18mm Blues (23 page)

“Then forget it.”

He made out a new slip, bid all he had, the hundred.

It wasn't enough.

To make it worse he ran into Clifton, who was happy to relate he'd just gotten lot 593, those nice number one rounds, for a hundred fifteen. Grady didn't let Clifton know he'd bid on them, just told him
nice going
, exchanged a few more words and drifted away.

Julia was disappointed and perturbed. Saying
shits
under her breath. Grady asked if leaving appealed to her.

“Anytime,” she replied.

“I mean Burma.”

“I'm with you.”

She went up to the room to pack. Grady, meanwhile, had a taxi take him downtown. There was one important loose end he had to tend to. He was let off on the corner of Merchant Street and Barr in the heart of old British Colonial Rangoon. Walked along Merchant, cut up Thirty-sixth and around to Pansodan Road. Found on Pansodan the sort of shop he was looking for, a small, second-rate place trying to appear to be a jewelry store while also offering an array of way overpriced Burmese mementos.

Grady came right to the point, asked to see some synthetic rubies. Was told that the shop handled only genuine rubies. How about genuine synthetic rubies? Grady pressed. The shop owner decided that when a large fraudulent sale wasn't possible a small legitimate one would have to do. He brought out a dozen or so briefkes containing synthetics of various cuts and sizes. The same sort of convincing Burma-looking goods that retired General Tun had tried to pass off on Grady the day before yesterday. Grady bought a cushion cut of six carats for a hundred dollars a carat.

He taxied back to the hotel. Julia was in the lobby with the baggage. They checked out and a half hour later were at Mingaladon Airport trying to get through customs.

Their bags were thoroughly searched again, disheveled again. Including their carryons. The customs inspector took particular interest in Julia's sketches, apparently approved of them, was fascinated with her charcoal, chalks and all that. Perhaps he had aspirations.

The crucial thing was Grady's currency form. He'd gathered from conversations with various dealers that the Burmese government, arbitrary as it was, was deadly serious about visitors accounting for every penny brought in, spent and taken out of its country. Hardline Burmese bookkeeping intended to discourage currency smuggling and other contraband activities (such as attempting to depart with precious stones that hadn't been purchased from a government-connected source).

Upon arrival three days before, Grady had declared a hundred and fifty thousand in his possession. Now, upon leaving, he had about a hundred and would have to account for the difference. If he revealed he'd bought the piece of rough from that cheroot-smoking woman rebel it would probably be confiscated.

What to do? To start, he listed every currency exchange he'd made, exactly what he'd put out for the hotel, meals, gratuities and all. Then there was the ruby he'd bought from retired General Tun, fifty thousand for that.

The customs official considered that item, asked to have a look at the stone. He unfolded the briefke containing it, examined the scintillating cushion-cut red.

As far as Grady was concerned it wouldn't matter whether or not the official had eye enough to know synthetic from genuine. Either way fifty thousand would be accounted for. Grady watched the man's expression change to amused knowing and then to smug spite. Read the man's sentiments:
good! another fucked-over American
.

Within the hour Grady and Julia were airborne. Julia waited for the seat belt sign to be dinged off before going into her smaller carryon.

For the eraser.

Gray, malleable charcoal eraser that from her use during sketching had become an unsightly, variegated lump about the size of a large prune.

She dug at it with her fingernails, peeled the eraser stuff away from the piece of rough.

A conspiratorial grin.

She dropped the stone into Grady's hand. He bare-eyed it with the help of the afternoon sun that was striking that side of the plane. He hoped to God what he was looking at was what he hoped it was.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mahesak Road.

In what is now referred to as the old
farang
(foreign) quarter of Bangkok. To all appearances, Mahesak is unremarkable, just another side street. On its three short, straight blocks there is no
wat
(Buddhist temple), no new high-rise or ancient landmark, not even the offerings of some girlie bars. What's there is only a tight line of similar, older buildings of one or two stories that have changed little other than their faces over the past hundred years.

How dependent they seem, these squat buildings pressed side against side, as though jostling for inches, squeezing and being squeezed, giving off the impression that they must be suffering what might be called architectural pain.

