Clancy Martin - How to Sell

She started to show me a new Cartier design that she wanted to knock off, but I interrupted her and said, “Could you go sit with Morgan? Could you entertain him for a minute?”

I had the bracelet in my hand. I held it out to her to explain.

“Ha! Good. That old cowboy. He is horny,” she said.

I did not know how to respond to that remark.

“Bring him a couple of those eggs on a plate, would you?”

“No, I won’t. Those eggs disgust me. An Oriental person would eat them.”

“Polack, come on. Would you help me out, please? As a favor?”

I took the emerald bracelet to Old John. I pulled him back to the polishing room, where we could speak discreetly.

Old John was a former helicopter gunner who held the first bench in our jewelry store. At Popper’s Old John had always worked in the basement—“like the Roman god Vulcan,” Old John used to say — but in our store he sat right up front. All of our jewelers worked in the front-of-the-house. Jim said the customers would worry about their jewelry less, while it was being worked on, if they could keep an eye on it. The best jeweler sat up front. From up front you could watch the teenage girls go in and out of Victoria’s Secret through the big bay window next to the double doors. Tommy, our second-best bench man, sat behind Old John, and behind Tommy was Larry, et cetera, down to the back of the store, where the polishing wheels were. The exception was our wax carver, who always held the last bench because he claimed you couldn’t carve waxes with people watching.

Although Old John used solder to fill the gaps in his channel setting he was a patient jeweler, and was the only one who could reliably work with platinum without costing us money. He never broke diamonds, not even the corners on princess cuts. He worked late like Jim and me. But we came in early and we never asked Old John to come in before noon. Often, after the store was closed and everyone else had gone home, he would tell me about his time as a gunner in Vietnam, or his year in prison in Mexico, or the seven years he did at Leavenworth, in Kansas, where he learned to be a jeweler. It’s a fact many people don’t know, that most jewelers and watchmakers learn how to sit on the bench while in prison.

Old John dyed his hair jet-black. He kept a jade-handled.45 chained to his bench. At Christmas he brought his boa in for the late nights and fed it mice in the store. He was five-foot-three. He drove a small, light, bruised Ford truck. His cheeks were as yellow and shiny as a tortoise’s bottom shell. His lunch and his dinner came to work with him in Tupperware, and he brought his own special coffee in a canteen. He did not drink or smoke, and unlike almost every other jeweler I have ever known, he didn’t take speed or other stimulants. I admired his asceticism.

“Old John, I have a problem,” I said. “We need this bracelet to be platinum.”

He inspected it dubiously.

“I don’t feel very good about pulling those emeralds,” Old John said.

“Me neither,” I said. “Plus we don’t have the time to remake the whole thing. So, let’s do it the old-fashioned way.”

“Change the stamp,” Old John said.

“I think it’s for the best,” I said. “He’s not buying today, but we may as well do it right now. In case he wants to loupe the emeralds. I don’t want him to notice the numbers. Be careful when you’re polishing it. Then bring it back over to me on the other side.”

“Is this a smart idea?” he said. “Does Jim know about this?”

“Old John, it’s important,” I said. “We’re not going to make a habit of it.”

What Old John was doing for me was grinding out the “18kw,” or eighteen-karat white gold stamps, on the bracelet — there were two, one on the tongue of the box clasp and one on the undercarriage — and restamping the bracelet “Pt,” or platinum. He would rhodium-plate the whole afterward to give it that false brightness of freshly polished platinum. This was a common trick in the industry — restamping one karat weight or kind of metal as another — which I tried to avoid because it was amateurish, and easily discovered if the piece in question was ever inspected by another appraiser. Nevertheless, on certain occasions it was handy.

Back in my office the Polack and Morgan were laughing together. My favorite thing about the Polack was when I made her laugh. She looked much happier than most people. And, especially, happier than Wendy. But I wasn’t crazy about it when other men got her laughing.

Morgan took the bottle and poured himself another bourbon. I always left the bottle on the desk, but not too close to him, so that he would never think I was encouraging him to drink. In reach, with a stretch.

“What do you think, girl?” He grabbed her knee with his hand. Then he winked at me and let go. “You taken a look at that old emerald bracelet? Your boss here is trying to rope me into another one of his hundred-thousand-dollar jewelry deals. What do you think, ole Polack? You think that bracelet would make a nice Christmas present for my wife?”

“This bracelet is for a woman of her kind. Your wife is the type of beautiful woman, Mr. Joe Morgan. So, yes, the bracelet.”

Yes, the bracelet. I liked that. Good close, Polack, I thought.

“Mr. Morgan? Did you call me Mr. Morgan, girl? Mr. Morgan was my father! How many times do I have to tell you to call me Joe?”

“That’s not a Christmas present, Joe,” I said. We were half a year away from Christmas. I didn’t have that kind of time. “Your anniversary is barely a month away. That’s an anniversary piece. We’ll figure something else out for Christmas. For anniversaries you want something that will stay in the family. Something your wife can pass down to your daughter. That bracelet is a Morgan family heirloom. At that price, especially. Here, Joe, let me see that pinkie ring of yours. When was the last time I cleaned that for you? Polack, would you mind taking this little diamond of Joe’s next door and have Christian give it a tighten and polish?”

Joe Morgan wore a five-carat princess cut in a rose gold pinkie ring I had sold him a couple of years before. The stone was what is called top-light-brown, a kind of orangey-tan color, but set in rose gold with a rhodium plating beneath I had managed to make it look almost white. Cheap big diamonds like that are perfect for men’s rings, because men feel it is feminine to inquire too closely about the quality of a diamond once it is set in a piece of men’s jewelry. They are very particular about their wives’ diamonds. But they are insecure about wearing diamond jewelry themselves, and they suppose that if they ask too many questions about their own diamonds you will conclude they are gay.

“Where the hell is she going? Where are you going, girl? Well if you got to go, go. But hurry back.” He reached to pat the Polack on the bottom as she left, but she swung her hips and he missed.

“Man, that’s a fine piece of ass, Bobby,” he said. “You ever get yourself any of that action? Just a taste, maybe?”

We smiled that man’s smile at each other, but I did not say anything.

“I wanted us to have a chance to speak seriously about this bracelet, Joe. You know I always tell people that you buy jewelry for the pleasure of owning it, not as an investment. But that piece is something entirely different. That truly is investment quality. It’s like buying a Picasso. You don’t see emeralds like that anymore, not even loose. But a hundred-year-old platinum bracelet that was formerly owned by an Argentinean countess? Come on. Plus the circumstances. If we sent that bracelet to Sotheby’s or Christie’s it would bring four hundred grand. She knows it, too. But she doesn’t have the time. And the whole thing has to be cash. It has to be done with the greatest discretion. Margaret can’t even wear that bracelet around town for a year or two. I’m dead serious about that. It will be recognized. That’s one of the reasons I called you on this one, Joe. I know I can count on your discretion.”