Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  Katina made the introductions.

  A salesman’s grin spread across the book dealer’s face. “Are you two gentlemen interested in purchasing rare books? If you are, I’ve recently come into possession of a Voloretti codex.”

  “We’re here to ask you some questions concerning a robbery that took place in 1977,” Lucas said.

  “Eleven years ago? Really? That’s yesterday’s news.” His bright, curious eyes examined Vassos. “You’re not with the NYPD.”

  “I am a major in the Hellenic Police Department. Here on special assignment.”

  Lucas thought that he detected a fleeting expression of fear on the book dealer’s face.

  “I see,” Widener said, and turned brusquely to Katina. “Dr. Wright, before we discuss whatever police business brought you here, I would love to show you my prized possessions.”

  “I’d be delighted,” she said, asking for her companions to be patient by lifting an eyebrow.

  Widener guided them up through three floors of books. Brass chandeliers illuminated dark parquet flooring covered with brightly colored oriental rugs. There were rows upon rows of rosewood bookcases, the contents of which were protected by fine black metal mesh. The musty scent of books and the comfortable smell of worn leather pervaded each floor. Widener was a joyous child showing off his treasures. He brought out ancient vellum manuscripts, maps, tomes of Barcherlo and Stair. He twirled a great Cussennelli globe signed and dated 1587. Finally he led them single file into the fourth-floor vault, a stainless steel monster with massive locking pins.

  “My best stuff is here,” he said, and proceeded to show them a tenth century Bloomberg missal, a first edition King Lear dated 1608, a set of three Shakespeare folios. His last treasure was a first edition of de Reuyter’s Voyage to Foreign Lands, dated 1579.

  “May I?” Katina said, holding out her hands. “I love to listen to the music of the old paper.”

  “Oh yes, so do I,” Widener said, with an air of excitement bordering on sexual arousal. He placed the book into her waiting hands. She held it up close to her ear and gently flipped the pages, sounding each one with a sharp push of her fingers. Her head was tilted slightly into the book so that she might better hear the music, her eyes lifted in concentration.

  Lucas watched her fingers caress each page, sending them past with a snap. They were exquisite hands, the beautifully cared for nails glowing with polish. His eyes drifted down to her bare legs, and he fantasized about the dark mysterious treasure at their apex.

  Widener moved between her and the policemen. “Each page should give an authentic rag paper crackle,” he explained.

  She added, “If it’s not a forgery.” She snapped the last page and handed the dealer back his book. “A wonderful collection.”

  Widener beamed. “Thank you. Now. Shall we go to my office on the second floor and discuss this eleven-year-old crime?”

  The office looked out at the colorful mixture of architecture in the area. A carved walnut desk with high-relief scenes of Hercules and the Sphinx dominated the richly furnished office. A golden tapestry depicting the Adoration of the Magi hung on one wall.

  “Please sit,” Widener said, moving behind the desk and lowering himself into a carved walnut armchair. His expression became serious. “Why are the police suddenly interested in this crime?”

  Vassos took out and fingered his jade worry beads, the ones that Colonel Pappas had taken off of Iskur’s body and then given to Vassos for good luck.

  “Mr. Widener, we have some reason to believe that your stolen commentary might be connected to the theft of an antiquity from Greece,” Lucas said.

  A flush came to the dealer’s cheeks. “What antiquity?”

  “The casket-copy,” Katina said dryly.

  He looked at Vassos. “Your goverment has sent you here to try and recover it?”

  “Yes,” Vassos said.

  “And you, Dr. Wright, have been enlisted to render whatever technical assistance the police might require?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I see.” Widener slumped, his shoulders sagging under some invisible weight. “The casket-copy,” he said reflectively. “The collector’s ultimate dream.”

  “Was your Aristarchus commentary on the Iliad?” Katina asked, holding her breath.

  “Yes,” Widener answered.

  “Would you tell us how you came to own it?” Lucas said.

