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Volume 25, Number 1 & 2 (2001) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum THE EMERALD BRACELET LOWELL B. KOMIE By 10:25 p.m. last Friday they finished their game and she was home, sitting up in her bed waiting for Johnny Carson and pinning her hair back when she collapsed. She fell backward on the lace trimmed pillow, gave a little sigh and choked on her tongue just as Carson walked out and Doc Severinson bowed to him with that wiggly, servile gesture. She had been a great Chicago beauty, the daughter of an old banking family, her husband, Dickinson Taylor, dead for twenty years, their children scattered in Aspen, Cambridge and Palm Beach. Next to the mini-Kleenex box on her night stand was her husband in a mother of pearl framed, gray shadowed Bachrach portrait. The portrait showed a stern faced middle-aged man in a white formal tie, a cutaway and a pince nez. Hidden in her night table drawer, locked in an old diary, was another photograph. It was a yellowed snapshot of a young man, taken in Paris in 1922 on the Rue Rivoli. He had been her lover, a young Chicagoan with whom she’d had a love affair during the tenth year of her marriage. Her husband had been in Berlin on business. He’d left Emily and the children in Paris for a week alone. She’d met the young man one quiet afternoon with the children at the sailboat pond in the Tuileries. Two nights later he made love to her in his hotel room. He bought her a beautiful emerald bracelet at Cartier’s the last afternoon they were together and she’d hidden it all the years her husband was alive. She could have seen the young man again, he also returned to Chicago, but they moved in different circles and they never met. She was filled with guilt and too timid to make an overture to him. He never tried to contact her. Hidden in her drawer was the young, handsome man, shyly looking up into the camera, a tennis sweater tied around his neck. She used the snapshot as a bookmark, locked in the old diary, marking the day he’d given her the bracelet, Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1922. NICK PAPADEMIS worked as a paramedic out of the fire station near the Water Tower on Chicago Avenue. He came to this country from Crete ten years ago. He was a short, good looking man, cocky and unmarried, with a full head of black hair. He wore his hair curled in back and he had a heavy black mustache and dark sad eyes. On the night Emily Taylor died, Nick was the lead in the paramedic squad that answered the call from the Ambassador. The desk clerk had checked Mrs. Taylor’s room late that night when she failed to request her customary 8 a.m. wakeup call. When Nick found Emily Taylor, her face was already a pallid blue, her eyes bulging, a fall of gray hair twined on her pillow in a spray of hairpins. He immediately removed her false teeth and dropped them in a plastic drawstring pouch she kept beside her bed. Then he dropped her reading glasses in the pouch and pulled the sheet over her face and with a thick finger touched her eyelids closed. He took off her blue satin scuffs with the coral poufs and placed the slippers neatly under her bed. Nick turned the TV set off, although he stood and watched Rickles for a moment. Then he saw the fragile withered arm dangling from the sheet, with the emerald bracelet hanging loosely, heavily on the thin wrist. He unhooked the bracelet and stuffed it in his pocket. “Hey, Nickey . . . . .” a man from the squad called from the living room. “Whatta you doing with that old broad? Come on, Nick!” “Come and get her,” Nickey Papademis answered. He felt for the bracelet deep in the pockets of his oilskins and carried Emily Taylor, enshrouded in a pink Ambassador sheet, out into the living room. TATIANA THE BELLY DANCER danced for Nickey Papademis in her bare feet, covering him with her veils and giggling, shaking her long auburn hair at him. Nick was her only customer. It was 4 a.m. Saturday morning at the Hydra, a bouzouki joint on Halsted Street owned by Tatiana’s father. Nick had promised himself that he would wait for Tatiana and take her back to his rooming house. Her belly glistened and undulated in front of him. The fragrance of her perfumes hovered over him like incense. He stared at her as she whirled through the smoke, teasing him with her veils and snapping her finger cymbals. He was drunk. So drunk on ouzo his head kept slipping from his hands to the table. He’d cashed his paycheck at the bar and as she danced he plucked his bills from a water glass where