She worked late that night organizing her case file, then reread all her notes. Leaving the office after everyone else, she ran into a middle-aged woman she recognized, a cop's widow turned office-cleaner, pushing a broom down the main hall.
When Marta greeted her, wishing her a good evening, the woman gave her a cold stare. After Marta passed, she heard the woman growl the phrase "La Incorrupta" with contempt.
This isn't funny anymore.
In the morning she discovered that her locker, which had been repainted, was marked again, this time the swastika larger and more deeply gouged. Ricardi, furious, said he'd put in a surveillance camera. Then he made a suggestion.
"You're working a sensitive case. I hate to say it, but people in this building may be involved. There's a police safe house in Barracas reserved for confidential investigations. I'll requisition it for you under another case name. That way you'll have your own command post, which no one will know about, and where no one will bother you."
She and Rolo moved in that afternoon. The safe house, overlooking the foul oil-streaked Riachuelo River, was sparsely furnished with desks, chairs and bunk beds. There were also two one-man holding cells on the second floor converted from closets. But for Marta the best part was an entire wall in the front room lined with cork overlaid with plastic.
"This is where we'll mount our flowchart," she said.
They set to work pinning up photos from their case file: pictures of the victims; the crime scenes; copies of the doctored photos; Costas' computer sketches of the thugs; news photos of people on the Window Dresser's list; photos of Kessler and other prominent former Crocodile members; photos of Viera, Charbonneau, Juan Sabino and Juanita Courcelles. Then, using colored markers, they drew all the connections they knew about. When they were finished the wall gave them a visual representation of everything they'd uncovered so far.
Marta stood back and studied the chart, then peered out the window. In the distance she could see the old iron girder bridge in La Boca, a dark grey structure against a lighter foggy grey sky. There were abandoned rust-bucket ships in the Riachuelo, rotting piers and old broken-down loading cranes decaying by the water's edge.
She turned back to the wall, squinted at the display.
"I see a drift," she told Rolo, "but no clear picture yet. Tomorrow morning I want you to set up an interview with Countess Natasha. While you're arranging that, I'll see Judge Lantini."
"What about, Marta?"
"I'm going to ask her permission to open a secondary investigation into Viera, Charbonneau and their possible involvement in obstruction of justice. If she goes along, we'll have another way to stir the pot."
Chapter Six
DAGGER-FINDER
They had put Hank up at the Castelar on Avenida de Mayo, a large old-fashioned hotel with an extravagant exterior and splendid lobby, but with rather less attractive rooms upstairs. Which was fine by him; he didn't expect to be spending much time in his room.
They had put him here, they said, because the detective agency was just down the street. After checking in he went out to scout the address, a huge rococo building called the Barolo, an architectural feast of undulating balconies and cupolas surmounted by what looked to be the turret of a lighthouse.
Staring up at it, he asked himself: Have they put me so close for my convenience, or because they want to keep an eye on me? Returning to the Castelar he asked the concierge, an elderly man of great dignity, whether the Barolo turret did indeed revolve.
"It used to," the concierge told him, eyes lighting up at the memory. "There was a time when on very clear nights the Barolo light could be seen as far away as Montevideo." The old man shook his head. "Believe me, sir, that building's seen better days. Now it's filled with second-rate dentists' offices and scummy private detective agencies." He sighed, showed a bitter smile. "But then, sir, the entire city's like that now, a ruin of what it was."
Since Hank's appointment with the detective was not till six p.m., he had four hours to spare. Handing his map to the concierge, he asked the way to the antique district.
"For that, sir, you must go to San Telmo! You can walk there in less than half an hour...."
Setting out, he decided to test his instincts. Would it work for him down here, the uncanny sixth sense that had led him to so many extraordinary finds? Would his homing ability, legendary in the business, still function for him south of the equator?
He headed down Avenida de Mayo toward the Casa Rosada, which, he knew from his guidebook, housed the offices of the President of Argentina. There was some kind of demonstration taking place in front. Men and women, holding up long banners, were cheering a speaker hectoring them from a sound truck. Some of the demonstrators smiled, others looked grim. Police in riot gear watched warily from behind barricades.
Following his map, he turned south toward the antique stores clustered around Plaza Dorrego. Here, around the old bordellos, the concierge had wanted him to know, Argentina's national dance, the tango, had first been tripped by immigrants upon the cobblestone streets.
As Hank walked, he thought back upon the chain of extraordinary events that had brought him to this city at the bottom of the world.
It started at the bar at the Radisson Hotel adjoining the ExpoMart in Monroeville, PA. He was in the Pittsburgh suburb to attend the annual MAX (Militaria Antique Xtravaganza), the largest militaria show in the world. But for him this year's MAX had been a disaster: his entire inventory had been stolen from his car right in front of the hotel.
