by David Pierce
I gave him my number, thanked him, then asked, "How's the health? Hope you still got enough to put away the occasional fifth of that rotgut Tennessee mash you tried to force down my throat the night we were celebrating."
He laughed. "Well, son," he said, "if I work at her and concentrate real hard I find I can get a sip or two down of an evening."
I said I was glad to hear it and severed the connection. Not a bad guy, all in all, for someone who'd been a politician most of his life and who never got caught once. It'd be strange being married to an opera singer, though—you'd never be able to understand a word she said.
I cleaned up my desk, then brought my accounts up-to-date, then answered a slightly scatalogical scribble I'd received the week before on the back of a change of address notification; it was from a good old boy who'd got me a job with the Burns security people when I'd first moved out to the coast, and then I had a phone call from a lady. She wanted to know if I was Mr. Vic Daniel. I said I was. She asked me to hold on, please. I held on, which is generally speaking an activity I enjoy roughly as much as back-combing tarantulas. After a minute or so, a man came on the line and told me his name was Ralph Howieson and that he was a senior vice president of International Machine & Mercantile.
"How do you do, sir?" I said.
"I've just had a rather strange call from an old college friend," he said. "He suggested I listen with some attention to what you had to say as it had been his experience that despite a certain lack of appreciation for some of the finer things of life, you were neither a con man, a fool, nor a waster of other people's time."
"Kind words indeed, sir," I said. "Eh, the reason I don't want to go into details on the phone is that in my experience they are not, alas, always private."
"This one is," he said. "It's my home phone, and it was my daughter you spoke to a moment ago. I was just on my way back to the office after lunch when Slick caught me."
"Slick," I thought. Another one of those great nicknames. I always wished someone had given me one as a lad, like Minnesota Fats or Tex or Lefty, all I'd ever had was Dopey (that dumb dwarf), Stilts, and, from the twerp as soon as she saw me wearing glasses for the first time, the derisory Prof. Who cares anyway about that stuff?
As I really didn't want to go into details on the phone at all, private or party line, mainly because I didn't have many details and would have to rely on my forceful and winning personality, obviously more effective in a face-to-face encounter, I suggested we meet instead so I could fill him in, as we would probably have to meet later anyway.
"Home or office," he said. "Take your pick, Mr. Daniel."
"Office after work, maybe?"
"Why after work?"
"Same reason as the phone," I said.
There was a pause. Then Mr. Howieson said, "Mr. Daniel, I am starting to get slightly worried by all this."
"Well, if it helps," I said, "there's only the slightest chance you have anything to worry about."
"Which doesn't help in the slightest," he said. We agreed that I should pass by the IMM head office building the following evening at six-thirty, address supplied, press the button reading "Night Inquiries," give my name to whomever answered my summons, show some I.D., and I would be accompanied up to his office, where he would be waiting, if not exactly eagerly, for my arrival. I said thank you and good-bye. He said good-bye to me. Click. Click. All right. That was done, for all the use it would probably be, if there was a windmill around I'd go and have a tilt or two at it instead; much more useful and bound to be more fun.
After I'd hung up, King looked at me hopefully.
"OK, you win," I told him. "Let's get out of here." I tidied up and out of there we got and into the car we got and up to the observatory in Griffith Park we got, where we got out and he romped and sniffed and rolled and I sat on the bench by the water fountain and observed. I didn't see any stars, although there were enough would-be starlets passing to and fro to keep an amateur Galileo like me more than content. None of them, however, stopped to say, "Oh, what a cute pooch! I just adore an older man with a dog!" Guess I'll never understand starlets.
THEM LITTLE THINGS," I said, "that look like dried peas, only gray, are worth a quarter of a million bucks? You've got to be kidding."
