“Yes, those are reasons. But not the reason. You were sent because it was felt that you would have the proper motivation, and the courage, to do whatever was required to return the casket-copy to us.” She shrugged. “As for the people responsible for the Voúla massacre, we have no objections if you consider that a personal matter.”
He looked out the window at St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s north tower. “I would prefer to handle the matter on a personal basis.”
Detectives Ivan Ulanov and Frank Gregory huddled in front of the Sixteenth Precinct’s computer console located in the muster room, behind the desk. The days when the dogged detective had to spend a good part of his tour knocking on doors and seeking out information had gone the way of the truncheon and the Police Gazette. Today, by keying identity codes and access codes into police computer banks, detectives were able to retrieve a broad spectrum of facts about anyone. “Gimme their name and social security number, and I’ll own ’em for life,” Ulanov said to Gregory as he key-stroked the Matrazzo name into the automobile registration bank.
“What is it with this Matrazzo caper and the Greek major?” Gregory asked, looking over his partner’s shoulder.
“Don’t know,” Ulanov said. “The word is that the boss is doing a confidential for the C of D.”
A list of Matrazzos who owned cars registered in New York State appeared on the lime green screen. Ulanov pressed the Pf 8 button. The printer on the side of the console came alive, pushing out computer paper.
Frank Gregory tore off the spread sheets and slipped them into a folder. Ulanov typed in the access code for the boat and aircraft bank, then entered the Matrazzo name.
The precinct roll call man, a skinny guy with thinning gray hair, walked behind the desk and glanced over at the detectives. “Hey, Frank, how’s your love life these days?”
Gregory looked at his old radio car partner. “It don’t go up so often.”
“Yeah, but it do last longer,” the roll call man said, putting the roll call sheets for the third, first, and second platoons down on the desk.
Gregory tore off the sheets that had just been ejected from the printer and slipped them into the folder. The police radio on top of the desk belched out a 10:30 in progress. He picked up the telephone and, looking up at the list of telephone numbers taped to the wall over the console, dialed New York Telephone security. An appointment was made for later that day. He made other appointments with Consolidated Edison security and the Burgerwade Credit Company, Ltd.
Ulanov typed in his tax registry number and signed off the machine.
“Where do you want to go first?” Gregory asked as they stepped out from behind the desk.
Ulanov glanced up at the wall clock. “Why don’t we call it a day? We can hit the Board of Elections tomorrow and see how many Matrazzos vote.”
Anna Grantas bustled around the restaurant dimming lights while her husband Spiro played backgammon in the lounge with two of the waiters. The last of the American patrons had left five minutes ago. The Greeks would be arriving shortly. The night was winding down; the clock behind the bar read 10:24. The bartender slowly turned the pages of a newspaper.
Zorba’s was located on Thirty-sixth Street, three blocks west of Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens. The trendy Manhattan crowd usually arrived there early in the evening. They’d cross the Triboro Bridge in their cars and drive into the Greek section of Astoria to eat exotic foods, listen to exotic music, watch waiters dance, and break plates on the floor, the cost of which was added to their bills at a markup of six hundred percent. Breaking plates was good business.
The dining room was to the left of the entrance, down four short steps. It was a large room decorated with garish good wallpaper; a vaulted ceiling with golden rococo molding framed swirling white clouds against a blue sky. A huge crystal chandelier dangled over the parquet dance floor; spaced at regular intervals were glittering glass candelabras set in niches in the walls.
At 10:46 five men sauntered through the glass doors. Anna Grantas called to the waiters to turn up the lights as she and her husband rushed to greet their guests. The new arrivals shouted greetings in Greek to the waiters and bartenders. One of them rushed to reach across the bar and shake hands. The band climbed back onto the bandstand.
More men arrived, coming in groups. Each of the male guests made a peacock’s stroll into the restaurant. Soon couples and families began to arrive. An unmarried daughter of the owner ambled over to the steps to look into the restaurant, her eyes evaluating the available men.
