Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  “Some people put you in a whole lot of shit, Edward,” Lucas said.

  “Fuckin’-A right they did,” the guard said, picking at a scab on his face.

  Vassos poured more vodka into the guard’s sloshing cup. “Did they telephone you or tell you in person?”

  “Telephone me in the shack.”

  Vassos looked at Lucas. “What did they tell you?” he asked the guard.

  “To take a hike between nine and ten, and to keep my trap shut.”

  “Do you know who telephoned you?” Lucas asked.

  “Naw. Some guy. On the docks you don’t ask too many questions.”

  Disappointment showed on the policemen’s faces. Lucas swung open the door. “Big Jay, drive Mr. Walsh home.”

  “What do we do next?” Vassos asked, sitting in one of the swivel chairs.

  “Burke took several falls with a guy named Bucky McMahon. He’s the one who was arrested for the Widener robbery.” Lucas ransacked the top of his desk. “I sent a request to the Probation Department to try and locate McMahon. Their answer should have arrived in the department mail. Here it is,” he said, pulling a multiuse envelope out of the basket. He opened it and read the slip of paper. “Shit! Bucky McMahon died three years ago.” He balled up the paper and tossed it into the wastebasket on the side of the desk.

  Ulanov sauntered into the office. “We’re calling it a day, Lou. Wanna pop over to Heidi’s for a taste?”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  12

  Sunlight filtered through the bedroom blinds; the air still held morning’s freshness. Dressed in undershorts, with his arm around Joan’s shoulder, Lucas steered her into the living room toward the door.

  She kissed him. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he echoed, reaching for the doorknob, anxious to get on with his day. She reached out shyly, touched his hair which was still wet from the shower, and put her arms around him. Hugging him tight, she savored what she suspected were their last moments together. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Me too,” he said, surprised to find, even as he said it, that he felt a pang of regret.

  “What do I mean to you, Teddy?”

  “You’re a nice woman, Joan. I like you.”

  “A nice woman?” Her hands slid off his shoulder. “I’m available, I make no demands, and I’m a nice woman too. You got yourself a real bargain.”

  “Get off it, Joan. You understood from the beginning …”

  She smiled and tilted her head back to look into his eyes. “I know, lover. It’s just that I’m a hopeless romantic. But when reality sets in, I can cope.” She reached down and gently bounced his scrotum in her palm. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” She threw open the door and stepped out into the empty hallway. “By the way, I don’t know who you thought you were doing it to just now, but it certainly wasn’t me.”

  “Kahleemehrah.” Good morning, Vassos greeted Lucas thirty minutes later.

  “Kahleemehrah,” Lucas said, going into his office.

  Biting into a doughnut, Leone observed, “Not in such a great mood, our boss.”

  The Second Whip was in the Whip’s office pawing through the morning mail.

  “Anything important?” Lucas asked, scanning the sixty sheet.

  Grimes pulled out a thick, multiuse envelope from the pile and handed it to Lucas. “Identification Section, addressed to you.”

  Lucas unstrung the jacket and slid out a clump of fives. The blue forms were pinned together. He worked out the pin and tossed it into the coffee can that dressed up his desk. A gigantic lollipop stuck out of the can. It read: “Winning isn’t everything, but losing sucks.” The fingerprint technician had prepared a five on each known member of the Purple Gang, summing up the results of the comparison of their fingerprints with those of the latents that had been lifted at the scene of the Iskur homicide.

  Each report ended with NR, negative results. The technician had tacked on a personal note: “Lou, none of them came close. Sorry.”

  Lucas opened the bottom drawer of his desk and shoved the fives into the case folder. He glanced over at the composite sketch tacked onto the blackboard. Looking at Grimes, he asked, “Anything else?”

  “A few things,” Grimes said, pulling a stack of folders out from under the basket. “I’ve heard from the army on Denny McKay. He was a printer, worked in an intelligence unit that operated out of Japan during the Korean War.”

  “What were you able to find out about his unit?”

