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  “Jesus Christ on a plate,” Jack the Fourth wheezed, and almost sat up straight. Reaching for his phone, stubbing out his cigarette in the big ashtray—almost out; it smoldered, reeking like an old city dump—Jack the Fourth even rose briefly above his wheeze. “Don’t you move, Mordon,” he stated. “We’re about to get this boy.”

  11

  As fences go, Jersey Josh Kuskiosko was no more scuzzy than the average. As human beings go, of course, Jersey Josh was just about at the bottom of the barrel, down there in the muck and the filth and the fetid stink where thoughts just naturally arise of retroactive abortion. But as far as fences are concerned, he wasn’t bad.

  Still, it wasn’t often that Jersey Josh’s phone rang, so when it did on that Monday evening a little after six, while he was watching several children being burned alive in their tenement apartment on the local news (their mother had only left the place for a minute, to get milk, Cheerios, and crack), Josh turned a very suspicious head to glower at the telephone, daring it to repeat that noise.

  It did; damn. Hadn’t been a glitch in the wires after all. It could still be a wrong number, though, or bad news. Aiming the remote at the TV to hit “mute”—now he could watch the children burn without listening to the newscaster’s play-by-play—he mistrustfully picked up the phone, an old black rotary-dial model some scumbag had sold him long long ago, and warily said into it, “R?”

  “Josh?”

  “S?”

  “This is Freddie Noon, Josh.”

  “O.”

  “You gonna be around?”

  Where else would he be, but around? Nevertheless, this answer was going to require more of the alphabet. Hunching over the phone, as though he didn’t want the burning children to watch, he said, “Maybe.”

  “I got some stuff to show you,” Freddie Noon said.

  Meaning, of course, stuff to sell him. So why didn’t he just come over and announce himself around midnight, like a normal person? “S?”

  “I’ll send Peg. She’s my friend.”

  “Y not U?”

  “I’m kind of laid up,” Freddie said.

  “U sound OK.”

  “It’s my leg.”

  “O.”

  “When should she come over?”

  Shower. Shave. Change underwear. “8.”

  “Okay. Her name’s Peg.”

  “S.”

  Jersey Josh Kuskiosko lived over a onetime truck-repair place near the Lincoln Tunnel. The building was squat and brick, with a tall ground floor and a normal-size second floor, its grubby windows overlooking a tunnel approach; open one of those windows, you’re dead in ten minutes. Nobody had ever opened them.

  In the old days, the upstairs had been used only for storage of parts and files, since the downstairs had at that time been full of the noise and stench of big trucks, many of them not stolen, undergoing repair. But some years ago the owners of the business moved to the other end of the tunnel, over in Jersey, where the rents are lower and law enforcement even more slack. This left the owners of the structure, the British royal family, with yet another lemon on their hands. Fortunately, the British royal family is used to thinking in the long term, so they simply held on to the parcel, as they’ve continued to hold on to so many Manhattan parcels, waiting for the idea of gentrification of the world’s most important city to come around and be popular again.

  These days, the downstairs was rented as storage space by a restaurant-supply company, so on that thick oily concrete floor down there stood big restaurant stoves, walk-in freezers, industrial dishwashers, wooden boxes full of dishes and cutlery, all kinds of stuff, much of it not stolen, and all of it protected by locks, bolts, chains, alarms, razor wire, and two Doberman pinschers who were never fed quite enough.

  Upstairs—you got up there through a door at the right front of the building, next to the two big wide green accordion-metal overhead garage doors—were Jersey Josh’s apartment, office, and storage area. Some of the restaurant-supply company’s security measures also protected his space, but in addition to that he had his own double layer of doors at the foot of the stairs, both metal, both wired for a variety of things, including a disagreeable but probably not fatal electric shock should you insert anything at all into any of those inviting-looking keyholes.

  The stairs themselves were steep and narrow, so that only one person could ascend at a time. The door at the head of the stairs was also metal, and contained a peephole for looking through, a slit for shooting through, and a small hinged openable panel for accepting pizzas through.

