Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  The policemen walked away from the plaza. Two fashionably dressed women passed as they were descending the steps. “Good afternoon, ladies,” Nashin said, smiling at them.

  “Gentlemen,” the taller of the two women responded good-naturedly.

  “I have to get back to the office,” Nashin said, shaking Lucas’s hand; then, with a mischievous grin on his face: “Say good-bye to Major Vassos for me.”

  Adele Matrazzo’s body had become a swollen black mass. Larvae squirmed over her lifeless eyes; insect eggs lined the corners of her mouth and nostrils.

  Lucas, Vassos, and Ivan Ulanov stood amid the bizarre activity that homicide engenders. The stench of decaying flesh infested the house. Every ground-floor window had been thrown open; plates sprinkled with disinfectant crystals were scattered about. The big-screen television was still on, the sound turned down.

  Seven-two Squad detectives gathered around the body; another day, another case. The heavy noon heat didn’t make it any easier. Lucas suggested closing the windows and turning on the big window air conditioner full blast.

  “What the fuck is it?” asked one detective.

  “Looks like a long piece of wire,” observed another.

  A third announced: “It’s a string from a stringed instrument. Most likely from a violin.”

  “No shit?” said the first. “It sure cut the hell out of her neck.”

  Sandy White, the Seven-two Whip, a lean veteran with a craggy face, spotted Lucas and the others and came over to them.

  “A friend of yours, Teddy?” White asked, pointing to the body on the floor.

  “I interviewed her regarding a nothing case my squad is carrying,” Lucas lied. “I left my card with her.”

  “I found it; that’s why I called you,” White said. “Why don’t we get some fresh air?”

  They abandoned the crime scene for the sunlit world of the living. Once outside, Lucas introduced the Seven-two lieutenant to Vassos and Ulanov.

  “Greek, hmmm?” White said, eyeing the major.

  “Yes. I am here on an exchange program,” Vassos said.

  “Exchange program?” White echoed disbelievingly. He turned to Lucas. “Why you interested in my murder victim?”

  “We’re looking for a cousin of hers in connection with a larceny,” Lucas said.

  “What’s the hump’s name?” White asked.

  “Paolo Matrazzo,” Lucas said.

  White asked, “Is he connected?”

  “An independent,” Lucas said, “No tie-in with the wise-guys.”

  White silently ran the name through his memory, then said, “Paolo Matrazzo? Never heard of him.”

  Lucas asked White what his detectives had come up with on the initial canvass. White told him that the victim had been strangled, and that there was no sign of a forced entry into the house. “We figure she’s dead maybe twenty-four hours, no more than forty-eight. It’s hard to tell in this heat, they melt fast. We interviewed the people living in the immediate vicinity. The neighbors did her shopping, but none of them knew shit about her. A Mrs. O’Rourke,” – he pointed to the green house across the street – “she and the victim used to have tea together a few times a week. She’s the one who discovered the body. She don’t know anything about her either.”

  Lucas glanced at the O’Rourke house in time to see someone duck behind the curtains.

  “… a retired schoolteacher with no known relatives. I’ve sent one of my men to the Board of Ed to have a look at her folder,” White said.

  “No one saw anyone enter or leave the house?” Lucas asked, glancing across the street in time to catch a glimpse of someone ducking back from the same window.

  “No one saw nothing,” White said.

  Lucas turned his head slightly so that his peripheral vision could take in the O’Rourke house. He could see a woman peeking out, watching them.

  “Ya’know, Teddy, if you want this case, I’ll be more than happy to bang out a five and transfer it to your squad,” White said. “My intuition tells me it ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Thanks, pal. But I’m carrying enough open homicides. I don’t need another one to drag down my clearances.” Lucas dropped his voice. “Any objections if I have a talk with the O’Rourke woman?”

  “Be my guest,” White said.

  “Wait here,” Lucas told Vassos and Ulanov.

  “Mrs. O’Rourke?” Lucas asked when she opened the door. He produced his shield and I.D. card.

