Black Sand

by William Caunitz

  Matrazzo looked at the policeman. “Sit on the floor facing the wall with your hands behind your head.”

  Lucas carefully set the glass plates on the dolly and lowered himself down, his back to the dolly, the gasoline cans a few feet beyond his reach. Keeping his automatic trained on Lucas’s back, Matrazzo slowly moved backward toward the driver’s side. Lucas inched his torso back, winding it up for a forward leap, waiting for that instant when his enemy would be off balance. He tilted his head slightly to the right so that his peripheral vision included Matrazzo.

  Reaching behind with one hand, Matrazzo felt for the handle. He opened the door. With his eyes riveted on Lucas, he transferred the automatic to his left hand and, bending at the knees, groped under the dashboard for the tailgate latch release.

  Now! Lucas sprang forward, grabbing a gasoline can and hurling it at Matrazzo; then he dived for cover behind the dolly.

  Matrazzo got off one round with an unsteady hand; it missed. The can struck his chest, knocking off the spout and dousing his front; he staggered back across the driver’s seat. Lucas grabbed the Beretta and fired a shot under the dolly that struck Matrazzo’s foot.

  Screaming obscenities, Matrazzo grabbed the automatic with his right hand and pulled himself up into a sitting position. “Get out from behind my Iliad. Get away, you son of a bitch! Leave my Iliad,” Matrazzo screamed, aiming for a clean shot.

  Lucas popped out from around the side of the loaded cart, firing a round at the killer. The driver’s seat exploded in a reddish blue fireball that engulfed Matrazzo and turned him into a flailing, thrashing gargoyle with blue and yellow streamers fluttering out his eyes and mouth. Lucas leaped up off the ground and hauled the dolly past the roaring fire out onto the driveway. He ran bent over, trying to put distance between himself and the garage.

  The force of a violent explosion hurled Lucas across the dolly, toppling him and the cart over the lawn, spilling the plates onto the grass. Slowly regaining his senses, Lucas straightened up and looked back at the inferno. A deformed hand was sticking out of the hungry flames, a gold ring reflecting the savage light of the blaze. Then the hand disappeared in the fire.

  The Monte Carlo came racing over the lawn and jerked to a stop. Ulanov and Sergei leaped out and ran over to him.

  “Are you all right?” Nashin shouted.

  “I’m okay,” Lucas said, uprighting the dolly. “Help me pick up these sheets.”

  “Matrazzo?” Ulanov asked, picking up some scrolls.

  “In there,” Lucas said, jerking his thumb at the now blazing garage. Ulanov smiled grimly. “That’s a conviction that won’t be overturned.”

  “Where is he?” August Hayden, the man from Diplomatic Security, demanded. They were standing outside The Den, a cluster of police officials that included the PC, the C of D, Warren Cribb, the man from the National Institute of the Fine Arts, the Duty Captain, and two detectives from the Sixteenth Squad.

  “I don’t know where he is,” Big Jay answered.

  “Me neither,” Gregory followed.

  Repeatedly digging his forefinger into Big Jay’s chest, Hayden warned, “You’d better tell me, Officer, or it’ll be your ass.”

  Big Jay scowled down at the offending finger. “If you stick that thing at me one more time, we is gonna be rushed to the hospital. They’s gonna be extracting my foot from your asshole.” Since all of them had spent a sleepless night, tempers were ragged. The coolness of a new day did little to ease the tension.

  Angrily snatching off his Panama hat, Hayden said to the PC, “You oughta instill respect for civilians in your men, Commissioner.”

  Police Commissioner Vaughn met Hayden’s glare. “Fuck you,” he said, turning away and walking over to his car.

  Hayden glared at the C of D, who looked away from him.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Hayden said to Cribb, and the two of them ran to their car.

  Edgeworth looked at the two detectives and said, “You’d better get on the horn to your boss and tell him some uptight people are going to be looking for him.”

  23

  Before noon August Hayden had set up a temporary command post in the garage on the Forty-fifth Street side of the United States Mission to the United Nations.

  “This was to have been uncomplicated,” Cribb complained.

  “We can’t always control events,” Hayden said, pacing back and forth in front of the open garage door. “Obviously Lieutenant Lucas had his own plans for Alexander’s Iliad.”

