Weiskopf thanked her and hung up. He did not sound optimistic. They weren’t best friends, but they were closer than most apartment dwellers. Ben looked after Sara’s cat when she was out of town. She had brought him groceries when he had the flu. He helped her with her taxes, not that there was much to it. Weiskopf was retired, a widower, with grown children: a son in Florida, a daughter in California.
A bike messenger appeared at the end of the bullpen on the other side of the rail, carrying his thick-tired mountain bike over one shoulder. In blue and black span-dex, gloves, and helmet, he looked like a participant in some new-wave extreme sport. Jan Pooley, the office secretary, pointed at Sara and held the swinging wooden gate open for the messenger, who headed her way with a brown-paper wrapped package under one arm.
“Detective Pezzini?”
“That’s me.”
“I have a delivery for you from Panther Security. Sign here, please.”
She signed the form and took the package, which was sealed with scotch tape. When she opened it, there were three videocassettes inside, each labeled Bachman Galleries with the time indicated. The three tapes were for the hours from six p.m. Tuesday to noon Wednesday, encompassing the period during which Bachman was last seen alive, and when he was discovered.
This was going to take some time. The only videocassette machine on the floor was in Siry’s office, and she could hardly commandeer that for eighteen hours. Nor could she watch the tapes straight through. The smart thing would be to divvy them up among the detectives. She badly wanted to watch them all herself, to be the one who saw the killer first. But she knew she could use help. When she looked at her watch, she saw it was twenty minutes past quitting time.
Sara took the cassettes, knocked on Siry’s door and went in.
He didn’t look up. “What?”
“These are the video tapes from Bachman’s shop. Can you get someone to watch these, someone we can trust?” Siry glanced at his watch in annoyance. He was making notes on a legal pad, sheer torture for him. Like most bureaucrats, he was at war with the English language. “I’ll ask Raj when he comes in. Go on. Get out of here. Go home and relax. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
One more task. She phoned the Sixteenth Precinct in Brooklyn, eight blocks from where she lived. She spoke to a desk sergeant named Hannity, who promised that he would step up the patrols in her neighborhood. She thanked him, hung up, and methodically stored her belongings in her leather Skechers backpack.
When she went outside, the Hayabusa was back.
CHAPTER
TWO
Sara lived at Waubeska Place on St. Mark’s Avenue, state-of-the-art luxury in 1959. Today, the building was a five-story, red brick, U-shaped apartment block, the two arms embracing a tidy little garden, lovingly maintained by the residents, who, until recently, had fought a winning battle against graffiti. But the neighborhood was changing. Section Eight had assumed control of part of the building through a complicated judicial arrangement based on the previous owner’s alleged crimes against groups traditionally considered to have been marginalized. In other words, discrimination. Since the previous owner was now serving ten to twenty at Ossining for RICO violations, no one wept for him. One wept for the honest tenants left behind.
The present owner was a retired entrepreneur in the garment industry who’d acquired the property when his consortium took over the property management company.
Sara seldom used the main entrance, because she
stashed her bike in the underground lot of the Neame Medical Center, directly behind St. Marks on Prospect Place. The medical center was happy to accommodate her, because she was a cop. Wheeling down the ramp, she waved to the security gal and found her spot on the second level down, in a yellow-striped rectangle adjacent to the elevators. After she had secured her helmet to the frame, she ran a kryptonite bike lock through the front wheel. You couldn’t be too careful.
It was 6:30, still bright out, a gentle breeze playing off the East River. Instead of ducking in one of the rear entrances, for which she had a key, Sara shouldered her backpack and headed around the block, noting the young tea and mulberry trees planted in squares of soil like de-votionals, held in place by guy-wire. The soil was barely visible through the layers of discarded crack vials, trash, and cigarette butts. At least the dog crap had disappeared. For some reason, Brooklynites took that ordinance seriously.
Walking now in the shadow of one of the wings, she passed a couple of homeboys working on a ’67 Chevy Im-pala, one bending over the open hood, the other with his feet sticking out from below. A wolf whistle emitted from beneath the car.
“I’m ugly on top, ese,” she said without stopping.
