Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Thirteen

The fog had broken early; sunshine blessed the Marina District’s wide quiet morning streets. When Harriet Nettrick’s doorbell rang at North Point and Broderick, she saw on her terrazzo stoop two young nice-looking men she took to be Latino. Each carried a workman’s long metal toolbox. The panel truck in the driveway wore the familiar Water Department logo.

She opened the door. The one with FRANK sewn above his tan uniform’s pocket said, “Mrs. Nettrick? We’re from the Water Department. A chemical contaminant has gotten into the pipes for this area and we have to eliminate it. Can we come in?”

She opened the door. “My goodness, I hope it isn’t—”

“The kitchen, ma’am?” He was all business. “Syd, you go check the upstairs bathroom.”

Syd went up the stairs as Frank followed Harriet to the kitchen and across its old-fashioned inlaid white tile floor to the sink.

“Could you get me a water glass, please, ma’am?”

While holding the glass under the cold water tap he let a fragment of crumbled Alka-Seltzer slide down its inside, then turned to her with the glass of foaming liquid in hand.

“This isn’t the way your water usually looks, is it?”

Harriet put her hand to her breast in shock. “Oh my Lord!”

Down on his knees in front of the sink, Frank opened his toolbox. It held wrenches and screwdrivers, rolls of soldering wire and electrician’s tape, and any number of odd-looking tools. For the next twenty minutes he was under there, twisting things, grunting, tapping metal tubing with the back of his small pipe wrench, having Mrs. Nettrick hand him a variety of objects from the tool kit. Finally Syd appeared in the doorway.

Frank demanded, “Were the bathroom pipes corrupted?”

“Level three.”

“Same here. We got it in time!” He went back under the sink, tightened something, gave a couple of grunts, backed out awkwardly, stood up to wipe his hands on a maroon cloth from his back pocket. He rinsed out the glass, filled it anew, and held it up before Harriet’s dazzled eyes.

“See that? Crystal clear.” And he drank it down to show her how innocuous it had become.

Because they were such nice boys, who had saved her from who knew what lurking chemical horror, Harriet wanted to tip them even though they solemnly assured her it was not necessary.

Several hours later she realized all her cash and credit cards from the purse she had left beside her easy chair in the living room were gone, as was the money from her bedside table. So were her silver and jewelry.

At about the same time the kumpania took its share of Frank and Syd’s take.

While Mrs. Nettrick was calling SFPD Bunco — much too late, of course — diminutive Midori Tagawa was almost selling sweet old Mr. Stabler the wrong size shirt.

This was at the menswear department of the big fancy Nordstrom’s department store in the Stonestown Mall way out off 19th Avenue. The shirt was a red and black check lumberjack with a brown cloth log cabin sewn to the back of it. Midori was still heavy-lidded and almost languid from yesterday’s lovemaking with Larry Ballard, still unfocused.

“Midori, are you sure that’s the right size for him?” asked a low voice in her ear.

For a second Midori thought it was an inner voice, a Zen sort of thing, then realized it was the other saleswoman on the men’s department floor, a Guatemalan of Baltic origins with the exotic name of Luminitsa Djurik.

Midori blushed and put her hand over the lower part of her face. She giggled nervously. “I no so good at sizes yet.”

“I am,” said Luminitsa. She was a long-legged, slenderly voluptuous woman with long black shiny hair and dark exotic eyes and an oval face. She raised her voice so Stabler could hear her. “This shirt is preshrunk, sir, so there is no need to buy a size too large against shrinkage in the first wash.”

“Say again, miss?” He gave them a small, sweet smile. He was short and shaky, but his faded blue eyes behind severe gold-rims bubbled with good cheer, and his silvery hair had an absolutely stunning pewter sheen. “The hearing’s the second thing that goes when you get old.”

Luminitsa moved in for the kill, a warm big-sister smile on her gleaming red lips. Midori knew this was a common tactic, taking over the sale a new salesperson had already made and grabbing the commission. But she was secretly grateful: it was so easy to lose face by not pleasing a customer.

