Kill Me If You Can

Chapter 1

I SWEAR THIS is true. My name is Matthew Bannon, and I’m a Fine Arts major at Parsons in New York City.

The first thing you resign yourself to when you decide you want to dedicate your life to being a painter is that you’re never going to get rich.

It goes with the territory. Vincent van Gogh died without a nickel, and that guy could paint rings around me. So I figured I’d spend the rest of my life as a starving artist in a paint-spattered loft in SoHo — poor but happy.

But that fantasy took a total nosedive when I found millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds inside a locker in Grand Central Terminal one night.

That’s right. Found.

I know, I know. It’s hard to believe. I didn’t believe it, either. I felt like a guy must feel when he wins the Mega Millions lottery. Only I didn’t buy a lottery ticket.

I just reached inside locker #925, and there it was.

A leather bag filled with millions and millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds.

One minute I was planning a life of poverty; the next minute I was holding a small fortune in my hand.

Growing up in Hotchkiss, Colorado, I saw my share of rich people. None of them lived there. They would just be driving the scenic route on their way to Vail or Telluride and they’d stop for gas or something to eat at the North Fork Valley Restaurant.

Hotchkiss is about half the size of Central Park, with fewer people than you’d find in some New York City apartment buildings. But it’s in the middle of God’s country. It’s everything John Denver sings about in “Rocky Mountain High.”

It’s where I learned to hunt, fish, ski, fly a plane, and do a whole lot of other macho stuff that my father taught me. He was a Marine. So were his father and his father before him.

My artistic side comes from my mom. She taught me to paint.

My father wanted me to carry on the family’s military tradition. My mother said one uncultured jarhead in the family was enough.

So we compromised. I spent four years in the corps, with three active deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then I saved up enough money to move to New York. Now at the age of thirty, I was in one of the best art programs in the country.

And suddenly my days of worrying about money were over.

I was rich. Or at least I could be rich if I decided to keep the diamonds. And why not? The guy who owned them wouldn’t come looking for them.

As far as I figured, that guy was dead.

Chapter 2

YOU MIGHT THINK that finding a bag full of diamonds would be the best thing that happened in my life.

But you’d be wrong.

The best thing was finding Katherine Sanborne.

We met at the Whitney Museum.

The Whitney is one of my favorite places in New York, and I was staring at one of my favorite paintings, Armistice Night, by George Luks.

And then I saw her. Midtwenties, a heart-stoppingly beautiful face framed with auburn hair that fell to her shoulders in soft curls. She was escorting a group of high-school kids. As they came up beside me, she said, “George Luks was an American Realist.”

“And I’m a Puerto Rican romantic,” one kid said.

Big laugh from his teen cohorts.

Another kid jumped right in. “And I’m a Jewish pessimist,” he said.

Within seconds, half a dozen kids were vying to see who could get the biggest laugh. Katherine just grinned and didn’t try to stop them.

But I did. “None of you is as funny as George Luks,” I said, pointing at the painting on the wall.

“You think this picture is funny?” the Puerto Rican romantic said.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “But the guy who painted it, George Luks, was a stand-up comedian and a comic strip illustrator. Then he teamed up with seven other artists and they became known as the Ashcan School.”

“Cool,” the kid said.

“He was pretty cool,” I said. “Until one night he got the crap kicked out of him in a barroom brawl and was found dead a few hours later. Now, if you paid attention to your teacher, you could learn a lot of cool stuff like that.”

I walked away.

A half hour later Katherine found me gawking at Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning.

“Where’s your class?” I said.

“I’m not their teacher,” she said. “I just do volunteer work at the museum every Wednesday. The kids liked you. They were sorry you left.”

“I’m sure you handled them just fine,” I said.

“I did. But I was sorry you left, too. How do you know so much about art?”

I shrugged. “I just do. It’s not a very exciting story.”

“I love to hear what other people think about art,” she said. “If I bought you a cup of tea and a pumpkin muffin at Sarabeth’s Kitchen, would you tell me some of the least boring parts?” She smiled and her soft gray eyes were full of mischief and joy and promise.

“I couldn’t do that,” I said.

Her smile faded and her eyes looked at me, more than a little surprised.

“But I could buy you a cup of tea and a pumpkin muffin at Sarabeth’s Kitchen,” I said. “Would that work?”

The smile flashed back on. “Deal,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Katherine Sanborne.”

“Matthew Bannon,” I said. Her hand was warm and soft and about half the size of mine. I held it for only a second, but it was long enough for me to get that jolt that goes through your body when you touch someone who has touched your heart.

We had tea.

I told her about my dream to be a painter.

“Maybe I can help,” she said. “I teach art. I’d love to see your work. Maybe you can bring some samples to my office tomorrow after my class.”

“I thought you said those kids in the museum weren’t your class.”

“They’re not. I don’t teach high school.”

“Oh, okay. That makes sense,” I said. “You’re pretty young. You probably wouldn’t want to put up with a bunch of hormonal teenage boys all day. What grade do you teach?”

She smiled. “It’s not a grade,” she said. “It’s a master’s program. I’m a professor of Fine Arts at Parsons.”

It was now official: Katherine Sanborne was beautiful and brilliant.

I was totally out of my league.

Chapter 3

I SPENT HALF that night trying to figure out which of my paintings I should show her. Was this one too predictable? Was that one too boring? Or worse, completely pedestrian? I was seeing my work in a whole new light. Not just was it any good, but was it good enough for Katherine?

The next day I was in Professor Sanborne’s office with fourteen photos of what I hoped was the best work I had done thus far. I doubt I’d ever felt more vulnerable and exposed in my life.

“No wonder you knew so much about the Realists,” she said after she looked at them. “Your work reminds me of Edward Hopper. In his early days.”

“I suppose you mean back when he was finger-painting in kindergarten?”

She laughed, and I decided it was gentle humor, kind humor, rather than the savage variety some professors strive to perfect.

“Not that early,” she said. “As you know, I’m sure, Hopper is legendary for his ability to capture reality. But his early works are so impersonal. That’s where you are now. In my opinion, anyway. Over time, Hopper’s paintings began to take on emotions — loneliness, despair, gloom. Nighthawks is probably his best work — my favorite — and he didn’t paint that till he was sixty.”

“I hope it doesn’t take me that long,” I said, “to do something half as good.”

“It won’t,” she said. “Not if you study at the right school.”

“Like where?” I asked. “Any suggestion you have would be so helpful. Honest.”

“Like here,” she said.

I shook my head a couple of times. “I don’t think I have the talent to be accepted at Parsons.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she said. “Loser buys the winner…I don’t know — dinner at Peter Luger. I love Luger’s.”

Six months later, Professor Katherine Sanborne and I were having the porterhouse medium rare at Peter Luger in Brooklyn.

I paid for dinner.

We started seeing each other regularly after our celebratory dinner, and six months after that, I was in her Group Critique class at Parsons. We did a pretty good job of keeping our relationship a secret from the other students, I thought.

The best part of Group Critique was being able to be near her three times a week. The worst part was enduring the critiques by my so-called peers.

The morning before I found the diamonds, my latest painting was being thoroughly trashed by Leonard Karns. Karns was short, round, pretentious, and bitterly, unnecessarily nasty. He waddled over to my canvas and explained to the rest of the group why it sucked and, by proxy, why I sucked.

“So it’s a bunch of nobodies in line at an unemployment office,” he said. “But do we really care about any of them? I could take the same picture with my cell phone camera. It’s like the German playwright Bertolt Brecht said, ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.’”

“And you don’t think Mr. Bannon has shaped this piece?” Katherine said.

“No,” Karns said. “But I think he should take a hammer to it.”

If he was hoping for a laugh from the rest of the class, he didn’t get it. Most of my fellow students sat in silence and winced. It was the last day of the semester, and by now Karns had managed to systematically piss off every one of them with his condescending elitist bullshit.

He would have pontificated longer, but Katherine cut him off. When class ended, she gave us back our term papers. The assignment had been to write a five-thousand-word critique of public art in New York City. It counted as a third of our grade, so I’d spent a lot of time on it. I’d hoped for an A.

But I didn’t get it. There was a yellow sticky on the front page. It said, C+. Matthew, see me after class.

I sat in a depressed funk while everyone else filed out of the room. Katherine Sanborne finally came around her desk and walked toward me.

“C-plus?” I said. “I thought the paper was a little better than that.”

“If you’re willing to put in the time, I can give you a chance to improve your grade,” she said.

“What do I have to do? I’m not afraid of hard work.”

And then Katherine’s mischievous gray eyes lit up, and she clicked the lock on the classroom door.

“Take off your pants,” she said.

I’d been had.

She stepped out of her skirt. Very graceful. Nice to watch. “If those pants don’t come off in five seconds, Mr. Bannon, I’m going to have to give you an incomplete,” she said. “By the way, that paper of yours was damn good, but I’ve come to expect even more from you.”

The classroom had a chaise longue that was used for the figure-painting courses, and within seconds Katherine pulled me to it and began caressing, kissing, exploring. Then I was inside her. This was some kind of teacher-student counseling session.

Finally, Katherine put her lips to my ear, taunting me with kisses and little flicks of her tongue.

