18mm Blues (24 page)

Reese offered drinks, cold Polaris mineral water was settled upon for all. Grady and Reese spent the next ten minutes reacquainting, touching upon, almost as though reciting résumés, high points and some of the lows of their recent years. Julia just sat there and tried to appear interested, contributed nothing, held back making the wry quips that came to mind. Why didn't they just get to the reason for being there? she thought. After all, it wasn't as if Reese was a long-lost genuinely missed relative. She was relieved when finally Reese said he presumed Grady was there on a buying trip, and Grady told him he'd been to the Emporium, was on his way home.

“How'd it go?” Reese asked.

“Not all that great.” Grady understated and allowed some silence while he omitted telling Reese how he'd been outbid every time.

“They're such bullshit, the Burmese,” Reese said. “Mean little fuckers too.” He looked to Julia and begged pardon for his language.

A blasé shrug from Julia.

“Did you get to buy anything?” Reese asked Grady.

“Just this.” Grady brought out the piece of rough.

Reese took it and took a look at it. Shifted his eyes aside, then brought them back to the crystal. Grady believed he saw Reese's interest intensify. No doubt Reese knew ruby rough, had seen a lot of it. “What do you think?” Grady asked offhand.

“Looks okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Can't say more than that for sure until we get some crud off it. That all right with you?”

“Sure.”

It was precisely what Grady had hoped for, had come for, and he liked that he hadn't had to ask the favor. He followed Reese across the room to a workbench. Reese flipped a switch that started the spin of a grinding wheel. He gave the piece of rough some deciding inspection before applying one of its surfaces to the wheel. Did it cautiously with practiced fingers and just enough gentle pressure.

The stone sounded mortal, tortured, screeching the way it did as the diamond-coated wheel abraded its worthless skin. Reese gave the same attention to its five other surfaces and its ends. Then treated it to another kinder wheel to polish it some.

He spat on it. Held it up to the daylight fluorescent light. Louped it from various angles for a couple of minutes. Next pincered it with a pair of locking tweezers and mounted the tweezers in place on the nearby microscope so the now cleaner crystal was held below the lens. He clicked on the microscope's attached light and sighted into its binocular eyepieces. Adjusted the tweezers, adjusted the focus and looked and looked. Without comment or even some little sound like a grunt that Grady might interpret. Finally, still silent and expressionless, he backed off and gestured that Grady should take a look.

The magnification was forty times.

The realm that Grady viewed was rich deep red, entirely, except for…

“See the silk?” Reese asked.

As though Grady could possibly miss it. An arrangement of rutile needles. They intersected one another at an angle of about sixty degrees, were interwoven densely, glittering. Silk. To Grady's eyes it was like seeing a vast number of headlights transformed into four-armed stars by a red rainy San Francisco night.

“Notice how fine woven the silk is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That's what's telling us it's Burma goods. Not Ceylon. If it was Ceylon goods the needles would be a lot more slender, with a coarser weave. If it was Thai or African goods there'd be no silk at all. It's Burma, all right.”

Grady knew most of what Reese had just said. It was elementary geminological textbook stuff, but he let Reese say it. The important thing he'd just learned was what Reese had taken for granted. It was ruby. How good a ruby was yet to be determined, but surely, considering the carat weight, it was worth more than the fifty he'd paid for it. “Want to sell this piece?” Reese asked.

Grady didn't reply immediately. He was enjoying looking at profit. Finally, he gave his eyes a rest. “You want to buy it?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“If maybe, what would you offer?”

“A fast deal, a right-now deal, I might go two hundred thousand.”

Grady didn't say two hundred was an insult, didn't want to bother with that old obvious routine. Instead, he refused with just a shake of his head.

Reese removed the ruby crystal from the microscope. Bare-eyed it again. “I myself don't have the kind of money you probably want, but I know someone here who does.”

“How much would that be?”

“You tell me.”

“I don't have a figure in mind.”

“Think about four hundred thousand.”

