Stone Cold (10 page)

I went back to my hotel and looked up the Kinsella Motel. I telephoned and asked to speak to Mr Kinsella.

A woman answered. “He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back.”

“He’ll be here at eleven o’clock. He’s the night desk clerk.”

“I mean Tom Kinsella.”

“That’s right. He comes on an eleven o’clock. You can reach him then.” That seemed odd but she hung up before I could ask any more questions.

It had been a long time since I had walked on a beach, so I strolled along a bit of that 400-mile long stretch of soft sand that is part of America’s frontier on the Pacific. It was not beach weather for most people, balmy but windy, but a few hardy souls were swimming. Then a sudden cloud came and blotted out the sun and it was chilly.

The Kinsella Motel was on Ocean Highway, a ten-minute drive from where I was staying in Marina del Rey. I drove along it shortly before eleven o’clock, passing one motel after another with little to distinguish them. Most had a swimming pool just visible behind, with a balcony around it. The Kinsella Motel was a two-storey building but had no courtyard. I presumed it had a swimming pool in the back. In Southern California you would surely not be offered overnight accommodation of even the most modest kind where there was no swimming pool.

In the lobby the woman behind the front desk told me that Tom Kinsella would be in soon. I sat down on a couch covered in torn brown plastic. After a few minutes, a tall, slender man came down the stairs. He went over to the front desk and the woman spoke to him quietly, nodding in my direction. Then she left and he took her place, looking at the computer screen in front of him. I went over to him. “Mr Kinsella?”

“Yes.”

“I’m looking for the Tom Kinsella who used to work at Google.”

“That’s me,” he said warily.

“Oh.” I looked across at him. He had dark curly hair and noticeable brown eyes. He had a subdued, nervous manner, like someone who has taken a beating from life. Which, if he was doing this job after owning the Uzbek diamond, he probably had.

I said, “My name is David Root. I wonder if I could have a word with you. I’d like to ask you about something.”

“I have to check the register first.” He spoke abruptly. A middle-aged couple came in and told him, in answer to his question that yes, they had enjoyed the restaurant and thanked him for recommending it. They took their keys and went upstairs. A young couple came in and took their key, clearly in too much of a hurry to get to the bedroom to stop and chat. Briefly, I felt envy.

Eventually, Kinsella turned to me and said, warily, “What do you want to talk to me about?”

“It’s about a diamond you used to own,” I said.

His expression changed and his tone became angry. “I’ve had this before,” he said. “A woman came in from the
California
Monthly
, the magazine. Did an article about me. Fall from wealth. Tragic story. Lesson in hubris. No thanks. I don’t want any more. Not interested.”

“Mr Kinsella, I’m not a journalist,” I said. “I’m interested in the diamond, not in you.”

“Why are you interested in the diamond?”

I decided that it was best to tell the truth. “I work for a security company. We have a client who wants to know the origin of this diamond. There’s some mystery about it. The security company is in England. I live in England.”

“You’ve come all the way from England?”

“That’s right. It’s that important to our client.”

“And you don’t want to ask about anything else, just about the diamond.”

“Yes.”

He paused, then said, “I believe you. Do you know why?”

“Because I have an honest face?”

“No. Because someone else called me earlier to ask about the same thing.”

“Really? About the diamond?”

“Yes. So you’re not the only one. From some private investigation agency. McIntyre Agency, I think it was. I didn’t like the sound of him somehow, so I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“And that was that?”

“Not quite. He said perhaps I would think again. He said a representative of the agency would call on me in the morning when I came off work a seven o’clock, and might persuade me to think again.”

“What did you say?”

“He hung up before I could say anything.” I thought about Molloy back in Adimurcham, and about how someone might try to persuade him. It could be nasty.

Then he broke off the conversation, as if he had made a mistake in talking to me. “You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes. I have work to catch up on,” he said, and turned back to his computer. I sat there awkwardly, and picked up a copy of the previous day’s
Los
Angeles Times
and started reading about the city’s water problems.

A young man came in with a suitcase and asked for a room for the night. His car was already parked in the car park, he said. Kinsella told him the price, he accepted it, Kinsella took an imprint of his credit card, gave him his room key, and directed him to the second floor.

Then a woman came in. She was about the same age as Kinsella, black-haired with Hispanic features, pleasantly plump with a round face made for smiling. She walked up behind Kinsella, put her arms around his neck and said, “How’s it going,
amigo
?”

“Nothing special,” he said. Then, looking across at me he said, “A man there wants to talk to me. Wants me to tell him about my past. My big diamond and all that.”

“Not necessarily all that. Just the diamond,” I said.

“This is Maria,” he said to me.

I stood up. “David Root,” I said.

He said, “Maria, why don’t you talk to him. I don’t like talking about myself.”

“Is he a journalist?”

“No, he says he’s not a journalist. You can tell him what he wants to know.”

“Why does he want to talk about the diamond?”

“He’s come all the way from England, to find out where the diamond came from.”

“It came from Afghanistan, no?”

“Uzbekistan,” he corrected her. Then, to me he said, “Maria and I knew each other in high school.”

“But he didn’t notice me then,” she said.

“I didn’t notice any girls, I told you. I was a geek.”

“And when you did notice girls, what a girl you noticed,
ay
-
ay
-
ay
. Tina, she of the tits and the pout and the blonde curls. Tom, if I’m to tell him about the diamond, I have to tell him about Tina.”

“You don’t really have to tell him about Tina.”

“Oh, but the diamond is all about her.”

