Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  “And Alexander’s funeral chariot reappeared?” General Politopoulos asked hopefully.

  “Alas, no,” Levi said. “I’m afraid it is still lost.”

  “Then what has been stolen from us?” asked Vitos.

  “In June of ’thirty-nine, a collector named Paolo Matrazzo wired his partner from Thíra that he was on the verge of making a great acquisition. Matrazzo instructed his partner to wire him two million U.S. Matrazzo’s partner wired back demanding to know the nature of the acquisition,” Levi said.

  “And?” demanded the minister.

  “Matrazzo wired back, ‘I have found the casket-copy.’”

  “And then what happened?” asked General Tsimas, leaning forward.

  “Matrazzo’s partner wired him the money.” Levi shrugged. “Word leaked out that Matrazzo was after the casket-copy, and some of the vultures started to circle over Thíra. Anyway, the draft arrived from Rome on a Thursday. It was never cashed. Paolo Matrazzo was found dead in his hotel on Saturday. An apparent heart attack.”

  “And the casket-copy?” asked General Politopoulos, the head of the Hellenic Police.

  Levi shrugged.

  “A swindle,” announced General Tsimas.

  “I think not, General,” Levi retorted. “Matrazzo was then one of the world’s foremost dealers, specializing in Greek antiquities from three hundred B.C. to four hundred A.D. It would have been almost impossible for him to have been deceived by a fake. And he would, without question, have had the artifact authenticated before he wired Rome for the money.”

  Pappas held up his pencil to ask a question. “Professor, is it your opinion that the casket-copy had been kept in the amphora that we found in Orhan Iskur’s shop?”

  “Yes,” Levi answered.

  “Then why not take the amphora? Why would Iskur’s killer leave it behind?” Pappas asked.

  “Amphorae are not rare. True, this one is worth a considerable sum, but it is not priceless. And it is big. Perhaps whoever killed Iskur did not know it was in the shop.”

  Playing with his pencil, Pappas asked, “Do you believe that the casket-copy was taken out of Greece and transported to the United States?”

  “Circumstances force me to that conclusion, Colonel,” Levi responded. “The killers of the two policemen, and of all those other poor souls, were from New York City. One must assume that the person who hired them was also from the United States.”

  A hush fell over the room.

  General Tsimas slapped the table. “You and the professor expect us to send someone to the United States, don’t you, Colonel Pappas?”

  “I want to see the casket-copy back in Greece. And” – Pappas leaned forward in his seat, pointing his pencil at General Tsimas, his voice heavy with rancor – “most of all, I want the people responsible for Voúla punished.”

  “Proof,” General Tsimas shouted across the table, slapping his hand on it in anger. “Where is your proof? We cannot send someone off on a wild-goose chase. Tell us the connection between the two policemen and Iskur. Proof, Colonel.”

  Pappas pushed his chair back and stood up. He put his palms down flat on the glistening table and looked directly at Tsimas.

  “Proof, General? When I questioned Kostas and Thanos Koukoudeas, the brothers-in-law of one of the murdered policemen, Lakis Rekor, they confessed that Rekor and his partner, Tasos Lefas, had discovered something of great value in the ruins of Akrotiri on Thíra. I had the logbooks checked. Akrotiri was within their patrol zone. Kostas Koukoudeas, the older of the brothers, told me that Rekor and his partner used to park their patrol car outside the ruins at night and roam about searching for undiscovered treasure. As I’m sure you are aware, excavations were begun at Akrotiri in May of ’sixty-seven, and they are still not complete. Well, one night in the fall of 1984, in the Temple of the Egyptians, Officer Rekor noticed a depression in the ground and began to dig. They dug for most of the night while the watchman slept in his shack. They found something of great value.

  “Thanos Koukoudeas told me that they quickly contacted Orhan Iskur, and he arranged the sale of the object to an American collector.”

  “And did he also tell you what this precious object was, Colonel?” General Tsimas asked.

