We cleared the city. As we headed out Long Island, Great Pipe continued its meteoric climb. The market issued warnings. No one paid attention. At sixty dollars the market suspended trading a second time. The frenzied buying and selling switched to the gray market. Inside an hour, the pressure to clear the swelling backlog of trades forced the market to remove the stop order. Great Pipe blew like a magnum of champagne. It had just passed seventy dollars when Patrick called.
“A European broker is selling 500,000 shares every time the price goes through a five-dollar increment.”
“When did they buy?”
“I can’t find any record that they bought.”
“Maybe it’s one of the funds that had an early investment, and they’re taking a profit.”
“It’s not a fund.”
“OK.” I thought for a minute. “Where’s the broker?”
“They’re using a New York nominee, but the orders are coming from Helsinki.”
Sag Harbor is a pretty, shaded town full of those enormous cedar-shake houses that the original inhabitants would have built if they’d been partners in hedge funds instead of fishermen. The bank was on a side street, leaving the charming, cobbled main drag for the coffee shops and bookstores and sellers of expensive handmade soaps. We parked in a lane behind the bank.
The manager had a roomy, old-fashioned office at the back. A ceiling fan stirred the soupy air. I’d called ahead. The file for L. T. Labs lay open on his desk. He was going through it—what there was. Only a few pages. He was frowning at them. And us.
“Sag Harbor is a long way from Washington, DC,” he said, tilting his head back to stare down his nose at my Treasury ID.
The manager was in his thirties. He had a red face, as if he’d just come in from a jog. A hank of black hair fell across his forehead.
“I’m not sure what I can tell you,” he said. “This account was closed a month ago. I don’t even know if this business exists anymore.”
“We just need a few particulars,” I said, “such as where they were located.”
He pushed the hank of hair from his forehead. It fell back again.
“We only had an address in the city,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “And I’ll need that too. But what I need today is where the physical premises were and what was the nature of the business.”
He nodded and made another futile attempt to brush the hair from his forehead. His face glistened with a sheen of perspiration.
“All I know is what’s in the file.”
“I know you’re familiar with the provisions of the Dodd-Frank legislation,” I said in a reasonable tone. “But just so we know what provisions I mean—you’re supposed to know the nature of a client’s business. By that I mean, you are required to know it. That’s to prevent the I-didn’t-know-what-they-were-up-to defense if we have to prosecute you for abetting a crime.”
The sweat was pouring off him now.
“Research,” he blurted out. “It was some kind of research company. That’s all I know.”
“You don’t know where they had their building?”
He shuffled through the statements in the file again, then closed it and took a deep breath.
“Look, this account was opened by head office in New York. Deposits came by wire. Mostly it was used to pay bills for L. T. Labs. There was an authorized person for cash withdrawals.”
“And he was?”
He glanced at the file. “Lane Turner.”
“Where did the wires come from?”
“A bank in Liechtenstein.”
“Oh, boy,” I said, and after that he shut up like a clam.
“He was more afraid of someone else than he was of you,” Tabitha said when we left.
We walked around the corner to the real estate office. The salesman wore a black polo jersey and those faded pink cotton pants that New Yorkers hope will make them look as if they come from an island other than Manhattan. He had the local newspaper spread out in front of him and was deep in a story about local politicians caught up in a corruption probe. There’s a surprise. Prime oceanfront properties located in small municipalities with rudimentary oversight, a short helicopter ride from the richest people on the planet. What could go wrong?
“Industrial?” he said when I told him what we were looking for. He had a gleaming bald head with a fringe of wispy hair. “We don’t get much industrial interest out here.” His shrewd eyes darted back and forth between Tabitha and me. “Mostly what people like yourselves are looking for is a nice summer place.”
“Light industrial,” I said. “Place for a small plant.”
He stepped over to a large wall map of the area.
“The only place I can think of,” he said, “is to the south of town, right around here.” He drew a circle with his finger that took in a swath of countryside. Black rectangles marked the few buildings that stood along the roads. “There’s a place in here somewhere,” he said, tapping the map. I stepped closer and saw a long straggle called Old Shinnecock Road. “No idea what they do,” he said. “Some kind of lab? Been there about a year. Want to take a look?”
I told him we’d be fine by ourselves, and we’d be in touch. He gave me the sad smile of a man who’d heard it before.
