get her back for England,” said Sir Anthony. And this time he took a sip of port like a gentleman. And enjoyed it. “You know I believe we really did have the actual cup of the Last Supper.”

  “Really?” asked Rawson. He put his hand back in his pocket.

  “Yes. Relics at that time were notoriously forged. Notorious. Vials of Mary’s milk that were mercury. Straw from the manger that was gold and silver. Enough wood from the one true cross, they said, to build a fence around the Vatican. But ours was a poorish bowl, just the kind Our Lord might use. Now if that doesn’t convince you it was real, I don’t know what will.” Sir Anthony shook his head with conviction.

  “Then you believe,” said Rawson.

  “I do. I believe, Captain, you may well be searching for our greatness. Get her back. Get her back for England. For everything we are and always were. For England, Captain.”

  “Save the chips,” said Rawson cheerily. “You’ll need them when I return our bowl. And don’t worry. I should be the only one who has a chance of finding it. I’m the only one after it who knows how valuable our poorish bowl is, and undoubtedly I am the only one who has a nation behind him.”

  It wasn’t the lady’s looks, or even some of the unique stones, that got Detective Modelstein moving that day, putting the word out in the right places that there was an interest in some large colored stones that might be moving hot.

  It was the damned little imitation marble-covered notebook she had bought and filled with her own neat handwriting, the kind of notebook in which Arthur Modelstein of P.S. 19 and millions of other New York City schoolchildren learned to write their first letters, and the kind in which they learned that neatness counted and that honesty was rewarded and that they lived in the greatest country in the world where everyone was created equal.

  Claire Andrews had been neat. She had all that faith that, having written everything down neatly, persevering as she was told, justice would prevail. The rightness of her cause would win. Her father was innocent as all daddies had to be, and in the course of time, justice would out.

  It was beautiful. Artie wanted to kiss her. On the cheek, no less. More than that, he wanted her at home in Carney, and maybe telling bad stories about the horrible city, and getting married to another Wasp in Carney, Ohio, and raising other little Wasps who would become chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or run big banks or the country itself, and noticing spring coming with the flowers instead of an absence of slush. Of Claire Andrews, Artie thought she would never have a plastic pumpkin on Halloween as he did.

  Claire Andrews was real pumpkin, with her mother making pie from the insides instead of insisting Artie wrap them in the New York Post and get rid of them immediately. He had only bought a real pumpkin once, and his mother threw it out when it began to sag three days before Halloween.

  Claire Andrews was all the innocent hope that was in a fresh notebook that always began a school year. She was Artie before he got out of the first grade. She was the girl in the schoolbooks chasing perfectly round red and yellow balls across color-box green fields with a very happy dog who never made in the gutter or got run over.

  Artie moved out that morning into his world offences and informers, crooks and merchants, dealers and con men, and he began the almost impossible task of getting back something he knew didn’t exist from people who had no reason to return it.

  All he had was that the lady would not lie. The word on Battissen was that he lived in the gray area of the law, dealing forgeries but in such a way that he was not really vulnerable. He sold forgeries on the side, but the people who bought them knew they were forgeries and if they didn’t and complained, he would buy them back at the sale price. The fact was everyone knew there was a market for forgeries and the only time they became criminal cases was when someone foolishly sold one of them at an original’s price. Then the person who paid $150,000 for a Picasso that wasn’t went to the police.

  Battissen, according to the book on him, was never one of those.

  He would gum but he would never bite, and the last thing he would ever do was steal something worth a million—this was the word from fences, thieves, and forgers.

  It was worth a push on Geoffrey Battissen, who didn’t, as the word went, like trouble.

  Detective Modelstein found Battissen Galleries a quiet, expensive establishment with an elegant presence that made him regret not spending more on his tie. It had rugs that devoured sound and elegant white fabric walls that encouraged whispers.

  So Artie yelled as though fighting for attention in a Bronx candy store.