  Behind this door was a large living room with two natural brick walls and two plaster walls painted a kind of dirty white. These weren’t dirty walls, these were walls painted a specific white only found in New York City, variously known as landlord white or cockroach white; it goes on gray and drab, and therefore will always look the way it does the first day it’s spread, and so it doesn’t have to be repainted as often as walls painted more esthetically pleasing colors.

  The furnishings here are, you might say, eclectic, since everything was bought from thieves, including the saggy green sofa, all the lamps (he paid a premium, three dollars, for the table lamp that represents a Moor in a turban and scimitar and wide lavender pants), and the rug on the floor, on which can clearly be seen the traffic patterns of its previous owners.

  Almost no one penetrates deeper into Jersey Josh’s domain than the living room, but then, almost no one except police with warrants would want to. His bathroom is large and contains a big old clawfoot tub (stolen), but is otherwise unspeakable, as is his kitchen. His bedroom is as large as his living room, and furnished out of the same back doors. The floor-length mirror on its farthest wall is actually a door, leading to Jersey Josh’s business space: a room with a desk and two safes, plus several rooms of watches, fur coats, TV sets, and SaladShooters. At the farthest end is the wall-less ancient elevator for which only he has the key, used to bring larger goods up or send shipments down for resale to dealers from Pennsylvania and Maine.

  When Jersey Josh uses this elevator, it descends into a cage on the first floor, which separates his realm from the territory of the restaurant-supply company; always, when he and the elevator lower into that cage, the Doberman pinschers are there, slavering, in such a frenzy to tear his flesh they bite the bars of the cage. Good-humoredly, Jersey Josh spits at them and makes obscene gestures in their direction, before turning to open the overhead garage door which only he can operate without electrocution, and which leads to a side alley, where the customers await, with their trucks.

  Usually, Jersey Josh was content in this comfy little nest he’d carved for himself from the cold heart of the city, but tonight he was to have a lady visitor, and tonight he wasn’t sure the place was absolutely up to snuff. He fussed around, dusting the Moor, running water in the bathtub to redistribute the grease in there, spraying the rooms with an aerosol product that was supposed to make them smell like a mountain glade but which in fact gave them an odor strongly reminiscent of an Eastern European chemical plant. But it was the best he could do.

  Also, there was his personal self. Short, heavyset, out of condition, with long lank gray hair and a deeply lined face the exact color of Egyptian mummies, Jersey Josh was not at the best of times easy to look at, and his best of times had been some decades ago. Nevertheless, when he was ready—seven-thirty, half an hour early, agog with anticipation—and looked at himself in his mirror/secret door, he saw an image that did not displease him totally. Wasn’t there something of Henry Kissinger in his stance, a soupçon of Ari Onassis in the debonair tilt of his brow? If he were a little taller, couldn’t he give Tip O’Neill a run for the money? Wasn’t there more than a trace of Ed Meese in his whole self-confident air?

  7:32. Jersey Josh put Blue Nun on ice, Centerspread Girls in the VCR ready to roll, and sat down to wait.

  * * *

  8:04. Doorbell. Josh jolted awake from a warm dream. Doorbell. The lady. Right.

&n
bsp; He struggled out of the saggy sofa, wiping drool from his chin, and lumbered across the room to push the intercom button: “R?”

  “It’s Peg, uh . . . Peg.”

  Female. Young. Nervous. Check, check, and check. “S,” Josh said, and pushed admittance button number one. Then he peered through the peephole in the upstairs door, and didn’t push button number two until he heard her thud into the interior door down there, expecting it to open. Push. Open.

  In she came, holding the door open a long time down there, as though thinking she might turn around and go back after all. She even muttered to herself, showing more of the nervousness he liked, then looked up toward his door, and at last released the door down there and started up the stairs.

  Nice. Good-looking, but not a real beauty, not enough to scare a person. Good strong legs, coming up those steep stairs. Good long fingers holding the rail. Nice round head, slowly rising toward him.

  He didn’t make her ring the bell at the top, the way he did with most people, including the pizza kid. Instead, just as she reached the last step he opened his final door, smiled at her in a way he hoped wouldn’t show his teeth too much, and said, “I.”