  She was a short woman with gray hair pulled back and held in place with a rubber band. Her face was alive with barely suppressed excitement. She wore a peach-colored housecoat, white anklets, and sandals. She studied Lucas’s photo identification card, comparing it with the smiling face in front of her. “I told the other policeman everything that I know.”

  “A moment of your time, please?”

  “Well, I guess it’ll be all right. After all, Adele was a dear friend. God rest her soul.” She stepped aside to admit him into her house.

  He walked into a cheerless room filled with overstuffed furniture swaddled in plastic. He lowered himself down into a yellow armchair. “It’s a lovely neighborhood,” he began.

  “It used to be a grand neighborhood,” she complained, “but it’s changing, for the worse, if you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do,” he said, and for the next several minutes smilingly endured her rambling monologue before he felt she had relaxed enough for him to ask, “Have you lived here a long time, Mrs. O’Rourke?”

  “Himself and I raised six children in this house. My husband passed on twelve years ago, God rest his soul.”

  “I guess you must know everyone on the block.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said proudly. “Mrs. Cohen – she lives three doors down – moved in three years ago.” Leaning forward, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “She keeps kosher, if you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Once a week,” she continued in her conniving tone, “a man who has those funny strings that religious Jewish men wear around their waists visits Mrs. Cohen.”

  “Those fringes are called tsitsis.”

  “Well, I can tell you, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he played with Mrs. Cohen’s tsitsis, if you know what I mean?”

  “I think I do, yes.” Leaning forward in his seat, he went on: “I understand that you and Adele had tea together a few times a week.”

  “Yes, but we never discussed anything about her private life. I’m not one to pry, you know.”

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “Mostly she listened to my problems. Adele was a very good listener. One of my daughters-in-law doesn’t believe in cooking, working, or cleaning. Humph! The modern woman. I tell you, my Johnny is forever buying that no-account wife of his presents. No one ever buys me presents. And I’ll tell you something else, Adele agreed with me. No one ever bought her presents either, except that one at Christmas. And I’ll tell you something else, too …”

  “What one at Christmas?” he asked, on the edge of his seat.

  “The television. The one with the big screen in the parlor. Adele told me that it was a gift from her wonderful cousin.”

  “What cousin?”

  “I don’t know. She just said in passing it was a gift from her cousin. And then she added ‘my wonderful cousin.’”

  “Did she ever mention any other member of her family?”

  She thought; shook her head no.

  “Did you ever see anyone visit her?”

  “I play bingo and go to exercise classes most days at the senior citizen center, so I’m usually not home.”

  Lucas retreated into his own thoughts. Adele Matrazzo had told him that she had had two cousins: Anthony, who had been killed in Guadalcanal, and Paolo Jr., who had taught art history at NYU and had died in 1968, leaving behind a wife and two children. He hadn’t checked out any of that information. It hadn’t seemed relevant at the time. He got
up from his seat and thanked Mrs. O’Rourke.

  Walking out of the house into the bright sunlight, he saw the morgue attendants carrying Adele Matrazzo’s body to the meat wagon. Her shroud was a dark green body bag, compliments of the City of New York.

  Waiting the following morning in front of the stone mansion on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, Teddy Lucas watched the passing parade. First came a file of roped-together nursery-school children who were shepherded by several teenage girls. Next came a dog walker struggling with ten leashed canines.

  He checked the time and saw that he was twelve minutes too early for his nine-thirty appointment with Katina. He had telephoned her late yesterday afternoon after he returned to the Squad from the Matrazzo crime scene. “Is there some way that we can check on Paolo Matrazzo Junior’s academic credentials to see if he really existed?” he had asked her. She had said yes and they arranged to meet the next day.