  “I made a few phone calls. Seems he worked in a ‘disinformation unit.’ They used to print phony enemy orders, pay records, transfers, that sort of stuff. McKay remained there for the duration.”

  “Was he a printer before he joined the army?”

  “He didn’t join. He was drafted. It seems that he graduated from George Westinghouse Vocational High School where he learned printing.” He passed the folder to the Whip.

  “What else?”

  “I’ve prepared our Quarterly Case Management Study,” Grimes said, passing another folder to the Whip.

  Lucas took out the report, a review of all active cases designed to insure increased supervisory direction and control of investigations. Glancing through the several pages, he thought: more fodder for the Palace Guard, that bureaucracy of self-preservation that had raised busywork to a managerial art form. “I’ll sign this. What else?”

  “That’s it,” Grimes said, leaving the office.

  Lucas spun around in his chair and checked the list of important telephone numbers taped to the wall. He picked up the telephone and dialed the Legal Bureau. A civilian attorney answered. Lucas told him about the dental impressions and the result of the saliva test. The person who had smoked the cigarettes had A-positive blood.

  “And you want to secure a search warrant that will enable you to forcibly take the suspect’s dental impressions – and draw blood,” the lawyer said.

  Here we go again, Lucas thought, picking up on the attorney’s bored and patronizing tone. “Correct.”

  “I’m sure that you’re aware, Lieutenant, that allegations of fact supporting a search warrant may be based upon an officer’s personal knowledge, or upon information and belief, provided that the source of the information and the grounds for the belief are stated.”

  “I know that, Counselor. I’m acting on information and belief, an informer, one John Doe, a person whom I’ve used in the past, someone who has always proved reliable.”

  “Is this informer of yours registered with the department?”

  “Come on, Counselor, you know as well as I do that most informers refuse to go into the register.”

  “Sure I know. But the courts are not interested in what you and I know. PD regulations require informers to be registered with the department. Now, if you try and play games with the court, you could end up having a mighty big problem.”

  “One of my detectives observed the suspect chewing on the same brand of cigarette as was found at the crime scene. And I know from the suspect’s army record that he has the same blood type.”

  “Not enough, Lieutenant. You need something that tends to connect him to the scene.”

  “Thanks,” Lucas said, slamming down the phone.

  Vassos was in the doorway, watching him. Lucas told him what the department lawyer had said.

  “You have strange rules, Teddy. In Greece we would drag McKay in and he would do what we told him to.”

  “Regrettably, we have different rules.”

  “Is there no way to get around these rules of yours?”

  “There are several things we could do. But if we got caught doing them, there’d be a good chance that the case against McKay would go bye-bye. We’ll wait. Good cops need a lot of patience. McKay is going to trip over his prick one day, and I’m going to be there when he does to make sure that he takes the fall.”

  Ulanov poked his head into the office. “Our friend from across the street just called. He wants to meet the both
of us, now. Says he’s got something for you.”

  Leaving the squad room with Vassos and Ulanov, Lucas asked Leone if they had come up with anything on the Burke homicide.

  “Nothing,” Leone said. “We traced Burke’s movements back twenty-four hours before the hit but came up dry. His girlfriend, a debutante from Hoboken, told us that he had an appointment around nine, but she didn’t know with whom. Claims he never talked business with her.”

  “Anyone on the pier see anything?” Lucas asked.

  “Not even the seagulls,” Big Jay replied.

  “Let it slide then. Work on it when you have time,” Lucas said, opening the gate.

  Ulanov parked the unmarked police car on the west side of Park Avenue, in front of the Banco Disicilia. Hands gripping the steering wheel, he people watched. Lucas, in the passenger seat, studied the golden statuary of Jupiter and Juno that adorned the golden clock of the Helmsley Building. Vassos sat in the rear of the car watching a bag lady scavenging for food in a refuse container.

  The radio trumpeted police calls: 10:67, traffic condition, Madison and Five-six; 10:59, alarm of fire, Third and Four-seven.

