18mm Blues (19 page)

“Fort Lauderdale.”

“Damn shame. No one had better eyes. In his time Larkin could grade a mixed lot of sapphires in less time and more accurately than anyone I've ever known, and that includes those chinks in Bangkok who've always been magical at it. Phenomenal eyes.” It was the ultimate compliment one gem dealer could pay another. The ability to sight into a precious stone and know practically everything about it, not just its quality and value, but, as well, its place of origin—continent, country, area, often even the very mine that had yielded it.

“Larkin loved pearls,” Grady said reminiscently.

“Didn't he though.”

“Taught me plenty.”

“How long were you with him?”

Grady told him.

“Now that I think of it I believe I remember him speaking of you, favorably. Tell me your name again.”

Grady said it while his mind went back to the bar of the Algonquin with Larkin and that favorite topic, pearls. He returned to take notice of Clifton's professionally manicured nails and passé dental work, caps that no longer convinced because they didn't fit the gums. Grady wasn't being critical as much as observant. “Where are you headed?” he asked.

Clifton enjoyed replying. “Hong Kong first, then on to Colombo for a day before Rangoon. What about you?”

“Rangoon.”

“For the Emporium?”

“Yes.”

“Ever been before?”

Grady disliked having to admit this would be his first Emporium. He'd heard so much about the event, mainly from older dealers such as this Clifton and from Larkin and others, that it seemed attendance was prerequisite to being thought of as thoroughly experienced. Grady had been particularly impressed by the accounts of profitable, fine goods that had been purchased at the Emporium of one year or another. He had, of course, dealt a fair number of Burmese stones over the years, knew them well enough. No sapphires were more valued, except perhaps those rarer lazy ones out of Kashmir. And Burmese rubies, the true pigeon bloods. One such ruby of four carats had sold at auction only a few years ago for five hundred thousand a carat. Burmese pearls and jade were also considered superior.

Such riches.

Grady was looking forward to having a chance at them on the Emporium level, just one step out of the ground and therefore far less expensive. He knew it probably wasn't going to be absolutely easy. Fine goods weren't going to just pop into his pocket. However, it wasn't beyond possibility that he'd make some better than merely good deals, and he imagined himself returning to San Francisco and the Phelan Building, causing a stir of envy as word got around that he was starting up his business with a spectacular inventory.

Have you seen Grady Bowman's goods?

I've heard
.

You've got to see. Burmese beauties. The buyer at Shreve took only a quick look and wanted the lot
.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy
.

Oh, how it would hurt Harold's ears.

Clifton now asked, “Are you going to be looking to buy for someone or for yourself?”

Grady gladly told him.

“Well, I hope you won't be disappointed. In fact, I hope the same for myself. The last Emporium I went to was hardly worth the trip. That was in '82. Year by year before that it had gone downhill. The lots that were offered, anyway all but a few, were made up of second-rate goods with a first-quality head of about ten percent.”

Grady had heard as much but he continued being attentive to hear Clifton's version. Clifton paused to blow his nose into the fluff of an ordinary white handkerchief, examined with a mixture of curiosity and distaste what he'd discharged, enclosed it with a bunchy fold and inserted the handkerchief into his inside jacket pocket. “Damn dry air they pump around in these jets. Always raises hell with my sinuses. I'm no good for a week or two after a long flight.”

Grady's misery enjoyed the company.

Clifton went on. “Every year the Burmese government gave one excuse or another for the decline in desirable goods offered for bidding at the Emporium. Blamed the heavier rains, the depletion of certain mines, trouble with rebels such as the Karens and the Mons, just about anything that sounded reasonable.”

“One would think they'd be eager to sell their goods to the West.”

“They are eager and they do sell, only not as straight and aboveboard as one would imagine. The Burmese government is military. It runs everything and takes its whack up and down the line. The lower ranks circumspectfully pocket their nibbles, the top of the brass, of course, help themselves to the flagrant big bites. Thus it stands that for a soldier, especially an officer, say a lieutenant or captain, to be assigned to one of the rich gemmining districts such as Mogok is thought of as a privilege, the next best thing to being given outright instant wealth.”

