Black Sand

by William Caunitz

Vassos’s eyes grew chilly. “Yes, I do speak English.”

  “Let me help you, Andreas,” Lucas said, taking the hand-grip and waving a thank-you to Cutrone.

  A jumbo jet lumbered up off a runway, its nose straining to gain altitude as they walked out of the terminal. Lucas’s assigned car was double-parked at the curb. The Port Authority cop he had asked to look after it stood nearby.

  “Thanks,” Lucas said to the cop, pulling the back door open and tossing the suitcase onto the seat. He stepped off the curb and walked around to the driver’s side. Vassos was already in the passenger seat when Lucas squeezed in behind the wheel.

  “At last I can see for myself,” Vassos said, watching the PA cop give directions to a group of women.

  “See what?”

  “On television and in the movies your police always carry so much equipment I do not know how they can move about.”

  Lucas looked out the windshield at the cop. “Revolver, holster, twelve-extra rounds, handcuffs, traffic whistle, mace, billy, flashlight, memo book, summons book – all normal equipment, Andreas,” he said, sticking the key into the ignition. “What do your people carry on patrol?”

  Vassos said, deadpan, “Their revolvers.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “They’re lucky.” Driving out onto the roadways, Lucas asked, “Where to?”

  Vassos handed him a slip of paper. “My address in Manhattan.”

  They drove in silence, Lucas paying attention to the traffic; Vassos was absorbed by the scenery. The car glided up the ramp leading off the Van Wyck Expressway onto the Long Island Expressway. Lucas braked and merged into the traffic. “Where did you learn your English?”

  “At Police College. It is not possible to obtain promotion without fluency in another language.”

  “Good idea,” Lucas said, inching the car into the middle lane.

  “I was told that a Greek-speaking officer would be assigned to work with me.”

  “A foul-up. I haven’t spoken Greek in years.”

  “But you are Greek, yes?”

  “Greek-American.”

  “Your name is not Greek,” Vassos observed, watching the driver.

  “I was born Theodorous Loucopolous. My father had it shortened to Lucas.”

  A grimace. “Here everyone has to be American, yes?”

  Lucas eased the Buick into the curb in front of the Hotel Olympian’s blue-and-white canopy on Eighth Avenue near Thirty-second street. The digital clock on the dashboard read 7:26. The hotel was a second-rate affair pressed between an abandoned movie house and a glass office building. Lucas tossed the vehicle identification plate onto the padded dashboard and slid out of the car.

  Standing on the curb, Vassos watched homeless men gathering under the marquee. Shopping carts crowded with paper bags and bedrolls were lined up against the boarded-up doors of the movie house.

  Lucas opened the car’s back door and yanked out the luggage. He tossed one to Vassos. “Catch.”

  Snagging it with both hands, Vassos inclined his head toward the homeless people. “Are there many such persons in New York?”

  “Enough. And in Greece?”

  “None.”

  The hotel’s oval vestibule had a vaulted ceiling. Painted wall panels depicted fishermen casting nets under a cloudless sky. The lobby was long and narrow, and led to a desk cage made of brown marble and faded brass. Two settees were the only furniture; they were worn and shiny.

  “Do you have a reservation?” the desk clerk asked, looking up from his racing form.”

  Lucas put down his bag. “Vassos.”

  The clerk ran his finger over the reservation tray. He slid out a card, read: “Andreas Vassos. Direct billing to the Greek Consulate, Press Information, 601 Fifth Avenue.”

  “That is correct,” Vassos said.

  The clerk handed him the necessary form to fill out and then passed him his plastic keycard. “Room ten-ten.”

  Plastic pie-shaped light fixtures lined the ceiling of the long hallway. Vassos slid the plastic keycard into the slot above the knob. The light on the right of the lock turned green and the door opened. They walked into an ice-cold room. Vassos rushed over to the window, threw the curtain aside, and pushed the window up as far as it would go. Manhattan’s sounds and moist, hot July air rushed into the room. The major looked down at the strange city. “I hate air-conditioning. It is unnatural.” He looked around, found the temperature control, and fiddled with it until the flow from the air-conditioning vent stopped.

