18mm Blues (29 page)

Grady examined the oval with his ten-power loupe. Saw how clean it was, no obvious inclusions, only a grid of silk that ran vertically so it was barely visible, a mere single thread lost in the red brilliance of the stone.

As for the cut, not even Merzbacker could have improved on it. Not a sign of grain on its facets, sharply defined edges and corners, perfectly even girdle all around. The quality of the cut no doubt had much to do with the stone's extraordinary color and brilliance. Grady felt his heart celebrating. “A beautiful make,” he remarked. “Whoever cut it sure as hell knew what he was doing.”

No comment from William.

“I'd like to meet the guy.”

Still nothing from William.

Grady got it. “You did the cut, right?”

William modestly admitted he had.

At once Julia was interested, wanted to have a look with the loupe, was enthusiastic about what she saw. “How beautiful!” she exclaimed. “I can't see a hint of the awful purple you so dreaded, and you know what an eye for color I have. What a red! Simply beautiful!” She took her time, examined all four stones and came within a word of the mistake of complimenting the little pile of overage, chips and such and what waste was left of where the rough had been zoned. “What a marvelous job you did,” she told William. “You must have worked day and night.”

“I got into it and couldn't stop,” William said.

“I thought you looked a little tired,” Julia said and turned to Grady to prompt him to join her sympathy. “Poor William,” she said.

“Yeah,” Grady said while preoccupied with the two rounds, thinking that their match in size and color increased their value considerably.

“When will you be returning to San Francisco?” William asked.

“Sometime tonight,” Grady replied.

“Do we have reservations?” Julia asked, concerned.

“I doubt we'll have a problem,” Grady told her.

“Satisfied?” William asked Grady, referring to the stones.

“Very,” Grady said.

He paid William the amount they'd agreed on, plus an additional 10 percent that he insisted William accept for best effort and all. “You're one hell of a cutter,” he said, “we're going to be doing a lot of business.”

William wrapped the stones with cotton and placed each in the folds of a separate yellow-lined briefke, the kind normally used to carry rubies, put the four briefkes into a bright red chamois drawstring pouch, wound and tied the drawstring shut. Handed the pouch over to Grady, who put it in his shirt pocket.

William walked them out to the waiting water taxi.

Farewell cheek kisses by Julia.

Thanks and a parting handshake from Grady.

The taxi got under way. When it reached the bend, Julia looked back, saw William was still on the dock watching them go. It caused a catch in her throat.

The first leg of the return trip, that twisting maze of narrow canals, went without incident. Grady couldn't recall ever being so high on life, so receptive to the brighter side of everything offered to his eyes. The ordinary foliage, wide open water lilies at the foot of the banks, the sun striking on half-hidden teak houses, a woman chasing a hen, which would be supper. His, Grady's, was a more prosperous point of view. He could afford to be generous with appreciation now, with those rubies there in his shirt pocket next to his heart.

What a day!

What a splendid world!

His only regret was having ever been skeptical of the piece of ruby rough. He wished, like Julia, he'd believed in it all the way. He'd owed it that. But wasn't it her inexperience with such matters that had allowed her the faith, while his time in the heat of the trade had cooked him to overdone cynicism? Explanation or excuse?

Anyway, glory be, he had in his pocket what he figured was a million profit, give or take a hundred thousand. The cabochon alone was worth at dealer's price as much as he'd paid the rebel woman in Rangoon for the rough. Buddha bless her! Please see that her next ten lives are soft ones.

Grady pinched himself by patting his shirt pocket, proving the red pouch was truly there.

A believer all the way, he thought.

There would have been profit of a different kind in that.

And wasn't that a good-looking bunch of pigs snouting around in the shade of that house? Best of luck, pigs.