“Matthew,” she whispered.

“What?”

“A-plus-plus.”

Chapter 4

OKAY, LET ME get back to my story about the unexpected treasure trove that I found in locker #925. It was a night I’ll never forget, of course. And for the other people in Grand Central Terminal, it was probably their worst nightmare.

I wasn’t in New York City on September 11, 2001, but I’ve lived here long enough to understand the citywide paranoia. It could happen again.

New York is, was, and always will be Ground Zero. Code orange is as lax as we get here. I’ve seen tanks parked on Wall Street, bomb-sniffing dogs in public buildings, and convoys of cop cars barreling into neighborhoods as part of the NYPD’s daily anti-terrorism drills.

So, when the post — rush hour lull at Grand Central is shattered by gunshots and followed by two loud explosions, only one thing comes to mind.

Terrorist attack.

In an instant, the collective paranoia was justified. Mass panic ensued.

The screams echoed off the walls of the marble cavern. The first thing I saw was that nobody ducked for cover. Everybody ran — with visions of the crumbling towers replaying in their heads, I’m sure.

And then I couldn’t see a thing. Red smoke filled the building.

I’ve spent a lot of time in war zones, but this was not my responsibility. I wasn’t a first responder.

I ran like the rest of them.

And then I saw it in the smoky haze.

A trail of blood.

Instinctively I followed it. And then I saw him.

He was a big bear of a man, slumped against a bank of lockers in a pool of his own blood — from a gaping wound in his neck.

In all the madness, nobody was paying any attention to him. I knelt at his side.

My knee hit something hard. A gun.

“Get doctor. Stop blood.” He gurgled out the words in a thick Russian accent.

But there was no time for a doctor. No time for anything.

Before I could say a word, his eyes rolled back in his head and he exhaled a strained breath. He was dead.

His dark blue suit and the floor around him glistened with blood. It coated the door of the bottom locker closest to him. As I looked up, I saw a wide swath of red where he had leaned against the upper locker and slid to the ground.

Locker #925 was covered in bloody handprints.

And it was open.

Wide open.

Chapter 5

I COULD THINK of only one reason that a reasonably sane man who was hemorrhaging blood would open a train station locker instead of wildly seeking help. Whatever was inside that locker had to be too valuable to leave behind.

I looked down at the dead Russian. Was it worth it, Comrade?

But then, who was I to judge this poor man for choosing locker #925 over calling 911? If I had half a brain, I’d be running out of Grand Central with all my fellow bomb-scared travelers.

But I wanted to know what was inside that locker. No — I had to know.

I stood up. By now the red smoke was starting to dissipate and I could take in the pandemonium.

People were stampeding toward the exits, fighting and clawing their way out of the station. Some cops were trying to keep them from getting trampled in the doorways.

Other cops were trying to evacuate the people who refused to leave.

A woman with three suitcases was holding her ground in the middle of the station, insisting that she wasn’t going anywhere without her bags.

“Damn it, lady,” a ruddy-faced cop screamed, “you can’t get a redcap during a terrorist attack.”

He grabbed all three bags, and she followed him as he struggled toward an exit.

And then a body came flying through the air and hit the marble floor.

It was a young man, Asian, wearing a busboy’s uniform.

Michael Jordan’s Steak House is a popular restaurant on the balconies overlooking the main concourse. People were pouring out, shoving their way toward the wide marble staircase at the west side of the station. The busboy must have been caught at the far end of the restaurant and opted for the quick way out. It was about a twenty-foot drop. He stood up on his right leg and started hopping toward the exit.

I thought I’d just experienced the most insane day of my life. What I didn’t know then was that after I reached inside that locker, the insanity would only get worse.

I put my hand on the open door and peered in. There was a bag inside. But not just any bag. It was one of those old-timey medical bags that you see in black-and-white movies from back in the days when doctors made house calls.

Maybe the Russian wasn’t so dumb after all. Doctor bags are usually crammed with gauze and tape and about twelve hundred cotton balls.

I opened it carefully and looked inside.

My first thought was Holy shit.

My second thought was This is a bag worth dying for.

Chapter 6

I’D SEEN DIAMONDS before. My mother had one in her engagement ring. My aunt had two in her ears. But my recently shot-up acquaintance, now cooling on the floor of Grand Central, had them all beat. Did you ever enter one of those contests where you have to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar, and there are so many of them, you know you won’t even come close? That’s how many diamonds were in the Russian’s medical bag.

Correction—my medical bag. At least for the time being.

When I was growing up, my mom used to tell my sister and me about a leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But she never mentioned a Russian Neanderthal with a bag of diamonds at the end of a bloody trail in a train station. Mom also said something about never taking what doesn’t belong to you. But to whom did the diamonds actually belong? The dead guy with the gun? I definitely suspected he had taken them from somebody else. My mom meant well, but at a time like this, I had to seriously consider my dad’s worldview. Finders keepers.

I could almost hear my dad listing my options. What are you going to do, Matthew? Leave the diamonds with the dead body and walk away? Or maybe you want to get on the PA system and say, “If anyone at Grand Central lost a bag of diamonds, please meet me on the main concourse”?

I made a decision, a temporary one, anyway. The diamonds were up for grabs and I was the one who would grab them.

I closed the black bag and snapped the brass latch. My mind started racing. These diamonds could completely change my life.

Little did I know how soon, and how much.

The voice behind me was deep, resonant, and authoritative. “Police. Turn around real slow. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

I turned. The voice belonged to a young, very large African-American cop. And just in case his size didn’t intimidate me, he was pointing his service revolver at my chest.

Hmm, I thought. Looks like my life is changing already.

Chapter 7

THERE WAS A dead guy at my feet, a fortune in diamonds in my hands, and an NYPD uniform pointing his gun at me. Now what happens?

“Officer Kendall,” I said, reading his name tag. “I’m really glad you showed up. Thank God. Can you give me a hand here?”

“Who are you? Who is he?” the cop asked.

“I’m Dr. Jason Wood,” I said, dredging up a name. “And I have no idea who he is, but I can tell you he’s dead.”

I knelt down beside the body and tried to appear oblivious of the policeman’s gun. “There was nothing I could do. He had expired by the time I got here.”

Kendall was young, a beat cop, and this had to be the most action he’d seen since the Academy. One minute he was probably shooing unlicensed T-shirt vendors off Madison Avenue, and the next he’s involved in a bomb attack in the heart of Manhattan.

“Please do me a favor,” I said, barely looking up at him. “Would you point that gun somewhere else?”

“Sorry, Doc,” he said, holstering the weapon.

I leaned over the dead body like I knew what I was doing. “He must have caught some shrapnel when the bombs went off,” I said, stalling. “You know who’s behind it?”

“I don’t know shit,” the cop said. “I was on Forty-sixth Street. The call went out that bombs had gone off at Grand Central. I just got here.”

“Just a minute. Hold on. I’ve got an incoming.” I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and pressed it to my ear. Then I improvised. “Hello, this is Dr. Wood,” I said. “I know. I was actually in Grand Central when the bombs went off. I’m still there. I’ll get to the ER as soon as I possibly can.”

I stood up. “Look, Officer,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do for this man. But there are people who need my help. I’ve got to get back down to St. Vincent’s. Are the subways running?”

“Shut down,” he said.

“All right. I’ll walk if I have to.”

Kendall’s radio came to life then. “All units, Grand Central Terminal. I have a ten-thirteen. Repeat — ten-thirteen: Officer needs assistance. Multiple looters at Five Borough Jewelry in the Forty-second Street Passageway. Shots fired.”

That’s when I found out that an officer in trouble trumps a dead civilian. Kendall didn’t hesitate. “I gotta go,” he said. “You wait here for the coroner.”

He raced off toward the Forty-second Street Passageway. As soon as he was out of sight, I headed in the other direction. As fast as I could.

I cut through the frenzied mass of people in Grand Central. It took maybe five or six minutes to get out to Lexington Avenue, where the insanity was even worse.

With the trains shut down, the street was teeming with commuters who wanted to get as far from midtown Manhattan as possible. And who were fighting over the few yellow cabs that had stopped.

Three men in suits had cornered one driver and were attempting to negotiate their way out of Dodge.

“Scarsdale,” one said. “I’ll give you three hundred bucks.”

“Ridgewood, New Jersey,” another guy said, and he actually held out a handful of hundreds. “A thousand dollars.”

I couldn’t believe it. I could fly to Japan for less than that. Jersey won the bidding war. He was about to get in the cab when I grabbed his arm.

“I’m a doctor. I have to get downtown to St. Vincent’s Hospital to deal with the victims,” I said. “If you’re taking the Holland Tunnel, you’ll go right past it.”

He looked down at my medical bag. “Yeah, yeah, Doc,” he said. “Hop in. Let’s get out of here.”

I got in. The driver locked the doors and began to weave his way through the human traffic jam on Lexington Avenue. St. Vincent’s is only a few blocks from my apartment. I was headed home. No charge.

Even if I decide to turn in these diamonds, I thought, I’m definitely keeping this little black bag.

