Stone 588 (27 page)

Three Usquaebachs nailed Springer to the roomy chaise longue diagonally opposite Audrey's bed. For nearly an hour he salted his wounds with the pages that listed lot by lot what had been stolen.

Moe Bandy was through now.

Audrey sat the doll in a comfortable position importantly among the antique crystal and silver jars and atomizers on her dressing table. She dabbed some of Libby's personal Guerlain (doled out to her) at the back of each knee before going to the stereo to replace Moe Bandy with Brahms. Tender French horns at the start, woodwinds meeting them midair. Piano Concerto No. 2.

She had the urge to go over and give Springer a rough, emphatic hug. Instead, she flopped down onto the puffy heap of elegantly shammed pillows on the floor at the foot of her bed. Her usual flopping place, preferred by her over the chaise. She fell right into an unintentionally alluring pose, the long dips and rises of her enhanced by the various swellings of the pillows beneath her weight and the way they served as soft backdrops. Her right arm was extended. The lower half of her face was concealed by the round of her bare shoulder. Over that shoulder her eyes vamped Springer, willed his attention. When he looked her way she playfully overworked her eyelashes, trying to draw at least a small smile from him.

He remained glum, but he winked.

"Did they steal that special stone?" she asked.

"Yeah." Lot number 588. He'd noticed it designated and described that way on the list. But he hadn't considered its loss as important as other lots. Such as twenty-six internally flawless D- to F-quality round-cuts totaling fifty-eight carats.

"That's a shame." Audrey sat up abruptly as though reacting to a call. "Whoever has it may never realize what it is."

The Brahms was now tempestuous.

Springer allowed the pages of listings to drop to the floor. It wasn't the loss of stone 588 that made him say, "I think I'll quit the business, get into something else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"Sloth seems to have a future. I know many who've done conspicuously well at it. Could you get into sloth?"

"Possibly." He grinned.

As though considering it she cocked her head and studied him. "You don't have any experience," she decided.

Continuing seriously, he said, "At least what I might do is close the office. Get all that shit off my shoulders." The blasphemy caused a shiver in him. He defied it. "There'll never be a better time to do away with the office."

"Better excuse?"

"Better time," he maintained.

"Where would you do business?"

"Out of my pocket and in my head. I'd freelance around, build up a private clientele."

"Like Libby."

"Sure, why not."

"If she threw you just a few of her sparkling friends you'd have it made. Incidentally, Libby invited us up to Penobscot again."

"When?"

"She called me today at the store."

"Call her right now, tell her we accept."

"You really want me to?"

"No."

Audrey reached for her carryall shoulder bag on the floor nearby. From it she brought out her pendulum. And a bag of strawberry licorice whips. She separated one of the three-foot-long candies from the rest, put just the end of it in her mouth. From then on it required no hands. She fussed with the pendulum while the pink sweet went into her inch by inch.

Springer was in no humor to indulge her pendulum crap. He squinted to eliminate everything extraneous, to be seeing only the aspects of her and what she was about. Audrey, his love, sitting there cross-legged amid the pillows, preoccupied with a toy and chewing up a make-believe snake. He reassured himself that she was as mature as her body, not retarded. Maybe, he thought, that was one of his reasons for loving her—because she was so foie gras and Baby Ruth. He certainly wouldn't be as attracted if she were entirely foie gras. Oh, well. . . .

Audrey finished with the pendulum. She dropped it in her bag. She'd also had enough Brahms. She got up and put on Aretha Franklin's "Sweet Bitter Love."

Springer thought that Audrey, now she was up, would come snuggle on the chaise with him. But she returned to her pillows and selected a couple of books from those stacked on the floor by the bed. Wild bird feathers that she'd found served as her bookmarks, so she was able to turn right to her place in The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, Anthropogenesis by H. P. Blavatsky. She'd been nibbling on it for well over a year and was about two thirds of the way through, on a section that was headed "The Law of Retribution."

After intense concentration on a page and a half Audrey resurfaced, said without looking up, "We're going to get it back."