Grady imagined while Clifton verbally drew it for him.

“Doesn't matter that those mining areas for the most part are chronic war zones occupied by rebels. And not just a few insurgents here and there but thousands of real angry, well-armed Karens, Mons, Hachins and the like. Plenty dangerous, but for the Burmese army officer well worth the risk. Between firefights he goes around to the numerous ruby and sapphire pits, which, as you may know … I'm sorry, stop me if you're knowledgeable about these things…”

“No, please, go on.”

Clifton obliged. Told how the pits weren't large, on the average measured about thirty feet in diameter and half that deep. So the army officer from his vantage up on the edge was able to see everything that went on. Told how the men worked in muddy water up to their crotches, water that had seeped or rained in. It was all quite primitive. They dredged the bottom with flat pans of tightly woven bamboo, brought up dirt and gravel from the mucky bottom. The army officer kept a sharp eye on what they brought up, what they emptied onto the sievelike screen situated at the edge of the pit. The silt and grit got hosed away leaving the gravel. No one, certainly not the mine operator, was allowed to touch that until the army officer had looked through it, spread it, rolled it over, picked the most promising rough rubies and sapphires from it. If he was new at this he was probably fooled by the dull material that adhered to the surface of some of the stones, often to some of the much finer ones, disguising them so they appeared to be no more than ordinary gravel. But he, like the fortunate army officers before him, soon learned what he shouldn't overlook. He and his greed became sure-eyed, able to recognize the better stuff no matter how thick and ugly its skin.

Grady imagined it. A diminutive Burmese army officer with a pocket or two of his fatigues bulging with what he, Grady, would happily settle for a mere few of. “What then?” Grady asked Clifton. “Where does that rough get sold?”

“Across the Thai border,” Clifton replied and went on, telling how the Chinese dealers from Bangkok were the main buyers, how they usually situated themselves on the Thai side, not in a village but out along one of the remote, nearly indiscernible paths that crisscross in and out of Burmese territory. Paths known and used by locals but hardly anyone else. Most of the transactions were carried out at night, the darker the better. The buyer would prop a strong flashlight upright, aiming its beam through an opening in the jungle growth overhead. The large amount of cash he'd brought along would already be shallowly buried somewhere close by. He'd sit and wait, hoping a Burmese officer with ruby and sapphire rough to sell would notice the beam and come to him. He might wait all night in vain. If so, he'd move to another spot along the path. Sometimes it would take a week of such nights. It was dangerous business. There was always the chance that soldiers of one rebel faction or another might spot the beam and get to him. The rebels knew about this regular trade in contraband gems. They roamed the border areas at night searching for those vertical beams of light. When they spotted one they hurried to it, killed the buyer right off and located his money. The Bangkok buyers paid a fat price for the rough, but, of course, when the rough reached Bangkok and was cut into finished goods it was worth a great deal more.

Clifton was a frustrated storyteller, Grady decided, but he allowed himself to go along with it, mentally placing himself some night along the Burmese-Thai border, waiting awhile and then doing swift business with a Burmese officer, trading the dollars he now had in his money belt for a chamois sack of precious stones, a veritable fortune in fine Burma rough. He could hear the contained stones clicking against one another, fine ruby against fine sapphire as he shoved the sack into the largest pocket of whatever he was wearing. But then came the realization of the peril involved in such an undertaking. It shot a shudder through him and he snapped back to Clifton's face across the aisle. “Anyway,” Clifton was saying, “that's why the last ten to fifteen Emporiums have been so paltry. Seems the government high-ups have conducted them merely for show, to keep their personally profitable traffic in contraband from being altogether obvious.”

Grady thought about how he'd hate having made this long trip merely to look at mediocre goods. “What about this year?” he asked. “What are the expectations?”

