Quest

by Richard Ben Sapir

  “That’s always helpful,” said Artie.

  “You see, the one thing I learned was that the leads to our cellar are out there. But the information has to be organized. People don’t refer to gems the same way. They will talk of a red stone and call it a ruby, indiscriminately so. Do you know the crown of England has a spinel, not a ruby? They didn’t know the difference then. It’s so exciting, Arthur. Now I have a taste of how exciting your work can be.”

  “I see you’re kind of at home here now,” said Artie.

  “Arthur, it’s not home, but it’s where I belong. Boy am I glad to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just am. I am. You’re a nice person. There aren’t too many in the world. Do you want some coffee?”

  “Coffee would be good,” said Artie. He went into the small kitchen, where she had set up a pot of boiling water. Above it was a spice shelf, with spices ordered into groups. Some were for meats, some were for desserts, some were for vegetables. Claire explained that the ones closest to the other groups could be used for either.

  Artie glanced around. There wasn’t a stray envelope or newspaper lying around. Everything was in place. It was as though he had walked into a file drawer.

  “You always this organized?”

  Claire laughed. “Oh no. I just like things easier to deal with. I like them in place. I guess I’m really lazy. I hate having to look for things.”

  “That’s organized,” said Artie. He felt the British report burn in his jacket pocket. If he were an amateur shoplifter, that report would have been the hot goods he was trying to get out of the store. He felt a strong desire to pat it, to make sure it wouldn’t fall out and expose itself so she would ask questions about it.

  He drank the coffee. He got a small lesson in the organization of the world into time and space. He got a lecture on jewels that surprised him, how only in the last few hundred years were they considered a form of monetary exchange. She was now tracking the jewels. And it occurred to Artie that already she might know more than he.

  “For most of man’s history they were considered to have magical powers,” said Claire, bubbling. “Did you know that?”

  “Yeah, well, I kind of have to deal in today.”

  “But yesterday has to do with today. Nothing ever really ends. We just aren’t usually aware of things, like jewels having meanings. It was more than just coincidence that Dad’s cellar should have had so many stones. Cellars not only don’t have gems in them, but when the middle ages put gems on something it meant something. Wasn’t just showing off like maybe a rich lady would wear a diamond necklace. Do you know what I mean? Is your coffee all right?”

  “Yeah,” said Artie. He took the report out of his jacket pocket, the Scotland Yard statement, the gem prints, and everything that gave ownership to a British gentleman and his family.

  “Claire,” he said, “people don’t always know other people, or circumstances. I’ve been in police work almost fourteen years now. If my own mother, aluva shalom, should be arrested for, say, dealing in a hijacked television, you know I wouldn’t be shocked. My own mother.”

  “What does aluva shalom mean?”

  “It means rest in peace. She’s dead.”

  “Well, of course you would be shocked, because she’s dead.”

  “Sure,” said Artie.

  “That was a joke, Arthur,” said Claire. “I didn’t mean to dishonor your mother’s memory. I’m sorry. Is that why you’re so glum?”

  She sat on the room’s one chair, with her back to a computer terminal. Artie was on the couch.

  “Right,” said Artie. She cradled her cup of coffee in her hands as though to use its warmth. She was so damned open. So happy. All the place needed was a log fire, and they could spend the afternoon talking about childhoods.

  “Why couldn’t you be a bitch?” said Artie.

  Claire laughed. “Oh, I can be a real bitch. I can be the worst bitch you have ever seen. You don’t know me that well.”

  “Bitches don’t say that. Bitches say the world is a bitch. They don’t say they are bitches. I know bitches.”

  “What are you really talking about, Arthur?” asked Claire.

  “I saw another claimant to the cellar this morning,” he said. He wanted to die on the couch, maybe crawl under one of the cushions. She just nodded. She was still happy and bright and just nodding. She was nodding when he handed her the photocopy of the 1945 Scotland Yard report, which included the gem list belonging to the Rawson family.

  “A cellar very similar to the one you describe, to that drawing over there,” said Artie, nodding at the wall, “was stolen from the London home of Lord Rawson on May 18, 1945. It’s right here. And this is the list of the gems. That ruby with Christ’s head was eighty-seven karats. The sapphire is one hundred and forty-two karats, and the engraving is that of Poseidon enthroned. The gem prints are there also for the diamonds. You had garnets and topazes and jade also. It’s all here.”

  “Then you’re not mad about what I said to your friend Norman Feldman?” asked Claire.

  “Feldman? No.”

  “I’m so glad. You were so glum when we left his office. And you looked so angry when you came in. May I see the list of that man’s cellar?”

  “That’s a Scotland Yard report on the theft.”

  “You’ve dealt with them before?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I just wanted to know who affirmed it. The claimant affirmed it, I take it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a phony,” said Artie.

  “It looks like a good list he’s got. Could well be applicable to my father’s cellar. Possibly.”

  “You don’t think that’s your father’s cellar?” asked Artie. He couldn’t believe her pleasant businesslike calm.

  “I think somebody came to America and made a claim on Dad’s cellar. I’d like to talk to him,” she said.

