Stone 588 (50 page)

Not entirely.

The gate of his mind that was supposed to keep her confined—she was swinging on it. Back and forth, away and diminishing, then forward and dominant. The gatekeeper was fucking off again.

If Libby was motivated and resourceful enough to uncover that piece of Philadelphia business, as close to the vest as it had been, Wintersgill thought, she might very well get to the truth of the twenty million Townsend thing he'd just pulled off. It was conceivable that nothing, no one, was beyond her reach, certainly not some bank officer in Liechtenstein with all the secrets in his head. Libby would have someone have that bank officer open and spilling out in no time.

Wintersgill recalled the smug way she'd folded that bank transfer receipt and put it in her handbag. Obvious to him now that she intended to do something with it, use it to check up on the transaction. And when she found out the twenty million had been deposited into an account that was his, how much deeper would she delve? Might she just recover the money, reprimand or dismiss him, and let it go at that? Fuck, no. She of all people would smell the more that was behind it. It would be hard for him to sell Townsend's death as a coincidence. Surely Libby wouldn't buy it. She'd pry around and pay off until she had him tied to it, and then she'd enjoy having it be up to her whether or not she preferred to make a stink of it.

A Wintersgill indicted for murder.

A Wintersgill in prison.

For him, almost as much hell would be Libby forever holding that possibility over his head. She would thoroughly document the mess with records: facts to substantiate facts, depositions. She'd put it all in a sealed dossier that the Hull lawyers would be instructed to get into whenever she gave them the nod.

Gone then, rendered ineffective, would be the ledger on her that Wintersgill had been compiling over the years, the privacies he knew about her, had done for her. All those things he'd never brought out but that they both understood were there, keeping them more or less in balance. She'd have him groveling. She'd have him fucking collies on a treadmill twice a week.

The slut.

The pretentious slut. Elle pete plus haute qu 'elle a le cul, as the French so aptly say of her sort: She farts higher than her asshole.

For the next two hours Wintersgill lay there, his rage ripening. The Libby in him kept at him, and as if she wasn't enough, now there were also Audrey and Springer to contend with. Audrey and Springer came out from another of his mental gates to side with Libby. They ganged up on him, the three of them. Every accusation, every threat from Libby was also from Audrey, and she was inseparable from Springer.

Wintersgill lay there festering.

With too much of a grip on himself. His legs and arms tensed, drawn up as though their tendons were thongs of leather going dry.

The promising bed linens had betrayed him, were now confused, wilted. Every pillow had given up its comforting puflF.

He had swallowed the yellow five and the blue ten, but they didn't help with the gatekeeping.

Brillat-Savarin had been dropped spine first to the floor.

Wintersgill, self-sorry, was resigned to having to get up and check the dead bolts. His confidence that they were locked was long lost. The bedroom bolts would only be the start of it, he knew. Once he was up and concerned with those he would also have to do the service door and the front door again, and there was no telling how many lockings and relockings it would take for him to convince himself before he could get back to the bedroom to cope with the locking and relocking there, the fixing of his eyes upon the crack between the door and the doorjamb, anticipating the horizontal movement of the brass bolt as it slid into place, trying to put stock in it.

By that time he would be in such a rising spiral of disbelief and fear he would have to look the room. Down on his belly to look beneath the bed and see only floor there but not believe that and have no choice except to continue looking, lifting and lowering the bedskirt time after time. It wouldn't matter that the bed frame was only seven inches from the floor and that it would be impossible for anyone to squeeze under. So caught up in it, he would have lost his sense of proportion.

He would have to look it all—under the commode, the chest, the chaise. Behind the portiere drapes. Such a traditional hiding place they always gave him trouble, those drapes.

And when, exhausted, he was finally convinced that he believed he had everything locked and looked enough, he would get into bed and try to keep himself believing until he fell asleep.

This would be that kind of night, Wintersgill thought.

Unless therapy helped him.

More often than not after therapy he was able to lock right up and go straight to sleep.

At quarter to one he dialed the number.

