Stolen Away

“Which attracts the attention of the underworld.”

“Something like that.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know—perhaps the stone is ‘evil.’ I had it blessed by a priest, and I like to think it’s brought me good luck. I’ve had some of that, too, you know.”

“You’ve got it better than some people I know.”

“They say that three hundred years ago the blue diamond was stolen from the eye of an idol in India. Marie Antoinette wore it as a necklace…and it was stolen in the aftermath of the revolution.”

“Well, once she was guillotined, Marie would’ve had a hell of a time keeping the thing on, anyway.”

She laughed; the first time. A good laugh, full-throated and as rich as she was. “Legend has it you’re not supposed to even touch the thing. I don’t encourage my friends to handle it, and for years I kept it away from my children.”

“That sounds like you do take the curse seriously.”

“But I don’t really. Hell, I’ve grown casual with it. I do love the silly thingamabob. I wear it almost all the time.”

“I don’t see it now.”

“Don’t you? Haven’t you noticed? Mike’s wearing it today.”

The Great Dane lifted his head at the sound of his name and looked at me like I was the dumbest shit on the planet. He had a right to feel highfalutin, for a hound, considering the simple necklace of “rhinestones” looped around his stiff collar bore the most famous diamond in the world, an indigo blue stone, in a diamond setting, about the size of a golf ball. It winked at me.

So did Mrs. McLean.

“Stay for dinner, Mr. Heller,” she said, rising, “we’ll have drinks and talk of Gaston Means and kidnappers and ransom money, afterward.”

17

The butler, Garboni, showed me to my room, so I could freshen up before supper. It seemed I was staying overnight.

“People may talk,” Mrs. McLean had said, as we exited the sun porch, taking my arm rather formally, as if she were attired in the latest Hattie Carnegie creation and not a housecoat, “but hell, let them. I hardly think with a staff of twenty, and sixty rooms, I need worry about you compromising what little remains of my virtue.”

“Like the white slaver said to the schoolgirl, you can trust me, Mrs. McLean.”

She smiled at that. “You’ll be staying in Vinson’s room. It’s been kept just the same, since his death.”

“You’ve put me in your son’s room?”

“No. My brother’s. My son’s room has been preserved, as well. It’s a luxury of a house this size. But I never allow anyone to sleep there.”

Brother Vinson’s room, my room, was on the third floor—and we, the butler and me, went by elevator. I tried to remember when I’d ever been in a private residence that had elevators before, and couldn’t. The hallway Garboni led me down was wide enough to accommodate an el train and still take passengers on from either side. Persian rugs underfoot, brocade wallpaper surrounding me, I gaped like a rube at oil paintings and watercolors that looked European and venerable in their elaborate gilt-edged frames, noting my slack-jawed expression in the mirror of dark-wood furniture that was polished past absurdity. I felt about as at home as an archbishop in a brothel; but like the archbishop, I could adjust.

Garboni opened the door to Vinson’s room—actually, it was a suite of rooms—and we entered a sitting room a little smaller than the deck of the Titanic. The butler dropped my traveling bag with a clunk.

“Take it easy, pal,” I said irritably. “There’s a gun in there.”

His eyes flared a little bit; that threw him. “Sorry, sir.”

“And here I was getting ready to give you a nickel tip.”

He took that at face value, or seemed to. “No gratuities are necessary, sir.”

“I’ll say. Scram.”

He scrammed; without a word, without even a nasty look. For a burly-looking wop, this bird was pretty easily spooked.

And so I was alone in Vinson’s digs. Sort of.

Just me and the stuffed alligator. And the two sets of armor. And the waist-high ivory elephant. And the six-foot bronze horse. I sat on a plush red couch with a half dozen red pillows, the sort of thing you might find yourself sitting on in a San Francisco whorehouse, and took in the goddamnedest, godawfulest assembly of mismatched junk I ever saw. A Navajo blanket covering a table; an oversize anchor clock on the wall; a portrait of a Madonna and Child; a Hindu bust; a combined bookcase and gun case; seven pieces of old armor on the wall and a shield, too; a carved bellows; several red throw rugs; a slinky-looking sofa that looked like something a Turkish harem girl might lounge on. Vinson might’ve been dead, but his bad taste lived on.

The bedroom itself was almost spartan in comparison—a bookcase filled with Horatio Alger, a cabinet with mirror, a single bed of rough rustic wood that seemed a relic or reminder or something of Colorado.