Chapter 8

THIRTY MINUTES AFTER Walter Zelvas bled out on the floor of Grand Central, two NYPD detectives pulled up to his apartment building on East 77th Street. Some cops go by the book, some bend the rules. But Detectives John Rice and Nick Benzetti were considerably dirtier than most of the crooks they busted.

They had finished the day shift in Robbery for the Department, and now they were working for Chukov at a much better hourly rate. Their mission was simple. Find the diamonds.

The doorman looked away as they entered the building. He knew exactly where they were headed. For fifty bucks he had supplied them with a key to the apartment of that nasty-ass Russian who had stiffed him at Christmas: Walter Zelvas.

The two cops entered the elevator.

Benzetti stood six feet tall, with slick black hair and an oversize hawk nose protruding from a small, pinched face. Tall, dark, and ugly. In reality, he was wearing six-inch cheater shoes, and his gray hair was slathered with Just For Men hair dye. The ugly came natural.

Rice, six three and bald, didn’t need help from a shoe company or a hair dye. But the two cops had one thing in common. They were both terrified.

They had met Zelvas once. And he didn’t like them. He didn’t care if they were on Chukov’s payroll. They were still cops.

They’d sat across the table from him at Chukov’s apartment, a bottle of vodka, a loaf of black bread, and a large block of cheese between them.

“Screw me over and I’ll kill you,” Zelvas had said. “And not with a bullet.”

He picked up a stainless-steel slicer and dragged it slowly, menacingly across the top of the cheese. A ten-inch sliver peeled away.

“Do you know how long it takes a man to die if you skin him alive?” Zelvas asked, popping the cheese curl into his mouth. “Six days. Four if you add salt.”

Benzetti and Rice stood to the left and right of the door outside apartment 16E, guns drawn. They knew Chukov wanted to ice Zelvas. What they didn’t know was that he was already dead.

“If Zelvas is there, we take him out quick,” Rice said. “I’ll aim for his head. You go for his heart.”

Benzetti knelt down, slid the key into the lock, and turned it. With Rice standing over him aiming high left, and his own gun pointed low right, he opened the door. Clear. The two men slowly padded into the living room.

The overstuffed sofa and two massive armchairs were covered in a shiny fabric with black and gold geometric shapes. Walter Zelvas was big and ugly, Benzetti thought, and he had furniture to match.

They scanned the room. Clear.

And then they heard it. A noise. Metallic. It was coming from the bedroom.

The two cops froze.

Whoever was on the other side of the door was too busy to know they were in the apartment. They moved silently, expertly, through the living room and flattened themselves against the wall outside the bedroom door.

From his lead vantage point Rice could see the wall safe. It had just been opened. But not by Zelvas.

He signaled his partner, and the two of them rushed in. “I’m guessing Walter isn’t at home,” Rice said, pointing his gun at the safecracker.

She looked up. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Midtwenties, dark hair, long legs, wearing ass-hugging jeans and a tight white blouse with the top three buttons undone.

“Shoot her,” Benzetti said.

“Back off,” the woman said in a voice that seemed to hold no fear. “Do you know who I am? Obviously you don’t.”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Benzetti said. “Shoot her.”

“Maybe we should find out who she is first,” Rice said. “She obviously thinks she’s somebody.”

“I don’t care who she thinks she is,” Benzetti said.

“I see, I see,” she said. “Good cop, bad cop. You’re the two mudaks who work for Chukov, Benzetti and Rice. Zelvas warned me about you.”

“And you’re the woman breaking and entering, then ransacking Walter Zelvas’s safe.”

“I’m not ransacking. I have the combination. Zelvas gave it to me. As well as a key to his front door.”

She was defiant but she was also breathing hard. She was scared.

Benzetti loved watching this one squirm. The nice breasts were an added bonus for him. In a way, it would be a crime against nature to kill her.

“And why would Zelvas give you his front door key plus the combination to his safe?”

“I’m his girlfriend. I’m Natalia.”

Rice looked at Benzetti. “Chukov never said anything about Zelvas having a girlfriend.”

“So you do work for Chukov,” Natalia said. “What does he want here? You can tell me. After all, you plan to kill me.”

“He sent us to pick up some diamonds,” Benzetti said.

“I work for Nathaniel Prince,” Natalia said. “He sent me here for the diamonds, and he’s Chukov’s boss.”

“I thought Chukov was the boss,” Benzetti said.

“Chukov?” Natalia said, spitting out the name. “Do you think that boot-licking dalbaiyob is smart enough to run an operation like the Diamond Syndicate? Chukov works for Nathaniel Prince, and Nathaniel sent me, so put the guns down, gentlemen, and let me finish what I started. You couldn’t open the safe, anyway. I have the combination.”

“But we have the guns,” Benzetti said. He nodded to Rice. “Cuff her.”

Zelvas had a home gym in the bedroom, and Rice handcuffed Natalia’s slender right wrist to a two-hundred-pound barbell.

Benzetti reached into the safe and pulled out a black velvet bag. It had some heft to it — at least a couple of kilos. He wondered how many diamonds they could skim off without getting nailed. He dumped the contents on the bed.

No diamonds. Just cheese. A big fat wheel of cheese the size of a birthday cake.

Natalia let out a string of Russian curses.

“Calm the hell down,” Benzetti said.

She didn’t.

Rice grinned. “I don’t speak Russian, but I’m guessing she’s really pissed.”

Benzetti shrugged. “Hey, she was banging the ugliest guy on the Upper East Side, expecting diamonds, and all she got was a hunk of cheese. Hell, I’d be pissed, too.”

Chapter 9

THE TWO COPS left Natalia chained to the barbell and did a quick search of the apartment. After five minutes, Benzetti called it off. “If they’re not in the safe, they’re not here,” he said. “Which one of us breaks the bad news to Chukov?”

They flipped a coin and Benzetti lost. Jesus, he did not want to make this phone call.

Chukov was a two-hundred-fifty-pound powder keg with a half-inch fuse. Benzetti had once seen him smash a beer bottle and drive it into a man’s jaw for cheating at poker. And that was over a lousy hundred-dollar pot.

“Cheese?” Chukov screamed. “Cheese? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Benzetti could practically feel the enraged Cossack’s spittle through the cell phone. “No diamonds?” Chukov shouted.

“And no Zelvas,” Benzetti said.

“Zelvas is dead,” Chukov said.

“Zelvas is dead?” Benzetti repeated so that Rice could hear the news. “And you know that how? You’re sure of it?”

“He was stealing from us,” Chukov said. “I’m in charge of the Syndicate’s loss-prevention department. Ten minutes ago I got a confirmation call from the field that Zelvas’s thieving days are over.”

Benzetti breathed out in relief. “I’m impressed. Where did you find someone who could get the drop on Walter Zelvas? Never mind. Did your man in the field say anything about the diamonds?” Benzetti asked. “If they’re not here, I figure Zelvas took them with him.”

“If he did, our man didn’t see them,” Chukov said. “He barely had time to finish Zelvas off when a shitstorm of cops arrived. He was lucky to get away.”

“He never saw any diamonds?” Benzetti said.

“That’s what he told me. I really don’t know, but I want those diamonds back!” Chukov yelled.

“And so does somebody named Nathaniel Prince,” Benzetti said.

That seemed to get the Russian’s attention. “What do you know about Nathaniel Prince?”

“Is he your boss?”

“You and Rice work for me,” Chukov said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Actually, there is one other thing I need to know,” Benzetti said. “Who’s Natalia? She’s around five ten, dark hair, fantastic rack, a very pretty lady.”

“How do you know Natalia?” Chukov asked.

“We’ve got her handcuffed in Zelvas’s bedroom. She was opening his safe just as we got here.”

“Natalia is Prince’s girlfriend.”

“Prince’s girlfriend? She said she was Zelvas’s girlfriend.”

Chukov laughed. “She gets around.”

“What should we do with the lovely Natalia?”

“Two choices,” Chukov said. “You can uncuff her, apologize for not knowing who she is, and tell her you’re going to do all you can to get the diamonds back for Nathaniel Prince.”

“I’m not much for apologies. What’s my second choice?”

“Keep her cuffed, rip off her clothes, fuck the living shit out of her — and a few hours later, you’ll be happy but dead. Prince will kill you—gulag-style.”

Chapter 10

THERE’S SOMETHING SURREAL about sitting in the back of a taxi with a bag full of diamonds. This can’t be happening to me, I kept telling myself. But it was. I only wished I could open the bag and make sure.

My benefactor from New Jersey didn’t even talk to me. He was on his cell with someone in Tokyo, hedging funds or whatever those investor guys do. I’m sure by the time he got to Ridgewood, he’d made more than enough to pay for the thousand-dollar cab ride.

The driver was chatty all the way downtown, filling me in on his own financial plans.

“I can be back at Grand Central in an hour. There’s gotta be hundreds of rich guys willing to pop big bucks to get home to the suburbs,” he said. “This is the kind of incredible night a cabbie waits for.”

So little time. So many desperate stranded souls to gouge. I smiled and hefted my medical bag. Who was I to judge?

He took me to the Emergency entrance at St. Vincent’s and left in a hurry. I walked the three blocks to my apartment, looking left, right, and behind me every step of the way.

