Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  The search would be conducted outward from the center of the store, in straight lines out along the spokes of an imaginary wheel. Teams were assigned to each of the spokes.

  “It’s open,” radioed the key man.

  Pappas and the lieutenant entered the darkened store at 3:24 A.M. A team quickly followed them and installed a black cloth over the window.

  The lights were switched on. The interior was long and narrow and crammed with furniture, clocks, stelae, and pedestal busts of gods and warriors. In the rear six steps led up to a balcony that served as an office.

  Search teams entered and went about their tasks. One team climbed up to the office and began to empty the desk and file cabinets. A woman member of the team put a self-stick label identifying what had been removed in the exact spot where the item had stood. This was done so that the object could be put back in exactly the same spot. An aluminum table was set up and each item was removed, then photographed. Teams moved gingerly out along the radii, searching everything within the confines of the spokes. Pappas and Kanakis remained in the front of the store, observing the Special Operations policemen do what they had been trained to do.

  One of the teams removed all the electrical fixtures; some members of the unit probed walls, ceilings, and floors with a magnetic box that registered hollow spaces. In the building’s lobby the firemen relaxed, waiting for the word to return to quarters; their part of the charade was over.

  A policewoman dressed in jeans and a UCLA sweatshirt and sneakers crawled between a chest and a commode, over to a long case clock topped by an allegorical bronze figure representing Time. She ran her hand over the front and around to the sides. Squeezing into the cramped space between the clock and the commode, she lay on her right side and stretched her arm between the wall and the back of the clock. Running her hand over the smooth wood she felt an almost imperceptible crack. A ridge? A joining? “Someone give me a flashlight,” she requested. A policeman twisted his way through the furniture over to her and passed down a light. She aimed the beam behind the clock and made out the outline of a panel fitted into its base. Looking for a latch of some kind and finding none, she transferred the light to her left hand and, throwing the light over the back of the clock, tried to dig out the panel with her nails. “Shit, I broke a nail.” She studied the panel, trying to determine how to get it open. “A nail file,” she called out.

  The policeman who had given her the flashlight repeated her request, and a policewoman came over to him and gave him a nail file, which he passed down to the policewoman lying on the floor. She worked the blade into the crack and began prying out the panel. After loosening it, she pulled it free and leaned it up against the wall. Maneuvering her hand inside the clock, she felt the stiff binding of buckram-covered ledgers. Contorting her body, she worked out three books. A big smile on her pretty face, she passed them up to Lieutenant Kanakis. The rapid clicking sounds of high-speed camera shutters soon shattered the eerie stillness that had fallen on the antiques store.

  With the pages of the ledgers photographed and everything returned to its proper place, Kanakis ordered his men out. The blackout curtain was taken down and folded; the grill pulled across the front of the store, and the padlock returned to its rightful place.

  Othonos Street was reopened to traffic at 4:45 A.M.

  Colonel Pappas returned to his office to await the development of the film, and to try to get some sleep. He left instructions with the night duty officer to awaken him as soon as the film was ready, then collapsed on the leather couch and fell into a deep sleep.

  A harsh sound roused him, causing him to spring up and dash barefooted for the phone. “They’re ready, sir,” a woman’s soft voice said.

  “Thank you.” He fell heavily into the chair. “I’m too damn old for this kind of life,” he muttered to his wiggling feet on the cold floor. He was uncomfortably aware that he had forgotten to bring fresh socks and underwear from home.

  “I thought you might need some coffee,” the duty officer said, coming in with a tray. She had pretty eyes and full lips. A sergeant at thirty. The new breed, he thought, watching her put down the coffee. I bet she has extra underpants and stockings in her locker. “Thank you.”

  She smiled and left the office, returning shortly with a clump of folders. She put them down on his desk, asked if there would be anything else, and left.