We could have found Old Shinnecock Road by following the news helicopter. It circled at about a thousand feet, the camera operator visible in the open door. A sheriff’s car blocked the nearest intersection. A TV truck from the local station was parked beside it. A camera was set up on the roof of the truck, beside the satellite dish. The cameraman was shooting down the road, where two more sheriff’s cars were parked by a gate, roof lights churning their message of foreboding into the dry scrub.
The sergeant at the gate just glanced at our IDs. He looked like a man not far from retirement, and Lime’s black Ferrari Testarossa parked at the entrance to the building and the sudden appearance of federal agents were telling him that this was not a scene he wanted to be in charge of.
“I’d better call the sheriff,” he muttered, reaching for the mike clipped to his shoulder.
“Suit yourself,” I said, “but before you do,” I pointed to a deputy pulling on blue latex gloves and heading for the Ferrari, “stop that officer right now. We’ll get our own forensics.” I nodded to Tabitha. “Call Tommy. Tell him what we need.”
“One more thing,” I said to the sergeant. “What brought you out here?”
“Phone tip,” he said.
“Let me guess. Anonymous.”
The single-story building was made of concrete blocks and painted a cream color. It looked well maintained. No sign identified the occupant. Orange and black notices that warned RADIATION: DO NOT ENTER were clipped to the chain-link security fence around the property. A police tech with a Geiger counter was coming out the door.
“It’s clear,” he said.
Inside, daylight poured though skylights and puddled on the polished concrete floor. Against one wall stood a row of benches with flex lamps and diamond scales, and after that, a large, glass-walled office. That’s where Lime was sitting.
His chin was resting on his collarbone. His face was paper white. He stared in perplexity at the papers on his desk, as if he were trying to understand exactly what they meant: in the circumstances, a hopeless task. The killer had slashed his throat from ear to ear, severing the jugular vein. Lime’s chest and lap were caked in the dark, congealing mess of his own blood. A viscous pool had formed around his shoes.
The sharp, metallic smell of blood filled the room.
I left the office and crossed the empty lab to a door painted in diagonal, black-and-yellow stripes. A red lightbulb was mounted just above the door. A sign warned employees not to enter when the light was flashing. The door was ajar. I stepped into the windowless room.
Thick cables ran from a ceiling duct and connected to the back of the stainless-steel machine in the center of the room. It was the size of a home washing machine, with a thick, steel door that opened into a small space lined with white tiles. I heard Tabitha come in behind me.
“That’s Lime in the office?”
“Yes.” I swung the door open. In the center of the chamber was a small, clawlike device. Tabitha came in and crouched beside me to peer in.
“What is it?”
“A radiation chamber.”
“For what?”
“For irradiating diamonds. They fix the stone in that clasp in there and bombard it with radiation.” I stood up. “This whole room is lined with lead.”
“And what does that do, when they bombard the diamond?”
“It changes the color of the stone.”
“You mean…”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. They can make a diamond any color. Including pink.”
A loud whoop whoop sounded just outside, and a flash of blue and red strobes flickered through the door. We came out of the radiation room in time to see Honey Li climb out of a black Suburban. She came wobbling across the gravel parking lot in her heels. Behind her were a couple of secret service agents and the sergeant from the sheriff’s department, all looking unhappy.
“You are fucking kidding me,” Tabitha said, raising the total number of obscenities I’d ever heard from her to one. She took off for the front door like a shot, hauling out her badge and holding it up and shouting, “Federal crime scene.” Honey stepped through the door. “Ms. Li,” Tabitha called, “you need to stop right there.”
She stormed down the room in a whirlwind of hair. Honey froze. When I got there I could see she was trembling.
“Ms. Li,” Tabitha said, “you don’t want to come in here.”
“But, Sergei,” she stammered, “on TV. They said a killing.” She grabbed Tabitha’s sleeve. “I drove over from Bridgehampton,” she said in the same shaking voice.
Honey stared down the room at the open door. Lime’s body was just visible, with its awful wound. She staggered, and I grabbed her quickly to prevent her falling. She clasped her head in her hands.
“I’m sorry I’ve come,” she said. “I see how inappropriate this is.” She shuddered. “I’m so sorry. I’ll go.”
“How did you know it was Lime?” I said as she was turning to leave.
