Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

Gold was up 2 percent the morning Benjamin Raabs life began to fall apart.

He was leaning back at his desk, looking down on Forty-seventh Street, in the lavish comfort of his office high above the Avenue of the Americas, the phone crooked in his neck.

Im waiting, Raj.

Raab had a spot gold contract he was holding for two thousand pounds. Over a million dollars. The Indians were his biggest customers, one of the largest exporters of jewelry in the world. Two percent. Raab checked the Quotron screen. That was thirty thousand dollars. Before lunch .

Raj, cmon , Raab prodded. My daughters getting married this afternoon. Id like to make it if I can.

Katies getting married? The Indian seemed to be hurt. Ben, you never said

Its just an expression, Raj. If Kate was getting married, youd be there. But, Raj, cmonwere talking gold herenot pastrami. It doesnt go bad .

This was what Raab did. He moved gold. Hed owned his own trading company near New Yorks diamond district for twenty years. Years ago he had started out buying inventory from the mom-and-pop jewelers who were going out of business. Now he supplied gold to half the dealers on the Street. As well as to some of the largest exporters of jewelry across the globe.

Everyone in the trade knew him. He could hardly grab a turkey club at the Gotham Deli down the street without one of the pushy, heavyset Hasids squeezing next to him in the booth with the news of some dazzling new stone they were peddling. (Though they always chided that as a Sephardi he wasnt even one of their own.) Or one of the young Puerto Rican runners who delivered the contracts, thanking him for the flowers hed sent to their wedding. Or the Chinese, looking to hedge some dollars against a currency play. Or the Australians, tantalizing him with uncut blocks of industrial-quality stones.

Ive been lucky, Raab always said. He had a wife who adored him, three beautiful children who made him proud. His house in Larchmont (a whole lot more than just a house) that overlooked the Long Island Sound, and the Ferrari 585, which Raab once raced at Lime Rock and had its own special place in the five-car garage. Not to mention the box at Yankee Stadium and the Knicks tickets, on the floor of the Garden, just behind the bench.

Betsy, his assistant for over twenty years, stepped in carrying a chefs salad on a plate along with a cloth napkin, Raabs best defense against his proclivity for leaving grease stains on his Herms ties. She rolled her eyes. Raji, still?

Benjamin shrugged, drawing her eye to his notepad where he had already written down the outcome: $648.50 . He knew that his buyer was going to take it. Raj always did. Theyd been doing this little dance for years. But did he always have to play out the drama so long?

Okay, my friend. The Indian buyer sighed at last in surrender. We consider it a deal.

Whew, Raj. Raab exhaled in mock relief. The Financial Times is outside waiting on the exclusive.

The Indian laughed, too, and they closed out the deal: $648.50, just as hed written down.

Betsy smiledHe says that every time, doesnt he?trading the handwritten contract for two glossy travel brochures that she placed next to his plate.

Raab tucked the napkin into the collar of his Thomas Pink striped shirt. Fifteen years.

All one had to do was step into Raabs crowded office and it was impossible not to notice the walls and credenzas crammed with pictures of Sharon, his wife, and his childrenKate, the oldest, who had graduated from Brown; Emily, who was sixteen, and nationally ranked at squash; and Justin, two years youngerand all the fabulous family trips theyd taken over the years.

The villa in Tuscany. Kenya on safari. Skiing at Courchevel in the French Alps. Ben in his drivers suit with Richard Petty at the Porsche rally school.

And thats what he was doing over lunch, mapping out their next big tripthe best one yet. Machu Picchu. The Andes. Then on a fantastic walking tour of Patagonia. Their twenty-fifth anniversary was coming up. Patagonia had always been one of Sharons dreams.

My next lifeBetsy grinned as she shut the office doorIm making sure I come back as one of your kids.

Next life, Raab called after her, I am, too.

Suddenly a loud crash came from the outer office. At first Raab thought it was an explosion or a break-in. He thought about triggering the alarm. Sharp, unfamiliar voices were barking commands.

Betsy rushed back in, a look of panic on her face. A step behind, two men in suits and navy windbreakers pushed through the door.

Benjamin Raab?

Yes He stood up and faced the tall, balding man who had addressed him, who seemed to be in charge. You cant just barge in here like this. What the hells going on?

Whats going on, Mr. Raabthe man tossed a folded document onto the deskis that we have a warrant from a federal judge for your arrest.

Arrest? Suddenly people in FBI jackets were everywhere. His staff was being rounded up and told to vacate. What the hell for?

For money laundering, aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, the agent read off. Hows that, Mr. Raab? The contents of this office are being impounded as material evidence in this case.

What?

Before he could utter another word, the second agent, a young Hispanic, spun Raab around, forcing his arms roughly behind him, and slapped a set of handcuffs on his wrists, his whole office looking on.

This is crazy! Raab twisted, trying to look the agent in the face.

Sure it is, the Hispanic agent chortled. He lifted the travel brochures out of Raabs hands. Too bad. He winked, tossing them back onto the desk. Seemed like one helluva trip.

Check these babies out, Kate Raab muttered, peering into the high-powered Siemens microscope.

Tina OHearn, her lab partner, leaned over the scope. Whoa!

In the gleaming luminescence of the high-resolution lens, two brightly magnified cells sharpened into view. One was the lymphocyte, the defective white blood cell with a ring of hairy particles protruding from its membrane. The other cell was thinner, squiggle-shaped, and had a large white dot in the center.

Thats the Alpha-boy, Kate said, slowly adjusting the magnification. We call them Tristan and Isolde. Packers name for them. She picked up a tiny metal probe off the counter. Now check this out.

As Kate prodded, Tristan nudged its way toward the denser lymphocyte. The defective cell resisted, but the squiggle cell kept coming back, as if searching out a weakness in the lymphocytes membrane. As if attacking .

Seems more like Nick and Jessica, Tina giggled, bent over the lens.

Watch.

As if on cue, the squiggle cell seemed to probe the hairy borders of the white blood cell, until in front of their eyes the attacking membrane seemed to penetrate the border of its prey and they merged into a single, larger cell with a white dot in the center.

Tina looked up. Ouch!

Love hurts, huh? Thats a progenitive stem-cell line, Kate explained, looking up from the scope. The white ones a lymphoblastwhat Packer calls the killer leukocyte. Its the pathogenic agent of leukemia. Next week, we see what happens in a plasma solution similar to the bloodstream. I get to record the results.

You do this all day? Tina scrunched up her face.

Kate chuckled. Welcome to life in the petri dish. All year.

For the past eight months, Kate had been working as a lab researcher for Dr. Grant Packer, up at Albert Einstein Medical College in the Bronx, whose work in cytogenetic leukemia was starting to make noise in medical circles. Shed won a fellowship out of Brown, where she and Tina had been lab partners her senior year.

Kate was always smartjust not geeky smart, she always maintained. She was twenty-three. She liked to have funhit the new restaurants, go to clubs. Since shed been twelve, she could beat most guys down the hill on a snowboard. She had a boyfriend, Greg, who was a second-year resident at NYU Medical School. She just spent the majority of her day leaning over a microscope, recording data or transcribing it onto digital files, but she and Greg always jokedwhen they actually saw each otherthat one lab rat in their relationship was enough. Still, Kate loved the work. Packer was starting to turn some heads, and Kate had to admit it was the coolest option shed had for a while.