At the suite, Artie phoned Feldman in New York City. It would be shortly before noon there. When it rang, he wondered who was in Feldman’s office, or if Feldman was out. He also wondered if Feldman had given people he wanted to talk to a special ringing code, like two rings and hang up. Then again, maybe Feldman never answered the office phone during certain months. Anything was possible with him.
He asked the operator to keep trying and went back out into the parlor section of the shared suite to eat what Harry had ordered. The man knew how to travel. There was a light port wine with stuffed sweets and little meaty snacks in puff pastry, and Harry promised an extraordinary meal to go along with the ladies of the night.
The room had more elegant charm than Artie had ever seen in homes, delicate furniture carefully gilded, lamps that looked like treasures, long dark velvet drapes with tassels, and soft chairs and sofas with sumptuous glistening fabrics. Artie asked how much it cost. When he found out it was more than the ladies per night, he whistled. He could get used to this. If he could afford this, he would never chase anything. He might not leave it ever, he told Harry Rawson.
The phone rang, and Artie took it in the parlor. The operator had Feldman on the line.
“Norm, we got to a sapphire dealer in Geneva,” he said.
“So why are you calling me?”
“To get some information on him. I got this far, you got to admit, I’m doing something right.”
“I don’t know how far you got.”
“Ever heard of Werner Gruenwald?”
“No.”
“Is it possible he could be dealing large sapphires and you wouldn’t have heard of him?”
“Doubtful. What did he sell it for?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because that is the only intelligent question you could have asked him,” said Feldman. “I could tell you for certain a lot of things from the price.”
“He sold it to Jardines. Ever heard of them?”
“Of course. He’s a crook, and he doesn’t deal in the market I told you about.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he sold it for too little, and probably so did they.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you have to know what you have to pay the right price for it. Does Jardines still have it?”
“Why?”
“Because I can get a price off them.”
“They sold it.”
“To whom?”
“A Lady Jennings.”
“Good-bye bargain,” said Feldman.
“You know her?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe the ruby will turn up with her.”
“Never. She’s sapphires. She’s got the eight hundred-karat James.”
“I understand what you mean about recovering stolen property here now.”
“You don’t understand salt, Artie, or you wouldn’t be running after those things. Good-bye.”
Harry was watching as Artie hung up.
“I couldn’t help overhearing and I didn’t try to. Was that Norman Feldman of New York you were talking to?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you get to meet him? He was the first person I tried to get in touch with because of the great ruby. He wouldn’t even speak to me.”
“I dunno. I always seemed to be able to talk to Feldman, from my first day in Jewels. I just went up there and he explained things to me. I learned quick … on most things.”
“Why do you think he wouldn’t speak to me?”
“Because, like God, Norman Feldman moves in mysterious ways. He gives money away like crazy. Will fight for the right time to sell a gem, fight his wife on a divorce settlement, then give over a million dollars to their kid, and not speak to the kid.” Artie was smiling.
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?”
“I never thought about it. Do you?”
“Just wondered. Lot of death, you know. Claire’s father, the art dealer, the Israeli,” Rawson poured himself another port. Artie declined a refill. “Wondering what your homicide people thought of it.”
“What do you think of it?”
“I think it adds the spice of death to the whole thing, don’t you?” said Rawson.
“Harry, do you really think of death as a flavoring?” asked Artie. He didn’t like the wine, and he would prefer a Coke if he could get it, or beer, or Scotch. He and this British aristocrat had gotten close as only two drunks could, with all the intensity of cellophane flaming and just as quickly, cold and gone. And yet during the workdays Artie learned to respect him, and to like him, a strange liking without the easy warmth he usually felt with friends. Perhaps it was because Rawson was English and rich, which were two alien things to Artie. He couldn’t sense where the man was.
They talked about training and the police academy and Sandhurst, and they switched to the devil champagne while waiting for the thousand-dollar ladies. Rawson was a thinker. Before the first bottle of champagne was done, and while he was on his cyclical theory of history, Artie had a question, apropos of historical eras coming and going.
“Did you get anywhere with Claire Andrews?”
“God no.”
“She said you didn’t.”
“You thought she lied?”
“No. I just wanted to know.”
“I like courtesans, Artie. They are cleaner. There is no fraud unless you want to pay for fraud. Nobody is feigning closeness, and when they leave, they leave no emotional baggage. Your street whore, Artie, is the only clean screw in the world. And they are always pleasant.”
“Pleasant is fraud,” said Artie. “Why didn’t you get it on with Claire?”
“I just told you. She is also a very difficult person.”
“I think … I hope she’ll be all right.”
“She will always be all right, old man. The world will pick up our bodies off ash heaps, friend, while the Claire Andrewses of the world breakfast with orchids on the table.”
“I think she’s crazy. I think, maybe.”
“Are you sweet on her?”
“If I were not a grown-up, rational human being, I could let myself go that way.”
“Phone her.”
“I’ll phone her in New York. I’m a little bit high.”
“Phone her now. I’ll pay for it.”
“She’s a competing claim to you.”
“Competition makes it interesting. Phone her.”