An hour later he answered the front door.

"I'm Millicent," she said, smiling impressively and stepping in before she was invited.

Not her true name but conscientiously appropriate, Wintersgill thought. She looked Millicent. Tall and brunette with the good bones of a well-bred. More beautiful than pretty. If she'd been gamine or ingenue or horse-faced he would have refused her.

He led her into the living room.

She walked well, he noticed, and he also noticed that she sat nicely in the large armed chair, not up on the edge of it but deep in it as though such luxury was commonplace for her. Everything about her that he took in was important to him, every little thing. She was wearing a knee-length dress of crepe de chine, a dark blue that was just a bit livelier than navy. At the least a good designer copy. It was long-sleeved, ample at the upper arm, tapering to the wrist. The large square-cut stone of the ring on the third finger of her right hand blazed enough to be imagined a diamond, as did the stones of her ear clips.

"May I offer you something to drink?"

"What are you having?"

"Evian." He'd drunk two glasses while awaiting her.

"All right," she said and stipulated, "Evian sans gaz."

"Ice?"

"No," she said, purposely leaving off the thank-you.

While he was getting her Evian she found the money. Where she'd been told it would be: beneath the most recent issue of Connoisseur on the table beside her chair. New hundred-dollar bills, twenty of them. She counted them before putting them into her evening bag.

He returned with her Evian in a crystal goblet so fine she felt, as she sipped, it might shatter on her lips.

His gaze was on her.

She met it for a moment with her strong gray eyes and then glanced about the room. "Quite charming," she said as though she almost approved.

Wintersgill tried not to think that she was probably a passe fashion model who hadn't married well but intended to, who was in the throes of that interim stage of having to depend on what she'd saved, which was only herself, and that barely in the nick of time. Keeping herself above the milieu with wardrobe, with address, was vital to her ends. He tried not to think there was nothing more pathetic and more easily compromised to extremes than beauty desperate for money. He studied her nose, decided it hadn't been pared. There was nothing he detested more than a face overly reliant on a revised nose, a peasant looking to pass.

He gulped his Evian and gave her the conversational openings.

Millicent said, rather credibly, that she'd just returned from the Algarve, adored Portugal, adored the people, their eager humility, so different from the French and Italians and especially the Greeks in that respect.

Millicent said, and it seemed entirely possible, that she'd spent most of last winter being shared by Eleuthera and Steamboat Springs. Had he ever skied Steamboat or Crested Butte? Marvelous snow, and not nearly as stuffy as St. Moritz. Although, of course, the accommodations were not adequately seasoned, never would be.

Wintersgill accepted the quality of her voice, its typical affectations, the way it handled vowels. Only once did she give herself away with an error of speech. He was also grateful for her presumptuous and condescending airs. Yes, he concluded, if anyone would do, it was this Millicent.

Without his verbally suggesting it, they went into his bedroom, through, and on into the bath area.

He relaxed on one of the chaises while she undressed. She had on expensive underwear.

He waited until she was nude before he removed his dressing robe to also be nude. He had the start of an erection, just enough tumescence to make him hang heavier. From anticipation rather than from wanting her.

Using both hands she gathered her dark hair back, glanced at him questioningly. He gestured no and she released her hair, got it more or less back into place by tossing and shaking her head haughtily. "I went to an exhibition of jewelry at Christie's yesterday," she said with characteristic ennui. "Only a few pieces were worthwhile: a Schlumberger emerald-and-sapphire choker, for one. The rest were the usual leftovers, things various people we know have, with good reason, tired of."

She stepped down into the elongated, sunken bathtub. No water in it. She stretched out, languorously.

Wintersgill gave the situation a moment to register sufficiently. He went to the tub, straddled it, stood with one foot on each side of it.

From her point of view he loomed like a colossus, his genitals dominant. He controlled the intention of his huge limp cock with his fingers.

She had been instructed not to close her eyes while he urinated on her. She was to cower and protest, express how repelled she was by it, scream out, flail to almost fend it off, writhe evasively.

