Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  “What year was that?”

  “June of ’seventy-nine. I had just turned twenty-five. I’d been home for about three weeks and had visited all my relatives and friends, and I was bored to tears. My father suggested that I go on the dig. Kenneth Wright, a colleague of his from Columbia, was in charge of the excavations. Have you ever been to Vergina?”

  “No I haven’t,” he said, noticing the glimmer in her green eyes.

  She lapsed into Greek. “Vergina is located in the shadows of the Piéria Mountains. The Aliákmon River flows nearby, and at night it’s very romantic. The first time I saw Kenneth he was up on a scaffold studying the frieze of the Royal Tomb. He was gorgeous,” she said, looking down at the shimmering wine. “He was wearing shorts and sandals and he had on a floppy sun hat. In the next few weeks Ken and I worked closely together cataloging the contents of the tomb. At night we’d all walk into Vergina and spend the evening in one of the tavernas. Later we’d stroll back to camp. One by one the lovers would peel away from the rest of us, making their way down to the river.” She stared at the flame, remembering. “One night Kenneth took my hand and led me off toward the river. He didn’t say anything. He really didn’t have to.” She sighed. “We got married five weeks later. It was a civil ceremony. My father refused to attend. He called my marriage to Kenneth an act of immaturity, said that it could never work. I tried reasoning with him, but he refused to speak to me. Anyway, Kenneth and I moved back to New York. And then I accepted my position at the Morgan. We moved into one of Columbia’s subsidized apartments on the Upper West Side.”

  “You never heard from your father?”

  “He wouldn’t answer my letters or take any of my phone calls. I was distraught over it, but there was nothing that I could do to get him to accept the marriage.”

  “And then what happened?”

  Again her brooding eyes looked out across the river. “The first three years were wonderful. Then? I wanted a baby. Whenever I brought up the subject, Kenneth would say he was too old for parenting and we’d end up in a fight. I did a foolish thing. I stopped taking the pill without telling him. When I became pregnant, he was furious with me. He demanded that I have an abortion. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  “Overnight I became Kenneth’s enemy. He accused me of ruining his life: all of a sudden I’d become a pariah. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me.

  “Then, when I was in my third month and miserable, I dragged myself home from the obstetrician one Saturday and found Kenneth in the living room with one of his graduate students.” She brushed tears from her face. “He was screwing her, right there in our living room, on our sofa. I ran away from the house and never returned. I went to my aunt’s in Astoria. Kenneth and I were divorced shortly after that.”

  “And the baby?”

  “I don’t want to discuss that, not now.” A desperate cheerfulness perked up her face. “What’s your story, Lieutenant?”

  A faint smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Your everyday American love saga: married and divorced.”

  “Children?”

  “Regrettably, no.” He checked the time. “It’s almost eleven. I’d better be going.”

  They pushed away from the table. She walked with him to the door. “Thank you for dinner, and for the conversation.” He went to shake her hand good night.

  She stepped into his arms and kissed his cheek. “Good night, Teddy.”

  14

  Belmont Widener looked down Seventeenth Street for a car with the familiar triple-X sign in the windshield. He had telephoned the car service at six and told them that he wanted to be picked up at eight. It was now 8:10. The heavy beat of rock music from a nearby club irritated him. Gramercy used to be a quiet and even genteel neighborhood, he thought. Now, with Yuppie restaurants opening on every other corner and condos blooming everywhere, its charm and atmosphere had been ruined.

  Looking across the street at Union Square Park, Belmont thought that at least the real estate boom had gotten rid of the junkies. He checked his wristwatch again. His dinner date was for 8:30 and he did not want to be late. He had been surprised and delighted to receive an invitation from his dear friend to have dinner at Maison Blanche.

  Belmont patted his hair, checking to see that his ringlets were still all in place. He had taken extra care dressing for this dinner. He wore his white silk suit, complemented by a blue shirt with bold stripes and an oversized blue bow tie.

