by Norman Green
“I’m all ready,” Georgie said.
“Okay,” Tommy said. “Right now we got some time, and I don’ got nothing to do, so I’m gonna drive back up to the motel where Jack wasa stay, checka to see if anybody’sa see something.”
“All right,” Stoney said. “If you don’t find anything, you can get on the horn and find out if Jack was on any of the flights to Toronto last night or this morning.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. “I gonna do. Marisa knows what to do?”
“By now, everybody better know what to do,” Stoney said. “When Prior calls her this afternoon, she knows what to say. Until then, Tuco is gonna keep her out of sight.” He glanced through the window at Tuco and his daughter in the backyard. “This is it. No more phone calls unless something is coming apart.”
Moses Wartensky’s place of business was located in a narrow, run-down building on the west side of Manhattan, in the jewelry district. The exterior of the building was dirty white. Stoney and Georgie Cho walked into the lobby, empty except for a directory on one wall and a security guard who sat in a booth opposite the elevators. The man had a copy of the New York Post, open to the sports section. “Wartensky,” Stoney said, walking past him.
The guard did not look up from his paper. “Twelfth floor,” he said. Stoney pushed the button for the elevator, then turned and looked at Georgie, who was up on the balls of his feet, bouncing a little bit, looking like a very thin welterweight, standing in his corner, psyching himself up.
Neither of them spoke as the elevator rattled them up to Wartensky’s floor. It jerked to a stop and the two of them stepped out into the hallway, the floorboards creaking underfoot as they made their way to the correct metal door. Stoney rang the bell, then yanked the door open when he heard the buzzer. They both stepped into the small, dark vestibule, and after the door closed behind them, the inner door buzzed, and they were in.
Moses Wartensky had once been a tall man, but time had rounded his shoulders and bent his spine. He had puffy white hair, blue eyes, and a wispy goatee. “Come in, come in,” he said, hobbling across the floor. “You’re letting all the heat out.” Stoney pushed the door shut behind him.
The place looked like it hadn’t been painted since the Depression. A long, high, L-shaped counter blocked off most of the space inside, and three dark-haired men sat at tables behind the counter, working. They did not look up as Stoney and Georgie entered. There was a massive metal safe down at the end of the room, its heavy doors open. The thing looked like it was ready to go through the floor any minute. On the public side of the counter, a couple of ancient, stained, mismatched armchairs and a table gave a place for Wartensky’s less squeamish customers to wait while business was being conducted. “Our boy here yet?” Stoney wanted to know.
“Yeah, he got here about forty-five minutes ago,” Wartensky said.
“Really? Where is he?”
“Waiting in the stairwell, like a schmuck.”
“You’re kidding. You see him?”
“What?” Moses said. “You think just because I’m old I should be blind also?” He shook a long, thin finger in Stoney’s direction. “I haven’t lost my mind yet. I got a closed-circuit camera watching the hallway. Forty-five minutes ago, the elevator door opens, two apes get out. They walk past my door, pretending not to look, then they go to the end of the corridor. Only thing down there is the office of a guy, used to make zippers. All his business has went to China, poor bastard. So they go through the stairwell door, and it locks behind them. What do they know? There’s no sign. There ought to be a sign, don’t you think? You could complain to the landlord, but would he listen to you? He would not. So they can’t get back in, they have to walk all the way down the steps, then the doorman calls to tell me they’re on their way back up. So here they come again, they repeat the whole performance, except now one of them has his foot in the door like an encyclopedia salesman. Which nobody buys anymore, because now we have the Internet. Who needs a book?”
“We all ready, Mose?”
“What kinda question is that, of course I’m ready, you think I been standing around all day long with my thumb in my ass?”
“Easy, Mose. I was just asking.”
“Well, I’m ready. Are you ready, that’s what you need to worry about.”
Four minutes later, Stoney watched Prior on Wartensky’s black-and-white television screen as the man stood outside the door. Prior’s bald chauffeur stood right behind him. A bell sounded, and Wartensky buzzed the men inside. Georgie Cho stood up, wadded his bony fists, and started bouncing up and down again.
