Stone 588 (4 page)

"Let's see what you have," Springer told Drumgold to begin.

The words corrected the course of Drumgold's thoughts. He'd been momentarily coveting the youth of this Springer fellow, the energies in store, all the chances not yet taken. He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, thoroughly, and brought his good but far from new Moroccan leather briefcase to his lap. He had a little trouble with one of its snaps but got it unstuck. He didn't fumble inside the case, evidently had come well organized. He brought out a "briefke," a sheet of paper folded five times a certain way down to 31/2 by 21/2 inches. He placed it on the desk.

Springer hardly lifted it from the surface as he opened it, deftly, although mainly with his thumbs. It was something he'd done countless times. The folds of a briefke form a pocket to hold stones. This one contained melee, ten-pointers in this case, or, in other words, at the standard 100 points per carat, stones that were one tenth of a carat. Fifty of them. Springer examined them only for a moment before setting the briefke aside.

Drumgold presented another.

More melee. Twenty pointers of a better quality. A hundred carats in the lot.

Springer also set these aside without revealing interest. He turned partly away from Drumgold, not actually giving attention to what was outside his window. His usual view: tarred rooftops and standpipes, the dun-shaded symmetry of Rockefeller Center, the spires of St. Patrick's cathedral contrasting with the ominous black of Olympic Tower, and, a few blocks farther up the avenue. Trump Tower, also black and attractively sinister. To Springer they were like the elements of a painting or a photograph he'd looked at so often there were no more discoveries.

After another lot of melee of nearly the same size and quality. Springer asked, "Did Holtzer say these are the sort of goods I might want?"

"No."

"All you have is melee?"

"At the moment," Drumgold said, his eyes dropping.

The point had been reached where Springer could kiss Drumgold off, do something else with his time, perhaps sort through and match up some of the two-carat stones now in inventory. However, Drumgold's last three words moved Springer to consider all the fine precious stones that had probably passed through this man's hands. All the glowing times when he'd bought well or sold well. Beautiful deals made and celebrated. Now the years, like a sieve, had him down to melee.

"These your best?" Springer indicated the three briefkes he'd opened.

Drumgold had several briefkes in hand. He thumbed through them and extracted one.

Springer unfolded it. After a glance he tilted it, and the diamonds flowed down the groove of a crease and out onto the white paper sorting pad on his desk.

He ran the edge of his tweezers over them, gently disturbing them, provoking scintillations. When bunched as they were, they borrowed brilliance from one another. He wanted to see how they did on their own. There were eighty stones in the lot. Round-cuts of a quarter of a carat each. Twenty carats total. Springer separated about a third of the diamonds from the rest. Using the tweezers he turned those over one at a time, so they were all table down, their pointed bottoms up. He did it with professional swiftness, arranged the stones into a single row, spaced about an eighth of an inch apart.

This enabled him to observe their color through their pavillion facets. He went over them bare-eyed and then with the help of a tripod table loupe that magnified them ten times. Bent over with his eye close down to the loupe he inspected the color of each stone, compared it with its companions, while also searching for inclusions, specks of carbon, clouds, or any other imperfections.

"Aikhal goods," Drumgold said.

Springer had already figured they were Russian, from their colorless quality. They were so white they looked frozen, an appropriate characteristic inasmuch as they had been mined in a region of Siberia called Yakut, where the earth never thawed. Aikhal diamonds were the finest out of Yakut, and, as nature's frequent perversity would have it, they were also the most difficult to get at.

Springer took up a single stone with his tweezers, used an eye loupe to look at it. Its cut appeared perfectly proportioned, the underpart of the stone in proper ratio with that above its girdle. Its facets were clean, sharp-edged, and precisely angled so the spread of its face was right. Everything about the cut contributed to getting the greatest possible brilliance from the stone.

"Nice make," Springer said, to the stone as much as to Drumgold. He inspected the cut of several others. They were identical. It was known the Soviets were now using electronic devices that could be set to cut to such perfection.

"How much?" Springer asked.

