18mm Blues (33 page)

“Won't we anyway?”

“Not if you're wasted.”

“I'll revive. You're probably right, low blood sugar.”

“Doesn't matter, not as far as I'm concerned. I'm for a fortnight of celibacy.”

He waited a long beat before saying “Me too,” drawing the words out as though at last he was reprieved. He got up and hugged her from behind. She used total impassivity to get free. He did a nonchalant shrug and decided to help by taking their toiletries and other such needs into the huge marble bathroom. “What do you want, the left or the right sink?” he asked out to her.

“The right,” she said, definitely, as though it mattered.

Ten minutes later, after freshening and changing into shorts, they went down and found their way to the main terrace. It was hardly missable, as the better part of the rear of the house opened onto it. A linear terrace thirty feet deep, two hundred long, the roof of it supported by a series of graceful arches. From anyplace along it the rear grounds, lawn, planted beds, cascades and all, were accessible by way of eight shallow steps. Blue wisteria and pink bougainvillea had captured the columns that formed the arches, and huge to incidental stone planters were grouped around to have mock orange, camellias and hibiscus close by.

Kumura was at the far end of the terrace seated at a large round table covered by pale blue linen. He noticed Grady and Julia immediately and beckoned them to him, as though anxious to have them near. He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin as he stood for Julia and acknowledged Grady. Thus far, none of his mannerisms or gestures had been Oriental. He offered them chairs with a sweep of his arm. “Normally,” he said, “I breakfast late or lunch early, whichever suits the whim of my appetite. You'll have to tolerate me.”

It occurred to Grady that if he had Kumura's means he'd sure as hell set his own hours. He noticed an edition of the
Manchester Guardian
lying on the table and folded just so; propped up in a silver holder to permit reading it hands-free was a
London Times
.

“I do hope you're hungry,” Kumura said pleasantly. “I certainly am. Mind if I continue?”

“No, please do,” Julia told him. “I'm famished and Grady has terribly low blood sugar.”

No sooner said than the servant standing by at a side table prepared two plates with portions from several covered sterling silver dishes. Shirred eggs, Irish bacon, Scotch sausage links and scones. The scones were nearly split through. Grady watched Kumura load one with strawberry jam and dollops of cream. Grady followed suit.

“My favorite, Devonshire splits,” Kumura said.

“Mine too,” Grady fibbed.

They toasted with their scones before taking bites. Grady found it impossible to not be sloppy, got jam and cream down his fingers all the way to his palms. Kumura was practiced, didn't nibble but his bites were gentler.

“Fortnum and Mason sends me things each week,” Kumura said, “delicacies and what I consider staples, certain spreads and tins of stuff. It knows my tastes by now. I bloody well panic when at least one cupboard isn't full.”

A concurring
mmmm
from Julia, as though that had also been her experience. Now, having heard Kumura more she was even more off balanced by his long
a
's and
o
's and short
i
's. No doubt, she thought, he'd been educated in Britain, probably sent there by his family, however that wouldn't have entirely swept the Japanese from the corners of his vocabulary. He must have gone on practicing and perfecting and erasing accent long after his school and university years.

Kumura paused from eating, looked Grady's way, anticipating what would be next because it was time for it. The question.

“How did you know I was in Bangkok?” Grady asked.

“An acquaintance, well, actually I should say a connection at the Oriental informed me. When anyone of interest or importance stops over there I'm apprised of the fact.”

“Why?”

“In case I might consider it useful.”

“Useful?”

“Being in this off-track part of the world for any length of time has its pleasures and advantages, however it can get to be a sort of creeping mildew if you allow it. Thus, one must reach out for diversion, make the most of what comes.”

That seemed reasonable to Grady. Interest or importance Kumura had said. Grady doubted he qualified for either, considering Kumura's league. “What do you know about me?” he asked straight across, expecting Kumura either to admit he knew nothing or, more kindly, claim having heard good things generally from various people and hope Grady would let it go at that.