Prior opened the door, took one step inside, and seeing Cho, held out his hand. He was wearing black silk pants, white tee, silver jacket over the tee. “Gregory Ahn?” he said.
“Come in, come in,” Wartensky said, hobbling arthritically across the floor. “You’re letting all the heat out.”
Cho ignored Prior’s outstretched hand. “Give him your shit.”
Prior scowled, pulled his hand back, and motioned to his driver with the other hand. The man stepped forward with a thin attaché. Prior opened it, took out a black velvet bag the size and shape of a large burrito, and handed it to Wartensky. “In a sock, he brings it,” Wartensky muttered. “You wanna watch, come with me.”
Prior looked at his driver for the first time since they’d entered the room, but he still didn’t say anything to the man, he just nodded to him, and the driver followed Wartensky back behind the counter. “You and you,” Wartensky said, designating two of his three assistants. “Each of you take half of this. I want a good wholesale number.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Prior said. He walked over to the edge of the counter. “Who said anything about wholesale?”
“What?” Moses didn’t even look at him. He watched as one of his assistants spilled the diamonds out of the bag onto a metal tray and began dividing them into two piles. “You want the goy price? What the hell good will that do you? You won’t get that kinda money from anyone, not unless you open up a store and start selling earrings, and believe me, by the time you absorb your overhead, pay your taxes, and your workers steal a little something for themselves, how much difference will there really be? Better you should sell wholesale, you don’t gotta listen to a bunch of asshole customers.” He put on a high, thin, nasal voice. “‘Mr. Wartensky, don’t you think this one is a little yellow? It don’t really match the other one, you think maybe you could do something about the price?’” He turned and looked at Prior. “Hey, just let us give you a number, okay? Then you and the big macher can hondle each other all you want.”
“Yeah,” Prior said, and he tore his attention away from the diamonds. He made brief eye contact with his chauffeur, who nodded and settled in to watch the two jewelers.
“Where did you get this shit, anyway?” Georgie said. “I decide to take them off your hands, am I gonna have trouble unloading them?” He turned to Stoney. “What was that thing with diamonds everybody was yelling about a couple years back? Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Stoney closed his eyes and pretended his head was aching. “The Congo basin,” he said. “Rebels held the miners in virtual slavery. They were selling the diamonds to finance their wars.” Stoney walked over to one of the armchairs and dropped himself into it. Georgie, tall, thin, long-haired, stood with a hand on his hip, staring at Stoney with a mixture of pity and disdain. Prior, as tall as Georgie but older, better-looking in a Waspy sort of way, and in far better shape, stood by looking uneasy. By any rational measure, Stoney thought, Prior ought to have all the advantages. He could probably snap Cho in two if he desired, and he had years of real-world experience on the kid. Whatever else the man was, he was a survivor, but it was obvious from his posture that he had given in to the classic jock’s inferiority complex: I am a meathead, I may be stronger and quicker, but this guy really is smarter than I am. Prior stood with his hands clasped in front of his belt buckle, his elbows pinched in close to his body, his feet to
gether and shoulders slightly stooped. He’s not even conscious of it, Stoney thought, but he’s making himself as small as he can, while Georgie, never quite still, turned, put his elbows on the counter, watched the jewelers for a moment, looked at Wartensky, then turned back to Prior. Georgie’s taking up as much space and attention as he can manage, Stoney thought. Dominant male. Stoney willed himself to shrink smaller into his chair.
“Prior, is that what your name is? Where’d you get these fucking things? Huh?”
Prior exhaled like a man who had been holding his breath. “They’re not conflict diamonds,” he said, and he rubbed his face. “Not to my knowledge. They came out of the De Beers vaults in Amsterdam. They were purchased at one of the annual auctions that De Beers holds.” He glanced at Wartensky. “Is that the goy price?”
“Not unless you’re a moron,” Wartensky muttered.
“Purchased by who?” Georgie demanded. “By you?”
“Not directly.” Prior took a breath. “Maybe you should tell me what’s bothering you, Mr. Ahn.”