Squeeze and pain. Suitable for the type of commerce conducted daily on Mahesak. For it is here that most of Bangkok's gem dealers do their business. Dealers, mind you, not jewelers. Although there's a bit of jeweler in nearly every dealer as there's some dealer in most jewelers, the distinction is made. The jewelers of Bangkok are scattered throughout the city. They have public concerns, retail mentalities. The Mahesak dealers, on the other hand, are a concentrated community closer to the earth, that is, closer to the treacheries that go on along the violent borders Thailand shares with Burma and Cambodia.

Any Mahesak dealer of consequence has his line of supply from those providing but perilous areas. A networking team, perhaps, to cover simultaneously various points. Or a partner with whom he takes turns being the carrier. Or his connection might be as tenuous as someone he's hired by the trip who he hopes will prove trustworthy.

The carrier goes out with money, buys and brings. Comes back when he's accumulated a satisfactory number of stones. Rubies and/or sapphires, some faceted, some in the rough. Occasionally he returns with a single stone, one that is especially large and too promising to put off being bought.

Such
brings
, as they're called, are never apparent. The arrival of the carrier is never even a minor event. It just blends in with the everyday comings and goings of Mahesak, an unhurried pace blamed on the steamy weather though more likely it is a habitual, intentional cover-up of the anxieties that go along with the surreptitious acquiring. (Millions' worth brought sewn within a trouser cuff or tucked where a molar had been between cheek and gum.) Millions are all the more reason not to rush. The prudent attitude is serious nonchalance, as though every moment is no different from the one before or the one ahead, while underneath, in the underbelly of each transaction, dwells a venal quickness, the swift reflexes of the mind needed not only to profit but also to not get taken (the ultimate embarrassment).

The gem dealers of Mahesak. Strangely, there are few Thais among them. Perhaps Thais just don't have the personality for it, they with their tendency to smile first and if at all possible sidestep friction. Their absence is filled by a stew of nationalities. Self-eminent Germans, umbilicated to the cutting factories of Idar-Oberstein; shrewd, and friendly, coal-eyed Armenians; some excessively patient Arabs. Many caste-conscious East Indians, especially from New Delhi and Darjeeling, who never seem to have the desire to go home even when there is next to no profit to be made, who'd rather stay and make a penny than leave and not. The majority of dealers are Chinese. They're the most successful, the more industrious ones with the wherewithal to exploit. They owe their financial edge to their day-by-day, deal-by-deal tight fists and their instinct to know precisely when circumstances are right to risk everything.

This, then, on that Thursday morning in early June, was the sphere and milieu Grady and Julia entered when they rounded the corner of wide, bustling Silom Road and walked north up Mahesak. Grady's stride was a little heavy in the heel. He still had remnant misgivings about staying over in Bangkok, and it was occurring to him that by now, if they'd been able to connect right away with a flight, they'd be only a couple of hours out of San Francisco. He told himself he wouldn't have minded terribly being layed over for seven hours and catching Northwest's nonstop night flight, which had the first available space. He'd been perfectly willing to make the most of that layover, to taxi into Bangkok proper, see some of it and have a good meal. Julia, however, believed that Bangkok was deserving of more than a few hours. At first that was just an opinion she impassively expressed. Next it came out as a pointed remark. Then a rather adamant preference.

Grady was swayed by the way Julia had endured without complaint the room at the Lake Inye Hotel, put up with that awful furniture screwed to the wall or floor as though anyone in the world would ever want to steal it, and the wall-to-wall carpet so stained and contaminated-looking that to expose bare feet to it had seemed a health risk. As much as Grady wanted to get the next long leg of inevitable lag over with, get back home and give his all to his new business, he more or less persuaded himself that he owed Julia a portion of comfort. In fact his debt was greater than that; he owed her luxury.

