The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(3)
Chapter 2
This was his life.
Today was typical. Up at six, a Saturday, can you believe it? Help his mother empty all the pantry and kitchen shelves, for cleaning and laying new contact paper. Then wash the car—on this damp, grim day! Hugging his mother and father goodbye, then taking the train from their home in Queens all the way to Brooklyn, on an errand for Mr. Patel.
Yet another train to Manhattan, to start polishing the stones that awaited him. He was on board now, as it swayed its way north.
Saturday. When everyone else was at brunch or plays or movies…or museums.
Or galleries.
How unfair was this?
Oh, forget entertainment. Vimal Lahori would be fine—in fact, he’d prefer to be—in the damp basement of the family’s house in Queens.
But that was not an option.
He pulled his dark-gray wool jacket around him more tightly as he swayed with the gentle motion of the subway. The twenty-two-year-old was thin and not tall. He’d reached his present height of five feet, six inches in grade school and had had about two years’ edge over his boy classmates, until others pulled even or eclipsed him. Still, the ethnic bent of his high school, with names more Latino and East or South Asian than black or Anglo, meant he wasn’t as diminutive as many. Which wasn’t to say that he didn’t get bloodied occasionally—though the engine for the most severe torment was that his family had immigrated from Kashmir, the region claimed by the bordering rivals, India and Pakistan. Vimal was, he believed, the only boy to have been beaten up for a border dispute (ironically by two gangly seniors whose religions—one Muslim and one Hindu—should have made them sworn enemies).
The wounds were minor, though, and the conflict soon forgotten, largely because Vimal was hardly a Kashmirista (he wasn’t even sure where the borders of his ancestral homeland lay). More important, he could move down the soccer pitch the way a honey bee zips from petal to petal; ball control will trump geopolitics any day.
The train approached the stop at 42nd Street. The wheels shrieked and the smoky, salt odor eased into the car. Vimal unfurled and looked into the paper bag he carried. It contained a half-dozen rocks. He removed one, a piece about the size of his fist. It was gray and dark green, striated with crystals. One end was cracked flat and the other rounded. Every piece of stone on earth, big or small, could be turned into something else and, with some thought and patience, the artist could see what it should become. But this one was obvious: a bird, Vimal saw instantly, a bird that was pressing wings to body and keeping its head low to ward off the cold. He could rough out the creature in a day.
But today was not that day.
Today was for work. Mr. Patel was a very talented man. A genius, many people said, and Vimal knew it was true. And probably because of his brilliance Mr. Patel was also a taskmaster. Vimal had the Abington job to finish. Four pieces of stone, three carats each, more or less. He knew it would take a full eight hours, and the old man—he was fifty-five—would spend agonizing periods of that time examining Vimal’s efforts under the glass. Then have him make adjustments. And more after that.
And more and more and more…
The doors of the subway opened and Vimal replaced into the paper bag the Solitary Bird, January—his name for the sculpture that would never be. He stepped onto the platform and climbed to the street. At least it was Saturday and, with many of the Orthodox stores closed, the Diamond District would be more serene than on weekdays, especially with this nasty March weather. The bustling of the neighborhood sometimes drove him crazy.
Instinctively, the minute he turned onto 47th Street Vimal grew cautious—as did pretty much every one of the hundreds of employees here, a place where many owners were reluctant to advertise too loudly. Yes, there were plenty of “Jewelers” and “Diamonds” and “Gems” in the shop and company names but the higher-end operations and the few important diamond cutters left in the city tended to call themselves by names like “Elijah Findings,” “West Side Collateral” and “Specialties In Style.”
Hundreds of millions’ worth of diamonds and gems flowed into and out of these stores and cutting shops every day of the year. And there wasn’t a halfway competent burglar or robber in the world who wasn’t aware of that fact. And they also knew that the number one way to transport precious gems and gold and platinum and finished jewelry wasn’t via armored trucks (too many shipments in and out daily to make a whole truck cost-efficient) or in aluminum attaché cases handcuffed to wrists (far too easy to spot and, as any doctor would tell you, hands can be severed with a hacksaw in less than sixty seconds, even faster if you go electric).
No, the best way to transport valuables was to do just what Vimal was doing now. Dressing down—in jeans, running shoes, a Keep Weird and Carry On sweatshirt and wool jacket, while carting a stained paper bag.
So, as Vimal’s father—a former cutter himself—insisted, the young man kept his eyes scanning constantly for anyone who might glance a certain way at the bag in his hand or might be moving close while overtly not looking.
Still, he wasn’t too concerned; even on less-busy days like this there were guards present, seemingly unarmed but with those little revolvers or automatics tucked into sweaty waistbands. He nodded at one now, as she stood in front of a jewelry store, an African American woman with short purple hair of crinkly texture that Vimal marveled at; he had no idea how she’d managed it. Coming from an ethnic background that offered pretty much one-size-fits-all hair (black, thick and wavy or straight), he was greatly impressed by her do. He wondered how he might render it in stone.