Now Shabbat was over and he clicked on TV. The screen blossomed... with a commercial. Of course. Nothing about the crime.
He pushed aside heavy, gold-colored drapes and peered outside once more.
No bogeymen. No killers.
Weintraub fetched his overcoat from the rack in the front hall. Ten minutes until the car was here. The area code for the phone of that nice woman officer — nice because she hadn’t yelled at him for his reticence — was Manhattan. Was that where her office was? And after the interview, where would he go then? His wife and daughter were at a college mom-daughter weekend. He could hardly go there. Didn’t want to, truth be told.
Clenching and unclenching his hands, he thought: Ah, how sad! Jatin Patel. Gone. One of the best diamantaires in the world. The gems stolen must have been valuable — he only worked on the best diamonds — but killing for stones? That might happen in Africa, Russia, South America, yes. But not here.
He reflected again that she seemed quite nice, Amanda, no Amelia. He couldn’t remember her last name but recalled it sounded German. It might have been Jewish. He wondered how old she was, if she was married. Weintraub’s twenty-eight-year-old son still had no wife.
He sighed.
His mobile hummed.
Curious. It was the owner of the deli next to his office — about ten blocks away. He and the man were friends but rarely talked via phone.
“Ari. What, is all well?”
“Saul. Just thought you should know. A man was in, having some coffee, and he asked about you. He seemed nice enough. He asked if you were the Weintraub that lived on Ditmars Court. Jenny told him yes. She just told me.”
“When was this?”
“About a half hour ago.”
Weintraub’s thoughts leapt quickly: Patel tells the killer my name and my business address — not knowing my home. The killer starts asking about me around my shop, armed with a list of Saul Weintraubs in and around Long Island City. At the deli he asks the counter girl if the Weintraub who owned the shop is the one who lives on Ditmars Court. He’s a friend, he says. And Jenny says, yes.
Fucking Internet.
A broch...
“I have to go.” He disconnected and summoned the keypad on his phone.
Before he could dial 911, though, a figure stepped forward fast, from behind him, spun him around and ripped the phone from his hand. Weintraub gave a cry of shock and fear. The man’s face was obscured by a ski mask. Weintraub thought: basement window, back bathroom window. He never locked windows the way he should.
“No, no, please! I didn’t say anything to them! I promise. I didn’t see anything, I’m not a threat!” His heart slammed in his chest.
The intruder glanced at the screen and slipped the phone into his pocket.
Weintraub said desperately, “Please. I can get you diamonds, gold. Whatever you want! Please! I have a wife, a daughter. Please.”
The man held up one finger to his own lips, shushing him the way he might a babbling child.
Chapter 12
One of the kur from yesterday morning’s excitement at Jatin Patel’s shop was dead and gone.
Saul Weintraub.
Goodbye. May your Jew God embrace your soul. Or burn you in hell. Or send you wherever. Vladimir Rostov hadn’t been old enough to sample the Soviet Union firsthand but his study of history told him he would have fit right in with USSR state atheism. He didn’t believe in second acts for the soul.
Now, one gone. One more kuritsa to go: the skinny boy. Rostov was impatiently awaiting word from his little sniffy-cryee Persian friend Nashim, who had better be spending the Day of Rest making calls to his Indian counterparts in the diamond world.
Thinking of those daughters of his: Scheherazade and Kitten.
Pretty girls.
Vladimir Rostov was presently refueling. His residence was in Brighton Beach, the Russian enclave of Brooklyn, but he was in neighboring Sheepshead. He was sitting in what had become one of his favorite restaurants in the world. The famed Roll N Roaster, a landmark in Brooklyn. It was a neighborhood “joint” — a term he’d heard somebody use but that he didn’t quite get, English not being his first language. After he looked the word up, though, it made perfect sense. The man felt right at home in a joint. Especially this one, which served up magnificent roast beef sandwiches — with cheese, always cheese — and Coca-Cola better than in Moscow, no doubt on this.
His only regret was that one could not smoke in the Roll N Roaster, which would have made a meal here an exquisite experience.
A mother with two small boys walked past — the kids, like him, were crowned with blond crew cuts and had broad faces. They stared at his meal, maybe marveling at the quantity. Two and a half sandwiches were sitting before him, a mountain of fries.
Since they were near Little Odessa, the Russian émigré community, Rostov said to them, “Zdravstvuyte.”
The boys stared blankly with steel-blue gazes, also matching his. The mother nodded, a faint smile on her overly powdered Slavic face. “Khoroshego dnya.”
Rostov’s eyes dipped from face to crotch then, as she passed, to ass. She wore a short red jacket and tight black skirt — and he watched her hips sway as she walked out. Rostov debated but decided there was no reasonable scenario that would let his momentary fantasy come to life. Forcing himself on a mother with children in tow could have only bad consequences.
In his appetite for women, like in his appetite for beef (and most other things, for that matter, diamonds among them), he walked a tightrope.
Gone to the stone...
Which sounded better in Russian than in English.
He had his parents to thank for the phrase — and the condition itself, which Rostov equated with a form of controlled madness.
It had all begun with his father. One night — not an ounce of vodka in him! — the man had stabbed his wife, Rostov’s mother (though only in the face and only with a screwdriver, so hardly a problem). Then he’d stripped his clothes off and run into a nearby forest, where he spent the night, apparently chasing nocturnal animals and howling. At dawn, he’d used a rock to chip away the ice that had formed around him in the stream he’d fallen asleep in and returned home. After forgiving her for the affair, his father began to methodically negotiate the divorce with his soon-to-be-ex. The discussion included a number of real estate, financial and insurance details — but not a word about where little Vladimir would go; the boy had always been an afterthought, at best.
They decided that he would temporarily live with Uncle Gregor and Aunt Ro.
So the twelve-year-old packed a suitcase, not even a wheelie but one you had to heft, and shopping bag and boarded a plane for the picturesque town of Mirny, Russia.
If ever there was a place for a boy to go to the stone, it was Mirny.
Rostov lifted the rest of the sandwich, chewed it down in just a few bites, then vanquished another. Returning to the laptop, which was online, he scrolled. He lived on the device. He watched porn, played games, sent emails, hacked (he was Russian, of course)... and followed the news.
This is what he was doing presently, while he chewed and chewed and tried not to think about the Slavic mother’s hips. He read several accounts of the incident at poor Mr. Patel’s.