My apartment is in a five-story brownstone, built back in the early twentieth century, when craftsmanship and integrity were still the hallmarks of the construction industry. The brick is so solid-looking that the tenants call it the Fortress.

I live on the top floor. There’s a closed-circuit TV system in the vestibule, and most nights I wave at the camera, and whoever sees me opens their door and gives me a “Hi, Matthew.”

But tonight I ran up the five flights, opened my door, double-locked it behind me, and exhaled. I hadn’t been arrested or killed and I still had the diamonds. I was safe. For now.

I always feel good about walking into my apartment, and tonight I felt even better. It’s hardly the biggest space in New York, but it feels homey. That’s because it’s wall-to-wall me. Literally. Every inch of wall space is covered with my paintings. I don’t know if I’m any good, but I like my stuff enough to want to look at it all the time.

My cat sauntered in. I got him at the shelter two years ago. He’s black and white, with about fifteen shades of gray. His name was Hooper when I adopted him, but I changed it to Hopper, after my favorite painter.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t come no matter what I call him.

“Look what Daddy brought home,” I said, showing him the bag of diamonds. He couldn’t have cared less, but I had been dying to show somebody.

“Well, you might not be interested, but I hear this stuff can be catnip for some women.”

I grabbed a beer from the fridge, sat down on the sofa, opened the bag, and let the diamonds trickle through my fingers. I was in I’m-Rich-Beyond-My-Wildest-Dreams euphoria when the doorbell rang.

Someone was coming for the diamonds! That had to be it. Shit!

I jumped up, sloshing beer on my pants, and headed for the cabinets where I store my paints, brushes, and a Beretta M9 semiautomatic. I’m an ex-Marine. Whoever was downstairs thought I was just an art student. Advantage: for me.

I gripped the gun and moved over to check the closed-circuit monitor. The cat, just as curious to see who was at my front door at ten minutes after midnight, followed me.

I looked at the screen and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Jeez, Hopper,” I said. “One of us is as nervous as a cat.”

Chapter 11

AT THE AGE of five I was given my first toy chest. It was a Marine Corps footlocker. While other kids got colorful wooden boxes with their favorite superhero or sports team logo painted on the front, my father decided I should have an olive-drab, steel-reinforced, double-padlock trunk emblazoned with SEMPER FI and steeped in his own personal military history.

I still have it. It’s bolted to my bedroom floor. I unlocked it and buried the medical bag with the diamonds under layers of old uniforms and a few souvenirs I brought home from Afghanistan. I shut the lid and made sure it was locked up tight.

Then I went back to the living room, tucked the gun back in the art cabinet where it belonged, and opened the front door.

And there she was, wearing a dove-gray V-neck sweater that matched her eyes and a just-to-the-knees denim skirt that showed off her legs nicely. Katherine.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” I said. “Besides looking terrific, that is.”

She threw her arms around me. “Haven’t you heard? There was some kind of terrorist attack at Grand Central,” she said, kissing my cheeks, my neck, finally my lips. “I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Good thinking,” I said, pressing her body against mine. “After the railroads, and maybe planes, the next logical terrorist target would be art professors.”

She stepped back. “Are you making fun of me, Matthew?”

“Never.”

“Will you watch out for me? Keep me company tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

And I meant it. My mother raised me to be an artist, but my father trained me to protect the people I love. When I was growing up, he was more like a drill sergeant than a dad. Once when I was ten, we were hiking in Pike National Forest. One minute we were together and then suddenly he was gone, and I was all alone in the middle of the Colorado wilderness. I had nothing but a hunting knife. No food, no water, no compass. I knew we hadn’t separated by accident, either. This was a test. It took me thirty hours to pass it, but I finally found my way home.

I looked into Katherine’s eyes. Would I watch over her? Absolutely. I stroked her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Then my lips traced the same pattern. Eyelids, cheeks, mouth.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked when we stopped for a breath.

“Absolutely.”

“How did your pants get wet?” She lowered one hand and cupped it between my legs.

“Beer. An unfortunate accident.”

“You can’t be walking around all wet,” she said, unbuckling my belt. Then she unzipped my fly and helped me out of my pants.

The beer had soaked through to my boxers. “Wet also,” she said. “And hard, too.”

“Can’t imagine why,” I said.

Within seconds I was naked and then Katherine joined me. I lay on my back and Katherine straddled my hips. I thrust up into her, not hard but firm. She arched her back, dug her knees into my thighs, and pressed down against me. She slowly took in a breath, then just as slowly let it out. She did it again. And again.

The sound of Katherine about to reach a climax is the best part of making love for me, and as her breathing got more frenetic, I matched her until—

Our orgasms came in rolling waves, one after another, slowly subsiding until she let her body fall on top of mine. Then Katherine wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed her lips to my ear.

“I’m crazy in love with you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” I said. “Never thought I could love anybody like this. But here we are.”

We fell asleep like that.

Not a care in the world.

So incredibly naive.

Chapter 12

VADIM CHUKOV WAS a survivor. When a rival mob captured him, he managed to strangle his captors from the backseat of the car with their own handcuffs. When four prison guards beat him and locked him in solitary confinement, he escaped and lived to kill them and their families. Chukov had been stabbed four times, shot twice, and thrown off a speeding train. He’d be damned if he was going to die from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He sat naked on the ceramic tiles of the steam room, a towel across his lap. His cell phone and a bronchodilator inhaler lay on the towel. Lifelines both.

Chukov had discovered cigarettes when he was eleven years old. Yava, the full-flavored Russian cancer sticks that gave a young street enforcer for the Solntsevskaya Bratva swagger, status, and eventually COPD.

Thirty-five years later, he was a slave to the steam, breathing in the moist heat almost every day to help open his inflamed lungs.

Most of the steam rooms in the city were magnets for fags and yuppies, but the Russian and Turkish Baths on East 10th Street were old school. Real tile, not that fiberglass and acrylic shit they were putting in those new hybrid steam rooms. And no pretty boys. At least not at this hour of the morning. He had the steam room to himself.

Chukov’s body was short, thick, and covered with curly black hair and sixteen tattoos. The rose, the tiger, the skulls — every blue line on his body told his history in the Russian Mafia to anyone who knew how to read it.

The cell phone rang. He was waiting for some good news that he could give to Prince. This had better be it. It wasn’t.

“Where’s my money?” the voice on the other end said.

It was the Ghost.

“Where are my diamonds, you prick?” Chukov came back angrily.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Ghost said. “All I know is we had a deal. I kept my end of it, you didn’t. Walter Zelvas is dead. My money hasn’t been transferred to the Caymans.”

“Why do you think I hired you to terminate Zelvas?” Chukov said. “He was skimming diamonds from the Syndicate. The diamonds weren’t in his apartment, so he must have taken them with him. You were the last to see him alive.”

“And if I don’t get my money, I’ll be the last one to see you alive.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chukov said.

“It means look to your left.”

Chukov turned his head. There was a red dot on the wall. It moved up to the ceiling, made a few S turns, danced back to the wall, and then landed on his chest.

He had to clench his sphincter for fear of shitting right there.

“You’re here?” Chukov said. “How did you find me here? How did you get in?”

“It’s what I get paid to do, remember? So pay me.”

“Be reasonable,” Chukov said. “Give me time to recover the missing diamonds.”

“Not…my…problem,” the Ghost said.

The red dot moved slowly down Chukov’s body to the roll of a lifetime of overindulgence around his belly and finally came to rest on the inhaler that sat on his lap.

Chukov was sweating profusely, not all of it from the steam. “Please,” he said.

“Lift up your skirt,” the Ghost said.

“What?”

“The towel. Lift it up.”

Chukov had faced death before. He beat it every time, but not by cringing in fear.

He ripped the towel off and stood up. Naked. Proud. Defiant.

“Fuck you,” he bellowed. “Vadim Chukov bows to no man.”

The words echoed off the tile walls.

Chapter 13

“WHERE’D YOU DO the seven?” the Ghost said.

“What?”

“I’m not interested in looking at your dick. I can read the tats. According to that star on your knee, you did seven years in prison. I asked you where.”

“Butyrka.” Chukov spat out the word. “Hellhole. I’d rather have gone to Siberia.”

“Put the towel back on and sit your fat ass down.”

Chukov wrapped the towel around his waist and sat. “If you can read tattoos, you know that the seven-pointed star on my knee means more than prison time.”

“I know. You’re a made man in the Russian Mafia.”

“I bow to no man.”

“I heard you the first time,” the Ghost said. “Were you a pakhan in the old country?”

Chukov inhaled deeply and filled his lungs with hot steam. “Nathaniel Prince was a pakhan. I’m a humble brigadier.”

“Brigadier, maybe,” the Ghost said. “But not so humble. Not if you choose to violate the Vorovskoy Zakon.”

Chukov exploded. “Bullshit. I have never violated the Thieves’ Code. I’ve been bound by it my entire life. Even in prison.”

“And I say you’ve desecrated rule number eighteen: Make good on promises given to other thieves.”

“That means nothing if you steal from me,” Chukov said.

“I killed a man for you, but I didn’t steal,” the Ghost said.

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You have two choices, Brigadier Chukov,” the Ghost said. “You either take my word for it and live by the code, or you don’t believe me and die in five seconds.”

