18mm Blues (10 page)

There were the pearls.

Eight hanks strung on acrylic line, each tied off with an elaborate royal purple tassel made up of slippery silk thread. Grady knew instantly and bare-eyed that before him lay a perfect example of everything that could be wrong with cultured pearls. He took up one of the hanks. It was much too heavy. A giveaway that in the culturing process the shell beads that were implanted in the oysters had been inordinately large, in order to produce more swiftly a pearl of larger size. Too swiftly for Grady, who without trying could make out the shadowy shape of the bead beneath hardly more than a couple of layers of nacre. He'd be willing to bet these pearls hadn't been allowed even six months to develop. What luster they possessed was superficial, would wear away in practically no time, and the unknowing owner, seeing her precious necklace becoming dull, would wonder what had happened, probably blame herself.

Hell, these pearls weren't even drilled well, Grady noted as he sighted them through his Nikon ten-power magnifying loupe. The edges around many of the drill holes were flaked, and the solution of Merthiolate that had been used to give these pearls a pinkish cast had concentrated in those places.

All in all these pearls were the antithesis of Kumuras. Grady told Ohimi that, bluntly.

Ohimi wasn't fazed. “Kumura quality,” he contended.

Grady put the hank back into place and closed the folder.

Ohimi reached across and flipped the folder open. “Kumura quality,” he insisted.

Grady had the urge to sweep the whole mess off his desk and into his wastebasket. Instead he stood, towered over Ohimi, sent down an unmistakable, dismissive glare.

Ohimi surrendered his smile, kept his head lowered but his eyes up and was mumbling gripes in Japanese as he took up his goods, dropped them negligently into his case and, without performing the obligatory bow, did his exit.

Some morning, Grady complained to himself. He turned and looked out the window for a long moment, as though something out there would be offered as a palliative. It occurred to him that he'd set and kept his own borders. How long had it been since he'd given serious thought to expanding his existence, to annexing another's? Not just a momentary impulse, squelched as swiftly as it came to mind, but serious thought.

“Mister Havermeyer won't be in today.”

“Oh?” Grady didn't need to turn, knew that haughty affected voice belonged to Eunice.

“But he wants you to join him for lunch at two.”

“Where?”

Eunice told him, and at half past one Grady was on his way to Harold's house across the bridge in Belvedere. One of the Bay Area's choicest residential roosts. Houses there went for millions even though only a few were situated on what might qualify as estate-size acreage. The large houses right on the water were especially side-by-side close, which, in a way, attested to the class-bonded sociability of their occupants.

Harold's house was one of those. A ten-thousand-square-foot contemporary whose backyard included frontage on Richardson Bay. Previously Harold had owned a house of traditional style in nearby Tiburon. It had eventually cramped Harold, not provided adequate blank wall for his collection of art nor free space enough for his sculptings and precious
objets
. In that regard this present house was most conducive, stark symmetry, all white and glass. Like a personal museum.

Grady pulled the Taurus into the fine graveled drive. The car was extremely dirty from having been parked in the airport lot for two weeks. It looked out of place in front of the clean, sleek structure. He got out and went up to the oversize entrance door. There wasn't a doorbell or knocker. Merely Grady's weight on an inset portion of the entranceway would activate a chime inside.

He stood in place three minutes that seemed longer before deciding the fact that he was early was the reason Harold wasn't home. Harold was always precisely on time or very late. Earliness exposed eagerness, he contended.

Grady went around to the side of the house, past impeccably lidded garbage bins to a gate. He reached over, slid the bolt aside and proceeded to the rear terrace. There was a square-shaped swimming pool like an island of ideal colored water surrounded by a sea of ideal green grass. White tubular loungers, chairs and tables arranged just so. A bright blue Italian marketplace umbrella and a painted white steel flagpole, a real tall one. Harold had a collection of flags, even some that hardly anyone could identify, such as those of Madagascar, Suriname and Tibet. Most frequently for the implied impression he flew the tricolor or the Union Jack. At the moment nothing had been hoisted, Grady noticed, although right then there was a breeze that could have caused a lot of nice furling and fluttering.

