Scimitar

by Ed McBain

  “So can I.”

  “Of course. Forgive me. I’m merely saying we can help you with whatever …”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good. Phone me if you …”

  “The Chinese girl and the other one, are they …?”

  “Not Scimitar, but yes, with us, of course. She’s not Chinese, by the way. She’s from Bali.”

  “Oh.”

  “In any case, you don’t have to go through the SeaCoast line. The number you have is my private line and completely secure. As I told you.”

  “How soon can you get me the information I need?”

  “I’ll put someone on it …”

  “Because the sooner the …”

  “I was about to say I’ll put someone on it immediately, hmm?”

  All at once, it was clear to Sonny that Arthur did not enjoy having his authority questioned. Fuck him, Sonny thought. Time was of the essence here, and he preferred directness to convolution. His plans had to be formulated as soon as possible, the one for the ballroom, the contingency plan for the island. If Arthur couldn’t get the information he needed quickly, then he would go elsewhere for it.

  “I’ll need some cash, too,” he said.

  “How much?” Arthur said at once.

  “A few thousand for now. Perhaps more when I know what my plans will be.”

  “Fine,” Arthur said, and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took from it a small, grey, metal cash box, unlocked it, and removed from it a sheaf of banded hundred-dollar bills. Breaking the paper band around the bills, he began counting them out.

  “You know how important this is to us, don’t you?” he asked, counting, his head bent.

  “I do,” Sonny said.

  “You won’t fail us, hmm?” he said, and looked up sharply, his eyes meeting Sonny’s.

  “I won’t,” Sonny said.

  “I hope not,” Arthur said, and smiled, and handed the bills across the desk to him. They felt new and crisp. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Is there a safe house? If I should need one?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In Westhampton,” Arthur said.

  The call from Miles Heatherton came at twelve-ten that Friday afternoon, just as Geoffrey was leaving the office for lunch. A glance at his watch told him that his stomach was understandably growling and that, incidentally, it was already a bit past closing time in London.

  The first words Heatherton said were, “Are you having us on, Geoff?”

  “How do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

  “This second passport notification request.”

  Geoffrey had rung London at eleven this morning, shortly after Santorini had left the consulate office. The detective had seemed almost gleeful that yet another British subject had turned up dead in this insufferably hot and murderous city. With an identical scimitar tattoo on her breast, no less. Which report Heatherton had received silently and non-committally, promising to call on Monday. It was not yet Monday. It was merely lunchtime today—and thank God it’s Friday, as the natives were fond of saying. Geoffrey waited now for whatever dire information Heatherton was about to transmit.

  “Having you on how?” he prompted.

  “The two persons she listed in the passport?”

  “Yes.”

  Get on with it, he thought.

  “Non-existent,” Heatherton said.

  “I see.”

  “And it’s the same passport.”

  “How do you mean?” Geoffrey asked.

  “As the first one. The name on it is different, of course, Angela Cartwright on this new one, as opposed to Gillian Holmes on the first one …”

  Oh dear, Geoffrey thought.

  “And the dates and places of birth are different as well. Colchester in 1943 for the Holmes woman, London in 1937 for the Cartwright woman.”

  Oh dear dear, Geoffrey thought.

  “Which are almost certainly false names,” Heatherton said, “since, you see, the passport numbers are identical.”

  Geoffrey glanced at the number he’d copied from Angela Cartwright’s passport before making his call to London this morning.

  “Which number,” Heatherton said, “is the number of a passport issued to the same Hamish Innes McIntosh.”

  Born in Glasgow, Geoffrey remembered.

  “Born in Glasgow,” Heatherton said.

  In 1854, Geoffrey remembered.

  “In 1854,” Heatherton said. “So what we have here is a case of two women claiming to be British subjects, for reason or reasons as yet unknown, seemingly unrelated save for the identical passport number and the rather curious tattoo adorning their, ah, respective bosoms.”

  Geoffrey sighed audibly.

  “I’ve turned this over to MI6,” Heatherton said flatly. “I rather imagine someone in New York will be contacting you.”

  Geoffrey looked at the calendar.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Depends how urgent they feel it is, wouldn’t you say?” Heatherton said. “There are two corpses already, you know …”

  But not British subjects, Geoffrey thought. So why …?

  “So perhaps they’d like to move on this before there are any more of them, eh?” Heatherton said. “How’s the weather there in New York?”

  “Beastly,” Geoffrey said.

  “Quite the same here,” Heatherton said, “but in a different way, I’m sure. I wouldn’t plan on dashing off to the mountains, by the way …”

  Shit, Geoffrey thought.

  “… or the seashore,” Heatherton said, “until the man from MI6 has made contact. Shouldn’t want him to think you rude, eh?”

  Geoffrey looked at the calendar again.

  Friday, the twenty-sixth day of June. He had, in fact, planned to go to the seashore tomorrow. A friend in New Jersey …

  “What do you think those bloody scimitars represent?” Heatherton asked.

