Gemsicuted

Written by Julian Robov

Five

Lam had all the reasons to worry about himself. The rainmaker touch, his bull’s-eye started to look like it was turning into a hailstorm. The money and contracts were taking more time than usual to stack up. Rubyhall’s telescope and microscope magnification now zoomed to its maximum. He saw Lam’s hollow brain. Rubyhall’s piggy face started to expand in accumulated despair, like the foam in a cappuccino. Something had to be done. There were no big stones coming to his office. He always liked big stones. That’s where the money took its comfortable residence. Some Bangkok ladies loved big ones. Just like their husband’s big balls. They loved to roll them with their aging fingers so with big stones. Lam wondered why the big ones, rubies, his favorite, and his bosses too, were not coming to his office. He knew who the major and minor players were, and their limitations. His competitors like Melvine Sanders and others were in no way an immediate threat to his position. With the addition of few Asian newcomers, who lacked the inside information and the knack to pin down the socialites of Bangkok, he had no reason to worry about his prestigious position for the forseeable future. Now that luxurious thought looked threatened by a new invisible group. They were skimming the rubies right from the source with amazing speed and precision. He just couldn’t figure out this group’s exact operation in Bangkok. The huge market potential in dealing with the more than 10carat stones, which brought millions each week, had now shrunk to the lowest record in Rubyhall’s memory.

Lam too had a lot to worry about the unusual twist to his fortune and of his organization. He could now be tattooed and fired, anytime, if he didn’t manage to find the source. Even the regulars who used to bring stones to his marbled office were just not in a mood to see him. He had only one way to know the skimmers. Join them and destroy their roots, once and for all. He had known few chickens like Mark Cleavage, Christian Pinpoint, and David Feather during several trading floor encounters. They all kept their careful distance, as to not to get too attached in order to keep their secret contacts and personal interests away from poachers. Tito and Miko were too small for Lam to worry about but he still kept an eye on them. They had an occasional chat, just for the sake of avoiding their competitors, but all these players knew their strengths and weaknesses. When Miko called Rubyhall at his office to let him know that he was about to acquire a 37carat ruby of the best quality, that alarmed the old man. He saw Lam’s ability to track the source of rubies disappearing right in front of his eyes. He couldn’t understand why Miko had to tell Ris that he had a 37carat ruby coming soon for sale. Usually dealers kept quiet until after the sale, because of the presence of powerful brokers and dealers who might thwart the sale if the piece wasn’t in the right hands. But the ones who knew the game of hide and sell always had the advantage no matter how strong the competition was in this dog eat dog market. He didn’t know what to do. It looked like the whole world was crumbling under his feet. The tattooing day was approaching faster.

Miko was born to an American father and a Thai mother. He began learning the ropes of ruby trade working with different brokers, dealers, and miners as an intern, first in Chantaburi, and then in Mae Sot and Mae Sai. His mother introduced him to this wild trade at a very early age after his father divorced her for reasons only they knew. He didn’t want to know either. She later found another rich American for good and helped Miko quietly till he learned the ropes of the ruby trade. Her second husband didn’t like Miko, and the gem trade. But Miko got hooked to the ruby trade with the help of his mother, Suwanee, who happened to be a one-time gem broker. She taught him the secrets of bargaining and how to compete with other brokers, especially women in the gem market. When it came to a certain quality, they were more persuasive, reasoning and aggressive than men. Overall, when it came to making money, everyone competed against each other for survival. He liked the unpredictable nature of the ruby trade and loved meeting and learning from the crooks and bimbos of the trade, because there were many in all colors, shapes and disguises. With time, he learned fast to spot a potential ruby and cut a deal profitably benefiting both sides.

He had only one problem. His brain remained active only for a few hours a day. That was the time when his concentration peaked and profits then churned out countless amounts of money. THAT WAS HIS BULL’S EYE!