  “Detective Arthur Modelstein from Fraud,” Artie boomed in the middle of the gallery. Everyone looked around. A slick young woman in severe black hurried over to him. He flashed his badge. “I’d like to see Geoffrey Battissen.”

  The voice was louder than it had to be. So was the repetition. A middle-aged gay man in a robin’s egg blue blouse walked desperately quickly from the back, looking as though someone had nailed a bee into his crotch.

  Mr. Battissen suggested strongly they discuss this matter in his office, and Artie loudly talked about hot goods all the way to the back.

  “I got a complaint against you about some stolen goods. I’m talking grand larceny. Grand larceny, Mr. Battissen. It doesn’t look good.”

  Battissen listened. His pinkish face paled, but he didn’t break.

  “Are you going to charge me with something, officer?” said Battissen, cleaning imaginary dust off the corner of a glass table.

  “I’m gonna ask you questions. I’d like some answers.”

  “Am I a suspect?”

  “Sure,” said Artie.

  “Then talk to my lawyer,” said Battissen.

  “I’m talking to you. I’m talking to you about a young lady who trusted you with a gold saltcellar. I’m talking about switch. I wouldn’t try to move stuff like that if I were you.”

  “Officer Modelstein, are you going to charge me with something?”

  “I’m wondering how real those pictures are out in the gallery. You think art experts would say there aren’t some forgeries here?”

  “Is somebody pressing charges?” asked Battissen.

  The man was right. Artie couldn’t touch him. Almost no one ever pressed a charge for buying forgeries. If they pressed charges, they would have to prove the painting they owned was phony. That would definitely make their property less valuable while only offering the possibility that they might win a lawsuit that might recover the money. On the other hand, if they kept their mouths shut, they could pass on the forgery, often for a modest profit. And Artie was sure they would just as soon use Battissen again, because he had a proven ability to sell forgeries.

  So Battissen knew there probably wasn’t anyone around who was going to press charges, which meant Artie was flapping his tongue in this very expensive place on Fifth Avenue.

  “I’ll be back,” said Artie, letting the dealer know there would be more crude noise amidst this quiet sophistication. Which was all he was doing in the first place. If Artie could increase the nuisance value to the owner of Battissen Galleries, then it might mean a few thousand more to the lady from Ohio. Of course, that implied that Claire Andrews of the pure white notebook, and perfect daddy, would settle for a few thousand more.

  Artie had lunch in the back room of a diamond cutter on Forty-seventh Street, where he felt comfortable again. He was accepted by these people so much that he could entertain the illusion that he was part of the cutting trade, but he knew he wasn’t. He would always be a policeman even though he could eat a pastrami sandwich next to one hundred thousand dollars worth of uncut diamonds, careful not to let the coleslaw drip on the wax paper that held them. They looked like a handful of bumpy caramels. But in the hands of Dov Katzman and his son they would be cleaved in planes to sparkle and glisten under “the light,” that special banking of lights that made diamonds jump with so much life that people buying rings would sometimes wonder where the luster we
nt the minute they left the store. That luster was the cleaved reflection of light. Without cleaved planes, a diamond had none of that sparkle in any light. Artie wondered why anyone would ever polish a diamond instead of cutting it. He asked that of the Katzmans. He did not mention that Claire’s cellar had about a half dozen of them.

  “It’s the old way,” said Katzman, offering Artie a glass for his diet cream soda. “They only discovered cleaving in the seventeen hundreds. You’ll never see a stone like that today.”

  “Maybe you will,” said Artie. He said nothing more and finished his sandwich.

  He could not put the word out that large uncleaved stones were stolen because then he would have to admit he did not have a description or gem prints, and that would have been tantamount to announcing there was no provable claim on them. Diamonds that might have been eschewed by dealers as hot, treated as hot, with possible rumors to that effect, would become as free and open as sunlight. And this despite the famed honor of “the street.”