Grady's hope half expected he'd find lunch all laid out on one of the terrace tables. He'd looked forward to a leisurely couple of hours of sterling, crystal, linen and a bottle of one of Harold's show-off wines. But only a half a plastic bowl of cashews, probably stale.

Grady looked to the house. No discernable movement inside. Where was the Balinese houseboy? Normally he'd be hurrying out to ask was there anything Grady wanted.

Grady took off his suit jacket and moved a lounger around so he could sit facing the bay. The water was choppy and the sun striking upon it exaggerated its pointilistic impression. White bloated triangles of boats were running and tacking. The high-rises of San Francisco a more definite backdrop than usual and, nearer, the protruding, dun-colored lump of Alcatraz, which caused Grady to consider there were all kinds of detention.

Harold got there forty minutes late. By then Grady was dozy. Harold told him not to bother getting up, pulled a lounger around for himself. Grady would have welcomed going inside, had had enough of sunning in his business clothes.

“Want a drink?” Harold asked as he sat.

“Yeah.”

“Tall or short?”

“Tall, thank you.”

Harold didn't look in the direction of the house, merely held two fingers high. In less than thirty seconds the houseboy arrived with the drinks. Harold must have told him to have both tall and short ready. The drinks were a Mezcal and pineapple juice concoction topped with a half-inch kicker of 180-proof rum. To not have to gulp his way through the rum Grady requested straws.

“How did the trip go?” Harold asked.

“Not bad.” Grady had brought along the sales report, believing it would please his employer and father-in-law. He got it from his jacket pocket, handed it across.

Harold pushed his Gianfranco Ferré sunglasses up onto his forehead so he'd have a clear, untinted view of the report. He just squinted at the bottom line.

Grady was awaiting a smile or some praising reaction.

Only a faint uninterpretable grunt from Harold. He allowed the sales report to drop to the grass. At once the breeze stole it away through a bed of birds of paradise to get caught up in an oleander hedge.

Grady told himself he wouldn't retrieve it, not even had it accidentally slipped from Harold's fingers.

Harold repositioned his sunglasses, took a sip and crossed his feet. He was wearing a pair of elevator high-top sneakers. Had those and all his shoes custom made in Italy so they'd give him two inches more height. Not because he was so short. He just wanted to be taller than five eight in stocking feet, believed that at five ten to eleven he could get away with claiming and feeling he was close to six feet, which, as he saw it, was the masculine summit.

Harold admitted to fifty, would be sixty-two come October. He'd had his eyes done, lids and all, eight years ago and needed to have them done again. His hair had gone gray and white and its front line was well in retreat, but he hadn't done battle with that. The exposed skull skin was thoroughly freckled. For some reason his eyebrows had remained dark, and the contrast of them bushy and unkempt as they were along with his surprisingly deep voice gave him a paradoxical attractiveness. He smiled a lot. Not because he was well humored but because his number five tooth, the right upper bicuspid, was crowned with gold and a certain degree of smile would flash it. Harold had practiced before mirrors and was able to gauge by the tension he asked of his cheek muscles precisely the measure of smile required.

As for style, Harold had little of his own and was ambivalent about from where he should borrow. At times he dressed the WASP, at other times the Bijan. He had the most professional-looking golfing outfits and the best set of sticks a lot of money could buy. Belonged to the Belvedere Country Club, where his claim of severely torn ligaments in his right shoulder that would never properly heal was believed with sympathy. How unbearable, his not being able to play!

Then there was trout fishing. He owned the proper, impressive tackle. He'd talk streams and flies with anyone anytime, had elaborate opinions of the Beaverkill, the Frying Pan, the San Juan, the Middle Fork of the Salmon, said the Upper Yellowstone around Livingston was his favorite water. As though he'd fished them all. As though.

Harold held his arm up, fist clenched.

The houseboy came within seconds with a silver dish of macadamia nuts.

Grady wondered when they were really going to eat.