Grady enjoyed thinking about it. A chance to pick up a fast three-fifty, if Reese was serious, and he seemed to be. A certain sort of gem dealer reasoning told Grady that if the ruby crystal was worth four hundred here it would be worth perhaps half again as much on the market back in the States. And even more when it was cut. “I'm going to have it cut,” he decided aloud.

Reese accepted that Grady's mind was made up, wouldn't press further. Cutting the piece was what he'd do if the piece of ruby was his. “Who'll you have cut it?”

“Merzbacker, probably,” Grady replied, wishing that could be. “Or at least someone of that level.” Merzbacker had the reputation of being the best cutter of colored goods in New York City and one of the best in the world. He was said to be temperamental and extremely slow but seldom got less than the most out of a stone.

“You want to put yourself through all that?” Reese said.

“Be worth it.”

“Merzbacker'll take six months to let you know whether or not he wants to do the stone, and just as long as that to get to it. Fucking prima donna. In my opinion there are plenty of cutters as good as Merzbacker.”

A dubious grunt from Grady.

“Maybe not plenty,” Reese retracted, “but shit, there are four hundred thousand cutters in this country. Most of them have been cutting gems since they cut their teeth. Some are so good at it they'd be stars on Forty-seventh Street. William Shigota and a few others I know of. That's what I'd do, let Shigota cut it. At the least you ought to let him take a look at it, long as you're here.”

“Will you call him for me?”

“No problem.” Reese went to his desk, rifled through the center drawer and found Shigota's business card for Grady.

During all this, Julia had kept to herself, wandered about the room, overhearing what was said but not seeming interested. Grady had thought, considering her involvement with the piece of ruby up to that point, that she'd be right there at his side, anxious to have a turn at the microscope. It was as though she knew the outcome, had already been told the ruby was a ruby, believed that, and all this proving wasn't necessary.

Now she was standing at a counter off to the right giving her attention to some loose pearls that she'd found lying there. Evidently Reese had been grading and matching them when Grady and Julia arrived.

Grady went to her, realized how caught up she was in the pearls. They weren't all that special, nice enough ten-millimeter creams mostly but not worthy of her. He'd had in mind for quite a while improving on the ones he'd substituted for her strand, that the stringer had made off with. Perhaps this was a good time to do that. He asked Reese, “Can you show me some pearls for Julia?”

His words seemed to snap Julia back to there and then. She smiled, the sort of pleased smile usually meant to convey everything was going well.

“You're in luck,” Reese said and went to his safe. “It just so happens that I got these last week from a Safartic dealer who's been trying for ten years to get out of the business.” He brought a dozen large self-sealing clear plastic bags to the counter. He opened them and laid the cultured pearls they contained out upon a white velour cloth. Lined the pearls up neatly hank next to hank according to gradations of color. They ran from white to creamy white to pinkish white.

Grady's eye told him they were eight to eight and a half to nine millimeters, except for those subtle pinkish ones second from the right, which were nine and a half to ten millimeters. Those, he decided, were best of all, what he'd try to buy, although he'd go at them by way of the eight millimeter whites on the opposite end.

His approach was thwarted by Julia's going right for those best pinkish ones. That hank consisted of four eighteen-inch strands, tied together by numerous winds of purple silk embroidery thread and a tassel of the same. The strands clicked against one another as she picked them up, held them up high with her right hand, appreciated them with her eyes and her free hand, ran her fingers down their lengths, a caress.

Grady was surprised that she was so enamored with pearls. She'd never indicated as much. Her giveaway eagerness toward these pinks was going to cost him, but he forgave her for that. He took out his loupe and examined their complexion, found it was much better than merely acceptable. He guessed around thirty thousand when he asked Reese how much.

Reese didn't have a chance to say because from Julia came: “They're not what I had in mind.”

“Oh?”

“Not at all,” she said, “they're perfectly lovely but…”

“They're the perfect shade for your coloring,” Reese told her.

Which was also Grady's opinion.

“That may be, however…” She hesitated, returned the hank to its place on the velour, went reflective for a moment, then asked, “By chance do you have any blue pearls?”

“Blue?”

“Pearls don't, as a rule, come in blue,” Grady told her.