"Finest water, those," Drumgold said. The old epitome of British praise for diamonds.

A maybe shrug from Springer. He sat back, pushed back from his desk a way. "You regularly handle Russian goods?"

Drumgold told him no, regretfully. "I happened onto these in Hong Kong. They were part of a larger lot. The far better part, I must say."

Nothing unusual about that. Sellers nearly always fattened their better lots with stones of lesser quality.

"I went a bit overboard on them," Drumgold admitted.

Springer took that as part of Drumgold's sell.

Drumgold did a little scoffing grunt and diverted his eyes. "By now I should be beyond such foolishness, not heeding my common sense, allowing diamonds to have the final say." He paused briefly to consider his words. Again the stones prevailed. "But they are lovely goods, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Be something, wouldn't it, if they were each twenty carats?"

Springer didn't go along with that dream, but the times of his own similar losses occuned to him, when the owning of a certain lot or stone had mattered more to him than his better judgment. It hadn't happened much, however. Perhaps, he thought, the tally had been no greater for Drumgold when he was thirty-four. "What price have you put on them?" Springer asked.

Drumgold didn't reply quickly and firmly as he should have. "Sixteen," he said, meaning sixteen dollars a point, sixteen hundred a carat.

Springer looked to Drumgold's eyes, saw the off-color of their whites, the shade of old yellowish pearls, outlined by the pink of his inflamed lids. What business battle was left in the gray of the irises was not enough. "Will you take a check?" Springer asked him.

"Of course," Drumgold managed to say. He was stunned that there'd be no haggling.

"I can give you cash."

"Whichever accommodates you. A check will be fine."

Springer gathered up the Russian melee with a small flat scoop. On the counter within reach of his chair was an electronic scale about the size of a toaster oven stood on end. He transferred the stones from the scoop to the shallow pan housed within the scale. The hitting of the little diamonds on metal sounded disproportionately loud. The readout in green numbers on the face of the scale settled on 20.60 carats.

"Make it an even twenty," Drumgold said.

That sixty points just conceded was worth $960. Springer held back from refusing it. Better he should allow some reciprocity. He poured the stones back into their briefke and closed its folds. Drumgold put away his other goods while Springer wrote out a check for $32,000.

"How long will you be in town?" Springer asked.

"Perhaps a week. It's been a while since I was last here. I find everything even taller and faster than I remember. London is my home field, naturally."

"So then you're probably a sight holder." After a deal. Springer usually eased things down with conversation: a tactic his father had instilled.

"Used to be. For many years I was one of the chosen. Got struck off."

Only Springer's eyes inquired.

Drumgold told him. "Business was tight for . . . various reasons. I had difficulty raising payment for a couple of packets. Presold them seal unbroken to an Indian dealer. The System got wind of that, of course. Didn't approve. Didn't approve of an Indian getting such goods nor of my financial bind. My very next packet was half again larger — only half, mind you — but the price The System put on it was three times as much. Three million. They had me. I couldn't presell the packet. I couldn't buy it. I was out."

Springer's nod was genuinely sympathetic. He was well acquainted with The System and its ways, as hard and insensitive as the diamonds it controlled.

Drumgold continued. "That was in 'seventy-seven, just before the bren. " Meaning, like a fire out of control, the run-up of diamond prices from $8,000 to $63,000 per D-flawless carat. It lasted from 1978 to 1980. "Unfortunate timing for me. Could have recouped, possibly even made a bundle." Drumgold's good-loser smile was incongruous with his recollections. His teeth were tea-stained.

Springer got up and went to the safe, situated within a recess of the near wall. When he swung open its heavy door he realized why he hadn't waited for Drumgold to leave before putting away the Russian melee. He took his time, enough to deal with the ambivalence he felt, and then removed from the safe one of several small zippered leather cases. He returned with it to his desk.

Inside the case were at least fifty briefkes. They were neatly filed with contents coded in pencil in their upper left corners. Springer fingered through them. Withdrew one, considered, and decided against two others. "I take it you'll be calling on other people while you're here."

