Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

impatient.”
    Touching her for the first time, he put his hand under her upper arm and led her toward a bank of elevators. Though the touch would look familiar to anyone watching, Hannah felt its lack of intimacy like a slap. There was no hidden circling of her skin, no tender caresses, no sweet feeling of connection, nothing but an impersonal pressure that directed her through the crowd.
    “Where are we going?” she asked as the elevator doors closed.
    They were alone in the cage that smelled of musty carpet, spilled espresso, and Chinese cigarettes. Asian nicotine addicts simply didn’t get Seattle’s no-smoking rule.
    “To the next floor.”
    “And then?” she asked.
    “To the next. Then the next.”
    “Do you really expect to find the Black Trinity in one of the retail stalls?”
    “It isn’t likely, but the Linskys aren’t expecting me until eleven. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a black rainbow in one of the wholesale booths. Then I’ll trace it. If I’m not lucky, I’ll have gotten a feel for what’s new at all levels of the pearl market, and the two government bureaucrats following us will have learned more than they ever wanted to know about pearls.”
    Hannah smiled slightly. “What about the black pearl you already have? Why not trace it?”
    “Dead end. Teddy bought it from a man who bought it from a woman who bought it from a man nobody can find, who supposedly got it in Tahiti. That’s the reason Teddy showed me the pearl. He thought I might know where it came from.”
    “You did.”
    “He doesn’t know that. That’s why he sold it to me. He’s been looking for over a year and found nothing more than rumors. He decided to take cash for a pearl curiosity rather than trying to assemble enough black rainbows to make a piece of jewelry.”
    The elevator door opened. The second floor was slightly better maintained than the lower one, but its atmosphere still was more carnival than restrained luxury. Despite not having the studied elegance of a high-end jewelry outlet, the goods on the second floor were obviously more expensive than those on the street level. Video cameras covered every angle of the area. The booths were more spacious, less jewelry was dangling within reach, and rent-a-cops watched everyone with bored eyes and big holsters.
    It didn’t take Hannah and Archer long to circle the second floor. The pearls were bigger and of better quality than on the first floor, but the emphasis was the same: finished jewelry. There was a very nice pair of Tahitian black earrings with violet overtones, and a tangerine South Seas parure consisting of brooch, necklace, bracelet, ring, and earrings. The latter made Hannah pause, but when the salesman came forward, she shook her head and moved on.
    There were few loose pearls for sale. None of them was a black rainbow.
    The elevator smelled the same on the way to the third floor. When Hannah and Archer stepped out, they were confronted by a desk and an armed guard who was even more bored than his buddies downstairs. Archer wrote his name, corporate identity, and wholesale number in the logbook on the desk, took two tags, and gave one to Hannah. He clipped his to his pocket. After several tries, she managed to clip hers on the neckline without wrinkling the material.
    As he watched her smooth the borrowed dress beneath the tag, his hands itched to help her. Then he could savor again the creamy warmth and resilience of her breasts, feel their tips harden beneath his hands, his tongue.
    Cursing silently, he turned away from the endless temptation of Hannah McGarry. A quick scan of the room told him that the same traders were in the same places. No new faces. In fact, he would have sworn that some of the same people were leaning across the same counters arguing the same prices as they had been six weeks ago, when he had strolled through the Pearl Exchange just for the pleasure of seeing so many varieties of loose pearls gathered under one roof.
    Hannah scanned the various booths and almost smiled. This she understood: the people haggling over a tray of pearls, the other people watching as though placing side bets, the dramatic gestures of disdain on the part of buyer and seller, the handshakes, the voices rising and falling. Chinese, Japanese, Australian, American, European—the languages varied, but the focus didn’t.
    Pearls.
    Everybody was buying, selling, trading, wishing, living, and dreaming pearls. Some people wanted only to match pearls