“What I wanna know,” Georgie said, “is whether or not the real owner is gonna come looking.”
“They’re not hot. The man who bought them from De Beers died in Europe a couple of years ago. I was given to understand that he met his end via an unfortunate reaction to a fish dinner. He apparently didn’t make it to the hospital in time. I was able to obtain the gems from his heirs.” He looked at Wartensky. “For cash. I await your judgment as to whether the price I paid was fair or not.”
“I don’t know from fair,” Wartensky said. “I can only tell you wholesale.”
“Oh, please,” Georgie said. “Let me try and translate, okay? Let me sift through that line of bullshit you just handed me and see if I can’t come a little closer to reality. Some unnamed and probably unlamented jerk-off makes a large investment in ice, but then he steps off into the great by-and-by. Something like that. Or did someone push him? No matter, somehow or other he transforms himself into a sidewalk pizza. Am I close? And before the pepperonis are even cold, you swoop in and you make your grab. Maybe you did pay off the widow and orphans, maybe you didn’t, but the end result is, you’re here with a bunch of rocks in your hands, and you would just love to get out of the jewelry business and into the market, and oh yeah, you need to do it quietly. No need to alarm the local IRS storm troopers. Isn’t that a bit closer to the truth? You are nothing but a fucking shark, but you would rather look like a retired schoolteacher. Am I right?”
Prior’s face got a little rosy. “Shark?” His voice began to rise. “Who are you to call me a shark?”
Wartensky looked at them from the other side of the counter. Prior’s chauffeur glanced their way, too. “Hey,” Wartensky said. “You come to fight or to do business? ’Cause if you wanna fight, you’re gonna have to take it outside.” Georgie waved him off without even glancing in his direction.
“Come on,” Georgie said. “Get off it. I need to know something. There are two kinds of shark, okay? There’s the kind that swallows its prey whole, and there’s the kind that bites off a piece and swims away. Which kind are you?”
“Let me tell you something, you little turd,” Prior said, thrusting his chin forward. “I served my country and my employers with honor, and all I got out of it was the right to eat shit.”
“Current market value for honor sucks,” Georgie told him.
“So?” Prior demanded. “So if I saw an opportunity and I jumped on it, how does that make me any different from you? You really think you’re that much better than me?”
“Yeah,” Georgie said, “I do. I didn’t get stuck with a depreciating asset, for one thing. Did you know that the De Beers monopoly ain’t what it used to be? Their market share drops every year. Another ten years, that shit will be worth half of what it is right now.”
“What?” Wartensky asked, his mouth agape. “What did you say?”
“Ah, what do you care?” Georgie asked him. “You’ll never make another ten years anyhow.”
Moses Wartensky closed his mouth, and he seemed to shrivel, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. He shook his head and turned away.
Prior looked at the other people in the room before turning back to Georgie. “Man, you are really something,” he said. “I have dealt with some cast-iron pricks in my time, but you gotta be the blue ribbon dick, you know that? So tell me something, genius. If diamonds are a depreciating asset, why the hell do you want ’em? Huh?” The two men were getting closer to each other, one slow millimeter at a time. Stoney readied himself, and he noticed Prior’s guard in the background, who was watching, and doing the same.
“Well, that depends on how bad you wanna get rid of ’em,” Georgie said, sneering. “Seems to me you wanna cash in the Queen’s jewels, but you don’t want the Queen to hear about it. And then you think you wanna maybe make some money. Okay? And you ain’t gonna take your shit down to the local pawnshop, can we agree on that? You gotta deal with someone like me. And you know what? There ain’t anybody like me. There’s just me. So if Moses says your shit’s tagged at five large, I’ll give you three and a half. Take it or fucking leave it.”