  “That’s it? That’s the whole thing? It?” yelled Artie. He felt his neck veins about to explode, pumping outrage into his head. He had been so miserable, and she was so calm and happy, like a lunatic babbling about daisies when someone told her the roof was collapsing around her head.

  “Of course I’d like to talk to him. Information is the most powerful thing you can have, Arthur.”

  “If I thought something belonged to me and somebody came in with a prior claim to that thing, I would have doubts.”

  “Arthur, you jump to conclusions.”

  “Lady, I am a fucking New York City cop. You are a fucking … a fucking Ohio person.”

  “Arthur, please don’t swear. It’s not becoming.”

  Artie threw up his hands to the very heavens that had foisted this all upon him, the hopelessness of reaching this woman, the waste of bad feelings for this woman, the absolute impenetrability of this woman.

  “Do you wish to discuss this with me?” she asked.

  “No,” said Artie. “I don’t wish to discuss anything with you ever. I wish to say good-bye.”

  And he was gone. Without even a handshake. And she didn’t know what she had done. What did he want her to do? She understood, of course, the implications of a previous claim. But if there was one thing she had learned it was that every bit of information was only that. Information. He had come in with some very good facts and was outraged that she did not immediately assume the interpretation he wished. And that interpretation was a lot more than Claire would make about her father without more facts, especially corroborating facts. She didn’t know how Dad came into possession of the cellar, and neither did this Captain Harry Rawson of the Rawson family of Hereford.

  She sighed. She wished Arthur had a bit of Bob Truet in him. Bob would listen to everything. Of course there wasn’t such excitement in telling things to Bob. And when he understood them, she always had the feeling it went into that cloudy white space that was his soul.

  She was alone again. She waited a few minutes on the chance that Arthur would return and the
n took the Scotland Yard list to her computer.

  Strangely, there was no picture of the cellar, just the list, and yet, as she went down each gem, she knew the incredible probability they were the same. But still it was a probability.

  What she decided to do with this absolutely wonderful list was to assume they were the same, without coming to conclusions about her father’s ownership. She would deal with that later. And making that decision, she could now track the stones better. Because if there was one thing that remained the same through history, it was the size of a stone. And everyone weighed them, from a Roman siliqua equal to a karat, which was one-twenty-fourth of a Roman slidus, but four times as large as a Phoenician obol, or one-twentieth of a Persian drachm or one-third bigger than an ancient Arabian qurot. Everyone throughout history measured the size of gems.

  Arthur had given her in that specific list the absolute perfect markers of identification. He had given her the certainty of stone. And she wanted to thank him. But he was so irrational about some things. He wouldn’t listen.

  And all day while she reorganized her search, she knew there was no one to tell, no one to share, only the loneliness of her success.

  There were no new people in her life. She never socialized much anyhow, but in New York City no one said hello, no one seemed to care. There was no one to even argue with much except perhaps Detective Modelstein, who was too excitable even to argue. He had resorted to helpless swearing and running before she could get to know him. She understood that his initial sexual pass was almost form for him, even if he didn’t understand it. He was more than just eating and fornicating, as his female acquaintance had claimed, and she was surprised that the woman didn’t see it. This could only mean they weren’t really that close, she believed.

  Unfortunately, Arthur had developed such wonderful defenses against hope, as though he would have to pay for every one of them in crushed dreams, as though he clung to the dark side of the world for safety, lest his real good nature come into the light and he be destroyed for believing.

  Was she naïve? He was a New York City detective. He certainly had seen the worst in the world.

  And was she telling herself these things because she wanted to feel she had a friend in him, because she really had no friend in New York City?

  Claire Andrews got mad and she got mad at herself. She could sit in her apartment thinking about not having a friend, thinking about Dad not being there, thinking about no one being there, or she could do something about it.

  It was 9:00 P.M. when she went to a nearby Queens Boulevard department store that had a pet shop. Originally, she thought she might get a dog, but abandoned that when she realized it could only go outside on a leash and that it would spend most of its time inside an apartment. New York City was not a good place for dogs.

  Cats could do well inside apartments. In fact, they liked nothing better than sleeping. She forced herself away from the friendly puppies back to the cages with the kittens. She really did want a dog. A dog could be a friend.

  “I’ll take a cat,” she said.

  “Which one?” asked the salesclerk.

  She looked back to the dog cage. There was an absolutely perfect terrier bouncing around the cage, trying to get at her, trying to be her friend.

  “Any one. Just put it in a box and give me kitty litter, and do you have food, cat food?”

  “We have something that will last until you can get to a supermarket. They’re cat snacks.”

  “Fine,” said Claire. She paid for the cat with a charge card. If she had to give up a cat, that would not be nearly as hard as giving up a dog. She remembered when Rusty had been put to sleep. He was twelve, which was like eighty-four for a person, she was told, and Rusty had had a good life, and Rusty was in pain, and they were doing the right thing for Rusty. That’s what Mother said.

  Dad said it was always a bitch to lose a friend. And Mother had been horrified that he would use that language to their daughter, who was fourteen.

  But those were kind words, somehow in ways she could not explain, the kindest words she could have heard. She went on a long walk with him that day, like many of the long walks they would take by the Miami River, but this one was more important. She asked him how many friends he had lost. And he said he had lost two friends in his life. One during the war and another, Billy Cassidy.