  “No he did not,” Pappas said, lowering himself back into his seat. “Lakis Rekor told his brothers-in-law that they were better off not knowing.”

  “I see,” said General Tsimas. “And did you speak with the other dead officer’s family?”

  “Yes, I did,” Pappas answered. “At first they denied any knowledge. But after I carefully explained their situation to them, they confessed. And their story was basically the same.”

  “Colonel, you still have not presented any proof. Hearsay is not proof,” Tsimas said, a thin smile compressing his lips.

  “Alexander’s Iliad was in that amphora,” Professor Levi said sternly, his face set in a stubborn look.

  “And how do we know that?” General Politopoulos demanded.

  “The black sand tells us,” Levi answered with authority. “Sand keeps moisture out and helps protect ancient writings from rot and decay. The ancients used it as a preservative. They knew that water was the main destroyer of parchment and papyrus. That was why Apollonius of Rhodes removed the Iliad from the casket and stored it in the amphora, which, I am positive, was filled with sand from the desert. Whoever brought the casket-copy to Thíra put the island’s volcanic sand into that amphora to preserve Alexander’s Iliad.”

  “If what you say is true,” Antonis Vitos, the Minister of Public Order, said, “are we then to assume that Alexander’s Iliad would be intact?”

  Professor Levi’s lips fluttered. “I don’t know. No one can know the answer to that question with any degree of certainty. Perhaps it is a fragment. A scroll or two. Perhaps more. But think of it, gentlemen, the Iliad written in Aristotle’s own hand for Alexander.”

  “If your somewhat imaginative conjecture is correct, Professor, then please tell me why this elusive American would go to such extraordinary lengths to arrange the deaths of two Greek policemen and an antiquities dealer,” asked Antonis Vitos, crushing out the stub of a cigarette in an ashtray.

  Pappas answered: “Because the two dead policemen had overextended themselves in business and thought that they could go back to the well and draw out more water. But, unfortunately for them and the people of Voúla, whoever this person is did not want to pay again for what he had already paid for once.”

  General Tsimas furrowed his brow. “Then why kill Orhan Iskur?”

  “To sever all connections with himself,” Pappas answered.

  “Why?” asked General Politopoulos. “This American had whatever he wanted. He was safely back in the States. Why not tell them to go to hell? What could they possibly have done to him?”

  Professor Pericles Levi chuckled. “You are not a collector, General, or else you would understand. Collectors are paranoid when it comes to their collections. Their acquisitions are kept secret from the world. Why do they do this, you ask? Because they know that other collectors are as crazy as they are. They know that other collectors will commit murder to possess certain pieces; pieces that they have spent most of a lifetime aching to possess, only to have someone else acquire them. Have you, General Politopoulos, ever heard of the Treasure of Priam?”

  “Of course,” answered Politopoulos. “It was the treasure that Schliemann unearthed at Troy. It was housed in the Berlin Museum and was destroyed during a bombing raid during World War Two.”

  “Correct, General,” Pericles Levi said. “A treasure that caused Schliemann to send his famous telegram to the King of Greece: ‘I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.’ Only the collection was not destroyed. It was stolen. Three of the museum’s guards removed the collection during the raid. Later they sold it to a Canadian who now lives in dread that someone will steal his prized collection. He knows that there are those of us in the art world who know that the Treasure of Priam exists. And h
e knows that there are many who would kill to possess that treasure.

  “And that, gentlemen, is exactly what your two dishonest policemen had to sell this elusive collector, their continued silence. Because if they, or Orhan Iskur, had revealed his name, then he, too, would have to spend his life in mortal fear.”

  4

  The furry head poked out from behind the tree trunk. Daring out onto a branch, the black squirrel reared up.

  “Good morning, Ajax,” Teddy Lucas said, standing near the kitchen window of his second-floor Stuyvesant Town apartment, located off Manhattan’s First Avenue. He was spreading peanut butter over a cracker. “Sorry I’m late this morning.” He broke the cracker and put the halves out on the sill. Stepping back, he picked up his coffee mug and watched the creature run out to the end of the branch and leap onto the windowsill.

