18mm Blues Page 6

  Grady didn’t really need further indications, such as the ten days’ accumulation of newspapers on and around the front entrance or the avalanche of mail beneath the slot or the total vacancy of the second right-hand built-in-dresser bottom drawer where Gayle kept her better, trickier lingerie.

  Gone again, he thought, mentally sighing. This time for longer. Ten days at least.

  He roamed the house. There wasn’t much of him in it the way it was done. She hadn’t let him contribute except when it came to some of the outside plantings. So the house was her. Every room and every area of every room and every possible surface within every room was intentionally cluttered. With tasteful and expensive things but nonetheless cluttered.

  The low burled chestnut table that served the fat-armed sofas of the living room seating area, for example. There was hardly room left on it to place down a wineglass. A leather case with its lid ajar just so contained a set of nineteenth-century bone dominoes with several spilled out just so, never to be further disturbed. Packets of letters postdated early 1900s, British stamped and addressed in the very practiced hand of the time to several someones in Yorkshire and Northumberland, were tied by dainty silk ribbons, the curled strands of which invaded perfectly an antique brass spyglass positioned just so next to an antique sterling silver porringer stuffed just so with dried pink miniature roses in slight disarray. Lorgnettes, things of tortoise, a just so stack of old leather-bound books of odd sizes buffed and so patined they looked as though they’d been adored, read and reread countless times.

  Highly polished pairs of used riding boots in the rear hall, floral-banded, wide-brimmed straws on brass hooks or supposedly tossed over the knob of a chair. Persian carpets, varnished woodwork, paintings of high-strung dogs, cats, horses and boats.

  The arranged disarrangements overfed the eyes. But that wasn’t how Gayle saw it. To her it was accomplishment worthy of not admitting she’d been assisted by one of San Francisco’s most sought-after interior decorators.

  To Grady the decor was paradoxical, very much like Gayle and very much unlike her. He never came right out and said it reminded him of a Ralph Lauren display.

  He was up for the night now, he believed. Too tired to get to sleep, that was actually it, nothing to do with Gayle, he told himself. Went to the kitchen to warm some milk, but the half carton of it in the refrigerator had gone sour. He settled for a twenty-three-ounce-size Perrier that he twisted open with more strength than was needed and took swigs from on his way to the study. Such large, fast swigs the burst of its fizz burned his palate and the start of his throat.

  He sat on the green leather Chesterfield sofa with the cold green bottle in his hand, the base of it resting on his knee. Thought a while about tomorrow, which already was, thought he’d call in at nine and say he wouldn’t be in until two. Thought about how he must look from across the room, bare ass adhering to leather in the low light. Did an alone thing, brought the bottle to his crotch, between his thighs, snugged it with a squeeze. After the initial sensation, he couldn’t tell which was winning, chill or warmth, the bottle or his balls. He set the bottle on the side table where its sweat might very likely leave a ring. Toppled over onto the sofa’s hard arm and brought his legs up, shifted onto his side, knifed his legs to himself and, without another thought, slept for four dreamless hours.

  Now it was eight-thirty and he was finishing his shave, giving his cheeks and chin some upward strokes. He splashed his face with two handfuls of hot and dried briskly with one of the fine linen hand towels Gayle had asked him never to use. No aftershave or cologne, this wasn’t an aftershave or cologne day. He’d smell his true clean self.

  From his suits he chose a slouchy, double-breasted brown light wool that was fresh from the cleaners. Liberated it from the plastic bag, suspendered it and got into it, along with a soft cream cotton shirt and the tidy small knot of a brown grounded tie. Didn’t appraise himself in Gayle’s full-length mirror. Put his pistol into the everything drawer of his dresser, put his ready cash to pocket, put at once out of mind the suggestion to himself that he make the bed, took his attaché case and went down and out.