The red dot made little circles on Chukov’s chest.

“Pyat,” the Ghost said, counting backward in Russian, “chetirye…tri…dva…odeen.”

“I’ll pay, I’ll pay,” Chukov said.

“Kogda?”

“You speak Russian?” Chukov said.

“Just the basic stuff you need in my line of work,” the Ghost said. “Like please, thank you, and when can I expect my money?”

“I’ll transfer it immediately.”

The red dot disappeared from Chukov’s chest.

“Spasibo,” the Ghost said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

“We’re not done,” Chukov said. “I have another job for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I accept that you didn’t take the diamonds,” Chukov said. “I want you to find out who did.”

“Then kill the mudak and return the diamonds to you,” the Ghost said. “Da?”

“Da,” Chukov said, followed by a wet, croupy laugh.

“I want double what you paid me for Zelvas.”

Chukov choked on his own laugh. “Double? Are you crazy?”

“It costs more when I have to figure out who the target is,” the Ghost said. “Plus, I figure getting back all those diamonds ought to be worth something to you.”

“Maybe ten percent more,” Chukov said.

“Double,” the Ghost said. “Take it or…”

The red dot reappeared on Chukov’s chest.

“…leave it.”

Chukov took it. “All right. I’ll pay double, but only if I get the diamonds back.”

“Then we’re in business again,” the Ghost said.

Chukov looked down at his chest, waiting for the red dot to disappear. It didn’t. “You can take the gun off me now,” he said.

There was no answer.

Chukov sat there sweating, but the dot didn’t move. It took him a full minute until he realized — the dot was never going to move. The laser beam was on autopilot.

Cursing, Chukov stood up and followed the red line through the steam to its source. It wasn’t even a gun. It was a cheap key-chain laser pointer resting on a block of wet tile.

The Ghost, of course, was long gone.

Chapter 14

CHUKOV SHOWERED, DRESSED, took a cab home, and begrudgingly transferred the money to pay for eliminating Zelvas.

He poured himself a shot of vodka and downed it, then picked up the phone. He started to dial Nathaniel’s number but quickly hung up.

He couldn’t face the wrath of Nathaniel Prince without a second shot of vodka.

Times had changed. Forty years ago, Chukov had given the orders and Nathaniel had followed them without question. The two were cousins who grew up in the Sokol Settlement, a working-class neighborhood in Moscow.

Nathaniel was a model student and an adored only child. His father was a cheese maker, and after school, the boy worked in the family stall at the Leningradsky Market, using his charm and good looks to sell the soft sweet Tvorog and Bryndza to the tourists and well-to-do shoppers.

Vadim Chukov’s father was in prison, and by the age of twelve, Vadim was stealing cars on Arbat Street, where the wealthy parked. Luxury cars often yielded bonuses, such as cameras, watches, or the occasional gun in the glove box, and soon Vadim had a stash of hot merchandise. He showed it to Nathaniel, who had an idea. He would wrap each item in plastic and hide it in a tub of cheese in the family stall. Clued-in customers would ask for a particular batch of cheese, and before long, the smooth-talking Nathaniel was making more money in a few hours than his father made in a week.

Once he got a taste, he wanted more, and he climbed the ranks of the Bratva rapidly. He was only twenty-nine when he approached the Diamond Syndicate with the idea that propelled him to the top of the ladder.

The Syndicate trafficked in the illegal diamonds that had become the currency in war-torn African nations. Rebel armies funded their civil wars and armed conflicts by kidnapping the natives and forcing them to dig out the diamonds buried along the muddy riverbanks. Anyone who refused to cooperate would be mutilated or murdered, so the rivers ran red and the stones came to be called blood diamonds.

Prince came up with a foolproof plan to smuggle blood diamonds into America. Cheese.

He bought a small factory in Marseille where an exquisite Gruyère Fontu was made. When a shipment of blood diamonds arrived from Angola or Sierra Leone, they were cut, dressed, and molded into carefully marked wheels of the heavenly fromage.

The cheese was exported to New York, where Zelvas and his crew extracted the stones and sold them to diamond merchants on West 47th Street who cared more about the black-market low prices than the fact that they came from the hands of murderous African warlords.

The plan worked well until Zelvas got greedy. By the time Chukov realized that Zelvas was taking a few stones from every shipment, the man had amassed a fortune.

Now Zelvas was dead, and the diamonds he stole were missing.

Chukov’s job was to find them. He downed a third shot of vodka and dialed Nathaniel’s number.

“This better be good news, Vadim,” Nathaniel said.

“It is,” Chukov lied. “Rice and Benzetti are closing in on the diamonds. You should have them back in a few days.”

“Rice and Benzetti?” Nathaniel screamed. “You’re counting on a couple of crooked cops to bring home a fortune in diamonds?”

“No, no, I’ve got a dozen other men looking,” Chukov said, wheezing. He paused to suck on his bronchodilator. “And I’ve hired the Ghost to track down whoever stole the diamonds and get rid of him. The Ghost is a legend, Nathaniel. He’s the best.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Vadim. Because if you don’t come up with the diamonds fast, I’ll be hiring the Ghost to get rid of you.”

He slammed the phone down.

Chukov picked up the vodka bottle and took a few quick swigs. Then he inhaled another lungful of albuterol from the little canister.

Bastard, he thought. I’ve created a monster.

Chapter 15

THE BRIGHTON BEACH section of Brooklyn is so heavily populated with Russians that its nickname is Little Odessa.

Nathaniel Prince, born and raised in Moscow, refused to live there. His logic: Brighton Beach was a hotbed of crime. And while he wasn’t intimidated by the street violence, he didn’t want to live where the NYPD had beefed up its manpower.

Instead, he chose Park Slope, a much tonier part of the borough. His neighbors were artists, writers, musicians, and actors. Prince liked that. With all those famous people to gawk at, nobody bothered to look at him. So, for four million dollars, he bought a luxurious hundred-year-old town house and total anonymity.

The master bedroom filled the entire third floor. With its high ceilings, parquet floors, and wood-burning fireplace, it was Nathaniel’s haven from the world.

He shared it with Natalia. She stepped out of the bathroom in a crimson silk robe that stopped midthigh. The belt was cinched tight, accentuating her narrow waist and her full, generous breasts.

She smiled at Nathaniel. “Who were you yelling at?” she said.

“Chukov.”

“What did poor Vadim do now?”

“Millions of dollars in missing diamonds,” Nathaniel said. “Walter Zelvas has screwed us from the grave, and it’s all Chukov’s fault.”

“Not all of it,” Natalia said. “I accept some of the blame.”

“You? What did you do wrong?” Nathaniel said.

“I thought I had Zelvas under control. He wanted to run off with me,” she said. “I never thought he’d leave me and run off with the diamonds.”

She unscrewed the top of a jar of Crème de la Mer. Nathaniel had no idea what was in it, but he had seen the credit-card receipts. Twelve hundred dollars for the tiny pink-and-white jar.

Natalia undid her belt, opened her robe, and began rubbing the outrageously expensive moisturizer into her long, firm, perfectly sculpted legs.

Only ten minutes before, Nathaniel had been between those legs, deep inside her, his face buried between her breasts, his tongue tantalizing her nipples, his brain intoxicated with her perfume. His orgasm, as it always did with Natalia, had left him blissfully happy and totally spent.

But as he watched Natalia slide her hands from her calf to her inner thigh, Nathaniel began to stir. He was still naked under the sheets, and he felt himself growing hard.

Natalia put some more cream on her fingertips and let the robe fall to the ground. Her skin was radiant, still glistening with moisture from the hot shower. She had towel-dried her thick raven-black hair, and it fell in ringlets on her shoulders.

“I’m glad Zelvas is dead,” she said as she massaged the creamy emulsion into her breasts and flat stomach. “The thought of having his fat, sweaty body on top of me even one more time makes me sick.”

“How do you think it made me feel?” Nathaniel asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had to sleep with him. It was the only way he would trust me enough to tell me he was stealing from you.”

Nathaniel grunted.

“Don’t be angry,” she said, dipping her fingertips into the Crème de la Mer. “You know you are the only man I ever loved.”

She walked slowly, seductively, toward him, and sat down on the bed. “You know Zelvas said I should dump you,” she said, rubbing the lubricant into the palm of her hand. “He said you were old enough to be my father.”

She slipped her hand under the sheet. “Little did he know,” she said, “you are.”

Chapter 16

IT WAS DARK when Chukov came out of his blackout. Too much vodka, he thought. This is why there is trouble. Two weeks earlier he had been drinking with Zelvas. They were shit-faced, and Zelvas was bragging about his many kills.

Finally Chukov could stand it no longer. “Any old lady with a gun can kill someone,” he said. “Come back and wave your dick when you kill twenty-seven people at one time. That, my friend, is my achievement.”

Zelvas belched and the air filled with the stench of the pelmeni and sauerkraut they had devoured together two hours before. “Bullshit,” he said.

“I swear on my mother’s soul. Twenty years ago my cousin Nathaniel’s wife, his son, and his daughter were crossing the street when a taxi came speeding around the corner and hit them. The wife and the little boy were dead before they hit the ground. The daughter was in critical condition. The driver never stopped.”