He'd left it in the turnabout for less than a minute while he went in to check on his reservation. When he came back out it was gone. The police found it several hours later in a mall parking lot less than a mile away. The car was in perfect condition, but the trunk was empty.
Most likely, the police told him, he'd been robbed by professional thieves who'd been scouting him for some time. The guys who pulled this type of job were slick, the cops said; they worked fast and made clean getaways. The cops hoped Hank had insurance, since it was unlikely he'd ever see his goods again.
So there he was, sitting at the bar in the Radisson, drinking and feeling sorry for himself, when the bartender brought him a drink he hadn't ordered.
"Lady at the far end sends it over," the bartender said.
When Hank turned he met the friendly smile of a woman in her mid-thirties, whom he didn't know but who'd been pointed out to him several times, a woman bearing the unlikely name of Marci Lorch, the talk of this year's MAX.
"Hi. Thanks," Hank said. "But why me?"
"I heard you had troubles," she said.
"And you took pity?"
She shook her head. "You were looking forlorn, so I thought I'd perform a friendly act."
"I've heard about you too," he said.
"So...shall we take a table and discuss what each of us has heard?"
Seated opposite her, he got a better look. Slim, short, five foot three or four, with short, bottle-blonde hair, she had a quick smile that seemed nearly electric for the way it lit up her face.
"Between the two of us, we're the talk of the place," she said.
"Yeah...me for being this year's Big Loser, you for being this year's Mystery Woman."
She leaned forward. "What are they saying about me?"
"That you're knowledgeable, that you're buying top quality material, that you're spending like there's no tomorrow, and that no one here knows who you are or where you come from."
"Anything else?"
Hank, amused, decided to tell her the rest.
"That it's the rare stranger who turns up here and in one day spends upwards of fifty thousand dollars on Third Reich artifacts. That all the major players are known. Therefore..."
"I must be acting for someone else."
He nodded. "Any truth to that?"
"Well," she said, eyes dancing, clearly enjoying their banter, "if there was I certainly wouldn't tell you, would I?"
He couldn't help but like her, an
d, more surprising, found himself enjoying the encounter. Here he was, a man with a great deal to be depressed about, sitting in a hotel bar flirting with an attractive stranger.
"You don't look like the other guys hanging around," she told him.
He peered about the bar, spotted the usual low-end types who hung around militaria shows—big, beefy motorcycle riding guys who were always asking to handle fine chained SS officers' dress daggers, but never bought one because they couldn't afford the five thousand dollar plus prices such items fetched on the collectors' market.
He turned back to Marci. "So what're they saying about me?"
"That you were set up and what a damn shame that is because you're one of the few totally honest guys in the business. That even though you're shrewd, you always play fair and that you've never tried to palm off a fake. That you're an expert appraiser and an incredibly talented finder. People speak with awe of your finds—a perfect Feldherrnhalle dagger at a garage sale in Oklahoma; General Braunsteiner's honor sword found in a dusty corner of an Indiana gun shop. In short, that you're the top dagger-finder in the game." She sipped her Scotch. "By the way, I happen to know the guy who owns that Feldherrnhalle."
"Your employer?"
She smiled her electric smile again. "Wouldn't I be dumb to answer that? But I'll tell you this, Hank, he's a great admirer of yours. I'm going to tell him I met you."
Three rounds of drinks and two hours later they were up in her hotel room making love. Somewhat nonplussed by her eagerness to get him into bed, he was enraptured once he got there. She seemed to know instinctively how to excite him, and, better still, told him how much he excited her, that down in the bar she'd barely restrained herself from ripping off his clothes.
"I just knew you'd be good at this," she told him when they laid back to rest.
He looked at her curiously. He'd never thought of himself as a great lover. Here he was, at least fifteen years older, not the greatest physical specimen in the world, certainly not the most desirable guy at MAX. But still, she'd made clear, she found him attractive. When he asked her why, she had a ready answer.
"Just something about you," she said, "the look of regret in your face. I believe they call it rue. Always been a sucker for world-weary guys." She leaned over, kissed his chest. "Hope you're not offended."
How could he be? World-weary was exactly the way he felt. Yet, thinking back, he couldn't recall any other woman who'd fastened on that. Certainly not his two ex-wives.
After they made love a second time, he asked if there was someone in her life.
"You mean like a boyfriend? Not at the moment. They seem to come and go. What about you?"
"No one at the moment." He laughed. "So where does all this take us, Marci?"
She raised herself, stepped off the bed, walked over naked to the window, turned, perched on the edge of the hotel room desk, then folded her arms.
"Hank, I've no idea where this takes us. What say we just follow the old 'Yellow Brick Road,' okay?"
When he told her he was agreeable to that, she asked if she could hire him as her adviser for the final day of MAX.