  He used the twenty-minute drive from Mill Valley to the toll bridge to make friends with the day. It was something he frequently did, left off the radio because the music would likely be either songs involving emotional situations unlike his own or abrasive hard rock stuff that would only potentiate anyone’s early morning hostility. As for the news, was it ever really news? Just a carousel of public affairs with seldom a happy horse.

  Anyway, this day was a pretty June day, nice sky and everything. Some clouds around but none that looked like they’d form a gang and cause rain. The tie-up at the toll was, as usual, worth it for the bridge, so cheerfully painted and strong and complicated. Since 1981, the first time Grady ever saw the bridge, he hadn’t ever taken it for granted. Even on the way home after his most devastating days he was able to get out of himself enough to appreciate it, let it lift him.

  As it did today.

  By the time he reached Market Street and parked the Ford Taurus in the open lot opposite the Phelan Building, his spirit was boosted two, going on three notches. The old ivory and black marble lobby of the Phelan was as impeccable and deserving of appreciation as ever, and five of the seven people Grady shared elevator number two with were gingerly carrying cardboard containers of coffee and the slight steam from the tiny puncture holes in the lids of the cartons seemed playful.

  Every tenant of the thirteen-story Phelan was in one way or another involved in the gem and jewelry trade. Thus the structure was, in effect, a sort of community made up of specialists dependent upon one another or in compatible and sometimes not so compatible competition. So, Grady recognized five of his fellow passengers and was acquainted well enough with the other two—a first-rate stone setter and a younger man who dealt in semiprecious goods—to exchange smiles around good mornings. The setter was next to last to get off. On ten. He seemed eager to get to work. Grady thought probably he’d promised some client, Shreve and Company or someone of that importance, that he’d have a particular piece of work completed first thing that morning.

  Grady went to the top, which was mainly taken up by the Harold Havermeyer Company. The designed ensignia HH was in gold on the heavy double doors (only the door on the right could be opened) and beneath the ensignia, like an explanation of it, was the firm’s full name.

  Grady’s name wasn’t on either door.

  Harold Havermeyer was his father-in-law.

  Now and then over the years Harold would make a point of indicating to Grady where on the door he intended to have Grady’s name put. Harold’s tone always inferred it was imminent and a few times he emphatically tapped the exact prominent spot with a forefinger. However, having it done seemed always to slip Harold’s mind.

  It got so it was embarrassing for Grady, who told himself that his name on the door wasn’t a rung on his ladder.

  The girl at the HH front desk was new, extremely pretty and, probably for both those reasons, overdressed. Earrings so dangling they barely cleared her outdated, padded shoulders. Grady discerned the cool may I help you in her eyes and beat her to it by introducing himself and asking her name.

  He went on down the hall to his office, on the way glancing into the largest office, which was Harold’s. Harold hadn’t come in yet. His office was the only one with personality because that was how Harold wanted it. His desk was a bureau plat, a reproduction but nevertheless a bureau plat. His chairs were convincingly distressed bergères, the rug a high and thick piled Chinese, pale blue. The paintings were original oils, two portraits of anonymous British nobles and a Normandy landscape that featured cows by a turn-of-the-century impressionist who hadn’t made E. Bénézit but who nevertheless had been a turn-of-the-century impressionist. Harold also had a private toilet. He never referred to it as that but rather as his w.c. Too, there was an impressively stocked bar, though Harold refilled a perpetual vintage ’66 Graham p
ort bottle with seven-year-old Sandeman.

  The rest of the HH space, reception area, halls, other offices and even the vault room were painted a surely inoffensive dove gray in a flat finish. The woodwork a shade darker. Matching wall-to-wall nylon carpet throughout, and the only thing allowed to be hung were framed oversize examples of fairly recent HH advertisements that had appeared in trade journals and various fashion and snob publications.

  Grady’s office was an adequate twelve by twelve. The view from its one window was the unattractive aspects of some nearby shorter buildings, their undoubtedly grimed black roofs, air-conditioning and elevator facilities, a great many standpipes. The savers were an oblique slice of the bay on certain clear days, the sky when it was blue or having a sunset, and that attitude Grady came to naturally.

