Abomination Read online

  Michael sighed. He did that a lot recently. Maybe she did have a cushy little deal with Gary. But the fact was he wasn’t going to go home empty handed. But he didn’t have time to comparison shop and he didn’t have much money to spend. And his cash was sure to go farther at a pawn shop than an actual jewelry shop. May as well go to Gary’s.

  What did he have to lose?

  Chapter 8

  If Glenn ever had even the slightest inkling of keeping the necklace, either for a new woman who may enter his life or to give to one of the daughters he may have one day, that night’s experience squashed it. He would not keep the damned thing in his possession one minute more than necessary. And if Gary offered him far less than it was worth, though he doubted his friend would intentionally try to cheat him, he would probably accept the offer.

  Part of him kept saying that he was being ridiculous, that it wasn’t the beautiful bauble that was causing his problem. That there was a rational reason for his overeating last night. A rational reason for the dreams. A rational reason he smelled smoke everywhere he went.

  The greedy center of his brain, along with the sensible part, joined together in a joint effort to convince the primal, fearful half of his mind that currently sat in the driver’s seat that the diamond was nothing more than a beautiful hunk of compressed carbon in a gold setting hanging from a simple gold chain. That there was nothing exceptional, nothing cursed, about it. He shouldn’t settle for anything less than what he thought it was worth.

  But if there was nothing supernatural about it, why had he twice—not once, but twice—found the damned thing hanging around his neck when he clearly hadn’t put it there himself, the primal half asked. Well, the rational part of his mind said, you must have put it on without thinking because you know how expensive it is, how much cash it could bring you, and you didn’t trust it in your pocket at the casino or even in the safe at the hotel. That he didn’t actually remember pulling it from his pocket at the restaurant or opening the safe in the middle of the night was of no consequence. All that mattered was cold, hard logic, and logic said it was more likely that his subconscious concern over the safety of the necklace drove him to action, not the necklace itself.

  But in the end, the primitive, superstitious half of his brain, still disturbed by the horrid nightmare, won out, and when Glenn found himself at Gary’s shop at ten in the morning, he wanted nothing more than to just be rid of the diamond.

  Like many pawn shops in Vegas, the place operated twenty-four hours a day, fifty-two weeks a year, but during most of the overnight hours, the store itself wasn’t open, just a bullet-proof window with a slot underneath it where one of Gary’s guys could work in relative safety. All of the business that the store did during the off-hours was easy-to-do pawning and buying: simple gold jewelry, watches, coins, some electronics. Things that even the simplest of minds could be trained to recognize and appraise. Glenn guessed that Gary did brisk enough business every night. In Vegas, there were always hundreds, if not thousands, of people looking for a little extra coin to push their luck or try to buy some new luck, even in the dead of night.

  The overnight window was set next to the front door. A black curtain was pulled across the area where the attendant worked behind the glass, and the little slot was closed and bolted from the inside. All business from now until eight would be done inside the store.

  Glenn pulled open the door. A very large black man with no neck, a deep frown and a considerable belly sat on a stool to the left directly inside the door. He gave Glenn the up and down.

  “How they hanging, Frankie?” Glenn asked.

  “Can’t complain, Glenn, though the humidity does make them stick once inna while.” He took a bite from a candy bar he held in the sausage-like fingers of his right hand. He may have looked like a man beyond his prime, too heavy to effectively protect a pawn shop from a would-be thief, but he was still a force. He carried a Smith and Wesson in a shoulder holster, a weapon he could remove easily and with surprising grace if someone pulled a weapon of their own. But if a situation called for non-lethal violence, like an agitated patron becoming loud or threatening while trying to pawn or sell something (no woman was ever happy to hear that her engagement ring was fake and would only bring a hundred bucks), Frank could spring into action and have the shopper out the door in less than thirty seconds. Hell, Glenn had once seen him apply a sleeper hold on a man twice his size and have him snoozing on the floor in a minute flat. Frankie wasn’t pretty, but he was effective. Rumor was he was ex-military, Navy Seal or Marine, who wanted nothing more than a simple job where he got to indulge his nasty side once in a while.