By then, the water taxi had reached the Klong Bang Kruat, where the driver took a right instead of the left that would have been the way they'd come. Grady sent him a questioning look and interpreted what he got back in approximate English that the river was a couple of miles ahead and going downstream on it would be faster and easier. Grady surmised from that the reason they hadn't come this way earlier was the river part of the trip would have been much longer and slower, upstream going. He relaxed, returned to his stratospheric mood, taking in the step-up of color and activity there along the
klong
.

It was like a main street of water, about four lanes wide, in some places less than that, depending on how much the structures along it extended out. Every inch of frontage was taken up, crammed by one- and two-story buildings—houses, places of business, combinations of both. There was no unity to the architecture unless it was its dependency on pilings. Pilings of varying heights studded up by the hundreds along both sides. Even the telephone poles were similar uprights standing awry in the water, as though a gigantic someone had just carelessly stuck them there and strung wires from top to top for support. A confusion of wood wherever one looked, turned a prevailing shade of brown from weather and years. Wood asked to fight and outlast its nemesis, water, some of it sorry wood, dead and eaten, needing to be replaced for the sake of its function as a ramp, a dock, a porch, to accommodate the serving of bowls of noodles, the pumping of gasoline, all sorts of everyday neighborhood commerce.

Added to this were the animate, the inhabitants of the
klong
, those who lived by it, spent hours of each day upon it in one kind of craft or another, not many water taxis, small raw wood boats the most common. Powered only by effort and paddle, the latter were constructed with an equally blunt stern and bow so the person aboard needed only to turn in place for a 180-degree change of direction. So many boats! Scurrying back and forth across the
klong
, vending from place to place, loaded to the gunwales with eggplants and moongbeans, durians and starfruit, and all kinds of fish, including pomfret, hard sun-dried prawns and crispy wafers of squid. Other boats clustered here and there for the exchange of gossip.

Evidently, Grady thought, to these people a paddle on the
klong
was equal to a neighborhood stroll. He was expressing that observation to Julia when the speedboat went by. Doing an insolent forty, and, judging from its sleek lines and the vigorous growl of its engine, it could do more. It was the kind of fiberglass, stern-driven speedboat usually used for water-skiing. In fact, when it was by, Grady saw a pair of bright blue water skis sticking up out of the aft cockpit, and he believed that explained its incongruous presence there on the
klong
. The two men in it were headed for the river to water-ski.

That didn't, however, excuse how reckless they were being, Grady thought. No regard for anyone's safety, not even their own at the rate they were going. Make way for us or else was their attitude. Grady disliked them for it, especially when he noticed how much trouble the smaller boats were having as they coped with the speedboat's wake, how they were abruptly bobbed up on the crest of it and had all they could do to keep from overturning. Even the water taxi was sharply pitched by it, causing the driver to mumble a rapid string of words in Thai that Grady was sure weren't blessings.

Grady watched the speedboat cause the same bullyish disruption all the way down the
klong
until it was a small white, diminishing thing that a distant bend eliminated. He wished those two idiots lousy skiing, a lot of high speed, painful smacking falls, and he thought thanks to whatever power was in charge of encounters for making that the last he'd ever see of them.

The water taxi proceeded to the bend, rounded it.

There was the white speedboat. On the opposite side of the
klong
, idling with its bow pointed out, as though waiting, sure of itself and waiting. On the pilings nearby tin advertising signs were nailed up for the everything kind of store located on the dock.

They'd stopped at the store for some reason, was Grady's first thought, most likely beer. They were standing in the forward cockpit. All Grady could see was their heads and a little of their bare shoulders above the windshield. They were young men, Caucasians, similar in appearance, not quite twins but close to it with their darkly tanned skin and variegated blond hair. They even had similar hairstyles, cut close along the sides, long and layered on top, sort of ecclesiastic. Sunlight flared off the mirrored lenses of their identical sunglasses.

Grady half expected they would shout something, probably something obscene, but coming from the speedboat all he heard was the flatulent gurgle of its exhaust along with some heavy metal rock. A cassette in a boom box. The music was suddenly turned up to peak volume, strident, ugly.

