by Lisa Unger
He stepped inside. The place smelled of cheap cologne and something meaty cooking.
“Can I help you?” the kid said. He had an open, earnest face, a slight New York accent. The whole Hasidic thing was weird to Jeffrey. The older guys, he understood traipsing around in their traditional garb. But the young men, modern Americans with iPods, didn’t they want a more up-to-date look? Something that didn’t alienate them so totally from the present? It had always seemed to him that a religion that didn’t stay with the times was doomed to plenty of conflict between younger and older generations within, and eventually extinction.
“I’m here to see Chiam,” he said resting a hand on the glass counter.
“I’m Chiam,” the kid said. “But maybe you mean my dad.”
“Christian Striker said he might be able to answer some questions for me.”
The kid nodded and walked through a door toward the back of the small space. It was a small rectangle of a room, barely two hundred square feet, with bare white walls. There was nothing to distract from the glass cases lining the three interior walls and their magnificent contents. Diamonds. Earrings, necklaces, stunning solitaires. He noticed a case containing a small sign that read “Fancy Diamonds.” In here, the gems were red and blue, pink and yellow. They were beautiful, certainly, but to Jeffrey nothing compared to a colorless white diamond with its cold fire.
An older version of the man he’d spoken to emerged from the back. He extended a hand.
“Christian called and said to expect you,” he said. “I am Chiam Bechim.”
Jeffrey shook his hand. “Jeffrey Mark. Good to meet you.”
Chiam opened a small door between the cases and Jeffrey walked through, followed him into a back room. Chiam senior barked something in Yiddish to his son, who reddened. Jeffrey saw him put the iPod in a drawer by the register, muttering something under his breath.
It looked like a laboratory, with clean well-lit workstations that were empty at the present. Large magnifying glasses were mounted on moveable arms over tables lined with delicate tools, Jeffrey imagined for mounting gems in their settings. They walked into an office with glass walls. The space had an unobstructed view of the work stations. Chiam, he guessed, liked to keep an eye on things. In the back of his office, there was a large safe that looked like it recessed into the wall when it wasn’t in use.
Chiam motioned for Jeffrey to sit in a chair opposite a small wooden desk as the older man sat heavily into a wooden banker’s chair. The desk was meticulously organized, files neatly arranged, ten blue Bic pens in a leather cup. A computer sat neat and white on a small metal desk to the side. Jeffrey removed the gem from his pocket and handed the little velvet pouch to Chiam. He took a jeweler’s loupe from his drawer, unwrapped the stone, and examined it.
“Lovely,” he said. “Quite nearly flawless. A tiny, tiny imperfection deep in the stone but invisible to the naked eye. Pink diamonds like this are very, very rare. Though recently there’s been a huge demand for them. So some jewelers started buying irradiated stones, real diamonds that have been colored. Most people don’t know the difference. But this one is real.”
“How can you tell?”
“Trust me,” he said looking at Jeff with eyes that had examined a million stones. “I can tell.”
He had deep, knowing brown eyes set in a landscape of soft and wrinkled skin. A full gray beard hung nearly to the middle of his chest.
“Where did you get this?” Chiam asked when Jeffrey nodded. He’d narrowed his eyes just slightly.
“It came into my possession by accident,” said Jeffrey, wanting to be vague without being rude.
“That’s a lucky accident,” said Chiam, leaning back.
“I guess that depends on where you think this stone might have come from.”
Chiam stared at Jeff for a second and then nodded, as if deciding with himself to talk.
“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 Form
ica 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.”
“What for?” she asked. Her phone beeped in her jacket and he waited while she fished it out, glanced at the screen, and returned it to her pocket. She smiled briefly, thoughtfully, and turned back to Matt. He continued.
“They started calling attention to themselves when they bought up a whole bunch of property in this small town in Florida. It was this kind of sleepy beach town with lots of undeveloped land and struggling businesses. They bought up some historic buildings and started renovating, really giving the area a face-lift. They brought a bunch of members in and helped them buy small businesses. But people were suspicious of them and wanted to know what they were doing there. The FBI investigated but they weren’t doing anything illegal and nothing came of it. That was back in 1980. They continued to grow their presence in that community and now they own more than fifty percent of the commercial property.”