“No, she ain’t!” sang the other one.
Around the comer to St. Marks Avenue, off which Waubeska Place sprung like an extra head. The street was a genteel mix of residential and retail, mostly restaurants, neighborhood markets, and laundry. As usual, the broad boulevard was parked up on both sides. It was a warm evening, and many residents were taking the stroll or cruising the boulevard. Skaters, skateboarders and bicyclists swooped around her, even though it was illegal to operate any of those devices on the sidewalk.
As Sara came into view of the main entrance, she saw the problem. A cement walk extended straight back from the street to the broad stoop and arched main entrance, framed on both sides by narrow strips of flowers surrounded by lawn. A half-dozen kids, five boys and a girl, were draped around the stoop passing cans of malt liquor and listening to bad rap on a portable boom box. The noise was intolerable. Sara’s apartment faced the back, so she’d never heard it.
As she approached the stoop, the youths stirred. You couldn’t really call them kids. They’d forfeited their childhoods on the altar of machismo. No, these were homies, a tribe of feral youngsters observing gang rule. The men began making comments when she was a hundred feet away.
“Que guapal"
“Hey, missy! You look sweet in that jacket!”
“Hector, let her through.”
“No way. Everybody’s got to pay. But she don’t got to give me money!”
They laughed. She spotted the leader at once, the hulking Hector, a cruiser-weight at least, in his white muscle shirt and black jeans that were so baggy they could have supplied the main sail for a schooner. Hector had limpid black eyes over an eagle beak and a hairline mustache. His black hair was slicked straight back with either Vaseline or axle grease. He wore a red bandanna around his forehead, and a gold chain around his neck, his name in big block letters. The other three were negligible.
Sara started up the steps. Hector stood on the stoop directly in front of her. She moved to go around him. He moved with her.
“Huh-unh-unh, guapal Is a dollar to get in, a dollar to get out. But you know what? You and me, we can strike some kind of deal..
Sara lowered her head and kept on moving. Hector had to move aside lest she butt him in the groin. When she had obtained the top step, she pulled out her badge.
“I’m a police officer. It’s illegal to consume alcohol on a public ingress. It’s illegal to throw your trash in the flowers. And it’s illegal to extort money from people going in or out. Now get out of here.”
Five heads turned grinning toward Hector, who grinned at Sara. “You ain’t no cop. Lemme see that badge, wild thing.”
Sara flashed the briefest grin before her left hand shot out and snagged Hector behind the neck, followed immediately by the right. Boosting herself up, she slammed her right knee into Hector’s solar plexus with enough force to crack a brick. She let go and stepped back as Hector sank to the stoop like a collapsing skyscraper.
“Hey!” one of the guys said. “She smoked Hector.” Another one gave a long, low whistle.
The third said, “Are you really a cop?”
“In Manhattan. But this is where I live. And you do not, repeat, do not want to mess with a cop where she lives. I want, I can have half the Brooklyn police force hassling your asses t
wenty-four/seven. Comprende?”
One of the girls looked familiar. Sara turned toward her. “Do I know you?”
“I live here," the girl said.
“That makes us neighbors. I’m Sara Pezzini. What’s your name?”
“Lupe. Lupe Guttierez. I live here with my mother and little sister.”
“See you around, Lupe.”
Lupe said something snarky that Sara didn’t catch, because she was through the double glass doors and into the marble-floored foyer. Using her key, she unlocked her mailbox and removed several bills, and the latest issue of Sunset: The Magazine of the West. Someone had propped open the inner security door to bypass the lock. Sara took the chunk of wood with her as she let the door click shut behind her. She really was going to have to talk to the landlord.
The trouble was he didn’t know she was a cop. She’d inherited the apartment from a friend who got a job in Colorado. If the lease had formally changed hands, the landlord would have at least doubled the rent. It was an awkward situation. The management company to which she paid rent never noticed the shift in accounts. They only noticed the bottom line. Technically, she was in violation. But if the police tried to enforce every violation, it would simply choke the court system to death.
