“I see. Do you think that a Turkish diplomat named Mehmet Ersoy might have sold things to Kerbussyan? Real or fake.”
The art dealer raised an eyebrow. His smile was now purely formal, a faint upward tug of his thickish lips. He said, “Miss, ah, Ciampi, is it? Perhaps it would save time for both of us if you simply told me what you are here for.”
“You recognize the name?”
He nodded. “The man who was shot. At the United Nations?”
“The way you say that, Mr. Sokoloff, suggests to me that you knew Ersoy’s name even before he was shot,” Marlene said, and then, to forestall the response she saw building in the man’s face, “No, you asked why I was here. Okay, I’m going to tell you, frankly. I’m not interested in art fraud per se. What I’m interested in is who killed Mehmet Ersoy and why.”
“But I thought-”
“Yes, we have a suspect, but we have reason to believe that whether or not he actually did it, the reason had nothing to do with political terrorism. The reason Mehmet Ersoy was killed involved the sale, or theft, or forgery, of objects of art. Which is why I want you to tell me everything you know about Ersoy, about his dealings in the art world, and about his relationship with Sarkis Kerbussyan.”
She was looking directly at Sokoloff as she spoke, and she imagined that she could see the calculations going on behind his dark eyes. She added, “I should also tell you that I have no reason to believe that you have been personally involved in any of this, and you are not at this point the subject of any investigation. However, you are obliged to give me any information that you have; failure to do so is called hindering prosecution, and is itself a felony.”
The words sounded absurdly formal in Marlene’s own ears, but she could see that Sokoloff took them seriously. V.T. had been right; the art dealer did not want to he mixed up in anything to do with a murder. He chewed on his lower lip, and dropped his eyes, and sighed-a picture of surrender that Marlene hoped was not a complete dramatization.
“Well. You’re a forceful young woman, Miss Ciampi. Of course, I will help you in any way that I can. You will forgive my not being forthcoming at first. There is, ah … a certain confidentiality associated with my business, which I would not have liked to breach without good cause. In any case … I did know Mehmet Ersoy, from, say, two years ago. Naturally we met. He was cultural attaché at the mission, I am an antiquities dealer, much of my business is with goods originating in Asia Minor, so of course we had much to discuss.
“Then-I forgot how it came up-he asked if I would be interested in handling some items, some antiquities, on the New York market. His brother is an archaeologist and a museum director in Turkey. I had no problem with that. His paper was in good order. He said these pieces were being de-accessioned from Turkish museums, and he was credentialed as agent.
“The pieces arrived, beginning last November. I remember a small figurine of Tiamat from Pergamum, in ivory, some Ionian red-figure work, some jewelry. A beautiful tetradrachm of Tigranes the Great. Small but very high quality. I had no trouble selling them. Kerbussyan, of course, snatched up the tetradrachm.” Marlene looked blank. “An ancient Armenian coin,” he explained.
“We do some more business. The pieces get better and better. This is all private sales, by the way. He doesn’t want an auction or a gallery show, even though I tell him he can do much better than he can selling privately. About six months ago, he stops selling to me. I think I half expected it.”
“Why is that?”
Sokoloff shrugged and, with a watery smile, replied. “I’ve seen it before. A seller comes to town. Puts a few pieces with you. You do okay by him. Everyone’s happy. Then, bang, you find he’s all of a sudden the competition. He knows who your best customers are. They’ve bought his things. He approaches them-let’s do a deal, minus Sokoloff’s commission-who needs him?”
“What do you do when that happens?” Marlene asked. “Or, did you do anything in this case?”
“What can I do? They’re both free agents. But, of course, dealing with someone on the side like that exposes the customer to certain risks, which he doesn’t have when he buys from me.”
“Like fraud?”