  “Then you do think he has it?”

  “He has it all right. But the question is, what is he going to do with it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He might want to sell it to the highest bidder, or he might want to turn it over at a full-blown press conference, get some publicity for himself and his men. Or …?” He let the word drop, glancing at his men lounging around the double-parked sedans on the street outside.

  “Or what?”

  “The lieutenant and Major Vassos were partners. I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate the significance of that, but take my word, among policemen it means a lot.” Hayden thoughtfully tapped his fist against his chin. “I think he’s going to return it to the Greeks.”

  Cribb’s mouth dropped open. “You must not allow that to happen. Kill him if you have to, but that Iliad must remain in this country.”

  “Kill an American cop?” Hayden said, his voice full of contempt. “I get paid to pull dirty tricks on people but I don’t murder Americans, not for any price.”

  “But … but …”

  “There are not buts, Cribb.” Hayden called one of his men over and told him to go inside the mission and get a Manhattan telephone directory. When the man returned. Hayden put the thick book on the hood of the town car parked inside the garage and copied several addresses onto a page of his notepad.

  “What are you doing?” Cribb asked.

  “If I were Lucas, I’d go get the casket-copy and make for a Greek government facility in New York.”

  “Why? Why not some fish store in Astoria?”

  “Because it’s not extraterritorial, outside the territorial and judicial limits of the United States,” Hayden said, reaching for the walkie-talkie atop the town car’s hood. “And the Greek UN mission and consular office are.”

  Northbound traffic crawled along York Avenue from Fifty-third to the entrances of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive at Sixty-first and Sixty-third streets. Lucas thought: my luck is holding.

  They had just finished loading the plates into the back of the Monte Carlo when the fire engines arrived at the scene. Traffic had moved briskly on the way back into Manhattan. Big Jay’s transmission had alerted Lucas that the bad guys were looking for him. Figuring that Hayden wouldn’t be able to gather enough people on short notice, he drove all the way east, hoping to slip through any cordon placed to intercept him. He looked out into the sideview mirrow and saw the surveillance van behind him. Ulanov was driving; Nashin, copiloting. He prayed that Elisabeth had alerted her people.

  Traffic agents worked cars into the northbound entrance at Sixty-first Street. Lucas cut the car out into the far left lane, skirting around the packed mass of cars trying to get on the drive.

  The light turned red; he gunned the engine and sped north, with the van staying close behind him. At Seventy-ninth Street, Lucas made a left turn off of York Avenue and double-parked. He got out and ran back to the van. Ulanov rolled down the window. Lucas told him that he was headed for the Greek consulate between Park and Madison avenues.

  “Right behind you, Lou,” Ulanov said.

  Lucas looked at Nashin. “Sergei, why don’t you grab a taxi back to your mission and report the car stolen? Stay out of it, you’ve done more than your share.”

  Nashin let go with a litany of Russian obscenities.

  “What did he say?” Lucas asked Ulanov.

  “You don’t wanna know, Lou. But the bottom line is, he’s coming with us.”

&nbs
p; The Greek consulate was located in a town house on the north side of Seventy-ninth Street. Three low steps led up to two arched doorways with ornamental ironwork, separated by a large window. Approaching Park Avenue, Lucas saw the blue-and-white Greek flag hanging over one of the doorways. He also spotted the crescent-shaped barricade of black sedans blocking the entrances and the men standing alertly behind the cars.

  Hayden’s read my mind, Lucas thought, hurriedly stopping at the curb and parking. He got out and stood between cars, looking into the next block, desperately pondering his next move. He knew that he had to get the casket-copy to a safe place where Hayden and his crew couldn’t get their thieving hands on it. The only really safe place would be a diplomatic mission. If Hayden had thought to cover this location, he’d have the Greek mission and other places covered too. I don’t want Andreas to have died for nothing, he thought. No! I’m not going to let that happen. He could see Hayden and Cribb having a curbside discussion with three men. They’re probably telling the Greeks that they are there to protect them against an imminent terrorist attack, he thought; then the surveillance van whooshed past him with Nashin leaning out the window signaling him to wait where he was.