  “Get to beat anyone up, recently?” Glenn asked as he shook his hand.

  “Naw. Why, you volunteering? I could use a little practice.”

  “You know I’m more than you can handle.”

  Frankie made a sound that was half between a snort and laugh, then let go of Glenn’s hand.

  “Gary around today?”

  That half snort/laugh again. “When is the boss not around? I think he’d miss his own mother’s funeral to be here. The man’s gotta problem.”

  “That he does. But we love him anyway.”

  “Hey, if you’re ever feeling the need to test out those things you call arms, give me a call.”

  Glenn couldn’t help but smile as he made his way to the back of the store. As he did every time he was here, he allowed his eyes to wander. So much junk. So much glorious junk. It wasn’t cluttered, not in the way a hoarder’s house or garage was cluttered, but free space was limited. Everywhere he looked there was something waiting for a shot at a second life before it was consigned to a landfill somewhere: guitars and drum sets and other musical instruments, televisions and DVD players, tennis racquets, baseball bats and mitts, hockey sticks, and coins and sports memorabilia and other collectibles inside glass cases. It was trippy to see such a collection of… stuff, and then to think that there were dozens of other places just like this scattered across Las Vegas.

  Glenn only had to wait a minute or two for Gary to appear through the door to the left, from the room Glenn had learned years ago was the small man’s modest office. He spent those several minutes ogling baseball cards and championship rings that littered the glass case in front of him. A Joe DiMaggio baseball card, a 2004 New England Super Bowl ring from the year the Patriots beat the Eagles, a baseball signed by the 1996 Yankees… it went on and on. He never got tired of looking at Gary’s ever-changing collection of artifacts that celebrated American sports history.

  “Hey, Glenn,” Gary said as he walked over, drawing the younger man’s gaze up. His lips split into a toothy smile.

  “Hey, Gary,” Glenn returned, shaking the pawn broker’s hand.

  “So what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? You usually bring me some good stuff, though it has been a while.”

  “Haven’t had the same amount of free time, or money, to enjoy my hobby lately. The cost of travel, the cost of the units, recent failures, work being slow. It’s made me a little less impetuous than I used to be.”

  “I know, I know. It’s tough for everyone. But since you’re here, I’m assuming that you have something interesting for me.”

  “Indeed I do. I think you’re going to like this.” He dipped his hand in his pocket and retrieved the little velvet bag. With hands that shook ever so slightly, he removed his treasure and laid it out on the glass countertop.

  “May I?” Gary asked, his eyes widening slightly.

  “Please.”

  Gary lifted the chain so that the diamond rocked and rotated slightly, carefully lowering the gem into his hand. For a moment, he just stared at it, watching as the light pierced its surface and was reflected back out, shimmering like a sliver of a star in his hand. “It’s beautiful,” he said, his voice close to a whisper, as if he were talking to himself and not to Glenn.

  “It is,” Glenn said, leaving it at that.

  “You know, Glenn, assuming it’s
real, which I think it is, you can probably make more selling it yourself rather than using me as a middleman. I can never give you as much as if you sold it privately.”

  Glenn nodded. “I know, I know. But I don’t have the time. I’d rather just let you sell it.” And, he added to himself, I don’t want the thing in my possession one minute longer than it needs to be.