“Like fraud. Even so, I was surprised when Kerbussyan started dealing directly with Ersoy. Sarkis, I told you already, is a maniac for Armenian pieces. I hear things, on the street, in the Armenian community. You didn’t know? Yeah, I’m an Armenian, too; half-my mother, God rest her. She got out of Zeitun just before the big attack in 1915. Her parents sent her east. She kept moving, one step ahead of the Kemalists, and ended up in what became Soviet Armenia during the civil war. She met my father there, and they got to Odessa, where I was born, and then out in 1925. What a life! So, yes, I’ve known Sarkis for years. And I’m hurt; it’s not like him to take bread out of my mouth for no reason. So I invite him. We meet. At the Russian Tea Room, in fact. I ask him what’s going on, he’s buying direct from the Turks. It’s like a joke. I know how he feels about the Turks, right? He apologizes. Then he tells me a story.” Sokoloff paused and shook his head sadly. “A crazy story. He says, ‘Stephan, Ersoy has got the mask. The Suurp Timag.’”
“I’m sorry, the what …?”
“The Holy Mask of St. Gregory the Illuminator,” said Sokoloff, a tone of awe creeping into his normally dry voice. Marlene remembered the conversation she’d had with Rodriguez and Roslin’s painting of the interment of the saint.
“Which is what, exactly?” she asked.
“It’s a myth,” said Sokoloff. “A dream.”
“But Kerbussyan believed it?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he did. He was obsessed with it, as both a collector and an Armenian nationalist. When it was offered to him, he suspended all disbelief. It’s strange. Otherwise he’s such a clever man. I suppose we all have a weak spot …”
“But he must have seen some evidence.”
“He said a photo. In color. I tried to tell him it was a plot, a forgery racket. But he went right ahead.”
“He actually bought it?”
Sokoloff’s forehead wrinkled, as if under the press of an unpleasant memory. “I don’t know what he did. When he saw I was scoffing, he closed up. He can do that. A very proud man sometimes. We haven’t discussed the matter since then.”
Marlene nodded and asked, “Mr. Sokoloff, in your opinion, if Kerbussyan thought that Ersoy had defrauded him over something as important as this mask, could he have arranged to have Ersoy murdered?”
A tight smile. “I suppose everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances.”
“Is that a yes?”
An inclination of the head, with tightly pressed lips.
“And would he have used Aram Tomasian to do it?”
Sokoloff’s face broke into a smile. “My dear young lady, if you had a perfectly good hammer and you had to bang a nail in, would you bang it in with a Meissen vase instead? Believe me, if Sarkis wanted to kill someone, he has people to do it who could eat little Aram for breakfast. And you wouldn’t have caught them either.”
When Marlene returned to her office, there was a note on her desk saying that the district attorney wanted to see her immediately. Marlene said, “Shit!” in a high-pitched voice that provoked a burst of laughter in her office, grabbed a yellow pad, and headed for the elevator. As she rode up, she tried to think of any high-profile, newsworthy rape cases that might have engaged the interest of the DA. She drew a blank. No politician’s or big shots daughters, no nice white girl raped by black beasts, no nice black girl raped by gangs of Nazis, no day-care scandals. Not this week.
Thus, she was curious and mildly apprehensive when she walked into the D.A.’s outer office and announced herself to the receptionist. This glittering person informed her that Mr. Bloom had been called away and that she should speak to Mr. Wharton instead.
Marlene’s heart sank. Whatever it was would have nothing to do with her or with her bureau-not really. She felt a brief surge of resentment against her h
usband, which she quickly stifled. It wasn’t fair, but it was a fact that anyone closely associated with Karp in the office came in for a share of harassment from Wharton, and it was now her turn.
Wharton was sitting behind his desk when she entered. Late afternoon sunlight from his two big windows glinted off his round glasses. He looked at her with his kewpie-doll’s face drawn into its characteristic expression of mild distaste. He didn’t ask her to sit, but she sat anyway, and steeled her jaw.
There was no point in small talk. Wharton said, “Henry Pinnett tells me you’ve been harassing the United Nations.”
“Who’s he?”
“The mayor’s liaison with the U.N. He called Mr. Bloom this morning, and Mr. Bloom hit the roof.”
“I haven’t been harassing anyone.”
“According to my information, you made a visit to the Turkish delegation to the U.N. last week, during which you misrepresented yourself and rifled through confidential files.”
“I was conducting a legitimate interview as part of a murder investigation. There was no misrepresentation. The information I collected was freely given.”
