The next morning I woke at 8am. Manny's exchange opened at 9:30. I bathed in my kitchen, dressed in a midnight-blue pin-striped suit, threw on my leather coat, and walked over to Velseka's Coffee Shop on 2nd Avenue. A light snow was falling without sticking to the sidewalk. I had $5 left from the $20 Manny had given me the day before and ordered a bagel and coffee from the Polish counterman.
"Where you going? A funeral?" Tony placed the bagel before me.
"No, I have a job." The tie felt tight on my neck. I couldn't recall the last time I had worn one. "How I look?"
"Not bad," Tony said before going over to take the order of two cops.
Not bad didn't sound so good. The mirror on the wall reflected the image of a 38 year-old man with a full head of hair and all his teeth. Maybe 'not bad' wasn't so bad. The wall clock showed 8:55. Showing up on time for work was a good thing and I ate the bagel and drank the coffee in three minutes. The Astor Place Subway was five minutes away by foot. The train stopped four times before reaching Grand Central. I had ten minutes and sped up my pace. 47th Street was seven blocks away.
The terminal bled commuters into midtown. All of them were fast walkers and I matched their wide gait, as if we were practicing for the Olympic Walk-Run 500 meters. I arrived at the diamond exchange in a sweat with one minute to spare. The Jamaican guard unlocked the door. The other booths were setting up for the day. Manny was at his desk. He checked his watch.
"On time."
"According to my watch." I took off my leather coat.
"Where did you get that?" Manny made a face.
"What? I bought it in Paris." The shop owner at the Marche des Puces in Porte Clignancourt had sworn the forest green coat came from the StaatPolizei in old Germany. The inside lining was suede.
"Sure, it wasn't Berlin. You look like a Nazi in it." Manny shook his head.
"Sorry."
"What to be sorry about, you're a goy, but we'll have to get you something else before you give one of the 'alte kachers' a heart attack like that movie with Dustin Hoffman."
"Marathon Man." The old man had spotted Josef Mengele on 47th Street. "I don't look anything like the Angel of Death."
"Never said you did." Manny rose from his desk. He was wearing a crisp white shirt with his tie hanging undone. A paper towel was stuffed around the back on his neck. "I sweat a lot. This saves the shirt a little work. Now let's open the safe."
"Aren't we going to wait for Richie or Domingo?" Domingo was Manny's all-purpose employee.
"Your second day and you're telling me my business." Manny pulled a chair over to the safe and held a small slip of paper in his hand. It was the combination. He waved me away, "You don't need to watch this."
Across the aisle two women were setting up the show cases. A blonde and a brunette. They smiled and the brunette said, "Hi, I'm Elise. You must Richie's new schlepper. This is Cinnamon. She's our schlepper."
I said hello and glanced over their heads. A sign said RANDOLPH, GLEISTER, SAMUEL AND SONS. "Are you one of the sons?"
"No, there are no sons. They went into banking. I'm a Randolph." Elise spoke with a Park Avenue accent. She came from money. Almost any man would think she was beautiful.
"Enough talk already. I can't concentrate on the combination. Sssssh." Manny ordered from a crouch. Sweat darkened his shirt. He twirled the tumbler and started spinning left and right. Elise and Cinnamon suppressed a laugh and I shrugged with a bemused smile. Manny had eyes in the back of his head. "Sure, I'm old, but you'll be old too and soon enough and you'll have young people laughing behind your back too."
"But not today." There was a knock on the door. It was Domingo. The guard twisted a key. Domingo was 15 minutes late.
"So what's the excuse today?" Manny asked without lifting his head.
"Someone jumped in front of the train, so I had to walk to Forest Hills." Domingo lived in Queens. He whipped off his coat and stood over Manny. "You want me to do that?"
Manny stood away from the safe and Domingo yanked the safe open thirty seconds later.
"Teach the goy how to set up. I'm going back to my desk." Manny whipped the paper towel from his neck and wiped his face. Domingo grimaced as Manny replaced the paper towel. Domingo hauled a grey metal can from the safe and said, "Follow me."
"So the trains were late this morning?" I stepped onto a low platform before the front window.
"The trains are late every morning for me." Domingo carefully pulled a diamond necklace from the can. "Rains, I'm late. Snows I'm late. Sunny I'm late. Get drunk the night before I'm late and Manny always makes a face, but nothing like when Googs and Richie show up."
"When will they show up?"
"Who knows?" Domingo arranged the necklace on a bust. "Put the stuff out as best as you can, Richie will come in later to make a story of it, but be careful not to drop anything or break anything. It all costs money."
Domingo and I set up the window and the showcase within the hour. The Randolphs had finished 30 minutes before us. Manny was on the phone to his new wife. There was no sign on either Richie or Googs.
"The sons are MIA."
The door swung inward for a stocky redheaded man huffing like someone had stolen a lung. He lifted the counter top for the Randolphs and sat at a desk without exchanging a greeting to Elise and Cinnamon.
"Whatcha looking at?" he asked, picking up the phone. He was talking to me. Normally I would have replied with an insult, but I needed this job, and let him continue, "You must be the new goy. Hi, I'm Kyle."
A second later Karl was ranting on the phone to a diamond broker about a lost stone.
"That's the Randolphs' diamond maven." Domingo whispered in my ear. "He can get any stone from anyone."
"Doesn't he have his own?"
"No one has what everyone wants, so they pass stones from dealer to dealer. Everyone of them taking a cut and stealing from our commissions."
"Commissions?"
"Yes, we get paid commissions. 5% on all sales. 25% on our own customers. It adds up, but you don't have to worry about that. After Christmas it gets really slow."
"What about Valentine's Day?"