Her face was cringing ugly with distaste, as Wintersgill shook his cock and the final few drips fell on her. He put on his dressing robe and left her there. She had only five minutes to cleanse, dress, and be gone, because he needed the experience to be as fresh as possible in his mind.

It was two thirty when Wintersgill heard the front door closing behind her.

At four o'clock he was in his bedroom. On the floor behind a bergere. Rivulets of perspiration running down his neck and back and sides, his heart pounding like some separate creature trying to burst out. He had been looking that corner for nearly half an hour, just that empty corner.

And there was still most of the room to do.

Dance, diamonds, dance.

So glittery and gleeful looking.

It doesn't matter; 47th Street is still a way of woe, habitually heartsick. Even its most prosperous days are enjoyed with characteristic despondency. Ask a 47th Street dealer how business is, and although it's been only an hour since he made the deal of his dreams, he will hunker his head into the shrug of his shoulders, make a glum mouth, and say things could be a lot better. That's how most 47th Street people are. Wouldn't think of passing up a chance to commiserate, to wail at least a little, to find fault. That faultfinding disposition might very well have a lot to do with the way they're forever looking down into diamonds with their magnifying loupes and nearly always coming up with something wrong.

Naturally, in such an atmosphere any rumor of misfortune is quick to spread. Those men in pairs or threes seen huddled on the sidewalks of the street aren't always in the course of making pocket-to-pocket deals. More often than not what they're up to is putting downside rumors in one another's ears.

One such rumor had been along the street for several weeks. Springer & Springer was going to fold, it was said and heard and said. Springer & Springer couldn't recover from the nearly total loss it had recently suffered.

Such a pity. See what could all at once happen to even a solid third-generation firm? Kaput

Springer, by merely tearing the comer off an eight-by-ten manila envelope, squelched all that tattle. Out of the envelope and onto his white desk pad poured some ten million dollars' worth of goods, a mix of colored stones and diamonds. A fourth of what Audrey had dropped from her stocking yesterday afternoon. On his way to the office today Springer had stopped at his bank and put the rest of the goods, worth thirty or so million, into his safety deposit box. He had decided to feed the goods into the firm in reasonable portions, so never at any one time would there be more than ten to twelve million in his safe. Then, if he got hit again (an increased possibility, now that he and Danny weren't on good terms), at least he couldn't be wiped out. Not only that. There were taxes. A sudden forty million into the flow of the firm would be a bit much. No need to rub the IRS's nose in it. Business just reasonably better than usual was how things should appear, and, as usual, like everyone else on the street: one set of books, but another in his head.

The goods made a pretty pile on Springer's sorting pad. It wasn't right for them to be in a haphazard mixture like that. Agitated, the diamonds might bully the not-so-hard rubies and sapphires and especially the even softer emeralds, scratch or fracture them. Springer would feel better when they were all sorted and graded and folded away in their individual briefkes. He and his assistant, Linda, would do that together.

When Linda saw the goods pour from the envelope her legs went. She had to sit. In keeping with the code that the right to handle goods belonging to another is never assumed, she asked, "May I?"

Permission granted by Springer with a casual gesture.

Linda used the side of her tweezers randomly to separate some of the goods from the main pile. By lightly running the tweezers back and forth she spread them into a single layer, then isolated several sapphires, intense pinks and Burma blues in the six- to ten-carat range. With professional deftness, she flipped the sapphires over onto their faces so, one at a time, she could more easily get a pinching hold on their girdles and bring them to her eye. While she examined them through her ten-power loupe the sounds that came from her were similar to those usually drawn out by physical ecstasy. She was too loyal and too knowledgeable about the ways of the trade to ask where Springer had gotten these fine goods or how much he'd paid for them.

"We're going to expand," Springer said.

"Looks like we already have."

"From now on you're in charge of all colored goods."

"I'm what?"

