Eye Wit
Page 4
“Nah, that guy’s still in surgery. They’re not sure he’ll survive, helluva lot of damage from that one arrow. What the chief said was for Dan to go to the hospital and pick up the arrow, they don’t want it hanging around the ER too long. Our butt-lovin’ ME, Dante Necrophilian, reported to the chief about the arrow that killed Marco Fellini, something about it being different from regular arrows. Doc Necrophilian wants to compare the two arrows. Gotta be some connection. No surprise there, I figured two attacks with arrows, one attack lethal, one attack that may wind up being lethal, it don’t add up. Oh, yeah, God forbid I forget to tell you the ME raved about Marco Fellini’s custom-made sportswear. Doc Necrophilian knows about clothes, that’s for sure, a regular fashionista.” Brian paused for breath.
Yoko waited for the rest of the message––or was it a rant?––grimacing at Brian’s homophobia. Dante Necosian, an MD as well as a top ME with the city, was openly and unashamedly gay, and as fastidious about his appearance as he was about his autopsies. He represented a walking offense to Brian Watson’s soon-to-be-retired old-school cop sensibilities, which was the reason Brian preferred Vinnie Baldoni’s nickname for the head of the morgue and used it as often as he could.
“I’ll tell Dan,” Yoko said, but Brian hadn’t finished.
“Seems they found a really old pistol in the basket of the hot-air balloon. Sounds like one my dad picked up off a dead soldier in the Ardennes, probably worth a fortune.” Brian paused, obviously considering what a Luger pistol worth a fortune would add to his retirement package. Yoko was about to prod him for the rest of the message when Brian said, “Anyway, Dan’s gotta get the gun from the hospital, as well as the arrow, and bring both to the morgue.” Yoko heard Brian chuckle as he continued. “Listen, Yoko, tell Dan to strap on his chastity belt before his second stop. I think Necrophilian’s got the hots for him.”
“Cut it out, Brian,” Yoko said. “You know Dan’s only got eyes for me.”
“Yeah, you laugh, sister, but it’s not Dan’s eyes I’d worry about, if I was you. I tell ya, one of these days, Necrophilian’s gonna make a play for Dan and it’s not gonna be pretty…. Oh, what do I care? I’ll be on a beach somewhere, sipping a colada and eye-ballin’ bikinis.”
Brian hung up. Can’t be soon enough, Yoko thought, grinning despite herself.
Yoko caught up with Dan and Zoran, who were outside the living room, talking in low voices.
“What’s so funny, Yoko,” Dan said.
“It’s nothing. Brian called. Dante Necrophil…I mean…oh, never mind. Dan, you’ve to go to the hospital, then to the morgue, right away. The surgeons extracted the arrow from the balloonist, who’s in critical condition and still in surgery, plus they found a gun in the balloon wreckage, probably an old Luger pistol from what Brian says. Anyway, Dante wants to compare the two arrows right away, so Brian’s sending a car for you.”
“His name is Doctor Nicosian, Yoko,” Zoran said. “He is a medical doctor.”
“I know, Zoran. I know. Be sure to remind Brian Watson,” Yoko said.
“Okay,” Dan asked. “I’ll take off. Ballistics will need to test the gun, too. These two arrow hits, what’s the connection?”
Yoko nodded thoughtfully. “If the balloonist survives, his interview may shed some light on matters. But Brian says there’s a reason Dante wants to compare the two arrows.”
She couldn’t resist adding, “Just keep your hands in your pockets, though. Okay?”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later. Go. The car ought to be out front by now.”
Yoko turned to Zoran. “Come on, Zoran, let’s talk to Sophia Fellini.”
8
Herr Tolliver:
Now that you have opened the sealed envelope, please forward one copy of this document to the New York City Police Department and another copy to the New York Times.
Thank you, my friend, for agreeing to perform this one final service for me.
Hans Reiniger
Lüzern, SCHWEIZ
To Whom It May Concern:
I am Hans Reiniger, of Lucerne, Switzerland, and this is my confession.
