quite so badly. I shrugged.
“She should have had a synthetic.” This was none of my business. “Some manmakes are red hot. I mean cubic zirconias usually won’t chip, which natural zircon sometimes does — not as hard, you see, though nothing’s quite up to diamond. And finding a big natural zircon can be a pig because they’re usually pretty small.”
More silence, everybody looking. I cleared my throat, running out of facts.
“Ceylon exports them. People used to call colourless zircons Matara diamonds, after a town there.” Pause. That was my lot, unless they got me a good library. “I like natural zircon. Mrs. Brandau’s were terrific, though not worth much. Zircon,” I bleated on desperately, “gets a bad press. Like colourless sapphires. You can’t give them away nowadays, yet they’re beautiful stones.”
No response. I began to sweat, casting about in my mind for more bits gleaned from my sordid past. Mrs. Aquilina crossed her legs, driving me mad just when I wanted to concentrate. Jennie and Orly were intent, Nicko gazing off somewhere. His wife was nearly smiling, hard eyes on me.
“The woman,” she said softly. I swallowed.
“The only reason women wear natural zircons nowadays is if it’s their Zodiac thing. Or if the setting’s complicated and old and it’d take too long to have replicas made.” I gave a stiff grin. End with a joke. “There’s a lot of thieves about. So I’d use the antique phonys because the setting’d convince even if the gemstones wouldn’t…”
And I wished I hadn’t, because suddenly it was no joke. I learned that when Nicko moved. His head swivelled, but so slowly it was like waiting for a salvo. His eyes stilled me. Black as coal. I felt my feeble smile fade.
“Try him out,” he said.
THEY took me to a small room a mile down some corridor. God, but white corridors daunt your spirits, don’t they. What’s wrong with a bit of colour, for God’s sake?
For an hour Orly and Jennie showed me stones of varying sorts, including zircons in various cuts, spinels and colourless stones, mounted and unmounted. I was worn out, but becoming less scared as I worked through the gems in their plastic envelopes. Mrs. Aquilina came in to watch from time to time, smoking her head off but graceful with her cigarette and giving submerged looks. An elderly man called Sokolowsky had brought the gems. He sat by, saying nothing. Presumably the jeweller. He’d brought the instruments every antique dealer knows and hates—they tell whether a dealer’s speaking the truth. You can put the fear of God in a jeweller by simply asking for a handlens, a microscope, a refraction gadget. (Don’t let him tell you he hasn’t got these essentials handy—notice that all jewellers have a little dark alcove behind the counter?) I was nearly thrown by a synthetic turquoise; the sod had treated it with paraffin, as if it were a natural stone, so I had a bad minute with the microscope. The most valuable instrument is an old pair of Polaroid sunglasses, but I shelved that dealer’s trick and did it all properly, for show.
All the while I was thinking, a brilliant-cut diamond of six carats isn’t much less than half an inch across, if the proportions are about right. Sophie Brandau’s zircons had been way above that diameter, from what I could remember. So her real ones must have been worth a king’s ransom. Yet what did it matter if she’d decided to wear el cheapo copies? Women often do that for security, leaving their priceless tom in the bank. Sweating less, I handed Jennie the list of the forty gems they’d given me, and waited while the old bloke ticked them off, nodded, packed his stuff and departed with a wheeze.
Orly sat with me, talked animatedly and with open friendliness about last night’s party, being witty about the guests, making me relax.
Then I was sent for by Nicko, who told the middle distance, “He’s hired.”
“Hired?” I glanced from Nicko to Jennie, to Orly, to Gina who by now had worked up into a genuinely frank actual smile, and very lovely it was.
“Well, thanks, er Nicko, I’ve already got a job. I honestly think I’d better stick with it.”
The world iced.
“Is he real?” Nicko asked, passing a hand in front of his forehead.
Jennie wasn’t so pale now. She gave a hand flap. Two suited blokes lifted me off my feet and flung me out, along, down into a limo. All the way I was thinking: Hired? Hired for what? I mean, what good was I to a man like Nicko? To Jennie, Orly? To New Jersey, even, now I’d got it pinpointed on the world map?
I had a headache, my freedom, two jobs, and a growing terrible notion that I suddenly knew far too many people in America.
Thank goodness I hadn’t told Nicko’s lot quite everything about the blue velvet lady. Like an idiot, I actually thought I’d got away with something.
CHAPTER FIVE
« ^ »
THAT Monday started so odd that I began to wonder what I was doing wrong. Or right. I had a visitor, discovered a familiar face, and got yet another job.
The minute I arrived at Manfredi’s I got an envelope. The place was hardly open when in came a Suit. It was the huge truncated man who’d sat beside the limo driver the previous night. He gave me a thick manila, asked for coffee.
“I’m Tye Dee, Lovejoy,” he said without blinking. He sat on a stool like a cartoon elephant, overflowing all round. “I bring the word. Capeesh?”
“Sure, sure.” The word?
He watched me pour coffee, then left without touching it. Lil was close by and gave a phew.
“Ya got him for a friend, Lovejoy, ya gotta friend.”