He told her again, explained that Springer & Springer would no longer be dealing exclusively in diamonds. She would make sure that was known by all the major dealers of sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. She would be calling on the buyers at Cartier and Tiffany, Van Cleef and whoever, charming orders out of them. She would establish sources in Bangkok and be going there at least once a year, and to Bogota, and probably even more frequently to Paris and Geneva.

It hit Linda's dream so squarely on the nose she had to tell herself it would be awful if she cried. She always looked as though she had an eye infection when she cried. Now was a moment to be at her best.

"Regarding salary," Springer said. "Triple what you're making, and we'll work out some sort of commission."

Linda knew graduate gemologist assistants such as herself who felt trapped in the trade, who had practically given their eyesight, and in some instances much more, to their jobs, and in return received only twenty-five-dollar raises and a spritzer of Estee Lauder for Christmas. This was her break, the helping hoist over the hump. "I'll still be answering to you, won't I?"

"Only when I ask," Springer said lightly.

She thanked him. Three times. Was tempted to get gushy about it. She sent him her most purely grateful look and then, to ease the earnestness of the moment she added a smack of her usual dalliance. "Damn that Audrey," she declared, smiling, which, of course, expressed all the otherwises. She pincered up one of her new charges, a six-carat ruby that she would get no less than twelve thousand a carat for. While momentarily lost in the ruby's blood-red atmosphere, she told Springer in a by-the-way manner, "Mal's here."

"Here in the office?"

"Came in about an hour ago. To get something from his desk, so he said. He's been just sitting in there."

"Do me a favor. Go in and let him know I want to see him."

"Want to or would like to?"

Within a couple of minutes Mal appeared in the doorway, his eyes avoiding Springer's.

"Come on in. Sit down." Springer had never seen Mal's hair so in need of a trim. His sideburns were bushed out, uneven. He had on a fresh shirt but it was missing the second button down. No tie. His suit was badly creased in all the places a suit creases when it's been worn for several days straight. This was Mal but not the same Mal, Springer thought. Different in the eyes and the set of his mouth. That Marcie had stolen more than gems.

"How was the retreat?" Springer asked to begin.

"It was okay."

"Just okay?"

"The food was bad."

"The no-talking part must have been worse."

"Truth is I didn't get there."

"Oh?"

"I was in Pennsylvania but not there. I was in New Hope."

"Great name for a place. Does it live up to it?"

"For some people, maybe."

"What did you do in New Hope?"

"Nothing. Went for walks, tried to sleep a lot. Nothing." It was evident that Mal was ambivalent about being there, facing Springer. He kept glancing in the direction of the door, even had one leg out favoring that side of his chair, ready to take the first exiting step. "What's happening with Jake?" Mal asked.

"He goes in for his second chemotherapy tomorrow morning."

"Poor kid." Just two words but with a lot of caring in them.

The sorting pad on Springer's desk was bare now. Springer had hurriedly scooped up the goods and put them away, only to eliminate the distraction. He sat back, studied his uncle for a long moment, noticed that he'd cut himself while shaving and there was a trace of styptic powder, paler than his complexion, where he'd stopped the bleeding. "Mal," Springer said evenly and with plenty of voice, "what you did stunk."

"I'm sorry. I'll always be sorry," Mal mumbled, hanging his head.

"Sorry isn't enough."

"What can I say?"

"I don't know." A noisy sigh from Springer conveyed exasperation. "But . . . to just up and leave me here to take care of the business the way you did was no fucking way to treat a partner."

"Huh?"

"Maybe you've forgotten how much there is to do. People have goods out on memo and need a nudge, people owe us, clients are in from out of town, there are sights to go to London for, there's always something." Springer's words were harshly angled.

"I thought—"

"What it looks like is you want a free ride. Well, let me tell you, there isn't going to be any free ride. Not on my back."

It was like pumping up a person. Mal sat taller. His chest filled out, and so did his neck and face, visibly recovering.

Springer kept on. "And now, after weeks of fucking off, you show up, but do you show up ready to carry your share? No, you come in a mess, looking like you've been on a train for five days and nights. Christ."

