Kill Me if You Can Read online

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 di
dn’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.”