West 47th (32 page)

“A raise,” he corrected back. “In this country a rise is something else altogether and I'm sure you've caused a great many but what you want in this case is a raise.”

“Whatever.”

“Please order my sandwich.”

Mitch went into his office. He cleared his desk and moved the two visitors' chairs aside to make enough room on the carpet. He wanted to do this alone, indulge in the doing.

He placed the Kalali file on his desk. The four-page numerically itemized loss list, the twenty pages of corresponding descriptions and appraisals and the eight-by-ten color photographs of each of the forty-eight stolen, now restolen, items.

He arranged the photographs on the carpet. According to their loss list numbers in four orderly rows, twelve to a row with space in between to move about from row to row.

He paused to consider and appreciate what he was doing. No need to hurry, make it last, he thought, although at the finish there'd be the phone call to Ruder, the six-hundred-thousand phone call. He thought the wish that he'd made the recovery for someone, anyone, other than Ruder.

Shirley came in with his lunch. She laid it out nicely on the ledge behind his desk and he sat upon the ledge while he ate. He invited her to join him and she got her thermos of tea and sat with him.

“About the raise …” he started.

“It's nothing that has to be decided right off,” she told him. “I mean, it's not critical.”

“Oh?”

“If you say no then no it is and none the worse.”

“You won't quit on me?”

“Lord no. I have the best job in the district. Working elsewhere would be bloody painful. It's just that I'm so far behind on my layaways that it seems I'll never catch up. Saturday last I went overboard, put twenty down on a silk blouse at Saks and forty more on a jacket that hooked me with its reduced sign at Bergdorf.” She did a sag. “I'm incorrigible.”

Mitch had the urge to give her an encouraging hug as well as a raise. A mere, platonic hug couldn't be misconstrued as sexual harassment, could it? “Would a hundred more a week help?” he asked.

Shirley's sun came on. “It would just about free me!”

“Then make it a hundred and fifty.”

“That's too much.”

“Today it isn't.”

Shirley kissed him. On the cheek but close to the mouth. He noticed she was wearing an expensive scent. She immediately gathered up the remnants of his lunch and went out to her desk. Mitch hadn't thought it possible that he could feel any better but he did. Not hugely, but he did. Generosity is therapeutic, he thought, especially when it's affordable.

He returned his attention to the Kalali swag. He removed it all from the attaché case, and referring to the loss list, used a black magic marker to note the designated number of each piece on the outside of the transparent envelope that contained it.

That done, he set about to place each piece on its corresponding photograph. He was busy at it when Hurley showed up.

A gesture was Hurley's hello. No smile.

Mitch would let Hurley have the first word, sure it would be congratulatory, something such as
hey, nice going
. But Hurley just stood there taking in the rows of photos on the carpet and the swag. His expression had some glower in it, as though he resented what he was seeing.

“What's your problem?” Mitch asked.

“You didn't wait.”

“I couldn't.”

“Yeah, it was right there and so easy you had to make the move, couldn't help yourself, had to.”

“You know me and having to wait.” Mitch shrugged nonchalantly, trying to lighten the moment.

“I practically perjured myself down in Baltimore in order to make it back here today. You should have waited.”

“What's the difference?”

“None,” Hurley replied too quickly.

Mitch was disappointed by Hurley's reaction, but then Hurley made it right, grinned as though he'd been kidding. “You did good,” he said exuberantly.

“I got lucky,” Mitch said modestly. He related some of his previous night's adventure. The high points and a little of the in-between. He'd gradually dole out the details. “You'll probably want to let the New Rochelle police know about the bodies in the pool.”

“Maybe,” Hurley said, “or maybe somebody should just find them sooner or later.”

Mitch didn't understand that but let it go. He was about half done with correlating the pieces of jewelry and the photographs. Hurley showed mild interest as Mitch returned to that task. “What's with this piece?” Hurley asked, indicating a yet vacant photo of a diamond-encrusted bangle bracelet.