  As he waited Belmont remembered how they had met. In retrospect, he realized that their meeting eighteen years ago had not been a chance encounter. His friend’s motive had obviously been to get him to drop the criminal charges against Iskur and that disgusting man, Yiotas. But that was all in the past now; the important thing was that they had met.

  Belmont had been sitting at the bar in London’s Imperial Hotel, sipping a whiskey and soda, when he glanced to his left and saw him standing nearby. Belmont was immediately taken with the man’s almost excessive handsomeness – then he saw the magnificent gold ring on his hand.

  The stranger became aware of Belmont’s interest and, taking his drink with him, came over and stood next to him. He put down his drink and slid off his ring, placing it down on the bar in front of Belmont, and said in a pleasant, mellow voice, “Emperor Caracalla had the coin struck around 215 A.D.”

  Belmont, his pulse accelerating, picked up the ring.

  “The scene on the reverse shows Meleager and Alexander hunting boar.”

  Belmont was brought rudely back to the present when an Oldsmobile sedan stopped in front of him. “You’re late,” he said coldly, sliding into the backseat. The car drove off toward Broadway. A rented Ford sedan with Connecticut license plates backed out of a parallel parking space on the side of Union Square Park. Leone was driving; Big Jay sat in the passenger seat; perched in the rear, with his arms crossed over the top of the front seat and his burning eyes fixed on the departing taillights, was Andreas Vassos.

  15

  Frustration gnawed at Colonel Dimitri Pappas. His investigation of Voúla had stalled at Yiannis Yiotas. No matter what avenue he went up, he kept dead-ending at Yiotas. There must be something he had overlooked, some witness he had failed to locate, something he had neglected to do.

  He left home an hour early that morning to do what he always did whenever he felt discouraged by a lack of progress in a case: wander around ancient Athens, allowing his mind to sift the facts, searching for a new beginning.

  Driving his unmarked car along Amalias Street in the center of Athens, he reached the part where the street opened into a large busy triangle and saw to his right the imposing columns of the Arch of Hadrian, the monument erected in 132 A.D. to mark the boundary of the ancient city and the start of “New Athens.”

  He steered the car through the heavy traffic, maneuvering it toward the curb. The traffic policeman, on duty in the middle of the avenue, saw him and watched with an expression of mixed incredulity and anger. When Pappas parked in the forbidden zone, the policeman snatched the white pith helmet off his head and ran screaming over to Pappas. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Move that car. Now!”

  Pappas dug into the pocket of his trousers and came out with his credentials. “I won’t be long.”

  “Yes, sir,” the traffic man said, returning the helmet to his head and retreating back to his post.

  Shoulders hunched, hands plunged deep into his pockets, Pappas strolled the relic’s external boundary, pausing occasionally to kick a stone. One side of the arch bore the inscription in classical Greek: THIS IS ATHENS, ANCIENT CITY OF THESEUS; the other side was inscribed: THIS IS THE CITY OF HADRIAN AND NOT OF THESEUS.

  Why had the case stalled? Pappas asked himself over and over again. Iskur’s calls outside the country suggested the involvement of many more people in this confederacy of thieves. Why hadn’t he been able to come up with any in Greece? He believed Yiotas had told him everything that he knew about Iskur. He also believed that Iskur was too
smart to have confided in a person like Yiotas. Still … There had to be some unpicked morsels inside Yiotas’s mind, something he knew without realizing its importance.

  Pappas angrily kicked the dirt in the circle around the arch. He suddenly realized that the only person connected to Iskur who he hadn’t interviewed was Nina Pazza, Iskur’s mistress. He hadn’t bothered with her because he’d assumed that she was just another one of Iskur’s objects, to be used and displayed in public. Damn! She should have been questioned. How did he knew what their relationship was? Policemen did not have the luxury of assuming anything. In all the years he’d been in the department, he still hadn’t been able to overcome that damn chauvinistic Greek attitude toward women. That was a serious flaw in someone in his line of work. He’d telephone her this morning and go to see her. But first he thought he’d go see Yiotas and replow some old ground, Pappas decided, wondering how Yiotas was enjoying his isolation cell in the basement of police headquarters.