Lucas and Vassos pushed their way through the door. Spiro and his wife greeted them warmly. A waiter escorted them to a table on the edge of the dance floor.
“Do you want me to order?” Vassos asked, seeing that the late-night menu was in Greek.
“That’ll be fine,” Lucas said, glancing around the room. Nothing had changed since his father had brought him here on his sixteenth birthday. Mr. and Mrs. Grantas looked the same; the waiters still wore white shirts open at the collars and black flared trousers to hide their elevator shoes. The late-night patrons still spoke Greek and the men still wore clothes with a European cut. Many of the men still carried handbags tucked under their arms. The ashtrays were forever filled with the butts of strong Greek cigarettes.
Lucas felt strange being there after so many years. He had the uncomfortable feeling of not belonging. He wondered why Greeks clung so tenaciously to their culture, why they held on to the past so longingly. Then a waiter appeared and began to put down plates of appetizers. Another came and put down two water glasses and a pitcher of the house retsina.
Vassos poured the homemade wine. “Giassou,” he toasted.
They raised their glasses to each other.
It had been many years since Lucas had tasted retsina. His grandfather used to make it out in a shed behind the house back in Greece. He hadn’t thought of his grandfather in years. He pictured the old man’s stern countenance, his upswept mustache, his warm embrace and loving heart. Suddenly he was enveloped in a wave of guilt because he so seldom thought of his grandfather, or his grandmother.
“Was your homework at the library a success?” Vassos asked.
Lucas cut off a slice of bread and scooped up cucumber salad. “Moderately. I didn’t have much time but I learned that there is a lot to learn. I also learned that the plural of papyrus is papyri, that it comes from Egypt, and that when Alexander was a boy there was a shortage of the stuff because of the Persian occupation of Egypt.” He sipped some of his wine. “Alexander’s dad, the king, ordered a special supply of papyrus be sent to Aristotle so that he could copy the Iliad for his son.”
“Yes, I know,” Vassos said, trying to decide on an appetizer.
Lucas sipped retsina.
As heavy bouzouki music blared from the amplifiers the waiter brought more appetizers: rice-stuffed grape leaves, pies of cheese and spinach, fried squid, souvlaki. Lucas made wet circles with his glass, waiting for the waiter to leave. When he did, Lucas said, “The last time there was any mention of the casket-copy was on June tenth, 323 B.C.,” when Alexander went DOA. He ate a round of squid. “I don’t believe that your people were killed over some papyrus fragments.”
“What are you trying to say, Teddy?”
“I’m suggesting that there might be a different motive behind the massacre.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.”
Vassos leaned across the table and said, “Teddy, you spent a little while at a library looking in a few books. Do you really think that you could have even begun to know such a subject in so short a time?”
“Of course not. And I certainly don’t think that I’m any expert on Alexander. But I read enough to know that I’ve good reason for my skepticism.” He watched as Vassos poured more of the amber wine into their glasses.
“Teddy, before you make up your mind concerning the existence of the casket-copy, I ask you to please wait until we speak to the book dealers.”
The music grew in intensity.
A man leaped up onto the dance floor, his shuffling feet and flailing arms keeping time to the music. Another man ran up and danced, twirling his body over the parquet. The tambourine rattled louder. The steel guitar and the bouzoukis played in melody with the Udte. Three men linked arms around each other’s waists and danced. The waiter came over to their table and put down plates of lamb heads.
“Kefalaki,” Lucas said. “I haven’t eaten lamb heads in years.” He speared one onto the plate. Using his pinkie, he gouged out an eye and, impaling it upon his nail, sucked it into his mouth, savoring the cold membrane. He chomped down slowly until it squished, splattering inside his mouth.
Watching Lucas eviscerate the head with his knife and fork, Vassos commented, “And you tell me that you are not Greek. You eat kefalaki like a Greek.” He laughed, a dry, mirthless hacking sound, then suddenly slammed his glass down on the table and leaped up onto the dance floor, slowly spinning around on one foot with his arms outstretched at his sides, his head thrown all the way back.