So, with carryons and baggage they proceeded by taxi to the Hotel Oriental where, when asked by the registration clerk how long they'd be staying, Grady, in a moment of romantic magnanimity, had replied, “At least several days.” Shortly thereafter they were unpacking and stowing and hanging their belongings in the drawers and closets of the five-hundred-dollar-a-day suite on the twelfth floor, overlooking the river. Julia going about arranging her cosmetics and other personals on the shelf over the counter in the elegant marble bathroom and humming and dah-dah-dahing to herself a song that was decidedly, stridently Oriental. Grady thought she was getting into the spirit of the place.

Now, next day, here they were on Mahesak, putting off any sightseeing until they'd satisfied their questions about the piece of red rough bought in Rangoon. Whether it was a crystal or spinel or ruby or what. And if a ruby as claimed, how good a ruby? Fifty thousand good?

Grady hoped to find out by finding Alfred Reese, a Bangkok dealer who'd called upon him years ago when he'd been buying for Shreve and Company. They'd had a long pleasant lunch and gotten along well and Grady had bought a lot of nice lavender sapphires. Sapphires and rubies were Reese's métier. He truly knew them. Grady hadn't seen Reese since that day, but there'd been some long-distance transactions, numerous phone calls, quite a bit of nonbusiness conversation. Reese, as Grady recalled him, was a tall man, six five or so, with a stoop. He wasn't merely round-shouldered but had a stoop so extreme that a drip of water from the tip of his nose would have missed his toes by six inches. By now he would be in his late fifties. He'd been born and raised in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, gone to school in Stillwater and gotten into the gem business in Tulsa. Buying trips to Dallas, Chicago and New York preceded the trip to Bangkok that changed his direction. The only reason he returned to Tulsa was to settle some legal loose ends including a pending divorce and to turn everything that was surely his into cash.

The thing about Bangkok that got Reese was something that wasn't there. The concept of original sin, the yoke of it. Reese hadn't realized how restrained he'd been by it, libidinously suffocated, until the Thai women, those little beauties, unknotted him and caused him to take deep, totally responsive breaths. They and their ways stripped him of the Methodist Sunday school cupjock and converted him into a happier-to-be-bareass Okie cowboy Buddhist.

So that was Reese, the dealer Grady and Julia were looking for on Mahesak. It had been years since Grady had spoken to Reese and there hadn't been an answer that morning when Grady had tried phoning him. The address Grady had for him, 531 Mahesak, would be along there somewhere. The sidewalk was insufficient for two-way foot traffic. Grady and Julia had to go single file to make room for those walking in the opposite direction. None of the businesses appeared hospitable, they noticed. Not one open door. Most had steel gates across their entrances, and electronic locks. Some were numbered in Thai, some in Arabic, others had no numbers at all.

Grady and Julia walked the entire length of Mahesak without coming upon 531. They doubled back and inquired. The third person they asked pointed it out. A narrow place looking bullied by its adjoining buildings. No windows. A steel-faced door. The entire front from street level to roofline was painted a high-gloss dark green enamel that emphasized here and there the buildup and flaked-away patches of numerous previous coats. Grady thought back to the times he and Reese had talked longdistance. He'd never pictured Reese talking from a place such as this.

Julia found a buzzer button inset on the door frame, gave it a jab. Nothing. She gave it another, more insistent. After a long moment the door clicked open, allowing entrance to a short, narrow landing at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Nowhere to go but up. Gritty, metal-edged stairs. At the top was a similar landing and another equally formidable door with a peephole in it at eye level. Being peeped at made Julia uncomfortable. She repressed an impulse to make a face. Grady doubted, considering how long it had been, that the door would be opened by Reese.

But it was.

Glad to see Grady, glad to meet Julia. An unexpected pleasure, Reese said with more Oklahoma twang than Grady remembered him having. Reese led them to an area not partitioned off from the rest of the second floor but which he good-naturedly and somewhat apologetically called his office. There was a formidable late-model safe in the corner and a refrigerator of about the same size next to it.

Reese didn't look an hour older, Grady thought. Whatever he was getting out of life apparently agreed with him. It caused Grady to give his own ways and means a moment of comparative consideration and in the next moment reach the conclusion that a long term with Julia was going to make the same world of difference for him.