Chapter One of The Untimely Demise of an Excellent Customer

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Deborah Makes a Purchase

The subway vomited its contents onto the platform. Passengers streamed out in several directions, heads down, eyes not looking directly at any other person. Many were on cell phones; many more had thin white cords trailing from their ears to some hidden area on their person. I headed for the closest turnstile I could find, got my purse stuck in it, swore, and extricated myself.
Racing up the 3 grimy flights of stairs, I emerged into natural daylight, commotion and the stench of garbage juice. It trickled out of a huge compactor bin on a dark side street. The smell, festering in the October warmth, was strong enough that it triggered an involuntary retch in the back of my throat. At the sound, the woman walking just to my left looked sidelong at me, crossed the street, and continued her frenetic pace. Millions of people, going everywhere, going nowhere; all hurrying to the same fate. Well, they can have New York. I like it a lot, for about a week at a time, twice a year. I come, I spend, and I get the heck out. The trade shows bring me here in early summer; I make all my contacts, stock my store for the year, and refurbish my wardrobe. Then I come back in October to stock up for the Christmas gift-buying season, fill specific diamond requests, and hand pick our famous gift wrap and display. Each time I get here, I am tempted to join the madness; but by the time my flight leaves for home, I have been cured of that whim.

This particular trip saw me on my second to last day in the City. I always save the best for last. I made my way to 47th St. and turned in at one of the less impressive buildings. Riding the elevator up to the 9th floor gave me the same gut lurch elevators always do. I had tried the stairs here once and was so winded by the 6th floor that I had to sneak back to the elevator and cheat for the last three floors. I am not in the best of shape, but I get points for effort, right?
Down a rather twisty hall I found my destination- a large black door with the moniker ‘H. Abramoff, Importer of Fine and Large Coloured Gemstones’ engraved on a red plastic plaque. It looked like most other office doors, just with a little bit more security. Having gotten security clearance downstairs, I was admitted presently and stood gazing at case after case of blazing color. No research lab developed this color; no chemical process was studied and perfected, at least not by mere man. These colors were formed far below the earth’s surface millions of years ago by heat, tectonic plate shifts, and incredible pressure. Then gnomelike men in various parts of the world dug it up and sold it to ferretlike men who studied it and cleaved it and cut it and sold it to lizardlike men who brought it here to be sold to people like me.
The color seeped out of the gems onto the white displays under them, the fire within winked as I moved past. This is why I cannot leave the jewelry business; I am hopelessly trapped by a love of shiny colored rocks.
Mr. Abramoff has his gems arranged by color, in a sort of rainbow. Most jewelry and gem venues arrange by gemstone, but since there are so many colors available in most minerals, it becomes a riot of color. He is in business solely for the color worshipper and therefore wisely caters to us.

I was headed for the brown-red section, which just has to be at the far end of the Mr. Abramoff’s spectrum. So of course the blue purple tanzanite, the grass green moldavite, and the juicy peach precious topaz distracted me on the way. I was so absorbed in my reverie that I jumped when Abramoff himself appeared from nowhere and gripped me by the arm,
“Mizs Peregin! How veddy veddy nizce to see you!”
I only come twice a year but the man always remembers me. He called out to an associate lurking in the back room-
“Mickey! Come help ze lovely Mizs Peregin… Mickey! You eat your lunch later!”
My heart sank just a bit; Mickey was a consummate flirt and rather distracting when I was trying to shop. He came out of the back room with a small piece of onion in the corner of his mouth.
“Hey Deborah, wanna taco? I got chicken, I got beef, which’ll ya have?” His eyes traveled me up and down as he spoke, finally making contact with my own eyes.
“No thanks, I can get just as much satisfaction from smelling them on your breath.”
“HA! Mrs. Funny, huh? Glad to see ya. Where we gonna start?”

Welcome to New York, the melting pot. Mr. Abramoff is about as Russian Jew as one can get, while Mickey DiSaronto is pure Brooklyn. He has the rough accent, his head bobs forward slightly when he speaks, and he’s completely unfazed by any personal insult
Trying desperately to ignore the onion smell on his breath and the souvenir stuck in the crevice of his greasy lips; I asked for garnet.
“We got your rhodolite, we got your demantiod, we got your tsavorite, spessartite, color change. Eh?” His head bobbed with every word but the onion remained firmly in place.
“Actually, I just need plain ol’ Mozambique, as red as you can get it, very large and preferably pear shape.”
“Large red, very hard to find…” he shrugged and opened a drawer.

