Harry turned annoyed eyes on him. 'We've eaten together before, Phillip. Though of course, the meals were not served in the right spirit.
Did something to the appetite. But I've never been one for food.'
Every now and then the echo of Midwestern naivete would come through.
'A man of action, Harry; that's what you should call yourself. Just as I call myself a man of taste. People appreciate being told what you are.' He shrugged his shoulders like a titillated schoolgirl. 'They get all nervous and jumpy inside if they've got to figure it out themselves.'
Harry smiled a bit contemptuously. 'You should have been a psychiatrist, Phillip.'
'I am, I am,' Phillip warmly interrupted. 'I listen to people; I find out what's on their minds, what's in their safe, how they spend their sleepless nights, how many Nembutal they take, when the maid is away, if they like big nasty dogs, if they always imagine they hear footsteps on the parlor floor. Then I add up all my bits of information, sacrifice my peace of mind, and one night when they least expect it, I tiptoe into their bedrooms and carry away their most troublesome burdens.'
'Their money.'
'If it happens to be lying carelessly about.'
'Their jewels.'
'Always. Always their jewels. I find diamonds are a man's most confusing possessions. To own a diamond, you must be neurotic. First of all, you've taken everybody else's word for it that they're beautiful.
Then you've taken the bespectacled little man's word that they're valuable. Often my clients have offered their sacred virginity for a paltry little diamond that hardly shines in the dark. So they give up their cunts, their youth, for a little row of beads that are so valuable they're too heavy to be worn about the neck. They fire the fingers. A woman must sink under the weight of her diamonds.'
'So.'
'So, to save them when they've given up any hope of salvation, when they've buried the jewels in a nasty black safe and worn lighter carefree paste that looks just like the real thing (but they hope no one gets confused and shoots at them for the phonies, too), I enter the room like a merciful surgeon and amputate the choking stones.'
'Careful, Phillip. I thought you were a psychiatrist.'
'A man of taste, Harry. That's all you must remember.'
The waiter made frantic little signs to the maitre d'hotel, who made frantic little signs to the bartender, and their great announcement was made that a table was free. They were gallantly escorted to it. Over the antipasto, they decided to remove poor Mrs. Aldrich's weighty neurosis.
'Mrs. Aldrich,' Phillip explained, 'is one of the most neurotic matrons in Rye.'
'Good.' The words were coming through to Harry unadorned.
'To calm her nerves, she belongs to the Archer Society, the Town and Country League, and a few other local organizations.'
Phillip reached into his thin black briefcase. 'Here,' he said, laying a paper alongside Harry's plate, 'check here.'
'Check,' his partner commented.
'She is, in short, a busy, fashionable, neurotic woman.'
'The kind Carol creates,' Harry interjected.
Phillip looked up sharply. 'Exactly.' The two men forgot about the Aldrich's for a moment, but Harry was the first one to get back to work.
'How long do we have to pull it off?'
'They go to Nassau every year. This month. Never before the 10th, never later than the 25th. We have to know exactly when. She takes the big stuff out of deposit a few days before they leave. That's why we have to know exactly when.'
'What's the layout,' Harry calmly asked.
'The house has eighteen rooms, three floors. Ours is the second.'
'How many servants?'
'A maid, a chauffeur, a cook who goes home evenings.'
'When does the maid go home?'
Phillip smiled at Harry. 'Find out, my boy.'
Harry looked at his watch. It was a nervous gesture, one of the few Phillip had observed. The hour, the minute, the month, the day, the year, all tiny neat numbers in the compact face.
'Today is the 6th; the stuff may already be in the house.'
'Find that out too, Harry.'
The younger man nodded. 'I'll telephone you from Rye tomorrow.'
'Good.' Phillip was pushing his chair back. 'Oh yes,' he added the slight oversight, 'Carol wondered if you needed the $26,000.'
'Minus fifteen percent?'
'Minus fifteen percent.'
'Let's go for a walk,' Harry suggested. 'Let's go look at lots of bright sparkling things.'
Phillip signed the check, adding a generous tip, and the two prosperous looking bourgeois left the restaurant. The walk lasted as far as the outside door. When the doorman rushed over saying, 'Cab, sir,'
Harry nodded. Phillip looked amused. He followed Harry into the cab and grinned with understanding when Harry gave the West 47th Street address.
In the sheltered upholstery of the car, Harry finally said to Phillip,
'Why didn't you tell me who you were in prison?'
'As it works out,' was the reply, 'I think I did the wiser thing to not tell you. What's your story, Harry?'
'It's my one story,' said Harry. 'I made all my money on the Black Market in Europe. What I stole, I brought back. Stashed it in a deposit box. Bundles. Enough for a lifetime. What can they do? I was a paratrooper and it could be true. Your … your Carol was telling me,'
he hesitated, 'that you were busted on Income Tax charges.'
'Yes,' Phillip smiled. 'The rich man's disease. It's replacing gout.'
He frowned theatrically. 'Actually, I got into the cooler,' he was going to play it Harry's way, 'through an overweening love of art. My inventory of paintings fattened out of all proportions to my sales. The north wall in my study alone represents almost $200,000. You need to sell a lot to make that kind of money and live well too. I mean, you can't say you won it all at the races.
'Yes,' his fingers rubbed eyes, 'art is my one great weakness. I can't bear not owning a picture I want, when it's only a matter of a little money between me and possession. It's impossible to explain this or account for oneself when a battery of experts descends on you, goes through your books, makes an inventory. I did my penance.'
He intoned directly to Harry. 'That's my weakness, Harry. What's yours? I've wondered for months, what is Harry's weakness? What's going on behind those eyes staring up at the cell ceiling?'
The cabdriver pulled to the curb and turned around to read off the meter. 'That'll be $4.'
Harry handed him a $5 bill and opened the door for Phillip, 'I don't have a weakness, Phillip. Maybe that's my weakness.'
Phillip shook his arm. 'Of course, you've got your weakness, Harry.
It's not knowing what your great weakness is.' His face was curiously calm. He looked suddenly prophetic, stone-like. 'It makes you a dangerous man. And, I admit, a very brave one.'
On 47th Street, they charge you for the priceless. The diamond hawkers, in slouch hats and baggy pants, lean against the red brick buildings and sell each other immense, perfect stones. The sweet young things who blushingly accept the two-carat love guarantee never touch the sordid. But the diamond merchants have good clean fun.
They take a black smelly case out of their hip pocket and unroll a 100-faceted, blue-white stone. They appreciate it. They appreciate each other.
Phillip and Harry, strangely elegant, strangely incongruous yet part of the scene, threaded their way through the concentrated activity of the exchange. They found an empty wall space and Harry leaned convivially against it.
'I like it here,' he explained.