  “Pear-shaped,” Gary said. “Like a teardrop. About a…” He measured the diamond with a little ruler he withdrew from a pocket and looked at it from several angles. “Probably a carat and a half, close to two carats. Excellent color. Not perfect, very few are, but as close as you can get in consumer diamonds. Definitely an H or I…” He lifted a small lens that dangled from around his neck, a jeweler’s loupe with 10x magnification that would allow him to study the surface and internal structure of the diamond in more detail, and put it to his eye. He began to study the gem, his lips curling into, if not a frown, then a look of confusion. “Well that’s something you don’t see every day…”

  These words concerned Glenn, who watched closely as his friend examined the diamond. He knew that Gary was looking for inclusions and blemishes, internal and external defects which could affect the worth of a diamond. They ranged from chips and cracks to feathers and clouds, from small mineral inclusions and large clusters to laser lines and cavities. He had examined the crystal himself upon first finding it but hadn’t seen anything unusual, but he knew that many defects which were visible under 10x magnification could not be seen with the naked eye.

  What the hell could Gary, an expert in jewelry, see in his diamond that he rarely saw?

  “Take a look,” Gary said, as if reading Glenn’s mind. He handed the loupe and the diamond back to Glenn, who warily accepted it.

  “I’m not a gem guy,” he said.

  Gary nodded. “Still, you’ll see what I’m seeing. I promise.”

  Glenn closed his left eyes, lifted the loupe to his right eye, and stared at the diamond. And he immediately saw what Gary had seen, though he didn’t understand the ramifications. Within the diamond were dozens of tiny red pinpoint inclusions, dark crimson beads the color of blood. They were too small to see with the naked eye, and almost too small to see under 10x magnification, but they were there. He moved the diamond around under the loupe and found a different type of inclusion among the red spots: a four or five gray clouds, which, quite impossibly, appeared to be tiny swirls of smoke captured within the crystal lattice. Of course they weren’t actually moving—it was a trick of the light—but it was bizarre nonetheless.

  He finally handed the necklace and magnifying device back to Gary. “What do you think they are?” he asked.

  Gary had a somber look on his face. “The red inclusions, I’m guessing, are small garnets. It’s somewhat common to find them inside the body of a diamond, though usually not in that number. There are sometimes one, two at most, and they’re usually larger. And the color… it’s slightly off, sort of like—”

  “Drops of blood,” Glenn said.

  Gary nodded. “Blood. But who knows. At that size, that may be a natural color.”

  “What about the swirls?”

  “Again, could be malformation of the diamond, feathering, small internal cracks, small mineralizations.”

  “They look like little plumes of smoke.”

  “Yeah, you can get those when there is a fracture line with feathering along the edges. But…”

  “But you’ve never quite seen anything like this before.”

  Gary shook his head. “It’s really quite strange. Normally, these types of inclusions would seriously decrease the value of a diamond because it would affect its clarity. Inclusions like this normally affect the way light passes through the diamond, which affects how it shines. This diamond should be dull. But its clarity, despite the inclusions, is almost perfect.”

  Glenn licked his lips. “So what is it worth?” he asked, though he knew that he would sell it regardless of the number tossed at him. He knew little about gems, but he knew that there was something unnatural about this one.

  Gary sighed. “I honestly don’t know. It’s a nice size, has beautiful color, is cut perfectly, but those inclusions…. I know they can’t be seen with the naked eye, and somehow they aren’t affecting the shine, but…” He took a moment and looked down at the necklace that was spread between them, the diamond a giant tear on the glass. “Look, I’ll give you twenty-five hundred for it. But…” he added this last word very quickly, and Glenn suddenly got the feeling that Gary wanted the necklace. Wanted it badly. Maybe the diamond was speaking to him. “But if I get it looked at and sell it for anything higher than six thousand, I’ll give you an extra fifteen percent.

  “That’s not necessary—”

  Gary held up his hand. “Look, you come to me, you work with me in good faith. You’re a good customer. And I don’t want to cheat you.”

  “I’d never know.”

  “But I would.”

  “Twenty-five hundred it is, then,” Glenn said with no hesitation, sticking out his hand.

  Gary took it and smiled.

  Gary carried the necklace into his office once Glenn left. His intention was to put the necklace in the safe until he could get Leo Mazaroski from Leo’s Diamonds on the other end of the strip to come down and appraise the thing, which could take a couple of days. Leo was a busy man, as were many jewelers in Vegas (the spontaneous and casual wedding capital of the world), but Gary had learned early on that when he was stumped on a piece of jewelry, the surly man from Miami was the only man to call.