"Flowers and candies, but sometimes we get lucky, if a customer has been bad. Nothing says sorry like diamonds." Domingo handed me a brown manila envelope. "You know where Jose the setter is?"
"Upstairs in 35. 8th Floor." I had been to him three times yesterday. He was a 25 year-old Dominican. Already I recognized that the division of labor was separated by nationalities; Spanish did the setting, Turks the polishing, and goyim the buying.
"That's him. Have him pre-polish the prongs on the ring."
"Pre-polish?"
"The prongs hold the stone in place. Sometimes if he does a nice job you don't have to go to the polisher and Manny likes to cut corners like that."
"Should I wait?"
"No, but get us some coffees on the way back. One black for Manny." Domingo peeled off three dollars.
"No, sugar?"
"What do you think?"
"No, sugar." Manny was still on the phone.
I stepped out of the exchange and surveyed the window. Diamond engagement rings spanned the length of the display backed up by intricate jewellery. Snow covered the parked cars, yet most of the foot traffic were in either suit jackets or shirts. Everyone was in a hurry, but not Richie. He was struggling up the slippery sidewalk like it was steeply slanted towards the Hudson River. Passers-by greeted him by the name 'Gimpy'.
"Go ahead and laugh, but at least I can tell my kids I walked to work in the snow with broken legs and it won't be a lie." Richie hobbled up to the window and said, "It looks like a gypsy chest. Domingo has no eye for beauty. You lived in Paris. I want you to set up the front window."
"I don't know anything about jewellery."
"Think of us as pimps. The front window is our best hooker. She brings the customers into the brothel to spend money. The pretty the hooker the more customers we get and that's the truth." Richie tapped the manila envelope in my hand. "Put that inside your jacket. This street has more thieves than customers."
"Sure." My years as a physionomiste should have alerted me to thieves. "You want a coffee."
"Sugar and milk."
Richie waved to his father and greeted a Hassim with a long white beard. I wandered off to 35. Jose the setter agreed to pre-polish the ring. Back at the store Manny, Domingo, and Richie were happy with their coffee, especially Manny, who thanked Domingo.
"I owe you."
"You said yesterday."
"And I meant it."
The door opened for an elegant man with silver hair. He eyed my leather coat on the hook and said to Manny. "So we are now hiring Nazis?"
"He's no Nazi. He's friend of Richie."
"So Richie has Nazi friends?" the man asked stepping behind the Randolphs' counter. He slipped out of his cashmere coat and fingered his impeccable tweed suit. "Get yourself a new coat."
"Thanks for the advice." I wanted to leap across the counter and whack him. Richie grabbed my arm. "Don't mind Jerome. He likes getting a rise out of everyone. He's sort of my 'Dutch Uncle' up here."
"Dutch uncle?"
"Yeah, someone who tells you the truth even if it hurts so you learn what he knows, but accepts you're a fuck-up too."
"He do that with his daughter?" Jerome was speaking with his daughter at the front of their booth. Cinnamon was putting on her coat. Something said the young blonde was glad to be getting out of the office.
"No, Elise is the apple of his eye along with his son. Both good people. Not like you and me." Richie gave me an envelope. "Diamonds. Have Aron weigh them out. There are 13 of them. 1.35 carats. Get our memo too."
"Memo?"
"Yeah, a memo is a slip of paper we sing to get diamonds or jewellery from another dealer or them from us. We have 90 days to keep the merchandise and at the end of those 90 days we either give them the goods or the money."
"And if you don't."
"Then we get Manny to stall them." Richie lifted the counter. "I know it's a lot to digest at one time, but it will make sense soon enough. Remember the memo."
The rest of the day passed in a blur. I went to setter, brokers, polishers, findings stores, once to Berger's Deli. The snow stopped in the afternoon. Googs had yet to show up and Domingo said, "He musta got his tongue stuck in the micro-wave."
"Huh?"
"I don't understand either, but he used it once as an excuse for being late. It's nice being the SOB."
"SOB?"
"Son of the boss." Richie had good ears. "I was real lucky in the sperm lottery. I got Googs to be my older brother and Manny's going to leave it all to him, although not if I can help it, but this ain't a Cain and Abel day. I'm going home to my wife. You want to come over for dinner later."
"Sure." I was never one to refuse a free meal.
"8."
Domingo and I pulled the front window at 5:30. The goods were in the safe by 6. Domingo left without saying good-bye. Manny gave me another $20 and said, "I'll money you up on Friday."
"When are you going to start teaching me about diamonds?"
"You teach yourself here. You want to know something. You ask as long as it has nothing to do with my books."
"Yeah, but__________"
"There are no 'yeah, buts'. This is on-the-job training. Just don't fuck up. That's the # 1 rule. We're not selling sandwiches, so fuck-ups cost real money."
"Okay, I'll be real careful."
"I don't care about careful. I care about no fuck-ups." Manny wasn't angry. He was just telling it his way. I wished him a good night and the Jamaican guard locked the door after me. Elise was speaking to her father outside. Jerome smiled at me and said, "Nice coat, Herr Goy."
"Don't let him get to you." Elise's eyes were a sweet brown. "He's that way with everyone."
"Even you."
"Especially me." She startled me by reaching into my jacket pocket. Her fingers deftly pulled out a diamond package and then stuck it back into the pocket. "You have to be careful about what you carry. It's real easy to forget."
"I'll bring it back."
"Why bother Manny?" Elise nodded over her shoulder. Manny was buried in paperwork. "It'll keep till tomorrow."
"Thanks." Her smile was more genuine than her father's. I watched her walk away and then headed over to Grand Central. My feet were sore from walking and my brain numbed from all the new information, but I had a job in the diamond business and not many goys could say that. Not many other than Domingo and me.
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