Sweet Revenge

briefcase tucked under his arm read the latest Ludlum novel. A young woman in a suede skirt looked dreamily out the black window while she listened to music through earphones. Down the car a man lay stretched along three seats with his coat over his head and slept like the dead. The two women were still discussing Harry. Beside her, the man shifted, rattling his chains.
    At the next station the briefcase got off and three young girls who should have been in school piled on, giggling. Adrianne listened to them argue about what movie they would see, and envied them. She’d never been that young, or that free.
    At her station she rose, shifted her bag more securely, then stepped out. It was foolish to regret what she’d never been.
    Outside, the wind was brisk, cutting through the thin spandex of her pants and making a joke out of her fake fur. But this was the diamond district. There was enough heat radiating through the display glass to warm the coldest blood.
    Princess Adrianne might stroll here now and then, window-shopping, making the merchants’ hearts patter with the hope that she would take a few baubles off their hands. But Rose came to do business.
    A great deal of business was done on the streets from Forty-eighth to Forty-sixth between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The swifts, trying to look nonchalant, hawked last night’s takes. Stones, hot enough to burn their pockets, were waiting to be sold, popped from their settings and sold again. Groups of Hasidic Jews in their hats and long black coats scurried from shop to shop with attaché cases full of gems. Fortunes were carried along the narrow sidewalk by men who took care against even a casual brush with a pedestrian.
    Adrianne took the same care; she had never, even atsixteen, dealt on the street. She preferred to take her business indoors.
    Every window beckoned for attention. Tiffany’s or Carrier would dress them with more subtlety and class, but without the carnival flair that could draw in every man. Shiny stones against black velvet, armies of rings, legions of necklaces. Earrings, brooches, bracelets by the armful were all polished and positioned to catch the sun and the eye, Twenty-five percent off. What a deal.
    She turned down Forty-eighth and slipped into a shop.
    The lights were always a little dim, the ambiance a little seedy. At first glance it looked as if it were a business on the edge of bankruptcy. At second glance it looked the same. Jack Cohen had always believed it a waste to put money into appearances. If the customer didn’t like a little dust, let him go to Tiffany’s. But Tiffany’s wouldn’t take twenty down and twenty a month. A clerk glanced over as Adrianne entered but continued his spiel to the stoop-shouldered customer with a trace of acne on his chin.
    “A ring like this’ll bowl her over, and it won’t put you in hock for the next ten years. It’s tasteful, you know, but flashy enough so shell want to show it off to her girlfriends.”
    As he spoke, his eyes shifted to the door at the rear of the shop. With barely a nod of acknowledgment, Adrianne crossed to it. The low buzz told her that the salesman had released the lock. On the other side of the door was what passed as an office. Files were piled high on a metal army surplus desk. Crates and boxes lined the walls and the scent of garlic and pastrami hung in the air.
    Jack Cohen was a short, barrel-chested man who wore a thick mustache as defense against the thinning hair on the top of his head. He’d come into the jewelry trade through the front door of a business his father had built up. His father had also taught him how to handle backroom negotiations. He prided himself on being able to spot a cop posing as a client as easily as he spotted a cubic zircon posing as a diamond. He knew what businesses were feeling the pinch, what dealers would be interested in a quick deal, and how to cool a handful of hot rocks.
    When Adrianne stepped in, he was holding a briefke, a paper folded to form pockets for carrying loose stones. Henodded at her, then poured perhaps a dozen small, polished diamonds on the desk. With tweezers he began to separate and examine them.
    “Russian,” he said. “Good quality. D to F.” Taking out a hand loupe, he studied each one in turn. “Ah, beautiful, just beautiful. V.S.I.,” he said, meaning very slight imperfections. “Such scintillation.” Then he mumbled, clucked his tongue and brushed two stones aside. “Well, well, an