Zelvas was stunned. “I never knew Nathaniel had a family.”

“It was before your time with us. He was a devoted father. For the next six months he sat by his little girl’s bedside, singing to her, nursing her back to health. At night I would sit with him and we would talk about revenge.”

“He knew who the driver was?” Zelvas asked.

“No. But witnesses saw the blue-and-white taxi. It belonged to the Dmitriov Cab Company,” Chukov said. “One morning I took a dozen men, and we stormed the taxi barn as they were all starting their day. Almost every person who worked for Dmitriov was there. Many from the Dmitriov family — sons, brothers, cousins—family. I locked them in a storage room, turned on the gas main, covered the floor with petrol, and lit it. One match. Twenty-seven dead.”

“I have new respect for you, Comrade,” Zelvas said. “Whatever happened to Nathaniel’s daughter?”

“Natalia?” Chukov said. “She’s fine.”

Zelvas’s admiration turned to shock. “Natalia is Nathaniel’s daughter?”

Chukov realized he had just given away the family secret he had sworn to take to his grave. Nathaniel’s mistress was his daughter.

“Please swear to me you won’t repeat it. He would kill me,” Chukov said.

“Don’t worry,” Zelvas said. “It’s too vile to repeat.”

Zelvas went home. That night, for the first time since he was a little boy, he sobbed into his pillow. He had slowly stolen a fortune in diamonds from the Syndicate so that one day he could run off with his beloved Natalia.

But now he despised her. He would leave without her. Just him. And the diamonds.

Chapter 17

I WOKE UP with Katherine safely nestled in my arms — and a bag of presumably precious gems nestled at my feet. I have to say, I was happy beyond my wildest dreams. I was also rich beyond my wildest dreams. I had only one question: How rich?

After Katherine left for the office, I locked the door, opened the footlocker, and dumped the bag of stones on my bed. Hopper was just as curious as I was and jumped on the bed to check out the shiny stones.

I knew as much about diamonds as the cat did, but I could see that they looked to be roughly the same size. No big rocks; no tiny chips. Just countless shiny nuggets, each about the size of a piece of cat kibble. Hopper looked like he had come to the same conclusion, so I tossed him off the bed before he could help himself to a million-dollar breakfast.

I flipped on the TV. The bombing at Grand Central was all over the news. The dead guy had been identified as Walter Zelvas, but there was no mention of the pile of bling on my bed. I did a rough count, picked five diamonds at random, stashed the rest, and took the subway uptown to the Rockefeller Center station.

Fifth Avenue was packed with out-of-towners headed for Radio City Music Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Saks, or any of the many other tourist magnets in the area. Heading west on 47th Street, I entered a completely different world, where Hasidic Jews in long black coats haggled in a language I couldn’t understand, making deals on the sidewalk and cementing them with handshakes.

The Diamond District. I’d been here before but never on business.

I walked into the National Jewelers Exchange at 2 West 47th Street. Hundreds of vendors, each with his or her own little booth, were buying and selling gold, silver, fine jewelry, watches, and, of course, diamonds.

Chana Leventhal, a broad woman in her sixties, caught me staring at the diamond rings in her showcase. “You look like a young man in search of an engagement ring,” she said.

“Just the opposite,” I said. “I just got one returned to me.”

“Oy, she dumped you?”

I nodded.

“But she gave you the ring back.”

“I think she did,” I said. I reached into my pocket and held out one of my five stones. “She only gave me the diamond, and I don’t know if she switched the real one for a piece of glass.”

“Let me see,” Chana said. “I know a professional.”

She took the stone from me before I could answer. “Shmuel,” she said to a man sitting at a jeweler’s workbench facing away from the counter. “He got jilted. Give a look.”

She handed him the diamond and he put a jeweler’s loupe in his eye and studied the stone for about twenty seconds. He stood up and walked toward me. He was short, with a neatly trimmed gray beard and the yellowed teeth of a longtime smoker.

He handed me the diamond. “You can relax,” he said. “It’s kosher. Where did you buy it?”

“Colorado.”

He shrugged and looked at his wife.

“You should have come here,” she said. “Colorado overcharges.”

“What did you pay?” Shmuel said. “Fifteen thousand?”

“Sixteen plus tax,” I said.

“Goniffs,” he said.

Chana looked at me. “It means ‘crooks,’ ‘robbers.’”

Shmuel shook his head. “It’s a decent-quality stone, about a carat, maybe a carat and a quarter, good color, and very slightly included — which means I can tell it’s not perfect, but you can’t. I would have sold it to you with a nice setting for twelve thousand.”

“How much would you pay if I wanted to sell it to you?” I asked.

“Half. Six thousand.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. I’ll think about it.”

“Better you should keep it,” Chana said. “You’re a good-looking young man; you’ll find another girl better than the first one. Bring the diamond back and Shmuel will make a nice ring for you.”

I thanked them again, walked across the street, and started the process all over again.

I talked to ten diamond dealers so that each of my diamonds got two opinions. The diamonds were all in the one-to-one-and-a-half-carat range and all about the same quality. Nine of the dealers quoted me a price that averaged out to sixty-two hundred dollars. The tenth guy told me my diamond was a fake and offered to take it off my hands for a hundred bucks. I guess there are goniffs wherever you go.

I figured there were about twenty-one hundred diamonds in the bag. If I could sell them for sixty-two hundred bucks a pop, I’d wind up with about thirteen million dollars. But I wasn’t greedy. I’d happily take less for a quick sale.

I stood on the corner of 47th Street and Sixth Avenue and called Katherine. “I’ve got great news,” I said.

“Tell me, tell me.”

“I’m throwing a party. Tonight. Eight o’clock.”

“What are you celebrating?”

“I’ve got thirteen million reasons to celebrate,” I said.

“I’m busy,” Katherine said. “Give me one.”

“I’m in love with the most wonderful woman in the world.”

“That’s terrific,” she said. “I’d love to meet her. I’ll see you tonight.”

Chapter 18

I couldn’t tell people the real reason I was throwing the party, so I e-mailed and texted everybody I wanted to see that night. And a few I didn’t want to see. “School’s out. Let’s drink. My place.”

I hadn’t figured out how to unload the diamonds, so I was still on a student’s budget. I bought chicken wings, a six-foot hero, chips, vino, beer, and the cheapest vodka on the shelf.

Katherine showed up at seven to help me set up.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said.

I looked at my watch. “If it involves taking our clothes off, I’m definitely in.”

“Hold that thought till after the party,” she said. “Anyway, since when would having mad, passionate sex be a surprise?”

The onslaught of guests began at ten to eight, and by nine o’clock my apartment was a noisy, boozy, happy mixture of joy, escapism, and release. Most of the people who showed up were friends from Parsons, along with a few of my neighbors from the building.

“Did you invite the three guys who live on the first floor?” Katherine asked.

“You mean the sentries who live in apartment one and guard the building?” I said. “Of course I invited them.”

“They’re always super-nice to me when I show up,” Katherine said. “When they see me, they hold the door and say hi.”

“That’s about as much as those guys socialize,” I said. “They passed on the party, but I love having them live on the ground floor. I haven’t had a single Jehovah’s Witness stop by since they moved in.”

My paintings were all over the apartment, and every few minutes someone would grab my arm and drag me over to one painting or another to talk about it. Sometimes they’d have questions, but mostly they just wanted to give me feedback.

Early in the evening I was getting comments like “I love how you’ve managed to capture the essence of the urban condition, the sense of isolation and loneliness one can experience in the midst of the asphalt jungle.”

But after the alcohol had been flowing for a few hours, the comments were more like, “Dude, your shit is so freaking good. If I had any freaking money, I’d buy all of them.”

I had some great friends, and drunk, sober, or anywhere in between, they were fun to hang with. Except Leonard Karns.

Leonard was sitting alone on the sofa, nursing the cheap red wine he’d brought, because “beer is for frat boys and rednecks.” He looked amused, like an anthropologist studying a primitive tribe of beer-swilling natives. Everyone ignored him, except Hopper, who jumped up on the sofa to check him out. Karns reached out to pet him, and the cat responded with a nasty hiss and took off.

“Poor Leonard,” Katherine whispered. “He seems to be unpopular across all species. Why did you even invite him? He doesn’t like you or your paintings.”

I smiled. “I know. Having him around keeps me humble.”

At ten o’clock the doorbell rang and I checked the closed-circuit monitor. I didn’t recognize the guy. He was short and fat — about three hundred pounds — with slicked-back black hair, a small goatee, and no mustache. If I’d ever met this guy before, I’d have remembered him. I didn’t.

I’m not usually paranoid about strangers, but I had these diamonds that didn’t belong to me, and somebody might be looking for them.

My Louisville Slugger was still standing in the corner next to the front door. With fifty friends and a baseball bat nearby, I figured if he was looking for trouble, I had the edge.

I buzzed him in.

Chapter 19

I HELD THE apartment door open and waited. The fat man was slow and ponderous. He clomped up the stairs, stopping at each landing to catch his breath.

Katherine joined me. “Who’s coming?”

“Party crasher. Nobody I know.”