If you are reading this, I am either dead or in custody for the murder of Marco Fellini of New York City. I hereby confess that I killed Marco Fellini or died trying.
If I succeeded, Marco Fellini is now dead, and his secrets will be exposed here. If I failed and Fellini survived, his evil acts will still be a matter of public record. Either way, I will have achieved justice—for me and for my Romani family—and I can rest in peace.
To make sense of my confession, you need to know my story. Where to begin?
I will start with Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” whose exploits were thoroughly documented by prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
Why Dr. Mengele? Because he was Camp Physician for the Special Gypsy Family Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and it was Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” who led my Romani grandmother, Luludji Krietzman, and 2,896 other Gypsies to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, on August 2, 1944.
Those 2,897 Gypsies represent but a tiny fraction of total number of Roma and Sinti killed during the Third Reich’s Porrajmos (Devouring). At least half of all the Roma and Sinti who lived in lands controlled by the Third Reich—well over a million, probably a million and a half—were devoured. Shot by guards, worked to death in slave labor camps, starved and beaten by wardens and guards, sterilized and experimented upon by Nazi doctors like Josef Mengele.
Compared to the six million Jews annihilated in the Holocaust, the total number of Gypsies killed by the Nazis pales—only 20 to 25 percent as many Gypsies died. I understand that. But the effect on Gypsies was the same as for the Jews: whole families wiped out, an entire ethnic group nearly destroyed forever.
Please understand that I am not seeking recompense for my people, the Roma. That is not my goal, because I know that will not happen; we Gypsies are still seen as “undesirables” by too many people in too many countries for that kind of justice to occur.
My quest for justice is more basic, and the justice I seek is much more personal.
So let me tell more about Dr. Josef Mengele and his connection to my Gypsy family—and Mengele’s connection to Marco Fellini, the New York City art dealer.
When you understand those connections, you will understand why Marco Fellini had to die.
9
Yoko watched, surprised, when Zoran chose to sit next to Sophia Fellini on the sofa, which was either an antique or a very expensive copy of an antique. Equally obviously, pristine. Yoko sat in one of the two elegant chairs opposite. She hoped Sophia didn’t notice Zoran running his fingertips across the fabric appreciatively, almost sensually. She caught Zoran’s eye and shifted her own eyes toward the sofa, then toward Sophia, signaling him to start—and to stop caressing the fabric.
“Mrs. Fellini,” Zoran said, “our colleague, Lieutenant Riley, had to leave because of a development on another case, so he will not be joining us. May I ask you a few questions?”
Sophia Fellini nodded her permission.
“When did you discover your husband’s body?”
“A few minutes before eight,” Sophia said without hesitation. “I had a cup of coffee with Marco at seven, we always did that at seven. After, he went up to the roof for thirty minutes of target practice. That was his routine, he never varied. He would come down again by 7:30 to have some more coffee and some toast or a pastry, and I would help him plan his day. You know, remind him if there was an auction at Sotheby’s, whatever was planned for that evening, that sort of thing. Then he’d join his two assistants at the office when they came in, around eight.”
Yoko interjected. “So when Marco didn’t come down by a few minutes before eight o’clock, you went up to find him?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?” Zoran said.
“Yes.”
Zoran continued. “You found your husband dead when you got there.”
“Yes. I saw the blood in the archery run,” Zoran said. “The arrow in your husband’s back completely severed his renal veins and arteries, according to the report from the Medical Examiner. He probably bled out and died quickly…. If that is any comfort.”
Yoko realized Zoran was being deliberately blunt, a strategy aimed at gauging Sophia Fellini’s reaction. Yoko bit her tongue and decided not to say anything, to await the widow’s reaction. None came. Yoko looked at Sophia Fellini, checking to see if the pupils of the widow’s eyes were dilated. Unusual, Yoko thought. Not dilated. No sign of emotion? Is she on meds, perhaps a tranquilizer? Yoko knew that the eyes give clear indications how your brain is working—unless you’re skilled at lying. Poets wax eloquent about the eyes being the window to your soul but the retina, the covering of the back of the eye, is the same tissue as the brain, literally an extension of it, and that’s how specialists like behavioral optometrists learn a great deal about someone’s behavior and perception.