  Ajax reared, nostrils twitching, his bushy tail curling around his body. The squirrel scooped up a half and began to nibble away at the cracker. Dressed only in undershorts, Lucas sipped his coffee and talked to his friend. “So? How goes it, Ajax. You getting much?” Lucas wryly reflected on how surprized his men would be if they heard their tough boss talking to a squirrel.

  Ajax’s teeth champed into the peanut butter.

  Teddy Lucas and Ajax had been friends for three years. Their friendship began the day Lucas moved into the one-bedroom apartment. He had been unpacking dishes in the kitchen when the squirrel appeared on the windowsill. When he noticed the squirrel watching him, Lucas leaned up against the kitchen counter and began to talk to the creature. It was someone to talk to, to confide in, maybe even be friends with. And for no special reason, he named the squirrel Ajax, after the hero of the Trojan War.

  The next morning Ajax reappeared. Lucas put some peanut butter on a cracker and left it out on the sill. They’d been friends ever since. It was nice to have someone to talk to, another living creature to help break the loneliness of the morning.

  At forty-seven, Teddy Lucas was trim and muscular, although he was beginning to notice some extra baggage around his middle. High black eyebrows added intensity to his dark eyes, and a forelock of black wavy hair fell down over his brow. Flat cheekbones, an olive complexion, and finely denned features combined to make him an unusually handsome man.

  Ajax finished the crackers. He quickly brushed his mouth with his paw, looked up at Lucas as if to say thanks, and hopped back onto the branch. Lucas rinsed out the mug and balanced it on top of the pile in the dish rack. He walked through the living room into the bedroom and got dressed: tan slacks, brown loafers, a blue shirt with a white collar, no tie. He took a beige sports jacket from the closet and tossed it on the unmade bed. Going over to the oak dresser, he opened the middle drawer and, reaching under his socks, took out his holstered .38 Colt detective special and slipped it into his trousers, clipping it securely over his brown leather belt.

  As he pushed the drawer closed, he spotted the small icon tucked away in the back. His mother used to pray to the damn thing every day. He remembered her giving it to him, telling him that it would protect him. He asked himself why the hell he was saving it; was it a part of his life that he wanted to hold on to? He reached into the drawer, took out the painting of Christ, and set it up on top of the dresser. He stepped back, studying the golden aurěole that illuminated Christ’s melancholy face. The sight of the icon brought back painful and embarrassing remembrances: fights with neighborhood kids who would make fun of his Greek-speaking parents; his mother having to clean other people’s homes in order to make ends meet; his proud father’s struggle to support his family in a foreign land.

  Teddy Lucas was born Theodorous Loucopolous on September 2, 1940, in the northern village of Kilkis, close to the Yugoslavian border. He had picked a bad time and a bad place to make his entrance into the world. The Italians invaded Greece in 1939, then came the Germans, and then in 1943 the Civil War broke out, pitting Communist and Royalist guerrillas against each other.

  The civil war raged throughout the northern part of Greece. Of his childhood memories, fear ran through the most vivid ones. He could remember his mother clutching him tightly as she ran up the side of a hill with Melina and Thalassa, his two sisters, in tow; they were desperately trying to escape the shelling. He remembered the houses in his village aflame, and the explosions, and the dead, and the wounded begging for water. He remembered his mother and his two sisters cowering behind boulders, praying to the icon to spare the family. He had no recollection of his father during that period of his life. He was to learn years later that his dad had been in the hills fighting on the side of the ELAS, the Communist guerrillas.

  The Germans were driven out of Greece in 1945 and the civil war ended in 1949, a civil war that was to cost six hundred thousand Greek lives.