“Did a shipment arrive from Sri Lanka this morning?” Harold asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“Probably still in customs. Juja is sending some yellow sapphires they say are the finest they've found in years.”

“Cooked goods?”

“They say not but I hear Juja is hurting, so they could be cutting back on reliability. Look into it.”

“Sure.”

“The whole fucking market is hurting,” Harold grumbled, as though the thought was more lenient let out. He munched and asked, “Heard from Gayle?”

“No.”

“I spoke to her last night early.”

“Where is she?”

“With her Aunt Miriam in Rancho Santa Fe, but she doesn't want you running down there.”

Grady tried to recall anyone ever mentioning an Aunt Miriam. “When's she coming back?”

“As soon as everything's settled. It would only be confusing and painful for her if she came back now.”

“What's not settled?”

“Gayle wants a divorce.”

Grady allowed the words to sink in. They didn't have the impact they should have. “Shouldn't
she
be telling me?”

Harold sat up so his words would be right at Grady. “Look, Bowman”—What happened to Grady? Grady thought—“I didn't have you over here today to get tangled up in your emotional attitudes. It just happens that Gayle says she wants a divorce and I'm not the one to talk her out of it. Hell, divorce is no big deal, just an evolutionary paragraph, so to speak, a kind of healthful hitch that breaks up the tedium. Know what I mean?”

Grady knew. He'd heard it from Harold a number of times before, nearly syllable for syllable, Harold's condensed rationale for his four failed marriages. Once at a dinner gathering someone had pressed Harold to explain those words, and all Harold could do was repeat them.

“No,” Harold continued, “I very definitely don't want my life sullied by your resentments and despondency.”

Why presume I'm despondent? Grady thought.

“Naturally my favor falls on Gayle's side,” Harold said, “and I'll be looking out for her interests.”

“Very definitely and naturally.”

“Are you ridiculing me?”

Grady looked away.

“Anyway, Bowman, what you and I have to straighten out has to do with business.”

“Like what?”

“To get right to the bone of it, considering the deterioration of your and Gayle's relationship, I don't see how you'll be able to function comfortably in the firm.”

He's right, Grady thought.

“Neither of us wants to suffer that kind of aggravation, do we?”

Grady thought he sure didn't, said so.

Harold flashed his gold crown. “Good. I've always had faith in your business sense.”

Always isn't forever, Grady thought. Always is as long as there isn't a hitch, no need for an evolutionary paragraph. He didn't know whether he should laugh or be bitter.

“Of course, I'll help you get resituated any way I can.” Another gold flash. “Actually it's been a pretty good ride, ten years, hasn't it?”

What shit, Grady thought.

Harold's face tightened again. “The other matter we have to set right is the house,” he said.

Grady gathered Harold meant the house in Mill Valley. When he and Gayle were first married they'd lived in a leased apartment on Russian Hill. Gayle seemed to be satisfied with it for a while, less than a year, really, but then insisted on the house. Harold insisted on financing it, as though his holding the mortgage was a gift. “In case there's ever a sudden need to have it free and clear,” he'd said. It was all drawn up tightly, the 30 percent down, the monthly payments including interest. A fifteen-year mortgage with balloons. Not a payment had been missed.

“Gayle wants the house,” Harold said. “You know how much it means to her, the time she's spent on it. That's all she wants. No alimony or any of that, just the house. That's fair enough, isn't it?”

“No.”

Grady stood, took up his suit jacket by the crook of a forefinger, didn't give Havermeyer even another glance. Went over to where the sales report was caught in the oleander hedge. Wounded a few birds of paradise getting to it. He decided against going out by way of the garbage side of the house, went up the steps and into and through it, on the way taking what he was certain would be a last look at the large painting he especially liked in the entrance hall. An Elizabeth Bouguereau. So long painting, he thought, you're too good for him.

CHAPTER TWO

A half hour later Grady was sitting on Muir Beach. Up on the shoulder ridge of sand the tide had built. His shoes and socks off, trouser legs rolled to his knees, shirt unbuttoned and its tails pulled out.