It was ten o'clock the following a.m. The Lubinski brothers, Jonathan and Nathan ("Family Jewelers for Over 20 Years") and myself were in the small workshop out back of their store, which was just around the corner from my office. Nathan was weighing the peas, with great care, one at a time, on a beautiful antique set of jeweler's scales, while his brother and I watched. Every few minutes I left them to get on with it while I earned my fee by checking the front and back doors, the alarm systems, the street out front, and the alley out back. Earlier I'd hung a sign neatly lettered by Nathan in the front window; it said that, exceptionally, the store would be opening two hours late that morning. I'd also, earlier, unlocked the front door for the courier who'd delivered the so-called diamonds from New York so he could go have a bite of breakfast somewhere.
I returned from my umpteenth fruitless checkup and gave the thumbs-up to J. Lubinski, who gave me a grin in return. J. Lubinski was elegantly attired, as usual; this morning in a dapper gray mohair suit with his customary highly polished black loafers with tassels. His specs were gold-framed, his tie pin silver, his cuff links semiprecious-stoned, and his sliver of a watch platinum for all I knew. His lugubrious elder brother wore his customary baggy brown ensemble, topped up with a loupe in his right eye. We got on fine, me and the brothers. Jonathan was the businessman, Nathan the creative one; he was also an historian specializing in the years of the Holocaust, as I'd found out the time I was keeping my eye on the wedding presents at Nathan's only daughter's wedding reception in his modest little mansion in Beverly Hills. That same evening I'd cracked the Case of the Missing Champagne (the caterers done it) for no extra money, and we'd gotten on swimmingly ever since.
While N. Lubinski was weighing the last few peas, I drew J. Lubinski aside and asked him, "Why?"
"Why what?" he said.
"Why everything," I said. "Why buy, why weigh, why me?"
J. Lubinski sighed theatrically, and flung his beringed and manicured hands to the heavens.
"Why you?" he said. "Why me?" I followed him through into the store proper. "There follows a short lecture on crystallized carbon, otherwise known as diamonds."
"Or ice," I said. "In my trade."
"Or ice," he said. "A fixed number of times a year deBeers, through its Central Selling Organization, holds in some major city what is called a sight, in my trade. A fixed number of extremely reputable dealers attend these sights. They are offered various assortments of stones at non-negotiable prices."
"All diamonds," I said.
"Varying weights, varying colors, but all diamonds," he agreed. "These dealers then resell their boxes of goodies in smaller lots to other dealers, one of whom is a pal of ours who lives in New York, New York."
"So you call him up collect," I said, "and say, 'Got thirty peas such and such a weight and such and such a color?' "
"You got it, Vic," J. Lubinski said. "So he sends them out here by courier; we verify them and send them back to New York to a cutter."
"Weighing is verifying?" I said.
"Part thereof," he said, "as there is a type of manufactured diamond almost identical to the real McCoy except it weighs getting on to twice as much. As for why you, the diamonds are insured while they are in the hands of the courier, but not while he is out eating pancakes, then they are our responsibility, and it is a lot cheaper, my friend, to hire you for two hours than it is for us to insure them for that time. We will have to, of course, when they arrive back here all nicely trimmed and polished."
"Ah," I said. "Excuse me a mo." I checked out the front of the store again, then poked my head in the workroom, where N. Lubinski was wrapping the peas up in what looked like a bit of old bandage, then rejoined J. Lubinski, who was looking impatiently at hi
s watch.
"Don't worry," I said. "If we run over the two hours, I won't charge you for the extra few minutes. Anyway, it looks like Nate is just finishing up."
"Good," he said. "And what I am is nervous, not impatient."
"So who cuts and polishes them?" I asked. "Why not Nate?"
"Too specialized," he said. "Nate will get them back cut into brilliants or rose or double rose or occasionally if the stone is big enough into Kohinoor or even table, then design and make the settings, leaving me to do all the hard work, selling them."
"Ain't life tough," I said.
The courier came back about then, so I let him in and he and the Lubinskis completed the paperwork, the middle-aged courier tucked the package casually into one pocket, then off he went, and then, a few minutes later off I went, with a check for a satisfying number of U.S. dollars tucked carefully into my worn old wallet. Being casual is one thing, being foolhardy another.
