It's been doped.
Doped with chemicals that produce completely different separation criteria from the methyl silicone in the first column.
('There are three chemical separation mechanisms,' Dinesh will tell a floundering jury. 'Volatility, polarity, and shape. Volatility is how much vapor pressure a substance puts out at a certain temperature — its boiling point, put simply. Polarity refers to the electric property of molecules. Shape is simple — it's the shape of the molecule, whether it's, say, shaped like a chain, or perhaps a closed loop.
'Now, the first GC column only separates by volatility. So two chemicals that have the same volatility will come out of the first column together — unseparated — even though they have different polarities and/or different shapes. But when they hit the doped methyl silicone in the second column, they encounter a chemical mechanism that they haven't seen before, and they separate.
'So: polarity is an electrical property of molecules. Electrostatically, the positive attracts the negative and vice versa. The molecules tend to hug each other. They can maintain this mutual affection through the first GC column, but when they hit the second… well, love does not conquer methyl silicone doped with chemicals that have electric charges on their surfaces, and they separate. Same with shape. Two very differently shaped molecules that have the same polarity but different shapes can travel down the first column disguised in happy unity as one. But when they hit the second column they will have a different reaction to the stationary phase — to the doped methyl silicone — and they'll separate.
'The performance then of one GC multiplies the other. They don't add, they multiply. So if the first can separate one hundred peaks and the second can separate thirty, then in combination they can separate not one hundred and thirty, but three thousand.')
The net result is that the chromatograms look like stalagmites rising up off a floor, instead of shark fins coming up off lines.
It's the difference between a graph and a kaleidoscope. Between a coloring book and a Matisse. Between, as Dinesh likes to think, the 'Beer Barrel Polka' and a Charlie Parker solo. The GC x GC delivers a beautiful multicolored pattern, which will always be exactly the same — every time — for a given mixture. Every time you set the kaleidoscope at the setting marked 'Kerosene,' you'll get the same beautiful, complex pattern.
Like a signature in 3-D.
Like a fingerprint in Technicolor.
Only better.
And that's what Dinesh sees when he finishes running the first sample through the GC x GC. A two- thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that portrays one image and one image only.
Kerosene.
Six hours later he and his crew have run all the samples.
The kaleidoscope is always the same.
Kerosene.
He calls Jack with the results.
50
Maybe the best view on the south coast is the one from the patio bar at Las Brisas, with its view of Laguna Bay and Laguna town stretched out beneath you like some old Mediterranean city with its white buildings and terra-cotta-tiled roofs. Especially at sunset, with the sky turning from blue to lavender and the red summer sun starting to kiss the ocean horizon.
'Thanks for coming,' Nicky says. He tilts his vodka collins in a salute to Jack.
'Thanks for the drink,' says Jack, raising his beer bottle.
Nicky says, 'Well, I wanted to thank you for intervening in that ugly situation in the church the other day.'
'No,' Jack says, 'you wanted to find out what Letitia del Rio told me.'
Nicky smiles. 'That, too.'
'She told me some disturbing things.'
'No doubt she did,' Nicky says. 'I am sure that she concocted some wild and wonderful tales for you. I imagine at times she even believes them herself. Letty is a sick woman.'
'Yeah?'
'Well, they came from the same dysfunctional family, didn't they.'
'Letty says that Pam went to rehab.'
'Yes.' Nicky laughs. 'Would you like to see those bills?'
'And?'
'She stayed sober for about two weeks afterwards, I think,' Nicky says. 'Not a bargain.'
They sit and drink and watch the progress of the sunset, a spectacular Southern Californian light show gone from lavender to purple as the sky turns into a violent red.
'This might be Paradise,' Nicky sighs. Then he says, 'Think about this, Jack. The next beneficiary on the life insurance policy after me is Letty, in trust for the children, of course. It would be in her interest to make up stories, wouldn't it?'
Jack watches the bottom of the sun melt into the ocean.
'You know what I think?' Jack asks. He takes a long belt of his beer.
'I wouldn't presume to guess, Jack.'
Easy, relaxed, maximum cool.
'What I think,' Jack says, 'I think that you killed your wife and burned the house down around her. That's what I think.'
Grinning at Nicky, who turns pale.
Nicky stares at him for a long moment, then forces his face into a condescending smile. Looks Jack square in the eyes.
Says, 'Prove it.'
Jack says, 'I will.'
Behind Nicky the sun, the sky, and the ocean are on fire.
This beautiful inferno, Jack thinks.
This drop-dead gorgeous hell.
51
Here's the story on Nicky Vale.
Daziatnik Valeshin grows up in Leningrad, his father a minor apparatchik, his mother a teacher at the state gymnasium. She feels that she has fallen in the world — both her parents were professors and she did brilliantly at university. Were it not for one foolish, unguarded night she would doubtless have become a professor as well. But then, she had a child to raise — alone — as Daz's father splits early, a divorce while young Daz is still in the crawling phase.
Mother he sees.
Constantly, oppressively.
She's raising him to be something, most decidedly not a minor apparatchik. They go meatless for weeks to afford ballet tickets, the soup is thinned yet again for a Tchaikovsky recording. At a precocious age he reads his Tolstoy, of course, and Pushkin and Turgenev, and at bedtime she sits and reads Flaubert to him — in French. Not that he understands French, but it is Mother's firm belief that he will somehow absorb the meaning through the rhythm and tone.
Mother teaches him to appreciate the finer things-art, music, sculpture, architecture, and design. She teaches