“A heavyset guy?”

“Fat.”

She poked me in the ribs. “Shh, he’ll hear you.”

“I think he knows he’s fat.”

She punched me in the shoulder. “Stop.”

The fat/heavyset man got to the fourth-floor landing and looked up at us. “Hello, Katherine,” he said.

“Hello, Newton,” she said. “Take your time.”

“Like I have a choice,” he said, grabbing the handrail and trudging up the last flight.

“I gather you know him,” I said.

“He’s my surprise.”

The man was red in the face and sweating hard when he got to the top. “Matt, this is Newton,” Katherine said. “Newton, this is Matthew Bannon, the brilliant young artist I was telling you about.”

“Why does every brilliant young artist I meet have to live at the top of a five-story walk-up?” he said, extending a sweaty sausage-fingered hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Newton.”

“Not Mister. Just Newton. One name. Like Madonna.”

“You look exhausted, Newton,” I said as we entered the apartment. “Can I get you something?”

“An oxygen tank would be nice,” he said.

“We have beer.”

“Even better,” he said. “Two cans.”

By the time I brought back the beers, Newton had taken off his size 54 jacket. The blue shirt underneath had sweat rings the size of saddlebags under each arm.

“Newton is here to look at your work,” Katherine said.

“Great,” I said. “I’ll give you a tour.”

“I work alone,” he said. “You stay here with Katherine while I look around.”

He popped the top on the first beer and, with a can in each hand, casually began moving his way around the apartment.

“You think he’ll like my stuff?” I asked Katherine.

“It doesn’t matter if he likes it,” she said. “He buys art for someone else. A hedge-fund guy. He’s got tons of money and no time to shop. Newton shops for him.”

“If this guy has so much money, why wouldn’t he want a Pablo Picasso or a Willem de Kooning? Why would he want an original Matt Bannon?”

“He has those guys already. He’s passionate about discovering young talent.”

It took Newton ten minutes to look at my entire life’s work. He handed me two empty beer cans and I brought him two more.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirty.”

“And you served in the military?”

“Marines.”

“He was deployed to the Middle East three times,” Katherine added.

“I sensed that from the work,” he said.

“What do you think?”

“Bluntly,” Newton said, “I think Mr. Bannon has a ways to go, but the raw talent is there.” He turned to me. “I think my client will like your work, and I have no doubt he’d be happy to invest in you.”

“Invest?” I said.

“I’d like to buy three paintings,” he said. “If you’re as good as I think you are, not only will my client experience the joy of having them in one of his homes, but years from now an early Matthew Bannon will be worth a lot of money. Win-win.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Which three early Matthew Bannons would you like to buy?” I said.

“The four people in the subway station, the old man in the bodega, and the woman at the window,” he said, pointing at each one as he talked. “How much?”

I had no idea. I looked at Katherine.

“Give us a minute,” she said to Newton and pulled me to a corner. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. The canvases cost around fifteen bucks each, and the frames were about thirty. Plus the paint. So my investment on each one is about fifty bucks. I’m a total unknown, so if you could get three, four hundred apiece, that would be huge.”

She winked at me and led me over to Newton.

“You’re right,” she said. “Matthew is raw, he will get better, and at this stage he’s an excellent investment. You’re smart to get in on the ground floor.”

“The fifth floor,” Newton said, polishing off his next beer and opening another. “I was so winded climbing those stairs that I wanted to buy the apartment on the third floor and move in. Now stop greasing the skids, Katherine, and tell me how much.”

“Two thousand apiece.”

“That’s a tad steep.”

“Five thousand for the three paintings,” Katherine said. “That’s a thousand for every floor you climbed. And I’d hate to see you go home empty-handed after all that work.”

Newton guzzled the last beer. “Deal,” he said. “I’ll send my crew to pick them up tomorrow.”

He shook my hand and left.

I wrapped my arms around Katherine. I could see Karns sitting on the sofa, glaring at the two of us. Bannon’s hugging the teacher. What’s up with that?

“Did you just sell my paintings for five thousand dollars?” I asked.

“Just three of them. You still have plenty left.”

I loved this woman so much. I kissed her hard.

Everything in life seemed to be going my way. All I could think was, This can’t possibly last, can it?

Chapter 20

IT WAS THREE thirty in the morning, and Katherine and I were wrapped in one of those oversize blankets with sleeves. It sounds stupid, but when you’re on the roof of your building and you’ve just made love under the stars, nothing is stupid.

“I was wrong,” I said.

She snuggled up closer to me, and I could feel the heat of her body against mine. “About what?”

“When I woke up this morning with you in my arms,” I said, “I thought I could never be any happier than I was at that moment. But it’s less than twenty-four hours later, and I’m even crazier in love than I was then.”

“It probably didn’t hurt that I sold three of your paintings,” she said.

“You think I love you for your marketing prowess?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re always going on about how you love me, but I don’t recall that you’ve ever mentioned why. Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful, you’re smart, you’re funny, and you’re giving me an A in Group Critique.”

“Says who? Where’d you hear that one?” She was grinning.

“You mean you’re not giving me an A?”

“You deserved an A on your term paper, but I don’t post the final grades for another two days,” she said and looked a little pouty. “You’ll have to wait like everyone else. I don’t play favorites. Much.”

I kissed her. “Thank you for selling my paintings,” I said. “I can’t believe you got five grand. I’d have sold them for a lot less.”

“I knew that,” she said. “And so did Newton.”

“He did? Why didn’t he negotiate?”

She smiled. “It’s all part of the game.”

“Since when is art a game?”

“Not art. Commerce. The price of a painting shapes what people think of it. And no matter how sophisticated Newton’s boss is, he’s not going to be happy hanging something on his wall that costs the same as an Elvis on velvet.”

“You’re telling me Newton paid top dollar so he could look good to his boss?”

“No,” she said. “So you could look good.”

I shook my head. “I guess I’ve got a lot to learn about the art business.”

“You’re in luck,” she said, kissing me. “I’m an art teacher.”

We lay there wrapped in each other’s arms, gazing up at the stars. I never thought I could feel this good about a woman. Katherine Sanborne had changed my life, and with my medical bag full of diamonds, I was on the verge of changing hers.

“You think all that money will screw us up?” she said.

Shit! She knew about the money. I didn’t know how she knew, but she did. It was a punch to the gut. Deny, deny, deny.

“What money?” I said lamely.

“You just made your first sale for five thousand,” she said. “It’s a pretty impressive way to start your career.”

Oh, that money.

I exhaled slowly. “No,” I said, “it won’t screw us up. Besides, it’s only one sale. It could be a fluke.”

“No. You’re going to resonate with people,” she said. “You’re honest and it comes through in your work. It’s the essence of Realism.”

“Thanks,” I said.

But she was wrong. I wasn’t honest. And I had a bag of somebody else’s diamonds in my footlocker to prove it.

Chapter 21

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL is a majestic beaux arts building sitting on forty-eight acres smack in the middle of Manhattan. It’s been called the heart of the nation’s greatest city, and yet not one of New York City’s thirty-five thousand cops has jurisdiction in the terminal.

In a world where bureaucracy trumps geography, Grand Central has been designated the responsibility of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, and MTA cops work for New York State.

“You realize we got no juice here in Grand Central,” Rice said as he parked the car in front of a hydrant on 43rd Street.

“I make my own juice,” Benzetti said. “Especially when a bunch of crazy Russians are up our asses. If we don’t find the diamonds, they’ll just decide that we took them, and they’ll ice us the same way they put away Zelvas.”

They entered through the Vanderbilt Avenue doors and stood on the West Balcony under a trio of sixty-foot-high arch windows.

“It looks like everything’s back to normal,” Rice said, looking out over the marble balcony at the vast concourse below.

“Except for the beefed-up security,” Benzetti said.

“I know. I counted five Staties when we came through the door,” Rice said. “Normally, there’s one.”

Benzetti grinned. “Nervous times.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Central Security Office. Lower level.” Benzetti checked his watch. “I got a friend working this shift.”

The two cops walked down the sweeping marble staircase, crossed the concourse, passed the circular marble-and-brass information pagoda with its famous four-sided clock, and went down another flight of stairs to the dining concourse.

They made their way through the food court, where Brother Jimmy’s, Zaro’s, Junior’s, and more than a dozen other celebrated New York food institutions had taken up residence underground, then down a ramp till they got to a door that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Benzetti rang a bell and flashed his badge at a camera, and the two of them were buzzed in.

“NYPD,” he said to the sullen-faced MTA cop at the front desk. “I’m looking for Sergeant Black.”

The cop eyeballed the shield, nodded, checked a directory, and dialed a four-digit number.

“Be right out,” the cop mumbled.

Five minutes later, a tall, attractive African-American woman with three stripes on the sleeves of her uniform came out and threw her arms around Benzetti.

“I know this ain’t no social call,” she said, stepping back from the hug.

“Baby, you know me. I don’t need backup for social calls,” Benzetti said. “This is my partner, John Rice. John, this is Kylie Black.”

