Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  In a state of shock, he automatically slipped his handcuffs from his belt and, leaning toward her, cuffed her right hand to her left leg. Only then did he kneel next to Andreas and begin to weep.

  Paul Mastri had waited until he heard a crash against his hotel room’s main door; he ran out into the corridor, headed for the fire exit. Rushing down the stairs, he heard the commotion of people coming up so he darted out of the stairwell onto the third floor. He pressed for the elevator and serenely stepped into it when it arrived. He got off in the lobby to find it a sea of shouting confusion and calmly walked from the hotel, using the Central Park South exit.

  Big Jay and Christos rushed into the room. “Oh, my God!” Big Jay exclaimed, falling to his knees next to Lucas. “Lou, you okay?”

  The Whip ignored him.

  “Lou! You okay?” Big Jay repeated, shaking the Whip’s shoulder.

  Leone ran into the room, followed by Elisabeth Syros. She screamed and ran over to the body. Kneeling, Elisabeth rhythmically nodded her head and made signs of the cross, chanting the prayer for the dead in a near-choking voice.

  Gregory and Ulanov sprinted inside, stopped, their stares frozen on the macabre scene. “Shit!” Ulanov shouted.

  Lucas leaped to his feet and ran into the next room. The VCR was still running; it had recorded the entire ghastly murder. He rushed back into the crime scene, picked up the radio from the floor, and broadcast, “All units on citywide patrol, wanted for the homicide of a police officer, three minutes in the past, Paolo Matrazzo, alias Paul Mastri, description as follows …”

  His control regained, Lucas finished his radio message and picked up Andreas’s 9mm Beretta from the floor. He stuck it into his belt and, reaching down, unclipped the magazine pouches from Vassos’s belt. He held back his jacket and fastened them on his own belt. Moving to the sofa, he grabbed Nina Pazza by the handcuffs and dragged her contorted body into the next room. He tossed her to the floor. “Where did he go?”

  She fearfully shook her head.

  “Where?” he shouted.

  “I don’t know,” she screamed.

  Elisabeth Syros ran in and started to kick the prisoner in the face. Lucas stepped between them, shaking his head.

  Syros knelt down next to Pazza and said with threatening calmness, “You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a Greek prison – and I’m going to be there to see that your life is a hell. Now! Where is he?”

  “Ask McKay,” she shouted. “He’ll know.”

  Denny McKay took his time aiming the disk. He let it go, watching it slide the length of the shuffleboard, knocking Patty Guts’s and Bubblebelly’s off the board into the alley.

  The muffled sound of a ringing telephone caught McKay’s attention, causing him to look back into the barroom. His rule had always been no telephones in The Den, except for one locked in a drawer behind the stick. It was never used and it never rang. He went behind the bar and unlocked the drawer. Putting the handset up to his ear, he said, “Yeah,” and listened.

  “Park a couple of blocks away,” Lucas told Gregory as the surveillance van turned into Ninth Avenue heading downtown.

  Gregory drove to Fifty-first and parked the police department vehicle at a bus stop. Lucas took out the Beretta, slid out the magazine to check if it was full, and stuck the weapon back under his belt.

  Big Jay, sitting on a stool, slid rounds into the chamber of a Remington Bushmaster pump shotgun. Ulanov handed Gregory an Uzi from the gun locker as he stepped into the back of the van. Lucas asked Ulanov if there had been any word from Nashin.

  “Mobile Five is among the missing,” Ulanov said, “Maybe his radio is dead.”

  “He could call us on the cellular phone,” Lucas said in a worried tone.

  “Maybe he can’t get to a phone, Lou?” Gregory suggested.

  Lucas nodded and removed six pairs of handcuffs from the supply locker, handing each of his detectives two sets. He unlocked the explosives box and tossed Gregory two stun grenades.

  Before leaving the Plaza, Lucas had ordered Leone to take Nina Pazza to the station house and process her arrest reports. There was a lot of work to be done back in the squad room and he wanted Leone to take care of it. The video tape had to be invoiced as evidence, the “unusual” had to be prepared, notifications had to be made.

  Elisabeth Syros had been unyielding in her demand to come with Lucas and his men until Lucas told her that he wanted her to tell her people throughout the city to be on the lookout for him. He was going after the casket-copy.