  Lucas had shaven carefully this morning. He wore a paisley tie with a white button-down shirt, a brown sports jacket, and his beige slacks. He wanted to look his best for her. The imaginary insects in his stomach began to buzz when he saw her hurrying along Seventy-eighth Street. He quickly admired her pale yellow dress and black leather pumps. Her large yellow earrings and the way her hair was pulled back in an arrangement that accentuated her beautiful, high-cheekboned face. He wanted to rush up to her and tell her how wonderful she looked, but instead he just jerked his thumb at the stately building and said, “Some shack.”

  “The Duke Mansion,” she explained, looking at the facade. “The family left it to New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. If Matrazzo Junior received his Ph.D. from NYU, his doctoral dissertation will be on file here.”

  They climbed the steps and entered the vestibule. She signed for both of them in the visitors’ log at the security desk.

  He looked around at the enormous marble reception hall just beyond the vestibule and felt like a tourist. An elaborate curving marble staircase with a gilt-and-black wrought-iron bannister dominated the hall.

  “Shall we walk up, or ride?” she asked.

  “Walk. I want to see as much of this place as I can.”

  A quarter of the way up he stopped to admire a wall relief of putty, cupidlike children without wings. Climbing farther, he paused to look at a tapestry hanging on the stairwell’s wall. When they reached the second-floor landing, he leaned over the railing to get a better look at it.

  The library was at the end of a long hallway. They moved inside and went over to the blue-labeled card catalog. “Do you have any idea when he was supposed to have written his dissertation?” she asked quietly.

  “No.”

  “They’re filed by year and then alphabetically, by author.”

  “Adele told us that his brother Anthony was killed in the war. So why don’t we assume that the brothers were about the same age and begin with 1935.”

  She slid out a drawer and flicked index cards to the year. Some minutes later she had worked her way through to 1943. “He’s not here.”

  “Adele might have lied to us.”

  “I did not have that feeling when she was talking to us,” Katina said. “I thought that she was proud of Junior’s accomplishments.”

  Lucas mulled over the problem. Researchers moved about the racks of books; others worked silently at long tables.

  “Paolo Junior might have gone back to school on the GI bill after the war,” he said.

  “Makes sense,” she said, flipping index cards up to the year 1949, her fingers dancing over the tops to the Ms. “Teddy, look.”

  The call numbers were typed on top of the card and were followed on the next line by the title of the dissertation: “In Defense of Alexander’s Iliad.” By Paolo Matrazzo, Jr.

  Five minutes later they were alone inside a small reading room, sitting at a square table. Above them three stacked circular catwalks lined with books led upward to a skylight of opaque gray glass. A faded lavender binder lay on the table between them. He opened the cover. Brown age marks stained the edges of the pages. She inched her chair closer to his; they read together while she turned the pages. She went on to tell him how some scholars considered the casket-copy to be apocryphal, a fable made up to add to the legend of Alexander.

  Matrazzo’s thesis defended the existence of the casket-copy. Katina gave Lucas a detailed explanation of original and secondary sources and told him how Matrazzo had cited Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew and Alexander’s official historian in Asia, as the primary source for the world’s knowledge of the existence of the casket-copy.

  Lucas looked up. A woman was on the lowest catwalk, consulting her call slip as her finger slid over the spines of books. Very quietly he asked, “Could the casket-copy be forged?”

  “On papyrus scrolls?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would think that very unlikely. The aging of the papyrus. The ink. And the scrolls? A fake would never be able to withstand scientific scrutiny.”

  “Suppose a buyer accepted it as genuine without having its authenticity verified?”

  She shrugged in disbelief. “I cannot believe anyone would be that stupid.”

  “Greed makes the smartest people foolish, Dr. Wright. It’s the con man’s staunchest ally.” He shifted in his chair to face her. One of his knees got between hers accidentally. “There are many people in this world who are heavy with money but also short on brains.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed with a warm smile.

  “Let me give you a scenario. An art dealer with an impeccable reputation, and a captivating foreign accent, offers a one-of-a-kind antiquity, one that has, regrettably, been stolen from another country. So it lacks the necessary export papers; thus the prospective buyer can’t have provenance checked.”

