He laughed.
‘And she would too,’ he said to me. ‘Suppose we all cool off and chat it up? We’ve been talking about you. We could do a trade. How about swopping some of those diamonds you deal in for some pussy?’
I stared at her.
‘How about it, buster?’ he went on. ‘She’ll play. It was her idea when I told her who you were. You won’t get it without diamonds. Let’s chat it up.’
‘Give me back my money,’ I said to her.
She smiled jeeringly as she shook her head.
‘I’ve changed my mind. I can use five hundred bucks even if it’s yours. And don’t try to get it from me. Fel and me can take care of you. Think over what Fel’s said. If you want it bad enough, diamonds will buy it. Not one diamond, but a lot of diamonds. Think about it. Now... get out!’
I looked at Fel and saw he was holding a short iron bar in his hand.
‘Don’t try it, buster,’ he said. ‘You’ll only get a cracked nut. I wasn’t ready for you the first time, but I am now. Think about it. Now, scram!’
He edged back to give me room to pass him.
I hated him.
I hated her too, but my blood still lusted for her.
I went out into the hot smog, across the rough grass and debris and returned to the Buick.
I don’t remember driving back to the hotel. I became aware that I was lying on the bed with the mid-morning haze lighting up the cement dust on the window facing me.
A black depression filled my mind. Even Rhea had called me Cheapie! God! How I hated her! I felt a sudden urge to kill myself. I lay on the bed, asking myself: Why not? Suddenly this seemed to me to be the solution. Why go on? Why let this woman torment me any longer?
But how do I kill myself? I wondered.
A razor? I used an electric shaver.
Aspirins? I had only six left.
Jump out of the window?
I could kill someone in the crowded street.
I looked feverishly around the room. There was nothing that would support my weight on which to hang myself.
The car?
Yes! I’d take the car and at high-speed crash it into a tree. Yes! I would do that!
I struggled off the bed, fumbling in my pockets for the car keys. I couldn’t find them. Where had I put them? I looked wildly around the room and saw them lying on the dusty chest-of-drawers. As I moved towards them, the telephone bell rang.
For a long moment I hesitated, then I snatched up the receiver.
‘Larry... my dear boy!’
My black cloud of depression and madness lifted at the sound of Sydney Fremlin’s voice. I found I was shaking and sweating. I dropped on to the bed.
‘Hi, Sydney.’ My voice was a croak.
‘Larry, you must come back!’ I could tell by his voice that he was in the middle of a major crisis. The pitch of his voice told me he was like a bee captured in a bottle and buzzing like crazy.
‘What is it?’ I said, wiping the sweat off my face with the back of my hand.
‘Larry, precious, I simply can’t talk over an open line! Some dreadful person may be listening in! You just have to come back! Mrs. P. wants to sell you-know-what! I can’t possibly handle this — only clever you can do it! You do know what I’m trying to say, don’t you, Larry? This is absolutely, terribly top secret! Do tell me you understand?’
Mrs. P.
I drew in a long slow breath as my mind went back five years when I had brought off my biggest diamond sale for Luce & Fremlin. Mrs. Henry Jason Plessington, the wife of one of the richest estate men in Florida — and they don’t come richer — had wanted a diamond necklace. She had been a client of Luce & Fremlin for years. Until I had arrived as their diamond expert, Sydney had sold her this and that, but nothing really big. But when I arrived on the scene, had met her, had learned how rich her husband was, I saw the possibility of unloading something really big on her. Sydney fluttered and buzzed, saying I was far too ambitious when I explained the idea I had, but I turned on the charm and talked to this middle-aged woman, stressing that nothing but the best was for her. She reacted to this sales talk like a plant reacts to a dose of fertiliser. Having got her so far, I talked to her about diamonds. I said it was my ambition to create a diamond necklace that would be the end of all diamond necklaces. I explained how I would search for matching stones. It would give me pleasure to know that the end product would be hers. She lapped this up the way a cat laps cream.
‘But how do I know I will like it?’ she asked. ‘Your taste might not be my taste.’
I had expected her to say just this, and I was ready for the answer. I said, apart from showing her a design on paper, I would get a Chinese diamond cutter I knew in Hong Kong to make a mock-up of the necklace in glass. She could then judge for herself. The cost of the mock-up would be around $5,000. Naturally, if she decided to have the mock-up turned into the real thing the $5,000 would come off the bill.
She had said for me to go ahead.
I got Sydney to design the necklace on paper. He had a flair for this kind of thing, and he produced a real beauty.
‘But, Larry, in diamonds this will cost the earth!’ he exclaimed as we studied his design. ‘She’ll never stand for it! It’ll cost a million!’
‘It’ll cost more than that,’ I said, ‘but leave it to me. I’ll talk her into talking her husband into it. He’s stinking rich.’
Mrs. P. approved the design which was a step forward. I was hoping she would tell me to go ahead and make the necklace in diamonds, but she had still to work on her husband and she liked the idea of seeing the design in glass.
It took two months for my man in Hong Kong to produce the glass necklace and what a job he made of it! Only a top expert would know these stones weren’t diamonds. It was so good I had an uneasy feeling that Mrs. P. might settle for the mock-up and swank to her friends that it was the real thing.
I went to Plessington’s enormous villa, overlooking the sea, with a Rolls Corniche and a Bentley T standing on the tarmac, I laid the glass necklace on a pad of black velvet and watched her face. She went practically into a swoon. Then I draped the necklace around her fat neck and led her to a full-length mirror.
Then I turned on the sales talk.
‘These, of course, as you can see, Mrs. Plessington,’ I said, ‘are made of glass. Also as you can see there is no life in them (which wasn’t true), but I want you to imagine each one of these glass beads as living fire... the fire of diamonds.’
She stood there, entranced, looking at herself: a stout, middle-aged woman with a flabby bosom, her neck beginning to wrinkle.
‘Even Elizabeth Taylor would want a necklace like this is going to be.’
Then I unclasped the necklace before she got the wrong idea and settled for glass rather than diamonds.
‘But what is it going to cost?’
This, of course, was the sixty-four-thousand dollar question. I explained that to create a necklace like this with diamonds, I would have to search the world for matching stones. Having found them, they would have to be cut by experts, then they would have to be set in platinum which would also have to be done by experts. All this would cost money. I lifted my hands and gave her my charming smile. I knew, as she knew, it wouldn’t be her money that would pay for this necklace. She would have to put the bite on her husband. I pointed out that diamonds lived for ever. They never lost their value. Her husband’s money would be invested safely. I let her absorb all this, then told her, making my voice completely casual, that the necklace would cost in the region of one million and a half dollars.
She didn’t even flinch. Why should she? It would be her husband who would do the flinching. She sat there, a fat heap in a Normal Hartnell creation, a faraway look in her eyes. I could imagine she was thinking how her friends would envy her, what a status symbol this necklace would be and even, perhaps, Liz Taylor, would envy her.