  Lucas tossed the bag onto the bed and looked around the small, rather drab room. A night table, writing desk and chair, and a pay television with two movie channels. The remote was on the night table. One wing chair by the window.

  Lucas sat on the lumpy bed and leaned back to the wall. “What do you think of the city?”

  Vassos turned. “It is big and noisy.”

  Lucas noticed the blue of his eyes. They were the eyes of a truly homeless man, forever sad.

  “Thank you for meeting me, Teddy.”

  “My pleasure, one cop to another cop.” Vassos removed his sports jacket and slung it over the back of the chair.

  Lucas’s attention was immediately drawn to the automatic that was stuck into the slide holster of Vassos’s hip. “That’s some piece of equipment you’re carrying.”

  Vassos glanced down at the weapon. He slid it out of the holster, pressed the release button that dropped the clip into his hand, extracted the chambered round, and handed the gun to Lucas.

  “Nice balance,” Lucas observed. “A nine millimeter Beretta. You don’t see too many of these in New York.”

  Vassos sat down next to him. “It has some unusual features. This is a 93R model. On the left side of the frame there is a fire selector switch that allows the weapon a three-round burst capability.” Reaching under the barrel, he slid down front handgrips. “When the weapon is on full automatic, it is advisable to hold onto the grip.”

  “It’s a little heavy,” Lucas said, hefting it in his palm.

  “One point twelve kilograms. That is about two pounds.”

  “How many rounds in the magazine?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Not bad,” Lucas said, looking down at the two extra magazines protruding from the leather slip pouch snapped around Vassos’s belt. “You’re lugging sixty rounds around with you. I think that it might be a good idea if you fill me in on this investigation of ours.”

  Vassos took the weapon back and laid it on top of the night table. He unzipped the smaller of the two nylon bags and took out a bottle of scotch. “Black Label, duty free,” he said. “Will you join me?”

  “Why not?” Lucas said, getting up and going into the bathroom and returning with two glasses.

  Vassos poured. He lifted his glass to Lucas. “Giassou, Teddy.”

  “Cheers,” Lucas replied.

  “Why won’t you speak Greek with me?” Vassos asked.

  “Why don’t you want to tell me about the case?”

  Vassos smiled, watching Lucas over the rim of the water glass. “It began nine weeks ago in Voúla …”

  When Vassos finished telling about the shooting and the casket-copy, twenty-six minutes later, Lucas looked at him and asked, “Why did they send you?”

  “Are you married, Teddy?”

  “Divorced. My ex decided that marriage with me was not for her.”

  Shaking his head, Vassos said, “I heard American women were rather unpredictable.” Moving over to his sports jacket, he reached inside the breast pocket and removed his passport. He flipped open the cover, reached inside the leather case, and removed a photograph. Stepping back across the room he passed it to Lucas. A beautiful woman posed with a toddler clinging to her shoulder.

  “My family. They were among the dead at Voúla.” He looked out the window at the gathering summer twilight. “If only I had not acted as a policeman that day, they might still be alive.” He turned back to L
ucas. “What sort of a policeman are you?”

  “The kind that believes in justice,” Lucas said, sipping the scotch.

  Vassos gave him a hard look. “Real justice?”

  “Yeah, the real kind, where the bad guys get it put to them and the good guys are the heroes.”

  “We believe that the people responsible for killing my family are here in your city. Will you help me?”

  “My orders were to render all possible assistance. And if that means helping to nail the people who killed your family and returning some book to Greece, you got it.” He slapped his hands over his knees and pushed himself up off the bed. “We might even get to bend a few rules together.”

  “We bend rules in Greece too, every now and then.”

  “Get some rest. We’ll start in the morning.”

  When Lucas had gone, Vassos locked and chained the door. He moved to the telephone, read the instructions under the night table’s glass, pressed six, and hearing the tone, dialed.

  The voice came on the line after the third ring. Vassos spoke in Greek. “Professor Pericles Levi asked me to telephone you.”