Lucas’s hands and feet tapped to the beat of the music. He realized that he had eaten kefalaki the Greek way, and he also realized that for the first time in many years he felt Greek.
Patrons began to toss plates. Waiters rushed to keep tabs on the wreckage.
Vassos twirled around the floor.
Lucas gulped down more retsina. He felt light-headed, full of fun. He tossed a plate out onto the dance floor. Vassos saw him do this and laughed as he twirled around. Spinning back into his seat, gasping for breath, he said, “I saw you throw that plate.” Still fighting for breath, he smiled, shook a finger in his partner’s face, and said, “We have a saying, my friend: A man cannot erase what is written on his blood.”
Lucas drank wine. “And we have a saying too: A guy who goes through life with one foot in yesterday and another in tomorrow is bound to shit all over himself.”
“Giassou, Teddy.”
6
Sunlight streamed through the grated windows, casting a diamond netting of shadow over the detective squad room. A cleaner moved about emptying wastebaskets into a plastic trash bag. He scattered cleaning compound on the floor and swept up a night’s worth of butts and dirt with a long-handled broom.
“Is he a policeman?” Vassos asked, standing in the doorway of Lucas’s office.
“A civilian cleaner assigned to the precinct. The precinct CO is responsible for the building’s housekeeping.”
Floor fans hummed in the morning heat. Vassos turned and looked into the office, watching Lucas sitting on the edge of his desk, studying the blackboard. “You did not dance last night.”
“It’s not the custom here for men to dance by themselves or with other men.”
“One day you will dance.” Vassos moved into the office. “Thank you for paying the bill last night.”
“The Job picked up the tab,” Lucas said, turning to look at the sixty sheet, or the UF60 Chronological Record of Cases. He was relieved to see that nothing heavy had come in during the night. He might be off the chart, but it was still his squad, his cases, his clearances.
The metallic cadence of police calls droned through the squad room. Lucas looked at the wall clock: 9:32. He telephoned downstairs and asked the desk sergeant if the mail had arrived. It was being sorted, he was told. Moving into the squad room, he saw that Ulanov was typing a report. Gregory was interviewing a complainant over the telephone and Big Jay Owens was studying the case folder of an unsolved, seven-year-old homicide. John Leone had his feet up on the desk and was reading a newspaper.
“John,” Lucas said, “do me a favor and go downstairs and get the mail.”
“Right, Lou,” Leone said, putting down the newspaper.
Leone returned in ten minutes with a wire basket brimming with mail. He moved to the pigeonhole lockers and began to sort the mail into slots.
“Anything for me?” Lucas asked.
Leone foraged through the basket searching for mail addressed: CO 16 Sqd. He handed the Whip a bunch of envelopes and went back to his newspaper.
Taking the handful of multiuse envelopes and folders back into his office, Lucas began to go through the pile, looking for anything from Central Records. He found what he was looking for in three double-packed folders. He untied the flap and slid out the contents: printouts of all the complaint reports that Denny McKay and his friends had collected over the years. He put them aside and opened the case folder and removed the arrest reports that he had brought back from Central Records. He took his time matching up the complaint and arrest reports. That done, he arranged the arrest reports alphabetically by name of prisoner. Most of the collars had been made for burglary, robbery, and felonious assaults. With the arrest reports arranged by names, he wrote down the names on a lined pad and beside each one listed the crime, as well as the details of the crime. Looking over the arrest report on a Bucky McMahon, Lucas noticed in the Property Information box: “one old book by Aristarchus. Value: $500,000. Property not recovered at scene.” He jotted down the sixty-one number and the complainant’s name and address.
Vassos was studying the blackboard.
“An old book was stolen during the course of a robbery by one of McKay’s men. It happened eleven years ago, and the complainant was a Mr. Belmont E. Widener. The property was never recovered.”