  “Tighten your seat belt, comrade,” Ulanov shouted, shooting the van across Park Avenue against a red light.

  “This is almost as much fun as getting laid,” Nashin said, pulling the belt tight across his lap. Ulanov drove to the middle of the block and spun the wheel, forcing the van up on the sidewalk and plowing into the improvised barricade of cars in front of 69 East Seventy-ninth Street, bulldozing the front end of two automobiles aside and making a hole. Frightened men scurried for safety. Pedestrians stopped short, unsure what to do.

  “My neck,” Ulanov shouted in pain. “I hurt my neck.”

  Nashin unbuckled himself and helped the detective out of the driver’s seat. He jumped behind the wheel and, grinding the transmission into reverse, recklessly backed the van across Seventy-ninth Street. “Here goes my promotion,” he said, ramming his foot down on the gas pedal and slamming into low gear, aiming for the disarranged sedans. The police department vehicle smashed through the barricade and crashed into the doorway, unhinging the grillwork and the door.

  Once again throwing the van into reverse, its broken tail pipe gouging the sidewalk and throwing sparks, Nashin attempted, unsuccessfully, to shift gears but was unable to, so he drove off in reverse, heading west. He got about fifty feet away from the consulate before being boxed in by cars full of angry men aiming an assortment of firepower his way.

  Nashin rolled down the window and calmly announced, “We are Soviet diplomats.”

  Lucas waited for the light to turn green. He stamped his foot down on the gas pedal, propelling the Monte Carlo west-bound on Seventy-ninth Street. He reached out and tightened the passenger seat belt around the stacked sheets of plate glass.

  Reaching the smoking barricade, he spun the wheel and drove the car up onto the sidewalk, plowing into the doorway, wedging the vehicle into the threshold and sending chunks of concrete and mortar crashing down. He tried to get out but couldn’t; the front doors were crushed shut against the building’s doorjambs. He forced the window partway down on the driver’s side and, placing his face in the gap, shouted to the people milling about inside the consulate that he had the casket-copy.

  A man stepped out of the group of stunned and frightened people and asked, “You’re from Elisabeth?”

  “Yes. Yes,” Lucas shouted back, turning to see Hayden and several men running his way.

  Two men with fire axes rushed up onto the hood of the car and began chopping out the windshield. Lucas covered his face with his hands to protect himself from flying glass. When the windshield was gone, the Greeks formed a human chain; Lucas passed the glass plates out to them.

  “Open the fucking door,” Hayden shouted, pulling on the handles of the back door. Lucas ignored him; he went on passing plates out to the two men standing on the hood.

  Hayden grabbed a rifle from one of his men and smashed in the rear window. Reaching inside, he opened the door and jumped on Lucas’s back, putting a headlock on the policeman.

  Lucas dropped a plate on the front seat and hurled himself backward, smashing Hayden into the doorpost. The two men lashed about, Hayden maintaining his stranglehold, Lucas pounding his elbows into his assailant’s ribs. Meanwhile one of the Greeks climbed through the windshield and resumed passing out Alexander’s Iliad. Hayden was screaming curses into the policeman’s ear. Lucas felt his oxygen-starved body going limp, a cloud of blackness sweeping over him. He thrust his hand behind him and grabbed hold of Hayden’s testicles, digging in his fingers and crushing them.

  Hayden yowled and, releasing his grip, lunged for the policeman’s hand.

  “We have them all,” one of the Greeks said from the hood of the car. “Thank you.”

  Lucas collapsed on top of Hayden. “It’s over,” he gasped.

  Retching as he held his hand over his aching balls, Hayden muttered, “How will I ever be able to explain all of this?”

  Breathing deeply, Lucas answered, “You just begin your report with, ‘Once upon a time …’”

  24

  The forklift’s claws held the flag-draped coffin. An honor guard had formed just inside Olympic Airlines’ freight hangar at Kennedy airport. C of D Edgeworth, Lucas, Sergeant Grimes, Big Jay, Ulanov, Gregory, and Sergei Nashin tendered a breast salute as the lift rolled past them on its way out to the waiting cargo jet. Katina and Elisabeth Syros stood together off to the side, both with tears in their eyes.

