There was a heap of papers on the credenza next to the stand. Carefully, Sara gathered the whole pile and tiptoed out of the sea of blood. Finding a spot in the light from the street, she sat cross-legged on a Persian rug and went through the magazines and papers. A third of the way down, past Christy’s catalogs, dealer magazines, and a phone book, she came to an old office copy of a paper reprinted from Oriental Antiquarian: “Master Sword-makers of Sixteenth Century Japan.”
Placing the article in a plastic sleeve, she put it in her backpack. Next, she spied an old-fashioned Rolodex on a wooden rolltop desk tucked in behind the counter, beyond the credenza. Come to think of it, she realized, there were no computers in the shop. A single black-and-white monitor showed the front stoop. She looked up. A camera mounted over the shop entrance stared at her. Good. Maybe the killer was on videotape. The Rolodex went into a plastic bag and into her backpack. Next, she went through the cubbyholes. There were bills of lading, receipts, and customs forms in languages she didn’t recognize. All of it went into plastic envelopes.
She heard a shuffling in the hall. A moment later, Gerhard Koenig of the New York City Medical Examinerr’s Office, entered followed by his assistant, a moon-faced Korean girl. “Kim” something. Or maybe it was something “Kim”; she couldn’t remember-they’d only met a couple of times before. Koenig wore his characteristic mechanic’s coveralls, a fashion accessory he’d pioneered for coroners up and down the East Coast.
He paused just inside the entrance. “My stars and garters, what happened here? I haven’t seen this much blood since the Rangers played the Bruins. Is it safe?” “Watch where you step, Gerhard. The body’s behind the service counter. The head is on the counter.”
Stepping gingerly in plastic-wrapped shoes, Koenig made his way across the room. His assistant remained behind, setting her plastic crime scene kit on an antique chair. Koenig stood at one end of the counter and looked down. He emitted an admiring whistle. “Someone has been very naughty. And what have we here? An empty sword display case.”
“Yup. We’re looking for a samurai killer. You go ahead and do your thing. Holler if you need me.”
Koenig nodded and went to work. He would bag the antiquarian’s hands to preserve any evidence, search the body, preserve the head, and ultimately separate it from the stack of bills on which it had been impaled. Sara took the plastic bags off her shoes, then went out onto the stoop, where Sosa slouched with a cup of hot chocolate.
“Patrolman, you and I are going to go up and down the street asking merchants if they heard or saw anything unusual. We want to know the last time anyone saw Bachman alive.”
“What do you mean by ‘unusual’?” he asked.
Sara shrugged. In the East Village, you had to go some to be unusual. “You figure it out. You go west, I’ll go east. When we get to the end of the block, start down the other side and we’ll meet in the middle.”
She questioned a gallery and a green grocer, the next two shops. The proprietors barely knew Bachman, had seen or heard nothing out of the ordinary. A florist had seen Bachman the previous evening, as the antiquarian exited his brownstone on his way to dinner. They had exchanged greetings. That, at least, confinned what Sara surmised from the body’s condition-that Bachman had been alive the previous evening. Koenig would be able to establish time of death more accurately once he took the body’s temperature.
Other antique dealers took notice. The rumor that one of their own had fallen had swept up and down the street, was probably racing through galleries on West Broadway and Chelsea as well. Mildred Oxnard, who had operated her fine art gallery on Worth since ’89, remarked that Bachman frequently visited the Far East in search of booty, and perhaps had run afoul of some Asian warlord. Sara thanked her and moved on.
She was a third of the way back on the other side of the street when she saw the wrought iron sign hanging discreetly beneath a larger sign promoting The Feldstein Gallery: Specializing In the Art Of The Czars! It belonged to the shop beneath Feldstein’s stoop, a shop accessible by a wrought iron stair, protected by a wrought-iron gate, now open. The little iron sign beneath said:
Togi Sword Polishing
Sara walked down the stairs and tried the green metal door with an eyehole in the middle. It was open. A pair of chimes tinkled as she pushed the door inward.
“Hello?” she called out.
“Just a minute,” someone called from a back room.
