Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  Entering the white-tiled bathroom, Lucas stepped into an empty stall and locked the door. He reached into his left trouser pocket and took out the expense money that the C of D had given him. He peeled a fifty from the wad, folded it in such a way that Grant’s portrait showed, and slid it behind the red-tipped forest of matches in the open book. He closed the book’s cover, securing the lid behind the flap, and left the bathroom.

  This was the part of the Job he hated. Years ago it was a cop’s job. You did for each other out of a common sense of loyalty, a common purpose. No more. Civilization had come to the NYPD. The department was awash in political patronage, a pork barrel full of boa constrictors, each one with its mouth open.

  The technician was at the photocopy machine duplicating the Iskur latents. Lucas walked up to him and handed him the list of Denny McKay’s men that he had taken from Vassos on his way back from the bathroom. He gave the list to the technician and asked him to make a dozen copies.

  The fingerprint man said, “Sure, Lou. No problem. Everybody’s out to lunch so I don’t have to worry about tying up the machine,” and lifted the machine’s rubber mat cover, laid the paper on top of the glass, blanketed the mat back over the paper, and pushed a green button.

  The machine sprang into life, spewing out sheets of white paper into the side tray.

  Lucas leaned against the copier, watching the light glow each time the top slid back and forth. “Would you check those latents against the fingerprints of the men on that list?”

  “Sure, Lou,” the technician said, switching off the machine.

  “If you come up dry, would you also check the criminal and civilian files for me?” He slipped the book of matches into the technician’s shirt pocket. “Here are your matches back.”

  Tucking in his chin, the fingerprint man looked down into his pocket. He stuck two fingers inside the pocket and pried open the cover. Pushing the row of matches forward, he spotted Ulysses Grant’s dour face and smiled. “Lou, them civilian rights? I fuck ’em where they breathe.”

  Shielding his eyes with his hands, Lucas scanned Police Plaza for an empty bench. He spied four women getting up from a stone square. “Andreas, why don’t you and Katina grab that seat and I’ll go get us some lunch.”

  Lucas returned shortly, gingerly balancing three cardboard plates holding hero sandwiches overflowing with crimson onions. A cardboard holder for sodas was clutched in his other hand, straws protruding out of punch-in cans. He eased the sodas down on the bench between them and handed them both a plate.

  “How much do I owe you?” Katina asked, reaching into her pocketbook.

  “Nothing, you made a score,” Lucas said.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It’s on the NYPD,” Lucas said.

  “Thank you, NYPD,” Katina answered, gracefully nibbling onions. She looked at Vassos. “Have you ever eaten a hero sandwich before?”

  “In Greece such a thing would be called souvlaki, and we use pitta bread.” He smiled. “But Pericles Levi’s daughter must surely know that.” He chomped into the hero.

  “What do you think of police work?” Lucas asked her.

  “It’s fun,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “It can get a bit boring patching up ancient parchments. Do you think we’ve accomplished anything?” she asked, wrapping her lips around the straw.

  “I hope we’ve started some people worrying,” Lucas said, looking at her wet lips.

  She looked around the sun-drenched plaza. “Do most of these people work for the police department?”

  “Most of them,” Lucas answered, putting his plate down on his knees and looking at Vassos. “What did you think of Widener?”

  Vassos made a noncommittal shrug. Katina responded instead: “He’s got a slightly murky reputation. I think he is definitely hiding something. Maybe he’s no victim at all.”

  Paul Mastri was a handsome man in his sixties, tall and well built, with a sinewy body that moved with the graceful assurance of success. Mastri Associates was located in a triple suite of interconnecting rooms on Madison Avenue north of Fifty-sixth Street. A male secretary led the trio into Mastri’s office. The large room’s white marble floor and walls gleamed softly.

  “Dr. Wright, what a pleasure,” Mastri said smoothly, moving out from behind his desk to kiss Katina on both her cheeks.

  Katina made the introductions.