“You and your pear shapes…” he muttered as he dug through little folded gem papers.
“They make the best pendants.” I replied. He selected a paper, leered at me, pulled out a white velvet pad. The bulge in the paper was fairly significant. I held my breath as he opened it, the paper crinkling softly. The stone that slid out was breathtaking. Mickey was obnoxious, but he knew what I wanted, and he knew his stuff. Nearly an inch and a half long, the pear shape proportions were lovely, the cut perfect, the red fire within seemed alive. The color was almost indescribable; almost a pomegranate seed, almost a drop of blood, definitely a smoldering ember, and nearly a rose petal.
“Looks like a nosebleed.” Mickey said, interrupting my raptures.
No need to ask the price, we both knew I would pay whatever they asked, and my client would pay whatever I asked, which hopefully would be enough of a markup to pay a few bills. But ask I did, and dicker I did, until it was back in its paper, with a cryptic price written on it, and encased in one of those little zipper bags most people associate with drugs. We set it aside and I continued shopping for special pieces.
I had a request for a large perfectly clean squarish emerald from the local neurosurgeon. I guess when your career keeps you at work for over sixteen hours a day you make up to your wife every holiday with a beautiful gift to remind her why you can’t be home. Personally I would rather have my husband home than any sparkly rock; but I’m not married so I what do I know. Besides, it keeps me in business, so who am I to judge? If I eliminated any guilt-induced sales I may as well close up shop and sell shoelaces.
Mickey had reverently pulled a stone paper out of the safe and was slowly opening it. Just from his attitude I knew it was going to be good. Or bad, whichever your viewpoint. The stone slid out on the white velvet and just sat there being beautiful.
“Eight point two carats. Flawless. GIA cert.” Mickey said, now watching me narrowly for my reaction. Eight point two carats of pure green, with a flash of blue in its depths. It was like looking into a steamy Amazon rainforest, if there are any left. A flawless emerald is incredibly hard to find, let alone this perfect in color and cut. It was a nice cushion cut, which is a sort of rounded square. I didn’t even want to ask the price.
“How many digits?” I held up four fingers, knowing I was mad, then added my thumb. Mickey grinned and held up all five fingers, then added a stubby forefinger from his other hand. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still amazes me that something small enough to swallow can cost as much as a moderate house or a luxury car!
“Two hundred thou, give or take some spare change,” he said.
“Wow.” I pulled the velvet pad closer and picked the stone up in the large stone grippers. This is a contraption with 4 thin prong shaped springy wires that can push out from one end and hold the stone for viewing or display, much less dangerous and clumsy than tweezers. Examining the stone under a loupe was as much a delight as a task. It had perfect symmetry, perfect color, and it scintillated. Emeralds usually don’t scintillate. A blast of onion brought me back to earth.
“Hey Deborah, when ya gonna come out here to stay?” Mickey’s Brooklyn accent made my name sound funny, with the emphasis on the ‘De’ rather than the ‘ah’.
“What are you talking about, Mickey?” I asked wearily.
“Out here, New York, me, ya know…”
“You?”
“Yeah, I know you got the hots for me, its ok to admit it. Me an’ you could open our own thing, you make the stuff, I sell it, we have a little place out in Queens or somewheres, a coupla kids. Huh?”
“Mickey, you try this on every female customer you have.”
“Only the hot ones.”
Now, I am not hot. I am just past 30, ever so slightly overweight, somewhat short, and still have a trace of acne. I am rarely hit on, so a direct come on is so rare that even when I know it’s not serious I can’t help but get flustered. I diverted my confusion by pointing out his lunch leftover. Ever the gentleman, he flicked it on the floor.
“So whaddya think about this beauty, huh?”
“Well, it’s a little more than I think he wanted to spend, let me make a call to him.” I suggested
“More than he wanted to spend? What, he works at the Burger King or something?”
“Yes, actually he does, Mickey. He skims a buck off every Whopper they sell and pockets it. He’s a millionaire and everyone in my town is fat.”
“Ha.”
I ducked away to call the brain doctor’s office number that I had tucked into my purse before leaving. As my luck would have it, he was at the hospital in surgery, and unavailable to speak to. Would I leave a message? No, I would not. Leaving the receptionist with the impression I was carrying on a lurid affair with her boss, I hung up and returned to the even more lurid Mickey with his proffering of wonderful gems. At my request he pulled out several other emeralds for a fraction of the price, but none were the caliber of the cushion cut. I sighed and wrenched my eyes away from the beauty.