It was as if I’d turned a spigot that let ice into her veins. She looked straight at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you saw it on TV. But that wouldn’t tell you Lime’s name. It hasn’t been released.”
“Hasn’t it,” she said. “Well then,” she looked around, “I must have recognized the car.”
“Wow,” Tabitha said as we watched her drive away. “Where do you learn to do that?”
“She has an algorithm for it.”
“Suspicious circumstances,” I said to the sheriff’s sergeant when we left. “That’s all you release. Manner of death is a federal secret until the statute of limitations unseals the file in thirty years. Is that clear?”
“Is there even such a category as a federal secret?” Tabitha said as we walked back to the car.
“You have to wonder.”
It’s only fifteen miles from Sag Harbor to Orient, but you have to take two ferries on the way. So Tabitha had plenty of time to decide how guilty she should feel.
We were the only car on board when we slipped away from the jetty for the first crossing, a fifteen-minute run across the Peconic River. The thrum of the diesels made the interior of the car seem even quieter.
“I wasn’t supposed to know that Lily was with you on Jersey,” Tabitha said.
“No.”
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“You were always too good to be true.”
“You suspected?”
“The CIA spent a lot of money training you. For what, to lend you to FinCEN for immediate burial in Special Audits as my assistant?” The ferry slowed as we approached the dock on Shelter Island. “It never made sense.”
The boat eased into the slip. The ramp clanked down and the deckhand waved us off. We bumped ashore and took the road to the north side of the island.
“What I can’t figure out is who you’re working for. Who would be the client?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “My case officer only came up to New York once. Mostly she wanted to know where to buy shoes. You know they don’t tell us anything.”
“If you say so.”
My phone emitted a beep. Bulletins on Great Pipe were coming in fast now. At first, the killing at the lab had been strictly local news. The Suffolk County sheriff hadn’t released the victim’s name or even said who owned the building. But when Honey Li had rushed from the Nash estate at Bridgehampton all that changed. The paparazzi staking out the property for a glimpse of Honey caught the black Suburban as it came tearing through the gate, strobes flashing and a state police escort front and back. Boom: Suddenly it was O. J. Simpson in the white Bronco. The news chopper, alerted to Honey Li’s cavalcade, had picked it up, and from that moment she towed behind her the rapt attention of the whole country. Suddenly the reporters on the story were from the New York Times and CNN.
In less than an hour they’d linked the black Testarossa to Lime. Next they discovered that the building belonged to L. T. Labs. It wouldn’t take them long to connect radiation warnings to the science of altering diamond color.
Trading in Great Pipe slowed, then stopped. The price had hit $110. It was as if the market had sucked in its breath and was waiting to see what happened next.
“I’m not getting this,” I said. “If this is a stock play, and Nash is running it, what’s the murder for?”
“Why does Lime’s killing have to be about a stock-market plot? Maybe there are other reasons.”
“That’s not how we think, though, is it. We don’t believe in coincidence. We look at what’s happening now.”
“OK,” Tabitha said. “The share price of Great Pipe increased fast. That’s the main event.”
“Exactly. Why?”
“The belief that the Camafoza Pipe will hold other sensational pink diamonds?”
“Right again. So the question is: How does cutting Lime’s throat help that? And why did Honey Li come over? She had to know she would be followed by the press.”
We crossed Shelter Island to the second ferry. Tabitha rolled her window down. The warm breeze stirred her hair. We came to the landing, and the thick smell of seaweed drying on the rocks. If I’d ever had a home, that was the smell it had.
The ferry to the North Fork docks in Greenport. From there it’s ten minutes to Orient. We drove through the village and turned into the sandy lane that cuts through a pine grove and comes out on a point.
It wasn’t a big house, but it had a kind of perfection. Like everything Dad ever owned. He’d bought the weather-beaten cottage for my mother thirty years ago, when prices on the North Fork were a fraction of what rich New Yorkers were paying in the Hamptons. He’d restored the white trim, and the parking area blazed with a fresh load of sun-bleached shells. Banks of white roses and blue hydrangeas piled up around the entrance.
“Is this where you spent summers?”
“When my mother could swing it. You’ve read the file, Tab.”
The brass lamps beside the door shone and the window panes gleamed. Mrs. Cutler opened the door, so I guess she was still coming every day to make sure not a speck of dust or flake of salt was allowed to settle on my father’s world. He inspired that devotion in people. God help them.