  The office wasn’t merely superficially tidy. There was no dust on or under, and everything was in its place. Kept that way by Grady with more than just a little help from Doris, his secretary, who preferred to be known as his assistant. They weren’t affiliated compulsives. They just shared the belief that precious stones and pearls, asked to be as flawless as possible, were in turn deserving of cleanliness and order. It was something that had been impressed on Grady the very first day he went to work in the gem business on New York’s Forty-seventh Street.

  Grady removed his suit jacket, loosened his tie and collar and rolled his shirt sleeves up two cuffs’ width. Sat behind the gray metal desk in the vinyl upholstered chair that by now his 180 pounds had broken in to his fit—the chair that was at times a sanctuary, at other times a trap.

  He was in dire need of coffee before beginning anything, and his stomach had a right to complain of neglect. The last thing he’d put into it was a soggy airport tuna salad sandwich at Midway about eighteen hours ago.

  As though hooked up to his thoughts, Doris came in with a cup of steaming black and asking, “Would you like some of a bear claw? I only got one but I’ll share it. I would have gotten two but they only had one left and everything else looked like yesterday’s, even the glazed doughnuts if you can imagine.” Most work mornings she stopped in at a bakery several doors down from the Phelan and could tell what was stale by sight.

  Grady’s stomach threatened to refuse bear claw. An acidic growl.

  Doris must have heard it. “I’ll send down,” she said.

  “Fried ham and egg.”

  “On what?”

  “On anything. Make it fried ham and egg and cheese.”

  “You shouldn’t ever let your blood sugar level get this low.”

  He shooed her away with a couple of backhand flicks.

  She’d left her bear claw on a square of wax paper on his desk. He considered it, picked at it. Teasing nibbles of sugary chopped pecans. The coffee was bad, bitter, but it felt good.

  He snapped open his attaché, took from it several rubber-banded batches of three-and-a-quarter by two-inch briefkes, those special papers folded five times a certain way to form an inescapable pocket for gemstones. All gem dealers used them. Each of these briefkes bore a cryptic series of letters and numbers in Grady’s handprint on its upper right-hand corner, so Grady would know without opening whether the stones a certain breifke contained were rubies, emeralds, sapphires or what. The code also told him how many stones were in each lot, their size and quality. The price, top and bottom, was in his head.

  He placed the briefkes on his white, tear-off desk pad, along with a printout that listed individually the goods that he’d taken on his trip. He knew precisely what lots he’d sold, to whom he’d sold them and for what price and terms. He went down the list and made appropriate notations opposite each of those lots. He hadn’t yet summed up the amount of business he’d done but had an approximate idea how much it was. Found when he totaled it now he was only about twenty thousand off.

  What it came to was $695,800.

  On one trip last September he’d done over a million one.

  Doris returned with the sandwich. Unwrapped it dutifully and placed it in front of him. “Your eyes look glazey,” she commented.

  “This is shitty coffee.”

  “Eunice made it.” Inferring that anything this Eunice person touched would turn bitter. “The coffee maker needs to be scoured. She can’t lower herself to do it. I’ve been putting it off just to see how long she’ll put it off.”

  “Meanwhile I suffer,” Grady said after a swallow. He tongued egg yolk from the corner of his mouth.

  “Poor you,” Doris said.

  Eunice was Harold’s secretary and so-called assistant. She’d been with Harold for eight, going on nine years. A short woman in her late thirties apparently not at all self-conscious about her flat chest. She dressed more than a degree too tight and too severely, avoided bright colors, overdid her eyes and had never learned the art of lipstick, just smeared it on, hit or miss straight from the tube usually without the aid of a mirror. She often looked as though she’d just been brutally smacked.