The waitress brought Matt’s pastitso, a kind of meat, cheese, and noodle dish that resembled lasagna. Lydia, who claimed she wasn’t hungry, had ordered baklava. The serving of the sweet pastry dish was bigger than Lydia’s head and she dug right in, apparently unconcerned with caloric content. He liked that about her, too.
“In 2000,” he went on, “a man named George Benchly claimed that he had ‘escaped’ The New Day. He said that at a very low point in his life, he had been laid off from his job at a dot com and his wife had left him, he had attended an open meeting, having heard about the organization from a friend. He turned over his assets and signed on for a cleansing. They told him that he could leave at any point. But when, about three weeks into it, he decided it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t let him go. He managed to escape and went to the authorities. When confronted, a New Day official claimed that it was their policy to ‘discourage’ people from leaving a cleansing, much in the way someone who wanted to leave a drug or alcohol treatment center would be discouraged. They returned Mr. Benchly’s assets to his control, claiming that he had a serious substance abuse problem and needed help. Three weeks later, Mr. Benchly was found dead in a motel room. He’d shot himself in the head. Tox reports showed crack cocaine. The thing was, prior to his joining The New Day, Mr. Benchly had never had a substance abuse problem at all, at least not according to his ex-wife, former employers, and friends.
“This incident caused the FBI to investigate The New Day again. But again, they found nothing illegal in their activities.”
“But they were taking people’s money and holding them against their will.”
“Well, no. Those people were willingly signing over their assets to be managed by accountants who were also New Day members. And in the contract people sign when they are accepted for a cleansing, it states clearly that they will be ‘discouraged’ from leaving before the cleansing is complete.”
“You have to wonder,” said Lydia, taking a sip from her coffee. “Where do you have to be in your life to turn over your autonomy like that? Your assets, your freedom.”
She shuddered slightly as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse.
“Maybe you just have to be really desperate,” said Matt, finishing off his food and thinking about another order. “Or clinically depressed or hopeless, vulnerable to anyone who promises to make you feel better.”
Lydia looked at him then and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She had a very still face, beautiful in the way that precious metals were beautiful, cool, and distant. The gray of her eyes was impenetrable; there was no way to know what was going on behind them unless she told you.
“Did you sense that Lily was that kind of person?” she asked.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I didn’t.”
“But her brother might have been.”
“Did Tim Samuels tell you that?”
“Yeah. He said Mickey had been depressed on and off most of his life.”
Matt was starting to see where she might be going with this. Lily’s mother had told him early on in the investigation that where Mickey went, Lily followed. She was hysterical at the time and he thought she was communicating her fear that Lily had also killed herself and that it was a corpse for which they were searching. He told Lydia what he was thinking and she just nodded as if it didn’t surprise her.
W
hen she didn’t say anything, he went on with what Starkey had told him.
“The most recent investigation was back in 2002,” he said, “conducted by the ATF. Another New Day escapee, Rusty Klautz, claimed that they were stockpiling weapons. Supposedly there’s a farm called New Day Produce out in Florida near the Gulf Coast. They grow organic fruit and vegetables, raise free range chickens, hormone- and antibiotic-free dairy, make fresh juices and then sell it all at farmers’ markets in the area. The escapee claimed that this farm, nearly a hundred acres in the middle of nowhere, is actually a front. He said that there were weapons everywhere, buried in bunkers beneath the ground, hidden in barns. But aerial photographs showed nothing suspect. There was no intelligence to confirm that the types of weapons Klautz claimed were there had been bought or sold here. And Klautz had a history of being a conspiracy theorist, even had a newsletter back in the seventies. He was a Vietnam vet with a history of mental illness.”
“Let me guess,” said Lydia.
“Wrapped his Harley around a tree,” said Matt.
Lydia just nodded, looked down at her empty coffee cup.
Matt shrugged, slaked down his last bit of coffee. “The FBI keeps tabs on them now, supposedly. The New Day is definitely on their radar.”
“Did they ever go in to see if Klautz’s claims were true? Are they currently under surveillance?”
“Starkey wouldn’t say. But that would be my guess. At least they’re monitoring chatter. Three allegations in thirty years are not really that many. Hell, the Catholic church probably has more allegations against them than that.”
“It’s enough to interest the Feds.”
“The Feds are paranoid about stuff like this these days for obvious reasons.” He nodded in the general direction of the altered skyline. “Any organizing group with a political or religious agenda is interesting to them.”