Instead, Kumura recited, without commentary, Grady's past fifteen years in one unpunctuated sentence, from when Grady chose Larkin and gems over landscaping to his severance from Havermeyer and Gayle and even on to Grady's efforts to establish his own business in the Phelan Building. Kumura ended it with a signal to the servant for more coffee.

Grady was overwhelmed and perplexed and flattered that so much of him had been in Kumura's head. He decided to heed his dealer's side and not ask Kumura to take him further down this road. There was a lot more to it, had to be, but it would come out.

“Now me,” Julia challenged. “You know absolutely nothing about me.”

“Ahhh, you,” Kumura charmed, “You're like a Foujita sketch in invisible ink.”

Julia enjoyed that.

Grady was feeling much better now that he'd eaten. Perhaps low blood sugar really had been his problem. More likely the restorative had been Kumura's words. Whichever, he was thoroughly relaxed and it had been a good five minutes since he'd given a thought to either the lost rubies or San Francisco.

Julia and Kumura were now discussing the merits of Tsuguharu Foujita, who'd lived and painted in Paris in the early years of this century. That was out of Grady's conversational repertoire, so he just let them go at it. He looked down to the bay. The sun was striking it differently now, and he could see several small motorized boats on it, some stopped, others buzzing around. Also, the surface of the water, the uniform texture of it, was interrupted in some places by rectangular sections of some sort of floating material. The distance prevented Grady from deciding those were bamboo rafts, until Kumura told him. “This afternoon I'd like to show you around our operation.”

“You're pearl farming here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Is that well known?”

“It's far from a secret, but we do keep a low profile.”

“Looks to me like a great location for it,” Grady said to help the impression that he wasn't totally unknowledgeable. What he knew about pearl farming was what he'd read, which was considerable, but here with Kumura he was on actual unfamiliar ground.

“I have a hundred-year lease on the water and I've owned outright the land all around since 1970,” Kumura said. “The instant I set eyes on this bay I realized how ideal it would be for the growing of pearls.” It was one of Kumura's business victories, and he liked talking about it, went on to describe the special characteristics of the bay, how it was protected from the temperament of the sea and the fury of storms. “We had damage from a particularly vicious typhoon several years back but that's been it. More than I can say for the original Kumura installation at Ago Bay.”

The pearl farming in Ago Bay on the southern coast of central Japan was what Grady had read and knew most about. It was there that the Mikimoto firm and numerous prominent others were located. Grady understood that the water of Ago was becoming polluted and, as a result, first-quality pearls were becoming scarcer. Prices were up.

“If there's a better location than this for growing pearls I've not seen it,” Kumura said. “The tides are never a problem. The water is gently circulated by way of an inlet to the north and an outlet on the south. The bottom is clean and sandy, swept by the currents. Ago Bay, as you may know, has a problem with silt. When stirred up by a storm, silt can be a major problem. Pearl oysters are temperamental as hell, they seem to sulk and refuse to produce unless conditions are just so.”

Grady pictured the bottom of this ideal bay. Inhabited by contented, pearl-laden oysters. He also thought about the favoritism of fate. Here was Kumura, a man in the line of a family that had year after year for nearly a century made a fortune in pearls. Hundreds of millions. If he never grew another pearl it wouldn't matter. But it's he, rather than someone needful, who happens upon this bay. And, of course, he had the wherewithal, the clout and finances, to make the most of it. What if instead of Kumura, he, Grady, had been the first pearl-appreciating person here? He could see himself scuba-diving the bay, skimming along the dappled bottom, delighted as, for his benefit, oyster after oyster opened to show its perfect treasure.

“Oddly enough,” Kumura said, “there weren't any oysters here to start with. Except for a few strays. We had to bring some in, plant them, so to speak, allow them to proliferate on their own.”

“You brought them from Ago Bay?”

“Heavens no. Ago Bay oysters are the species
Pinctada martensii
, what we call Agoyas. They'd be extremely unhappy in this warmer water. Besides Agoyas rarely produce pearls larger than nine millimeters and they run yellowish, must be bleached. We wanted to try for double that size and white on their own.”