  “You all know what to do?” Lucas asked.

  The detectives looked around at each other. “Yeah, we know,” Big Jay replied.

  “Then let’s do the sucker,” Lucas said, shoving open the side door.

  Denny McKay pensively returned the telephone to the drawer and looked up at the anxious faces gathered around him. “We might be having company. Pussy, clear out this place and tell whoever is hanging around outside to make themselves scarce. We’re going upstairs to clean out some stuff, and then we’re goin’ to take a vacation.”

  Lucas got inside the pizza parlor, saw no customers, and closed the door. The pie maker’s protests were cut short by the sight of the Beretta pointing at his stomach. “Don’t hurt me! I’ll give you my money.”

  “Close up this hole,” Lucas ordered, reaching behind and locking the door.

  The pie maker reached up and pulled down the accordian shutters. Going behind the counter, Lucas motioned the nervous man over to the oven rack and handcuffed both his hands to a stainless steel handle on the oven door. “Cry out and I’ll come back and put a hole in your head.”

  The pie maker shook his head violently. “I won’t. Only please, don’t hurt me.”

  Lucas crawled under the oven, pushed out the door panel, squeezed through into the hallway, and made his way up to the roof.

  Pussy Lyne and Bubblebelly stationed themselves on the landing of the second floor at the top of the stairway without stairs, each man cradling an automatic shotgun in his arms.

  Patty Guts, his back to the other two and his shotgun held loosely in his hand, peered through the plastic cutout in the curtains, looking up into the staircase leading to the upper floors and the roof.

  Denny McKay hurried through the second-floor workshop into his office. Stretching his arm behind the rolltop desk, he pulled off a remote control module and rushed over to the file cabinet, shoving it aside. Getting down on one knee, McKay aimed the remote at a space on the wall, pushed the “on” button, and proceeded to punch in a code. A panel slid up into the wall, revealing a black dial safe.

  Ulanov looked up from his wristwatch. “Now.”

  Gregory picked up the cellular phone and dialed 911.

  “Police operator forty-two, may I help you?”

  “Der guy who murdered the Greek cop in the Plaza Hotel is hangin’ around right now in a bar called The Den, at Ninth and Forty-ninth,” Gregory said into the mouthpiece, and hung up.

  Big Jay wiggled a cigar out of its cellophane and stuck the unlit stogie in his mouth, clasping his hands behind his head, waiting.

  “All units on patrol in the Sixteenth and adjoining precincts,” Central broadcasted. “Central has just received an anonymous call that the suspect wanted in connection with the homicide of a police officer, this date, in the Plaza Hotel, is at a bar within the confines of the Sixteenth, located at …”

  Ulanov waited until Central had radioed the bar’s location and a description of the suspect before he transmitted, “Sixteen detectives to Central, K.”

  “Go Sixteen detectives.”

  “This unit is a block away from that location, Central. We’re in surveillance van one-two-four. Request backup units, K.”

  “Sixteen Eddie on the way.”

  “Sergeant going.”

  “Adam-Boy going.”

  “Anticrime going.”

  Big Jay tapped Ulanov’s shoulder and pointed to the cigar.

  Ulanov
nodded, and radioed, “Sixteen detectives to Central, K.”

  “Go Sixteen detectives.”

  “Advise responding units that there is a black member of the service with this unit. He’s in civilian clothes; he’s big, as ugly as sin, and he’ll have an unlit cigar stuck in his mouth.”

  Responding units let go with a chorus of ten-fours.

  Big Jay stood and locked the gates that sealed off the van’s interior. Moving out front, he knelt between the seats and said, “All secure. Let’s do it.”

  Surveillance van 124 screeched to a stop on the sidewalk, blocking the bar’s entrance. Detectives leaped out and took up firing positions on both sides of the entrance.

  Gregory tried the door; it was locked.

  Standing off to the side, Big Jay fired a shotgun blast into the wood, sending the door flying open.

  Gregory stepped into the doorway, aiming his Uzi into the deserted bar; Big Jay and Ulanov darted inside.

