Tonight, though, idle conversation was the game. His and Sales’s words ranged far and wide. He’d called the rehab specialist Thom had recommended. They hadn’t met yet, but Sales would update Rhyme about the appointment afterward.
Rhyme had to report to Sales that his intelligence revealed that the trial of the man who’d allegedly shot him was moving slowly. Clever lawyering, technicalities, bullying witnesses.
After they disconnected, Rhyme turned briefly to the evidence charts and memorized some of the more enigmatic entries. When this was done he swung around and followed Thom to the elevator. In bed he would use the netherworld, between deciding to sleep and succumbing, to wrestle a little longer with the knottier issues presented by the investigation.
Smiling to himself, he thought suddenly of a line that seemed to define the clues in the Unsub 47 case, words that Edward Ackroyd had spoken earlier, about cryptic crossword puzzles.
They can lie and be completely honest at the same time…
Chapter 30
Listening to the raucous sound from his son’s workroom—the grinding tools shaping the sculpted stone—Deepro Lahori slipped downstairs.
He stood in the hallway outside the studio, in the basement.
It was late—bedtime—but the boy continued to grind away. They had ended their conversation on a somewhat positive note earlier in the evening. But Vimal was, of course, now being passive aggressive—the grinder shouting a message of defiance to his father.
How foolish, this sculpture nonsense. What a waste of time. And of his talent. If it were only a hobby, fine. In fact, sculpting might enhance his son’s skill as a cutter. Better than video games, better than dating girls. But he knew Vimal wanted a career as an artist. Stupid boy. Lahori guessed the percentage of professional artists who made enough money to live on probably hovered around 1 percent. How could he get an Indian woman for a wife, someone who wanted to be taken care of, someone who would show respect only to a man who provided for her?
Apart from the impracticality of devoting his life to sculpture, the truly troubling, truly painful, aspect of his son’s behavior was the insulting rejection of his father’s—and the Lahori family’s—history in the diamond-cutting business. This was a sin, for Vimal was the only one in the family to carry on that tradition. Sunny would have gone into the business—but he had no talent on the scaife; he was embarrassing to watch. Yes, he would be following his mother into health care (though he would be a doctor, of course, not a mere nurse, like Divya). But that was a maternal tradition. Lahori needed a son to follow in his footsteps.
Downstairs, he approached the door of the studio, pausing as the grinder went silent.
Was he finished for the night?
No, the clatter started up again. Which meant Vimal couldn’t hear what was coming next. Lahori took a key from his pocket in a trembling hand and, after some effort, locked the door to the studio. He then placed a security bar, which ran at a forty-five-degree angle from an indentation above the doorknob to a similar hole in the floor. He affixed this too with a key lock. The bar was three-quarter-inch tempered steel, and the manufacturer assured the world, in its advertising, that only a cutting flame of two thousand degrees Celsius would slice through it. (Though, of course, a flexible disk saw embedded with diamonds would do the trick too, he thought. Just for the record.)
Vimal was now in prison. The door was sealed—and, because this had been a diamond workshop years ago, the low window was barred with thick iron rods.
Lahori congratulated himself silently for the ruse of putting his son at ease, agreeing to some “compromise.” Had Vimal been the least suspicious that he’d be locked up here, he never would have gone into the room. The insubordinate boy would have sprinted out the door in an instant and been gone, no matter that he had no money and no ID.
Going to California? A state whose only claim to fame, in Lahori’s opinion, was the billions of dollars in diamond sales from stores like the ones on Rodeo Drive?
He slipped the keys into his pocket.
What a child Vimal was! He could have been one of the greatest diamantaires of the twenty-first century…why, look at the parallelogram cut! Genius, pure genius.
Deepro Lahori had no particular plan, other than to keep Vimal here, locked downstairs, for the next month or so. He was sure the police would catch the killer and the boy would come to his senses. It would be the horror of the robbery, getting shot at, and seeing his mentor die that had upset him so, had unbalanced him. He was, Lahori decided, temporarily insane. A month in captivity would also get his mind off any non-Hindu girls he was vulnerable to.
A touch of guilt. But Lahori reminded himself he was hardly inhumane, certainly not with his son, whom he loved deeply, of course. The boy would find a comfortable sleeping bag in the closet, along with plenty of food and snacks and water and soft drinks. He suspected his son drank so he’d included some lite beer. There was a TV. No Internet or phone of course. The boy might grow even more unstable and call a friend to come break him out. Or the police, claiming he’d been kidnapped.
There would be some tension between them, because of what Lahori had done. But sooner or later the boy would come to understand that his father knew what was right for him. He would thank him, though Lahori honestly did not want thanks, or even an acknowledgment that he was right. He simply wanted the boy to come to the realization that this was the life he was destined for…and to embrace it.
He gripped the bar against the door and tried to shake it. The rod didn’t move a millimeter.
He was satisfied. And at last more or less happy…after these past few days, when events had tried him so sorely. And unfairly.
He climbed the stairs.
Deepro Lahori was in the mood for that game of Scrabble, and he knew his wife and his other son—his good son—would indulge him.
Monday, March 15
III
Sawing
Chapter 31
Now, where is my kuritsa?
Where are you, my little hen?
Aren’t you tired of working, aren’t you hungry for some curry, some vindaloo shrimp, some basmati rice? And who doesn’t love that wonderful raita?
The young man that Vladimir Rostov was waiting for was working in a jewelry store that specialized in wedding bands and engagement rings. It was lunchtime and the fucking kid better take a break soon. Rostov had enjoyed his time with the lovebirds—especially the ring swallowing! But now to work. Finding VL and slicing his throat.
That’s why he was here in this greasy Irish bar, where he sat on a stool, having a bourbon and studying the building across the street.
Come on, my little kuritsa…Your Vladimir is getting impatient and you won’t like him that way. His knife is sitting heavy in his pocket. The razor blade is lonely.
His Persian, no, Iranian, kuritsa, Nashim, had come through for him, and delivered the name of a young man who had worked for Patel a year ago and stayed in touch with the diamond cutter and those who worked for and with him. His first name was Kirtan, and Nashim didn’t know his home address but he did know where he worked: the store that Rostov was staring at right now. He had a passing regret that because of the Persian’s success, Rostov had no excuse to visit Nashim’s plump daughters, Scheherazade and Kitten.
Ah, families, families, families…