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” Geoffrey said. “When do you think this chap will be contacting me? To be quite frank, I’d made arrangements for the weekend, and the thought of hanging about in New York, waiting for a telephone call …”

  “I shouldn’t think it would be before Monday,” Heatherton said. “But, Geoff …” His voice lowered. “I really wouldn’t leave the city, were I you. Truly.”

  Shit, he thought again.

  “Toodle-oo,” Heatherton said, and hung up.

  5

  It was still only a little past one on Friday afternoon, but Santorini felt like he’d been sitting here in front of the computer for a month and a half. The computer was called Fat Nellie, for the letters FATN stamped into a metal plate screwed onto its back. Santorini didn’t know what the letters actually stood for, and he didn’t give a damn. He had trouble enough working the damn thing, without having to concern himself with technicalities.

  The fucking computer was driving him crazy.

  First of all, because he wasn’t sure how you spelled scimitar.

  It took him close to half an hour to realize that just possibly the word was spelled with an s-c like in scissors instead of just a plain s like in simple, or a p-s like in psycho, this was some fuckin’ language, English.

  What he was trying to do was come up with a scimitar tattoo, preferably, if there was any such thing in the files. But in addition to scimitar tattoos, he asked the computer to locate any sword-shaped tattoo because he was willing to settle for anything that even looked like a scimitar. And then, for good measure, he threw in sword-shaped scars or birthmarks as well, which he hoped might possibly give him something that related to the two dead broads with scimitar tattoos on their tits, stranger things had happened.

  He had started his search by limiting it to New York City and by further restricting it to felony arrests over the past five years. Those arrests would of course include murders, since homicide was a felony as every schoolboy and schoolgirl in this city knew from watching television and m
ovies and—in some instances—from having committed one or two themselves, murders. The same way that every kid in this city, from the third grade on up, knew that a kilo was the equivalent of two point two pounds. Never mind any other mathematical formulas; they could be failing algebra and geometry or even elementary-school arithmetic, but they all knew for sure that a kilo of cocaine or heroin was two point two pounds of the shit.

  Which is why Santorini suspected he should try spelling scimitar with an s-c, stranger things were possible.

  Bingo! Right off the bat, he came up with more scimitars than he could shake a sword at.

  There were two street gangs in Brooklyn named Scimitar. One of them was the Scimitar S.A.C., which letters stood for Social and Athletic Club, like fun. The other was just plain Scimitar, but the computer indicated the gang was now defunct; Santorini wondered if the Scimitar S.A.C. had taken over the name of the gang that had preceded it in time and exceeded it in reputation. Both gangs, past and present, tattooed these funny little swords on their right hands, on the ball of flesh where thumb joined index finger.

  There was also a street gang in the Bronx that called itself Scimitar Psychos, but they preferred tattooing the Persian sword on the forearm—except for the gang’s female members. The debs called themselves Scimitar Psycho Bytches, and they preferred to tattoo the little curved sword—well, well, well—on the upper slope of the breast, where the tattoo would be visible in a bikini, a halter top, or even a low-cut blouse. But the computer indicated that the oldest of the Bytches was only nineteen, scratch Gillian Holmes and Angela Cartwright, or whatever their square handles were.

  Santorini kept scrolling.

  A guy named Curtis Langdon had slain three nurses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn four years ago and had carved onto their cheeks a mark that faintly resembled a curved sword. The newspaper had taken to calling him the Scimitar Killer. According to the computer, though, Langdon was languishing upstate at Attica, where he was doing life plus ninety-nine.

  A woman named Alice Hermann had drowned her six-day-old infant in the bathtub of her apartment in a Queens housing project a year and a half ago. Among the physical characteristics identifying her was a tattoo on her left arm showing a heart pierced by a curving sword. Well, who the hell knew? Except that she, too, was doing time in the Women’s Division of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

  There were several other men and women with similar sword-in-heart tattoos … that was the trouble with such a wide search … and a man with a scar that resembled a curved sword or scimitar … and a remarkable number of men and women alike who had birthmarks shaped like curved swords or scimitars … and …

  Santorini leaned closer to the screen.

  In Manhattan, three years ago, a terrorist group named Simsir had claimed credit for planting an explosive device that detonated in the Iraqi airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy airport. One of the group had eventually been arrested, convicted of arson and reckless endangerment, and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He had escaped last fall and had not surfaced again. His name was Mustapha Hayiz and he was listed as an Iranian national.

  In Persian, the word simsir meant scimitar.

  Sonny walked past Bergdorf Goodman on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue and paused to look in the corner window, where a plastic blond mannequin, dressed in crisp white and black, looked coolly indifferent to the sweltering heat beyond the plate glass. He himself was wearing a tan tropical suit, matching shirt and tie, and brown loafers. Under his arm, he carried a brown leather Mark Cross portfolio with a gold-plated clasp. He looked at his watch: 1:23. He had made his appointment for 1:30.