“You really like to tell that story, don’t you?” he said in a tone that verged on a growl. She said nothing. He shrugged like a man resigned to his punishment and turned back to his computer.

Maria walked over and sat down in an armchair that went with the couch, covered in the same brown plastic, and said to me, “Well, Tom moved up to Silicon Valley and he made some millions. He and some Chinese called Cheng, who he met when he worked at Google.”

“He wasn’t Chinese, he was Chinese-American. He was born here,” Kinsella called across.

She went on, “They designed this very clever computer program. It helped you to sell things online. Right?” This to him. Then she turned back to me. I realized that even while she was talking to me her words were for him to hear. “They sold this program and they made a lot of money. And he bought a fancy apartment in Sausalito. I never saw that apartment. And he bought a yacht and sailed it down here to Santa Monica, where he started out. That’s where I met him again.”

She paused. It seemed it was up to me to say something, so I asked, “How was that?”

“I was walking along the waterfront with a girlfriend when we saw this guy, real smartly dressed, stepping off a yacht. And my girlfriend said, ‘Check out the dude from the yacht.’ And I looked and I said, ‘That’s Tom Kinsella. He was in my class in Santa Monica High.’ And I went over and said hello. You remember,
amigo
?” Her tone was teasing.

He did not say anything, so she went on, “That was when he was in the money. He was rich, and he met this Tina who was going to be a movie star. And she knew people richer than him. So he had to be not just rich but super-rich. Not just a millionaire but more.
Muchos
,
muchos
dineros
.”

Kinsella looked sheepish. This was clearly a game they had played before. I began to get the picture. He had made mistakes in the past and regretted them, and she was beating him up over them so that he didn’t have to beat himself up.

“He fell for Tina. As I say, she wanted to be a movie star. He used to come down to L.A. every weekend to see her.” She turned towards him. “That’s right, isn’t it?” He said nothing so she went on, “He had to do something really special, the sort of thing very rich people do. He heard about this special diamond, this diamond about the size of a basketball, that had just come on the market and he bought it for her. He was going to give it to her when they got married.

“But it turned out that she was sleeping with a director who could help her career. And probably a few other people. And Tom was broken-hearted. He’s a nice guy. He didn’t deserve that.” She looked across at him as if for confirmation.

“All right, enough already,” Tom said. “You’ve told him all about Tina. Which I don’t think he wanted to know. And I didn’t buy the diamond only for Tina.”

“Meanwhile,” Maria went on, “he met this French con man who was going to help him get very rich.”

“He wasn’t a con man,” Kinsella called across.

“Well he fucked off back to France and left you with his debts.”

“But that wasn’t the way it was supposed to work out,” Kinsella insisted. “He really did have an idea for a system of linking computers, and it might have worked.”

Just then a couple barely or not yet out of their teens came in and asked for a room. “Our car broke down. We don’t have any luggage,” the boy explained unconvincingly. Kinsella checked them in.

While he did, Maria said, “Why don’t I get us some coffee.” She went over to a coffee machine in the back of the lobby and got three coffees in Styrofoam cups. When the couple had gone upstairs and we were sipping our coffees she sat down and again and continued.

“Now where was I?”

“You were telling me about this new idea he and this Frenchman came up with.”

“Oh yes. Do you really want to hear all this?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, he had this idea, this French whizz-kid. He and Tom were going to develop it. As I say, Tom was rich but that wasn’t enough, he had to be super-rich. After buying the diamond, he put the rest of his money into it. His friend Dick Cheng told him he shouldn’t, that even if the idea was good he didn’t know the financial prospects. It kept on needing more and more money for development. Cheng was right. Tom is
mucho
intelligent. He’s brilliant with information technology and he should have stuck to it. When it comes to the world of finance, he’s a dumb
paesano
. Isn’t that right?”

“Please cut the Latino crap,” Kinsella said. And to me, “She was born here in Santa Monica and she can’t even speak Spanish.”

Maria was unperturbed, “Finally, it all collapsed, and Tom was left in debt, and with the Frenchman’s debts as well. And he had to sell everything. Right? No more rich life. And he was pretty broken up. He lived on the yacht down here in Santa Monica for a while, and then he even had to sell that. This guy was on the floor, let me tell you. He wasn’t going to be a Silicon Valley hot shot again just yet.”

I was enjoying their game, but I decided to get back on track. I said to Kinsella, “I know who you sold the diamond to – Duncan Bridey. But I need to know who you bought it from.”

He turned in his swivel chair and addressed me at last. “It’s no secret. I bought it from a German. Name of Otto Mollering. Was there anything wrong with it? Was it stolen?”

“No, I don’t think so. Do you know where Otto Mollering is?”

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t deal with him directly. I bought it through a diamond dealer in London. I’m sorry, I really can’t tell you any more.”

“Do you remember the diamond dealer’s name?”

“He’s a Frenchman. Pierre Azamouth.”

“Azamouth? Azamouth Frères?”

“No, just Pierre Azamouth.”

“Could you give me his address?

“I can get it for you later,” he said. I settled back in the couch. At one o’clock he turned away from his desk and said to me, “Everyone has checked in now. I’ll go upstairs and get that address for you. If anyone comes in, tell them I’ll be back in a minute.” He came back with Pierre Azamouth’s business card. I copied down the address. It was in the Hatton Garden district of London.

“Is that all you wanted to know?” Maria asked. “Just that?”

“That’s all really. Although I found it all very interesting. But since you’ve told me so much, there are a couple of things I’d like to know just out of curiosity.”