  Two hours later, after leaving an exhausted and frightened Yiotas in his cell, Pappas stopped at an open-front stand and ate three souvlakis and then drove to Nina Pazza’s section of town.

  Siesta was just ending and tourists were lining up for the funicular, which would take them to the top of Lykavitos Hill. Pappas parked his unmarked car two blocks away from the Aristodimou Street apartment and walked. It would not be smart to give a witness the opportunity to connect him to the small car that he drove.

  He was anxious to meet Iskur’s mistress, to see for himself if she was worth an apartment in one of Athen’s more exclusive areas. She was. He had expected to see a beautiful woman in expensive clothes, but was not prepared for the sight of the Eurasian beauty who opened the door. “Nina Pazza?” he asked, unaware of the slightly stunned expression on his face.

  She smiled. “Colonel Pappas, how nice to meet you.”

  Long black hair cascaded down her back. She had perfectly denned cheeks and almond skin; a white caftan flowed over her tall, ripe body, increasing her radiant sensuality.

  He walked past her into a large room splendidly decorated in white wicker; carefully placed antique pieces – a late Roman head, a broken torso in gleaming black stone – were artfully placed around the room on small, low tables. “You were Orhan Iskur’s mistress?” he asked, noticing the silk damask walls of the dining area and the Tabriz rugs.

  “Yes, I was,” she answered forthrightly, sitting in a wide-armed chair.

  “You’re an Italian citizen?” he asked, unable to stop staring at her exotic beauty.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Your passport, please.”

  An arched eyebrow, a sneering smile. “Of course.” She shifted in her seat and reached into the pocket of her caftan, pulling out her official documents. “I thought that you might want to see it, so I had it ready for you. Policemen seem to enjoy examining passports. As you can see my other papers are there too, my visa and my resident card.”

  This one doesn’t scare, he thought, checking her travel history. “Your Greek is excellent.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  He managed a little smile. “I see that you don’t have a work permit.”

  “I don’t work, Colonel. Orhan was an exceedingly generous man.”

  “You’ve done a lot of traveling.”

  “We both enjoyed visiting other countries; Orhan did not like to travel alone.”

  “How long had you been with him?”

  “Ten years. We met in Rome when I was sixteen.”

  “Didn’t your parents object to you going off with a man so much older than you were?”

  “They had no say in the matter, Colonel. My mother was a Japanese graduate student doing research on Castiglione when she met my father in Rome. He is an Italian philanderer and one of the most hateful men in the world. He never married my mother. She died shortly after I was born, and he consigned his mistake to a convent orphanage.”

  He handed her back her documents. “What can you tell me about Iskur’s business dealings?”

  “Nothing. I can only tell you that he was a kind, gentle man who trusted no one. Orhan confided in very few people.”

  “Evidently he trusted you.”

  “To an extent he did, yes. I guess I was the closest thing he had to a friend. But the only thing he ever told me about his business was that he made and sold souvenirs.”

  “What were his interests?”

  “Classical art and literature. He was an extremely well-read man.”

  “And business associates?”

  She shrugged.

  “His family?”

  “He had an ex-wife and three grown sons. He’d go to visit his children from time to time, but he never took me on such trips, of course.”

  Looking around the apartment, Pappas asked, “He lived here with you?”

  “Yes, but I suspect he had another place somewhere.”

  “Why do you believe that?”

  “Because sometimes he’d be gone for days and when he returned he would be wearing different clothes, ones I’d never seen before.”

  “Another woman?”

  She answered with swift assurance. “I saw to it that he had nothing left for another woman.”

  I’m sure you did, he said to himself, then spoke aloud: “What did he tell you about his army days?”