“I don’t know if slicing up brains pays enough now, what with malpractice insurance and all.”
“Ah, take a chance on it.”
“Mickey, I’m not a big enough fish to take a chance on a quarter of a million dollars!”
Mr. Abramoff again appeared out of nowhere and waved his arms,
“You plizs take on memo! Take to your good cuzstomer and when he sees, he will buy! It iz a be-a-u-tiful sztone, you take home today, call me in a week, ok?”
“Are you sure? I- I’ve never taken delivery of a memo that big, it’s almost scary.” I dithered. He snorted and gesticulated again,
“Did I make my money by not truzsting people? Do I build a buzsinez by hiding my stonesz up here in thisz safe? No! I trust you, I know where your store iz, you try anything funny, I szend Mickey to take your front door away. But it will not come to that.”
I had to laugh in spite of my fears, and I had him wrap it up along with the garnet. To be on the safe business side I had him put two smaller and cheaper stones with it for fallback. From there we moved on to the moldavite. I had no specific requests for it, but it was a favorite of my best saleslady, therefore it sold fairly consistently. Mickey pulled several pieces out of the case, ranging from a fine deep leafy green to a light yellowish green. The sparkle was intense, the cuts exotic and inspiring.
“Volcano glass, huh? You know we actually had a tough time convincing Boss to carry it, he looks down on it, says its not a real gemstone.” Moldavite, so named for the Moldavian mountain range where it was first discovered, seems to be the result of a volcanic eruption. Even though its crystal structure and properties are very similar to glass, it is still a natural occurrence, therefore valuable. I selected three specimens and checked my request list. Mr. Abramoff opened a parcel of nice Madagascar hot pink tourmaline and tried to pique my interest in it. As much as I tried to put him off (I had lots of it sitting in my safe at home) a huge fine kite shape kept catching my eye. I could visualize it in a wide cuff bracelet surrounded by some kind of baguettes.
“I can make it very nisze price just for you- Ah, hello there, good day, what can I do for you?” I was saved from commitment by a new entry. I turned around and saw a thin young man standing looking around with rather a self-conscious air about him. He was dressed in a tacky pinstripe suit, almost a zoot suit, ugly purple tie and shiny pointy shoes. He had slick hair, and was carrying a small case under his arm. Everything about him struck me as wrong and I could see Mr. Abramoff looking him up and down with a skeptical eye. Tired of getting picked on by Columbian crime rings, this end of the jewelry business has really started to dress down in recent years, so the sight of someone in a full suit, let alone a cheap full suit, seemed fishy. We all watched him narrowly as he looked in the cases, trying to be ultra-casual but only pulling off ultra-fishy. After a bit he asked Mr. Abramoff for large sapphires.
“What cut, plisz?”
“Uh, square.”
“You have a need for some special customer-?” The small man in the yarmulke was gently but suspiciously probing this guy.
“Oh, yeah, I’m a jeweler and a customer of mine, uh, needs one for his girlfriend. I’m going to set it in a necklace.” Jeweler, huh. Three heads swiftly glanced at his hands and glanced back at his eyes. Perfectly smooth and clean fingers fidgeted with the case he was holding. I sneaked a glance at my own jeweler’s hands. My forefingers had black polish rouge permanently ground deep into the whorls of the fingerprint. Bits of the skin around the nail were shiny and peeling, the fingernail was ground thin in spots at the edge from getting hit with a file. I had a small black hole under one nail where a tiny spinning bur had sunk into my flesh at 11,000 RPMs. There were dry scaly patches where the cleaning solvent and frequent washing has completely stripped my skin of its natural emollients.
They were ugly hands; I never bothered to do my nails anymore because within a day they looked awful again. If I had a professional manicure with the paraffin dip and everything, it succeeded in making my hands slightly softer and only somewhat more presentable for about 2 days. Jewelers’ hands are not pretty, but they are some of the most skilled hands in the world. This guy had never laid his fingers to any skilled handwork, let alone dirty jewelry work. Mr. Abramoff was angry.
“How did you get in here? You want a stone for cheap for yourself; you are a zneaky and bad man. This is wholeszale to the trade only! Get out!” He made a call to the security booth and could be heard furiously reaming out some poor bastard downstairs. Mickey and I finished the list with no further problems, I left with 3 fine emeralds for the brain doctor’s wife, the kite shaped tourmaline, a large oval tanzanite for a customer too old to enjoy it, several pieces for various other projects, and a stunning garnet for my favorite customer, Mae Griffiths.

