Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  “Yeah,” McKay said. “That way they can stick a peg leg on and send him back to work so he can play catch-up with the vig.”

  “Good advertising too, Denny,” Pussy Lyne said with real enthusiasm. “They’ll think twice before they miss a payment.”

  McKay lit a cigarette and bit down on the filter. “I want you to ask around. I’m looking for a decorative painter who can do gold leaf, French lacquer, marbleizing, and graining.”

  Bubblebelly started to say something when the front door flew open. Beams of sunlight outlined the silhouetted figure of a policeman standing in the opening, his hat cocked rakishly to the side, his hand menacingly close to the grip of his service revolver. Conversation inside the bar ceased; only Julio Iglesias continued to sing “Ron y Coca-Cola” from the old-style jukebox. Obviously and regally drunk, the policeman walked into the bar, his head high and his steps carefully measured.

  “He’s drunk outta his fuckin’ gourd,” Bubblebelly hissed.

  McKay said nothing. He sat chewing his cigarette, his suspicious eyes locked on the approaching policeman.

  “I gotta take a leak,” the policeman mumbled with a booze-thickened tongue and then stumbled, falling across McKay’s table.

  Pussy Lyne jumped out of his seat and helped the officer off the table and onto his feet. The policeman shook a wrathful finger at the bartender. “Your floor is dirty. I oughta give you one for maintaining a licensed premises in an unsanitary condition.” He staggered into the toilet and slammed the door.

  Standing before the urinal, the policeman pulled an evidence envelope from inside his summer shirt and deposited the cigarette butts he had palmed when he staged his fall. He remained inside the stinking room for another moment and then left, weaving slightly as he crossed the sawdust-covered floor. Outside a patrol car and a bored-looking driver waited for him. “Let’s go,” the policeman said to the other cop, sliding into the recorder’s seat in front of the radio set. The cop behind the wheel eased the transmission into drive and the police car slid away from the curb.

  The recorder picked up the handset. “Sixteen Adam to Central, K.”

  “Go, Adam.”

  “Time check Central.”

  “Twelve forty-six Adam.”

  “Ten-four.” The recorder wrote the certified time in the space provided on the evidence envelope and radioed: “Central, Sixteen Adam has left the licensed premises. We’re still ten sixty-one, precinct assignment. We should be back in service in about five minutes.”

  “Ten-four, Adam.”

  The blue-and-white cruised down Ninth Avenue, turning west on Forty-fifth, continuing until Tenth Avenue, where it pulled over to the curb where Teddy Lucas was waiting.

  “How’d it go?” the Whip asked the recorder.

  “I’m ready for the big time, Lou,” the raw-boned cop said, giving the evidence envelope to the lieutenant.

  “I’ll give you a receipt,” Lucas said.

  The recorder pulled his black, leather-bound memo book off the dashboard, wrote out a receipt under the last entry, radioed Central for the certified time, and made it a part of his entry along with their current location. He wrote down the names and shield numbers of those present and passed the official log out to the lieutenant.

  Lucas signed his name on the consecutively numbered page below the officer’s signature, handing the log back to him and asking, “What about the transmitter?”

  The raw-boned cop casually tossed his log back on the dashboard. “When I fell I slipped it under the table.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Lucas said.

  “All part of the J-O-B, Lou,” the recorder said, grabbing the handset and transmitting, “Sixteen Adam is now ten ninety-eight Central, resuming patrol.”

  “They’re gonna chop off some guy’s leg,” Ulanov said, his big frame crouched on a stool in front of the surveillance van’s communication center.

  McKay’s voice had come through the speakers with a slight scratch of static.

  “Like the man said,” Gregory intoned, “ye reap what ye fuckin’ sow, bro.”

  The van was parked on Ninth and Fiftieth. Lucas drove back from his meet with the two policemen in one of the department’s latest unmarked cars, a Jeep Cherokee. He parked on Fifty-first Street off Ninth and walked over to the surveillance unit. Entering the van by the side entrance, he stopped once he was inside. Glancing at Vassos’s tired face, he asked, “How late did you guys hang out last night?”

  “Too late,” Vassos moaned. “That Russian loves to dance.”

