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?”