"What do you want me to do?"

Springer sat forward, got Mal by the eyes, told him calmly, softly, "I want you to go home. I want you to stop kicking the shit out of yourself, have a relaxing long weekend, and come in Monday fresh and all set to deal. Can you manage that?"

Mal nodded. Even his eyes had regained some of their former spark. Possibly some of that was because they were welling.

"Did you find what you were looking for in your desk?" Springer asked.

"Yeah. I . . . uh, I just wanted to get my loupe and a couple of personal things. Nothing important."

Springer got up and went to the safe.

"Maybe you should have the combination changed on the safe," Mal suggested, thinking Springer might have already done that.

"Why? Only you and I know it." Springer returned to his desk with a black alligator-covered book: Mal's most recent address and number book with hundreds of active entries in it, from Adele to Zelda. "I figured this was too valuable to just leave there in your desk drawer," Springer said.

Mal accepted the book self-consciously.

"Here's something else," Springer said.

A briefke, no coding or any designation on it.

Mal unfolded it, saw that it contained a dozen diamonds of assorted grades and cuts from a half carat to two carats. With his old practiced hands, Mal shifted the diamonds about, made them show their all, tilted the briefke one way and then the other so the diamonds ran up and down its inner crease. He looked questioningly to Springer.

"A starter kit for your personal use," Springer explained, keeping a straight face.

After Mal left, Linda came back in and she and Springer got started on the new goods. Each stone had to be weighed to the hundredth of a carat, measured to the millimeter, classified, given an appropriate coded identity, placed into its briefke, and itemized on a confidential master list. It was a painstaking task, even for two experienced professionals. It would take days.

They went hard at it, working systematically, doing the colored stones first, not deciding on any prices for those until Linda had a better, longer look at them and the current market. There was more latitude, more room for personal appreciation and opinion in determining the value of colored goods. On the other hand, the value of diamonds was about as fixed as a monetary system. A well-cut two-carat E-graded diamond of WSl quality was worth specifically so much on any given day.

Springer told the receptionist to hold all calls except one. That one came in at five o'clock.

"It's been such a long day," Audrey said.

"What have you been doing?" Springer asked.

"Mainly?"

"Mainly."

"Loving the presence of your absence for one thing."

"What else?"

"How about yearning you?"

"Nifty."

"Are you looking out your window?"

"I am now."

"Can you see this?"

On a high corner of Trump Tower nine blocks up Fifth Avenue Springer made out a little on-and-off flash, as if the building itself was scintillating in that one spot.

Amused, he asked, "Is that your smile?"

"It's the light in my eyes for you, lover. Telling you to get your ass home."

Audrey was at one of the downtown facing windows of her apartment catching and reflecting the late-day sun with a silver-framed hand mirror.

"You're a compulsive flasher," Springer told her. "That's what you are."

"You'll be forever discovering such colorful things about me."

Springer liked the forever.

"When will you be finished there?" Audrey asked.

"Another hour, hour and a half."

"That's ages. I'll have cobwebs between my knees by then."

There was in her voice the quality that Springer had come to recognize meant if he were to say he'd be there in a few minutes, upon arrival he'd find her supine, waiting.

"What is it you're doing that's so important?" she asked.

He told her what he was doing.

"If you absolutely had to, you could leave there in ten minutes?"

"If."

"Good. I'll also leave here in ten minutes. I'll walk down the shady side of the avenue, you walk up, and we'll meet halfway. We'll shop some windows and you can buy me a triple-dip Haagen-Dazs to get me to do something ingeniously lewd later."

She clicked off before he had a chance to turn down or agree with her suggestion. He knew if he called her back she'd just let it ring. He gathered up the goods he and Linda had processed and those they had yet to do and locked them in the safe. They would continue with them tomorrow.