  “And this wealthy buyer thought he, or she, was getting a bargain.”

  “You got it,” he said, aware of the tiny ringlets of fine hair around her ears. “How does the art world stay informed about stolen objects?”

  “Trade publications, insurance bulletins, word of mouth. And then there are the flyers from the FBI and Interpol.”

  Lucas looked up at the skylight and did not speak for a minute or so, his expression serious and thoughful. “I wonder.”

  “What?”

  “I get the feeling that there is someone out there laughing at me. And I’m also wondering if …”

  “If what?”

  “Nothing, it’s too farfetched. Can we meet later today?”

  “It will take me most of the day to research his writings. Why don’t you and Andreas come to my apartment tonight around seven. I’ll make us a light dinner and we can go over whatever I come up with on Dr. Matrazzo.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She wrote her address down on the back of a call slip and handed it to him. “Where is Andreas?”

  “He had an urgent call from his embassy.”

  A gray cloud of pigeons landed around the fountain in Lincoln Center. Across the street in Ficco’s, Elisabeth Syros sipped espresso while she sat in the front row. Her cowboy shirt had leather fringes running down the sleeve; her brown-and-white boots not only gave her an extra two inches in height, but also complemented her western-style jeans. Her wrists and fingers were gleaming with silver Navajo jewelry.

  Sipping the strong coffee, her hungry eyes followed a long-legged beauty passing the restaurant. Caught up in a sudden erotic reverie, she licked her lips and unconsciously put her hand between her legs where a wonderful warmth began to spread out. Aroused, her nipples showed their points even through the thick denim of her shirt. Like her ancient ancestors, Elisabeth Syros loved both men and women, but she preferred the latter.

  One hand gripping the railing, Vassos edged his way into the aisle and squeezed into the empty chair at her tiny table. Beckoning to the waiter on the other side of the railing, he ordered espresso. She slid a folded slip of paper over to him. “This arrived in the pouch. It’s from Pa
ppas. Iskur’s telephone calls,” she said in Greek.

  Vassos unfolded the paper and studied the list of calls. They were printed out alphabetically by country, followed by the cities within the country, followed by the numbers called within each city. The listings covered calls made to England, Greece, Italy, Turkey, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The majority of the calls to the United States were to a 212 number in Manhattan. “Do we know whose telephone numbers these are?”

  Elisabeth passed another slip of paper over to him. The waiter came and, stretching his arm over the railing, handed Vassos his espresso. When the waiter had gone, Vassos removed the hand that was covering the slip of paper, picked it up, and studied what was written on it. Each telephone number had the subscriber listed below the digits. The frequently called 212 number belonged to a Brandt Industries. It had the same address as The Den, Denny McKay’s Ninth Avenue headquarters. He folded both slips and put them in his shirt pocket. “Anything else?”

  They continued to speak in Greek.

  “Pappas has located the man who did Iskur’s legwork,” she confided. “His name is Yiannis Yiotas. He’s in custody and has admitted making the arrangements, but he denies knowing what Iskur was planning.”

  Vassos ran a finger over one of her rings, a silver band with a turquoise stone. “Iskur took his orders from someone in the States.”

  “Pappas has come up with a name.”

  His face grew stern. “Who?”

  “According to Interpol, seventeen years ago in London Yiotas and Iskur tried to sell a fake antique to a tourist who turned out to have been a dealer. He had both of them arrested. Then, without any explanation, the American refused to go forward with the court case and the charges were dropped.”

  “The dealer’s name?” he demanded.

  “Belmont E. Widener.”

  Chief of Detectives Tim Edgeworth was standing by the window of his office contemplating the panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline when Lucas entered. He waved the lieutenant into a chair. “Any progress on the Greek caper?”

  “Several things are beginning to take shape,” Lucas said, sitting in one of the three chairs arranged in front of the desk. “I want to take four of my men off the chart to work with Major Vassos and me. That’s going to mean telling them the nature of the investigation.”