  The detectives paused briefly to check out the area. A bar to the left of the entrance, a kitchen at the other end of the bar. Booths to their right. A sawdust-covered walkway separating the bar and booths, leading to a large back room with more booths and a shuffleboard. In this backroom, Vassos had told them, was a closet that contained a stairway without steps.

  The wail of approaching sirens filled the air.

  The three-man fire team leapfrogged their way to the back of the bar, two covering while the third ran to take up a new firing position.

  Bubblebelly and Pussy Lyne trained their weapons down into the stairwell.

  Patty Guts tightened his grip on the shotgun’s cold steel, his eyes fixed straight up in the direction of the roof door.

  Denny McKay removed the .38 Colt from his belt and placed it on the floor beside him while he continued to sort through the safe, shoving money and records into a shopping bag.

  Lucas flattened his back against the roof hutch that contained the top of the staircase that led down through the tenement to the bar. His eyes were fixed on the second hand of his watch as it swept around the dial.

  Ulanov, standing with the others outside the tiny chamber downstairs that housed the stairless staircase, saw his second hand hit thirty and shouted “Now!”

  Gregory threw open the door.

  Bubblebelly and Pussy Lyne fired down into the stairwell, splintering the door between the back room and the stairs off its hinges. The alarm system went off, emitting the sounds of klaxons. Gregory, standing outside the tiny room, stuck his Uzi inside and emptied the magazine up into the stairwell.

  Big Jay pulled the pin on the grenade, holding the spoon down.

  Ulanov stepped into the doorway, firing up the stairwell in the general direction of the second-floor landing.

  Big Jay moved across the threshold and tossed the grenade up onto the second-floor landing. It exploded in a smoky roar, sending all three men reeling.

  Lucas threw open the roof door, ran to the third floor, and fired down the stairwell. Patty Guts lurched forward, ripping the curtain from its rod, shrouding himself in black cotton as he fell dead. Rushing down the steps toward the second-floor landing, Lucas emptied his magazine, crouching down to reload.

  Pussy Lyne, retaining the cover of the wall, stuck his shotgun around the wall and fired two blasts up the stairwell at Lucas, forcing him to dive prone on the steps. Pussy Lyne darted out from safety to fire at the lieutenant. Lucas, lying on the steps, fired first, exploding Pussy’s face in a geyser of gray jelly and blood. The dead man remained standing, his finger frozen against the trigger, the shotgun discharging automatic rounds up into the ceiling of the stairwell. Lucas fired another burst; it sent the corpse and weapon to the ground.

  Big Jay, with covering fire from Ulanov and Gregory, climbed up the risers, his hands clutching the banister, his shotgun thrust in front under his belt.

  Bubblebelly extended his arm and fired four rounds blindly down the stairwell. Taking careful aim so as not to hit Big Jay, Ulanov and Gregory fired alternate bursts, watching as their partner continued his perilous climb up the treadless staircase.

  Lucas, his back to the stairwell’s wall, automatic thrust downward, stealthily placed his foot on the next step down to the second floor.

  Reloading, Bubblebelly shouted, “Denny, they’re creepin’ all around me.”

  “I need another minute,” McKay shouted back, hurriedly sorting through records.

  Guns drawn, uniformed policemen rushed into the bar and charged into the back room. Firing a short burst, Gregory shouted for the new arrivals to stay back and do nothing. An overzealous rookie pushed his way through the crowd of policemen and recklessly fired two rounds up at the unseen criminals. Ulanov’s ingrained response was to swing his Uzi at the rookie, striking him across his forehead and sending him staggering backward, blood streaming down his face.

  “You fucking asshole,” Ulanov shouted at the stunned policeman, “we’ve got our own people up there!”

  Lucas was three steps away from the second-floor landing. Big Jay climbed to within a foot of the top. The alarm system continued to scream its head off at a deafening level; the acid-sharp reek of potassium nitrates fouled the air.

  Lucas hunkered down, his sweaty hands tight around the grips. Bubblebelly saw the shadow fall over the floor. He leaned his shoulder into the stock, aiming at the hidden source of the shadow in the stairwell.

  Big Jay stopped just below the top, balancing carefully on the risers, and slid the shotgun out of his belt, waiting to make his move.

  Ulanov fired a burst.