he’d arranged them in an intricate paper fan and stuffed them into her diamond belt. The diamonds of the belt glistened. He was dizzy and he wanted to puke, but he was a fierce Greek warrior and he was too proud to leave the table. He had promised himself to her. Nick had been dancing all night with the young Greek girls who gathered at the tables of the Hydra like clusters of black sparrows. Now they had gone, drifting quietly away in twos and threes in their black coats and white silk head scarves, and Nickey was alone with Tatiana except for the two old bouzouki players and her father, who was nodding asleep on a stool behind the bar by the cash register. “What you want from me?” Nickey pulled Tatiana laughing astride his lap, her hair falling over his face. “You want my money, baby? You got my money. You’re covered with my money. I got no more.” He grinned up at her, showing his even white teeth. “You got money, Nickey,” Tatiana pushed his black curls down on her perfumed breasts. “Tatiana find money.” Her hands began working his pockets. “Hey . . . don’t do that, baby!” “What’s this . . . . .?” Tatiana removed the emerald bracelet from the pocket. “My God, Nickey, Nickey . . .” She held the bracelet to the light and the emeralds shone green like the thin eyes of a serpent. Later, in Nick’s rooming house at dawn with Nick asleep on the metal frame bed like a child, Tatiana lit a candle in the cup beneath the icon above his bed, dressed, knelt and crossed herself three times and with the emerald bracelet on her wrist left his room and crossed the street and ran up the church steps to morning mass at St. Gregory’s. GUST KOKINAS, Tatiana’s father, was a short, dour looking man with steel spectacles and wisps of thin gray hair on his bald head. His face had almost the texture of parchment in the early Saturday morning light that came through the store front window of the Hydra and shadowed the bar where he and Tatiana sat alone. When she handed him the bracelet, the old man held the emeralds up to the stream of light and a slow smile froze across his thin lips. “Tatiana, Tatiana, my child. Where you find this?” He wrapped the bracelet over his knuckles and held it to the light again. Then the smile disappeared. “They not real. How I know they real? These gems . . . you give me fake.” “Emeralds, papa, emeralds. Call Pappas the jeweler. I had it appraised this morning. Emeralds, papa,” she said softly. The old man’s bony fingers reached for the telephone. AT NOON THAT SATURDAY, Gust Kokinas walked up the heavy carpeted stairway leading from the lobby of the Bismarck Hotel to the restaurant on the mezzanine level. He held the handrail as he haltingly ascended the stairs and then stood at the entrance and waited to be seated. He smoothed his hair and followed the captain to a table where a slim, well dressed black man was waiting. The black man was Edward Jeanette, the powerful alderman of Gust’s ward. The alderman was alone. “Are you here to see me about the expressway, Kokinas? I got people coming for lunch. You shouldn’t be here. I told you there’s no way on the expressway, it misses your property by two hundred feet.” “You can change that, Jeanette.” The old man leaned over and spoke quickly. “You can change all that, Jeanette. You make the condemnation take in my property, the restaurant, the building, let the city take it. Everything. Condemn it.” “You want to retire, Gust?” the alderman smiled. “Sure. Me. Yes. I want to retire.” Gust sat back. “I get dizzy now. I want to go to Greece. See my brothers and sisters. An old man. Maybe Tatiana and I stay there.” “Man, you’re talking real bread. I mean real bread. Not like that 4 a.m. liquor license. That was peanuts and you don’t count so good to start out with.” “Jeanette. You got a wife, no? Maybe a girl? You a man of honor. We trust each other. Here, hold your hand out to mine. We shake hands. Make a deal. Then I leave.” Gust stood up and extended his fragile pale hand to the alderman and pressed the emerald bracelet into Jeanette’s palm. The alderman squinted at the emeralds and then smiled and lowered his hand into his pocket under the tablecloth. He stared at the old man and shook his head. “Whoooooeeee . . . . . Uncle Gust.” The old man just shrugged his shoulders and began to walk away. He looked back once at Jeanette. EDWARD JEANETTE’S WHITE ELDORADO slid into a no parking zone in front of the criminal courts building at 26th and California. It was 3:30 that Saturday afternoon. A beautiful young black woman in a beige fox fur coat drove. She