On the hook on the back of his office door was his suit jacket. Also, hanging there by the strap of its holster harness was his .451 magnum automatic pistol exactly like the one Audrey had fired at the Town and Country faces pinned to the old bam in Sherman. Ever since the Townsend robbery, Audrey wouldn't let Springer go anywhere without it. Each time he was leaving the apartment she frisked him to make sure. He tried to kid her out of it but she was adamant, repeated that club-and-sword reasoning of hers, and reminded him again that the world was more violent than ever, merely cloaked in controls.

Disagreeing with her was always such a disagreeable thing for him that he just went along with her on it. It was only a phase, he told himself, probably some temporary offshoot of that craving she had for danger. Would pass.

To accommodate the wearing of her own .451 automatic, Audrey had bought quite a few new things by Giorgio Armani and Perry Ellis. How she wore the weapon depended on what she happened to be wearing. With an opaque and roomy top she wore it in a shoulder holster. With the new looser-legged slacks she wore it in an ankle holster. When neither was the case she tossed it into her carryall. One night when they were dining at La Grenouille she had on a regular-length dress with a rather fitted top. Springer believed she had to be sans her .451. She'd given up on it, he thought, gladly assuming that he would no longer have to go everywhere with death under his wing. When he broached the subject she guided his hand beneath the table to her inner thigh, and there it was.

Now, Springer flexed his shoulders to get the elasticized straps of the harness comfortably situated. Attached flat to the face of the straps were three extra clips, loaded. The holster was compact, especially made for the .451. The snubby silencer was attached. Springer shifted the holster slightly to make sure of its position. It fit close against his upper side. He had gotten somewhat used to the hardness of its being there.

He put on his jacket, adjusted his shirt cuffs. The receptionist had gone but he heard Linda on the phone in her office. She would lock up. He reached in under the receptionist's desk and pressed the button to let himself out. While he was in the corridor awaiting an elevator, his watch showed he had one minute to spare of the ten Audrey had specified.

The instant he stepped out of the 580 Building he saw the brown Daimler limousine at the curb. Audrey was in the rear seat and Groat, the chauffeur, was attending the open rear door. Springer's immediate thought was there had been a change of plans that involved Libby. He was disappointed. The walk and intimacies Audrey had proposed were far more to his liking.

Springer was halfway across the wide sidewalk when he sensed something wasn't right. He paused, took everything in. There was another man, a driver or whatever, in the Daimler's front seat. The man had his back to Springer, was half turned to Audrey. The glass partition between the driver and passenger compartments was down. On the opposite side of the Daimler, double-parked parallel to it, was a black Cadillac limousine, two men in its front seat. All but its front windows were tinted dark. The thing about the Cadillac that struck Springer as a bit strange was how close it was to the Daimler, within a couple of inches. It gave him the impression that the two cars were related. Then came the realization that the Cadillac, positioned as it was, would prevent anyone from getting out of the Daimler on the driver's side, and yet Groat was out. Groat was standing there with his hand on the rear door handle, the corners of his mouth unwillingly pulled up to appear pleasant, as if he were trying to coax a bird into a cage.

Audrey was up on the edge of the rear seat, leaning out to him, her hand extended to him. She was smiling, but not with her eyes. Distress in her eyes, Springer thought. "Hello, darling!" she greeted loudly.

The giveaway.

They never said hello or goodbye to one another.

Springer continued on across the sidewalk to the car door. He reached in to accept Audrey's welcoming hand, seemed to be getting in, when he stepped back and pulled. Yanked Audrey out past a surprised Groat.

As soon as there was sidewalk beneath Audrey's feet she began to run. Springer still had her by the hand and she was practically towing him. But now that she was out of the Daimler and on the crowded street, shouldn't they stop so he could find out what this was all about?

Springer glanced back. He saw three men and then another getting out of the Cadillac. They stood tall, scanned the moving crowds on the avenue. They were heavyset men, the Libby sort, the type that constantly cordoned her with their physical efficiency and expert lethalness. But why, Springer wondered, were they so aggressively concerned with him and Audrey? He glanced back at them again, saw they were in pursuit, keeping to the curb and the gutter so not to be impeded by the sidewalkers.