Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  Leykam had worked with a police artist to develop a composite sketch of Aldridge Long. Vassos removed the sketch; it was slipcased in plastic. He handed it to Lucas. “Our men checked the immigration control cards. They quickly found Long’s. His passport number was checked with Washington. His address was a convenience postal box that was closed out soon after the passport came. He arrived in Athens on Flight 605 and left the same day on Flight 793 for New York.”

  Lucas studied the pencil sketch of a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. His nose was thick; he had bushy eyebrows and a heavy chin. “Our Aldridge Long appears to be a careful man who knows how to enter and leave a country undetected.” He looked up at Vassos. “I think such a man would take precautions against anyone recognizing him. He’d take steps to see that no one would remember his face.”

  Vassos dipped into his briefcase and pulled out an eight-by-ten color photograph of a man. “And here’s what his passport photo looked like. Your State Department provided this copy.” He handed it to Lucas, who studied it with a frown of puzzlement.

  “Well, there’s a big difference between the man in the composite and the man in this photo. Maybe the sketch shows him in some kind of disguise. Look at the different hairlines.”

  Vassos pounced on the point quickly. “And it is entirely possible that the man in this photograph is not Aldridge Long, but a substitute. It could be anyone. The man at your embassy in Athens who got this for me explained that in your country you can get a passport through the mail. The photograph on the passport merely has to match the bearer. But if the man who actually traveled on this passport sent in pictures of someone who looked vaguely like him and then used some makeup and whatever to match up exactly with the man in the photograph …”

  Lucas looked thoughtfully at Vassos. “So we don’t know exactly what this guy Long looks like – just that he is a little like the composite sketch and a little like the passport photo.”

  “And the fingerprints on Iskur’s billfold?” Vassos asked. A wily smile came over Lucas’s face. “Even dogs and cats gotta get lucky sometimes.”

  The telephone rang.

  The Second Whip was calling from his next-door office. “Lou, this thing that you’re doing for the C of D, you going to want a sixty-one number?”

  Sergeant Roosevelt Grimes had just made the minimum height requirement for the Job: five feet eight inches. He was a thin man with a bony face, coal-colored skin. He wore his hair flat on his head, and his deep brown eyes seemed too large for their sockets. He was known as one of the best second whips in the Job, with a rare combination of street smarts and paper smarts. Many a detective had been jammed and dumped back into uniform for conducting unauthorized investigations; the only difference between authorized and unauthorized was a piece of paper. If a copy had a sixty-one number assigned to a case, it certified that the case was kosher and the cop’s ass would be covered. “Make out a complaint report and give it a number,” Lucas said into the mouthpiece.

  “And the crime classification?”

  “Confidential Investigation/FOA.”

  “For Other Authorities?”

  “Yes. And Roosevelt, thanks.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Lucas hung up and returned his attention to the blackboard. “Andreas, give me the story again, from the top.”

  When Vassos finished his tale, Lucas said, “You really don’t have much, do you? Some partial prints that are worthless, a composite that some Athens taxi driver made, a dubious passport photo, and Professor Levi’s assumption that Alexander’s Iliad was found and spirited out of Greece. Not a lot to go on.”

  Vassos turned solemn. “We also have the sudden, unexplained rise in the standard of living of two policemen and their families, and we have the statements of those families. We also have the amphora and the careful record that Apollonius of Rhodes made out when he stored the casket-copy inside the amphora.”

  “Ancient hearsay and wishful thinking is all you have, my friend.” Lucas slid up onto the edge of his desk; he looked questioningly at Vassos. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to extradite a person from this country to a demanding country, especially when that person was not in the demanding country at the time of commission of the crime?”

  “Difficult, I would imagine,” Vassos said weakly.

  “Difficult? It’s almost impossible.”

  “My family was taken from me, Teddy, and I want the people responsible purged.”

  “Punished,” Lucas corrected, studying the board. He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. What have your people come up with on Paolo Matrazzo?”

  “An important art dealer who died after sending his telegram.”

  “But the bank draft that his partner sent him from Rome was not used, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Anything else on Matrazzo?”

  “No, only that his body was shipped back to New York.”

  “Why here?”

  “Although he had offices in Rome and London, he was an American and lived in New York City.”

  Thoughtfully rubbing his hands together, Lucas asked, “And Iskur?”

  “Worked for Allied intelligence. Since the war he’s roamed the art world buying and selling stolen works.”

  “Did your people contact the intelligence community about him?”

  “Yes, we did. And we were told that they never heard of him.”

  Walking over to the two lockers that were up against the wall, Lucas said, “Bullshit, those guys wouldn’t know the truth if it reared up and bit them on the ass. But I know someone who might be able to help.” He worked the black faced combination lock of the locker that had the word Supplies stenciled across the door. He lifted up the handle and opened the door. A small refrigerator was on the floor and two cases of Stolichnaya vodka were stacked on top. Lucas took out two cans of cold beer and passed one to Vassos.

  The major peeked into the locker, a look of admiration lighting up his otherwise somber face. “Policemen always find ingenious places to hide their ‘supplies’.”