  At 10:45 the following morning, a Buick with New Jersey license plates turned left onto East Sixty-seventh Street from Third Avenue and parked in front of the Sixteenth Precinct station house. Lucas put the car in park as Vassos, carrying a briefcase, slid out of the passenger seat and stared across the street at a dirty building that had all its shades drawn. Police barricades lined the curb in front of the building, and a sergeant and six officers guarded the entrance.

  “What is that building?” Vassos asked, pointing with his hand.

  “The Soviet Mission to the United Nations,” Lucas said.

  “Ah, yes, we too must guard certain locations.” He turned and looked over at the station house’s facade. “Renaissance with some Romanesque details,” he observed.

  They hurried up the station house steps and crossed the threshold into the precinct’s muster room. Vassos moved slowly about, watching, fascinated: the cop on telephone switchboard duty; policemen moving around; a screaming prisoner with a gauze turban around his head; the high, ornate desk; the radio rasping out police calls; a blackboard covered with hastily chalked notifications; a civilian cleaner polishing the brass railing in front of the desk.

  The Desk sergeant called out to Lucas, “Hey, Lou, something came for you in department mail. You gotta sign for it.”

  Lucas introduced Vassos to the sergeant and the cop on the switchboard. The sergeant handed Lucas a white envelope that had three 49a’s stapled to it. Lucas ripped off the receipts, signed two of them, and handed them back to the desk officer. The third one he slid into his pocket.

  The desk sergeant stapled one of the receipts into the property receipt book. And, holding the second one in front of him, he made an entry in a long, thick ledgerlike book with a gray cloth cover. He noted the time and date of delivery, the name and rank of the member of the force to whom he delivered the envelope, the page number of the property receipt book wherein he had filed the other receipt, and the serial number of the communication.

  “What is that book called?” Vassos asked.

  “The blotter,” Lucas said, tearing open the envelope and taking out two credit cards. “It’s used to record the chronological assignments, activities, and developments affecting the command.”

  “We call ours the service book,” Vassos said, following Lucas out from behind the desk.

  “Hey, Major,” the telephone switchboard cop yelled, “How much does a Greek cop make a month?”

  “About three hundred U. S.,” Vassos called over his shoulder.

  They walked upstairs and stopped in front of the wooden railing leading into the second-floor detective squad room.

  Lucas draped his hand over the gate, reached down and pushed open the release latch. “Welcome,” he said, sweeping his hand through the air to include the entire squad room and announcing to the detectives, “This is Major Andreas Vassos of the Hellenic Police Department.”

  “I’m Ivan Ulanov,” the huge detective said as he got out of his chair. “Glad to meet you, Major.”

  Shaking the king-sized hand, Vassos said, “Ulanov is a Russian name.”

  “My parents came from Kiev.”

  “Welcome, Major. I’m Detective Frank Gregory.”

  Vassos measured the strong Serbian features, the flat cheekbones. “Where did your parents come from?”

  Gregory grinned. “I was born in Dubrovnik on the Dalmation Coast.”

  “Yugoslavia,” Vassos commented, “but Gregory is not a Slav name.”

  “We shortened it from Goregorievitch.”

  Mildly confused, Vassos said, “For some reason I thought that your department was composed of Irishmen.”

  “We got plenty of them, Major.” Ulanov laughed.

  “Please call me Andreas.” He looked to Lucas. “You are fortunate to have men who speak so many languages.”

  “I don’t speak Russian,” Ulanov said, going back to his desk.

  “And I don’t speak Serbo-Croatian,” Gregory announced with an expression of mild annoyance.

  “Did I say something out of place?” Vassos asked Lucas.

  “Not at all,” Lucas said, darting a warning glance at Gregory and Ulanov.

  Sergeant Roosevelt Grimes came out of his office. Lucas made the introduction. “Roosevelt is my Second Whip.”

  Vassos’s face showed confusion and then understanding. “Ah, yes. We would call Roosevelt the Second Terror. I am the First Terror.”

  “It’s all the same J-O-B, Major,” Grimes said, and walked over to Gregory to ask about one of his fives.

  Vassos moved up to the squad room’s wall maps. “What are the pins for?”