"Get what back?"

"Stone Five eighty-eight."

"So says your pendulum, 1 suppose."

"It was very definite about it."

"Did it mention the rest of my goods?"

"Pendulum doesn't mention, it answers. You know that. Anyway, I only asked about Stone Five eighty-eight, would we or wouldn't we."

Springer exhaled some of his peeve. Part of the rest of it came out with "You are a fucking whacko."

She hard-eyed him. "Want to fight?"

He really didn't. "Not with you."

"We ought to have some knock-downs and drag-outs once in a while," she said. "Fights are the bread and jelly of a relationship."

"You ever wanted to punch me out?"

"Sure."

Springer wondered when those times had been. Whenever, he must have sailed unaware right through them. Was he that insensitive? "Why didn't you?" he asked.

"I didn't want to hurt you," she said, and closed the subject by closing Blavatsky and spHtting open another book to any page. After a moment: "If you were on your own there'd be less or more time for us?"

"You'd like more?"

She felt anything so obvious didn't deserve an answer. "Libby adores you," she said. "She'd go out of her way to help you get a running start."

The old time-fighter traipsed across the front of Springer's mind, waving her hands. "I guess Libby's okay," he said.

"We should make a point of getting together with her . . . often."

"I don't want to be such a user."

"There are users and losers," Audrey cautioned.

"Also sinners and winners," was his cynical retort.

Audrey considered that, agreed with a nod, and went to her book. In her splendidly accented Foxcroft and Wellesley French she asked, "How does Lievre farci d la Perigourdine grab you?"

"What is it?"

"Stuffed hare." She spelled the homonym.

"Ever had it?"

"Not that I was ever aware of. Listen." She read. " Take care to collect all the blood when drawing the hare; break the bones of the legs that they may be easily trussed; clear the legs and the loins of all tendons, and lard them. Chop up the liver, the lungs, the heart' . . . God, it's gory!" The book was The Escoffier Cook Book for Connoisseurs, Chefs, and Epicures. She flipped to any other page. "Supremes de volaille, " she read and raised her eyes to Springer. "Chicken breasts. The French have about two million different ways to fix chicken breasts."

He realized what, in a roundabout way, she was saying to him. Up to now a tuna salad sandwich had been an accomplishment.

"Next you'll probably be thinking I want to get pregnant or something." She laughed. "Anyway, there's a self-serving motive in my wanting to learn to cook."

"Oh?"

"I figure, hell, I can't expect you to keep up your sexual hardihood for the next fifty or so years on a diet of Almond Joys and pepperoni."

Springer told himself if it hadn't been for the robbery and all the uncertainty it had caused, he would have at that moment asked her to marry him. He met her gaze, told her, "You're a lulu of a lady."

''Your lulu of a lady," she said courageously, not letting out any of the feeling that she'd just been turned down. She returned to Escoffier, pretending to read.

Springer stood and went across the room to one of the windows. The view it gave was down Fifth Avenue. The traffic, mainly a scattering of taxi yellow, appeared Lilliputian. Beyond the reflection on the window glass, out there in the perpetual aura of the city, he saw the 580 Fifth Building. Nine blocks away and oddly inconsequential from this vantage. He picked out the windows that were Springer & Springer easily because he'd done it numerous times before from that spot. What would it be like, he wondered, to never again feel obligated to that space and all the proprietary pride that had occupied it? How absurd, even bizarre, that its reason for being was particles hardly larger than specks clawed up out of the earth and declared precious? We hadn't come much of a way from the grunting prehistorics who bludgeoned one another to a pulp over certain prettier pebbles and animal teeth, had we?

Springer used his wrist to rub away a little itch on the side of his nose. The pungent smell of his skin surprised him. His rancor seeping out? He remembered the vinegar bath.

He had spoken of closing Springer & Springer, of going it alone. He'd thought his words were merely words, empty threat to whatever power was determining his circumstances. (Smile upon me or else.) However, now the idea was taking the shape of an earnest alternative. Audrey was right. With only a few of Libby's friends as clients he could do better than ever. He might even become another Winston or Townsend. Townsend had built his business with social stones, using charm and regretted confidences for mortar. Townsend had always dealt a highly lucrative few notches above the wholesale level. For Townsend the divorce or death of a client invariably meant money to be made.