  “Sometimes when he had a little too much wine he’d reminisce about those days, his friends, and what it was like to do intelligence work, but never anything of earth-shattering importance. As I’m sure you do know, he was born in Turkey. His family moved here when he was a boy and settled in Macedonia, around Kavalla.”

  “I know. They came with the Turkish influx of the twenties.”

  “He served with the Greek forces in Korea. I don’t know what he did during World War Two.”

  “Did he ever mention the names of any of the men he served with?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Pappas got up and wandered idly around the room. He stopped at a bust of a woman, a life-sized, elongated face with wide, seductive eyes.

  “The Queen of Sheba,” she said, coming over to him. “She ruled one of the five kingdoms that flourished in the thirteenth century B.C. in Arabia. It’s said that she traveled to Jerusalem and gave Solomon a hundred and twenty talents of gold and spices.”

  Running his hand over the head, he asked, “Is it real?”

  “A copy. Orhan was the king of the fakes.”

  Pappas moved back to his seat and took the sketch and photograph out of his briefcase. “Do you know this man?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “Someone who took a taxi from the airport to Iskur’s office the day he was murdered.”

  She restudied both. “I don’t know him. I’m sure.”

  He reached back into the briefcase, took out the photograph that had arrived last night from New York, and showed it to her.

  “No, I don’t recognize him either.”

  “He’s an American named Trevor Hughes. I thought you might have had some contact with him.”

  “I’m afraid not, Colonel. I’ve never met the man and I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Do you know who killed Iskur or why he was killed?”

  She remained quite composed under his steady gaze. “No, I don’t.” She got up and walked out to the terrace. Gossiping women talked from balcony to balcony. Their buzzing increased when Nina stepped outside.

  Pappas followed her.

  “I loved him, you know,” she said, looking down at the narrow street.

  “I’m sure that you did.” He paused, and asked casually, “You didn’t know any of his associates, but you did know Yiannis Yiotas.”

  “He’s a chauffeur, an errand boy.”

  “I want to search your apartment.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then I would give you five days to settle your affairs and leave Greece.”

  A shadow of alarm passed over her fa
ce. “You can’t do that.”

  “I can, and I would.”

  Her color deepened with anger. She tossed back her hair, smoothing it at the sides with her palms. “I’d be happy to let you search my home, Colonel.”

  For the next two hours he looked through closets, drawers, bookcases, vanities, and tables. He looked under the rugs and inside the appliances. He emptied closets, piling clothes on the bed, searching each article, including the shoes. Finding nothing, he pushed the pile aside and sat on the edge of the bed, absentmindedly opening the drawer of the end table. He took out the Athens-Piraeus telephone directory and the Blue Book, the business-tourist directory. Holding them, he looked around the bedroom. “You lived with a phantom.”

  Wearing a satisfied smile, she said, “That is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you, Colonel.”

  He put the book down on the bed, got up, and slowly walked out into the living room, around the dining area, out on the terrace, and back into the bedroom. She’s a cool one, he thought. No man, no matter how secretive he is, lives without personal articles in his home. She must have gotten rid of everything. Which means that there is something that she is trying to hide. I’m going to have to take a close look at this Nina Pazza, he thought, looking down at the book. He saw a white border showing between the blue pages of the Blue Book. He opened the book to the page and removed a black-and-white photograph. Three young men posed in front of a Shinto shrine. The lens had captured Japanese couples in the background strolling in a park at cherry blossom time. He showed her the picture. Her surprise was genuine, “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “That’s Orhan on the right, but who are the other two?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And Pappas knew that neither of the other two men looked like the composite sketch or the passport photo. So how on earth would he be able to identify them?

  Piraeus was a city of three harbors and four police stations. It took Pappas the better part of an hour to make the drive from Nina Pazza’s apartment to the station on Vassilissis Georgious 1. He could have telephoned in his instructions, but he had learned early on that if you wanted to make sure things were done the way you wanted them to be done, you had better make the arrangements in person.