“The what?” Rhyme interrupted. “You’ve said ‘rough’ before. What is that?”
“Sorry. That’s what we call uncut diamonds. Rough.” He paused once more. “My educated guess would be the thief didn’t know about our stones in particular. He picked Jatin’s store at random then demanded uncut diamonds. Finished stones have laser registration numbers — you can only see them with a loupe. But that makes moving them very difficult. There’s a much better illicit market for uncut diamonds. The pros always go for rough.”
Sachs asked, “Do you know anyone in America the thief’d approach to fence the diamonds to?”
“In America, no. But I can give you the number of our insurer’s New York office. I’ll have to put them on notice anyway. And they’d have somebody on staff who’d be able to help you.” He gave them the number; Sachs jotted it down.
Croft said, “I do hope you can bring all your resources to finding this man. This is such a tragedy. Unspeakable.”
Three people slaughtered, one of them tortured. And two witnesses in peril.
But Llewellyn Croft meant something else, it seemed.
“You see, I don’t think the thief will sell the stones outright. What he’ll do is have them cut quickly — he’ll butcher them and the finished diamonds will disappear into the mass-market trade in Amsterdam or Jerusalem or Surat. Those diamonds were destined for greatness. And now? They’ll be ruined.” He repeated, “Tragic.”
Sellitto’s face twisted into a grimace. It was Amelia Sachs who said, “Well, Mr. Croft, we’ll do our best to track him down.” She added a cool tone to her voice. “And make sure no one else loses their life.”
Chapter 9
Shivering in the mid-March chill, arms encircling his narrow chest, Vimal Lahori sat in Washington Square Park, that pleasant enclave of peaceful urban greenery in Greenwich Village. Here, on days nicer than this, you saw quite the mix: fringe musicians and nannies, uninspired drug dealers, earnest students, notebook-scribbling poets, thoughtful academics and the businesspeople who could walk home from their hedge fund and law offices in Wall Street but generally preferred limos.
Now, early evening, Vimal was in a shadowy, deserted portion of the place, far from the towering, and well-lit, arch, which echoed Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. He glanced at the New York University classrooms and residences and the fine Hamilton-era town houses, the windows glowing with yellow lights. People would be inside preparing to go out on the town, showering, primping, dressing. Or chopping vegetables and sipping wine for a dinner party soon to be. The sight of these small, inaccessible pleasures made Vimal Lahori want to cry. He played absently with the brown cloth bracelet that Adeela had made for him. His father had wondered if it might interfere with his working the dop stick, so he didn’t slip it on until after he’d left the house.
Literally looking over his shoulder frequently on the long, cold walk here, he had made his way via a complicated route from the Port Authority, which was thirty, thirty-five blocks north. He’d been planning to take the train but the shock of that man at the bus station, returning his phone, had shaken him so much that he’d decided to walk.
Not very likely that the killer was prowling the subway, taking train after train in hopes of finding him. He, of course, had seen Vimal, knew exactly what he looked like. But the diamond cutter’s apprentice had seen only a mask, gloves and dark clothing.
His paranoia wasn’t completely unreasonable, though; he’d stopped into a bar to gulp down two Cokes and had watched the news, learning that the man was still loose and believed to be in the city, armed and dangerous. Anyone with knowledge of the crime should come forward immediately. Which sounded like the police spokesperson was adding: for their own safety. Maybe they had information that the killer was in fact looking for him because of what he’d seen. He’d assume that was the case.
Thinking once more of the bloody shop. The shock was gone now, replaced by horror and sorrow. Mr. Patel dead. He’d been a taskmaster, stern and rarely satisfied. But reasonable. Kind in his own way. And whatever Vimal thought about the industry Mr. Patel had devoted his life to, you couldn’t argue that he wasn’t a genius. Vimal knew how hard it was to have your hands create what your heart saw.
And that couple, the customers, the young man and woman! What a sad thing they had walked into the crime. William and Anna. Their wedding was to be in six months, he seemed to recall.
He hadn’t gotten much of a look at the bodies at the shop, the encounter had been so shocking and so fast. And once the image of the motionless feet of his mentor had seared itself into his memory, he had seen little else. Vimal Lahori believed that image would be with him for the rest of his life.
He looked at his phone — his only source for the time — and noted seven missed calls from his father, twelve texts. As he stared, the muted phone lit up with another call from the man.
He hit Reject and put the unit away.
A grim smile. If only he could also reject the guilt he was feeling.
Mr. Patel, that couple... An unspeakable tragedy.
And yet...
Vimal couldn’t deny the warm, if tainted, feeling of relief, a burden lessening. He’d been crushed for a long time by a slow unstoppable pressure like that a hundred miles beneath the earth’s surface, pressing, pressing, pressing to form diamonds. Now freedom was possible. There was no way he could have taken this step on his own. Without some cataclysmic occurrence like the robbery and murder, he would have done what he had always done: acquiesced and accepted the life his father had chosen for him. Agreed. Kept mum. Hating himself for it, every minute.
As horrifying as the circumstances were, Vimal Lahori had been given a chance. He’d take it. His life was going in a new direction.
Some motion from across the park. He spotted her now.
First things first...
The young woman, with magnificent long, dark hair, walked purposefully into the center of the park, looking from right to left. Despite the horror of what had just happened, despite the pain in his side, he felt that tap within him, that familiar thud.
Every time he saw her — even after all these months of dating — it happened.
Oh, it wasn’t the smoothest of relationships. The couple didn’t see each other nearly as often as they would have liked. She was a busy medical student at NYU and he worked long and irregular hours for Mr. Patel and other diamond cutters his father would “rent” him out to. And Vimal needed to spend much of his free time in the basement studio at home.
This was typical of many couples, of course, in the metro area in this day and age. These were complications that got sorted out. But in their case there was a stickier problem. Vimal’s parents did not know about Adeela Badour, and hers did not know about him.
She wasn’t tall but her slim figure offered the impression that she was. Tonight her hair was purely black (occasionally, in defiance of a conservative mother, she would streak the strands blue or green — though hers was a tame rebellion; the tinting was never seen at family gatherings at home).
She now saw Vimal and her long face brightened. At first, that is. But she grew somber then alarmed, perhaps because he looked pale and drawn.
Vimal acknowledged her by lifting his head briefly. He didn’t want to wave. He was still thinking of the man in the mask. A look around revealed only a dozen people nearby, all oblivious to him and moving quickly to get somewhere less damp and chill.
She dropped onto the bench and flung her arms around him. “Vim... Oh...”
He winced and she released him immediately, then eased back and looked him over. He gazed at her beautiful face. She wore complicated, though subtle, makeup on her rich skin, so carefully applied he couldn’t actually say which of her features had been accented.