  “Hello,” she said, blinking at him, taken aback. She almost seemed to lose her balance for a second in the doorway, maybe from the long climb, causing her to lean against the door, opening it more widely than normal, while Josh automatically resisted, gripping the knob. Then she got her footing again and smiled a little shakily and went past him into the living room.

  Josh closed the door, metal door chacking into metal frame with a satisfying finality. He turned to see his guest surveying his room, so he took the opportunity to survey her, the black shoes, black slacks, black spring coat, the blond hair, the little winks of gold at her earlobes. “S’just my place,” he said, shrugging, sorry to hear himself apologize for it.

  She turned and smiled at him; nice teeth, better than his. “It’s very individual,” she said. Inside the black coat was a bit of white blouse, moving with her breath.

  “S.” He smiled back, forgetting about his teeth till he saw her look at them, then quickly stopped smiling, but was still pleased, no longer unhappy about his living room. “Take your coat,” he said. She frowned at that, and he hurriedly added, “No, no, I’ll give it back!”

  That made her smile again. “I know you would,” she said. “But I’m a little . . . chilly, I guess. I’ll keep it on.”

  Disappointed, he said, “OK,” then gestured at the sofa: “Siddown?”

  “I’ll sit here,” she said, and took the wooden chair off to the side, on which somebody long ago had painted, pretty poorly, some Amish hex signs.

  “But,” Josh said, as she sat on the hex signs, “you can’t see the TV!”

  She looked at him. “So what?”

  “Well.” His imaginings scrambled in his brain. He motioned at the VCR atop the TV. “You could watch a movie.”

  “No, I’ll just sell you these things,” she said, taking a white tube sock from her coat pocket. The sock was clean, and had red bands around the top. Softening the rejection, she said, “Freddie’s waiting for me at home. He’s pretty sick, you know.”

  “He said leg.”

  “That’s right, it went to his leg! He told you that, did he? I guess you and Freddie are pretty good friends.”

  “Pretty good,” Josh agreed. How could he ask this woman to go to bed with him? What were the exact words, to go from here to there? Did he have anything he could put in a drink, knockout drops? Maybe roach poison, he had plenty of that around here. Or maybe he could just hit her on the head when her back was turned, do what he wanted, and then when she woke up he’d say she tripped or something, knocked herself out, and she’d never know anything at all had happened.

  Meanwhile, she was holding the damn tube sock, saying, “Where should I put all this?”

  “What’s in?” he asked her, reluctant to engage in the wrong conversation.

  “Diamonds. Some other jewels, too, but mostly diamonds. All unset.”

  “Sit there,” he said, pointing again to the sofa. Then he pointed to the coffee table—kidney-shape avocado-colored Formica—and said, “Put ’em there. I’ll get wine.”

  “I don’t need any wine,” the damn woman said, and extended the sock toward him, dangling it in the air like some damn scrotum, as though to make fun of him, smiling at him but not getting to her feet, not coming forward, not letting him get his hands on her at all. “Here, you do it,” she said.

  Grumpy, stymied, Josh snatched the sock from her hand, sat himself down on the sofa, and emptied the sock onto the coffee table.

  Well, well. Unquenchable lust for the moment forgotten, Josh stared at the little mountain of diamonds, like the world’s richest pile of cocaine, with here and there a dozen other kinds of gems visible on its slopes. Small stones, mostly, but choice.

  Jersey Josh knew his business, you could say that much for him. He would check and double-check, but he already knew what he was looking at here. Somewhat over a hundred thousand dollars in gems, unset, untraceable. Probably not so much as a hundred and a half, but certainly more than a hundred.

  Since Jersey Josh and Freddie Noon had done business together for quite a while, Freddie normally would get the favored rate, which was ten cents on the dollar, which would be ten thousand in cash for this pile of crystallized carbon here. But that wasn’t Freddie Noon over there, was it? That was a lady Jersey Josh didn’t know, who wouldn’t sit with him on the sofa, who wouldn’t look at a movie with him, who wouldn’t drink any of his Blue Nun, who almost certainly would not have sex with him without a struggle, and bad feeling from everybody afterward. Ten thousand dollars would this lady not get.