Grady gave the two young men the attention they seemed to be clamoring for, glared contemptuously at them across the canal. Because of their sunglasses he couldn't tell whether or not they were looking his way. They seemed to be but perhaps not, perhaps his silent reproach was wasted. Finally they smirked and raised their bottles of beer to him, and Grady realized they'd delayed reaction on purpose, that it was their way of transmitting superior contempt.

Smartass punks, Grady thought, they'd brought him down, spoiled his high with their spoil. They were probably some diplomat's boys, taking advantage of immunity. Shouldn't have let them get to him that much, Grady told himself. Anyway, they were left behind now as the water taxi continued on with not far to go to where this
klong
gave to the river.

Grady tried not to look back. He didn't want to know the speedboat was no longer stopped at that store. Then he heard it, the growl of it under way, and he couldn't resist wanting to see where it was.

Which was about fifty feet behind the water taxi, just tagging along at the same speed. It seemed taunting, intent on intimidating, biding its time with a bit of foreplay until it grew bored with that and became in some way more malicious. Grady was visibly disturbed by it. Julia, realizing that, hooked her arm to his and attempted to distract him by pointing out a young couple making alfresco love on a dock. The man seated with his legs over the edge, the woman astraddle him, kept from falling into the water by his hold around her. They were fully clothed, the man's trousers in place, the woman's skirt naturally gathered up around her by her position. At first glance they appeared to be merely kissing, however the giveway was the cadent up and down cantering motion on the part of the woman, punctuated by a series of rotations and the way when she broke from the kiss she let her head fall back as though she lacked the strength at that moment to sustain it.

“Don't you wish you could be that oblivious?” Julia said.

“I could be,” Grady contended. “Given the right circumstances.”

“Conditions, conditions,” Julia needled.

The speedboat came on.

Came up even with the water taxi and ran alongside less than ten feet away.

Grady got a better look at the two young men and they got a better look at him. It seemed they were checking him out, verifying him. Maybe, Grady thought, he was wrong about that; there was no reason for it. The one at the helm was good with the boat, sure of it, Grady noticed. He also noticed the other one had a thin gold chain around his waist, swagged there, kept from slipping off by the studs of his hip bones.

The speedboat dropped back but only to get a running start so with a lot of throttle it could swoosh by the water taxi, causing it to have to contend with a wake so severe it came within a few inches of taking on water.

The taxi driver was incensed. So was Grady, who called them
young shits
while the driver called them worse in his language. Futile cursing because they were well out of hearing range and, anyway, its engine would have drowned it out.

The speedboat was down the
klong
. It turned around, came back and hounded the water taxi again, came alongside again, matched speed and maintained it about twelve feet away. The young man wearing the waist chain had moved to the aft cockpit, was standing there facing in the direction of the water taxi.

Grady sensed a change in the young man's attitude. It was as though he'd shed his layer of spiteful amusement and was down to a serious self. No mere hell raising in his eyes now, and there was a grimness to the set of his mouth.

The water taxi driver was livid. He stood, shook his fist at the young men. Let go again with his string of invectives, spitting them out so rapidly and with such rage that particles of saliva sprayed out along with the words and caught the sun in the air around his face.

Grady didn't see the gun, not at first. For one thing it was entirely unexpected. It was just something black on the end of the right arm of the young man in the stern of the speedboat before it became a gun, before it was raised up to hip level and pointed.

A nine-millimeter machine pistol was what it was. With a silencer attached so that when the trigger was pressured what was heard was merely a spewing of seven or eight
thumps
.

At least four of the shots struck home. An up-to-down pattern. From the water taxi driver's throat down to his crotch. The impact reeled him, drove him against the hot bare engine and crumpled him into a contorted heap in the limited space back there.

Grady couldn't believe it. A situation of mere harassment and peeve had suddenly turned deadly. Next he and Julia would be raked with bullets. However, the young man didn't shift his aim, actually relaxed the pistol, hesitating as though to appraise and appreciate what he'd done to the driver.