Vassos turned from the board. “Do you think there’s a connection?”
“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “It’s one more thing we’re going to have to take a look at. In fact–”
“You fucking cunt!” a frantic voice screamed out in the squad room.
Lucas and Vassos rushed outside in time to see a man come sailing over the wooden railing.
A hatless policewoman, heavyset, with a head of thick black hair, threw open the gate and stormed inside. “Get in that cage, asshole.”
The man leaped up, yanked down his fly, pulled out his penis, and screamed, “Suck my prick, you cunt.”
Ulanov continued to type.
Gregory covered the telephone’s mouthpiece with his hand.
Big Jay turned in his seat, draping his arm over the back of his chair.
The Second Whip closed the door to his office.
John Leone casually moved to the police radio and turned up the volume, then strolled back to his desk, shaking his head disdainfully at the man as he passed him. The insolent prisoner’s well-defined muscles shaped his dirty T-shirt. He stood in the middle of the squad room snarling at the policewoman, casting unsure glances at the detectives.
The policewoman’s partner, a sloppy man in his early forties with a ponderous gut and a small waxed mustache, calmly walked past the prisoner and opened the door to the detention cage. He waited for his partner to make her move.
“I’m not about to tell you again, asshole, get into that cage.”
“Suck this, you Puerto Rican douchebag.”
Rolling her eyes with a bogus irritation, she walked over to the prisoner, suddenly pivoted to her right, hunching down, and whirled around, throwing a right directly into the man’s genitals. He gasped and doubled over in pain. The policewoman struck again with a left hand that caught him flush on the temple. He crumpled onto the floor, rolling onto his stomach.
Big Jay sadly shook his head. “You should be ashamed of yourself, letting a woman beat the shit out of you.” He turned back to his case folder.
The policewoman straddled her prisoner, reached down, grabbed him by his belt, and scissoring him up off the floor, dragged him across the room into the cage. Her partner slammed the detention cage door, slid the locking pin through the steel bar, and moved to a vacant typewriter to help with the paperwork.
Vassos’s lips pursed in approbation. “Are all your women officers that efficient?”
“We have some that don’t row with bo
th oars in the water, but most of them are okay, and a few, like Josey, are damn good.”
“What am I being arrested for?” the prisoner shouted, struggling up on shaky legs.
“Possession of a big mouth,” Josey said, rolling an arrest report into the machine.
The man sitting across from Trevor Hughes in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel waited for his guest to butter his roll. Hughes’s feigned cheerfulness had not deceived his host. “How goes it in Athens, Trevor?”
“Fine,” Hughes said, his gaze sweeping the intimate, cozy restaurant, its dark oak walls and groined ceiling. “As you know, Greece can be quite civilized,” Hughes added.
“Did Nancy come with you?”
“No. She stayed on Paros. We rented a house there for the summer. I manage to pop over some weekends and whenever I can sneak away from the embassy.”
“How are the children?”
“Grown and scattered all over the place, doing their own things.”
“Well, I guess that’s the way of it all.” The host raised his water glass. “What brings you to New York?”
Hughes placed his butter knife across his bread plate and looked across the table at his host’s ring. “I’ve always loved that ring.”
“Yes, it is special,” he said, sliding it off his finger and passing it to Hughes. “Emperor Caracalla had the coin struck around 215 A.D. from the imperial mint at Ephesus. Alexander is on the obverse, and on the reverse is a scene showing him hunting boar with Meleager.”
Rolling the heavy gold ring over his palm, Hughes observed, “It must be quite valuable.”
“Not really. There are many coins and medallions around from that period.”
Hughes brushed a crumb off the tablecloth. “There was a massacre in Greece. In Voúla, a village outside the capital.” He watched the waiter roll the dessert cart past their table.
“I read about it in the newspapers. Those damn terrorists are getting a bit out of hand, I’d say.” The host forked some Caesar salad into his mouth.
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