Stone 588 (47 page)

He didn't mope, didn't go around brooding and bitching, just goddamned the circumstances and did his best to accept them. His best was spending a lot of time with Jake. As though driven to trying to compact the sharing of a lifetime in . . . what would it be, a few months or maybe, with luck, a few years? It was excruciating for Springer to know that Jake was on such a short path. Unfair that Jake should have to give up dreaming ahead. What did fate do with such untaken years?

Springer kept these feelings to himself, but with the communion that often exists so sympathetically between father and son, Jake sensed Springer's despair and tried to allay it. His laugh couldn't be the quick, boy-bright Jake laugh, he couldn't hasten his eyes or twinkle them, but there was no way for anyone to see the complaints held back, the whines not whined, the fears unexpressed, Jake thought — and, of course, he was wrong.

Springer and Jake.

Gave one another spiritual transfusions.

With funny stories, some favorite enough to deserve repeating, some new that were now, for some reason, allowed to be a bit risque. And hand after hand of generous gin rummy competing to see who could let the other win. And just sitting on a fat summer-warmed rock in the park to take turns asking any question and getting cross-the-heart answers, no dodging around with I-don't-knows or you'll-find-out-somedays.

And a trip up to the Bronx to watch volleyball as played by Mr. Malo and Mr. Bueno, who, informed in advance of the situation, put out a lot of extra energy and dazzle. Their one-on-one game was a cross between volleyball and soccer. The ball had to go over the net without being touched by their hands. They had played it on Copacabana beach in Rio many more hours than they'd ever gone to school or worked. Springer and Jake watched and drank Pepsis from the can while Malo and Bueno showed off, went through their entire tricky repertoires. Jake cheered them on, seemed genuinely delighted.

Friday, day after tomorrow, he was scheduled to go into Sloan-Kettering for his second chemotherapy.

Now Audrey sat on the floor among the pillows at the foot of her bed and did her pendulum again. It had never, at least never that she knew of, lied to her. Every day for the past week she'd done her pendulum and gotten the same yes from it. Perhaps, she thought, she wasn't doing it right or something contrary was influencing it. Or could it just be that her pendulum was tired? It certainly appeared lively enough now as once again, suspended from her fingers, it swung to and fro, insisting emphatically that, yes. Springer would get back stone 588.

The intercom buzzed.

It was the lobby wanting to know if a Mr. Raggio and another gentleman were expected.

While they were on the way up Audrey hurried downstairs to awaken Springer, who was dozing in the deep of their favorite sofa. He got up, went into the guest bath, and shocked the laggardness out of his face with several splashes of cold water. Audrey checked her face in a mirror and decided it was good enough.

Springer answered the door, opened it, and didn't step aside until his eyes had told Danny that coming here was out of line and Danny's eyes had said he knew that and it didn't matter. They went into the living room. Danny introduced the guy with him as a friend named Dave. The guy didn't have the look of what he was. No broken nose or pointed black shoes. He had on gold wire-rimmed glasses, and his brush mustache was trying to make up for the hair he was losing. Danny was wearing a suit and tie, so Springer surmised this wasn't an impromptu visit.

Danny took a chair before it was offered. Friend Named Dave remained standing, sort of hat in hand without a hat.

Did they want something to drink?

No drinks.

Springer got himself some iced coffee, just to delay the situation to that extent and get a better reading of it. He was barefoot, his shirt badly wrinkled from being napped in. He chose the chair directly across from Danny. He wanted to start off with letting Danny know how pissed he was with this violation of their territorial understanding, and all the more so because this was Audrey's place and the likes of Friend Named Dave didn't belong any closer to it than street level. Instead, Springer asked casually, "What's up?"

"I haven't heard from you," Danny said.

"You were supposed to?"

Danny turned his hands palms up, as though Springer should put something in them. "You tell me," he said, cold.

Maybe Danny was feeling slighted, believed he had some big thanks coming for his help in the burglary, Springer thought. If that was it, it was bullshit. Danny had made the thing business by insisting that he handle all of the take.

"Let's you and me go into another room and talk," Danny told Springer.

"You've got something your friend shouldn't hear?"