  “You’re sure that he said he wanted to see both of us?” Lucas asked Ulanov.

  “That’s what the comrade said,” Ulanov said, watching a long-legged woman with a very short skirt cross the avenue.

  Leaning forward and draping his arms over the back of the front seat, Vassos asked Lucas, “Do you know this person well?”

  “Colonel Sergei Nashin is the KGB’s liaison with the NYPD,” Lucas said. “Usually he only wants to meet with Ulanov. But I’ve met with him on several occasions. He’s not a bad guy.”

  “There he is,” Ulanov announced, “on the other side of the street, walking south.”

  “Wait in the car,” Lucas told Vassos.

  Nashin waited on the corner of Forty-sixth and Park until the two detectives had reached him and then crossed the street southward with the two policemen.

  Nashin nodded to Ulanov. “Comrade.”

  “Colonel,” Ulanov responded.

  They strolled through Helmsley Walk East, an arcade that tunneled through the ground floor of the Helmsley Building. They exited onto Forty-fifth, crossed the street, and stood under the vaulted entrance to the Pan Am Building.

  “I love this town,” Nashin said in flawless English.

  “Me too,” Lucas said, admiring the KGB man’s pressed, blue seersucker suit and open-collared blue shirt. Nashin’s youthful face belied his forty-nine years, and his thick flaxen hair gave him a Germanic aspect.

  “I hear the PC is getting out,” Nashin said, his cagey eyes playing the afternoon crowd. He delighted in using NYPD slang when he was with cops.

  “Rumors,” Lucas said. “The police commissioner is always retiring, according to the grapevine.”

  Nashin smiled. “It’s the same in my job. The latest rumor is that the Politburo is pissed off at the director because he was screwing an Olympic gymnast thirty years younger than he.”

  “Hey, that don’t make him a bad person,” Ulanov said.

  Nashin laughingly agreed. “How’s your son, Ivan?”

  “Getting ready to go off to college,” Ulanov said. “And your daughter?”

  “She just finished her first year at Moscow University,” Nashin said proudly. “She thinks she’s smarter than her papa and her mama.” He looked at Lucas. “You should visit the Soviet Union, really. I’d set the whole thing up for you. You’d have a ball, and I’d see to it that it was, ah … on the arm.”

  “Maybe someday,” Lucas said.

  A panhandler approached the trio. Nashin waved him off. “They always seem to have money for booze and cigarettes.”

  “You said that you had something for me,” Lucas said.

  “Let’s walk,” Nashin suggested.

  They backtracked through Helmsley Walk East and strolled up Park Avenue, heading north. At Fiftieth Street they climbed the steps of Saint Bartholomew’s Church and slowly walked through the plaza that ran between the church and its community center. Nashin peeled away from the other two and sat on the stone coping that ran above Fiftieth Street. He placed his hands behind him and leaned back, admiring the church’s stone tracery and tiled dome. “I love church architecture. Either of you ever see the fan vaulting in King’s College Chapel at Cambridge?”

  The detectives said no.

  “You ought to go see it, it’s really incredible.” Taking a small, elegant leather notebook out of his pocket, Nashin said, “Iskur worked for the Allies during the war. Mostly around the Mediterranean. During the Korean War he did some intelligence work in Japan. We don’t know what he did, but we do know that he spent some time there.” He looked at Lucas. “Why are you interested in Iskur?”

  Lucas knew better than to lie to the Soviet policeman. “We have reason to believe that he was involved in smuggling antiquities into this country.”

  “From where?” Nashin asked.

  “Greece,” Lucas said.

  Nashin turned serious. “Iskur has been murdered.”

  “How did you know that?” Lucas asked, trying to smooth the surprised edge of his voice.

  “From the collators,” Nashin said. “We have people in Moscow who spend their days cutting articles out of newspapers and magazines from all over the world. They translate them and then feed them into computers. Some of our people believe that it was no coincidence that Iskur was killed the same day as the Voúla massacre.”