  Widener sighed. “The Duke of Siracusa was selling his private library back in September of ’seventy-five. The sale was to take place at the duke’s castle in Lichtenstein.” He sighed at the memory of it. “I went, of course, and bought some interesting things. Late one afternoon, I was browsing in the east wing of the library when I saw a scroll sticking out from behind a stack of books. I bent down and removed it. It was obviously quite old. I rushed to check the card index but there was nothing on it. So, I did the next best thing and asked the duke. He informed me that his great-grandfather was notorious for buying things and sticking them on library shelves without bothering to enter them in the index.” A sly smile. “The duke and I engaged in some genteel haggling. He asked an outrageous sum, citing the scroll’s antiquity. I pointed out that it might contain worthless business records, or even be blank, or illegible. I also told him that I’d have to spend a considerable sum on restoration and deciphering.”

  “But you did buy it?” Lucas said.

  “Yes, and for not a lot of money,” Widener said smugly.

  “When did you realize what you had bought?” Lucas asked.

  “Not for several months,” the dealer said. “As soon as I returned home I entered into negotiations for a manorial land grant by William the Conqueror. That piece of business kept me occupied for the better part of three months. I stuck the scroll into the bottom drawer of this desk and forgot about it for a while. Five months later I had it unrolled and deciphered.”

  “What did you do when you discovered what you had bought?” Lucas asked the dealer.

  “I did nothing,” Widener said. “I knew that the scroll’s value was not going to decrease.”

  “You didn’t show it off to any of your friends or colleagues in the book business?” Lucas said, a disbelieving edge to his voice.

  “In this business, Lieutenant, you wait before revealing your treasure. A smart dealer first makes sure that there is demand for his find.” He tugged at his ear. “The greater the demand, the higher the price.”

  “And you create the demand,” Lucas said.

  “Exactly,” Widener said, adjusting his tie.

  “How do you do that?” Lucas asked.

  “By going to dinner parties given by the right sort of people. Dropping tantalizing tidbits about Aristarchus of Samothrace and the great library of Alexandria.”

  “And after you’ve created demand?” Lucas wanted to know, catching Katina looking at him, a haze in her eyes. When he looked at her, her gaze dropped away.

  “Then you let it be known at some cocktail party that you’ve located one of Aristarchus’s commentaries, but that, unfortunately, the owner refuses to part with it,” Widener said.

  “And the word spreads,” Lucas said.

  “With the speed of light,” Widener said. “Within days I had collectors and dealers calling me from all over the country. There was so much interest that I decided to hold an auction. So I announced the offering in my next catalogue.”

  “Was there any unusual interest?” Katina asked.

  “There was a lot of interest, but nothing unusual,” Widener said.

  “Tell us about the robbery,” Lucas said.

  “A few days before the auction I received a telephone call from a Mr. Dwight Roget. He wanted an appointment for the next day so that he could examine the commentary. I told him to be here at eleven o’clock.”

  “Wasn’t that unusual?” Lucas asked.

  “Not at all,” Widener said. “Most collectors want to see an item before bidding on it.”

  “
Did you know this man?” Vassos asked, closely watching the rare book dealer.

  “No, I didn’t. But then, one does not know every dealer and collector, does one?” Widener said, adjusting his tie.

  Vassos became agitated. “I think it very strange that you could show such a valuable thing to a person without making an identification of him first.”

  “The man with whom I spoke, Major, knew the rare book business. He knew the jargon, what was currently available. I had no reason to be suspicious,” Widener said, a trace of anger in his shrill voice.

  “You made the appointment, then what happened?” Lucas asked.

  “The next day, at the appointed time, two well-dressed men appeared. One of them, a stocky fellow, introduced himself as Dwight Roget. The other one didn’t say very much, as I recall. Just grunted hello. I escorted them upstairs and asked them to wait while I went into the vault to get the commentary. Suddenly, they were inside with me, the quiet one pointing a gun at my head.” He clutched his chest in painful remembrance. Beads of sweat appeared on his nose. “They handcuffed me inside the vault and left with my commentary.”