“That one? It's here. I saw it. I just haven't gotten to it.”

Hurley continued perusing the rows of photographs. “And these?” he asked offhand. “Did you happen to notice these?” The two enscribed emeralds.

Mitch was distracted, barely glanced to see which photo Hurley was referring to. “Probably,” he replied.

A grunt from Hurley, a sort of deep subversive sound that seemed to emanate from a Hurley within Hurley. He walked to the window and looked down at 47th. “You'll be turning over everything to Ruder.”

“Yeah.”

“He know you've made the recovery?”

“Not yet.”

“I guess you can't wait to tell him.”

“Six hundred thousand.”

“Anybody know you've got this stuff, other than you and me? Maddie, I suppose she knows.”

“Not even Maddie.”

Hurley unbuckled his belt and retucked his shirt, to offset with preoccupation the directness of what he was about to suggest. “How about fuck Ruder,” he said as though it was an impetuous notion that shouldn't be taken seriously. Unless, of course, Mitch chose to jump on it.

“Sure,” Mitch played along.

“How about you were never in New Rochelle last night. You were anywhere other than New Rochelle. We pop the stones from all this shit, melt down and Ruder gets fucked.”

That last part appealed to Mitch.

Hurley knew that. “How much do you think we'd be looking at?” he asked.

“Two, maybe three million.”

“So, I get my horse farm in Maryland, you can have an all-paid-for place on Martha's Vineyard or somewhere.”

In the various recoveries Mitch had made over the years there'd never been an opportunity such as this. Everything about it was right for doing wrong. No one except Hurley knew he'd made the recovery; Mrs. Kalali and Roger Addison would get their six million from Columbia Beneficial; Ruder would be out on his ass.

“Could you handle it?” Hurley pressed.

“Nearly.”

“I don't think so,” Hurley challenged, “you're too fucking straight. How anyone in this twisted business could stay so straight is beyond me.”

“You're right,” Mitch said, his tone letting Hurley know as far as he was concerned the subject had ended. He continued correlating the swag and was soon done. When he went down the loss list he saw every piece was accounted for.

Except one.

Number 32.

The two enscribed emeralds.

He mentioned that to Hurley.

“Are they actually
missing?
” Hurley asked.

“What do you mean
actually?
”

“Just that maybe they appealed to you.”

“You must be kidding.”

“I wouldn't blame you.”

“Hurley, go out and come in again.”

“Nothing sinful about helping yourself to a little hold-out.”

“Make up your mind. One minute I'm too straight, the next I'm holding out. Shit, if I was going to hold out something from these goods it wouldn't be those two scratched-up emeralds.”

“I guess.”

“No guess to it.”

“Then maybe the emeralds got accidentally dropped someplace. In your car or at home. That possible?”

Mitch considered it. Car? No. Home? No. Andy's during the clean-up? He didn't think so, no. But it was strange that only one item should be missing and that it should be this one. Might Ralph have taken a fancy to them and put them aside? He could have, but would he? Why would he? They weren't the sort of things an experienced fence such as Ralph would keep. They were too identifiable.

“Anyway,” Mitch brightened, “forty-seven out of forty-eight isn't bad.”

Hurley agreed. “Want to go have a beer?”

“I've too much work to do.”

Hurley almost let it go at that. He looked off thoughtfully, as though weighing what had ensued during the last quarter hour. When he brought his look back he did an amending face. “Sorry about the attitude,” he said. “I'm on the rag. My room at the motel in Baltimore was right next to the ice machine.”

“Forget it.”

“Sure about the beer?”

“Maybe later.”

“Later's not good for me. See you tomorrow.”

With Hurley gone, Mitch decided on a time-out. He left the photographs and the swag on the floor, switched off the light and shut himself in. Seated at his desk, he tried to blank his mind. It had been overaccelerating since yesterday and Peaches.