“A murder investigation?” said Wharton. “What the hell were you doing investigating a murder?”
His tone said he didn’t really want an answer, so Marlene remained silent and worked on controlling her wise mouth, a technique she had brought to perfection during the eight years she had spent under the absolute domination of Sister Marie Augustine, compared to whom Conrad Wharton was the merest twit.
After an appropriate wait to inspire terror, Wharton said, “It has to stop. You are not to contact any U.N. official for any purpose without clearance from the D.A.’s office. Is that perfectly clear?”
Marlene said, “Yes, it’s perfectly clear.” Wharton gave her a final dirty look and turned to pick up his phone. Marlene rose and walked out, much relieved. She had thought that she was going to be warned off Sarkis Kerbussyan too.
13
So I think we should go see Kerbussyan again,” Marlene said. “As soon as possible. Now, maybe.”
Karp considered this. His wife had burst into his office and spilled out the whole exotic and confusing tale of her interview with Sokoloff.
“You like him for Ersoy, right?” Karp asked. “Kerbussyan.”
“I think he’s connected, sure. Whether I like him? I don’t know.”
“Umm …” Karp rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, I thought of that too, God forbid,” she said quickly. “But Sokoloff said Tomasian was the last person Sarkis would’ve used, and that’s supported by what Mr. K told you when you went to see him. Tomasian’s a courier, not a shooter.”
“So he must’ve used somebody else. What makes you think he’ll be more forthcoming now than he was with me?”
“We know he lied. He said he didn’t know anything about Ersoy’s money, and I guarantee you it came right out of his own bank account. He dealt with the vic, for chrissake! So we got him anyway for obstructing. It’s a lever.”
Karp nodded. “Okay, I’ll call.” He called. And it turned out Mr. Kerbussyan would find some time around five.
Marlene went back to her office. Harry had left no messages, which worried her. She had sent him out again after Djelal, before she had been warned off the U.N., but she didn’t think that detail would matter to Wharton if Djelal or the ambassador made a stink. It could be very bad indeed. She could lose the bureau.
In this mood she scrambled through paperwork and made herself generally unpleasant to her minions. Being the kind of minions they were, they were unpleasant back. Thus, she was in no mood for playtime when Jim Raney stuck his head in her door and flashed his patented charming Irish grin.
“Go away, Raney, I’m busy.”
He slipped past the door and closed it behind him. “Go ahead, I’ll just watch.” He pulled a visitors’ chair around so that it was touching Marlene’s chair, and sat down in it, still grinning.
“Raney! Go away!”
He placed an arm across the back of her chair. “You seem tense,” he said. “I hear the marriage is breaking up. You’re probably not getting much lately. You ready for an indecent proposal from a deserving Irish lad?”
“The marriage is not breaking up,” she said snippily, suppressing a giggle. Raney had that effect on her, the same effect as the strutting neighborhood swains of her teen years-infuriating but crudely seductive at the same time.
“Oh, yeah? How come I hear he moved out?”
“He had an operation on his knee; he can’t climb our stairs.”
“A good story. Stick to it. On the other hand, I’d figure out how to climb those stairs with two busted legs, if you were at the top of them.” This last was whispered a half inch from her ear. His hand slipped down off the back of the chair to her neck.
Harry Bello walked in the door without knocking, as was his habit. There was a moment of frozen embarrassment. Marlene shot to her feet, knocking back her chair with a clatter.
Bello said, “You’re busy.”
“No, Harry, come in,” she answered in a voice that cracked. “Um, Harry, you know Jim Raney. Raney, Harry Bello.”
Raney stood up too. He seemed amused. “Yeah, Harry Bello. I heard you brought in Vinnie the Guinea by yourself. Very impressive.”
Harry said in a flat voice, “Jim Raney. I hear you shot four guys in the head in four seconds. Very impressive.”
Raney flushed, and his jaws stiffened. Another moment of strained silence, which Marlene broke by saying breezily, “Jim was just leaving.”
“Yeah,” said Raney, his grin returning. “I just came by to invite you to the big touch football game this weekend. Bring the family. Two at the Sheep Meadow, rain or shine. Be there or be square. I could pick you up.”