“Word is the government will offer up a considerable amount of fine grade. That would be in keeping with its recent change of heart in regard to doing more trade with the West. I tend to believe it. Otherwise I wouldn't be here.”

A flight attendant came down the aisle, causing Grady and Clifton to have to draw back from their outward leaning and momentarily eclipsing their views of each other. It more or less concluded the subject.

“Where in Rangoon will you be staying?” Clifton inquired.

“The Inye Lake Hotel,” Grady replied.

Clifton evidently disapproved.

“Something wrong with the place?” Grady wanted to know.

“It's not the hotel I would have recommended,” Clifton told him, “but at least you won't be staying at the Strand.”

“Someone suggested the Strand, said it was colorful.”

“It's been trading on that description ever since the British left in '48. Anyway, if you do nothing else, beware of the generals. They'll be swarming around the Inye Lake.”

Grady thought he meant high-level army types. Clifton set him straight: “Guys who present themselves as retired generals and look in every way as though they might be. They all use more or less the same approach and they're really good at it, have it down pat. First that sort strikes up an amiable conversation into which he slips the fact that he was once in charge of one of the outlying mining districts such as Magok. After a little bullshit about that he'll turn hush hush and confide that he still has a connection at the mines, someone who regularly supplies him with gems. He might be willing to part with a few, he says. For a price. Which will be a high enough price to make it more convincing. What he's selling, actually, are, of course, synthetic stones, cubic zirconium ruby-looking reds, sapphire-looking blues with silk and all the other right kind of flaws in them to make them credible.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Grady said politely, though not believing for an instant that anyone could fake out his eyes.

Clifton took a loud heaving breath and let his eyelids close. “I'm going to doze,” he said and tugged with a finger at his shirt collar, as though imploring it not to choke him while he was unconscious.

Grady sat back in his reclined business class seat and looked to Julia on his right. When he'd last given her his total attention she'd been engrossed in the Alice A. Bailey book having to do with souls. Had she overheard any of his conversation with Clifton? It seemed she hadn't. She let the book drop to her lap so her then liberated hands could claim Grady's upper arm. Her head used his shoulder. After a long moment of silence that was like an allotment to the auguring of the future Julia had said in a tone part encouraging and part the assuming of responsibility for her words: “Don't worry, hon, you're going to do even better than you hope. I just know it.”

That had been during the flight.

Now, here they were short of destination, having been deposited in Bangkok at Don Muang International Airport. They had an hour of the time waste yet to go. Grady couldn't stay for more than ten consecutive minutes in the seat there in the proximity of gate 14. One of the seats in a row of rows, identical, hard, indestructible plastic molded to fit the cheeks of the universal ass. He'd get up and walk anywhere until reminded of his weariness, then come back to sit and feel afflicted. Whenever his look caught upon Julia's he'd try for what he believed was a smile close enough to his true, relaxed one or he'd say something light. He was almost certain she was unaware of the strain in him, the terrible lag sensations. He reasoned that had she been aware she probably would have brought it up, tried to talk or even love him out of it, maybe. Best that she was as she was, okay, collected, taking care of herself, he thought.

She got up, told him she was going to the ladies' room. She was gone for longer than should have been required and Grady got to glancing uneasily every so often in the direction of the ladies' room, down the long straight corridor of that arm of the terminal. Then he kept looking steadily for her, concerned for her until he caught sight of her returning. He appreciated the confident stride of her, the sensuality in its strength as her thighs lefted and righted beneath the ample cotton skirt she had on. And it occurred to him that during his concern for her he'd not felt lagged and that made him wonder if it might not be entirely or at least mostly psychological. He hoped so and he hoped not.

He didn't realize she was miffed until she was close, sat down hard in the next seat.

“Why is it,” she said to the situation as much as to Grady, “that ordinary things cost like the devil in an airport? Do you know how much I had to pay for this?” She held up a pack of Wrigley's Doublemint gum and didn't give him time to guess. “Thirty bahts,” she said. “Can you imagine? Thirty bahts.”