I left the diamond district with close to half a million dollars worth of gems tucked into my inside jacket pocket. I have become used to the risk involved. I have a habit now of walking fast, staying aware of being followed, etc. This time, though, the stakes were probably higher than they had been in my career and a lot of it wasn’t mine yet. Taking risks I can handle. Taking risks with other peoples’ hard earned money makes me sweat. I dress extremely casual when I’m not at work, looking more like a dumpy schoolteacher than a woman who owns a successful jewelry store. If anyone were desperate enough to mug me they probably wouldn’t be lucky enough get the stuff in the hidden inner pocket of my coat, and if they did I carried insurance for these instances anyhow. But I would still put up a fight. Between our justice system and our entertainment industry we have bred a generation of heartless criminals, no conscience, seeking only for them and not afraid to dispense with any human life. They don’t scare me; rather, they anger me. I have a concealed weapons permit in my native Midwestern state, I carry, and I know how to use it. Of course I don’t bring anything out here that deadly, but I still carry a large wad of keys ready to take some punks’ eye out should he give me the least reason to. Too many of my trusting colleagues have died.

By the time I was done there it was nearly dark outside. It gets dark much earlier here than at home. We are 700 miles away, yet still in the same time zone, strange as it may seem.
The next meeting on my agenda was with an old high school friend, Lila Pointer. She was one of many of us who wanted to get the heck out of our suffocating small town as teenagers. She was one of the lucky ones who made it out and never came back. Graduating from a fine culinary school, she had traversed the world doing various foodie things, finally landing a job in New York City. I’m not sure exactly what her job entailed, but it had something to do with restaurant menus. All I know is when I went to visit her she always brought me to some wonderful dark little watering hole. We met outside of her Midtown office and shared a cab to some remote corner of Manhattan. The outside of the restaurant would have not caught my attention as anyplace to eat, it had the look of a closed up store. The inside, however, was fantastic. It looked like a small hanging garden. Plants hung from the ceiling, wound their way around lights, trailed down the walls. There were small cactus gardens in the center of each table and in long boxes attached to the wall. There were no menus for tables, just a small sign hanging from the ceiling in amongst the plants. Lila found us a table in a hidden corner and plopped down with a sigh,
“Whew! You’d think after dealing with these people all day I would just want to go home and forget about food, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I play with pretty baubles all day and go home and make some more… I guess when your work is your passion you just can’t unplug, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess. So! Show me the stones you got!” I had told her about them on the way over.
“Not here, Lila! That’s too dangerous!”
“Nonsense! No one here gives a hang what you do. Besides, I might have you make something for me!” Her jewelry box contained not a few of my creations, collected over the years of our friendship. Her tastes were usually a little more moderate than what I had purchased today. Reluctantly I drew out the parcel of stones and showed her the big emerald. She cocked her head at it and pronounced it “fakey looking”. I laughed and told her the price and her jaw dropped.
“Well, I never really liked green anyhow. Do you have any more earthy tones?” I showed her a Madeira citrine I had picked up. It was the color of the autumn leaves still clinging the trees. It was a very elongated pear shape, nearly 2 inches in length but only about ¾” at its widest. To me, it was a challenge to set; to the stonecutter, it must have been more of a challenge. Lila liked it, but as I thought, it was too big for her.
“I’m sorry, I already had the medium sized stones mailed home. The ones I bought a few days ago were great but I don’t want to hassle with them so I have the guys send them to the store as soon as I pick them out. But I have a nice matched set of this material back at home, if you like the color I can make you a pendant and earrings set.”
“How matched is the set?” she asked skeptically.