“What for?”
“You have information on the sapphire. Phone her. Take the Dom Perignon with you. Go into your bedroom, and phone Claire Andrews, mid-American virgin, Sir Arthur.”
“I feel strange using your money to give her information, not that I wouldn’t give it to her anyway once I got back to New York. We’re dealing with legal claims here.”
“Claims, Artie,” intoned Rawson, grandly waving his glass without spilling. “Haven’t you learned anything about claims from the Jennings sapphire? A claim is a matter of public opinion of the moment. Get out of here. Phone the damsel Claire.”
“I’m not getting involved,” said Artie, taking one of the bottles and his glass as he got up from the very soft chair.
“Don’t worry, our ladies will be here to rescue you from any involvement with the infinitely superior love for cash. Your reward for a job well done.”
Perhaps it was the champagne, perhaps a fatigue he felt from traveling in strange cities where he couldn’t relax, but Artie found himself just talking away with Claire about everything. They hardly mentioned the sapphire or European rights claims. They talked about Carney, Ohio, and the Bronx, and Europe, and New York City. She was surprised to find out that for Artie as a boy a trip to Manhattan was like her going to Columbus or Toledo.
Missing Christmas had been hard for Claire, and she had almost wavered and gone home, but it was easier to be without Dad in a strange place. Artie understood.
He had lost both parents within a month of each other, and the first holidays without them were the hardest. Because holidays and families seemed to mean the same thing. It was an emptiness he had felt. They were stronger that first holiday in not being there, than they were when they were alive. If that didn’t sound crazy? he said. She didn’t think it did at all. Claire asked if he were drinking and he said champagne. He acknowledged how difficult life must be for her in New York and said he never expected her to stay at first.
Rawson came into the room to say the ladies were there, and Artie said he would be out in a minute.
“Are those dates?”
“Kind of,” said Artie.
“Did you meet them in Paris?”
“Not yet,” said Artie.
“Oh, a blind date.”
“Yeah, I dunno how Europeans do these things,” said Artie. “Harry’s doing this thing, and I’m going along with him. But it looks as though your sapphire or Harry’s is real. The real thing. Quite a stone. Not a fraud.”
There was silence across the Atlantic.
“Some stones can be faked. They’ll do anything for money, cut a sapphire top and put it over glass. You couldn’t tell unless you looked at the sides,” said Artie.
“Does he know a lot of women in Paris?”
Artie wanted to answer “the best women money can buy,” but found himself promising to show Claire how to use a jeweler’s loupe to look at stones when he got back to New York.
She said she would like that. And he thought, even as he said that, What have I offered?
An attractive woman in her late teens, more a girl than a woman, entered the room with a full bottle of champagne and a lascivious smile. The champagne in one hand and the glass in the other went behind her to her sides, leaving herself as the offering.
Artie held up a finger indicating one minute and signaled she should leave the champagne. He heard laughter outside before she shut the door.
When he was through talking to Claire, he went out into the parlor, and there was Harry Rawson, sitting in a silk bathrobe, smoking a mellow cigar, a glass of brandy in his lap and a table with three dirty plates and food in all manner of disarray.
“They’re gone. And it was wonderful. A thousand-dollar whore, Artie, is lust raised to a level of perfection that men can only dream about. It makes ordinary fornication the bangers and mash of life.”
“She looked young.”
“Only in body, but the mind was that of a thousand-year-old courtesan with all tricks and devices to drive you mad.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Artie.
“You’ll never know, will you?” said Rawson. “And it bloody well serves you right.”
XVIII
For had you all the riches of the world at your disposal, you would have given them away without a qualm for the love of your Maker.
—SIR THOMAS MALORY
Morte d’Arthur, ca. 1470
“I’m sorry,” said Gruenwald to the afternoon guest in his Geneva office. “But the price has gone up. I have added expenses.” Gruenwald carefully opened his eye-drop bottle and squeezed in a half dropper full of pink medicine, which he released first into his right eye, closing it until the sting had gone, and then into his left, wiping each eye carefully and gently with sighs of relief.
A businessman had to understand necessary costs, Gruenwald knew. He had to understand that if one traded cars, or razor blades, or tankers of oil, one provided oneself with the necessary insurance.
For trading a name, there had to be proper insurance also. But there was no underwriter who could guarantee safety of life, and that was the insurance Werner Gruenwald needed. And that cost.
Gruenwald hired the best strong-arm people in Europe, the Marseilles French. He had done some business with them before and was delighted to find out that they had added an absolutely brilliant wrinkle. A simple electronic beeper would stay with Gruenwald at all times. The bodyguard would not, for the simple reason that bodyguards clinging to their employers were more likely to be fellow targets. When Gruenwald buzzed, the bodyguard, who always hovered around like a scout, would come in and, if Gruenwald wanted, kill the attacker, or if Gruenwald needed some form of payment just let the man know. Gruenwald was not for killing.
The bodyguard was a six-foot barrel of a brute of a man, with a face that had registered many blows, and enough muscle to crack through a three-inch wide board with a lead pipe as though it were a sword. His name was Pierre. He was illiterate but obedient. He was perfect insurance.