Prior was turning purple. “Three and a half?” he shouted, outraged. “Three and a half? Fuck you! Fuck you, you little cocksucker! You ain’t gonna—”
Georgie got right up into Prior’s face and shouted back. “Fuck me? Is that what you said? Fuck me? I’m trying to do you a favor, you asshole! Fuck you! What do you think the feds are gonna think about your little stash, huh? You fucking piece of shit…”
Everybody moved at once. Moses Wartensky backed away as Prior made a grab for Georgie Cho’s throat, missing narrowly. Georgie ducked, tucking the thumb on his right hand and driving four stiff fingers into Prior’s abdomen just under the ribs as hard as he could. Prior, grunting, made another grab and got Cho just as his chauffeur cleared the counter. The guard wrapped himself around Prior as Stoney jammed his body in between Prior and Georgie and broke Prior’s hold. All four men wound up on the floor, with Prior and Georgie still bellowing at each other. Prior, red-faced, regained his feet first, but by then Wartensky had an old .357 in a shaking fist. The end of the barrel described an unsteady circle. “Stop it!” he shouted. “Stop it, goddammit! Don’t make me shoot somebody!”
Prior looked at Wartensky and laughed, and all the steam went out of him. “That’s a double-action piece,” he said. “You wanna shoot someone, you gotta cock the hammer back. No, all the way. Gimme that.” He reached out and plucked the revolver out of Wartensky’s hand. He looked at the gun. “Be helpful if you cleaned this thing once in a while. You pull this trigger, this thing would probably blow up in your face. Pack my belongings back in the bag, please, I’m leaving.” He pointed the revolver in Georgie’s general direction. “You breathe a word of this to anyone, my friend, and you’ll live to regret it, but not for long.”
“All right, all right,” Georgie said, still sitting. “I’ll go three and three quarters, but not a cent more.”
Prior shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said. He turned and watched Wartensky’s assistants as they poured a river of glittering silver back into the black velvet bag. Wartensky, his dismay writ large on his lined face, accepted the refilled bag, then handed it over to Prior with obvious reluctance. Prior looked at the bag, then down at Georgie. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.
“Are you kidding me?” Georgie shouted. He was up on one knee, and his voice was a little hoarse. “I can’t go four! That’s ridiculous! Three-nine is my absolute highest offer!”
Prior uncocked Wartensky’s cannon and laid it carefully on the counter. “Clean that,” he said to Moses, then, bag in hand, he walked over to the exit. Wartensky leaned on the buzzer. Prior, followed by his chauffeur, who held the empty briefcase, went through the inner door, and then the outer one.
Georgie waited until the outer door closed, then cleared his throat. “Was that too over-the-top?” he asked.
Stoney
and Wartensky just stared at him.
TWENTY-TWO
Tommy Bagadonuts watched Prior stalk out of Wartensky’s building, followed by his driver. Prior, Tommy thought, is either extremely pissed off, or else he all of a sudden grew an underbite. “Oh, boy,” Tommy said. He itched with the desire to call Stoney and find out how everything had gone, but he did not. His job now was to tail Prior and see where the man went, and he did not need his attention compromised. And if he lost track of Prior while he was on the phone with Stoney, he would never hear the end of it. Prior and his driver got into a black stretch Lincoln Town Car that was parked in a commercial-vehicles-only parking spot just up the block. Just the two of them, Tommy thought, noting that Prior got into the back and the other guy got in behind the wheel. He wondered where the other guard was. Prior had two guards, and he often traveled with them both. Wouldn’t it make sense, Tommy asked himself, to take the two of them along when you are transporting five million dollars’ worth of gems? He saw the Town Car’s front wheels angling away from the curb, so he dropped his Mercedes into gear and prepared to follow. A car coming down the block behind him saw the Mercedes ease forward and stopped to let him out. Tommy knew that it wasn’t courtesy, the guy wanted the space. That was the only way you ever found a parking spot in midtown. Just up the block, the same thing happened, a commercial van stopped to let the Town Car out into traffic. Tommy couldn’t get past the van until the guy had it parked, but it was no sweat. The light up at the corner was red, and the van driver had himself over next to the curb in one shot. New Yorkers, Tommy thought, may not be able to drive for shit, but they are world-champion parkers.
Marisa listened to the voice mails on her phone, deleting them one by one. “Sheesh,” she said, after sitting through one particularly long message. “Someone must have dialed me by mistake. I can’t hear what they were saying.”