Heartbreak Hotel

Chapter 49

Harold Saroyan looked at Elie Aronson. Elie looked at Milo and me. Both men wore the sad expression of parents forced to punish a usually well-behaved child.

Saroyan, a white-haired, mustachioed man in his eighties, bought and sold colored gemstones from an office in Elie’s downtown building. He’d come to the meeting in a tailored black suit, flawless white shirt, and extravagant yellow cravat, carrying a black leather case from which he drew out a jeweler’s loupe and a stereoscopic zoom microscope.

The meeting was in a high-security room in the crime lab’s property area, accessed by Noreen Sharp’s coded card. Noreen wasn’t there, called moments before to one of the loading docks where two cars, battered and blood-soaked due to a fatal crash on the 101, had just come in.

Just Milo, myself, and the gem dealers, arranged around a plain, gray table. In the center, a gleaming bit of gorgeous, faceted red sat atop a black velvet bag supplied by Noreen. (“Shows off the color, no?”)

Saroyan had begun by holding the ruby up to the light and turning it between his fingers. Following up with the loupe, then the scope, before placing the ruby back.

He sighed. Looked at Elie, again.

Elie said, “Something to tell? Tell.”

Saroyan faced us. “I apologize for having to say this to you. It’s a spinel.”

Milo said, “Which is...”

Elie said, “Not a ruby.”

“It’s a fake?”

“If you tell someone it’s a ruby, it’s a fake. But it’s not glass, it’s another stone, called a spinel. S-P-I-N-E-L.”

Harold Saroyan said, “I knew the minute I held it up but to make you feel better, I had a look inside. No doubt.”

I said, “What did holding it up do?”

“Showed me it has no pleochroism — doesn’t break up light the way a ruby does. Rubies are double-refractive, the light divides at two different speeds. Spinels are single-refractive, you don’t get a prismatic effect. The look inside said the same thing. Spinels have eight-, sometimes twelve-sided crystals. Rubies have six. This one has twelve.”

Milo said, “What’s it worth?”

Saroyan: “Nice spinel, this size? A few thousand dollars. Maybe you could get five.”

“Thousand.”

Elie said, “That’s the point. Not millions.”

Milo sat back in his chair. He’d lost color. I knew what he was thinking.

All those lives for this.

He said, “Obviously, the British Museum wasn’t conned, so it was probably switched with a ruby sometime later.”

Saroyan tugged at the knot of his tie. “Not necessarily, Lieutenant. Dealers in Asia caught on a long time ago but Europeans took longer to get educated. Years ago, a nice blue stone was a sapphire, a nice red stone was a ruby. There’s a big spinel in the British Imperial State Crown that everyone thought was a ruby. Many other situations like that.”

Elie said, “Czars and kings thought they knew what they were getting. They didn’t.”

Saroyan lifted the gem, rubbed it between his fingers. “A little softer than a ruby, seven and a half, eight on the Mohs scale instead of nine for a ruby, but that’s still pretty hard. Making it more confusing, spinels are found where rubies are. They’re actually rarer than rubies. So why aren’t they more valuable?”

He shrugged. “That’s gemstones, it’s all about mystique. Like with women — models. Photographer wants a blonde, pretty brunettes don’t get hired.”

Milo said, “But sometimes brunettes are called for.”

Saroyan said, “True. But so far, the market wants only blondes.”

I said, “So there wasn’t necessarily a substitution.”

“I looked at the pictures of the museum exhibition, sir. No way to know for certain from an old photograph, but I took my time going over it and found facets that are identical to this stone. If I had to bet, it’s the one the Egyptian owned.”

Milo said, “No one would know different until they tried to sell it.”

“Maybe even after they tried to sell it, Lieutenant. Sometimes people aren’t careful. Sometimes they lie.”

“Okay, thanks, gentlemen,” said Milo. “Appreciate your coming down and sorry it was a waste of time.”

“Not a waste,” said Saroyan. “It’s an interesting story. My age, you start to collect stories more than money.”

The four of us exited Hertzberg together. Saroyan got into a gleaming black Mercedes S300, Elie into an equally pampered silver version of the same model.

I said, “So many opportunities for a swindle. Whoever sold it to the Egyptian and who knows how many before that, then onward to the jeweler who consigned with Drancy, Drancy, Hoke, Thalia.”

“Not Demarest,” Milo said. “Idiot. You think Thalia stuck what she thought was a fortune on top of a lamp?”

I said, “That’s the assumption I want to live with.”

“Why?”

“Her having a sense of humor.”

We reached the car. I asked him when I could go public.

He said, “What the hell, nothing to hide anymore.”

“Then hold on for a sec.”

I punched a preset on my cell. Maxine Driver answered at her office.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “About to start office hours. Whining sophomores wanting their grades changed.”

“Keep ’em waiting in the hall, I’ve got a story for you.”

I gave her the basics. Surprisingly short tale.

She said, “That was definitely worth waiting for. You’ve restored my faith in humanity.”

I hung up without comment. But as I drove out of the crime lab parking lot, I thought: What a wrong way to put it.