  “Minute,” Josh said, palmed a couple diamonds, and got to his feet to go into the bedroom and get his jeweler’s loupe, pausing to drop the diamonds into a dresser drawer and to pat his hair a couple times in front of the mirror.

  A sound like a giggle came from the other room; was she loosening up, this woman? Josh lumbered back to the living room, and she was seated as before, knees together, arms folded, with her head bent forward now and shaking back and forth as she muttered something or other, then stopped when she saw he’d returned.

  Woman talks to herself. Prays? Giggles. Maybe Josh’d be better off, have nothing to do with this woman, could be crazy. Nothing worse than a crazy woman. So loud.

  Sitting up straighter, hands now in her lap, the woman said, “Did you bring those diamonds back?”

  He stared at her. She could not have seen him palm them, could not. “What diamonds?” he asked.

  “The ones you carried into the other room,” she said, cool, calm, and collected.

  He was rattled, but he shook his head anyway, and clamped his jaws tight shut.

  She smiled easily at him, and as though to give him an out, she said, “I figured, maybe you wanted to weigh them or something.”

  “Did not,” Josh said.

  She considered him, then looked around, and pointed at the phone. “Should I call Freddie?”

  A confrontation with Freddie Noon? Bad idea. Josh snapped his fingers, as though suddenly realizing what she was talking about; it wasn’t much of a snap. “Weigh them,” he agreed.

  “I thought so,” she said.

  Feeling put-upon, Josh sat on the sofa again, in front of the little stack of diamonds. He screwed the loupe into his right eye, put a few of the stones in his right palm, studied them one by one.

  Nice, very nice. Good quality. Excellent resale value. “Not so good,” he said.

  “Oh, sure they’re good,” the woman said, unruffled.

  She was very annoying. Josh dropped the diamonds back onto the table, lifted his eyebrow to drop the loupe into his now-empty palm, and looked at her. “I know diamonds,” he said.

  “So does Freddie.”

  Hmm, yes. Whatever he gave this woman, she would take back to her friend Freddie, whose leg illness, whatever it might be
, wouldn’t last forever. Freddie Noon had for some time been a good source for Josh, and from the look of these diamonds Freddie was just now hitting his stride as a source.

  Then there was the woman herself, named Peg; why make her angry or irritable? If she goes to bed with cheap burglars, why wouldn’t she go to bed with Jersey Josh Kuskiosko?

  All right. Time to lighten up. Taking a deep breath, Josh aimed an utterly false smile at . . . Peg . . . and said, “Peg.”

  She looked perky and alert. “Yes?”

  “Wait,” he announced, and heaved himself to his feet. At her look of surprise, he patted the air as though in reassurance, repeated, “Wait,” and waddled off to his unspeakable kitchen, where he not only took the Blue Nun out of the refrigerator, but also the cheese spread he’d put in there last Christmas after nobody showed up. He gave it the sniff test—still fine. Crackers, crackers, crackers, here they are.

  Speaking of crackers, the woman was muttering to herself in the other room again. Josh could hear her. That’s okay, that’s okay. Maybe crazy women aren’t so bad, maybe they’re better in bed, more . . . uninhibited. Josh tried to imagine what an uninhibited woman in his bed would be like, and had to lean briefly against the drainboard until the image faded. Then he opened the Blue Nun—the tock of the cork coming out silenced the muttering in the other room—chose his two least unspeakable glasses, put everything on an unspeakable tray, and carried it all to the living room, where he smiled at . . . Peg . . . as she looked at him in some surprise, gazing in particular at the wine bottle as he bore the tray across the room and put it down on the coffee table next to the little alp of diamonds.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t,” Peg said.

  “Peg,” Josh repeated. His instinct told him, if you say her name, she’ll think you care about her. About her.

  She shook a finger at him, with a smile to show she was only teasing. “If you think,” she said, “you can get me drunk so I’ll take less money, you’re wrong.”