The day after Christmas Manny’s longtime partner, Lee, was showing a 7.04 Cushion Cut Round Diamond to a retired couple from West Palm Beach. The sixtyish woman wore a fashionable Dior outfit, though her nasal accent betrayed Brooklyn roots with an envious coo, “I don’t know, it’s so bigggg!"
Her husband’s skin color of an old leather couch from the decades of sun on Long Island and Florida.
"It is big.”
For once he agreed with his wife. He wanted to get back to Boca Raton ASAP, preferably without buying this rock.
“Big? This isn’t big.” Lee, silver-haired and handsome in his early seventies, slipped the platinum ring onto the woman’s finger. “You remember Liz Taylor and Richard Burton? Well, back when we were all young, my good friend, Buzzy Yugler, had a 55-Carat D Flawless Diamond, which sparkled like snow under moonlight. Liz also thought it was a little too big. Buzzy said they get smaller after time and put the ring on her finger. Liz changed her mind and said, “I think I can get used to it.
Acting as if he had been in the room with Liz, Lee guffawed with practiced elegance and slipped his diamond ring on the lady's finger.
"Maybe you're right." She admired the stone with a smile.
"Maybe there's a little Liz in you." The venerable diamond dealer hailed from Brooklyn too. His posh mannerism were inherited from his wife. Her family was French and he patted the woman's hand. "You got used to your husband. You'll get used to this ring too."
The couple laughed with embarrassment and the man sighed, "We'll have to think about it."
"Take your time. We'll be here when you make up your mind." Lee waved good-bye to the couple. Once the door shut, he handed me the ring, “Put this back in the front window."
As I waked past my boss' desk, Manny muttered about Lee’s unabashed schmoozing, “Buzzy Yugler had nothing to do with that sale.”
Whereas Lee had inherited his father’s diamond business on 47th Street, Manny had spent his youth on the streets of Brownsville and learned the jewelry trade on the Bowery from the bottom up. The Italian suits and imported ties pinpointed his rough background, not that he cared a rat’s ass what anyone thought, because he didn’t have to pretend that he appreciate the division of classes in Jewish society.
“What do you mean?” I asked, bringing the 7.04 to the front window.
Carat weight was one of the diamond trades 'Four Cs', because the cost of a stone was determined by the carat weight, cut, and clarity.
“I don’t have time to tell stories.” Manny looked at the wall clock at the back of the exchange. It was past noon and his customer hadn’t arrived with a promised check. He frowned like Jackie Mason not getting a laugh and turned to me. “And neither do you."
I surveyed the sidewalk for prospective customers, however most of the pedestrians were intent on wide-eyed browsing.
"Not much business out there today.”
“Now you hexed the entire day.” Manny tightened his tie and joined me in the window. He was ready for action, but one glance at the street broke his heart and he said, “Buzzy Yugler bid a million dollars for the stone, which wasn’t 55-carat.”
I was old enough to remember Liz Taylor leaving the singer, Eddie Fisher, for Richard Burton during the filming of CLEOPATRA. “
"A million dollars back in 1964 must have been a lot of money.”
“But not enough to buy a 66-carat Pear Shape, because someone beat Buzzy’s bid by three hundred thou, though that failure didn’t prevent his claiming to hail sold Liz the stone.”
“I thought Harry Winston sold Richard Burton the stone.”
“Maybe he did.” Manny shrugged like he heard different. “Abe Padrush offered Elizabeth Taylor two-million three for the stone. She would have sold it to him, except he wanted her to hand it to him personally and be photographed doing so. Publicity like that would have been priceless, but Richard Burton refused. Thought it was too low-class. Goyim, go figure.”
Richard Burton’s rejecting the prime Yiddish tenet of ‘nimmt geld’ or take the money confounded Manny, as did many aspects of gentile behavior. His son, Richie Boy, had been speaking on the telephone, but overheard his father and decided to his father a zug or needle. “You just don’t understand them, because you were brought up on the Bowery.”
“We had plenty of Gs downtown.”
“Yeah, but not like here and you don’t know how to deal with these uptown people.”
Being Yankee Irish I had a lot of better things to do than intermediate the eternal psychological struggle between father and son, but Richie Boy turned to me and said, “You remember than million dollar ruby?”
“How can I forget?”
The deal was ten years ago.
The fingernail-sized stone possessed an awe-inspiring blood red radiance, but I hadn’t seen one million dollars in it and when I had told Richie Boy the same at our old exchange, he had said, “I don’t either, but believe me that’s what it’s worth."