  Threading a telescopic lens onto a camera, Gregory complained, “My head feels like there are a lot of strange things dancing around inside.”

  Lucas sat down on the bench that ran along one side of the van. “You guys pick up on the assault they’re planning?”

  “Yeah, we heard,” Ulanov said. “Some guy’s gonna lose a part of his leg because he didn’t pay his weekly vig.”

  “Phone in a sixty-one on McKay, conspiracy to commit assault one. Maybe Sergeant Grimes will be able to turn one of them,” Lucas said, not really believing it. He looked at the detectives. “Can you guys handle it from here on?”

  “No problem, Lou,” Gregory said.

  “I want you to stay in radio contact with me. Andreas and I are going to be jumping back and forth between units. Do you have the list of call numbers?”

  Ulanov consulted the pad in front of him. “You’re Mobile One. Leone and Elisabeth are Mobile Two and they’re covering Widener. Big Jay’s Mobile Three and he’s on Pazza. We’re Mobile Four and we’re on McKay. The comrades are Mobile Five and they’re late-tour reliefs.”

  “Correct. Remember that Sergei and his crew do not come out until tonight,” Lucas said.

  “Do the Russians have radios?” Gregory asked.

  “Yes,” Lucas said, “I gave Sergei two sets last night.” He leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “Listen up. I split the other teams, assigning a Greek with Big Jay and Leone, but I kept you together because you’re going to be on McKay. You’re to observe and report, nothing more. No hero stuff. Understand?”

  “We understand, Lou,” Ulanov said.

  “Do you have heavy weapons?” Lucas asked.

  “Shotguns and Uzis,” Gregory said, pointing to the weapons locker bolted to the wall.

  “McKay and his friends are bad people. Don’t take any chances,” Lucas said firmly.

  “We won’t,” Gregory assured him.

  Ten minutes later Lucas and Vassos slid into the blue Jeep with the smoked windows.

  “Where did you get this?” Vassos asked.

  “Motor Transport. It comes equipped with all sorts of high-tech goodies.”

  “Thank you for going out on a limb and planting that transmitter in the bar. I know you could be making trouble for yourself, not having a search warrant.”

  “S’all right, we didn’t need a warrant.” He started the engine, checked traffic.

  Vassos was confused. “I thought …”

  “We can turn a public place into a Hollywood sound stage if we have to,” Lucas said, driving out of the parking space. “Nina Pazza has a right to privacy in her hotel room, but The Den is a public place. The courts have held there’s no expectation of privacy in a public place.”

  “All your laws aren’t so stupid, are they?”

  “Not all of them,” Lucas agreed, turning up the volume control on the police band radio under the dashboard.

  Belmont Widener bought a pair of loafers at Gucci. He left the Fifth Avenue store and walked north. At Fifty-sixth Street he entered Trump Tower’s marble lobby and strolled through the gleaming center hall, idly glancing at the expensive things for sale in the gold-plated display cases on either side. He paused to admire the cascading waterfall, occasionally glancing sideways at the crisscrossing escalators.

  Elisabeth Syros, who had changed into a white spaghetti-strapped sundress in the back of a Mykonos Fruit Store delivery truck, was examini
ng a gold necklace in the Blantree and Company jewelry store to the right of the waterfall. Detective John Leone, riding the up escalator, had one eye on Widener and the other on the shapely ass of the woman standing in front of him.

  Nina Pazza stepped off the elevator inside the Plaza Hotel’s lobby and paused to look at a diamond necklace in the display window of Black, Starr and Frost, Ltd. She stared at the glittering gems for a minute or so before she made her way through the lobby to the entrance of the Palm Court, the hotel’s unenclosed restaurant separated from the lobby by a low wall made up of flowers and palms set in large Chinese vases. She had a brief conversation with the maître d’ and was escorted to a table.

  A string quartet played Brahms against the background noises of tinkling silver and glassware and the polite hum of muted conversation.

  Big Jay, sitting in one of the lobby’s armchairs, turned to Christos, his newly assigned partner, and said, “Looks like the lady is going to have lunch.”