  Lucas noted that Mastri’s handshake was firm, his clothes jaunty: he wore a tie of bold blue stripes against a blazing orange background, a blazer of white linen, a fluffy orange handkerchief in the pocket, blue trousers. “I must have gotten a dozen telephone calls so far this morning telling me about your visit to Widener Books,” Mastri said, carefully spreading the folds of his jacket to avoid sitting on them and wrinkling it. He lowered himself into his carved and gilded throne of a chair, which was covered with scarlet velvet.

  “That’s some chair you’ve got,” Lucas observed.

  “Thank you,” Mastri said. “It’s Venetian, circa 1730.” He turned his attention to Katina, wiggling a finger at her. “You’ve tantalized the industry, Dr. Wright, with your inquiries concerning the casket-copy.”

  “Word travels fast,” Lucas said.

  Mastri leaned forward, sliding his elbows onto the desk. “Has the casket-copy really been unearthed?”

  “We think so,” Katina said.

  “Think? Only think?” Mastri relaxed back into his seat. “Hasn’t anyone seen it? Established provenance?”

  “No, not yet,” Katina said. “The entire matter is a bit confused.”

  “Confused?” Mastri said. “What is the Morgan’s interest in all this?”

  “Absolutely none,” Katina said. “The police requested our help and we agreed. The library is not involved in any other way.”

  “Not involved?” Mastri said, a disbelieving smile evident on his smooth face. “One of the greatest finds ever, and the Morgan is not involved. I find that a very difficult morsel to swallow, Dr. Wright.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s the truth,” she said.

  “Mr. Mastri, if someone were to bring you the casket-copy, would you be able to sell it?” Lucas asked.

  “I wouldn’t touch it without the necessary export papers,” Mastri said.

  Lucas leaned forward on the low-slung white sofa, his hand making tiny circles. “Just suppose that everything was in order.”

  An insincere smile exposed Mastri’s capped teeth. “The legendary casket-copy? I would be able to dispose of it within the day.”

  Vassos was subdued and thoughtful. “At what price?”

  Mastri fixed his eyes on the ceiling. “Truthfully? I don’t know. Prices in the art world have come unglued since Van Gogh’s Irises went at auction for fifty million dollars. There is no limit anymore, no rationale. What price? I would make up some ridiculously absurd number. And I would get it.” He looked at Katina. “Dr. Wright, I would just love to show you my latest acquisition.” He got up and went over to the book-case. Cabinets lined the bottom. He opened one of the doors and removed a book, its green cover heavily embossed with gold. He went over and handed it to her, then stepped back.

  Katina placed the book on her lap and turned back the cover to reveal an ancient script written in silver ink on purple paper. Slowly turning each sheet, she took in each decorated page with muttered approval. Toward the end of the book she looked up at the policemen and explained, “This is a translation of the Bible into the Gothic. Sixth century, I think.”

  “Very good, Dr. Wright. You know your subject,” Mastri said.

  Carefully closing the cover, she handed the book back to the dealer and said, “Magnificent.”

  “Thank you,” Mastri said, beaming proudly.

  “Before today, had you heard of any interest in the casket-copy?” Lucas asked.

  “No, I hadn’t. The last I heard of it was when I heard of the famous Matrazzo telegram. And frankly, I just do not believe that it would have survived all th
ose millennia. Fragments perhaps, but the complete Iliad? I can’t believe that,” Mastri said.

  Lucas got up and moved aimlessly around the room. “You don’t appear to have any alarm system in place, Mr. Mastri.”

  “We’re well protected, Lieutenant,” Mastri said. “There’s all sorts of state-of-the-art gadgetry hidden about. Insurance regulations require it.”

  Vassos asked, “Do you know Orhan Iskur?”

  “No, I don’t. Is he in the trade?”

  “Not really,” Lucas said. “He deals in cheap imitations.”

  “I wouldn’t know such a person,” Mastri said dismissively.

  “Mr. Mastri, did you know that Belmont Widener had come upon one of Aristarchus’s commentaries on the Iliad?” Katina asked.

  “My dear Dr. Wright, the entire trade knew once he announced it in his catalogue.” He smoothed back his stone-colored hair, taking great care that all the strands were tucked neatly behind his ears. “I, of course, knew long before he announced.”