Danny's eyes shifted to Audrey and back.

Audrey was trying to fathom why Danny appeared so different to her in these surroundings. It occurred to her that up to now her exposure to him had been limited to restaurants. She felt that she was seeing his real dimensions for the first time. His slickness that she'd thought amusing was now just slippery, his smarts were self-servingly shrewd. There were thick, hard underlayers to his likable toughness in this light, Audrey realized. "Whatever you do," she said archly, "don't pretend I'm not here." She transposed her crossed legs.

Normally that would have evoked Danny's best Italian smile, but now he went right through it, asked Springer, "You get what you were after from the Townsend thing?"

"No."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah."

"You got nothing?"

"Nothing."

"How's Jake doing?"

Springer shrugged, didn't really reply because he felt Danny hadn't really asked. He was right. Danny took it quickly in another direction. "Doesn't figure," he said. "Even when we give it the benefit of the doubt and all that shit it still doesn't figure." He paused, looked off to his right at one of Modigliani's better elongated faces. For a moment it almost seemed he was studying the painting. "Nobody takes a shot like the Townsend thing and comes away with nothing," he remarked. "I ask you, if we could exchange mouths and ears, would you believe it?"

"Probably not."

"My people don't. I don't."

Springer didn't let show how much that affected him. A mixture of anger and disappointment. "I'm holding out on you, kept something aside for myself?"

"That's it."

"If I had kept a little something I deserved it."

"We don't do business like that. We make a deal we keep a deal. Our agreement was for the whole package."

Audrey squirmed in her chair. She combed at her hair with her fingers, settled into a slouch and sat up again.

Why was she so suddenly fidgety? Springer wondered. No doubt, like himself, she'd had enough of this, was anxious to have it over and Danny and Friend Named Dave gone.

"What exactly am I supposed to be holding out?" Springer asked.

"Twelve stones," Danny replied, a sharp eye on Springer's reaction. "The twelve Russian stones you got for a client about a month ago."

Springer had shared with Danny his good feelings about making that deal. He had expressed rather avidly his appreciation for the quality of those Russian goods.

"You fell in love with those stones," Danny said. "Had this chance at them and couldn't pass."

"Why me?"

"It's an amateur move, you're the amateur."

"As far as I know they weren't even in Townsend's inventory."

"They were there."

"They weren't there," Audrey put in staunchly. "I saw everything that came from the vault. I would have surely seen them."

Danny brought out some papers from his jacket pocket. About a dozen pages. They were copies of the computer printout listing Townsend's inventory. The same that Townsend had submitted to the insurance adjuster and the police. Each item or lot that had been stolen was so indicated and boldly circled. Halfway down one of the pages convincingly included and encircled was the lot of twelve Russian stones. They were described in detail and in the far right column was their worth. A fifteen million loss.

Springer passed the printouts to Audrey and waited for her to finish reading that particular entry before he told Danny pointedly, "Never saw them."

"Neither did I." Audrey's chin went up a defiant notch.

"Possibly he was using those stones to pad his loss," Springer suggested.

Danny scrunched his face, an ugly no. "Townsend, like everybody, fattened up his loss. By about twenty, twenty-five percent, we figure. We're allowing that much from the package. But that fat he put on was goods out of his head, not goods like this Russian stuff that we know are for real."

Good Friend Dave had left his spot, was now wandering around, looking at things. He picked up a Galle cameo glass vase and held it up to the window light to better see its lavender to deep purple treescape.

Springer was afraid if he told him to put the Galle down he'd drop it on purpose. Safer, probably, to ignore the bastard. Springer sat forward on the edge of his chair for emphasis. "I don't give a fuck how your people see it," he said. "I don't have those stones." Springer found himself hoping Danny wouldn't say he believed him.

Danny didn't say anything.

"While we're at it, is there anything else I'm supposed to be holding back?" Springer asked.

"Just those," Danny said. His eyes had turned suddenly icy lethal.

Exactly like the never-forgotten eyes of Just John, Springer realized. He stared right into them, told them, "You're wrong."

"That your stand?"

"That's my stand."

Danny got up, gestured to Good Friend Dave.

They didn't wait to be shown out.