  Lucas looked cautiously at Nashin. “Why do I get the feeling, Sergei, that you have a vested interest in what happened to Iskur?”

  “We are extremely interested in Iskur and his associates,” Nashin said.

  “Why?” Lucas asked.

  “We are a big country, Teddy, with thousands of churches and monasteries scattered through the most isolated regions. All of them are crammed with ancient art. A criminal network is looting our patrimony; we have reason to believe that Iskur was involved.”

  “How do you tie him into it?” Lucas asked.

  “Last year our border guards stopped a truck trying to enter Turkey at Yerevan. According to the papers that the driver and his helper tried to pass, they were delivering potash to Yerevan. For whatever reasons, the guards became suspicious and searched the truck. Hidden inside a false gas tank they found a Cyrillic codex from the eleventh century and a tenth-century Byzantine diadem. Both had been stolen from the monastery at Orsk.”

  “I assume that your people had a talk with the driver and his helper,” Lucas said.

  “Oh, yes. They are both serving thirty-year sentences in a most disagreeable labor camp,” Nashin said.

  “I wish we could send some of our mutts to one of your labor camps,” Lucas said wistfully.

  “Thank you, but we have enough mutts of our own,” Nashin said. “The comrades told our interrogators that they had been paid by a man in Orsk, who sent them to a dealer in Yerevan. There they were provided with forged travel documents and the necessary export papers.”

  “Printed documents?” Lucas asked.

  “Very good quality forgeries. We believe that the counterfeits were made in the States and shipped to the Soviet Union.”

  “Don’t you have enough of your own forgers?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes, we do. But our crooks do not have the high-tech electronic copying machines that you have in the West, nor do they have access to special paper. Our experts tell us that the documents came from the West, probably the States.”

  “What happened to the dealer in Yerevan?” Lucas asked.

  “Some of our people paid him a visit. Some money changed hands and he confided that the eventual destination of the stolen art was Athens.”

  Lucas looked at Nashin. “Orhan Iskur?”

  “You got it, kiddo,” Nashin said.

  “A network of art thieves with Iskur running the operational end,” Lucas said.

  “That is what we believe,” Nashin said. “Turkey, It
aly, and Spain have a similar problem.”

  “What happened to the man who hired the driver and his helper?” Lucas asked.

  “He disappeared before we could arrest him. We’ll catch him, eventually.” Nashin watched several people climb the church steps. “I’ve been authorized to offer you whatever help you might need.”

  “Thanks. I’ll stay in touch, Sergei,” Lucas said, making a move to leave.

  “There is something else,” Nashin said, “Eight years ago a Greek Scylites manuscript depicting Oleg’s campaign against Constantinople was stolen from Saint Andrew’s Church outside of Kiev.” He looked at Ulanov. “Your hometown.”

  Ulanov screwed up his face. “A long time ago, Sergei Sergeyevich.”

  Nashin smiled. “The manuscript resurfaced last year in Rome. A respectable dealer was offering it for sale. We ransomed back what had been stolen from us.”

  “Why didn’t you go into court and sue to get it back?” Lucas asked.

  “It was a political decision. The nomenklatura who decide such matters felt that it would not do for my government to go into a court in Rome and have to admit that we were unable to protect our national treasures. It would have shown, I believe the word was ‘vulnerability.’” He sucked in a deep breath. “We were bamboozled. The manuscript was a forgery.”

  “They steal the original, make copies, and peddle them around the world,” Lucas said.

  Nashin continued wearily. “Our agents went back to the dealer and told him that it was a fake. He returned our money along with his apologies.”

  “Do you think he was in on the scam?” Lucas asked.

  Nashin said carefully, “There is no way of knowing for sure. He claims that he, too, was taken in. Would you care to guess from whom he acquired the manuscript?”

  “Iskur,” Lucas said firmly.

  Nashin nodded. “Let’s stay in touch?”

  “Absolutely,” Lucas said.