He wore his summer uniform—immaculate white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, khaki pants, and blue canvas boat shoes. His vintage, steel World War II officer’s wristwatch fastened with a simple khaki nylon band. Thin, erect, thick white hair.
“Lane Turner,” he said in that confident, warm voice, taking Tabitha’s hand when we came into the front room. “I hadn’t understood I was to have such a pleasure in my dull, old life.”
We stood in an awkward silence for a moment until he said to Mrs. Cutler, “So that will be tea for three, then, Hannah.”
My father’s idea of tea was a meal featuring ham sandwiches on brown bread with English mustard and lettuce, served at exactly 4:00 P.M. Sure, it came with tea—in a beautiful china pot that my mother had used every day. But now the tea was just another part of the ritual. Dad didn’t touch it. He hated tea. He ate his ham sandwich and washed it down with three fingers of single-malt Scotch.
“You want to talk about the Pink,” he said to me. Then he turned his smile on Tabitha. “That’s the only reason he’d come to see me,” he said in a confiding tone, as if she might not know.
Turning back to me, he said, “They’re saying on the news that the dead man at the lab could be Sergei.”
“It’s Lime,” I said.
“But why? It was a lab. And we were closing it. There wasn’t anything valuable there. We’d moved the diamonds. I don’t understand.”
“Why did you have the lab out there in the first place?”
He took a sip of his drink and held the glass up to the light to examine the color. He was particular about everything. But the news about Lime had shaken him.
“It was a good location partly because it’s so out of the way. We didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing. For me, it was convenient. And for Honey too. They have that place over in Bridgehampton so she could use that as a base when she wanted to keep tabs on progress.”
“So she knew where the lab was located and what you were doing?”
“Knew? It was her idea.”
“The radiation chamber too?”
“Of course. Once I explained to her how browns could be turned into pinks.”
“Dad, for Christ’s sake. This is not an academic discussion. People are betting their shirts right now on news about the Russian Pink. If you altered the color and have concealed it, that’s going to put you back in jail.”
The face he turned to me wore that frigid expression I knew well. And if I thought for a second I’d forgotten it, the boy who had feared its icy splash was there to remind me.
“The Russian Pink? Are you out of your mind?” He clenched his teeth. “I didn’t touch the Russian Pink! I analyzed a chip that Davy gave me. It’s the strongest, most vivid pink I’ve ever seen. Alter it?” he spat. “Who on earth would alter such a diamond?”
If Dad had any appetite for truth, that’s where you’d find it: inside his fascination with minerals. They were more alive for him than people. The photographs of my mother and me on the walls were like the remnants of a collection he’d once put together before losing interest and moving on.
“If not for the Pink, what was the chamber for?” Tabitha said.
“Browns,” he said. “If they have the right properties, they do very well.”
“You mean brown diamonds in the Camafoza Pipe?” Tabitha said. “You’re planning to change them into pinks?”
“Why not? It’s not illegal, as long as the certificates acknowledge that the stone’s been treated and enhanced.”
But something kept nagging at me.
“If you were closing the lab, what was Lime doing there?”
“How would I know? Maybe he left some papers out there, I don’t know.”
“There were no papers anywhere. The place was cleaned out. It was completely empty. Except for the radiation chamber. Why was that still there?”
“I guess they were going to move it last. Harry said to leave it.”
“Nash? I thought you said it was Honey and Lime who were running this.”
“Nash took an interest. He wanted to know how everything worked.”
“Why did Nash tell you to leave the radiation chamber?” I said.
“Always probing,” he said angrily. “Always suspicious.” He glared at me bitterly. Once he’d started, he had to finish. I guess he’d been imagining this conversation as long as I had. “You blamed me for your mother’s death.”
“Of course I blamed you,” I said. “You killed her. You starved her of what she wanted, which was your love.”
“I did love her! I loved you!”
He looked out at the remains of the dying day. His shoulders registered defeat. The night came on like a fist closing on the sun.
I don’t know what attracted him to people like Nash and Honey Li. I suppose no man on earth knew more about diamonds than my father, or less about people.