Springer didn't know when he'd be seeing Danny again, but, whenever, it wouldn't be the same.

Audrey quickly bolted the front door. She waited time enough, then called down to the lobby and asked if the two gentlemen had left. Told that they had, Audrey did a blithesome, pivoting, arm-floating Isadora Duncan accompanied by her hums and trills of laughter twice around the living room. She finally dropped into the sofa with her throat arched and the rest of her body contrived in a graceful pose.

Springer was also glad the unpleasantness with Danny was over, but not to the extent of dancing. Audrey, for some reason, was overreacting, he thought. He went to the sofa, stood above her. He knew from such previous playfulnesses the rule was she wouldn't break her pose until he acknowledged it in some active loving way. His Galatea.

This time he ran a single tender finger along the line of her throat, from her chin all the way down to that tensely defined little cup between her collar bones.

At once she came to life, came up to him, brushing his lips with her own, implying that more of a kiss was imminent. She kept her face close to his, the tips of their noses nearly touching. Now she was his beautiful Cyclops. At that range she asked, "Do you have those Russian diamonds?"

"No," he replied. "Do you?"

"Nope."

She felt that her mind was wide open and he, of all people, should be able to read it. When, after a long moment, he didn't say anything about what she was thinking, she stood abruptly. "I'll be back in a breath," she promised and bounded up the stairs two at a time. Went through her bedroom to her dressing room to one of her dressers. Third drawer from the top. She disturbed the tranquillity of neatly layered lingerie to get at something in the deep comer of that drawer.

A black, truly silk stocking.

With its foot stuffed and tied off with a knot.

Like a homemade sachet.

She hurried down the stairs with it, twirling it around her head as though it were a bolo. On her way she got a large pair of scissors from her writing desk in the study.

Springer was where she'd left him, seated on the sofa. She swung the stocking before his eyes, back and forth as she would her pendulum. It was teasing. He couldn't get a good look at it. What the hell was she up to?

She knelt beside the glass-topped table that was in front of the sofa. Holding the stocking above the table she used the scissors to snip it just below the knot.

They poured from the stocking.

To the glass top of the table.

(Causing Springer to recall at that instant, but only for an instant because it only circumstantially applied, Seggerman and his hooker that day at the Parker Meridien.)

Bounced, scattered in all directions, piled up. Many hopped off onto the rug.

Diamonds.

Rubies, emeralds, sapphires too.

Round cuts, fancy cuts, every conceivable cut, ranging in size from a single carat to fifteen carats.

About forty million worth.

Springer was stunned.

In mimicking mobsterese Audrey explained. "What we got here, lover-boy, is Townsend's fat." Meaning, of course, the twenty-five percent Danny and his people assumed Townsend had tacked on to his loss. Thus conceded, these goods would never be sought.

Springer now understood why Audrey had been so edgy in Danny's presence.

She anticipated his question. "While you were so desperately fishing in the vault. Strand took a couple of handfuls from the shoe box and put them in a pocket of your vest. I guess he didn't believe it was fair, your coming away with nothing."

"Strand, huh?" Springer said thoughtfully, picturing Strand's generous moment, liking it. "And I suppose you had nothing to do with it."

An ever so slight evasive shrug from Audrey. She shifted the aim of her eyes to above Springer's head, then to the left and to the right as though spotting something in the air. "Remind me to burn some sage to get rid of all the negativity," she said. "God, but they brought in a lot of negativity."

Libby gave a graceful little tug to each fingertip of her pale yellow gloves. She hardly ever wore gloves any more; however, when she did she enjoyed gradually peeling them off, having someone anticipate the emergence of her hands.

She shoved the gloves anywhere into her handbag, as though they were now used, discardable things. She brought out a platinum Tiffany case, popped it open for a cigarette. Cancer fear had influenced her to quit smoking fifteen years ago. That, along with becoming a believer of a highly regarded dermatologist who claimed that smoking strangled the capillaries and thus hastened aging. Up until then she'd averaged twenty a day of a blend especially concocted to suit her taste by Dunhill in London. Wherever in the world she happened to be, Dunhill had seen to it that she was freshly supplied. Just recently they'd been notified and resumed shipping to her.