They shook hands and Kylie escorted the two men inside. The grandeur and the classic beauty that made the building an architectural landmark was nowhere to be found in the command center. Whatever charm the space may have had when it was built more than a century ago had been painted or plastered over. What remained was an uninspired sterile cavern with fluorescent lighting, banks of monitors, and rows of people at desks and consoles doing their damnedest to keep an eye on every one of the six hundred thousand people who passed through the terminal every day.

“What can the MTA do for New York’s finest,” Kylie said, letting her tongue gently glide across her upper lip, “that we haven’t done already?”

“I hate to bother you,” Benzetti said, “but we need to look at some of America’s Funniest Home Videos from Tuesday night.”

“The bombing?” Black said. “We’ve already run the tapes for the NYPD, FBI, Immigration, Homeland Security — you name it. We’ve had everyone looking at that bomb blast except for the fat lady who runs the food stamps program.”

“We’re not here about the bombing,” Benzetti said. “Some reporter from the Post was mugged Tuesday night by some homeless prick who’s taking up residence in your lovely train station.”

“Mugged?” Kylie said. “First I heard about it. Usually our wretched refuse are pretty well behaved. They come here to sleep and use the toilets. The bus terminal is where you get most of your muggings. Grand Central is the home of the harmless homeless.”

“Well, one of your bums ripped off this Post reporter’s brand-new leather jacket. His wife is a friend of the mayor’s wife, and you can guess the rest.”

Black shook her head. “NYPD assigns two detectives from Robbery to get a bead on this dude’s precious jacket before City Hall shits a brick.”

Benzetti shrugged. “Hey, I got two years till I make my twenty. Somebody asks me to do something, I shut up and do whatever makes them happy.”

Black smiled broadly. “I’ll remember that, Detective Benzetti, next time I can think of something that will make me happy. Come on, I’ll set you guys up in a room with the tapes. Knock yourselves out.”

Chapter 22

THE TECH WAS gaunt and pasty. His name was R. J. or J. R. Rice and Benzetti didn’t pay attention, didn’t care. All they wanted was for him to leave.

“You guys know how to navigate this puppy?” the tech asked.

They were sitting in a cramped screening room with a computer, a thirty-inch monitor, and not much else.

“I’ve got a sixteen-camera surveillance unit at home,” Rice said.

“LOL,” the tech said, actually laughing out loud. “Well, this will be like going from a Buick Skylark to a Bugatti Veyron.”

“They both got four wheels and an engine,” Benzetti said.

“LOL,” the tech repeated, not laughing this time. “But don’t worry, it’s idiot-proof.” He held up both hands. “Not that I’m saying you guys are idiots.”

“LOL,” Benzetti said. “Just show us how to work the goddamn Bugatti computer and get out of here.”

Ten minutes later the tech left the room, and Rice pulled up the cameras on the main concourse.

“The bomb went off a little after eleven Tuesday night,” Benzetti said. “Start the search an hour before.”

The images were high-def, and finding Walter Zelvas in the late-night comings and goings of thousands of travelers took less than twenty minutes.

“Freeze it,” Benzetti said. “There he is, buying coffee at Starbucks.”

They tracked him as he walked into the waiting area, then fast-forwarded as he sat down, got up, checked the monitor, then repeated the process, getting more frustrated each time.

“His train is late,” Rice said as they watched Zelvas go back to Starbucks.

As the time code approached 11 p.m., Zelvas finished the second cup, crumpled it up, threw it in the trash, crossed the concourse, stopped to have a few words with a porter, and then entered the men’s room. Rice froze it again.

“There’s the guy the cops described. Beard. Poncho. That’s the Talibum — the guy with the bomb. He’s following Zelvas into the john.”

“That’s no bum,” Benzetti said. “That’s the guy Chukov hired to waste Zelvas. Pick them up on the bathroom camera.”

“There are no bathroom cameras,” Rice said. “Some crap about civil liberties.”

They watched the video at normal speed. Eighty-eight seconds later, Zelvas stumbled out of the men’s room, bleeding from the neck and firing his gun backward. Then he disappeared out of the frame.

Seconds later, the man in the poncho stood in the men’s-room doorway. He pointed a gun in the direction Zelvas had headed, but first he had to deal with the MTA police.

“This is like watching the Keystone Kops,” Rice said as the bearded man handily dispatched a cop with a bucket of soapy water.

The bum grabbed two grenades from under his poncho and pulled the pins, and the screen was engulfed in smoke.

“That bastard is slick,” Benzetti said. “See if you can pick him up on another camera.”

Rice bounced from one camera to another, but the smoke blocked them all. He hit fast-forward, but by the time the smoke faded, so did the bum. “I can’t find him anywhere,” Rice said.

“Chukov hired him, so Chukov can find him. Our job is to find the diamonds. Somebody knows where they are.”

Rice smacked his forehead. “Duh. Zelvas knows.”

“Duh,” Benzetti repeated. “Zelvas is dead.”

“He’s not dead in the video. Hang on.”

Rice surfed from camera to camera. “Got him,” he said after a few minutes.

They watched Zelvas stagger across the marble floor. He crashed into a bank of lockers, found one on the top row, and opened it.

Rice froze the image and zoomed in on the frame. “Jackpot,” he said. “Locker number nine twenty-five. How much you want to bet it’s not filled with cheese?”

Chapter 23

RICE UNFROZE THE image, and Zelvas slumped to the floor. A wet circle fanned out from his body, slowly turning the white marble bright red.

And then wisps of smoke crept into the corner of the screen.

“Shit,” Benzetti said. “We’re going to lose the picture again.”

“Relax,” Rice said. “He’s a good two hundred feet from the blast.”

They watched as the smoke cast a pink haze over the picture, then lifted.

“Look at all those people run. They’re practically tripping over the poor bastard, and they don’t stop to help him,” Rice said.

“As far as they’re concerned, some terrorist just set off a couple of bombs. It’s every man for himself,” Benzetti said. “Wait a minute. Here comes Mr. Good Samaritan.”

The preppy-looking young man knelt down and tried to comfort Zelvas.

“Who is this guy?” Rice asked.

“Who knows? He looks like some latte-sipping pansy who was running for his life and decided to stop and smell the dead guy.”

“Zelvas is telling him something,” Rice said.

“Short conversation,” Benzetti said, as they watched Zelvas die. “He just cashed in his chips.”

“Now what’s this guy gonna do?” Rice said.

“If the kid is smart, he’ll move his ass out of Grand Central.”

But the kid didn’t move. He was staring up at the blood-smeared lockers.

“Uh-oh,” Rice said. “The monkey sees the banana.”

The young man stood up, reached into the open locker, and taking out a small leather bag, looked inside.

“The monkey is about to crap in his pants,” Benzetti said.

“He looks like a Boy Scout,” Rice said. “Maybe he’ll turn it into Lost and Found. I know I would.”

Benzetti laughed. “He could be as honest as a full-length mirror, but we all have our price.”

The young man shut the bag in a hurry and snapped the latch.

“My instincts tell me this dude just found out what his is.”

And then the cop showed up.

“This guy is NYPD,” Rice said.

“He must be from the Idiot Squad,” Benzetti said. “Why would he pull a gun on a civilian?”

The kid ignored the cop’s gun and tended to the dead Russian.

“He’s smart,” Rice said. “He’s using Zelvas’s bag as a prop and playing doctor.”

“And Officer Dumbass is buying it,” Benzetti said as the young cop holstered his gun.

They watched the scenario unfold. Finally the kid dug into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and started talking.

“How convenient,” Benzetti said. “A phone call.”

“It’s a ruse,” Rice yelled at the cop on the monitor. “And you’re buying it, Officer”—he paused the video and zoomed in on the cop’s name tag—“Kendall.”

He hit the play button and watched as Kendall listened to his radio. The call was brief but it seemed to energize the cop.

“Oh, crap,” Benzetti said. “I think I know how this movie is going to end.”

Kendall spent a few more seconds with the kid, then took off toward the Forty-second Street Passageway. The kid waited another ten seconds, then cut and ran in the other direction.

“Track him,” Benzetti said.

Rice followed the action from camera to camera as the kid made his way to the Lexington Avenue exit. The final camera caught the drama outside as three men haggled over a cab and the kid bummed a ride with the winner.

Rice froze the frame. “The hack number is six J four two,” he said, writing it down. “I’ll call the TLC and hunt down the driver.”

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Benzetti said. “It’ll probably be some towelhead who won’t remember anything because he was too busy gouging people that night.”

Rice hit play, and the cab, the kid, and the leather bag with the diamonds were gone.

“He wasn’t carrying any luggage,” Rice said. “So he’s either a regular commuter or he works in one of the shops here at Grand Central. I’ll pull a screen shot of his face. We can find this guy.”

“And when we do, I will personally put a bullet through his head and bring the diamonds back to Chukov,” Benzetti said.

“Y’know,” Rice said, grinning, “there really ought to be a finder’s fee for something like that.”

“There will be,” Benzetti said. “A fistful of diamonds.”

“Two fistfuls,” Rice said.

A close-up of the young man filled the thirty-inch screen, and Rice froze the image. “And if the Russians notice that any stones are missing,” Rice said, “we can just blame it on Pretty Boy.”

Benzetti nodded. “LOL, baby. L.O. Fucking L.”