  He turned the corner onto Fifty-eighth, walked partway up the street, almost to the Fine Arts theater, and then crossed Fifty-eighth and walked past the fountain and small park outside the Plaza. Huge flags, only one of them American, hung limply over the entrance doors to the hotel. A dozen or more limousines were parked outside, their windows down, their chauffeurs looking pained by the heat. A doorman, uniformed in white trimmed with gold braid, hailed a taxi for a woman who waited at the top of the steps under the merciful shade of the hotel marquee.

  Sonny glanced at her as he walked by and pushed his way through the revolving doors. Following the directions he’d received on the telephone, he walked past the Palm Court and to the left, and then went straight ahead and up a flight of carpeted steps to the mezzanine level, following the signs to the Terrace Room. His appointment was with a woman named Karin Lubenthal in the Catering Department. He had told her on the phone that he wished to make reception and banquet arrangements for his sister’s wedding next June.

  The wooden sign was painted white, edged with gold, trimmed with a double scallop at all four corners, and fastened to the wall with a pair of brass fleurettes. It read:

  CATERING * SALES

  CONFERENCE SERVICES

  OFFICES

  The receptionist just beyond the door was a woman in her late twenties, wearing a wispy red summer dress, her dark hair cut in bangs on her forehead. A laminated identification tag was clipped prominently to the sash of the dress.

  “I’m Mr. Morris,” he said. “I have a one-thirty appointment with Miss Lubenthal.”

  “Yes, sir, please have a seat,” the woman said. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  He sat in an upholstered straight-backed chair on the wall perpendicular to the desk. There were several brochures on the table beside the chair. One of them was titled Wedding, Plaza Style. It showed on its all-pink cover a bride all in white. The other was larger—some six by twelve inches, he reckoned—and was simply titled The Plaza, in elegant gold script lettering against a background that looked like marble. He was opening the first brochure when the receptionist said, “She’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and then, conversationally, “Do you all wear those tags?”

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “The ID tag. It is an ID tag, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. All hotel employees are required to wear them.”

  “Why’s that?” he said, studying the tag more closely now.

  “Well, for security,” she said. “We don’t want unauthorized people wandering around the halls.”

  “I would guess not.”

  “For security, that’s all,” she said, and shrugged.

  A redheaded woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties came down the corridor, stopped several feet from where Sonny was sitting, smiled, and said, “Mr. Morris?”

  He stood up at once and extended his hand.

  “Yes,” he said. “How do you do?”

  “Karin Lubenthal,” she said, and took his hand.

  “Where’s your tag?” he asked.

  “What?” she said, puzzled.

  “Your ID tag.”

  “Oh. In my desk drawer,” she said, still puzzled.

  “Only checking,” he said, and smiled.

  “I just finished telling him we all have to wear them,” the receptionist said.

  “Well, don’t report me,” Karin said, and winked at her. “Won’t you come with me?” she asked Sonny, and then led him down a carpeted corridor to the office’s inner recesses. She was wearing a pleated white skirt and a navy blue blazer. She looked altogether nautical, and quite patriotic if you counted her red hair.

  “So your sister’s getting married,” she said.

  “Yes. You may think it unusual …”

  “Not at all.”

  “… for me to be handling the arrangements …”

  “No, we get different members of the family all the time.”

  “Both my parents are dead, you see.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  They were passing conference spaces, or consultation spaces, he didn’t know quite what to call them, they certainly weren’t offices per se. Merely spaces partitioned one from the other …

  “They died a long time ago,” he said. �
��I virtually raised my sister, which is why I’m here today.”

  “Not at all unusual, won’t you come in, please?” she said, and smiled, and indicated one of the partitioned spaces, in which there was a desk and several chairs. She sat in the chair behind the desk. He took one of the chairs in front of it.

  “First,” she said, “let me give you my card. People sometimes have trouble spelling the last name.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and accepted the card, and glanced at it. Looking up again, he said, “Just the way it sounds,” and then took out his wallet and tucked the card into it.

  She waited till he’d put the wallet back in his pocket, and then she asked, “Has your sister chosen an exact date yet?”

  “No. It’ll be next June sometime, but … oh my,” he said. “Are we already too late?”

  “No, no,” she said. “We sometimes get people who book two years in advance, but there’s still time, please don’t worry.”

  “Phew,” he said, and smiled.

  “How large a party will this be?” she asked.

  “The exact figure isn’t set yet,” he said. “I expect somewhere between a hundred and a hundred fifty people.”

  “I see you have both our brochures,” she said.

  “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to …”

  “If you’ll open the back cover of the larger one … yes … and just flip back the flap there … that’s it … you’ll see a page with some floor plans on it …”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding.

  “… and below them, a chart.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’ll look at the floor plan …”

  Sonny looked at it.

  “… in the upper right-hand corner there,” Karin said, “just above the Grand Ballroom—I don’t think you’d want the Grand Ballroom, would you? It’s much too large for something like this.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “But the Baroque Room is very popular for wedding receptions. Do you see it on the plan there?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said.

  “I’ll show you the room itself later on, of course,” she said. “That, and also the Terrace Room. You passed through the Terrace Foyer on the way in …”

  “Yes …”