The silence lengthened. Zoran finally asked, “From where did you call 9-1-1, Mrs. Fellini?”
“Pardon?”
“There is no phone on the roof. Did you return here to report your husband’s death?”
“No, I…I called from the office, it’s on the floor above. It was closer to the roof, and I wanted to see Iona and Jessica, tell them about…about Marco. I called 9-1-1 from the office.”
Yoko consulted her notes. “That would be Iona Duncan and Jessica Ware, his assistants? We’ll be talking to them too, of course.”
Zoran interjected, “What did Iona Duncan and Jessica Ware do when you told them your husband was dead?”
“Do? Nothing. They didn’t do anything. They were too stunned, too shocked. Like me.”
“They did not go up to the roof?”
“No, no. I don’t think so. Maybe they did after I returned here to wait for the ambulance, I don’t know. I assume they waited in the office.”
Yoko wondered if Zoran was thinking what she was thinking, that Sophia Fellini made a point of seeing Marco’s assistants before she called 9-1-1 for some reason other than just wanting to tell them that Marko Fellini was dead. Did Sophia suspect that one of them—or both—were involved in her husband’s death? Was she looking for blood on their hands? Or was she trying to establish an alibi for herself?
Zoran didn’t disappoint. “Tell me about your husband’s assistants. Iona and Jessica. What was their relationship with your husband?”
“Their relationship? Why, they worked for him, of course. And of course, he had affairs with both of them.”
10
A brief history of my family: In 1939, Grandmother Luludji was 13 years old, working the street markets and fairs with her family in Hamburg, Germany. Her father, Besnik Komorov, highly skilled in metal working, had no trouble selling his filigreed copper ornaments. Luludji’s mother, Floritsa or “Little Flower,” a seer of future events since she was old enough to talk, told fortunes for German shoppers and tourists patronizing Hamburg’s many markets and fairs (but not for other Roma; Roma never tell fortunes for one another). For the last two years, her mother also had foreseen her own death, as do many Roma.
“Death by angry hands, my darling, soon,” Floritsa told Luludji many times. “You must concentrate, my sweet Luludjiyo. Soon you will replace me.”
In June of 1939, a Prussian soldier, Lieutenant Von RosenSomething, strode the street, resplendent in his uniform. The Prussian’s precise identity has been lost in the oral history of my Gypsy family—perhaps Von Rosenstien? Von Rosenkrantz? The Lieutenant was accompanied by his bride-to-be, a local burgher’s daughter. On a whim he stopped by Floritsa Komorov’s tent for a reading on his upcoming marriage. He listened but a few moments before becoming enraged with Floritsa’s carefully worded forecast of “tumult and longing.”
“You filthy sow!” he bellowed. “How dare you!” He drew his sword.
Floritsa’s payment for her seeing the Lieutenant’s future was the loss of her head. The Prussian burst from the tent, the seer’s head impaled on his sword.
“See what happens, Schweinen!” he said to the Gypsy merchants lining the street. “This will be your future in the Third Reich!”
The Lieutenant was neither arrested nor charged for Floritsa Komorov’s murder. But his would-be wife, appalled at witnessing her fiancé’s violent nature, refused to see him again.
Luludji, cringing at the back of the tent, followed the Lieutenant out of the tent and glared at his back. “Your beastly family shall be cursed forever,” she muttered. Then she held her hand to her lips and reached up to the hand-lettered sign above the tent, placing her fingertips on her mother’s name, Magie Seher Floritsa Sees All. “Goodbye, Mama. I shall not forget.”
She returned to the tent and a moment later emerged with a piece of paper that she taped over her mother’s name. The sign now read: Magie Seher Lulu Sees All.
“Magic Seer Flower” would be replaced by “Magic Seer Little Flower.”