“Grab those two young guys just coming in,” urged Luminitsa sotto voce as she turned away with the old man firmly in tow, her arm through his. Her dark eyes gleamed, her almond skin glowed. “You come over here, Mr. Stabler, I have some other things you’re just gonna love.”

“Mr. Stabler, that was my dad,” he said spryly. “I’m Whit, that’s short for Whitney...”

After she had sent Whit Stabler away with a shopping bag full of menswear, Luminitsa asked Midori, “How’d you do with those college kids?”

“They no buy anythings. They just keep asking to take me out to drink after work.”

“You gotta be more aggressive, kid. You won’t even make your draw unless you get in there and make people want to buy. I put everything Whit bought on your number, by the way.”

Midori’s hand started up to cover the bottom part of her face. “But I only talk to him about that one shirt...”

Luminitsa pulled the hand back down.

“You aren’t in the land of the rising sun here, kiddo. People think either you got bad teeth or you’re hiding something. Fair is fair, he was your customer. But next time he comes in he’s mine, girl!”

“How you know he come back, Luminitsa?”

“Once they’ve seen Luminitsa, they always come back.”

Larry Ballard, he come back for more of Midori last night. Maybe he come back again tonight, too. He say he come back. Maybe he no able to get enough of Midori. But to be safe, she better make sure he didn’t see Luminitsa.

The intercom buzzed. Victor Marr said curtly, “Yes?”

“Hong Kong is on the scrambler phone, sir.”

Marr picked up to hear Kahawa’s flat, dry, sibilant voice.

“Marr-san, Brantley has heard rumors that the man in Europe is planning to try and recover what he considers his property.”

“Does he know this man’s identity?”

“No,” said Kahawa. “But he suggests you beef up security...”

“My security up on the mountain is excellent,” said Marr coldly.

“Mr. Brantley has a great deal of experience in security matters — before the Colony was reunited with Mainland China. He has used a security specialist from Germany and found him very satisfactory.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Marr. “Get his name for me, and I’ll hire him to double-check our precautions.”

Josh Croswell was a tall, slim man of 31, with a ready handshake and a smile full of wonderful teeth. Cultured and elegant outside of business hours, he had cried when Evelyn Cisneros retired as prima ballerina of the San Francisco Ballet. But when the young couple entered the store, he circled like a shark smelling blood in the water around a crippled seal. A pair of crippled seals; a lot of blood.

Croswell’s jewelry patter was like the man himself, precise and practiced and so sincere. He knew little about fine gems, but the upscale tourists shopping this Post Street store knew less.

This pair was almost laughably perfect. Computer types up from Silicon Valley to the big bad city to celebrate either an engagement or a wedding; and either way, ready, nay, eager to pledge their troth by spending some of that Internet IPO money. Almost as eager as Josh was to help them spend it.

The man was maybe twenty-four, with dark hair parted in the middle and slicked straight back to give his face a surprised look. His glasses were heavy horn-rims and his fingernails were manicured.

The girl could not have been over twenty-two, slight and honey-blond and shy, clinging to his arm as they came through the door. Life had not yet written any interesting messages on her perfect face, but she had a figure that deserved a porno Web site of its own. Not Josh’s gender of preference, but he could go either way. Right now he was strictly business, at his smarmy best.

“May I be of assistance?”

“I... we...” The girl colored, and the man picked it up. “My, ah, fiancée... Ah, we would like to see some, ah, rings.”

“Diamonds, of course?” Josh was already indicating two trays of their most expensive items. “I think you will find—”

“Oh Donny, they’re all so gorgeous!”

“Yes, ah, they sure are, darling. We’ll make the final choice together, but I want you to come up with the possibles.”

Donny moved farther down the counter with a slight head-jerk. Josh followed. The girl was so engrossed in the locked display case of rings that she barely noticed them.