  He removed a lithographic copy of the famous painting of dogs playing poker from the far wall of his office, revealing a large safe with a key slot between a biometric thumb reader and number pad with a small screen above it. He pulled the key from his pocket, stuck it into the lock, then placed his right thumb over the fingerprint reader. As soon as the safe emitted a beep, he thumbed in a five-digit number on the pad. A moment later, he turned the key. The hiss and clatter of sliding pistons filled the room and the door swung open, revealing a handful of rings, watches, necklaces and other expensive pieces of jewelry. The safe, though big, was not vast enough to hold all of the jewelry he was in possession of, so he only kept the most expensive and rarest pieces here. Everything else was kept in a larger, less sophisticated safe in the main storage room.

  Gary went to place the tiny velvet bag containing the necklace on the top shelf of the safe.

  Something stayed his hand.

  Now why would I place something so beautiful in a safe? he asked himself. Hard to sell something when no one can see it.

  What an odd thought, Gary noted, his hand wavering inside the safe. This was what he always did with something he needed appraised. Couldn’t put it right out on the floor if he didn’t know what to sell it for.

  Sure I can. It’s flawed. I’ve been doing this long enough to make an educated guess. I don’t need Leo Mazaroski. I just have to stay honest, can’t ask for too much. Maybe five grand. That sounds good. Gary won’t get a cut, but he got a fair price.

  Gary pulled the bracelet from the bag without really knowing why he was doing it. There was protocol to be followed, and fawning over a piece of jewelry was definitely not protocol. He looked at the diamond, allowed the gemstone to rotate smoothly on the chain, noted that the diamond was turning more than it should have, shooting out rays of brilliant light. He stared into the depths of the crystal and somehow saw those bright red point inclusions he thought were garnets, watched them throb as if they were beating hearts. He looked at those smoky inclusions, watched as they swirled like tiny maelstroms.

  He suddenly tore his eyes away.

  And decided that maybe it was just as well to put the thing on display without getting it appraised.

  Chapter 9

  Michael pulled his rental car in front of Gary’s Pawn Shop just after six o’clock in the evening. Once again, he was sweaty and uncomfortable in his business attire. He didn’t relish
getting on a plane feeling dirty, but this… this was more important than finding a place to get a quick shower. He could always change clothes at the airport. His flight wasn’t for another five hours.

  Michael stepped out of the car, then stripped off his jacket and tossed it on the passenger seat. He undid the knot of his tie, removed it, and unbuttoned the single button beneath. Feeling ten times more comfortable, he set off for the front door of the shop, patting his right pants-pocket where he carried five thousand dollars in hundreds. He didn’t know if he could use credit cards here, but even if he could, he had heard that at pawn shops, especially when buying jewelry, you could avoid paying tax if you paid in cash. And if he could save a couple hundred bucks, why not?

  A small bell chimed as he pushed the door open. He looked around as he entered, curious as to what he would find. His perceptions of pawn shops up to this point were based on a handful of cable television shows he watched, and they portrayed completely different experiences. What he actually encountered was somewhere in between. It wasn’t a large shop, maybe a thousand square feet, with large glass counters filled with all sorts of stuff lining the walls and larger objects on tables in the middle of the room and hanging from the walls. The lighting was excellent, not the dim affair he had been half expecting. A large black man with a mean face sat on a chair next to the door, ready to pounce the moment trouble brewed, and half a dozen highly-visible video cameras hanging from the ceiling recorded everything that happened. Three men buzzed behind the counters, attending to the dozen or so people milling around. There were no arguments, no yelling, no raised voices. Everyone seemed to be acting quite courteously and professionally. All in all, Michael was pleasantly surprised, and whatever concerns he had at purchasing something from Gary’s were quickly swept away.