  Teddy was nine years old when his parents gathered the family together in the living room of their whitewashed house and told them that they were moving to America. He could still vividly recall his father’s weathered face and sad eyes as he explained that he wanted his children to grow up away from the ravages of war, safe and secure in a land of plenty; America. Although Teddy felt sad at the thought of leaving his beloved grandparents behind – they would continue to live in the family’s house – he was glad to be leaving Greece. He had nothing but bitter memories; memories and the anxious fear that someday the bombs would begin to fall on them again.

  The Loucopolous family settled in the Greek section of Astoria, Queens, in New York City. Their new home was in the basement of a three-family brick house. One room acted as their kitchen, bedroom, and living-dining room. At night a thick brown blanket separated his parents’ bed from the one in which his two sisters slept. Teddy slept on a cot in the boiler room.

  The beginning years in America were hard. His father worked double shifts in a factory that made cardboard boxes. Both his sisters helped their mother clean people’s houses. Their new home had a small backyard; the landlord gave permission for the Loucopolous family to grow vegetables in it. The family garden became Teddy’s responsibility. He enjoyed working the soil; he liked the smell of the earth and the feel of cold dirt under his feet. Teddy felt safe in America. He had looked forward to shedding his Greek ways and becoming an American. He wanted to immerse himself in the culture of his new homeland. But that was not to be; the part of Astoria where the Loucopolous family had settled was predominantly Greek. Instead of experiencing a new culture, he found himself living smack in the center of a kind of transplanted Greece.

  By the time he was eleven years old he could speak English haltingly. After school he would deliver orders from Mr. Skoulas’s grocery store. Although he had trouble speaking the language, he was able to read and understand it quite well; he devoured mystery stories. He loved to play soccer with his friends and was quite good at the game. Playing soccer developed his powerful legs and gave him an acute awareness of their strength and fluidity that most American boys his age lacked.

  When he was fourteen years old his parents changed their last name to Lucas, took every cent that they had saved, and bought a “handyman’s special” in Ridgewood, Queens. Teddy had never before heard the term handyman’s special. He was to learn that in this case it meant a frame house that was attached on both sides and had an old, leaky roof, a wet basement, and a frayed electrical system along with a boiler held together largely by hope, faith, and patchy repairs.

  Ridgewood was a vastly different neighborhood from Astoria. Mostly, the people were of Italian, German, and Irish stock. The few Greeks who did live there were completely assimilated into the culture and refused to speak Greek, except in private.

  The neighborhood kids in Ridgewood used to make fun of the new Greek family who dressed differently and did not speak English well. Teddy in particular became the butt of their hazing. Many times the tough guys would lie in wait for him after school. They’d taunt him, making fun of his short pants and sandals. Sometimes they would circle him and shove him from one to the other. It was duri
ng these awful times that the memories of the war flooded back into his thoughts and he would feel helpless, a peasant fleeing for his life, not understanding why he was being punished. Their vicious insults made Teddy want to strike out with his powerful legs and hurt them.

  But he could do nothing. He could not react to them because peasants do not strike their betters. Peasants learn early in their lives to be subservient, to cast their eyes downward, to bear the humiliation, to endure. Teddy was positive that if he ever did strike back and hurt any of the cowards, they would call the police. Then the police would come and the foreigner would automatically be at fault, and the police would deport his whole family to Greece. Then all that his family had struggled so hard to achieve would be lost because he had not been strong enough to endure the taunts of cowards. During those times he would steel himself against his tormentors and vow that he would shed everything about himself that was Greek. He was going to become a true American – then he and his family would be safe.

  He worked hard and his English gradually improved. He read everything in English that he could find. When the weather was nice he would work in the garden of their new home and whenever he had the time he would travel back to Astoria to play soccer with his Greek friends.

  One spring day Teddy was working in the yard, hoeing his garden. He was barefoot and wearing gray short pants that his grandmother had sent him from Greece. He heard snickers behind him and tensed, resisting the temptation to turn. He continued working, but when the laughter grew louder he did turn around and saw six of the toughest neighborhood kids leaning over the fence in the rear of the yard watching him. They started yelling obscene insults at him. “Fucking foreigner, go back to your commie country.”