James Patterson - Kill Me If You Can

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.

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.”

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.