  Pappas dumped the contents of the folders onto his desk, separating the business records from the photographs. He propped one of the surveillance photos of Nina Pazza and Ann Bryce against the desk lamp. Next to it he added one of Trevor Hughes and another of the three men posing in front of a Shinto shrine. The cast of characters was getting bigger, he mused, draining the bitter sediment from the bottom of his cup. For the next hour he studied copies of the ledgers. The entries in the first column appeared to be abbreviated names of artwork and countries. The next column listed the dates the items were shipped to the United States. He looked up from the page, wondering why they sent art to the States and then had it shipped back. The third column showed the date that the item was returned to Greece followed by a circled number, usually a 3, 4, or 5. He noted that in every instance the merchandise was sent from Greece to Brandt Industries in NYC. What did the circled numbers stand for? Fishing through the invoices, he found many recorded shipments of souvenirs and toys from Brandt Industries to Delos Antiques.

  Trying to decipher unfamiliar business records with an exhausted mind just doesn’t work, he thought. His tongue, sour from too much coffee, pushed grounds out of his teeth. His eyelids started to fall shut. Placing his head down on folded arms, he gave in to his fatigue. After a while he felt a soft warmth envelop him and he dreamed of the first time he made love to his wife. Pappas felt his prick stretching into a hard shaft. He asked himself if ancient policemen got as horny on night duties, wondered if he was awake or sleeping. Then he felt firm, relaxing hands caressing his shoulders. He was sure that he was not dreaming so he opened his eyes and saw the photos of records scattered all over his desk. He sat up slowly, conscious of the light summer blanket over his shoulders.

  “I didn’t mean to awaken you, Colonel,” she said, “but I worried that you might catch a cold.”

  “Thank you,” he said to the duty officer, gathering the blanket at his neck.

  “I’ll be outside,” she said, leaving the room, her maternal instincts satisfied.

  His improvised cape secured around his shoulders, Pappas reached out and pressed the start button of the tape recorder. Nina Pazza’s latest telephone conversations flowed from the machine. Ann Bryce had telephoned to thank her for a wonderful afternoon. “It was marvelous,” Nina agreed. “We must do it again, soon.”

  “Please, please.”

  They laughed.

  The next call was from a travel agent. Nina was booked first class tomorrow on Olympic Flight 641, leaving Athens at 12:55, arriving Kennedy 4:15 New York time. The agent informed her that she had an open-return ticket and that her reservation had been confirmed by the Plaza Hotel.

  Pappas listened to the clicks as she made a transatlantic call. Outside he could hear people on the morning shift coming down the hall and passing his closed door. A man answered in English. “Hello.”

  “Belmont, it’s Nina.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” she answered, and went on to tell when her flight would arrive and where she would be staying.

  “I’ll meet you,” he said, and hung up.

  Just a curt conversation between friends. He’d been a policeman long enough to recognize the special intimacy of thieves. Scooping up the photographs that leaned against the desk lamp, he shut off the recorder and hurried from his office, dropping the blanket to the floor.

  Yiannis Yiotas, his trousers gathered at his ankles, was sitting on the stainless steel toilet contemplating his lace-less shoes when the cell door swung open and Pappas marched in.

  In an embarrassed flurry Yiotas made a hasty effort
to pull up his trousers.

  “You needn’t stand,” Pappas said, lowering himself to the bunk. “We’re pretty informal around here.” Sniffing the air, he added, “I see you’re using a new after-shave.” He held out a photograph taken at the Everyday Café. “Who are these women?”

  “The one with her back to the window is Nina Pazza, and the other one is the lady from the antiques store.” Yiotas crossed his palms over his groin.

  “What antiques store?”

  “Delos on Othonos Street. On Wednesdays whenever Nina and Orhan were together I’d drive them there. I could see them talking to her through the window.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did they ever meet anyone else in the store?”

  “Sometimes the three of them would leave and meet a man in the Albert Café and have lunch.”

  “Who was the man?”

  “I don’t know. He wasn’t a Greek. Maybe English or American.”

  Pappas showed him a photo of Trevor Hughes.

  “That’s him.”

  Pappas sprang up from the bunk and left the cell. Moving down the corridor toward the elevator, he heard the clank of the steel door closing and thought: One down.