Rather than wait for the elevator, Sara took the marble steps, still elegant, to the second floor balcony. She passed an apartment that had been unoccupied since the previous tenant flipped out on ecstasy and bashed in the walls. The door was covered with faded DO NOT ENTER— CONSTRUCTION ZONE tape. Unoccupied apartments were bad news-magnets for trouble. Something else she couldn’t tell the landlord.
She entered the regular stair. She couldn’t help but notice the fresh gang graffiti littering the stairwell. “Romeros,” “Brooklyn Romeros,” and “Hector” were among the more legible scrawls.
Sara emerged on the fourth floor and proceeded to her apartment, 427, opposite Ben Wieskopf s, which faced the inner courtyard. As soon as she put her key in her lock, Weiskopf s door opened.
“Did you see them?”
“Hello, Ben. Good evening to you, too. Yes, I saw them, I spoke with them, and I don’t think we’re going to have any more trouble.”
“I know you saw them. I watched you coming up the walk.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“No. I don’t want to remove the screen so I couldn’t see straight down. You talked to them?”
“I talked to them.”
“One of them lives in the building. That’s why they’re here, picking on us. Even jackals know not to crap where they live.”
“Ben, don’t worry. I took care of it.”
“What about the graffiti in the stairwell. Did you see?” “Ben, I can’t do everything, and I’ve been working for nine hours straight. Call the management company about the graffiti.”
“The management company! No, you’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. And thank you. Thank you, Sara. I’m just a querulous old man.”
Sara got her door open, swung her backpack inside. She turned around and went up to Ben. He was about her height, with a slightly protruding belly, and wild white tufts behind each ear, like some exotic bird. He wore rectangular horn-rimmed glasses and had a mustache.
“Ben, let’s you and me get together later in the week for some java and I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll even let you put brandy in your coffee.” She winked. The old man brightened.
“Okay. Okay! And thanks again. I think Shmendrick is hungry. He keeps meowing. I was going to feed him, but I figured you’d be home soon.”
Sara nodded with good-natured weariness and gently closed the door. Shmendrick immediately began twining between her feet. She knelt and picked up the longhaired Himalayan. He was one big cat. Blue eyes and a folded back ear.
“Meow!”
“What else?”
“Meow!”
“And?”
“Meow!”
“Very good!” Sara poured the cat back on the floor, picked up her backpack and set it on her dining room table, which served as her desk, and removed the sacked stack of invoices and notations she’d brought from Bachman’s. She’d left the Rolodex at work under lock and key.
She peeled off her clothes while the tub filled, poured some lavender bath oil, adjusted the temperature so that it was almost too hot to bear, and lowered herself into the water. Fifteen minutes later she emerged in a floor-length terrycloth robe, hair wrapped in a beige towel, and famished. She went to the freezer. Genuine Palermo Microwave Chicken Cacciatore beckoned, with an olive grove and quaint skyline on the package.
She grabbed it. “Father, forgive me,” she muttered, glancing toward the heavens.
While she waited for Palermo’s Pride to cook in the microwave, she turned her attention to the stack of papers on the dining room table, an old oak circle she’d bought on Mulberry Street and shipped home in the “Black Mariah”-what they used to call the prisoner transport vehicle, back in her father’s days; today, it was a black Ford van. Shmendrick sprawled, a furry centerpiece, tail whipping the occasional paper into the air and onto the floor.
“Shmendrick!” She flicked a dishtowel at him. He looked at her with catly disdain. As if! She’d never done anything like that to the cat before, and she wasn’t about to start now. She had to physically lift the twenty-pound cat off the table. Only then did she see on what he’d been lying. A Xerox copy, bastard child of a twelfth generation twice removed, as if the article had been copied and recopied in clandestine circumstances so that by the time it got to her, the faded gray letters were barely legible.
MURAMASA-TO, it said.
Not just sword lovers, but people in general regard the swords of MURAMASA as bad swords with evil powers. This is simply a failure of imagination on the part of the public. Originally, the sword was a divine object filled with fire, water, iron, wood, and earth—in other words, the five elements of energy. And even though it is a tsu-rugi that is protected and pacified the country, or a tsu-rugi that is a living person, it is not something that can be expected to bring evil or calamity upon the owner.