  Elisabeth came over to the file of policemen and, working her way from man to man, thanked each one of them for all that they had done. When she reached Lucas she pressed a gold strand of jade worry beads into his hand. “Andreas would have wanted you to have these. And his Beretta.”

  “Thank you,” he said, adding, “I’m glad you’re taking him home along with the casket-copy.” He reached into his pocket and took out Cormick McGovern’s shield. Handing it to her, he asked, “Will you see that they’re together.”

  “I’ll tell Colonel Pappas,” she said, putting the shield in her pocketbook.

  Lucas reached down and picked up Denny McKay’s shopping bag. “This is for the people of Voúla.”

  She looked down into the bagful of money. “Thank you,” she said, and kissed him.

  Lucas turned to watch the forklift darting out onto the apron. He thought about the first time he met Andreas in the customs office at Kennedy. It all seemed so long ago. He laughed bitterly to himself as he thought of the newspaper headlines of two days ago: NYPD THWARTS TERRORIST ATTACK ON GREEKS. Andreas would have approved of that tale; there was a certain Greek panache to the lie.

  Watching the coffin being lifted up into the aircraft, he brushed tears from his face and whispered, “Good-bye, my friend.”

  “Lou, we’re going back to the Squad,” the Second Whip said. “I’ve got a desk full of fives waiting on me.”

  Lucas turned and looked at the sergeant. “I’ll see you in seven days. I hooked some vacation time onto my swing.”

  “I’ll hold it down,” Grimes said, walking off with the rest of the detectives.

  Nashin came over to Lucas and asked, “How’s your vodka supply?”

  “Getting low.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Did you have any problems with the car?”

  “None at all. My superiors were delighted with the material you gave us. Our labor camp population is about to increase.”

  “See ya’ round, comrade.”

  “Ten-four, Lou.” Nashin snapped back briskly and walked away.

  Long after the Olympic 747 had taxied out and moved off to the runway, Lucas stood by himself, looking out at the busy airport but seeing, in his mind’s eye, the faces of Andreas and his wife and son. He actually jumped, startled, when he felt a hand grip on his arm. It was C of D Tim Edgeworth, looking unusually subdued and thoughtful. The two
of them stood without saying anything for several minutes. Then Edgeworth cleared his throat with a cough and said quietly, “I don’t think Hayden is going to be collecting a pension from State.” He rubbed his eyes wearily and continued: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up needing a good lawyer. A friend of mine called from Washington this morning. Apparently Hayden is facing an administrative review hearing. And I sent a memorandum of information to the U.S attorney’s office.”

  Lucas turned and stared directly at his superior officer. A thousand possible questions ran through his head – and the vision of a murdered Greek family stayed with him like some awful retinal afterimage. His hand unconsciously felt for Andreas’s worry beads in the pocket of his dark suit.

  “Tim,” he asked in a hoarse, strained voice, “who were those two clowns working for?”

  Edgeworth returned his stare without any change of expression. “In a strictly technical sense Hayden did represent the State Department.” He paused, looking off into the distance. “But Teddy, they, I mean the guys at State, the feds in the Bureau, the spooks at the Agency – they’re a lot like the Department, like us. I get the same kind of paycheck you get. And so do these assholes in our Intelligence Division. That doesn’t mean that we are all one big happy family. You got Haydens everywhere. His paycheck came from the State, sure, but that don’t mean his loyalty got paid back. This guy, Cribb …”

  “Yeah,” Lucas interrupted. “I never heard of his outfit, this Fine Arts setup. Katina says it was founded only a year or so ago.”

  Edgeworth waved his hand impatiently. “Listen, OK, Teddy? Just shut up for a minute.” The chief looked like a man expending considerable effort to control his temper. “Cribb is a curator – I mean he was a curator for a museum on the West Coast. A fairly new one, with a hell of a big endowment but not a hell of a great collection. Anyway, he got promoted sideways when this foundation was set up. The old, established museums didn’t want it, didn’t need it. Seems that a bunch of people in the government thought it was a great idea. The foundation would represent the interests of the new, smaller or poorer museums. The ones ready to cut a few corners. The ones with patrons and donors who own things that they got through … well, ways that weren’t strictly kosher.”