  Lucas raised his walkie-talkie above his head, silently counted to three, and heaved it out onto the second-floor landing.

  Instinctively Bubblebelly pointed his shotgun in the direction of the sound of the radio hitting the landing, saw what it was, and swiveled the weapon back to aim at the staircase.

  Big Jay popped up and fired a blast into Bubblebelly’s stomach, sending the fat man crashing back against the wall. He slumped against the shot-pocked wall, gaping with bewilderment at the bloody hole in his dying body.

  Lucas dashed out from the staircase. Bubblebelly’s body had collapsed against the wall. Approaching cautiously, Lucas picked up the shotgun and tossed it away. Sticking his foot behind Bubblebelly’s, he yanked the dead man’s legs out from under him, sending the corpse crashing to the floor. Lucas moved to the stairwell, extended his hand, and pulled Big Jay up onto the landing.

  The detectives fanned out in the workshop, moving warily, their weapons at the ready.

  “Give it up, Denny,” Lucas snouted. “You and I can make a deal. I want Matrazzo, not you.”

  McKay, clutching two bulging shopping bags and his revolver, crawled behind the printing press to take cover and consider his options. The blocked windows offered him no escape. Cops were all over the place. He’d never make it to the roof alive and staying alive was what it’s all about. There would have to be a trial. That meant lawyers and bails, and appeals. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot,” he shouted, and stood up, hands above his head, his revolver dangling from his forefinger.

  Ulanov rushed over and took the weapon from him. Big Jay frisked the prisoner.

  Lucas, his face a mask of icy contempt, grabbed McKay’s arm and led him away. “Denny, we don’t have much time, so listen. You give me Matrazzo and the casket-copy, and you walk.”

  “I wanna call my lawyer,” McKay snarled.

  “You’re going to be arrested and charged with murder in Greece. Your boy George Cuttler made a dying declaration before he checked out, naming you as the one who sent him and Simmons over to hit the two cops.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never been to Greece.”

  “After that, you’ll be extradited to the Soviet Union and charged with the theft of government property. I don’t think you’re going to like it there, Denny. And after all that, if they don’t kill you, I’m going to arrest you for homicide.”

  A shadow of
concern crossed McKay’s face. “What homicide?”

  “Eddie Burke.”

  “Whered ja hear that shit? Eddie was my friend.”

  “You whacked him, Denny, and I can prove it. You left your cigarettes in the ashtray and outside the car. A forensic dentist will testify that it was your teeth that left the marks on all the filters. And the saliva we extracted from the cotton has your blood grouping.”

  “Circumstantial evidence,” McKay said uneasily.

  Lucas nodded in agreement. “But it’s powerful evidence, Denny. Anyway, we got this new gadget in the lab. It takes bioforensic ‘fingerprints.’ That means it analyzes DNA, that’s the stuff we all have in our genes. This machine measures several millionths of a gram of any body fluid. It’s a positive I.D. just like prints. Your saliva is going to buy you twenty-five to life.” He pulled him close and said grimly, “If the Greeks or Russians don’t get you, I will.”

  McKay pulled away. Nodding his head at the two shopping bags on the floor. “There’s two hundred K. Take it.”

  “Denny? When I came on the Job the theme song was ‘The Best Things in Life are Free.’ Today it’s the Ave Maria.”

  McKay shoved his hands into his pockets, regarded his shoes. “I walk?”

  “You walk.”

  “I’m not sure where he is. He telephoned and told me to get out. I know he got a house someplace in Queens and another one out in East Hampton. It should be easy for you to find out where. My guess is that he’s making for one of them.”

  “And Alexander’s Iliad?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that. He had me send a couple of boys to take care of the Greek cops. Orhan did all the background work on the job. That’s all I know.”

  Lucas turned to his detectives. “Read him his rights. Then book him for everything we got on him.”

  “You promised!” McKay shouted.

  “I lied,” Lucas said, walking away.

  21

  C of D Edgeworth was huddled in the back of the bar with the detectives, conducting a hurried rehearsal of the who, what, when, where, how, and why of the eventual official version of what had transpired. “Where did you get your reasonable cause for busting in here without a warrant?” Edgeworth asked.