“This got away on you,” I told him. “You thought it was a straight stock play. You would certify the pink as a Camafoza stone. After all, it was. Nash would make a bundle on the stock, and you’d get a cut. Turning those browns into pinks—that would be a nice sideline. As long as no one claimed the stones were natural, you weren’t even committing a crime. Except Nash had other plans. There could only be one reason to tell you to leave the radiation chamber at the lab. He wanted it to be discovered.”
Blue shadows crept into the room. The ocean lapped at the darkening shore. Fingers of cold night air slid through the open door.
“I think you know where I’m headed, but in case you’re too dazzled by your own brilliance let me spell it out:
“You issued a report on the Pink that established its origin in the Camafoza Pipe. The stock in the pipe went stratospheric. Now, at the premises of the lab that certified the Pink, here’s the scene: The place looks like it’s been hurriedly abandoned. There’s a murdered man. And what else? A radiation chamber. How long do you think it’s going to take the most aggressive reporters in America to find out that some diamonds can be turned pink by radiation? What’s the headline going to be? It’s going to be that the lab that certified the Russian Pink had equipment designed to make a pink. Conclusion: It’s a fake.”
He stared at me with a look of real loathing.
“You take innocent facts and weave them into your own sick fantasy,” he said. “A twisted, evil fantasy. It doesn’t even make sense on the face of it. For it to be true, Nash would have to know that the press would show up. He’d have to know beforehand that something would draw them out there.”
“I’m going to let you think about that for a minute.”
I checked my phone. The first stories about the radiation chamber had already broken. The market had imposed another cease-trading order. I called Tommy.
“Nash is shorting Great Pipe,” I said. “It’s a short play.”
“Are you sure?”
“He didn’t confess it to me personally, Tommy.”
“Stop snarling,” he said. He was silent for a moment. “Technically, in the strictest legal sense, this is the market’s problem.”
“Technically, in the strictest sense, this is the problem of all the poor dopes buying that stock right now, Tommy. So call it. Use your newfound power as a big-time fed. Shut down Great Pipe now, or your name will be at the top of my report.”
“OK, OK,” he muttered. “I’ll call the exchange.”
As Tabitha and I were leaving, Dad put his hand on my arm. He grabbed the picture of my mother and me in the silver frame and made me take it.
“She loved you,” he said. His voice was hoarse. As we drove off, I watched him dwindling in the mirror, an old man getting older, until a bend in the drive swept him from view.
“I don’t even know what a short play is,” Tabitha said as we left the village and headed west along the North Fork in the gathering night.
I explained that a short play is a bet that a stock is overpriced. The short seller thinks, or in Nash’s case knows, that the stock will fall. If he has the right connections, he borrows the shares from a broker and immediately sells them. Then he waits for the market to come to its senses. When it does, and the share price falls, the short player buys the shares back at the lower price, and returns them to the broker he borrowed them from. He pays the broker a fee, and pockets the difference.
“And the Helsinki broker means it was Honey Li,” she said, “and Honey Li means Nash.” She thought for a minute. “One thing I don’t get, though. Lime’s murder. It brings the press attention, but the Pink was a huge story. The press would have found the lab anyway, and the radiation signs would have done the rest. Now there’s a murder investigation involving a presidential candidate.”
“Look at it from the oligarchs’ point of view. I doubt they’d have trusted Lime after they robbed him. He was on borrowed time. Also, they don’t care what happens to Nash. If he’s elected, could he deliver on sanctions relief? Not a chance. The oligarchs were planning on making a killing on the short.”
“That assumes they were in on it.”
“Trust me—they were in on it. And so was Honey.”
“Which means she drove over from Bridgehampton on purpose, to draw attention where they wanted it.”
“Yes.”
At Southold we stopped at a donut shop and got coffee, then sped out along the black highway.
I felt comfortable with Tab. When you thought about it, what did I have to complain about? They’d given me a spy for an assistant, and sure enough, she’d spied.
The miles unspooled and we settled into companionable silences broken by brief exchanges. Who was running Chuck, and was Tommy fully in the loop? Then, after a long silence she said, “How did your mother die?”
“Cancer.”
“Hard on a kid.”
A minute later she handed me a handkerchief.
“You keep these just for me?” I said.
“You’d better hope I don’t put it in my report.”
As we drew closer to the city, the attributes of night dissolved into the stream of headlights, the brightly lit freeway, and, miles away, New York City, blowing its volcano of light into the western sky.