  Eunice disliked Doris, had from the minute Doris came to work at HH. Over the past four and a half years she’d done her best to have Doris fired, most recently only two months ago. It seemed to be a plot constantly on her mind, just waiting for Doris to slip up in some way. Grady tried not to take sides, however Doris was so likeable and loyal to him that he was tempted to pick Eunice up, shake her and tell her to stop being so goddamn territorial. Another thing about Eunice that vexed him was her evident disinterest in gemstones. For all she cared she might as well have been working in a bank.

  Not so with Doris.

  She had a love for gems, not to own them particularly but to enjoy looking into them and knowing them. She’d spent nearly a half of a week’s pay on a first-rate, color-corrected ten-power loupe that she wore every office hour on a gold chain around her neck, the accoutrement of a professional. And when she asked Harold to have the firm help pay for her Gemological Institute of America courses and he didn’t see any reason it should, she was determined to save up for them. Grady discreetly gave her the tuition money as a birthday present six months in advance.

  Doris was more attractive than pretty, but she stole a few degrees for herself by making the utmost of what she had. Legs, for instance. She had superb legs, knew it and never hid or handicapped them. And waist, a waist so narrow it appeared cinched. She played it up with fashionable belts and with blouses that had sheer midriffs. Naturally, such a slender waist complemented all adjacencies—hips, buttocks and breasts. The latter she used as a visual revenge whenever Eunice got an accurate shot off in their ongoing feud.

  Grady liked Doris.

  She loved him. And was outright about it, told him early on and since had reminded him every time she felt the need.

  Grady could have taken advantage. She wanted him to, encouraged him to. When it happened to be one of his lonely times or when they were both riding a crest because of having pulled off an exceptional deal, possibly Grady was within a couple of words and a certain touch of getting into that kind of complicity. He’d kissed her twice on the mouth, once rather lingeringly. She’d groped him once, about a year ago. Not an inadvertent brushing grope but an intentional full-handed helping that caught him so unaware he flinched. She’d laughed. He’d laughed. Her explanation for that sudden aggressive behavior was her imagination needed something substantial to go on. She hadn’t helped herself to him like that since, however he expected she might, and the anticipation was rather enjoyable.

  While Grady devoured the sandwich, Doris picked up the sales report from his desk. Scanned it. “No one took the pinks,” she observed brightly. “I thought the pinks would be grabbed right up.” The pinks, as she called them, were ten matched two-carat sapphires, round cuts of an intense pink color. Of all the gems in the HH inventory they were Doris’s favorites. On her way-down days, PMS days or just whenever she came in in need of some instant emotional elevation she’d go into the vault, get out that lot of sapphires and get into their happy pink atmospheres with her ten-power loup
e.

  “I came close to selling them in Houston,” Grady told her.

  “How close?”

  “Within two hundred a carat.”

  “Who was the cheap, Gilford?”

  “Better. I didn’t get to see Gilford.”

  Doris grinned smugly. “I think you didn’t sell them on purpose, probably didn’t even show them.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Again,” she sighed.

  One of Grady’s phone lines lighted. Doris picked it up. Covered the mouthpiece and told Grady, “It’s Lawler.”

  “Put him on speaker. I want him self-conscious.”

  Doris did as told.

  Grady waited a beat, then started with plenty of attitude. “Morning, Fred.”

  “How are you, Grady?”

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  “I gather you had a successful trip.”

  “Should I admit it?”

  “Business is slow here.”

  “Sure, you only did a half million yesterday.”

  “I mean honestly slow.”

  He wants the emeralds, Grady thought. “Honestly slow” means he wants them. “Well,” Grady told him, “if you called for commiseration you’ve got it.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “What else can I do for you besides take pity?” Grady asked lightheartedly, gauging that the conversation was about to come to its purpose.

  “Those emeralds I was considering…”

  “Oh, those.” Grady let fall downscale, inferring the emeralds were past history.

  “You’ve let someone else have them?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Don’t play with me. It doesn’t become you and it insults me.”

  “Just trying to hold my own, Fred. Just trying to hold my own.”

  “You been out there with Havermeyer too long.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you come back east and get hooked up with me? I’ll bet we could cut a better deal than you’ve got.”