  Lucas said: “The greens are foreign missions, the whites are foreign consulates. There are over forty-five diplomatic missions within the confines of the Sixteenth.”

  “And the red pins?” Vassos asked.

  “They’re the Soviet Mission, the Yugoslavian Mission, and the PLO Mission. We maintain around-the-clock details at those locations.”

  Turning in his seat, Ulanov asked, “How is your department organized, Major?”

  Gregory and the Second Whip stopped what they were doing to listen.

  “Our department covers the entire country and is commanded by a four-star general who reports directly to the Minister of Public Order. The country is divided into fifty-three prefectures. Each one is commanded by a colonel, except for the Athens and Salonica Prefecture, where a two-star general commands.”

  “And where are your detectives assigned?” Gregory asked.

  “We do not have detectives in the same sense as you do. Our department is divided into three branches: Uniform, Security, and Traffic. A two-star general commands each one. All of our investigations are conducted by the Security branch. This includes criminal, intelligence, and street crime patrol. The men assigned to the Security branch are rotated between the various units.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Lucas said, stepping over to Vassos and taking his arm, “but Andreas and I have work to do.” He led the major into his office.

  The Whip’s cubicle had a stale smell. Lucas pushed the one window up as high as it would go, turned the fan on high and pushed the blackboard next to his desk away from the wall. “Correct me if I make a mistake,” he said. Taking a piece of chalk, he began to outline the case on the blackboard.

  Rolling the chalk in his palm, Lucas said, “Tell me about Iskur.”

  “Colonel Pappas discovered his body at around two P.M. on the day of the massacre. The pathologist placed the time of death between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock.”

  Lucas added, “And if I remember correctly, your Colonel Pappas was told by Cuttler that Iskur had visited them in their hotel room that morning.”

  “That is correct. As I told you last night, Iskur arrived at the hotel at around eight forty-five and remained about one half hour, then left.” />
  “What killed Iskur?”

  “One bullet from a 7.65 automatic.”

  “Is it possible that Cuttler or Simmons killed Iskur?”

  “We do not believe that to be possible.”

  “Okay. Tell me why.”

  “Several reasons. Iskur was their only hope of escape if something went wrong. That is what Cuttler told Pappas. Therefore, we do not believe they would kill Iskur. There is also the fact that Iskur was killed in his office in Plaka. The old city. Narrow, winding streets. Both Cuttler and Simmons were strangers to Greece. How would they be able to murder someone in Plaka and then drive to Voúla? Impossible. And we suspect Iskur was killed perhaps a bit before the shooting started in Voúla. We know that Iskur provided them with detailed maps of the drive from Athens to Voúla. He even insisted that they make several rehearsal trips. Cuttler told this to Colonel Pappas.” Vassos came over to the other side of Lucas’s desk and opened his briefcase. “Our forensic investigators discovered fingerprints on Iskur’s billfold that did not belong to the victim.” He removed copies of the latents and passed them to Lucas. They showed an enlargement of three blurred fingerprint fragments. Individual characteristics were noted on the side of the blowup. A total of nine common characteristics had been discerned among the three fingers.

  “We need twelve points for a positive I.D.,” Lucas said.

  “So do we.” Vassos went on to tell him how Cuttler had told Colonel Pappas about the taxi driver who was to have been waiting for them three-quarters of a kilometer outside of Voúla. The driver was to have taken them to Athens airport. Upon hearing this from the prisoner, Colonel Pappas had rushed a detail of men to the location outside of Voúla.

  Farmers in the area were questioned. Several of the locals remembered the taxi waiting on the side of the road with its blinkers flashing. A description of the taxi and its driver was obtained. A shepherd recalled a partial license plate number.

  It took two days of canvassing every taxi driver who worked the Athens area before the correct one was found. His name was Leykam. Investigation showed that he was an innocent pawn who was hired to pick up a man named Aldridge Long at the Athens airport on the morning of the massacre, drive Long to Iskur’s office in Plaka, and then drive to Voúla and pick up two men who would meet him outside of the village. He was to drive these men directly to the airport.