“Last week a dealer came to New York City from South Africa. He supposedly had in his possession a collection of rare diamonds. Flawless, colorless stones… some pink and yellow. He traveled here on a private jet with three heavily armed bodyguards, carrying more than five million dollars in precious gems. Somewhere between the airport and his first appointment, he, the driver of his limo, and his three bodyguards were all killed. The diamonds, quite obviously, are gone.”
Jeffrey remembered hearing something about a South African businessman being killed, his limo found on a service road near the Westchester Airport. The implication of the report, if Jeffrey remembered, was that it was some kind of an organized crime hit. But he didn’t remember hearing anything else about it.
“And you think that this might be one of those diamonds?”
He picked up the diamond and looked at it again. “Like I said, they’re very, very rare. Last week a dealer is killed, his gems stolen, among which there was supposedly a cache of nearly flawless pink diamonds. This week you come to my shop with an extraordinary stone that you say came into your possession ‘by accident.’ If you weren’t a friend of Striker’s, I might be calling some of my friends,” said Chiam with a flat smile.
Few people realized that the Jews had a pretty nasty mob themselves. Jeffrey had noticed another exit door toward the back when he’d followed Chiam to the office and noticed a set of keys hanging in the dead bolt. He found himself wondering whether he could get to the back or the front exit faster, and where the back exit would leave him off.
“Has there been any speculation as to who might have killed the dealer and taken the stones?” asked Jeffrey.
“There’s always speculation,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe the Albanians, maybe the Italians, maybe the Russians.”
“Maybe the Jews,” said Jeffrey.
“No,” said Chiam with a short, mirthless laugh. “Not the Jews.”
Jeff nodded and guessed that if it had been the Jews they probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Anyway,” said the old man. “There’s been no movement. At least not locally. Whoever took the diamonds will want to sell them eventually. That’s when maybe we hear who is responsible.”
“Then what?”
He turned up the corners of his mouth, but Jeffrey wouldn’t have called it a smile. “Too many variables. No way to know.”
“When you hear something, I’d like to know,” said Jeffrey, sliding his card over the desk toward Chiam. He nodded, taking the card.
“Are you pursuing this through your own avenues?” asked Chiam.
“I am,” he answered.
Chiam seemed to consider his response. “Well, then. I’ll promise to tell you what I learn, if you promise to tell me what you learn.”
“It’s a deal,” said Jeffrey.
“Now,” said Chiam, looking satisfied. “How much do you want for this stone?”
When Matt Stenopolis called, Lydia was sitting in Jeffrey’s office staring at the box. A couple of times, she moved toward it but had wound up sinking back into the couch. She knew all about opening boxes. Once the lid was off, it could never be closed again. She considered herself a pretty tough chick, but that box scared her. She couldn’t quite say why.
The buzzer on Jeffrey’s desk sounded and a voice came over the speaker. “Lydia,” said Jessa, one of the trainees, “are you in there? There’s a Matt Stenopolis on line two.”
She jumped up, glad for the distraction. “Got it,” she said and picked up the call.
“Detective,” she said.
“Yeah, Ms. Strong. Can we get together?”
She was surprised he wanted to meet rather than talk on the phone. She got the feeling that he didn’t like her very much, considered her a necessary evil as far as Lily Samuels was concerned.
“Sure,” she said. “Where and when?”
The New Day achieved tax-exempt status in 1997. They claim to have over two hundred and fifty thousand members worldwide, growing steadily since their origination in 1977,” Matt told Lydia over strong coffee and a scratched Formica table at a Greek restaurant in midtown. It was bustling with the dinner crowd, loud voices, clinking silverware, and the occasional cry of “Opa!” as a waiter lit the saganaki on fire. The place itself was a dive, looking more like your average New York diner than anything else, but it had the best Greek food outside of his mother’s kitchen and he had a craving for pastitso that would not be denied.
“So The New Day is a religion?” she said, sounding skeptical, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with a delicate finger.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what they call themselves,” he said. Matt was not of the belief that you could just start a religion in the same way that you could start a company. It seemed a little backwards to him and he was suspicious of any so-called religion that had just popped up in the last twenty or thirty or even fifty years. Some backwoods bumpkin or science fiction writer declares himself a prophet, gets a few weak-willed souls to agree, and all of a sudden he’s talking to God. Maybe he was just being picky but frankly he would need some parting of the seas, water into wine, or something along those lines to be convinced.
“What are their precepts? I mean are we talking a Heaven’s Gate kind of thing… hitch a ride to God on the Hale Bopp Comet? Or what?”
“Well, from what I can determine, there aren’t any deities involved. They claim to be compatible with any religious belief, kind of a direct line to whatever God you believe in. Their whole concept is that through a kind of spiritual cleansing they can help people overcome addictions, reach their full potential as human beings and in so doing get closer to God.”
“And what do they get from their members in return?”
“The members of The New Day turn over everything to the church when they join. It’s not that they give it to The New Day, though. My understanding is that The New Day creates an account for the member and manages all his or her money and assets. They get an allowance or a dividend from their invested money to meet living expenses. Supposedly, the member can cash out that account and leave whenever he or she wants.”
She nodded thoughtfully and he wondered if she was thinking what he had when he heard that. He’d thought about Lily Samuels cashing out all of her accounts while someone waited for her in a black SUV.
“What if you want to join The New Day and you don’t have any money?” said Lydia.
“I don’t know,” he said. He only had limited information.
After he and Jesamyn met with the other detectives working on the Rosario Mendez case, and Jesamyn had left for the evening, Matt had called a friend of his, a guy he went to high school with out in Queens who was now an agent with the FBI. Special Agent John Starks was part of a unit whose task it was to track and observe the activities of domestic groups, such as the Michigan Militia or the Branch Davidians, with political or religious agendas that might pose a threat to homeland security. To Matt’s surprise, his friend, Starkey to everyone from the neighborhood, knew a lot about The New Day.
“Basically, when you sign up, it’s like going to rehab,” Starkey had told him. “They separate you from your life and your family. You can have no other club affiliations, like not even a gym membership. And you have to quit your job. Apparently, there’s a period they call ‘cleansing’ which can last from six months to a year. After this time, you’re allowed to return to your life if you want, while remaining a member of The New Day the way you would belong to any church. Or you can go to work for the church.”
Lydia had pulled a notepad from her pocket and was scribbling notes.
“I’m just taking some notes,” she said when she saw him watching her. Then, “How did the FBI learn about The New Day?”
“They’ve been investigated by federal agencies three times in the last twenty-five years.”