"Yes, I'd thought I would."

"Then perhaps, as a favor, you wouldn't mind showing some of our goods around."

"Happy to oblige."

Springer opened four briefkes. Each contained a diamond: a 2.30 carat, a 3.05 carat, a 2.26 carat, and a 2.01 carat. They were brilliant cuts, E to F in color and of WSl quality: that is, only very very slightly imperfect. These diamonds were part of a parcel that had recently arrived at Springer & Springer from one of its contract cutters in Antwerp, had just been placed in inventory. Springer took a pad of memos from his desk drawer, listed the stones on it along with their weight and price per carat. In the diamond trade a memo serves as combination record, receipt, and promissory note that is made out whenever a stone but not money changes hands. Drumgold's signature acknowledged his having received the goods and assumed responsibility for them up to the amount indicated. Springer kept the memo original; Drumgold got the carbon copy. He shook Springer's hand across the desk and again at the door as Springer showed him out.

Back at his desk Springer was in the wake of what he'd just done. He felt his father's presence admonishing but also commending. He could have bought the Russian melee from Dnimgold for less, surely for twelve, maybe ten. Was it a weakness that he hadn't been able to put his knee on that old neck? Actually, nothing was lost other than the profit not taken. He was sure that a client, a jewelry manufacturer in Chicago, would pay sixteen for that melee.

The four stones from inventory were, however, something else. The price per carat he had stipulated on the memo would just about cover cost. Drumgold would be able to sell them easily, make a nice profit for himself, twenty-five thousand minimum. Well, hell, that had been the idea of it, hadn't it? That and to supply the old casualty with something to go in with to make him a bit more significant than melee.

Springer zipped up the leather case, returned it to the safe. There was no sin in being soft in such a hard business once in a while, he told himself. At least he thought that was himself he heard.

At that moment Linda looked in to see if Springer was alone. She was the all-around assistant, a graduate gemologist who appreciated that she was in a good spot with Springer & Springer. She'd been with the firm for four years. She was twenty-five, and not merely attractive, a natural blonde who helped herself to some strawberry. Linda was extremely capable. She knew diamonds, could even grade rough when necessary. Her real love, however, at least when it came to stones, was color, especially sapphires. Springer shared that with her.

"Mal called," she said. She came all the way in.

"Where is he?"

"I'm sure I heard the rustle of satin sheets."

"No clinking of glasses?"

"Just rustle. He said he was on his way in, whatever that might mean."

"I have to leave in a half hour. If Mal doesn't get here, can you cover?"

"No problem. I was supposed to meet a hunk at Lutece but I'll order lunch in.

"Go to Lutece."

"I would," she flung at him on her way out, "if it was the truth."

Springer could only damn Mal's behavior.

Malcolm was his uncle, his father's younger brother. Malcolm was sixty-one. A bachelor by nature and preference, he believed he knew and had the wherewithal to provide what most thirty-year-old women needed. That confidence was probably the moving force behind his numerous carnal successes, although the fact that he was a diamond dealer must have often counted considerably.

Uncle Malcolm's libidinal irrepressibility was a principal reason for the early assumption that Springer would follow in the business. His father, Edwin Springer, had long ago given up any hope that brother Malcolm would change his ways. Edwin had believed that left solely to Malcolm the firm would be taken over by the banks or be in chapter eleven within a few years — perhaps even sooner — reduced to nothing by paternity suits.

Springer & Springer was founded in 1908 by brothers Willard and Bernard Springer. Bernard was the elder by eight years. They were the sons of an unenterprising merchant whose farm supply store, located in New Milford, Connecticut, did not expand an inch or show an increase in profit for twenty-five years. Not taking after his father, Bernard set out to do better when he was twenty-five. Willard, who was seventeen, tagged along. They went places, shipped out of Boston as deckhands. However, they had no ultimate destination until the possibility of precious stones took over their optimism.

In 1901 their ship had them in Salvador, Brazil. They signed off there and went inland four hundred miles to the province of Minas Gerais. Diamonds had been discovered there in 1725.