  When Lucas asked him how he knew, Mastri tossed him a patronizing look and said, “I’ve been in this business long enough to spot a dealer who is making the rounds drumming up demand.”

  Pompous ass, Lucas thought, smiling thinly at the dealer.

  “Mr. Mastri, are you aware of any dealer or collector with a special interest in ancient material relating to the development of silent reading?” Katina asked.

  “You are confusing scholarship with collecting, Dr. Wright. A collector desires to possess some great object from antiquity, but …”

  Lucas saw the fire blazing in the dealer’s eyes. He’d seen the same look on the faces of other men. He’d seen it on a gambler’s as he waited for the last card to be turned; he’d seen it on an alcoholic’s as he hurried up to the bar to get his first drink of the day; he’d seen it on Andreas Vassos’s whenever he spoke of his murdered family. Driven men, consumed by emotions they did not fully understand, each with an unalterable passion, and an uncontrollable one.

  “… a scholar seeks answers to questions. How did civilization progress from point A to point B? And why? A collector does not concern himself with such matters.”

  Vassos dumped his worry beads into his shirt pocket and took out the composite sketch. “Do you know this person?” he asked, passing the sketch and photo to the dealer.

  A minute passed. Mastri handed them back. “No, I have never seen this gentleman before.”

  “Would you let me know if you should hear anything about someone offering the casket-copy for sale?” Katina said.

  “You can count on it, Dr. Wright,” Mastri said, standing.

  Katina moved up to the desk to admire a black lacquer box. A hunting scene in a medieval forest was painted on the lid. She noted that the painter had made the blood of the dying boar all too real.

  The air conditioning in C of D Edgeworth’s unmarked Plymouth had not been repaired, despite assurances from the Wagon Board that a new condenser would be installed “forthwith.” This had not particularly improved his humor during the long, very hot drive up to midtown Manhattan from One Police Plaza. His driver stopped in front of the heavy stone facade of the Millenium Club, the iron bars over its windows and the heavy, dark-wood double doors of its entrance offering a rather forbidding welcome for the uninitiated guest.

  Inside, the large marble-floored lobby afforded a cool refuge from the blazing afternoon heat. Edgeworth was met by a dignified black man in a gray uniform and courteously directed to an uncomfortable bench, very like a pew, that stood on one side of the lobby. “Mr. Borden hasn’t arrived yet,” he was told. Asked if he wanted to “freshen up,” Edgeworth merely grunted a negative response and plumped himself down on the bench reserved for strangers. While he waited, with mounting impatience, he read a long and thoroughly puzzling article in the Journal of the National Association of Chiefs of Police written by a chief from a small western city, a prodigy who had a Harvard Ph.D. The article discussed ways of building department morale; Edgeworth found it as exotic and as irrelevant as a book by Margaret Mead on courtship in Samoa that he had read, under duress, while an undergraduate at Hofstra.

  He was attempting to understand what his fellow cop meant by something called “male bonding” when a beautifully shined pair of handmade shoes appeared in the lower left quadrant of his vision. He looked up to see the bright blue eyes of Gerald Borden regarding him indulgently, his hectic red complexion set off by a waxed white mustache; a gray, pin-striped unwrinkled summer suit, blue Brooks button-down, and a jaunty bow tie wrapping up the package.

  “I’m grateful that you made time to see me, Tim. And that you came up my way. I have to catch a six-fifty train, and we need some time to catch up.”

  Edgeworth was wondering about what precisely thay had to talk about as Borden led him up the wide staircase to the second floor, where they sat down in deep, leather-covered chairs. Large yellowing oil portraits decorated the walls; below them were bookshelves crammed with multicolored bindings. Edgeworth was making a cop’s thorough mental inventory of the place when he saw Borden writing out an order for drinks while a waiter hovered deferentially nearby. “And you, Tim?”

  “Just a soft drink, Gerry; whatever they got that’s real cold.”

  Borden pushed back in his chair and looked over the low round table between them. He took an immaculate white handkerchief out of his breast pocket and blew his nose vigorously.