  Christos, a fat little man squeezed into an ill-fitting, European-cut suit, leaned close to confide, “I’d love to feel her warm lips around me.”

  “Broads like that only suck cocks attached to wallets,” Big Jay said, adjusting the tiny receiver in his ear. He inclined his head slightly and spoke into the microphone concealed by his jacket. “The lady is having lunch.”

  Lucas’s voice came over the surveillance network: “Mobile Two, location of your subject, K?”

  Leone, who had just followed Belmont Widener out into the street, radioed, “Leaving Trump Tower, walking north on Fifth, K.”

  Lucas: “All units, it’s going down. Mobile Three, K.”

  Big Jay: “Mobile Three standing by, K.”

  Lucas: “Mobile Three, do you have a magnetic transmitter, K?”

  Big Jay: “Negative, K.”

  Lucas: “Mobile Three, have your partner ten eighty-five this unit in three minutes at CPS entrance.”

  Big Jay: “Ten-four, Mobile One.”

  Christos was standing on the hotel’s steps when the Jeep Cherokee jerked to a stop behind a double-parked Rolls Royce. Lucas honked the horn. Christos rushed over to the Jeep, held a short conversation in Greek with Vassos, took the disk from Lucas, and hurried back up the steps, disappearing inside the hotel.

  Big Jay surveyed the scene. The maître d’ was busy checking the reservation book while a line of five people patiently waited to be seated. Nina Pazza was seated near the quartet, at a square marble-topped table.

  “Wait here,” Big Jay told his partner, and moved toward the restaurant. He passed the headwaiter, pretending to wave to a friend. Nina Pazza, elegantly turned out in a pink dress with matching accessories and a short-brimmed straw hat, was too busy watching the violinist to notice the man who stopped next to her table and tied his shoelace.

  Big Jay: “Mobile One, K.”

  Lucas: “Mobile One standing by, K.”

  Big Jay: “Down and dirty, K.”

  Lucas: “Ten-four.”

  Lucas turned to reach into the supply box; he removed a receiver. He set it down on the console between the front seats and adjusted the sensitivity selector switch to screen out all low-level noises. He reached back into the supply box again and took out a maxi-powered mini tape recorder and plugged the attachment cord into the receiver.

  “I have never seen one that small,” Vassos commented.

  Resting his head against the seat’s headrest while he listened to the incoming transmission, Lucas said, “It weighs three and a half ounces.”

  “Nina, darling, you look absolutely stunning,” Widener said, brushing her cheek with his lips.

  “So do you, Belmont.”

  “Have you ordered?”

  “I’m having the salmon.”

  “I think I’ll have the grilled swordfish,” he said, after studying the menu.

  “Belmont, will you please tell me what is going on?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Orhan and Trevor. That is what I mean,” she said angrily.

  “I honestly don’t know, Nina.”

  The waiter came to take their orders.

  Elisabeth Syros walked into the hotel’s main entrance. Leone entered on the Central Park South side.

  Widener took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed at his face with it. “The American and Greek police are interested in Alexander’s Iliad.”

  Her eyes grew cold. “Are you sure?”

  “They paid me a visit. A lieutenant from New York, a major from Athens, and a woman from the Morgan Library. They were checking out the major dealers to see if we’d heard anything about the casket-copy coming onto the market.”

  “And had you?”

  “No. I was also questioned about my Aristarchus commentary. It was taken from me during a robbery a long time ago.” Sipping water from his glass, he added, “One of the robbers was caught. Did you know that?”

  “I heard.”

  “His name was Bucky McMahon. At his arraignment the DA informed me McMahon and Denny McKay were, er, friends.”

  She looked down at her place setting, perplexed.

  “It would be a real coup for some collector to possess both the commentary and the casket-copy.”

  “Yes, I imagine it would be.”

  “I love your hat.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you know anyone who might be interested in both of them?”

  “No one that I can think of,” she said, reaching for her water glass.

  He unfolded his napkin and carefully spread it out over his lap. “He wants to see you, tonight.”

  “How does he look?” she asked quietly.

  “Don’t be so gloomy, Nina. He looks wonderful, and he’s anxious to be with you again.”

