Authors: Gerald A. Browne
West 47th (50 page)
“Some of the best of my inventory,” he said, merely stating. “From what you said I gathered you wouldn't be interested in anything less.”
Two of the stones were round cuts. They appeared to be identical. Each exactly three carats.
Mitch thought the wish that he could afford those two for Maddie. Extravagant studs. He'd come close to being able to, so close.
He put that out of mind, tweezed up and louped the largest of the lot. An emerald-cut of eight carats, ten points. “Russian goods,” he thought aloud.
Baumfeld confirmed that.
Mitch had never seen a better diamond. Just as good but not better. He appreciated its make, the definite, sharp edges of its facets and girdle, its perfect proportions. Not a flaw to be found. The stone was colorless, clear as water. He sighted into it longer than he needed to. Its purity was beneficial. After what he'd been through recently, he could use a measure of purity.
He asked the price.
“Forty thousand,” Baumfeld told him.
Forty thousand a carat. Which made it three hundred twenty-four thousand.
Mitch waited for that number to settle. It didn't. It stayed way up there. “Can you do better?” Mitch asked, knowing it was expected.
“Is it intended for family?”
“My wife's uncle.”
“In that case ⦔ Baumfeld's pupils nearly disappeared up in under his eyelids, as though he was consulting the deity of profit. “⦠I could do thirty-seven without pain.”
Mitch allowed some silence for Baumfeld to possibly do thirty-five.
“Less would hurt,” Baumfeld told him.
A barely perceptible nod from Mitch to acknowledge rock bottom. He pictured the lovely Wally wearing the diamond, her left hand doing aerial acrobatics for emphasis during a dinner party conversation. Eyes following the glints of the stone as though it was a prompter. Sure, she could carry it off.
“Let me give it some thought,” he told Baumfeld in a tone that couldn't be construed as a turndown.
“I'll put it aside for you,” Baumfeld assured.
Mitch went down and out onto West 47th. It was one of those bright days that put a sharp edge on every shadow. The street was well into its usual commerce, tourists gawking, sellers of gold chains by weight hawking from the doorways of their shops. Mitch wasn't in the mood to hurry. He went along the street, taking it in, stopping at certain windows to contemplate the goods being offered.
He believed he recognized two or three old friends. Particularly an authentic art deco period necklace comprised of various-colored sapphires. He wondered where it had been lately, and what had brought it back to this sordid temple.
He wasn't seeing the street through the same eyes. It was like something in him, his enthusiasm certainly, had been quenched. What had been colorful was now revealed as blighted. Most of the upper windows of the old buildings hadn't been opened or washed for perhaps a decade or two. Pigeon droppings caked thick on the sills and eaves. The curbs fractured, the gutters grimed. How tacky, really, the legions of diamond rings in the store windows, the way they were stuck into slotted squares of cardboard. And so falsely spotlighted.
West 47th should live up to itself, Mitch thought. Its every window should sparkle immaculately. All its edges, curbs, sills, steps and fronts should be crisp and sharp as the most conscientiously executed facet. And clean, above all, clean rather than sleazy.
Hurley.
Mitch noticed Hurley headed west in his beat-up but souped-up official Plymouth. He'd suffered only a concussion as a result of Billy's blow to the head and had spent two days in the hospital on restricted fluids and Tylenol. Now Mitch looked the other way. So did Hurley. They might not ever speak again. Might not.
As for Billy, he'd been let go, was begging for a reference.
Mitch came to Fifth Avenue, crossed over and went up to his office. Shirley was slitting the mail open. She'd been back from Paris for a week. New hairstyle, revised makeup, recharged with self-worth.
“I was beginning to wonder about you,” she said.
“Yeah, I'm to be wondered about,” Mitch said dourly.
“You're still in a funk.”
He went into his office.
Shirley shouted in to him. “It's not like quicksand, you know. You can jump right out of it any old time.”
A bearish grunt from Mitch.
Shirley came to the doorway. “No calls,” she told him. “Did you have breakfast? You don't look as though you had breakfast.”
“I could use a fried egg sandwich.”
“On what?”
“Rye,” he growled decisively.
Before sitting at his desk he glanced out the window to Visconti's office across the intersection. Visconti had people there. Two or three guys. He was pacing around, ranting, gesticulating broadly. He appeared upset. Evidently in the midst of some sort of serious crisis. Mitch hoped so. He closed the blinds.
Today was his day for going over the books. Same as yesterday, but he didn't blame himself for putting it off. He knew what he'd be facing. The retainer from Columbia Beneficial would no longer be coming in, and Northland Providential, his Philadelphia client, had decided to cut back and given notice that his services were included in that slice. What with Shirley's salary and the rent along with other operating expenses and his personal living costs the water of merely breaking even was practically up to his nose.