  “But Billy used to drive you around. Go on errands for you.”

  “He was my friend.”

  “Why didn’t you put him in some high job if he was your friend?”

  “Because he didn’t belong in one, Peanuts. The worst thing can happen to a person is being in the wrong job. Wonderful thing about this country, beats others all hollow, is that you’re not born into your job.”

  It was spring and the Miami was strong, roiled muddy and eating away at the green banks that during the dry summer would grow back. The air was sweet with grass, which made it all the more painful that Rusty was not with them.

  “Some people say you grow up when you have your first drink or your first sex, Peanuts. I think it’s when you lose someone you love. It lets you know how precious the days are, every minute of them. It’s bullshit, that stuff about they are in a better place. Just bullshit. They’re done for. That’s it. They’re gone and it hurts like a sonuvabitch.”

  She was crying again, and he picked her up and held her, and they held each other and then walked some more along this river they all knew, and which if you ever went out of state no one had heard of. She didn’t grow up that day. She grew up when Dad died, because she knew the world was never going to hurt her worse again.

  The cat whined in the box all the way home, and when she let it out, she saw it was gray and white and so small and furry she wondered whether she would step on it. It went whining around the apartment and didn’t want to be picked up. It was one of those absolutely awful compromises. This was not a friend. This was a furry ball that wanted its distance and required a litter box, water, and food. It examined the cat snacks briefly, rejected them, and then disappeared into the apartment on its own.

  If nothing else, getting the cat was a good break, and Claire went back to work refreshed. She remembered seeing something about a large red stone that might have its Arab weight listed, some time around A.D. 900. It had been in a sword that was captured from Christians, and she was calculating the ruby’s weight in qurots when a furry white and gray ball began playing with her pencil.

  “Get out of here. You’re a nuisance.”

  She pushed the rubber eraser at the fur. Her cat thought it was a game. He slapped at the pencil. She pushed again. The nuisance slapped again.

  “All right, nuisance, I’ll play,” she said, and had a little delicate jousting match with her cat that now had a name, Nuisance. That night, as she was going to bed, she felt Nuisance crawl up on her stomach and start to purr. Both of them needed something warm.

  She went to sleep not knowing that the New York City Department of Sanitation had discovered Geoffrey Battissen just outside Queens. He was in a green garbage bag that broke open when another layer of refuse was tractored into the miles-long pile.

  X

  Keep your body pure and unsullied before the Holy Grail and without stain of lechery.

  —WALTER MAP

  Queste del Saint Graal, 1225

  For his anger at the homicide detective and his insinuation that Detective Sergeant Dennis McKiernan might have gotten a ring too cheaply for the sake of honest appearances, Detective Arthur Modelstein paid dearly.

  “He’s got to have some next of kin,” said Artie.

  McKiernan, a wiry sort with a gaunt face that seemed to have an antibody against warmth, informed Detective Modelstein that the deceased had no relatives willing to identify the body, and therefore a member of the NYPD known to have seen him last would be used to ascertain the identity of Geoffrey Battissen.

  “Aw, c’mon, Denny,” Artie said to Detective Sergeant Dennis McKiernan. “He’s a got a secr
etary or assistant or something.”

  “At this time we are investigating as to that factual data,” said McKiernan.

  “You’re stickin’ it up my ass because I thought you lifted that ring off a stiff.”

  “By the way, I got the ring out of the diamond precinct,” said McKiernan, referring to the precinct that patrolled Forty-seventh Street in undercover clothes so that no one would feel free to snatch the thousands of dollars worth of stones dealers routinely carried in their pockets. It was the safest street in New York and the dealers appreciated it.

  McKiernan was saying he had gotten a dealer’s deal.

  “I’m sorry,” said Artie. “I should have figured that. I should have known.”

  “C’mon, Artie. Are you a jeweler or a cop? We need you for the identification anyhow,” said McKiernan, who when they got to the morgue showed all was still not forgiven.

  “Ever seen a dead man’s dick?” asked McKiernan, pulling out the metal drawer on which lay a very still, cool, rotting form. All Artie could think of was how obsessively neat Battissen had been in life, and how now it didn’t matter that he stank not only from himself, but from the garbage dump in which he had been found. Fortunately, Battissen was dressed.

  Artie nodded and turned away.

  “That him?” asked McKiernan.

  “Yeah,” said Artie.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” said Artie.

  “Look here,” said McKiernan and turned the head to show a black blood clot behind the ear. A beard had grown around the fleshy face, and the eyes did not have a person behind them.

  “I’m looking. I’m seeing. That’s him,” said Artie. McKiernan made a move as though to wipe off his hands on Artie’s jacket, and Artie prepared to take McKiernan and clean off the morgue floor with his face. McKiernan had mistaken Artie’s aversion to death for a general weakness. Artie was not weak.

  He weighed two hundred and ten pounds, most of it still muscle, and if forced to fight he never failed to acquit himself well. He just did not have the meanness to want to fight or hurt someone. No matter how combative McKiernan was, Artie’s strength and speed would have ended it all quickly.