“My fiancée’s name is May,” Donny said in a low voice.

Josh almost said, And the month is May. So? But he merely kept his expression of polite interest. Donny was impatient.

“She was born in May. Her birthstone is the emerald.”

The light dawned. “You want to get her an emerald ring.”

“No.” Donny made a quick negative gesture. “May will be using her grandmother’s diamond wedding set, but I want to surprise her with an emerald. A good emerald.”

“All of our gemstones are of excellent quality,” said Josh, thinking of one they had in the safe that looked wonderful but that... well... according to Mr. Petrick, had some hidden flaws not apparent to Josh himself. “I have something in the office that I think might be exactly what you’re looking for.”

A relieved and boyish smile lit up Donny’s features.

“Cool. I’ll be looking at rings with May.”

The emerald was impressive and big — 15 carats. Josh kept an eye on the surveillance camera as he extracted it in its chamois bag from the safe, but May and Donny were heads-together over the diamonds, oblivious to all about them.

Donny said to Josh, “We can’t make up our minds over three of these, so if we could see them together...”

Josh unlocked the cabinet, set out the trays with their choices. He kept keen-eyed watch as May examined the rings with awe and wonder on her face.

“Can we... can you set aside... ah... hold all three of them for us until I can get my mom in to help us decide?” Anxiety filled her face and voice. “I mean, if you sold one of them before Mom saw them, well, then I’d always wonder if...”

“We will put them safely aside for you, madam.”

“May darling, you’ll be late for the bridal shower if—”

“Oh my God!” She hugged Donny, kissed him so quickly that she got the air an inch from his face rather than his lips, and careened out of the store on her teetery high heels, one hand holding her ridiculous red hat on her head, calling behind her, “That little bar off the St. Francis lobby at five o’clock.”

Donny leaned eagerly toward Josh. “Okay, let me see it!”

With the solemnity of a medieval bishop bringing out a local saint’s miracle-working gallstone, Josh removed the chamois bag from his pocket. He opened the drawstring. The 15-carat emerald slid out across the felt on the glass top of the display case to lie winking like an idol’s eye in a Sax Rohmer novel.

“Is it all right to pick it up?”

Josh gave him a calculatedly condescending chuckle.

“Certainly. Body acid from your fingers cannot damage a gemstone.” Donny had laid it reverently on his open palm. “It has a typical emerald cut — rectangular girdle with truncated corners. But...” Josh took the stone back, turned it over so it looked like a tiny Aztec pyramid. “See the cuts like steps from the girdle, the flat top of the stone, to the culot at the point? A Portuguese step cut, giving the maximum number of facets when you look down into the stone. Most unusual.”

Josh had expended his emerald expertise. He didn’t know that the low price his boss put on the stone was because of a slight yellow tinge and an occlusion hidden within its depths. But his scanty knowledge seemed all that was needed.

“How... ah, what does it cost?”

Mr. Petrick, Josh knew, would be delighted if he could sell the stone at $12,500 retail. But if Josh could move it for more, Mr. Petrick needn’t hear of the extra money.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said decisively. “As is. Of course a setting would cost—”

“No, no setting,” exclaimed Donny with a sort of alarm, “I don’t want it made into a ring or anything. Just the emerald itself. So May can choose exactly how she wants to wear it.”

Josh could barely keep the glee and greed from his voice.

“Then you wish to purchase it?”

“Do I... Oh, yeah, sure! It’s so great!”

Josh would not only collect commission on the $12,500 of the sale he was going to tell Mr. Petrick about, but also pocket the entire $12,500 he wasn’t. Now came the sticky part.

“How did you wish to...”

Before Josh’s astounded eyes, Donny jerked up his shirt to show a canvas money belt strapped around his lean middle. From its pockets he began pulling great wads of fifties and hundreds.

“We’ll take the money over to your bank so you can make sure it isn’t counterfeit...” He paused, obviously struck by a thought that alarmed him. “You do gift-wrap, don’t you?”