Tuesday afternoon King and I—again lucratively—passed together down in Huntington Beach, him dozing in the shade, me sweating in the sun. I was doing what amounted to a time-and-motion study on a company called Bloom Marine, Inc., for a movie mogul pal of my movie mogul pal, the aforementioned Lew Lewellen. His pal was filthy rich. Like many, if not all, the filthy rich, he felt that nothing was enough, because nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little, to paraphrase from the Greek. He was a tightwad, a stingy miser who was convinced all his employees were as avaricious (and as crooked, if you ask me) as he was. To give him a deeply begrudged credit, it was turning out that in the case of Bloom Marine, Inc., anyway, he was spot-on.
That Tuesday afternoon was my third half-day on the job, spread out over the past six weeks, so Bloom Marine, Inc., had already submitted one monthly statement to my client, which I had seen. And one item I'd seen was a charge for twelve man-hours of carpentry—and you know how much money those guys drag down an hour—on a Saturday afternoon (double overtime) when I'd been fifty feet away the whole time helping this laconic and well-grizzled sea dog scupper his barnacles, or whatever the fuck we were doing besides absolutely ruining my nails, and had seen nary a sign of a carpenter. I had seen a large, well-muscled beach bum type go aboard my client's boat a couple of times and stroll around the poop deck briefly, but that was all. Incidentally, according to the sea dog, my client's boat was a converted U.S. Navy minesweeper, he wasn't sure what class, maybe the MSL1 Cove, it coulda been, worth somewheres between $250,000–$300,000, depending. The sea dog's leaky piece of waterlogged junk, he told me in a rare moment of loquacity, was an old mahogany-over-oak offshore lobster boat, as if I cared. All I knew was it was upside down in an adjoining slip to my client's, otherwise known to one and all as G. Z. I'd rather be known by some nifty nickname than by initials, Hollywood style. I wonder why?
Anyway, there I was, stripped to the waist and trousers rolled up, scraping away while Popeye sawed a new piece of timber to replace a rotted bit in the hull. Well, I couldn't stand around doing nothing but stare over at G. Z.'s ship, could I, making the occasional note as well, I did have to try and fit in, so I'd told Popeye my first morning on the job who I was and what I was up to and said I was more than willing to work for my keep. He looked at my I.D., then at King, then at me.
"Know anythin' about boats?"
"Some float," I said.
"Start scrapin'," he said. And, so far so good, I figured. Another couple of hours and a few more blisters and I'd be out of there, I'd be history, I'd vanish into thin air like a tinhorn Casanova's oaths of love the morning after, another job well done, a few more greenbacks for the piggy bank. And maybe even a better class of dog food for my boy, like meat.
I was scraping and musing when Popeye said to me quietly, "Friends of your'n?"
I looked up. Coming down the concrete slipway toward us were three gents, the beach bum from G. Z.'s boat, a larger one, and a smaller but stockier one. One carried a piece of pipe, one a chunk of two-by-four. All were wearing shorts and tank tops.
"Don't rightly guess so," I said. "Hold the dog, would you?"
"Sure."
"And keep out of it."
"Sure."
"And you don't know nothing."
"Never did."
The hole in the hull that Popeye was fixing to repair was on the side of the lobster boat away from the three stooges, covered temporarily with a patch of tarp. I dodged around, eased up a corner, dumped in my wallet and notebook, then hardly having broken stride, continued around the hull back into their view and began ambling slowly toward them, trying to put in a little distance between me and Popeye, King, and the hole in the hull. Hell, maybe even they were just out for a little sea air and weren't really planning to put a hole in my head. If so, I'd just keep amblin' and later figure out some way of retrieving pooch and personal effects.
But, like the rebirth of dead hair follicles, it was not to be.
"Goin' somewhere, pal?" the beach bum inquired as we drew abreast.
"Have to get the kids from school," I said. "It's my day."
"And maybe not," the beach bum said. His mates snickered. I thought, oh well, all that scraping was playing hell with my manicure, anyway.
"Been hanging around quite a lot recently, haven't ya?"
"Oh, from time to time," I said. "Like to give the old fellow a hand."
"Uh huh," the stocky one said. "What was his name again?"
