Ginny Aiken - Priced to Move

I clear my throat to get his attention. “About how much good rough comes out of the mine every day?”

He narrows his eyes and scratches his head. More dancing dust. “Good rough?”

“Yes. Ruby rocks—good for cutting.”

“Ah . . .” He holds out a hand, cups it, and draws a circle about the size of a dime.

“That little?”

“Every day? Little, yes, little.”

I gesture toward the other miners. “All of them work in this mine?”

He points to the mouth of the mine. “They here.”

To the camera, I say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the small amount these men are bringing up out of the mine explains the skyrocketing cost of Burmese rubies, the finest of the red corundum.” I face the manager again. “How many hours do the men work?”

Hannah gets amazing footage while we talk about the non-glam stuff. I can see this special’s going to kick up a crazy craving for Burma rubies. But where am I going to get enough of the über-rare stones?

Once I tell Hannah to quit rolling and she goes to pack up the van, I ask Tufty—I’ll never be able to remember his name— where I should go to find great rubies in decent quantities.

He smiles and looks at the mine. “You go buying office, not market. Market little ruby, no clean.” He clams up and his expression becomes kind of sad.

My curiosity flames out of control, but this is one of those times when biting your tongue’s the only way to go. The mine manager takes time with his thoughts, and I give it to him. Finally, he looks at me again. “Yes. I tell you. Sometime small parcel is stole. Sometime so-so parcel is stole. One time, big parcel was stole. Beautiful rubies. Big, good red.” He shrugs. “Much ruby stole.”

“Oh, that’s bad! And no one has found any of them?”

He shakes his head. “No. Last stole two year ago.”

“Any idea who might have done it?”

A thin shoulder rises. “Don’t know. Anyone can do.”

“That’s true.” What a shame—and such a loss. “There’s a lot of evil in a lot of men.”

“Evil . . . bad, yes? Much, much bad. Many bad men.”

A few more minutes of sad laments go by, and then Max and Miss Mona wave me over. It’s time to go. I’m ready for one of those buying offices. I want to be amazed by rubies. I head to the van. “Hey, Miss Mona! What do you think? Should we go buy us some rubies?”

Max glances toward the van. “Do we ask the driver, the translator, or the armed goon?”

“Well, they’re all armed. I don’t think any one of them would get queasy about drawing his gun. But I’m sure the secret service one knows we’re here to check out all parts of their ruby industry, and to pick up product for the network.”

The three of us argue mildly over which one will go ask.

Can you believe they both think I’m the most likely to set them off? I smell red-hair discrimination here.

But I know at least two worse at it than me. “Aren’t you guys confusing me with Aunt Weeby? She’s the one who says weird things, but she’s back home in Louisville. And if you ask me, I’d have to say Max loves the taste of shoe leather more than I do. He’s always got those big feet tickling his throat, even on screen.”

“It takes two,” he says, his voice a low growl.

Miss Mona points to the van. “Go! The both of you. I gotta tell you. If you’d only stop picking at each other, you might just figure out you’re perfectly matched, and like each other too much instead of too little.”

I gape.

He stares.

We both shut up.

When we get into the van—still speechless—she gives the driver a signal, and we take off at his hang-onto-your-life speed. We go down narrow streets clotted on either side with old cars. Kinda freaky, you know? I have to wonder if we’ll get to that buying office alive.

We do arrive in one piece. How? Beats me, but not thanks to Speedy Gonzalez in the driver’s seat.

The buying office is located midway down a block of old stucco buildings. Some are divided into apartments; others have storefronts, topped by more apartments. Our destination is a plain vanilla two-story structure, no apartments on the second floor. The sidewalk here is made up of chunks of stone; elsewhere in the town I’ve seen boardwalks. Inside the building, we enter another dimension. Soft cream walls, a nice wooden desk, a sapphire and garnet Persian rug, a vintage copper light fixture, and two bulging bookshelves make the reception area a treat after the ruggedness of the mine.

And the rutted roads.

The slender Myanma gentleman in a dark blue suit shows us into an inner room. Wood paneling covers all these walls from floor to ceiling. A long, library-style table runs down the middle of the room. Eight dark wood chairs, possibly mahogany, are pulled up to it. The three of us take seats, while Hannah does her thing.

Just as she’s testing the light, the door yawns into our wood-paneled cocoon, and two men walk in.

“Good afternoon,” the one in a tan shirt and khaki pants says. “My name is Mr. Ne Aung, and I have some nice rubies for you.”

The very Myanma-looking vendor speaks excellent English with a British accent. His partner, Mr. Win, opens a square, black leather case lined in white satin. It’s a nice case, but nothing much can compare with the rich, glowing, pigeon’s-blood red rubies that nestle in the satin.

I suck in my breath. “I’ve seen Burma rubies before, but this . . . Wow! Which mine did they come from?”

Mr. Ne Aung points at two round stones. “These came from the one you visited today.”

And how did he know which one we visited? I don’t think asking is a good thing. Not right now.

Instead, I say, “Can I loop them?”

Mr. Win holds out a 10x jeweler’s loop and a pair of tweezers. I pick up the stone. Mr. Ne Aung turns on a pure-light lamp, and the ruby comes alive. You see, Burma rubies do this neat little trick. They fluoresce, and not just under the

“black” fluorescent type of light. Rubies from other locales don’t do it, even though they might show off a body color close to that of the Burmese.

“Nice,” I say. “Very, very nice. Do you have a carat scale I could use?”

Mr. Ne Aung smiles at Mr. Win. “I told you she would want to verify the weight.” He turns back to me. “Mr. Pak spoke very highly of you. Said you knew the business.”

Sadness hits me again. “You have heard he died, right?”

Mr. Ne Aung goes kinda green around the gills. “Dead? How can that be? He was here just two, maybe three weeks ago. He was on his way to see you.”

“Really? Did he tell you why? What did he say about the trip? And why me? Why was he coming to see me, of all people?”

My rapid-fire questions seem to surprise him. “Don’t you know why he came to see you?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you if I did. What did he say about his trip?”

Mr. Ne Aung glances at Mr. Win. The look they exchange makes me uneasy; the vendor’s answer even more. “Only that he would see you after he left here. Didn’t he tell you his reasons when he arrived? Or did he not reach his destination?”

“He came to the network studios, but someone killed him before I even knew he was there. We never had the chance to get together. I found him dead. In the vault.”

Mr. Ne Aung and Mr. Win swap looks. “Did you receive what he had for you?”

“I did. The police found the invitation from your government to come and film the Mogok mining operations. How else would we have received permission to enter the country? Oh! And I got Rio too—the parrot.”

“Parrot? A bird?”

I nod.

He shakes his head. “Then that must be that.”

“He was dead by the time I found him. Sure that’s that.” “Unless,” Max says, “the gentlemen are referring to something other than the parrot or the invitation.”