“Not too matchy-matchy, I promise. I know how tacky that is. The earrings are smaller and lighter, and they accent rather than match. I was going to set them in dangly settings with some brown garnets.”
“Hmm, that sounds nice, can you email me a pic of them before I commit?”
“Sure.” I put my stones away and the talk turned to more personal things. When the disinterested waiter finally showed up at our table I let her order for me, too. She scooted her chair closer to mine, dropped her red head in her hand and asked me confidentially,
“Any man worth mentioning?”
“Ugh, I was hoping you might not ask that. What about you?”
“I asked you first, out with it! Is he rich? Dashing? Romantic?”
“He is none of the above, there is no he. I’m sick of romance and dating and all of it!” I sipped my water to cover my discomfort, and discovered it had thin slices of ginger in it. It was kind of good. Not anything I would have thought of, but then again I didn’t run a little bistro in a town that demands to be impressed. I ran a little jewelry store in a town that demands to be catered to and then whispers behind your back. I turned my mind back to my friend.
“Your turn.”
She sighed and stretched, curling dainty little hands into dainty little balls. She had always been petite and pretty, but couldn’t hang on to a man for some reason
“Well, the guy I introduced you to the last time you were here remarried his ex-wife. It was disgusting. So I swore off men forever, but two weeks later I met this great guy online and we started emailing. He asked me for my home address and I didn’t want to give it to him, thinking he would be some freak and stalk me. But my curiosity got me and I gave it to him and can you guess what I got in the mail 3 days later?”
“Not a clue.”
“Oh, come on, just guess!”
“Um, flowers?”
“No! I said mail. Flowers get delivered! It was a handwritten love letter! He has this elegant handwriting and he wrote beautiful things on regular office paper but put in a little dried flower to make it better. So I wrote him back. I felt stupid doing it, I hadn’t written a real letter since, like, high school! But he is all into this old fashioned thing, and he is totally unique.” She sighed, and then dropped her voice into a confidential whisper,
“I think I might marry him.”
I looked at her face; she was serious for once.
“I’ve never seen you serious about a man before, Lila.”
“I know, it’s almost scary, huh? But he is serious, too! You should see his apartment, you could imagine Benjamin Franklin in there.”
At this moment our food came. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I smelled it. We thanked the waiter and dug in. My dish was some kind of tender light meat, which I thought might have been veal or lamb, but turned out to be kid goat. It had tiny mushrooms and probably large quantities of butter and wine. It was stacked in a small square with slivers of squash or something around it. These were arranged with white asparagus in a woven pattern on my plate. I hated to tear it apart for the lowly service of eating it, but I was hungry.
While I ate I listened with rather a sinking heart to her description of his wonderful eyes, his nice manners, blah, blah, blah. I am going to apologize now for my attitude towards that ephemeral pink haze people call Love. I am in the business of catering to Love, I run into bad and good every day. I sell wedding rings; I melt down used wedding rings. That; along with my bad luck in the field, has soured my view. I really was happy for Lila and told her so.

We finished with a dessert made with seafood. I’m not kidding. I had heard about this before, but never thought I’d try it, let alone grudgingly admit to liking it. And it was good.
As we stood on the street corner trying to flag down a cab, she grabbed my hand.
“It was so good to see you again, I wish we could do this more often. Really. Promise me you’ll do something for me,”
“Ok, what is it?” I asked her.
“No, I want you to promise me first, then I’ll tell you.”
“That’s crazy! What if you ask me to do something criminal?”
“Would I do that? Just promise me…”
I sighed, “Ok, what do you want me to do, I promise I’ll try it.”
“Try the online dating.”
“What?”
“It worked so well for me, just try it, ok. Tell me what happens. If you have one bad experience you can drop it, but at least you can say you tried.”
Whereupon her expert eye caught a taxi, she jumped in, and was swallowed up in a sea of yellow cabs. I stood around for a few more minutes trying to flag one down, and then rode in thoughtful silence back to my hotel.

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Labels: fiction, jewelry, mystery, New York