  Vassos persisted: “I still find it very strange, sir, that you would see such persons without knowing them.”

  “Major, we in the art world are not accustomed to being confronted by gangsters with guns. It just doesn’t happen.”

  Katina interceded in Greek. “He’s right, Andreas.”

  “You’re handcuffed inside the vault, then what?” Lucas asked.

  “Luckily, they didn’t close the door. So as soon as I saw them get into the elevator, I began to scream. It was early in the morning and no one else was on the floor. But fortunately, Mrs. Wooley, my assistant, was walking up from the next floor when she heard my screams. She ran up, saw me chained like a dog, and, thank God, had the presence of mind to press the alarm. One of your police cars was passing at the time. They caught one of the bandits, but regrettably, not the one with the commentary.”

  “Bucky McMahon was the man the officers arrested,” Lucas said.

  “Yes, that was his name. After eight months of interminable court postponements, he was permitted to plead guilty to robbery in the second degree,” Widener said.

  “Were you shown mug shots in an effort to identify the other one?” Lucas asked.

  “Hundreds of them,” Widener replied. “But I was unable to pick anyone out. They were all disgusting-looking people.”

  Katina slipped off her earring and laid it down on top of her pocketbook. She glanced at Lucas with a look that said: my turn.

  “Mr. Widener, I must confess that I have always been fascinated by your two specialties.”

  Widener sparkled. “I have one of the world’s greatest collections of incunabula and letters from nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutionaries.”

  “I hear rumors,” Katina confided, “that the Soviet government is negotiating for your collection of letters by Lenin and Trotsky.”

  Widener crimsoned. “That’s a damn lie. I’ll never break up my collection. Never! The Russians would love to get their grubby hands on those letters, but they never will.”

  A smile spread across Katina’s lovely face. “See how adamant collectors are about their collections.”

  Lucas smiled back at her.

  “Who unrolled and deciphered the scroll?” she asked.

  “Edmonds at Columbia deciphered it and Goodman at the Met unrolled it,” Widener replied.

  “Mr. Widener, does the name Orhan Iskur mean anything to you?” Lucas asked.

  “No, it doesn’t. Should it?” asked the book dealer.

  “No,” Lucas said.

  Vassos took out the composite sketch and the passport photo of Aldridge Long and handed them to Widener. “Do you know this man?”

  The rare book dealer studied the photo and the drawing for a long time. Finally he said firmly, “No, I don’t believe I do.”

  “Did you have much of a conversation with the men who robbed you?” Lucas asked.

  “As I recall they didn’t say too much,” Widener said.

  “Mr. Widener, can you tell me if either of them was the same man who telephoned you to make the appointment?” Lucas asked, watching the book dealer.

  Widener’s mouth dropped open; his eyes grew wide. “Good heavens, it was a long time ago.” He sat pondering, his hands clutching the ornate arms of his chair. “It wasn’t the same man,” he announced with sudden vigor. “The man who telephoned was educated, articulate, and he knew the business.”

  “Then why did you let two men, neither of whom sounded or looked quite right, into your shop?” Vassos demanded.

  “I … I didn’t realize until just now. No one ever asked me,” Widener explained.

  Vassos’s face betrayed open disbelief. He got up abruptly from his chair and said, with no pretense of courtesy, “I think we have heard quite enough. There are other people who can tell us what we need to know.”

  9

  A roll of fat bulged around the fingerprint man’s waist. Acne scarred his face and his flamboyant, greasy black mustache was grossly unkempt. He sat in front of the print scanner examining the latents from the Iskur crime scene. Lucas and Vassos stood behind him, studying the magnified impressions on the screen. Katina stood off to the left, her curious eyes taking in every detail of the Latent Unit’s fifth-floor office.

  They had left Widener’s thirty minutes before. Lucas decided to stop off at One Police Plaza before continuing on to the rest of the dealers; he wanted the prints from Greece examined by an NYPD technician.