“Never?”

“Not that I know of. How about you, Reese, blue pearls?”

“Nope.”

“The Japanese pearl farmers have been tinting pearls for years,” Grady said, “because most of what they grow comes yellowish. To make them white they soak them for a while in bleach. To give them a pink cast they use a solution of Merthiolate. The longer they soak and the stronger the solution, the pinker. So I guess blue-looking pearls would be possible with blue ink or something.” Grady looked to Reese for support.

Reese did a stoop-shouldered
why not
shrug.

“I wouldn't want them if they were dyed like that,” Julia said. “They wouldn't be authentically blue.”

Grady challenged her. “When have you ever seen or heard of natural blue pearls?”

Julia was suddenly confused, couldn't reply. She went over to where she'd left her canyon, looked into it for no reason other than to hyphenate the moment, slung it over her shoulder and conveyed to Grady with a glance that she was ready to go.

He thought the thing about natural blue pearls was something she might have read about in some work of fiction, or perhaps it should be chalked up to her artistic bent. He hoped he hadn't embarrassed her. Anyway, he was sorry she hadn't let him buy those pinkish tens. He could have gotten them at a nice price, and someday down the line she was going to look back and wish he had.

He thanked and hand-shook Reese. So did Julia. They went out the upper door and down.

When Reese was sure they'd gone he made a long-distance call. First he asked the man on the other end if the promise of the substantial sum that had been made quite a while back was still in effect. He was told that it was. He pressed for additional rewards, such as profitable, sure-thing business deals. He was assured they would be forthcoming. Did he have the man's word? He had it.

Satisfied, delighted that he would benefit so largely from such slight effort, Reese informed the man that at long last someone had made an inquiry about natural blue pearls.

Then told him who.

CHAPTER TWELVE

At that moment on the corner of Mahesak Road and Silom, Grady and Julia had paused to discuss options. It was only a five-block walk back to the hotel, Grady said, so shouldn't they go there and have a proper lunch? Julia wasn't for that, said they could get something to eat along the way. Along the way to where? Grady wanted to know. To the ruby cutters, Julia told him, that William Swaboda. Shigota, Grady corrected and said that could wait until after lunch or even until tomorrow. Julia gave it much greater priority, said so. And before Grady could say another word, before he could contend that he'd had an extremely early breakfast and nothing since, Julia hailed a taxi.

What came swerving to the curb was something that looked like an oversize golf cart. It had only one front wheel, was bright blue and yellow, open on both sides and the rear, with a roll bar and a canvas top. The driver, if one could call him that, was all smile, ready to roll. He had a two-week black and gray mustache and a month of beard, some of which appeared to have been plucked. Had on a red baseball-type cap with a huge visor.

Grady walked away in the direction of the hotel. Julia confidently watched him going, counted his strides, mentally wagering on eleven. She was one short. He turned, did a pleading expression, said, “To hell with you, Julia,” to save some pride, returned to the taxi and handed the Shigota business card to the driver, who studied it for a long moment and claimed, “I know.”

“Is it near or far?” Grady asked.

“I know,” the driver assured.

“Short ride or long ride?”

The driver nodded twice, made a face to express that the question was absurd and said another, “I know.”

At that point Grady noticed the driver was wearing two stainless steel digital watches on each wrist, had the snarling cartoonlike, wide-jawed face of a deity tattooed on the back of his left hand and three lines of Thai lettering tattooed lengthwise on his arm from his watches to his biceps, evidently some wise and protective Buddhist quotation. “Who could mistrust such a man,” Grady quipped as he and Julia climbed in.

Before they'd had a chance to get settled the driver lurched the three-wheeler under way and cut across the pack of the traffic on Silom. Got into a left lane for a right turn on Krung Road, a major way that became New Road, which became Songwat Road, which became Chakraphet Road, which took them close by a couple of major gold-spired
wats
and also the group of attractive structures that form the Great Palace. The traffic was near to coagulating all the way. Although they were bound for a destination where possibly Grady would do some business, it was rather like a sight-seeing trip.