“Your guy isn’t going to buy it!” Manny had insisted, as we examined the stone.
“Why do you always have to be so negative?” Richie Boy had shaken his head.
Richie Boy had lost his looks, but retained a winning affability. His uptown clientele consisted of wealthy millionaires, though none as rich as the president of a West Coast airline who had been looking to buy his married girlfriend, a blonde heiress, something special for her birthday.
The call had been for a very rare natural Burmese ruby over five carats the color of the blood bleeding from a pigeon’s nose.
The vein, not the artery. The customer had been very specific about the details, which meant he had done his research.
Richie Boy called several dealers and within a day found a stone fitting the client's prerequisites.
It wasn’t cheap and the dealer flatly told him, “It's 875,000 dollars and I don’t want to hear any kvetching about the price."
Banned from chiseling the price angered Manny, especially since his son was reaching for stars he couldn’t see.
“I’m not being negative, but no one, and I don’t care how rich they are is going to spend a million dollars for someone else’s wife.”
“Yeah, but he’s going to marry her as soon as she’s free.” Richie Boy protested, though Manny merely laughed, “Think what you like. You’re young. You’ll find out.”
His father stormed away and Richie Boy asked me, “What do you think?”
“It doesn’t look like a big house in the Hamptons, but what do I know about rubies?” I had grown up as a goy on the South Shore of Boston. A house on Jerusalem Road was much less than a cottage in Amagansett, but rich was rich and there was no way that I could ever afford a ruby for a million dollars, unless I took it with a gun.
"Nothing." Richie Boy picked two diamond necklaces as back-up. Both cost over a quarter million. “The G has to buy something.”
An hour later the client phoned to request a meeting at the Regis Hotel
In his room on the tenth floor.
Upon hearing the plan Richie Boy’s father warned that we were being set up.
Neither of us disagreed with his prediction.
"Get the G to come here." G was the street's label for a goy.
"He isn't coming here." Richie Boy had tried that, however the rich didn't like 47th Street's seedy atmosphere.
Manny wanted to kibosh the entire deal.
"Everything is insured to the max." Richie had spent $1000 on a twelve hour addendum to his insurance policy.
“And what if you get robbed on the street?” His father played every negative angle in the search for the right path.
“That’s not going to happen!” Richie was licensed to carry and stuck his 9mm in the shoulder holster.
“You’re not really going to shoot someone, if they try and rob us?” I was no gunman.
“No, nothing is worth dying over, but it will look better on the insurance form, if I was carrying.”
To Richie Boy getting robbed was almost like making a sale, since the insurance companies would have to cover the loss, though both of us could do without the psychological scarring of someone sticking a gun in our face.
As Richie Boy hid the jewelry inside his suit coat and I picked up the front section of the newspaper. His father swore, “What you need a newspaper for?”
I was about to tell him, I wanted something to read, however Richie Boy said, “He broke Doom Darazzio’s nose with a newspaper. One blow.”
Manny’s brother. Seymour the Cop, could attest to my toughness, but that beating was a long time ago and I was only taking the newspaper was to have something to read, while Richie Boy conducted his sale.
Leaving the exchange everyone wished us luck and his father swore, "My fucking heroes."
He was right to be worried, but we arrived at the St. Regis Hotel without incident.
Two guests tried to get on the elevator with us.
Richie Boy and I glared a warning for them to take the next car. Reaching tenth-floor corridor, we smiled nervously. So far everything had gone accordingly to plan.
Richie Boy padded his jacket, as if he thought he might have been pickpocketed by the Invisible Man. He nodded to indicate the jewelry was still on his person and then he pressed the buzzer for suite 1121.
Inside a woman laughed and several second later the door was opened by a naked blonde in high heels. She was in her early forties, but her skin tone was a testament to a strict gym regime.
When Richie Boy and I exchanged a glance, she smiled and drawled straight out of Texas, “C’mon in, boys, we’ve been waitin’ for y’all.”
She sashayed into the main suite, where her older boyfriend rose from the satin couch. He was tall, athletic, and wearing only a bathrobe. He greeted Richie Boy with a handshake and looked at me and asked, “Who’s your friend?”
“He’s the protection for these.”
Richie played it right and withdrew the two diamond necklaces from his jacket.
"Come here," he ordered the woman and draped the diamonds around her neck.
"And let's not forget why you came here?"
He slipped the ruby ring on her finger.