possessed a model’s slim face, high cheekbones, sleek hair pulled back and almond eyes cast like an Oriental. She was Jeanette’s mistress, and her brother, a small time drug peddler, had killed a man the week before in a bar on 63rd Street. Jeanette had come to the criminal courts building to see the judge assigned to the case. The state was holding the brother on a murder charge. Jeanette walked up the stairs into the lobby of the massive gray building and took an elevator to the chambers of Judge Jack Scheinblum. “I know why you’re here, Jeanette.” Scheinblum wiped the sleeve of his judicial robe across his mouth. “Your office already called me. It’s on that kid that shoved a knife into one of his pals. I got the file right here. They got your boy with three positive I.D.’s. Occurrence witnesses. Clean witnesses, no records. Saw your man arguing at the bar and then he pulls out a knife and shoves it into the guy. The guy fell over dead . . . it says here, right in the file . . . his last words.” The judge put on his half lens reading glasses and cleared his throat. “‘Ritchie . . . why’d you do me like that?’” The judge took his glasses off and sipped his drink again. “It’s all wrapped up and ready to go . . . your man does ten to twenty on a plea, easy. If he goes for broke, he’ll get life.” Jack Scheinblum shook his beefy head at Jeanette and smiled. “So what you want me to do, Eddie?” “I hear they got you slated for the Chancery Court.” “Who told you that?” Scheinblum’s pale blue eyes blinked. “The word is out.” Jeanette said soothingly. “Whose word?” “The word, baby. The word.” “I should live so long.” “Hey, you’re on your way up. Up and out, man. I just come from downtown and I made a personal inquiry.” “Yeah, I heard it myself last week. I can’t believe it, though. I really can’t believe it.” “So relax, Jack . . . you don’t have to come on heavy with me. Three weeks and you’re out of here. Slide on up to the Civic Center. Take your law books with you, and just shut the door . . .” Jeanette made a graceful motion with his wrist. “Per-man-ent-ly,” he said to the judge. “Per-man-ent-ly,” Scheinblum echoed. The judge’s face cracked into a grin. He leaned back in his chair and unzipped the front of his robe and opened another bottle of diet cola from a cooler near his desk and poured a glass for Eddie. “But you got to come up with ten big ones.” Jeanette sipped the drink and laughed. “Ten big ones, baby. Right? As a little contribution to the Party. Ain’t that right?” “So?” “So you got the bread?” “Sure I got the bread.” Jeanette smiled again and swirled the ice in the cola drink. “Jack, I know you twenty years, maybe thirty years. You done lots of favors for me. I done a few for you. I know what kind of bread you got and ten big ones are gonna hurt you bad, man. I mean you gonna dig real deep.” “Okay, so it’s gonna hurt.” “So maybe it don’t hurt so bad,” Jeanette said and took the bracelet from his pocket and unraveled it on the judge’s desk. “What the hell is that?” The judge held the bracelet up like a scuba diver inspecting an exotic underwater creature. “It’s ten grand easy.” Jeanette said. “Where’d you get it Eddie?” “Don’t worry about it.” “They’re not hot?” “Not hot. Very cool.” “You want the boy.” “I want him this weekend, Jack. By tomorrow afternoon.” The judge’s big fist shut over the bracelet. “Diamonds don’t do me good. I gotta drop that ten grand tomorrow. In the ward committeeman’s apartment by four. Whatta I do, Eddie? Hand him a bracelet? He ain’t no jeweler.” “It’s arranged, baby. Arranged. I have taken care of it,” Jeanette enunciated each word immaculately. “You just hand the big man the bracelet in an envelope and thank him.” “Arranged?” The judge opened his fist and stared at the emeralds again. “Just give him the envelope,” again the careful enunciation. “I’ll take care of the rest. I will . . . as they say . . . convert it . . . into cash for the gentleman. Through my office.” “Eddie . . .” Scheinblum looked at the alderman again, looked right into his eyes, and then after a moment the judge smiled. Eddie Jeanette grinned and extended his hand to Scheinblum in an affectionate slap, an athlete’s slap, an act of exultation, a ritual among old teammates. WILLIAM MCGIVERN was a cautious man, equally skeptical in the company of bankers and precinct captains. He was a wary but consummate politician. As ward committeeman, he counted the credits and debits of political favors with the same precision he used to tally the monthly rent receipts from the dozens of buildings in the ward owned