  “Where and when?”

  “You room, around nine. Ah, here comes our lunch.”

  19

  “Mobile Two, your location, K?” Lucas radioed.

  Leone, who had tailed Belmont Widener to the Plaza, radioed back: “In lobby with Mobile Three, K.”

  Lucas: “Mobile Three, your subject’s room number, K?”

  Big Jay: “Four-oh-two, K.”

  Lucas: “Mobile Two and Three, buy me twenty minutes, K.”

  Big Jay looked into the Palm Court, saw Widener and Nina Pazza deep in conversation, and radioed: “You got it, K.”

  Lucas opened the Jeep’s door. Vassos grabbed his arm, stopping him. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I need you here to monitor transmissions and to see that the tape recorder is working,” Lucas said.

  “You’re going to break some more rules,” Vassos said with a knowing grin.

  “One or two little ones.”

  “Then I will go with you.”

  “Stay here, pahrahkalo.” Please.

  Vassos looked down at the slow-moving reel and said, reluctantly, “Nai.”

  Lucas got off the elevator at the fourth floor and walked quickly down the carpeted corridor checking room numbers. This was going to be one of those times when expediency dictated police action. Approaching Pazza’s room, he saw the chambermaid’s supply cart and brightened at the thought of not having to use the set of picklocks that he had brought along with him. The door to room 402 was open; the maid was busy vacuuming the bedroom, her back to the entrance.

  Lucas slipped inside the room and ducked into the hall closet. Listening to the drone of the vacuum, he smelled a woman’s perfume all around him. His hand groped in the darkness and encountered a light cotton raincoat that gave off a strong aroma of evergreen. He thought of Katina and realized how much he wanted to be with her.

  The droning stopped. He heard movements outside, a rustling sound, a door closing, and then silence. He stepped outside and found himself in a small entry foyer that opened into an attractive suite of rooms. The pale pink bedroom was off to the right of the living room. He moved around, studying the layout, resisting the temptation to search. Walking into the bedroom, he th
ought: she’s neat. Frilly undergarments hung drying above the tub.

  Seeing what he had come to see, he left, rode the elevator down to the lobby, and, stepping out, walked straight over to the reservation desk.

  “May I help you, sir?” asked the clerk at the desk.

  “Yes, my wife and I are in town for a few days, and we wondered if room 400 was available for tonight. You see, we spent our wedding night there and, well, you understand,” Lucas said.

  “Of course, sir,” the clerk said, looking down and punching keys on the desk computer keyboard. Watching the screen, he smiled and said cheerfully, “I can let you have room 400 for one night, but you’ll have to be out tomorrow.”

  “That will be fine,” Lucas said, sliding the department credit card across the counter.

  “Exigent circumstances” meant conditions requiring secrecy because there was a reasonable likelihood that a continuing investigation would be compromised if any of the persons under surveillance became aware of it. Lucas had looked it up in his manual on criminal procedure law.

  After he left the hotel, Lucas went back to the Jeep and radioed all mobile units to stay on their subjects. He told Andreas to remain with the monitoring equipment and caught a taxi back to the Squad.

  In the squad room he spent several minutes going over reports with the Second Whip. He then closeted himself in his office with copies of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Detective Guide, and the Investigators’ Eavesdropping Handbook. He did not intend to allow anyone in the Legal Bureau to tell him he didn’t have sufficient probable cause for a wire, not this time.

  He decided that he could claim “exigent circumstances,” and went on to read the CPL’S definition of probable cause. He read that an eavesdropping warrant could be issued only when one of the crimes designated in section 700.05 was being, had been, or would be committed by a particularly described individual. He read the long list of crimes, picking out several in his mind that applied to the case.

  Lucas got up and went over to the form cabinet. He ran his finger over the dog-eared index thumbtacked to the inside of the door. Reaching into pigeonhole eleven, he pulled out Form 26:1 – Eavesdropping Warrant.

  He rolled the typewriter stand over to his desk, inserted the warrant application into the machine, spread out the case folder and the reference books on his desk, and, with a pencil firmly gripped between his teeth, started typing, saying aloud: “Once upon a time …”