The legend of Murumasa's evil swords began after the emergence of the Edo Jidai, and is something that was born because ill fortune followed ill fortune upon the Tokugawa Ke. The grandfather of leyasu, Jirosaburo Kiy-oyasu, was slain at the age of twenty-five by a katana made by Muramasa. His son Nobuyasa also received a serious wound by a drunk with a wakizashi made by Muramasa. Finally, Ieyasu himself cut his hand atMiyagazaki in Suruga with a ko-gatana made by Muramasa. For Ieyasu, this meant that the death of his grandfather, the maiming of his father, and his own cutting were all done one after the other by works of Muramasa. It is not unreasonable to surmise that the swords were evil, and it is not unreasonable that during the Edo Jidai, when the Tokugawa Ke was all powerful, that the story of the Muramasa swords became popular.
This was very unfortunate for Muramasa’s heirs, who were unable thereafter to find buyers for his swords among the daimyo who curried favor with the Tokugawa Ke in the Edo Jidai. It is understandable that many popular novels and Noh plays dealt with the legend of the evil swords, and the circumstances were that the feeling of the evil swords of Muramasa permeated the public consciousness.
Inevitably, among the daimyo and huge (military families) who harbored animosity towards the Tokugawa Ke, there was a tendency for them to like and keep swords made by Muramasa. These were, beginning with the Sanada Ke, the Fukishima Ke, and such, the people who had a feeling of deep obligation to the Toyotomi Ke of Osaka, and included the patriots ofSatsuma and Choshu of the Sonno Ha (Restore the Emperor Faction) and Tobau Ha (Anti-Tokugawa Faction). In their attempt to overthrow the Tokugawa Bakafu, they favored the Muramasa swords, which were said to have an evil influence on the Tokugawa Ke, and tried to use them.
In the fourth month of Meiji Gannen (1867), Katsu Yasuyoshi came to Satsuma Yashiki in Mita to discuss the surrender of Edo Castle. Saigo Takamori, who sat opposite him, held a heavy gunsen
(war fan). Inside this gunsen was a moroha zukuri tanto by Muramasa. The gunsen is made of iron, inlaid with silver iro-e where the fan paper is inserted in the fan; on the back of the omote and ura is a Chinese poem sketched by Fujita Toko. This Chinese poem is probably based on the tradition of a song sung by Keika when, in the vicinity ofEkisui, he assassinated Shikotei (First Emperor of the Chin Dynasty, China, 221-206 B.C.). The contents of the Muramasa and this poem were together a very positive statement of his opposition to the bakufu, and are articles left behind which graphically show the honor and dignity of Dai-Saigo.
However, in reality, the reputation of the swords made by Muramasa for being exceptionally sharp is an actual fact. The yakiba epitomizing keenness, combined with the terrible clarity of the ji and ha, may in themselves have given rise to the stories about them being evil. It is said that they cry in the night for blood, driving the owner to murder.
Moreover, Muramasa’s terrible end, and the murder of his four assistants, provide further proof, if any were needed, that his blades were cursed. In 1368, the swordsman Udo, contending with the swordsman Oji for the hand of a young lady of the Gozen family, commissioned Muramasa to forge for him a remarkable blade . . .
The page, and the narrative, stopped there.
Sara woke up on the sofa when her cell phone started beeping. She’d fallen asleep reading about the art of swordmaking. Shmendrick lay curled up contentedly next to her belly. She grabbed the cell phone off the coffee table and flicked it on.
“Pezzini.”
“It’s Joe. We got another one.”
“Another what? What time is it?”
“Another homicide by decapitation. It’s 11:45. Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep, kid, but that’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“Riiiiight. Where do I go?”
Siry gave her the name and address. Sara whistled. “Scott Chalmers? I’ve heard of that guy.”
“He’s a Page Six regular—charity balls, Democratic fundraisers, feed the children. Also a big time collector.” “Of what?”
“Wives, lawsuits, and Oriental art. I’ve cleared it with the captain at the One-Two—they’ll be waiting for you.” “I’m on my way.”
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