“I told him he should come with me,” Mrs. Edelman said. “I told him he could use the vacation, he should be good to himself, am I right? But no, he said he had too much work to do just now, planning for his trip to Europe next month. He told me he’d take a vacation when he got back, in April sometime. Who needs a vacation in April? In April, we have flowers, even here in the city. So he wouldn’t come. Now he’ll never have another vacation, never,” she said, and turned her head away because tears were beginning to form in her eyes again.
“What sort of work did he do, ma’am?” Brown asked. “Was he in the jewelry business?”
“Not what you would call a regular jeweler,” Mrs. Edelman said, and took a paper tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes with it.
“Because he was wearing this vest—” Brown started.
“Yes,” Mrs. Edelman said. “He bought and sold gems. That’s what he did for a living.”
“Diamonds?”
“Not only diamonds. He dealt in all kinds of precious gems. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires — diamonds, of course. Precious gems. But he neglected the most precious thing of all. His life. If he’d come with me...” She shook her head. “A stubborn man,” she said. “God forgive me, but he was a stubborn man.”
“Was there any special reason he wanted to stay here in the city?” Brown asked. “Instead of going with you to Antigua.” He pronounced the word “An-tee-gwa.”
“It’s a hard g,” Mrs. Edelman said.
“What?”
“It’s the British pronunciation they use. An-tee-ga.”
“Oh,” Brown said. He looked at Kling. Kling said nothing. “But in any event,” Brown said, “was there?”
“Only the usual. Nothing he couldn’t have left for a week. So look what happens,” she said, and again dabbed at her eyes.
“By the usual—” Brown said.
“His usual business. Buying and selling, selling and buying.” She was still directing all of her conversation to Kling. Brown cleared his throat, to remind her he was here, too. It had no effect.
Perhaps prompted by her steady gaze, Kling said, “Did he go very often to Europe?”
“Well, when he had to. That’s the diamond center of the world, you know. Amsterdam. For emeralds, he went to South America. He could run all over the world for his business, am I right?” she said. “But when it comes to flying only four, five hours away, for a week in the sun, this he can’t do. He has to stay here instead. So someone can shoot him.”
“Do you have any idea who might have—”
“No,” Mrs. Edelman said.
“No enemies you can think of?” Brown said.
“None.”
“Any employees he might have—”
“He worked alone, my husband. That’s why he could never take any time off. All he wanted to do was make money. He told me he wouldn’t be happy till he was a multimillionaire.”
“Did the possibility exist in his business?” Brown said. “Making millions of dollars, I mean?”
“Who knows? I suppose. We lived comfortably. He was always a good earner, my husband.”
“But when you’re talking about millions of dollars—”
“Yes, it was possible to make such money,” Mrs. Edelman said. “He had a very sharp eye for quality gems. He turned a very good profit on almost anything he bought. He knew what he was buying, and he drove very hard bargains. Such a dope,” she said. “If only he’d come with me, like I wanted him to.”
Her eyes were misting with tears again. She dabbed at them with her crumpled tissue, and then reached into her bag for a fresh one.
“Mrs. Edelman,” Kling said, “where was your husband’s place of business, can you tell us?”
“Downtown. On North Greenfield, just off Hall Avenue. What they call the Diamond Mart, the street there.”
“And he worked alone there, you said?”
“All alone.”
“In a street-level shop?”
“No, on the second floor.”
“Was he ever held up, Mrs. Edelman?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Yes,” she said. “How did you know that?”
“Well, being a diamond merchant—”
“Yes, last year,” she said.
“When last year?” Brown asked.
“August, I think it was. The end of July, the beginning of August, sometime in there.”
“Was the perpetrator apprehended?” Brown asked.
“What?” Mrs. Edelman said.
“Did they catch the man who did it?”
“Yes.”
“They did?”
“Yes, two days later. He tried to pawn the gems in a shop three doors down from my husband’s, can you believe it?”
“Would you remember the man’s name?”
“No, I wouldn’t. He was a black man,” she said, and — for the first time during their visit — turned to look at Brown, but only fleetingly. Immediately, she turned her attention back to Kling again.
“Can you be more exact about that date?” Kling asked. He had taken out his pad and was beginning to write.
“Why? Do you think it was the same person? They told me nothing was stolen. He had diamonds in his vest, nobody touched them. So how could it be anybody who wanted to rob him?”
“Well, we don’t know, really,” Kling said, “but we’d like to follow up on that robbery if you can give us a few more details.”
“All I know is he was working late one night, and this black man came in with a gun and took everything from the work table. He didn’t bother with the safe, he just told my husband to dump everything from the work table into this little sack he had. The good stuff was in the safe, my husband was tickled to dea—”
She cut herself short before she could finish the word. The tears began again. She busied herself with searching for another tissue in her bag. The detectives waited.
“You say it was sometime toward the end of July, the beginning of August,” Kling said at last.
“Yes.”
“The last week in July, would that have been? The first week in August?”
“I can’t say for sure. I think so.”
“We can track it from the address,” Brown said to Kling. “It’ll be on the computer.”
“Could we have the address, please?” Kling said.
“621 North Greenfield,” Mrs. Edelman said. “Room 207.”
“Was the man convicted, would you know?” Brown asked.
“I think so, I don’t remember. My husband had to go to court to identify him, but I don’t know whether he was sent to jail or not.”
“We can check with Corrections,” Brown said to Kling. “Mrs. Edelman, had you spoken to your husband at any time since you left for Antigua?” This time, he pronounced it correctly.
“No. Do you mean, did we call each other? No. Antigua’s not around the corner, you know.”
“Before you left, did he mention anything that might have been disturbing him? Threatening telephone calls or letters, quarrels with customers, anything like that? Was anything at all troubling him, that you know of?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Edelman said.
“What?” Brown asked.
“How he could make his millions of dollars,” Mrs. Edelman said to Kling.
This time, the call came from Dorfsman himself.
It came at twenty minutes past 4:00 that Monday, the day after Valentine’s Day, but Dorfsman apparently was still enjoying the influence of the brief lovers’ holiday. The first thing he said to Carella was, “Roses are red, violets are blue, wait’ll you hear what I’ve got for you!”
Carella thought Dorfsman had lost his marbles; it happened often enough in the police department, but he had never heard of it happening to anyone in Ballistics.