"I always called him Pop," I said, "seeing as he was sort of like a father to me."
They exchanged knowing glances.
"We been asked," the beach bum said, "seeing as all this is private property, to escort you from the premises."
"Man, I'm history," I said, spreading my arms, palms upward. "Adios, gents."
"We also been asked," the biggest guy said, opening his mouth for the first time and tossing the length of pipe from hand to hand, "to politely find out who you are and what you're doin' here."
"Is that all!" I exclaimed. "Why didn't you say so? My name is Hugh Gross, I live just off Atlanta, near the Fairview Hospital there, I'm in storm windows, and you already know what I was doing, giving Pop a hand with the heavy bits, any law against that?"
"We also been asked," the beach bum said, "to see some I.D."
"Forgot to say 'please,' " I said.
"Come on, shithead, hand it over," the stocky guy said, taking a practice swing or two over his head with the chunk of wood.
I patted my pockets, then I said, "Oh, now I remember. I didn't bring any on purpose because once when I was a kid, back in Davenport that was, we went canoeing and it tipped over and everything I had in my wallet, including in the secret pocket, can you believe, got soaked, so ever since then I've been mighty careful what I carry in my pockets around boats."
"Not careful enough, pal," the beach bum said. "So tough shit on you, Lofty." They fanned out and came at me from three sides at once. It could have been worse, I guess, they could have been asked to kill me, not just bat me around like a sponge ball till I went down and then take turns kicking me and then finally, whacking me a good one on the back of the head with either the log or the pipe, I didn't catch the details, frankly, and laying me out cold on the gritty concrete. I did manage to get in a few licks of my own, fight fans, never fear, including one perfect left hook that caught Shorty right on the button and out went his lights. And the beach bum, or is it boat bum, took one knee from me that would lower his testosterone count for a while and, by a whisker I missed the third guy's Adam's apple with a savage karate chop and so on, and then it was all over, Goliath was hurt, Goliath was down, Goliath was out.
When I inched back to painful consciousness a while later, someone was whimpering and something cold and wet was frantically licking my bruised face. Being a detective and all, I soon deduced that the whimperer was me and the something cold and drooly King's tongue. I managed to tell him that it was all right, he could put it away now, good boy, and all that. When I got my eyes opened all the way, I saw Popeye
hunkered down on his heels beside me.
"They gone?" I said.
"Yep."
"You OK?"
"Yep."
"My wallet OK? I dumped it in your hole."
"Yep. You OK?"
"Yep. Well, nope, but yep, considering. Wonder why they didn't eject me from the premises, too?"
"Probably saw what I did," he said. "Someone up at the main office lookin' out with a spyglass."
"Where was he earlier?" I said.
"How come you ditched your wallet?" he said, hoisting himself lithely to his feet.
"Car registration in it," I said. "Didn't want them going through the marina parking lot looking for it and then trashing it up."
"Oh," he said.
"They ask you anything?"
"Yep."
"Tell them anything?"
He didn't bother to answer such a stupid question. I gingerly pushed myself up to a sitting position, then waited for the world to stop whirling around in its madcap fashion, with my eyes closed and one hand on my aching head and the other on King's, calming him down.
"Bleedin's died down to a trickle," Popeye said after a while. I managed a lopsided grin in his direction.
"Another reason I stashed the wallet," I said, running my tongue over my teeth to see if they were still all there, which they were, thank the God of dentistry, considering what I'd paid for them, "I had all my I.D. plus eighteen dollars cash in it, plus a check I got for a job I did this morning."
"Prob'ly had yore Dick Tracy Junior G-Man decoder in her as well," he said.
"See, Pop," I said, "with macho assholes like that, you got to leave them something, otherwise their bullshit pride'll fester away. So I let them work me over a little, big deal, so I took a fall to keep them happy, but I'm not dumb enough to let them know who I am and where I live so they can stop by well tanked up some night for a little more fun."
"Thought I'd heard 'em all," Pop said, shaking his head. "Just goes to show you, son."
Chapter Seventeen
So all I gotta do now is hang on and keep the faith,