She was in a carpeted foyer, with an aquarium gurgling softly beneath the barred sunken window. The aquarium was large, at least a hundred gallons, and contained a dazzling display of coral, sea cucumbers, spiderlike crabs, and other colorful denizens. The floor was covered with thick, charcoal-colored nap. The room had been furnished with a comfortable old leather sofa, a teak coffee table, and an overstuffed chair. Examples of Japanese brush painting adorned one wall. Another wall was covered with swords—dozens of them nestling in hand-finished padded oak arches. A beaded curtain separated the foyer from a hall.
The beads parted and a man came through, bringing with him the fresh chill of the outdoors, as if he’d just stepped in from the Colorado Rockies. He was about five-nine, late twenties/early thirties, with close-cropped, dense blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and green/brown eyes which went from Sara’s face to the badge on her belt and back again. He grinned disarmingly.
“What can I do for you?”
“Detective Pezzini, Eleventh Precinct. I’m investigating the death of your neighbor, Thaddeus Bachman. You are ... ?”
The man’s mouth opened, and he stalled as he clearly tried to digest the news. “Thad is dead?”
“Yes, sir. We received an anonymous tip this morning. May I have your name?”
“David Kopkind. I can’t believe it. What happened?” “We’re not exactly sure yet, Mr. Kopkind. That’s what we’re trying to determine. When was the last time you saw Mr. Bachman alive?”
Kopkind slumped in the chair. “Last week sometime. He used to send me clients. He phoned me Friday, said he was sending me a client, and begged me to move him up the list.”
Sara sat on the sofa, removed her note pad and a pen. “What list?”
“I’m a sword polisher. It takes about two weeks to polish a sword, and I’m currently booked through August 2005.1 rarely make exceptions. Nobody likes a linecutter.” “You actually make a living at this?”
“You bet. There are enough collectors in Manhattan alone to keep me busy for the rest of my life.”
“So you know something about swords.”
Again, the disarming grin. Sara stifled an impulse to grin back.
“A little. I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know.”
The curtains parted again, and a large Siamese cat came through, snarling and yawning. It made a beeline for Sara, and jumped into her lap before she had a chance to move.
“Yoshi, no!” the sword polisher hissed, getting up from his chair and reaching for the cat.
Sara resisted an impulse to pet. She liked cats. But she was on the job. And the damned thing was covering her jeans in hair. She allowed Kopkind to lift the cat off her thighs, his fingers just brushing.
“Sorry,” he grinned. “Yoshi’s on patrol.” He shooed it back behind the curtains.
“No problem. Did Bachman have any enemies?” “Maybe other antique dealers who were jealous. Thad was famous for obtaining rare Japanese swords, particularly the work of Masamune and his top rival Muramasa, both of whom were active in the fourteenth century. Those swords are virtually priceless.”
“Hmmm,” Sara mused. “I guess if people are willing to cut each other up for ten bucks’ worth of crack, a priceless sword is good a reason as any.”
“That’s a beautiful bracelet,” Kopkind suddenly said. “Where did you get it?”
Sara looked down with a touch of alarm. He was staring at the Witchblade, resting like a piece of platinum rococo around her wrist.
“Old family heirloom,” she said, trying to
sound casual. “May I see?”
She permitted him to examine the strange band, holding her slender wrist, feeling his heat for one second before shaking him off. “Mr. Kopkind, this is a murder investigation. Please sit down and answer my questions.” The sword polisher resumed his seat. “Sorry. Would you like something to drink? A cup of tea?”
She would like a cup of tea. But she refused to let down her professional guard. “Some other time, perhaps. Are you aware of Mr. Bachman acquiring any valuable swords recently? Something that might prompt this crime?”
“Well, he did phone me, and when I asked him who the client was he said he couldn’t tell me, just to get ready ’cause the guy would make it worth my while. That’s another thing. I try not to let money sway me. I would have had to tell his client that I won’t move him to the front of the line. My only exceptions are for humanitarian reasons.”
Sara set down the notepad. “What possible humanitarian reasons could there be that would cause you to alter your routine?”