by the McGivern Trust. He didn’t trust the management firm’s computerized summaries. He liked to keep his own figures. His offices were on the second floor of a small bank he established ten years ago on one of his commercial properties. He did his financial business in the bank, but important political affairs, particularly the dispensing of patronage, took place in the living room of his Astor Street co-op on Sunday afternoons. Political patronage was a personal matter to McGivern, and so the old man saved his Sunday afternoons for politics in the muted atmosphere of his luxurious living room, high above the rooftops of his beloved ward where he would sit in his favorite chair with a white silk scarf around his neck, his face occasionally turning toward the windows. As William McGivern entered the living room, Judge Scheinblum stood up. The old man was dressed in his customary black suit. He walked toward Scheinblum very slowly and extended his hand limply. Scheinblum thought he looked like some ancient priest leading a funeral procession with a lace shawl on his shoulders. “You’re the judge,” McGivern said in a weak voice. “Yes sir.” “Well, I’ve heard good things about you.” “Thank you, sir.” “Judges are important. The judiciary is important. It has a special function. A noble function.” McGivern paused and rubbed his left eye and then a blemish on his cheek. “To be a law-giver, to interpret the laws, to judge your fellow men. A great tradition, an opportunity for service.” “I am very humble,” Jack Scheinblum said. “And you’re moving up to the Chancery Court, Mr. Scheinberg.” “I am very humble,” the judge repeated without correcting the name. “Mr. Jeanette spoke to me about the matter. A clever man, that Mr. Jeanette. A very good friend of yours, Judge.” “Mr. Jeanette and I have been friends for many years, sir.” “And your friend Mr. Jeanette mentioned you had a unique contribution to make to the Party.” The old man smiled wryly at Scheinblum and Scheinblum reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and handed McGivern the envelope. William McGivern took the envelope and nipped it open with a long ivory letter opener. He spread the bracelet out before him on the coffee table. Then seemed to frown, as if the emeralds had suddenly drawn from him a strand of sadness. He slowly picked up the bracelet. Then he shook his head and let the jewels fall through his fingers, inspecting the gems curiously as if each emerald bore an individual message. Finally, the old man nodded. “I wish you well, Judge Scheinberg,” he said, and then his foot reached for a buzzer under the carpet, ringing for a servant. “Pardon me if I don’t get up. I wish you good health and many years of service.” EMILY HAIGHT TAYLOR was alone in Parlor B of the funeral home, her coffin flanked by two silver candelabra, the candles flickering, creating moving shadows in the darkness of the room. It was late Sunday evening. A few friends had called in the afternoon, but since the dinner hour, there had been no more callers. There were only two floral pieces, one from her children and one from her grandchildren. One daughter was flying in from Aspen for the funeral. At 9 p.m. a gentleman arrived at the funeral home and gave an attendant his hat and coat. He then carefully signed the register and entered Parlor B and approached the coffin. He read of the death of Emily Haight Taylor in the Tribune. After dinner at his daughter’s apartment he asked his chauffeur to stop for a moment at the funeral home. He told the chauffeur to wait in the car. The visitor stared at Emily’s pale face, and after a moment cautiously touched his hand to her cheek. He slowly knelt down before the coffin and bowed his head and crossed himself. When he arose there were tears in his eyes and he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He looked at Emily again and then glanced over his shoulder to make certain he was still alone. She was still beautiful, very beautiful, even in death he thought. The years had been kind to her. He longed to hear her speak to him once more, hear the funny laugh, the deep hypnotic voice he had last heard on a February afternoon in Paris more than fifty years ago. He bent over and lifted her hand, the pale, stiff hand, and held it to his lips and kissed her fingers. Then he put the emerald bracelet back on her wrist and snapped the clasp. “The Emerald Bracelet,” first published in 2 (10) Chicago Monthly 34 (February 1977) and collected in The Lawyer’s Chambers and Other Stories, pp. 81-90. Lowell B. Komie © [1994] |