He wished his was the sort of mind that
could
be turned off and on. Some people claimed they could do that. The meditators. He'd never been good at meditating. Once, years ago, he'd attended a transcendental meditation class and given it an open-minded month. At least once each day, sometimes twice, he'd sat quietly with eyes closed and chanted the nonsense syllable that was his mantra. But always some aspect of 47th Street came jabbing in, as though the mantra had usurped its place.

Now he drew in deep breaths, relaxed his shoulders and defeated the urge to turn and peek through the slats of the drawn blinds at Visconti's office across the way and 47th below in its Wednesday summer afternoon mode. Instead of the peek, Mitch imagined it, which was, really, as compulsive as a peek.

The back of Visconti's head above the back of his expensive leather chair. The Luchino Visconti movie poster on the wall beyond. A silver salver of fruit on the side table? On the street below two-thirds of the people would be tourists. Obvious because of the way they were dressed and their stop-and-go walks from window to window, diamonds to diamonds. Tomorrow, Mitch told himself, he'd walk the street, down one side and back up the other. By tomorrow the street would have heard of the recovery. He wouldn't, however, be taking any bows. The street didn't like being deprived. Swag was grist for its mill.

The telephone.

Were his eyes caught on it or was it staring at him? Why hadn't Maddie called? He regretted now not having given her a departing hug. Maybe she was out shopping, defying curbs and bumpers, or maybe at that moment she was seated on a hard bench in the Grecian wing of the Metropolitan absorbing vibrations from ancient marble nudes. He should have hugged her, put some love in her ear. There should never be any should haves.

Why hadn't Ruder called? It would be better if Ruder called him rather than …

It was as though he'd launched the wish and it had been immediately granted. Shirley came on the intercom with:

“Ruder on one.”

Mitch didn't get on the line for nearly a minute, then opened with a busy: “Yes, Keith.” He rarely called Ruder by first name, never thought of him that way.

“How are you, Mitch?”

“Depends on who you ask. What's up?”

“Having not heard from you I was wondering how things were going.”

“You sound as though you've got something,” Mitch told him.

“What do you mean?”

“Could be it's your sinuses. I seem to recall your telling me you had a problem with allergies. A lot of ragweed in the air this time of year. And pollen.” Actually, Ruder sounded the same as ever, stuffy and dry.

“It's probably the connection,” Ruder said a bit exasperated. “Anyway, do you have good news for me? The situation here is getting rather squeezy to say the least.”

“Hang on a second.” Mitch held the receiver at arm's length and covered the mouthpiece lightly while he pretended to be giving instructions to Shirley regarding a letter that had to go out today. The figure two million eight hundred thousand was nonchalantly mentioned. “Now,” he got back to Ruder, “where were we?”

“I was asking if you had any news for me.”

“Oh, yes. I guess you mean regarding the Kalali case.”

“Of course.”

“Didn't you get my message?”

“Message?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Come on now, Keith, you're toying with me.”

“I don't toy!” Ruder snapped, his true disposition coming through. He controlled. “You left a message with my secretary?”

“No.”

“Then with whom?”

“Your secretary must have been out. The electronic answering system was on. You know, that press one if, press two if thing.”

“I didn't get the message.”

“Goes to show that system isn't infallible. Really Keith, you sound raspy. It could be your throat. You ought to have it looked into. I had an acquaintance who sounded similar. He ended up in Sloan-Kettering.”

“What was the goddamn message?” Ruder was only a few nerve ends from losing it.

God, how much he disliked this man, Mitch thought. Why not do what Hurley had suggested: not mention the goods, pop the stones and let Ruder take his fall?

Moment of truth.

“I've recovered the Kalali swag,” Mitch said so rapidly and run together it sounded like nonsense.

“What? What was that?”

“What you wanted to hear.”

“I didn't get it.”

Mitch did an impatient exhale and said again what he'd said, but this time disconnecting and drawing out each syllable.

Ruder was overwhelmed, overjoyed, couldn't hold in a short length of laugh. “You're remarkable,” he said. “I knew you'd come through for me, Mitch. You're remarkable.”

“Yeah.”