  “We drilled a hole in the back for the plug.”

  “I see that you have a good stock of Russian vodka.”

  Lucas pushed down the tab and drank. “We have a friend across the street,” he said, brushing the back of his hand across his mouth. He leaned over the desk, opened a side drawer, and put the beer can inside the drawer.

  Vassos did likewise and pushed the drawer closed. “We do the same thing,” he said, smiling at Lucas, “in case a watch commander comes snooping around.”

  “Do your guys eat on the arm?” Lucas asked.

  “I do not know that term.”

  “You know, a friendly restaurant owner, you work his sector …”

  “Oh, that, of course, they eat on the arm. It is only natural, yes.”

  “Of course,” Lucas said, mimicking his partner’s accent. “Did anyone think to ask Professor Levi what the casket-copy is supposed to look like?”

  “Papyrus scrolls.”

  “More than one?”

  “They think so, yes. The Iliad is composed of twenty-four books, and the experts think that there must have been more than one scroll.”

  “How many?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. In the middle of the nineteenth century a scroll containing the twenty-fourth book was unearthed in Egypt. It was from about the same period. It had survived and was in excellent condition.”

  “I don’t know anything about scrolls,” Lucas said, rubbing his jaw, studying the black slate, “but it’s my guess that you don’t get them unrolled at your local stationery store. Which means that our boy has got to go to a specialist, someone trained to unroll them, and that means that he is going to have to come out into the open to get it done. That’s one avenue we’re most definitely going to have to look at.”

  “Any other recommendations?”

  “I think that we should take another lo
ok at Iskur and Matrazzo. There is a chance that whoever stole your book was connected to one or both of them, somehow, somewhere in the past.” He reached over the top of the desk, opened the drawer, and took out the two beer cans. He passed one to Vassos.

  They drank beer, studied the blackboard.

  “You are beginning to talk as though you believe the casket-copy exists,” Vassos said.

  Lucas responded quietly, “Dead bodies don’t lie. You got yourself a homicide, that I don’t question. I just doubt that some book could have survived down through all the centuries. But, it’s your game; you threw the ball into play and I’ll run with it.”

  “Will we also examine the criminal records of Cuttler, Simmons, and this Denny McKay?”

  “Of course. There has got to be a link there. But you know, Andreas, one of our biggest problems is going to be getting hold of an expert on ancient writings. Someone who can keep his mouth shut.”

  Vassos brushed his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can help with that. Professor Levi gave me the name of a reliable scholar to contact, an expert on ancient writings. I telephoned last night after you left the hotel room. We have an appointment at three o’clock today.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “She is curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library.”

  “Good,” Lucas said, and then called out, “Ivan.”

  Ivan Ulanov sauntered into the office. “Yeah, Lou?”

  “See if our friend can meet us in ten minutes, the usual place,” Lucas said.

  Ulanov picked up the telephone on the Whip’s desk and dialed an outside number. When someone answered, the big detective began to speak in flawless Russian. Ulanov spoke for about four minutes, interspersing his conversation with laughter.

  Ulanov hung up. “Twenty minutes,” he said to Lucas as he strolled from the office.

  “I do not understand,” Vassos said, making circles with his hands. “He does not speak Russian, then he speaks Russian. Gregory is born in Yugoslavia and he does not speak the language. You are Greek, you do not speak Greek. It is all very strange.”

  Lucas drained his can, bent it in half, put it into the waste-basket, and pushed it under the trash so that it was hidden from sight. “You have to understand the Job, Andreas. We have a problem when it comes to foreign languages. Most of our supposed linguists are assigned to the Intelligence Division. They get extra money, they have weekends off, they don’t generally pull night duty; it’s a sweet detail. Only problem is, they don’t speak the languages that they’re supposed to. They are the lovers and relatives of important people in and out of the Job. But when someone is needed to speak Russian, or Serbo-Croatian, or Greek, the department has to reach out into the trenches.”

  “And the people in the trenches conveniently forget to speak their mother tongue unless they are asked by someone in the same trench,” Vassos said. “That is sad.”

  Ranks of flowers bathed Park Avenue’s center mall in a rainbow of summer colors. Taxis honked their familiar symphony; rushing people packed the sun-drenched streets; office workers ate their lunches, lounging around outside the fountains of glass office towers. To the south, the golden spire of the Helmsley Building looked down on the magnificent avenue.

  Andreas Vassos stood in the lobby of the Chemical Bank Building in awe, trying to absorb the full impact of the lush, exotic greenery. “I have never seen so many plants inside one building,” he said to no one in particular, moving over to where Lucas and Ulanov were standing, watching the passing parade. “Who do we wait for?” Vassos whispered to Lucas.

  Before the Whip could answer, Ulanov said, “There he is,” and quickly moved off, leaving the building.

  “He’s going to meet a Soviet cop,” Lucas confided, standing in the lobby, watching the detective melt into the crowd.

  “KGB?” Vassos whispered.

  “A cop like us,” Lucas said. “He’s our liaison with the mission.”

  “Why do you have such an elaborate method to meet?”

  Lucas shrugged. “They have their ways, and we have ours. We get along fine; occasionally we do each other small favors.”