“Do that. I wouldn’t miss it,” said Marlene. Raney left.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” said Marlene. “It’s just the way he is. He saved my life once.”
Harry shrugged and sat down like a cat. He said, “He’s got a Mercedes 300SL.”
“Who, Raney? No, he doesn’t … oh, you mean Djelal. Did you talk to him?”
“No, just checked him out. Nice condo in the fifties too. They must pay pretty good, the U.N.”
“I love it! This is looking a lot better. I also love it you didn’t roust him.” She explained Wharton’s orders about bothering the U.N., and told him what she had learned at Sokoloff’s.
“Butch and I are going to see Kerbussyan this afternoon-oh, crap! Look, Harry, could you do me a terrific favor and pick up Lucy at day-care and take her home? I’ll give you my key.”
“No problem,” said Harry, a little pale light starting up in the dead of his eyes.
After Harry left, Marlene called Ray Guma, who, as it turned out, had caught the homicide prosecution of Vinnie Boguluso.
“What do you think, Goom? Of the case, I mean.”
“Hey, it’s locked. Any time you want to do all the work up front, let me know. I could use a break.”
“He’ll go for the top count?”
“Rest assured. The little scumbag’s testimony and the toothmarks, and the Perez woman-it’s a lock. Grand jury this week, no problems. We go to pretrial probably the week after, but I can’t see the defense coming up with anything. The warrants’re good. So’s the evidence.”
“Have you talked to him?”
Guma chuckled. “Yeah. He’s a fuckin’ piece of work, Vinnie. You know, he’s really got a thing for you, Champ. I think you pissed him off. I think you insulted his manhood.”
“I’ll try to live with it. Any word on the third guy, Duane?”
“No, we got the usual APB out on him, but I’m not holding my breath. He got any sense, he’s in fuckin’ Texas, or someplace where there’s more Duanes to blend in with.”
“Yeah, really. Okay, let me know how it goes …”
“Hey, one other thing, you gonna see Butch the next coupla hours?”
“Yeah, I’m g
oing out with him right now on something. Why?”
“Just tell him to get with me. I got some more stuff about Turks on my wire into Joey Castles. He was interested the other day.”
“Turks?” she asked. “What’s a mob guy doing with Turks?”
“Hey, the fuck I know. Joey called Ready Eddie Scoli, you know, the fence? Handles heavy theft? He says the Turk got the product and they’re getting ready to process it. I thought, fuck, it sounds like scag-you know? Process? But Eddie doesn’t do scag-he’s into gems, metals, furs. So tell Butch it looks more like my theory that the Turk is this Brooklyn guy, Minzone. Minzone I could see getting hold of a shipment of dope. Maybe he’s cutting it or something and Eddie’s supposed to cover the financing, or maybe-”
“Hold it, Goom,” she interrupted. “This is getting too complicated, and I got to meet a car like five minutes ago. I’ll tell him to call you.”
One of the D.A. squad cops drove Karp and Marlene up to the house in Riverdale, and they told him to wait. The door was opened not by the housemaid but by a burly, bushy-mustached man in an olive drab T-shirt and chinos who looked as if he had just put down his assault rifle. He gave them a severe look and led them through the paneled and carpeted hallways, stopping impatiently from time to time to let Karp, clumping along on his crutches, catch up.
He took them not to the study where Karp had originally interviewed Kerbussyan, but through a solarium full of huge houseplants and then through French doors to a small brick terrace overlooking the garden. There he left them. Karp collapsed gratefully into a white wicker armchair. Marlene walked out into the garden.
It was a lovely place, smelling of wet earth, crushed foliage, roses, and lavender. It sloped to the west, and from the terrace end one could see the river and the cliffs of the Palisades. She strolled down an aisle of roses, turned around the heavy green arch of a grape arbor, and came upon Sarkis Kerbussyan clipping grapes.
The old man was dressed in a white silk shirt and pale linen trousers, slightly stained with green but crisply pressed, and a black-banded straw hat.
He nodded formally. “Miss Ciampi, I believe,” he said.
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