  A dealer’s word on Forty-seventh Street to another dealer was bond, even with religious overtones of rabbinical courts deciding disputes. If it should ever be found that someone knowingly dealt hot stones, his word would no longer be accepted for a deal. And without that handshake from one diamond merchant to another, more legally binding for them than any contract between banks or nations, a man could not buy or sell on the street or in Tel Aviv, London, or Antwerp.

  But the moment Artie advertised that five or six large uncuts without parentage could not be traced, the diamonds in the big gold piece could have moved out of sight like rain into the Hudson. Even the honor of the street might not protect them.

  If diamonds were a generally closed business around the world, rubies were so exclusive there were only a few people in any city who even knew the name of a dealer.

  Artie not only knew one, but he was a friend to one, perhaps the man’s only friend.

  He had not seen him for a year when he knocked on the plain office door that had no sign. Norman Feldman did not want anyone coming to his office who did not know him already.

  His space was in a morose and somewhat seamy office building on Forty-eighth Street. It could have been anywhere, because the only thing Feldman needed was good north light, the only proper light in which to examine a ruby. Feldman chose midtown Manhattan and its high prices because being there saved him time getting around the city. The only way money really mattered to Feldman was as a way to keep score, a way to record he had gotten a good deal, and a way in selling to know he had made one also. It was, to Feldman, a question of doing things right. So while he could pay fifty thousand dollars a year for a rental that would save him some time, he would also save paper clips from letters in a small white wood box, because wasting money was not doing things right either.

  Artie knew Feldman looked down on the diamond dealers, many of them Hasidic Jews. He also looked down on all rabbis, as well as priests, ministers, merchants, museum curators, the Internal Revenue Service, and speculators.

  Norman Feldman, like the Catholic Church, believed in original sin. Unlike the Church, Norman Feldman did not believe God provided any sort of solution to it.

  “A large ruby the size of a goose egg. Hear about it?” asked Artie, entering the sparse office with the good north light. He did not say hello. Feldman would only have asked him what he wanted without replying anyhow. Feldman did not believe in small talk like hello.

  Feldman sat behind a large oak desk with five black telephones on it. His hands stayed on the arms of the old oak swivel chair, which probably had the button that unlocked the door and let Artie in. One of the telephones was ringing. Feldman did not answer it. He did this sometimes, why Artie was not sure, but he suspected it was Feldman’s way of insuring privacy from answering services or machines, anything that might leave information around as to who had tried to contact him. Because of this, Artie was never sure when Feldman was in.

  Behind Feldman was a small scale, set up on a plain wood shelf. There were no books or pictures. The phone stopped ringing.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Feldman.

  “I am talking about a large red stone the size of a goose egg. It may be a ruby. Could be a ruby.”

  “And if it were a ruby would you know what you are talking about?”

  “I would hope so. You taught me,” said Artie.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Feldman. “So don’t act like an idiot.”

  “I sat in this chair in this room with that north light and looked into your ruby. Here.”

  “Right,” said Feldman.

  “So?” said Artie.

  “So you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about a damned ruby I saw, and another one I may be looking for.”

  “You saw my ruby. Right. Twenty karats. Rare. Pigeon’s blood. A beautiful stone. You saw that.”

  “Right.”

  “When you’re talking goose egg—that is, if you ever saw a goose egg in your life, a real one I mean—you are talking in the size of rubies, a great gem. A great gem. Not a good one. You saw a good one.”

  “So it’s larger.”

  “Artie, don’t break my heart by saying these things. You really think that a four-karat ruby is four times more valuable than a one-karat ruby?”

  “I know that it’s not,” said Artie.

  “So if we are not dealing in an arithmetical progression, and you see a twenty-karat stone that is a rare gem, what would one four times that size be?”

  “A hundred times more valuable? I don’t know.”

  Feldman shook his head. “Of that size you do not know. It’s nothing I have ever talked to you about. Even the crown of England doesn’t have a real ruby—it’s a spinel. Don’t come in here talking great rubies. Please,” said Feldman with disgust.