“So, what did you bring in?”

“Pinctada maximas
, silver lips.”

“From where?”

“That, my boy, is another story,” Kumura said, not evading, just arbitrarily concluding this installment.

Two explosive pops.

From somewhere down on the beach.

Sounded like gunshots to Grady. He looked to Kumura, who wasn't the least distracted from slathering jam and cream on another scone.

When after a while Grady again looked in the direction of the beach he saw a man and a woman headed up the slope. The man carrying a shotgun. Cradled across his chest in the manner of a serious hunter. The woman had on a floppy-brimmed straw hat. They came all the way up and onto the terrace.

Grady presumed Kumura must have been expecting them, as he was neither surprised nor elated, merely accepted their arrival. He did the introductions matter-of-factly.

The woman was the Marquise Paulette de Sablier, the man, Daniel Lesage. Both were French.

Paulette delivered ritualistic cheek kisses to Kumura, an extra for good measure. She sat and removed her hat condemningly, like it hadn't served her well enough. She requested in a demanding tone a goblet of Evian
sans glace
, then changed that to a
citron pressé
.

Lesage propped his shotgun against the nearest column and, without being offered and ignoring the servant, helped himself to sausage and eggs from the side table.

Paulette complained about the heat with typical French umbrage. Blew out a breath that, Grady thought, in keeping with her complaint should have come out as steam. “I'm moist all over,” she frowned. “I really didn't want to go shooting today, would much rather have splashed around in the pool, but Daniel insisted.”

Grady glanced at Lesage's shotgun. It was a Holland and Holland twelve-gauge over and under, elaborately engraved. At least a ten-thousand-dollar gun. “You were shooting traps?”

“No, no, no,” Paulette replied, “but it is very much like trap shooting. I scale slices of bread into the air as high as I can. The gulls catch the bread. At that perfect moment Daniel shoots the gulls. Twice today he got four gulls with one shot. I like him to shoot. It improves his disposition.”

“Monsieur Lesage is my partner,” Kumura explained.

“Limited partner,” Lesage corrected dourly.

“Limited,” Kumura confirmed to all but aimed the word at Lesage, who begrudged with a toss of his head and a grumble around a chew of sausage.

Lesage was a good-looking, tall man in his early fifties. Despite his large-boned physique he had a well-bred sort of face. His nose was narrow, pleasingly shaped but not totally lacking in interest; his brow ridges were just prominent enough and his cheekbones and chin were definite. Light brown hair, plenty of it. It had gone gray at the temples, distinguishing him, and for some reason at the moment he had a three-week beard, which was entirely gray.

A kind description of Lesage's bearing would have been confident or very self-assured, and, at times, when he made an effort, that was the extent of his uppishness. However, the attitude that those around him saw regularly was one of careless presumption. A life of privilege was to blame, it seemed, for having developed in him an outlook that could not be expressed without a degree of disdain. He was seldom pleased enough to admit he was pleased and when he couldn't avoid such an admission he was embarrassed. Sentiment was a stranger to him. He refused to recognize it in others. Guile, however, was an old, usable secret friend.

After the first few minutes of exposure (actually from the point when he'd heard about the gull hunting) Grady didn't like the Frenchman and was grateful that he'd never have to. The way Grady looked at it, Lesage was a temporary, the most transient kind, would be forever gone from his life in not too many breaths. He watched Lesage use the nail of a little finger to extricate a grain of fresh ground pepper from between two of his too perfect, unbelievably white, front teeth. Noticed how Lesage's hands contradicted, were not just huge, but coarse knuckled, ugly peasant hands.

As for Paulette, anyone in her presence, man or woman, would have found it impossible to disregard her. She was that physically beautiful. Paulette had a remarkable effect on a beholder. The mere sight of her, particularly when she was at her best, would dilate the pupils and send such strong impulses along the optic nerve to the occipital lobe of the cortex that the image of her wasn't just immediately clipped and filed away in one of memory's cells. Rather, an afterimage remained, as though the receptors did not want to proceed to what was next being looked at.