  “Such as Russian vodka?” A sly twinkle brought his eyes to life, and he added, “On the arm.”

  Vassos smiled, proud of his correct use of NYPD slang. “Something like that,” Lucas added, smiling back to him.

  Ulanov mixed in with the crowd waiting for the light to change. When it turned to green, he was immediately caught up in the surging mass of pedestrians.

  Lucas followed his bobbing head across the avenue.

  “Where is the Russian policeman?” Vassos asked.

  “Mixed in with the crowd.”

  “What are you asking him to do for you?”

  “Dig up whatever information he can on Matrazzo and Orhan Iskur.”

  Ulanov reached the other side of the avenue. He did an about-face and waited for the light to change. When it did, he crossed back across the avenue.

  “Message delivered,” Ulanov said, coming over to them. He shook out a cigarette and offered one to Vassos.

  Vassos was about to take one when a memory burst into his consciousness. Soula and Stefanos had always been after him to stop smoking. “Greek men and their damn cigarettes,” Soula would complain. Stefanos would leave him drawings of birds, each with the same note scrawled on it: Daddy, birds don’t smoke. His eyes brimmed over. Pinching the lids together, he turned away and said, “No, thank you, Ivan. I do not smoke.”

  5

  Management Information Systems Division was on the seventh floor of police headquarters at One Police Plaza, near Wall Street and City Hall. Rows of pentagon-shaped machines lined the glass-enclosed office. In the adjoining room technicians sat in front of consoles, typing in access codes, demanding information from the silent warehouses of data. Lucas signed the visitors log for both of them, and Vassos had a sticker pasted on the lapel of his jacket that read: VISITOR. The duty officer then assigned a thin, bookish fellow who wore a small yarmulka pinned to his thinning hair to assist them.

  They stood behind the technician, watching him type in the necessary codes. Within seconds the printer to the right of the console started churning out reams of paper.

  “Are all of your criminal records on tape?” Vassos asked.

  “Practically everything in the Job is on tape. Even our roll calls are computerized.”

  The technician ripped off the printout and passed it to Lucas. “Here are the arrest records, Lou.”

  Lucas studied them. Frank Simmons and George Cuttler had extensive records. He passed them to Vassos.

  The major looked them over and passed them back. “I am not familiar with your terms.”

  Taking them back, Lucas said, “Simmons had eight previouses: robberies, burglaries, a couple of felonious assaults. He did three years on a seven-and-a-half year sentence for armed robbery. Cuttler had six falls and did eight years inside for manslaughter. Both of them have falls for homicide and manslaughter.”

  “They do not appear to have been the arty type, do they?” Vassos observed.

  “They certainly do not,” Lucas agreed, turning to the technician. “Are the nineteens on tape?”

  “Yes, Lou.”

  “Dig out their associates on each collar,” Lucas said.

  The computer man swung around and danced his fingers over the keyboard.

  Watching the bright green screen, Vassos asked, “What’s Nineteen?”

  “A Prisoner’s Modus Operandi and Pedigree Sheet. Every time someone is arrested, the arresting officer prepares one. It lists how the perp committed the crime and any special characteristics of his MO, along with his physical description and his associates on that collar.”

  “That is our S six form,” Vassos offered.

  The printer chugged out paper.

  “What’s the difference between your UF and DD forms?”

  “UF stands for Uniform Force, and DD for Detective Divisi
on. I suppose that your S forms are used by Security Devision.”

  “That is correct.”

  The technician handed Lucas the printouts.

  “Is there someplace where we can work?” Lucas asked the civilian.

  Next to the console area was a bare, cheerless room, with one long table and several chairs, walls and ceilings muffled by acoustic tile, floored with black-and-white linoleum, and windowless save for a half-silvered window on one wall that afforded a view of the work area.

  Lucas placed the spread sheets on the table. He took a lined pad out of the folder and started to write down the names of associates who had been arrested with Simmons, Cuttler, and Denny McKay. This done, he left the room and gave the list to the technician. “I’d like their records too.”

  The computer man adjusted his yarmulka. “And then you’re going to want the associates of the associates.”

  “War is hell, kid,” Lucas said, going back inside.

  Each of the criminal records came with several sheets of grainy, black-and-white photographs of the prisoner. Lucas arranged the records alphabetically. He wrote the names on the pad, along with each date of arrest, the crime, and the names of associates listed on that arrest.

  Vassos examined the list of names. “They appear to be mostly Irish names. Does that mean anything?”

  A deathly pallor came over Lucas’s face and his lips set in a hard line. “Denny McKay is the boss of the Purple Gang.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Scum! The gang evolved from a mob founded in the twenties. Mostly Irish hoods who went in for strong-arm stuff. Our department intelligence people reported that sometime in the Seventies they began to do contract killings. They were recently discovered by the newspapers, who dubbed them the ‘Westies’ because they come from the West Side of Manhattan.”

  Vassos was standing, his palms flat on the table. “Do you think they would take an overseas job?”

  “If the money was right and the right guy gave the order, yes.”

  “You seem to hate them.”