Over the next eleven months, Magie Seher Lulu’s fame grew. Her visions were precise, never couched in maybes, but certainties. She foretold the gender of babies, predicted deaths, and foresaw fires about to consume homes and businesses—all with a clarity no other Gypsy fortune teller in Hamburg could match. She foreswore the Tarot cards her mother had used, instead preferring her mother’s crystal ball, now mounted on an elaborately worked copper base made by Besnik Komorov, her father. When practicing her craft, she would drape the ball with an old scarf from her mother, bow her head and mumble a prayer to the Virgin Mary. “Mother, let me see the truth.” She would open her eyes, remove the scarf from the ball and look at it until a scene swirled and formed. Then she would speak. Her visitors learned to pay attention.
Magie Seher Lulu never forecast what was happening in Germany. She didn’t need to. Everyone knew what would happen, most of all the Gypsies in Germany.
In May 1940, Reich Minister Heinrich Himmler ordered that all Gypsies residing in Hamburg be deported to the Lublin District of the Generalgouvernment—the “Greater German Reich,” that part of Poland not formally annexed to Germany. The Hamburg Gypsies’ destination would be the concentration camp at Majdanek, near the city of Lublin. At Majdanek, those not able to work under slave labor conditions, and those who put up any resistance to the guards, were shot in the back of their heads and fell directly into graves they had just dug.
Luludji’s father refused to dig and was shot. Luludji chose life and went to work in the camp’s warehouse, sorting the clothes and belongings of murdered victims.
At the camp in the summer of 1942, Luludji married a co-worker, Hadji (“He who visited a holy place”) Krietzman, despite the ban on Gypsy weddings that was harshly enforced––if the Gypsy celebrants were caught. Both Luludji and Hadji were 16 years of age, and their marriage ceremony was conducted quietly, quickly and secretly by a Romani clergyman from the barracks while the camp guards were dining at the mess hall, the usual celebratory music and dancing at a Romani wedding replaced by happy hugs and kisses all around.
Despite the horrors she had already experienced, Luludji was determined that her family survive. She became pregnant immediately. On April 23, 1942, her daughter, Luminitsa (Light of Dawn) Krietzman was born in the barracks at Majdanek with Gypsy midwives attending.
A gracious God and the flowering of life had produced the “Light of Dawn,” Luminitsa Krietzman. My mother.
Exactly a month later, Reichsführer Himmler ordered that all Gypsies in all Generalgouvernment concentration camps be transferred to one camp: the Special Gypsy Family Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as the first step of the “Final Solution for the Gypsy Menace.”
When she was transferred to Birkenau, Luludji Krietzman, still lactating, was without child—deliber
ately. She knew the sign over the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Arbeit Macht Frei (work shall make you free) was a cruel hoax. Indeed, as many in her group had deduced upon seeing that sign upon their arrival, Arbeit Macht Frei durch den Schornstein (work brings freedom through the chimney) would be more accurate.
Luludji knew she and her husband Hadji would not survive Birkenau, and she was certain baby Luminitsa would have been doomed as well. So she had left baby Luminitsa in the care of another Romani family at Majdanek, the Domanoffs. She knew that Andre and Mishka Domanoff, who were supposed to leave for Auschwitz-Birkenau the day after Luludji and Hadji left, had hoped to escape before then. In her heart of hearts, as confirmed by her treasured crystal ball, Luludji expected that no Gypsy who reached Birkenau would leave alive.
At Birkenau, after meeting Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” she was certain.
11
At the morgue, Dante Nicosian was waiting for Dan in his office just outside the white-tiled examination room that was visible through the window behind Dante’s desk—the only window in Dante’s office. Facing his desk was a much prettier scene: a hand-painted mural of Dante’s ancestral village, Nicosia, in the armed-truce island state known as Cyprus.
Dante handed a red file folder to Dan. “Here’s my report on Marco Fellini, number seventeen.”
“All right, and here’s the arrow you wanted to see.” Dan handed the bagged arrow to the dapper ME.
“Excellent.”
The ME held the bag up, examining the arrow. He walked to his computer and tapped the keys rapidly, looking back and forth from the bagged arrow to the words and pictures on the screen. Finally, he gave a nod of satisfaction. “Ha! Just as I thought. It’s exactly the same. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Come on back.”