  “I believe you have been in touch, er, more or less, with one of my former associates?”

  Edgeworth regarded him sourly and said, “Is that what all this fuss is about? I thought Hayden was State Department, not one of your gang.”

  Borden took the bourbon old-fashioned that the silently reappearing waiter offered him on a silver tray, then picked up a tall glass of ginger ale and handed it to Edgeworth, who downed half of it in one gulp.

  The waiter left and Borden continued in a lower tone of voice. “Strictly speaking, he isn’t one of us. He was a contract employee, a paramilitary type. Police background, not too scrupulous about what sort of jobs he would take on. We put his talents to good use in Laos, back in the days of the great crusade.”

  Edgeworth sat forward, hands on his knees. “Just what sort of jobs did he do for you?”

  Borden smiled benignly and said, “That comes under the great blanket of ‘national security’ – and I don’t think you have a need to know.” His eyes suddenly turned cold. “The Agency cut him off a long time ago. In fact, we helped him get a job with State because we wanted to get rid of him.”

  “And keep his mouth shut, too, I bet,” the C of D said with a tiny smile.

  “Ah, yes, we did ensure his … uh … discretion. Unfortunately he got used to working with some of my colleagues out there, some of my former friends who were a little too enthusiastic about helping the Hmong get their poppy crop to market.”

  Edgeworth had first met Borden when both men were on a joint Agency, DEA, and NYPD task force in the Golden Triangle engaged in antinarcotics operations with the less than enthusiastic authorities in Thailand. He knew Borden hated dope and anyone who made a profit out of the misery it caused. His son had gotten hooked on heroin while serving as a marine in Vietnam. Men like Hayden had helped to put the needle in the kid’s arm. But Borden’s son had kicked the habit the hard way. Six months after his return to the U.S., he shot himself in his bedroom in the Borden home in Virginia.

  “These former friends of yours – are they still in the Company?”

  Borden looked thoughtfully down at the polished oak floor. “No, the lure of private enterprise, as well as the suspicions of some of my DEA brethren, proved sufficient incentive to make them retire and go into other lines of work. Hayden is still their gundog, though. He’ll clean up their messes, do the dirty jobs they won’t touch.” He reached over and put his hand on the sleeve of Edgeworth’s rumpled tan suit. “Unfortunately Hayden is still on State’s payroll. I hear that he finagled his way into a certain assi
gnment so he could watch out for the interests of some of his old associates. And they have friends, very rich, very powerful friends. I expect I can find out more when I get back to Washington next week. I’ll do a little nosing around, quietly. Don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily, you know.”

  Edgeworth got out of his chair and looked at his friend without speaking for several moments. “I gotta go, Gerry. But you know my private number. My home phone is secure. I want to know a lot more. I got a bunch of damn good cops mixed up in something that’s beginning to smell real bad. And I don’t want any of the shit you guys deal in sticking to them.”

  As Edgeworth left the room, Borden was still wearily slumped down in his chair, looking at his feet. Edgeworth knew he had an ally. He just could not be sure how much Borden’s pain and anger would overcome the ingrained tendency of any Agency person to protect the Company and its officers, even if they were rogue elephants.

  The row house had brown curtains. It was in the middle of Markham Mews, an undistinguished block in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. Adele Matrazzo was a registered Democrat and the sole occupant of the house with brown curtains.

  Adele taught social studies at PS 181 until crippling arthritis forced her retirement. That was six years ago; now she passed her days confined to a shiny electric wheelchair. Her once-beautiful legs, which so many men had admired, were now motionless appendages hanging stiffly over the edge of her chair. And her graceful hands were now rigid, deformed claws with chestnut-sized knuckles straining the skin over them.

  She had stationed herself by the parlor window after she received the telephone call from the police. A minor matter, the police lieutenant had said. Adele could feel the knot of anxiety in her throat as she thought about what the police really wanted to know. She had been preparing for such a visit for many years. She prayed that he was all right. Perhaps she should call him just to make sure that nothing had happened to him. She quickly decided against doing that. He had warned her many times never to call him unless it was some kind of emergency that she could not handle without getting him involved.