So, knowing Pierre was nearby, Gruenwald contentedly dabbed the medicine from his eyes and said flat out that everyone was going to have to bear Gruenwald’s insurance cost.
Gruenwald was still smiling when he felt the blow before he saw his guest had made a move. It stunned him, sending him back in his rolling chair, seeing stars amid the softening sting of the medicine. He tried to scream, but his mouth was covered. Something oily. His mouth was being wrapped in tape even as his body was thrown up hard against the wall. And then like a sack bouncing off a truck, he was pulled downward by hands. He tried to get both hands to his jacket and the beeper device. One hand was held, hard, being taped now to the chair. His spine was numb where it had hit something hard. He had been pulled down to the chair. Bounced up, silenced, then bounced down again, all with eyes stinging from the first blow. The right hand was into the pocket. Gruenwald kicked out to get some free space. He felt the beeper. He pressed. He pressed the case. He pressed the button. He pressed its seams, and its label and both sides. He heard it squeal. The same squeal Pierre had demonstrated. He held onto the button, squeezing for his life, so that call was constant, so strong he heard it in front of him.
The wrist went down to the arm of the chair, taped there unmoving. But that hand did not surrender the device. That hand kept pressing the button. Pierre’s caller was so close now. In a moment it would be over. The guest would be crushed, and Gruenwald would be freed.
And then the squealing sound of constant beeps stopped. They stopped because the guest had turned it off, and he showed Werner Gruenwald he had the receiver. Slowly, the guest went to the door, closed it, and from Gruenwald’s own pocket took out a cigar, lighting it slowly.
He did not look angry. He did not look pleased. He could have been staring at a case of emeralds with a loupe for all the passion he showed. Then, making sure the tip of the cigar had a full red ember, he put it close to Gruenwald’s right eye and began to talk softly. To Gruenwald it sounded like madness. There were questions, there were threats. Of course the price had changed. As soon as the man untaped his mouth Gruenwald would tell him everything at the bargain rate of nothing. That was when the burning cigar went right into his eye.
Arthur was supposed to be back in New York City with Captain Rawson and he hadn’t phoned. He hadn’t phoned for two days since he should have been home, and Claire was almost certain it was what she had done that night, when they enjoyed that beautiful conversation from Paris.
It was like a warm bath in another human being, very comforting, very desirable and very familiar. In this polar cap world, Arthur Modelstein, for that two-hour phone conversation from Paris about nothing really, was the warm respite of joy. She had never talked that long on the phone with anyone and when she had gotten off her ear was stinging from the receiver.
And then Claire, with her mind that could look at five sides to a four-sided square, began thinking about those women, those French blind dates that Captain Rawson had arranged. She wondered if they were in the room with Arthur while she was talking to him and feeling all those good things about him? Were they doing things with him or to him, while she was feeling all those good things and thinking good thoughts about him. Was Arthur so skilled at that sort of thing that he could talk warmly to her and receive other things from others.
More importantly, at that moment while she was alone in her apartment in Queens with a bowl of cold soup and a computer trying to get some organizatio
n on the massive diversity of different civilizations toward their gems, with a computer screen in her face, Arthur might have right that very moment been doing something maximally intimate with one of those women.
He was the sort who had many women, and before she had thought it through, she was on the phone dialing him in Paris, not caring that it was the wee hours over there. Possibly even enjoying it. After all, she was only calling to thank him for his concern. After all, she wasn’t supposed to know things about being in the saddle while trying to answer a phone. He thought of her as the sweet, virginal, midwest innocent, so why should she know of such things? If he were having difficulty talking, why she would just press onward with her sweet-as-cornflower conversation. At worst, she would find he did not have a woman there. And what was she doing phoning Paris, France, to find out whether a New York City detective of thirty-four years of age was alone or not?
He was on the phone before she could hang up. He was groggy, drunk, sleepy, but saying she shouldn’t apologize for calling because whether she knew it or not she had a nice voice even though she came from Ohio, and places like that way out there where they talked like that and couldn’t help it, if she knew what he meant.
“I do,” said Claire, as cool and uninviting as windowsill water. And that was it. Two days before, and he hadn’t phoned and was probably now with his hundred and one other women. And all Claire had was what she had when she made the stupid, childish phone call: her screen with the gem weightings and chart for that one hundred and forty-two-karat sapphire.
The problem with the sapphire was that it was the most mystical gem of all. Some superstition held that even the Ten Commandments were written on sapphire, but that was impossible. Sapphires never came that big. On the other hand, there was a penchant for calling almost any dark stone a sapphire.
In one generation, the sapphire might be used superstitiously to corroborate fidelity of a spouse (it was supposed to change colors if the marriage partner cheated, but only the female, which had led Claire to surmise that most legends were created by men), or in another for a bishop’s ring because the sapphire indicated holiness, or in another for good luck on the sea, hence the Poseidon engraving on the cellar’s sapphire. And worse, because of the heavy mysticism and multiplicity of stones masquerading as sapphires, few were weighted and even fewer were sapphires.
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