She looked several million dollars richer and her head turned to the airline executive.
"How do I look?"
"Come into the bedroom and I'll tell you."
The bedroom door shut and Richie Boy motioned for me to go into the corridor.
"What if they leave by the window?"
"I'll shoot them off it." He went to the window and I stepped outside.
Then minutes later Richie Boy opened the door.
"He likes the bigger necklace."
"What about the ruby?"
"Back in my pocket." He showed me a check.
"It was for $330,000, which was more than we would earn in several years.
Back at the store everyone congratulated Richie boy on the sale. His father shrugged and said, “I told you that he wouldn’t go for the ruby.”
“Yeah, you’re always right.” Richie Boy retold the story. Lee came over and turned up his hearing aid, since he liked to hear about the schitzah’s being naked as much as the blonde buying his piece.
“You would,” Manny commented, since Lee’s admiration of blonde gentile woman was endemic to the most Jewish men. “But I’ll tell you another story.” “Not about your girlfriend!” Richie Boy groaned. “No, I’ll tell you a story about schitzahs that will curl your hair.” Manny smoothed down his Caesaresque coif for effect and then continued, “I was working down on the Bowery before you came to work for me, Richie.” “Back in the Stone Age before the car and telephones!” Lee joked, but Manny was two years younger and said, “You remember those days just as good as me, if not better, but this was also when the blondes were really blondes and not out of a blonde out of a bottle. Well, maybe half of them were real.” Manny had everyone's attention, including the two Hassidic diamond brokers at the counter.
“It was summertime, maybe 1971. Hilda and I were doing good. She was a lot like Richie in that she could sell rain at a picnic. Anyway this day she’s not working and I’m in the store with Norman.” “Norman!” Everyone remembered Manny’s first employee and some not fondly, especially Richie Boy, who announced, “Best thing I did two years ago was fire that kuchleffle!” As far as I could recall, Norman retired once he inherited his mother’s money, but Manny raised his hands, “Norman was a shit-stirrer, but back then he was a real lady’s man back then. He won the Lido Beach Club Body-building contest all through the sixties.” “And you call that a talent?” Lee asked and Manny answered with a smile, “It worked for me. Anyway this one afternoon I see Norman outside talking with this beautiful blonde. I mean, she’s like a Vegas showgirl. He comes in with her and I expected him to go down to the vault, but instead he tells me she’s looking for a diamond ring. A big one. Five carat. I know not as big as Liz Taylor’s or and certainly not more money than you got for that diamond necklace.” This story sounded very familiar, because I had heard it from Norman. Manny noticed my dismissive gaze and said, “Norman likes to tell it that he sold her the diamond and got screwed later, but she said to me, “I have this boyfriend. He’ll buy me anything I want. He won’t chisel you for the price, but I want you to give me half the profit.” “I couldn’t believe my ears and thought she was pulling a scam, but the guy came in, didn’t squawk about the price, and she left with him. Ring, box, go.” “And so then what happened?” one of the Hassidic brokers asked, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard. “Well, she came back just like she said she would and I paid her what I owed her." “Half?” Lee demanded incredulously. “Fifty-fifty above my cost.” This split could have meant anything, but Manny stilled all other questions by saying, “She was happy, but gave me back the ring.” “She wanted you to buy it back?”
Manny shook his head.
“No, she said she wanted me to sell it back to her.” “What?” Everyone asked in unison. “She tells me she has another boyfriend, who wants to buy her a ring, but she can’t have two, otherwise she won’t remember which is which could lead to complications, so she says, “Sell me this ring again and we’ll split the money fifty-fifty.” Manny eyed everyone.
Nobody attacked the morality of what the woman proposed and Manny said, “I did what I thought was best.” “Which means?“ Lee demanded in suspect curiosity. “That nobody got hurt.” Manny’s last word coincided with the arrival of a young couple looking for an engagement ring. I heard Richie Boy start to say, “You're up."
I turned to the young couple, “When are you getting married?” “September,” the twenty-two year-old brunette announced as if the vision of her wedding was playing inside her mind. “2002?” “No, 2003.” The man put his arm around his future bride. Manny and Richie Boy chuckled and said, “A WOT.” They were probably right about the couple being a 'waste of time', but you never knew where missionary work would lead, so I said, “Congratulations.” "How big you looking for?"
"A little less than a carat?"
"Nice size."
And I wasn’t lying, because in diamonds the best stone is the one you sell and in December 2002 2003 was just around the corner.
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