  “I’m listening,” said Artie. He was not going to cower at Feldman’s disapproval.

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “It may be stolen,” said Artie.

  “Go back to the gonifs on Forty-seventh Street. Play with the diamonds. Put them in wristwatches. Go. Chase necklaces of emeralds. Get out of here.”

  “I’m asking a question. There’s been a big swindle in this town.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing. I spent all this time talking to you about stones, teaching you about stones, and you come in here with silly questions about great rubies.”

  “I’m asking if the damned thing has come to you for sale.”

  “The problem today is every gonif, everyone with a dollar in his pants, thinks he belongs in great gems. It’s a whole other world. A whole other thing. You’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m talking about stolen property.”

  “You steal a car, that’s stolen property. You steal a country, that’s a historical event. Go chase stolen cars. I hate to hear you talking this foolishness. I hate people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Stealing is stealing, Norman.”

  “Artie, if you hung around me for a couple of years and did nothing else, you might get to suspect what I’m talking about.”

  “How did you learn?”

  “Lucky to be alive is how I learned. Really great gems are a whole other world. There are no courts and things like that. Stay where you know what you’re doing.”

  It was then that Artie realized Feldman had not taught him a vast amount about his business. He had omitted what may have been a way of life, and Artie had never suspected this over all these years. Was that the world ringing on the phones Feldman did not answer?

  “You mean I could get killed?”

  “No. Never. You won’t get close enough.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “If you had something to bet with, I would wager everything in my life, idiot. I would form consortiums to raise money to bet. Bet? Get me that bet.”

  “Has a man named Geoffrey Battissen tried to sell you a ruby tha
t size?”

  “You can bet him, too.”

  “What can I bet?”

  “That he doesn’t belong with a stone like that anymore than you. You don’t understand, you are not going to understand, so how have you been in the last year since I’ve seen you?”

  “Okay. And you, Norm?”

  “The same. How can I be in a world of idiots?”

  That night, because they hadn’t seen each other in so long, they had dinner together. They did not discuss business anymore. Artie had lasagna and calamari salad at the fine Italian restaurant. Feldman, who Artie knew was a millionaire many times over, ate a bologna sandwich on white bread. A single slice. Calories, as he said, were calories, and all special cooking was just another form of fraud and a waste of time.

  “If you do run across that stone, let me know. Okay?” said Artie at the end of the evening.

  “You ask one more stupid question like that,” said Feldman, “and I really am not going to talk to you again. Ever. I mean it. What is the point?”

  “Why is it stupid?”

  “If I told you I saw it, it wouldn’t make any difference. If I told you it was in the middle of your lasagna, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it would only be on its way toward where it belongs.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Not with you and probably not with anyone who is looking for it.”

  Claire didn’t know why all the phones were ringing and why the man Bob Truet sent over from the Carney Daily News had to answer them all. Mother said Bob was just helping out.

  “But why is it so important?” Claire asked as they ate so terribly alone in the large dining room with the fresh breakfast orange juice Dad used to love so much.

  “The Columbus papers have less sensitivity, dear,” said Lenore McCafferty Andrews, calmly, as though if she attempted to keep everything normal it might be as if nothing had happened. She unfolded her white linen napkin and placed it slowly beneath the table.

  Claire was afraid to ask, but sensed Mother might not be grieving much. She had not cried at the funeral and didn’t talk much about Dad. There had never been the closeness Claire felt she had had with her father. For breakfast, Mother was dressed bright and fresh in a yellow print dress, as though the only thing that had changed was one less setting of pale blue Wedgwood china on the white linen tablecloth. Even the pink autumn chrysanthemums were the same. The problem, and what made Claire so angry, was that she didn’t know what to be angry about. Did she want them both to wear black and drape the house in black? Yes. And make the world drape black too? But of course, the world did not and that was why Claire asked why the papers were still calling from Columbus.