How's this for coincidence?

Tags:  other-andrew-diamonds,

Back in April of this year, I was heading to south Florida to present at a conference at the University of Miami. By coincidence, my wife was returning from Miami just as I was packing to go. She had been visiting her father, and she said, “My dad wants a copy of Impala . Will you bring him one?”

I said, “Sure.” I signed a copy of the book and tossed it into my suitcase. And then for no particular reason, I tossed in a second copy. I flew out on a Tuesday for the conference that would occupy all of Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday night, I would have dinner with my father-in-law and his wife in Key Biscayne, where I’d give them the book. On Friday, I’d fly back to Virginia.

After arriving in Miami and checking in to my hotel in Coconut Grove, I had dinner, and then went to a bar called The Grove Spot and had a beer. I gave my credit card to the bartender. She rang up the sale, and when she returned with the card, she said, “You have the same name as my husband.”

I said, “Andrew?”

She said, “Andrew Diamond.”

I told her I had once met another Andrew Diamond, in New York, around 1990 0r so.

Before I went to bed that night, I grabbed the second copy of Impala from my suitcase, signed it with a message for the bartender and her husband, and dropped the book off at the bar.

The conference occupied most of the next two days, though each morning, I got up between 4:00 and 5:00 to write. I was working on another mystery, and for several weeks, I’d been compiling a list of questions about the logistics of drug smuggling, distribution, and money laundering. My plan was to finish a first draft, in broad strokes, and then find answers to these questions so I’d be able to fill in the finer details. I was wondering who who would be able to answer these questions, and I figured I could get some leads by asking other authors, people on Goodreads, and the readers and writers on Quora.

The conference went well, for the most part, and after it ended late Thursday afternoon, I took an Uber across the bridge to Key Biscayne and had dinner with my father-in-law and his wife on the patio of an Italian restaurant. We talked for an hour or so, lingering over a glass of wine, and then I gave them the book.

They drove me back to Coconut Grove, and as it was still early and the air was warm, I took a walk. Before I went back to the hotel, I stopped again at The Grove Spot for a beer. The woman who had served me the first night wasn’t behind the bar this time. She was at a table on the patio with some friends. The bartender, a man, gave me my beer. I took two sips, put the glass down on the bar, and started thinking through my questions about drug smuggling and money laundering, and how I should write them all down.

Just then, someone beside said, “Andrew Diamond!”

I turned and saw a guy with brown hair and a brown mustache, dressed casually in slacks and a collared shirt. He held a beer in one hand and extended the other in greeting.

I shook his hand, and he said, “I’m Andrew Diamond. Thanks for the book.”

He took the seat next me and we started chatting. He asked me what brought me to Miami, and I told him about the conference. I asked him what he did, and he said he was a retired federal agent.

“What agency?”

“Customs, which used to be part of the Treasury Department, then was merged into Homeland Security.”

“What kind of stuff did you work on?” I asked.

He worked on cases involving drug smuggling, distribution, and money laundering.

We talked for about an hour, and I went through every one of the questions I’d been compiling. He answered all of them, and even gave detailed examples, from cases in which he was personally involved, of how drugs are smuggled into the US, how they are distributed after they get here, how the dealers launder the profits, and how the feds, through painstaking work, are able to bust them. He even touched on some topics I had not considered, such as the tensions within and among different agencies of federal law enforcement, and different ways in which they approach their work.

Now how’s that for serendipity? My wife returns home to catch me while I’m packing and tells me to put a book in my suitcase. For no particular reason, I throw in a second copy, which will soon open the door to an unexpected meeting. On my first visit ever to Coconut Grove, I happen to go to the bar where the guy with the same name as me hangs out. And he happens to be the person who can answer all the questions I’ve been turning over in my mind for the past few weeks.

It’s now mid-August. I got an email from Andrew Diamond a few days ago saying he had just finished reading my novel. In case you haven’t read it, Impala is about a twenty-something hacker named Russ who finds himself with a load of stolen Bitcoin that a bunch of Russian thugs are eager to take back from him. He’s also being pursued by another gang, and by a federal agent who wants to haul him in before the thugs can get him.

In a final twist of coincidence, here’s Andrew Diamond’s commentary on Impala.

Thanks for the book. Good summertime read. Character reminded me of a Russian whiz kid we picked up in Cyprus in 2010. All of 23 years old and managed to swindle millions in New York and laundered it through bitcoin. Unfortunately for him, he also took a bunch from some businessmen in Russia with strong Kremlin ties, so – in the spirit of detente – we were all looking for him. Like your character, this kid was smart and tenacious. Unlike your character, he was arrogant and in love with the flash. It was ultimately his undoing. Truth be told, he was lucky my partner and I got to him first. US prisons always get far better TripAdvisor ratings than Russian gulags…

Not only did I give the book to someone with the same name as the author, he had actually participated in a story similar to the one I wrote. The federal agent in Impala , Jack Hayes, is not an upstanding citizen. Andrew Diamond seems to be, from what I know of him. And that’s a good place for the coincidences to end.