Kopkind leaned forward and touched his fingers together between his knees. “Last year, a big-time industrial Japanese player was forced to downsize. They had to lay off twelve hundred workers-workers to whom they’d promised employment for life. The CEO who made this decision realized that there was only one way for him to atone for his shame. I made an exception for him.”
Sara paused for a second. “Do you mean he used the sword to commit suicide?”
Kopkind nodded.
“You bumped his sword to the head of the line so he could kill himself?”
Kopkind spread his hands. “You can’t judge him by Western standards. Suicide is not a form of mental illness in Japan. Often, it is the only honorable course of action. He did not actually wield the sword himself. That was done by a subordinate. He used his short sword, his tanto, to disembowel himself while ..
Sara held up a hand. “I get the idea. Here’s my card. Gimme one of yours. Are these swords valuable?”
“They’re priceless. Sotheby’s sold an authenticated Masamune last year for three and a half million dollars.” Not that it mattered. Sara had learned that people will kill for any reason, or no reason. Greed just helped her
make sense of the crime. The nature of the crime precluded gangbangers and other low-level criminals. “Does it take extraordinary skill to behead a man like that?” Kopkind nodded. “You can’t just pick up a sword and start slicing. If an ordinary man picked up a katana and tried to cut someone’s head off with one blow, he wouldn’t get very far. He may kill the guy, but it would be a mess. It takes incredible strength, focus, and training. The ancient samurai used to train on the occasional live criminal. Once you dipped your sword in a person of low station, you had to purify it. All the great swords were baptized in blood.”
“Are you aware of Bachman taking possession of any extremely valuable swords recently?”
Again, the shrug. Sara decided Kopkind had an aw-shucks demeanor, and might have originated on a farm upstate. “That’s what he did for a living. I imagine his inventory is worth maybe fifty million.”
“That’s a pretty informed guess.”
“I’m a pretty informed observer. We were friends. We visited each other’s shops, although I wish I'd stopped in recently. I don’t know-not that I could have made a difference ... You don’t expect these things to happen in your own neighborhood."
Sara stood. “Nobody does. Thanks for your time, Mr. Kopkind. If you can think of anything else, you have my card.”
Kopkind sprang to his feet. “You bet. Maybe I can ask around, too.”
“You do that.”
Sosa was back on duty, looking anxiously down the street when Sara returned.
“Any luck, Patrolman?” she asked.
“Nobody saw anything. It’s a circus down here. You got green-haired hermaphrodites on unicycles selling Girl Scout cookies. Nothing’s out of the ordinary. What about you?”
“Maybe a motive.”
Two crime techs came out of the brownstone, wheeling a gurney with collapsible wheels. Atop it rested Bachman’s remains, encased in a rubber body bag like a big blood sausage. She waited until they passed, then went into the foyer and stood in the shop entrance. Koenig was peeling off his latex gloves and packing up his kit. Kim Something waited patiently, her plastic toolbox held in front.
“Find anything, Gerhard?” Sara asked.
“Nothing beyond what you’ve already seen. For the amount of blood, it was a remarkably clean killing. Whoever did it left precious little of himself. No hairs. No fibers. No fingerprints. Didn't step in any blood. 1 got crime techs dusting all the doorknobs, but I doubt they’ll find anything. I think the dealer let his killer into the shop.”
Sara thanked him and booked.
Weaving in and out of traffic, Sara headed back to the Eleventh. She zipped into the motor pool cage and worked the bike into the odd triangle between the loading dock and the rear entrance. Hers was the only motorcycle.
Someone had planted a rubber Godzilla on her desk with a word balloon stuck to it. The balloon said in crude block lettering, “PEZZINI CAN HANDLE WEREWOLVES AND MUMMIES-BUT IS SHE READY FOR GODZILLA?”
Sara couldn’t help it if she was a weird magnet. She hadn’t chosen the Witchblade.-it had chosen her. She glanced at the Art Deco-like band of silver enclosing what appeared to be a large garnet. You’d never guess it could expand in a nanosecond to enclose her entire body.