  Back in his office, he picked up the blanket and draped it around his shoulders, then sat behind his desk. He picked up the telephone receiver and dialed the international access code, the country code, the city code, and the number Andreas Vassos had sent him. After a series of metallic clanging sounds and a tidal wave of rushing air, he heard a ring and a gruff voice answer, “Lieutenant Lucas, Sixteenth Squad.”

  So, Pappas thought gleefully, they have to work on Sundays, too.

  16

  “People with American passports move to your left, all others go to your right,” two immigration agents instructed the deplaning passengers from Olympic Flight 641. Coming off the moving stairs, the travelers flowed along a short passage that fed into the immigration checkpoint, an auditorium-sized room with manned booths.

  A very short, slight man dressed in civilian clothes and wearing oversized aviator glasses with yellow tinted lenses moved among the foreign travelers. “Have your passports, visas, and landing cards ready,” Inspector Cutrone said, sweeping his eyes over the line, searching for a Eurasian beauty named Nina Pazza.

  Waiting just beyond the booths, uniformed as a customs inspector, Teddy Lucas waited along with the real inspector. He spotted Nina Pazza moving into the room and taking her place in line. Sexy, he thought, watching her. She was dressed in a raw silk suit with epaulets and beige open-toed, open-heeled shoes. She carried an overnight bag and had a large pocketbook slung over her shoulder.

  Cutrone moved along the line checking documents. When he reached her, he slid the visa that she had obtained with some difficulty on short notice out of her passport, gave it a cursory examination, and handed it back to her. He continued along the line for a bit and turned, motioning Lucas and the other agent into the empty booth at the end of the row.

  Lucas and the real inspector squeezed into the booth. Cutrone moved back along Nina Pazza’s queue, and arbitrarily broke it off four passengers in front of her, directing them to line up at the newly opened checkpoint.

  “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?” Lucas asked Nina Pazza, taking her documents.

  “Holiday,” she said.

  Looking up from her passport and landing card, he examined her face casually and said in a bored tone of voice, “You’re staying at the Plaza Hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  Handing her back her papers, he gave her a worn smile. “Enjoy your visit.”

  When Pazza had exited the inspection area, Lucas hurried from the booth into the ground-floor supervisor’s office in the front of the inspection area. Vassos was waiting for him. Lucas changed back into his street clothes.

  Nina joined the other anxious passengers gathering around the baggage carousels. To her pleasant surprise she immediately saw her one piece of Hermès luggage sliding down the chute onto the shiny plates. Quickly passing through customs, she walked into the crowded lobby and brightened when she saw Belmont Widener waving to her.

  A few feet away from the reunited couple, Detective Ivan Ulanov spoke into the transmitter clipped to his shirt pocket. “They’re leaving, get ready.”

  Nina Pazza and the rare book dealer left the terminal and crossed the street to the parking meridian on the other side and a waiting sedan.

  “We got ’em,” Big Jay said into the radio.

  John Leone, sitting in the rear of a taxi, rapped on the protective grill. “Don’t lose them.”

  “Fuck you. I don’t lose people.”

  Inspector Cutrone led Lucas and Vassos through a labyrinth of security doors. Exiting at the rear of the building, they were met by a wall of heat and the roar of engines. “There’s your helicopter,” Cutrone said, pointing to the blue-and-white police department craft.

  C of D Edgeworth rose from his chair to greet his visitors. “Major Vassos, nice to meet you at last.”

  “Nice to meet you, sir,” Vassos said, looking around the plaque-filled office.

  Returning to his desk, Edgeworth asked, “Is Lieutenant Lucas looking after you, Major?”

  “Yes, sir, very nicely.”

  “Good, good,” Edgeworth said, filling his pipe with tobacco. He looked across the expanse of his desk at Lucas. “What’s so important?”

  “Yesterday we received a call from Andreas’s boss, a Colonel Pappas.”

  “Yes, yes, I know all about that, you already told me,” Edgeworth said.

  “Today we received records and other material from the colonel. We’ve spent all our spare time going over it. We now believe that the case can be brought to a successful conclusion.”