  “What were those lifted off?” asked the technician, as he slid the latents around under the glass, obviously attempting to note all the characteristics.

  “The victim’s billfold,” Vassos said.

  “What can you tell us?” Lucas asked.

  “Right up front I can say that there are not enough points to make a positive I.D. I can only make out nine points among the three fingers, and as you guys both know, we need twelve in each finger.”

  Katina drifted over to the machine. “What does that mean, enough points?”

  Lucas said: “There must be twelve similar points of comparison before any two fingerprints can be positively identified as coming from the same person.”

  “What must be similar?” she asked.

  “The ridges that form the fingerprint pattern,” Lucas answered.

  The technician picked up a pencil from the workbench. “This is a bifurcating ridge,” he said, pointing. “See how it runs along and then forks into three branches?”

  She leaned in between the two men to get a better look. As she did, she brushed against Lucas. He felt a charge of electricity course through his body. Embarrassed, he stepped back in order to make room for her.

  “… this ridge we call a divergence. Notice how the two ridges run parallel and then spread apart.”

  “Yes, I can see them,” Katina said.

  “When we can point out twelve similar characteristics in another finger, we have a positive I.D.,” the technician said.

  Lucas found himself standing behind her, watching her as she bent toward the machine. The scanner’s illuminated screen backlit her skirt, revealing the vague outline of her thighs. Vassos picked up on Lucas’s hungry stare, and his face crinkled in a knowing smile. Katina backed away from the machine.

  Lucas took her place, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, leaning forward as if to study the screen, whispering, “What can you tell me, unofficially?”

  “Educated guesswork, Lou,” he whispered back.

  “I’m listening.” Lucas became painfully aware of the man’s rancid body odor.

  “Well, for one thing, they’re the prints of a man. Women have smaller, narrower ridges. And the array of the fingers show that they’re from the middle, ring, and pinkie, most probably of the right hand,” the technician said.

  “Why the right hand?” Lucas asked.

  Using the pencil as a tracer, the fi
ngerprint man said, “The ridges of the pinkie enter on one side of the impression, recurve, and flow down the other side.”

  “I see that,” Lucas said.

  “We call that kind of an impression a loop. There are two kinds: ulnar loops, which flow out toward the ulnar bone, and radial loops, which flow out toward the radial bone. The overwhelming percentage of pinkie loops are ulnar, which would mean that the chances are pretty good that this pinkie came from the right hand.”

  “But not a certainty.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “The ring and middle fingers appear to be tented arches, which would narrow down the search considerably, if we were going to search the files. Another thing, see how the ridges at the bottom of the ring finger appear to have been ripped apart, how they have a jagged white line running through them?”

  “Yes,” Lucas said.

  “That’s a permanent scar.”

  Lucas glanced around at Vassos and tossed him a “get lost” look. Vassos answered with a nod, took Katina’s arm, and waltzed her over to the wall display of blown-up marked fingerprints made for jury presentation in notorious trials.

  Lucas leaned in close to the seated man. One of his zits was oozing pus. “Would you check these latents out against a list of B numbers for me?” he whispered, referring to the permanent identification number prisoners receive when they are first arrested.

  “No problem, Lou. But you gotta understand, there just ain’t no way I can give you a positive. The best you can hope for is a maybe.”

  “I’ll take it. What about checking out the criminal and civilian files for me?”

  “Lou,” the technician moaned, “we ain’t allowed to search the civilian files on a criminal matter. You wouldn’t want me to violate some taxi driver’s constitutional rights, would you?”

  “Hey, perish the thought,” Lucas whispered, asking, “Where’s the john?”

  The technician jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Behind me and to the right.” He shut off the humming machine and got up.

  Passing Vassos and Katina, Lucas gestured to the major to keep her busy and moved down the aisle between machine-laden desks. As he moved past one desk he spotted a book of matches and picked it up.