Such thoughts brought to mind that Andy and Doris had gone ahead and leased the store on upper Madison. They were commencing renovations next week. They were still urging him to come in with them.
Andy, as a favor to Mitch, was making sure Roudabeth Kalali got a fair price for her jewelry. It wouldn't go to 47th Street. At least not yet. Some of it had already been purchased by one of Andy's dealer friends in Beverly Hills. The pieces that remained would be consigned to the new Laughton store where it would be displayed and sold to best advantage. Roudabeth had come conscious and been discharged from the hospital three days ago. She and her Roger Addison had gone off to Vermont. Roger behind the wheel of a new Infiniti Q45.
Phone call from Maddie.
“Can you come home right now?” she asked.
“Why?”
“I need you to read something.”
“Like what?”
“An instant pregnancy test. I just gave myself one and have no way of knowing if the red strip came up.”
“Oh.”
“I doubt you'd want me to have the elevator operator read it.”
“What makes you think you're pregnant?”
“The way we carried on in the country, the intensity and all that. I felt very vulnerable.”
“When are you due?”
“Don't you keep track?”
“No,” he fibbed.
“Next week,” she told him.
“You're jumping the gun.”
“I suppose,” she relented. “How's your day going?”
“Fine,” he fibbed again.
“Same old kind of day? Nothing extraordinary happening?”
“No.”
“I was speaking with Elise earlier.”
“And?”
“She started off with a lot of sobbing because ⦠guess what?”
“She's overdrawn.”
“Marian left her high and dry, went back into the closet.”
“Really?” Mitch tried to sound concerned more than amused.
“Marian ran off with someone connected to the Paris Ballet. I believe Elise said he's a rehearsal pianist. Imagine. I stoked Elise with consolation and positive thinking. By the time she rang off she was looking forward to some solo cruising in St. Tropez.”
“I'll be home early,” Mitch promised.
Shirley brought the sandwich, laid it out for him, little packet of ketchup, pickle and all. The bread was sogged and the fries limp.
“This just came,” she said.
A registered letter.
No return address on the envelope.
Probably another client bailing out, Mitch thought, and, that being the prospect, it could sure as hell wait. He placed the letter aside.
After he'd eaten he reluctantly opened it.
And it opened his eyes.
It was from a private bank located in Zurich on Bahnhofstrasse. A very courteous letter informing him that a sum of twenty-five million dollars had been placed in deposit on his behalf by a party who expressly wished to remain unmentioned.
A second page contained instructions regarding the formalities necessary for him to activate the numbered account. Along with details of bank terms, charges, minimums, policies and so on.
Mitch read the letter three times, the last two times slowly and aloud, before allowing reaction.
He made a fist and gave fate a short, victorious jab in the belly. “Yes!”
He felt like doing a time step ⦠right up the wall and across the ceiling.
He speed-dialed Maddie.
He read the letter to her.
“Are you sure it's not someone playing a sick joke?” she asked.
“Doesn't appear to be. No,” he said definitely, “it isn't.”
“The Iranian came through!” she exclaimed happily.
That, of course, was also what Mitch had surmised. But now, all at once, he and realization hit head-on. “So it would seem,” he said.
“Think so?”
“Who else but Mononchehr Djam?” Mitch pronounced the name correctly for the first time.
“Has to be,” Maddie concluded.
Contrivance and motive peeked out from behind her reaction. And, after a bit more back-and-forth praise for Djam, his being a man of his word and all that, after Maddie had clicked off, Mitch sat there for a long while â¦
⦠asking himself whether or not he should let her get away with it.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to express his gratitude to those who in one way or another helped generate this story. Such as Dr. Stephen M. Cohen, Dr. Jay Friedman, Dr. Robert Hambrick, Pam Bernstein, Joanna Tomkins, R. J. and Jill Wagner, Patricia and Robert Jesse Lovejoy, David the Wit and Jason the Clip, Robin Cumming, Norman Weisberg, Mark and Coleen McDowell and my dear cousin Joy Burkett.
Also, a special thanks to the swifts, fences, have-arounds and others of the underside who allowed me to know
the street
as it truly is.
About the Author
Gerald A. Browne is the
New York Times
âbestselling author of ten novels including
11 Harrowhouse, 19 Purchase Street, and Stone 588
. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and several have been made into films. He attended the University of Mexico, Columbia University, and the Sorbonne, and has worked as a fashion photographer, an advertising executive, and a screenwriter. He lives in Southern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Gerald A. Browne
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN:978-1-4532-6795-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY GERALD A. BROWNE
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