  Drawing on his pipe, Edgeworth said, “Then you know who has the casket-copy.”

  “No, not yet, but I believe we’re getting close.”

  A cynical smile showed through the swirl of smoke. “Am I then correct in assuming that you need just a little more help before you’re able to drop the net?”

  “Surveillance vehicles, electronic equipment, and men for tail work, preferably experienced guys from Narcotics or Safe and Loft.”

  Edgeworth frowned. “Equipment, okay; more men, impossible.”

  “Chief, the case is starting to go, I can feel it,” Lucas said. “I need some people watched around the clock and I don’t have enough detectives to do it. One of them is Denny McKay, the hump who ordered the hit on Cormick McGovern.”

  Edgeworth bit down on his pipe, flipping it up and down between his teeth, regarding the lieutenant with stern eyes. He removed the pipe from his mouth and thoughfully placed it in the glass ashtray. “Teddy, I judge leadership by what a commander does with his resources at hand. Every squad boss in the Detective Division is yapping for extra manpower. There ain’t none; I’d be guilty of malfeasance if I stole more men and gave them to you.” He looked at Vassos. “I hope you understand, Major.”

  “I do, sir. We have the same problem in Greece.”

  “I’m sure that you do, Major,” Edgeworth said, returning his attention to the lieutenant. “There is another reason why I can’t give you more people. Security. The more detectives I fly into your squad, the greater becomes the risk of a leak to the press.”

  Vassos asked matter-of-factly if the C of D was keeping Washington informed of the progress of the investigation.

  “I brief a Mr. Hayden. He’s with State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. At the moment he’s here in New York.”

  Vassos’s placid face hid his concern. He recalled Pappas’s admonition to destroy the casket-copy if it should prove impossible to get it back to Greece. He knew that he could never bring himself to do that. Alexander’s Iliad was going to be his memorial to Soula and Stephanos.

  “The equipment?” Lucas asked.

  “I’ll make the arrangements,” Edgeworth said, buzzing for his lea
d clerical.

  A clap of thunder heralded the downpour. Within minutes the city’s catch basins overflowed into the streets; traffic slowed to a crawl on all the major parkways. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the rain was gone, leaving a deep purple sky behind. Lucas stood on Katina Wright’s terrace sucking in the cool, crisp air. The past days had been exhausting ones for the team. His detectives had been tailing Widener and Denny McKay, and each five on the surveillance ended with “nothing to report.” Tonight his men had followed them to the Plaza Hotel, then waited outside and in the lobby until Widener left and returned to his home. Big Jay and Leone had stayed on Widener.

  Every night since Monday, Vassos, Lucas, and Elisabeth Syros had been meeting in Katina’s apartment to study and restudy the material from Greece. Lucas’s expense money and credit cards bought the dinners. Vassos had never eaten Mexican food, so tonight Lucas had ordered camaróns, enchiladas, mole poblano, and nachos. Katina provided the soda.

  Lucas had come to look forward to spending these evenings with Katina. He felt that being around her on a regular basis might give him the courage to say the things that he wanted to say to her. Once or twice he thought that he saw her looking at him and even imagined that he saw a certain receptivity in her glances. But he knew that that was only his wishful thinking. A woman like Katina does not let herself fall for a cop with only a high school diploma. On Friday night Lucas stole a look at Katina and clumsily tipped over a container of beef teriyaki, causing Vassos to look upward in an exaggerated gesture of prayer.

  Tonight was to be their final meeting, the one where they were to sum up their findings before starting the operation that could lead them to the casket-copy.

  Lucas stepped back inside. Paperboard cartons of food and dirty paper plates littered the table between the two sofas. One of the couches was covered with records and photographs; Vassos, Katina, and Elisabeth sat on the other one. The two women had gotten along well since Vassos first introduced them the previous Friday evening.

  Katina, dressed in her usual off-duty outfit of Bermuda shorts, a tank top, and espadrilles, studied the photo of Ann Bryce leaving Nina’s apartment. “Colonel Pappas said they’re lovers?”