Freddie took one tentative step away from the van, and here came hurtling two hooky-playing kids in big sneakers, waving cigarettes and laughing at each other's dumb jokes. Freddie dodged them, but then almost ran into a guy carrying a roll of tarpaper on his shoulder, coming out of the roofing-company truck. A rollout in the other direction put Freddie in the path of three middle-aged Japanese women, marching arm in arm, cameras dangling down their fronts, forming a phalanx as impenetrable as the Miami Dolphins' defensive line.
Freddie recoiled, back against the cool side of the van, heart beating, doubt rising to the surface of his brain. This mob was dangerous. It was true they rarely crashed violently into one another, hardly did anything worse than the occasional shoulder bump, but that was because they could see one another and take whatever minimal evasive action might be necessary to avoid a head-on collision. But they couldn't see Freddie, and would have no notion of getting out of his way or even accounting for his presence on the sidewalk. They would tromp his toes, knee him in the groin, elbow him in the breadbasket, and pound their foreheads into his nose, all without ever having the slightest clue that his toes, groin, bread-basket, or nose were anywhere in the vicinity.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Maybe what he needed was someplace quiet, uncrowded. But then, when he tried to move the loot, he would be noticeable. Still, the question was, how to deal with this never-ending crowd?
As Freddie stood there, pressed against the side of the van, staring at the surge of people and trying to figure out his next move, if any, a United Parcel guy bumped into him on his way past and kept going without even a backward glance to see what he'd hit. Coming the other way, a pale overweight tourist skipped out of the United Parcel guy's path and would have run head-on into Freddie if Freddie hadn't automatically fended him off with an elbow. The tourist threw some words in some language over his shoulder, perhaps an apology, and kept going.
Wait a minute. It was true the people couldn't see Freddie, but in fact they weren't really seeing anybody, except as necessary to avoid full-scale collisions. If Freddie were to bob and weave just enough to keep the jostling to a minimum, no one would even notice there was an invisible man in their midst.
Well, it was a theory worth testing. Freddie's goal was a narrow building, six stories high, just a few doors back up the block, with the words DIAMOND EXCHANGE among other words in gold on its bullet-proof glass display window. A truly homicidal-looking black security guard in a brown uniform sat on a stool behind the showcases in this window, looking out at the world like a fish-store cat, daring anybody to try to come in and take any of these goodies away. Beside this window, a locked black iron gate led to a small square vestibule and a solid door, and then who knew?
From time to time a person would approach this building, pause at the gate, and ring the bell beside it. He would then speak into the microphone grill set between gate and window. The security man in the window would engage him in suspicious conversation, would eye him with carnivorous hostility, and at last grudgingly the new arrival would be admitted. Sometimes two people showed up together, and while Freddie watched there was even a trio allowed in all at once, which meant there was certainly going to be room in that vestibule and those doorways for one entrant accompanied all unknowing by an unseen stranger.
The unseen stranger, at last emboldened to make his move, waited till he saw a black-coated, black-hatted, black-bearded, spit-curled skinny fellow who looked to be about seventeen approach DIAMOND EXCHANGE and ring the bell; then he pushed away confidently from the van, tiptoed rapidly across the iffy sidewalk, caromed off two or three pedestrians who merely kept on truckin', and reached the iron gate just as the nasty little buzzer began to sound. The skinny fellow in black pulled at the gate, it opened, he stepped through and the unseen stranger zipped through behind him, close enough to smell the combination of Palmolive soap and old wool coat that was his new associate's personal scent.
The iron gate very nearly nipped Freddie's heels and right elbow, but he scrinched himself just in time. The gate snicked. The inner door buzzed. Freddie and his dancing partner did it again.
He was inside. Here, Freddie and his new friend parted company, the skinny fellow in black moving purposefully across the floor toward a narrow door to what appeared to be a very narrow elevator, where he pushed another button, and waited, while Freddie didn't move forward at all, but pressed his naked back against the cool side wall, and took a moment to case the joint.
He was in a long narrow room, about twenty-five feet wide by sixty feet long, illuminated by a ceiling composed almost entirely of fluorescent tubes. Down both sides and down the middle of this space were three long rows of booths, waist-high cubicles separating each dealer and his desk and safe and display case from the dealers on either side. Armless wooden chairs for the customers stood outside each cubicle, facing in. Customers and security people moved up and down the two aisles, everybody constantly looking at everything. In their compartments, the dealers haggled, or read in little books, or talked on their telephones, or added up strings of numbers, or looked at tiny stones through their loupes.
Across the way, the elevator arrived, and was very small indeed. In that elevator, two was a crowd. A crowd of two emerged from it, shrugging their shoulders and adjusting their clothing after the unwelcome proximity of the ride, and Freddie's former friend boarded in lonely splendor to ride up — or possibly down — to some other selling floor.
There was a kind of loose unofficial flow to the movement in the long room; it mostly went counterclockwise, from the door here at the front right, then on back to the rear, then across to the left aisle, and thus back to the front again. Occasional customers swam briefly upstream, moving from one dealer to the next, but most of the traffic was one-way.
Fine by Freddie. He joined the throng, moving along at the general pace, tucking in close to one person or another, so as not to be bumped into from behind. And as he walked, he looked.
Jewels. Blue sapphires, green emeralds, red rubies. Blue turquoise, green jade, red garnet. Purple amethyst, black onyx, violet alexandrite. Opalescent girasol, creamy chalcedony, pearls of a thousand shades of white.
But what Freddie cared about, and only what he cared about, were the diamonds. Winking and blinking under the glass counters, nestling in clusters or in solitary grandeur on trays of felt, tumbled like sprays of magic moondust from palm to palm; little hard concentrations of light, colorless yet filled with color, prismatic, faceted, tiny, fabulous.
Freddie made one circuit of the place, getting used to it, getting used to himself in this new format, and by the time he got back to the front he was so comfortable, so at ease, so sure of himself, that he even tapped the homicidal sentry on the arm on the way by. The guard's head swung around, he looked, saw no one, and brushed away the nonexistent fly.
Freddie had his target picked out. On the left side, near the front, two dealers were dealing with one another as well as with a customer seated in front of one of them. The dealers would stand to speak across the cubicle wall at one another, then sit, then stand to hand across a tray of stones or take them back. The customer looked, discussed, moved back and forth between the two dealers. It had been going on for some time, it looked as though a lot of money was going to be involved once the deal was finally set, and the three thus engaged in the transaction were deeply engrossed in what they were doing.
Also, there were these factors: The site was not far from the front door. It was on the left side, where the movement of the customers was toward the front. And near the right elbow of the dealer nearest the front were several trays of small exquisite diamonds.