Tito, his partner, also had an unusual upbringing. He grew up in Australia working for his father in the opal mines in Lightning Ridge. He couldn’t stand his father’s rigid discipline, and later decided to go his own way. He took his flight to Bangkok, because the air ticket and the cost of living were so cheap, he never bothered to return. Tito met Miko through an acquaintance in Mae Sai, and that brief introduction brought them together like diehard twins. Tito had a reason to like Miko. A rainmaker in his own way! He had a heart, which no one saw, the heart of a saint.

That was the reason why Tito liked Miko. Tito later met Chichi, a gem broker from Chantaburi. They found a chemical match in their relationship both, business and personal. She later gave birth to a son, Timo. Though Miko remained single, he liked women, if they had beauty inside and outside, and occasionally graded them to see if they met his standards.

When Lam heard Rubyhall was planning to invite Miko to his office, an unbelievable gesture, he had all the reasons to worry about Miko and his motives. But most important of all what bothered Lam was how on earth did he manage to obtain a 37carat ruby, of top quality, if it was to be believed, now in Miko’s or Tito’s custody. How come he slipped that precious opportunity? Did someone from his traditional contacts switch sides? Why would they want to do that when they were all making such luxurious profit working with him and Rubyhall? Only a lunatic would kill the goose that laid golden eggs every week.

Now Lam had all the reasons to hate and kill Miko with one bite, if he was anywhere close. The achievement, the hard work, and the ambition to grow in prosperity had now come to a halt with the advent of Miko, the python. The only way to eliminate him was to get closer to him and learn the root of his contacts. Excess exposure to the Rubyhall group in the long run had to be minimized. The thought of Miko taking over his portfolio became unthinkable!

It reminded him of a story told by one of the nuns about a camel and the Bedouin in an oasis during his childhood days at the orphanage. The camel had been accompanying the Bedouin for so long, that one day, as he lay resting under his tent, the camel approached the Bedouin requesting, if he could rest his head under his tent while he was asleep. He couldn’t refuse. The first day, the camel slept with his head inside the tent. The second day, the camel had another request. This time he wanted his belly and head to be accommodated inside the tent when asleep. The next day, when the time came for both of them to sleep, the Bedouin got the shock of his life. The camel had taken over his sleeping area leaving him to sleep outside the tent, as the camel had done for years. He couldn’t grasp the analogy behind this simple Arabic tale then, but now he knew precisely what it meant. Miko had become the camel of the Rubyhall group.

When it came to rubies, Miko had the magical combination of putting together several color options in front of his table and selecting the best deal with an instinct only he knew. In that little time when his brain activates in any day, he had already done the work of ten people of similar intelligence. He had a unique talent to remember the best of a ruby color under any sort of light. His eyes had a different genetic makeup of selecting the best colors of a ruby in the worst possible lighting, thus weeding out the unsaleables.

Without a loupe or any sort of magnification, he could judge the clarity of rubies in a split-second. He had a library of information regarding the colors of all known localities. His brain also had the ability to calibrate the hue, saturation (vividness, intensity), and tone (relative lightness or darkness / gray) of rubies from the known localities. Using the Burmese top quality as a master color he had developed a system, only he knew to determine the best of best colors. ALL MENTALLY!

The best came from Burma. The colors were unmatchable and had all the right geological environment to create the best of all best colors known to mankind, up to this day. Miko was considered the walking spectrophotometer among a small circle of Burmese ruby experts.

Now Rubyhall had collected this pertinent information which would immensely fatten his business prospects, if it worked his way. At the same time, he had to laboriously check the consistency of Lam’s abilities to bring in uninterrupted profits with minimum overhead. He wondered why the famous gem merchants in the world hadn’t yet discovered this genius. INCLUDING HIM!

For him it turned out to be a happy accident of the day. If he could lure both, Miko and Tito to his net without Lam’s help, then that would give him a reason to find a cheaper replacement. With that and more wicked thoughts, he sat on his nephrite chair, rolling in his hand an oval cut Burmese ruby.