The Man In White Gloves Brought Rough Stones To My Counter

Bruno Sayer set a paper sack beside my tray of watch batteries.

“Tell me these are worth six hundred dollars,” he said.

He did not ask what they were worth. That was the first thing I put in my notes.

I was a lean, brown-skinned man with silver at my temples, a bent nose, and dark eyes made larger by thick glasses. At forty-five, I was an Indian American gemstone grader working the repair counter at Creek Bench Jewelry in Rapid City, South Dakota. My name was Arvind Mehta. People often called me the battery man.

That name suited Bruno.

Bruno Sayer was a broad white man of fifty-six, with pale lashes, brushed silver hair, and immaculate cream gloves. He owned Sayer Transfer, a freight business beside the tracks, and several men who behaved as if he owned their voices.

“Six hundred,” he repeated.

I opened the sack over a padded tray. Seven rough blue stones slid out. Their pale crusts had been partly ground away.

“A written grade costs forty dollars per stone,” I said.

“Write one price for the lot.”

Behind him, Della Pike held a broken silver clasp. She came in most Thursdays. She wore soft gray shoes and kept her repair slips in a little pink envelope.

“I can wait, dear,” she told me.

Bruno turned toward her. She looked down at once.

Our owner, Nina Cho, was downstairs checking a water leak. I had the counter, the phone, and a clock that gained four minutes each week.

I took one stone to the microscope.

Inside sapphire, light could catch thin mineral needles, small crystals, or healed cracks. Those marks were called inclusions. A rough stone might look like a dirty pebble, but its inside could hold a whole small room.

This one held a chair.

Two needles crossed above a short dark crystal. I had named that group the empty chair when I first photographed it. Now a new chip had taken one corner off the stone. The chair remained.

“Well?” Bruno asked.

I kept my face still.

On my grocery list, beside eggs and lentils, I drew two lines and a small square. I often sketched inclusions in those margins. Nina said my shopping lists looked like tiny floor plans.

“Natural corundum,” I said. “Likely sapphire. I need time.”

“You sell watch straps.”

“I also grade stones.”

He leaned over my list.

“Don't draw my property.”

I folded the paper.

Eighteen months earlier, I had spent nine days at Marian Vale's house outside Custer. Her late husband had left thirty-one rough sapphires. She paid me $4,200 to weigh them, map their surfaces, and photograph their insides before she lent several to a small exhibit.

My agreement let her use the report. It left the original image archive in my care. I had kept the camera files, scale checks, and dated work notes. A small job could leave a large paper trail if a person did it properly.

Three months before Bruno entered our shop, someone had robbed Marian's locked collection room. The list she sent for my insurance statement included the empty-chair stone.

I did not tell Bruno that.

“Leave these with a signed intake,” I said.

He smiled without warmth.

“There. Something you understand.”

He wrote Sayer Transfer on the form. Under stated value, he put $600. Under work requested, he wrote CONFIRM.

I wrote seven stones received, unverified ownership, no value stated by grader.

His glove stopped above my pen.

“I run freight through this town. Small businesses need freight.”

“We order padded envelopes,” I said.

His face tightened. I had not meant it as a joke. That seemed to make it worse.

“You have until tomorrow. Keep your little eyes on your little screws.”

He left the stones and took the yellow copy.

Della stepped forward.

“Terrible manners,” she whispered. “Still, best to keep a customer happy.”

Her clasp repair cost $12. She asked for a fresh envelope because the gum on hers had failed. I gave her one and watched her crease it with the edge of a bus timetable.

“Old habit,” she said. “I used to keep bus schedules. Everything in its proper box.”

When she left, I locked the tray in our safe. I called the number on the card Marian's investigator had given me after the robbery.

“Caleb Ortega,” a man answered.

“I believe seven of Mrs. Vale's stones are here.”

He did not ask if I was sure.

He said, “Tell me what you saw.”

I started with the empty chair. He let me finish.

Twenty minutes later, while I was still talking, someone slid an envelope under our door.

Inside was a demand for $18,400. It claimed I had damaged a freight shipment the previous month.

Across the bottom, Bruno had written one line in blue ink.

Pay By Noon, Or We Come Collect.