18mm Blues by Gerald A Browne

instant emotional elevation she’d go into the vault, get out that lot of sapphires and get into their happy pink atmospheres with her ten-power loupe.
    â€œI came close to selling them in Houston,” Grady told her.
    â€œHow close?”
    â€œWithin two hundred a carat.”
    â€œWho was the cheap, Gilford?”
    â€œBetter. I didn’t get to see Gilford.”
    Doris grinned smugly. “I think you didn’t sell them on purpose, probably didn’t even show them.”
    â€œYou’re wrong.”
    â€œAgain,” she sighed.
    One of Grady’s phone lines lighted. Doris picked it up. Covered the mouthpiece and told Grady, “It’s Lawler.”
    â€œPut him on speaker. I want him self-conscious.”
    Doris did as told.
    Grady waited a beat, then started with plenty of attitude. “Morning, Fred.”
    â€œHow are you, Grady?”
    â€œCouldn’t be better.”
    â€œI gather you had a successful trip.”
    â€œShould I admit it?”
    â€œBusiness is slow here.”
    â€œSure, you only did a half million yesterday.”
    â€œI mean honestly slow.”
    He wants the emeralds, Grady thought. “Honestly slow” means he wants them. “Well,” Grady told him, “if you called for commiseration you’ve got it.”
    â€œThat’s comforting.”
    â€œWhat else can I do for you besides take pity?” Grady asked lightheartedly, gauging that the conversation was about to come to its purpose.
    â€œThose emeralds I was considering…”
    â€œOh, those.” Grady let fall downscale, inferring the emeralds were past history.
    â€œYou’ve let someone else have them?”
    â€œNot exactly.”
    â€œDon’t play with me. It doesn’t become you and it insults me.”
    â€œJust trying to hold my own, Fred. Just trying to hold my own.”
    â€œYou been out there with Havermeyer too long.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œWhy don’t you come back east and get hooked up with me? I’ll bet we could cut a better deal than you’ve got.”
    â€œI’ll give it thought.”
    â€œDo that. I mean it. Anyway, do you still have those emeralds in stock?”
    â€œYeah.” While this exchange was taking place Grady had gone through the briefkes and slid the stones from that particular one onto the surface of his white, tear-off desk pad. Had drawn a circle around the stones, as though to keep them from straying. A habit of his.
    The emeralds appeared special. And they were. A pair of older stones of exactly eight carats each. Like so many older stones their quality was superior, with a particular ideal green vividness that divulged their origin was Colombia. To be even more precise, out of the Muzo mine. They might very well have been part of the cache of a fifteenth-century conquistador and then counted in the riches of some Castilian duke. More recently they’d surely been the principle stones in the tiara of a Nob Hill matriarch, wife of one of San Francisco’s gold rush scions. Harold had purchased them discreetly from a relative of that lady, one who needed desperately to cover some unfortunate stock margins. Harold often plucked such treasures from such family trees, believed he was only second to the late Harry Winston in that regard.
    â€œNow, how much was it you were asking?” Lawler inquired, hoping lack of memory would convey lack of serious interest. “Twenty, wasn’t it?”
    â€œThirty-five.”
    â€œOh now I recall. Thirty was what you were asking. I can still hear you saying thirty and my thinking that was too much.”
    â€œYou’re right, thirty was the number.”
    â€œBut you’ll take twenty.”
    They were talking thousands, per carat. Grady put some silence to work. Lawler broke it with, “Anyway, at least you’ll consider twenty-five. Just consider.”
    â€œThey’re worth