Sara grabbed the Godzilla. It was glued to the desk. “Very funny, guys,” she said, getting a good, two-handed grip. The two other detectives in the room buried their noses in their work. With an unpleasant sucking noise that reminded her of Bachman’s arm, she pulled the atomic dinosaur loose and set it aside. She opened her backpack and set out the plastic envelopes filled with receipts, notations, and the Rolodex. Sitting, she pulled her dog-eared Manhattan phone book out of her lower desk drawer and thumbed through until she found Panther Security.
She dialed the number. “Welcome, and thank you for calling Panther Security!” a hearty male voice boomed. “Please listen carefully to the following menu, and make your selection when you are ready. This call may be monitored for quality purposes.”
Impatiently, Sara stabbed zero. A phone rang. A female answered, “Panther Security, this is Doris speaking.” Identifying herself, Sara asked to be put through to a supervisor. Moments later, a male voice answered. “This is Norm Hansen. How can I help you?”
Sara identified herself again. “Mr. Hansen, I’m investigating a homicide that took place at Thaddeus Bachman’s antique shop on Worth Street. Do you know it?”
“Very well. I installed that set-up myself, about twelve years ago. Who died?”
“Mr. Bachman was murdered in his shop sometime last night. I’m hoping we can review those security tapes as soon as possible. They’re not stored on-premises, are they?”
“Nope. Everything’s here at central. We revised the entire system three years ago. Completely digital. How about I messenger those tapes over to you?”
“Mr. Hansen, that would be very helpful.”
“It’s my pleasure, Detective. I can’t believe someone killed Thaddeus Bachman. He was a real gentleman. Give me the address and a phone number.”
Siry came out of his office, unlit cigar in his mouth like an unexploded bomb. No one had ever seen him smoke one. In fact, no one had associated Siry with tobacco in any way until the City Council passed an ordinance forbidding smoking in public buildings.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Thaddeus Bachman, a noted antiques dealer. Head lopped off with a single blow. Maybe by a samurai sword.” Siry worked the cigar like a six-speed transmission. “A samurai killer, huh? Well, why not. With you, it couldn’t be an ordinary homicide.”
“This case was assigned to me on a random basis, Joe. But we may have caught a break. Panther Security's sending over their tapes. We may have caught the killer on tape.”
The cigar downshi
fted into four. “Ha. We should be so lucky. Keep me posted. Don’t talk to the press. You leave that to me.”
He turned to go. “Hey, Joe.” He paused. “Any idea who owns that Suzuki Hayabusa in the vehicle pool?”
“What is that, some kind of car?”
“It’s a motorcycle.”
“Might be that new guy Sharpe, from the Bay Area. Started this week.” Siry picked up the Godzilla. “Nice.” He stomped back to his cave.
Sara began with the Rolodex. There were over a hundred names that she removed, one by one, and placed in three stacks: unlikelies, possibles, and likelies. The “unlikely” pile quickly grew with service firms, auction houses, the deceased, etc. The “possibles” included a long list of clients, about which Sara knew little or nothing. There were no candidates for the likely pile.
Her telephone buzzed. “Detective Pezzini.”
“Sara, it’s Ben Weiskopf.”
It grooved her off-track. While on the job, she had a cop frame of mind. Ben Weiskopf was the retired accountant who lived across the hall from her in Brooklyn. She took a minute to shift gears.
“Ben. What’s up?”
“Sara, I hate to bother you, it’s not even your problem. It’s those kids, those Puerto Rican kids who hang out on the front stoop. They’re charging us a dollar to get in or out of our own homes. Mildred Gribble can’t afford to go shopping.”
“Ben, that’s terrible! I had no idea. Did you phone the Brooklyn PD?”
“Yeah, yeah, phoned ’em a bunch of times. Every time I phone, they send a cop car to cruise slowly by the building. Once. That had a big effect. They scatter like flies, and five minutes later, they’re back.”
“How about I phone them? I might be able to get some different results.”
“Yeah, sure, that would be a big help,” Weiskopf said dispiritedly.
“Well Ben, what do you expect me to do? I’m on duty in Manhattan, not Brooklyn. Let me talk to them. I’m sure we can do something. People shouldn’t have to live in fear in their own houses.”
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