The safety deposit box was registered to a corporation so it would not be included in her personal estate. The day after the funeral the primpily attired eldest son, who had authorized access, went to the bank, emptied the contents of the safety deposit box into a Mark Cross shopping bag, and proceeded directly to Townsend's. He didn't have an appointment but Townsend was expecting him.

"Sell these off for me, Gilbert. "

Bracelets, necklaces, rings, tiaras: diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds. Dumped upon Townsend's desk like so much junk.

"On the Q. T, of course."

"Do you have prices in mindP"

"Whatever's fair."

Springer might become what Townsend appeared to be.

But never what Townsend was.

Those Russian diamonds for Libby would be a nice beginning, though Springer doubted that deal even more now that he was back on familiar ground. The so-called Igor Bitov and his brief visit in Paris seemed a figment. The man had been so casually agreeable to delivering the diamonds in New York because he knew the whole thing was impossible. And Libby—perhaps she'd invented the opportunity in the first place just to make Springer jump and fail. When Igor didn't come through, that fifteen million would go back to Wintersgill, keeper of the great green funnel. Interest too.

Something gave Springer a sharp mental poke.

What a fucking pessimist he was getting to be, he thought. A mope, a brooder, a wallower, and after just this first big setback. Shit, he knew guys who had suffered worse three or four times in their lives and were still out-looking with spirit. Drumgold, for example. Springer almost laughed aloud at himself.

He turned, unaware that Audrey was standing close behind him. She didn't give ground, she closed it.

"I have a kiss for your stiff upper lip," she said and gave it to him.

His body would insist that she take small steps backward. Her legs would come to the edge of the bed and she would allow herself to fall onto it. He would drop upon her, but lightly, supporting most of his weight with his elbows. She would spread her legs. The loosely leg-holed teddy would accommodate. And, as they often jested about how his cock without assistance was able to find where it was wanted and wanted to be, it would.

The telephone rang.

They let it ring itself out.

Within the time it took for someone to redial it began ringing again.

Audrey answered it, told the caller to hold on. She placed the receiver down and walked away from it, saying, 'it's your ex-wife."

Bad enough he was so often subjected to Gayle and her bitchiness at the office. This was new and worse behavior on her part. When he got on the phone he felt justified to come down hard on her. "How the hell did you get this number?"

Audrey's number was not even supposed to be listed among the unlisted.

Gayle told him. "The doctor had the police get it from the operator."

Between 67th and 68th streets on York Avenue.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the largest, most comprehensive facility of its kind in the world.

Springer and Audrey went in and up a flight on the escalator to the spacious main waiting room. Regular visiting hours were over; only a few people were there, seated, it seemed, as far apart as possible. Gayle was in one of the plastic upholstered chairs by the window overlooking York. The way she was facing. Springer and Audrey were in her line of view as they approached, but she wasn't noticing them or anything at that moment. They didn't register until they were no more than a dozen feet from her. Then she stood, as abruptly as if she'd been jerked up by a magnet.

Springer realized immediately that this was a different Gayle from the one he'd been disliking. Crisis and grief had subdued her; she appeared physically smaller, easily breakable. Her face was drawn pale, the color of fright, and the lids of her eyes were inflamed from crying. She tried to smile but only managed a twitch of the corners of her mouth. Her upper arms were tensed against her sides. Her hands were palms up, cupped, as though asking for someone to put any crumb of meaningful comfort in them.

Springer didn't hesitate, overcame any unsureness of the moment by putting his arms around Gayle. They hadn't touched in more than two years.

Gayle gave in to it, let herself be entirely held. Over Springer's shoulder her eyes connected with Audrey's. The two women had never met, only knew of one another.

Audrey reached out and stroked Gayle's hair back from her forehead, a sympathetic caress.