"There're a couple items I'm looking at. That field marshal's baton, for instance the one the French dealer's showing under the table. I need an expert so I don't get stung. Also someone to advise me on how much to pay. There's no auction records on the high-end stuff. You available?"
God, am I ever!
"Marci, I came here with stuff to sell. I lost all of it. You're looking at a man who needs a job."
"What's your commission?"
"Standard ten percent."
She walked back to him, still naked, and stuck out her hand. "Deal?" she said.
They shook on it.
He found dozens of antique stores on the streets that converged on Plaza Dorrego. Some were elegant, others were geared to tourists, still others were little better than junk shops. He had not come to the antiques district expecting to make a find, merely to test his homing instinct. Could he, with just a minimal ability to make himself understood in Spanish, find the one store that offered old swords and daggers? For there was always at least one militaria specialist in every antique district in every city he'd ever visited.
The task took him but fifteen minutes. Though the shop turned out to be little more than a booth, he was pleased to have found it. Moreover, the friendly, middle-aged dealer spoke excellent English. His World War II vintage offerings were pathetic—a couple of ratty Wehrmacht daggers and a pair of broken Zeiss Kriegsmarine binoculars.
He asked the dealer if there were other stores in Buenos Aires that specialized in WWII militaria.
"No specialists, but there's some material floating around. We had Nazis here, though most didn't bring their dress daggers with them. They took new names and hid their pasts. Nearly all of them are dead now."
He spent the last day of MAX acting as Marci's consigliere. The marshal's baton, offered by the French dealer, was, he told her, a good reproduction. He also talked her out of making an offer for a diplomat's sword, which an otherwise reputable dealer suggested may have once belonged to von Ribbentrop.
"May," he explained to Marci, along with "prototype," were operative words in militaria transactions. If a uniform or artifact could be proved to have belonged to a famous Third Reich personality, its value was greatly enhanced. "May" meant it could not be proven, and therefore the surrounding story was likely myth. A "prototype" nearly always meant that the item had been constructed from old parts after the war.
"There're more Himmler dress belts and Goebbels automobile pennants floating around than Yankees baseball caps," he told her in the hotel bar after MAX closed down.
"Interesting you should mention that," Marci said. "What about Göring? I saw his hunting dagger at the West Point Museum."
"That's real," Hank assured her. "He was wearing it when he surrendered. There're other Göring daggers and swords around, his wedding sword, for instance. The guy was an edged weapons fanatic."
"What about his Reichsmarschall dagger?"
He studied her. "What do you know about that?"
"Not much." She glanced around. "If it turned up, what do you suppose it'd be worth?"
He was alerted by the casual way she asked. As a skilled poker player, he knew how to read a tell. He believed Marci had just shown him one...but then he thought: Maybe that's what she wants me to believe.
"No way to know," he said, playing along. "But since it's the Holy Grail of missing Third Reich collectibles, it would probably bring the highest price ever seen in the business."
"How much are we talking about?"
He shrugged. "Certainly in the high six figures. maybe even seven."
"Whew! Please tell me more!"
He was certain now she was testing him. Could it be, he asked himself, that she actually knew something about the Göring dagger? The mere thought excited him.
He told her what little was known: that the dagger had been designed and hand-made by Professor Herbert Zeitner, assisted by his students at the Berlin Technical Academy; that there were only two period photos of it, neither of which showed Göring wearing it; that at least two forgeries had turned up over the years, each elaborately made; that assorted gems and parts allegedly pried off the dagger, stolen from Veldenstein Castle, had also shown up, but their origin didn't match with the widely held view that the dagger was kept at Göring's estate at Koenigsee near Berchtesgaden. He told her he thought the jewels and pieces from Veldenstein were from a duplicate dagger Göring had commissioned in 1943, and that he believed Göring's aide, Walter Hobler, most likely took the original when he disappeared after the war.
"So what happened to this Hobler guy?" Marci asked.
"No one knows. We'll probably never know whether he escaped. But hopefully one day the dagger will resurface."
As he spoke he focused on Marci's reactions, how attentive she'd become.
"Why so interested in this?"
She shrugged. "T
he man I work for heard a rumor."
"So you are acting for someone?"
She smiled. "You didn't really think a nice Jewish girl like me was involved in a nasty macho hobby like this?"
Nice Jewish girl—he liked the way she said it. Most of the Jewish collectors he knew were very quiet about their participation in the hobby.
"Who is he?" he asked.
"Can't tell you that. Just that he's a wealthy low profile collector who doesn't want his name known."
"Does he play it low-profile because he's really high-profile...like a celebrity?"
"Think what you like, Hank," she said. "I won't confirm or deny."
As he was headed home to Chicago on an early morning flight, they went up to her room for what she called "a final bout." But after their discussion about Göring, Hank couldn't concentrate. Rather than initiating sex, he pulled two tiny bottles of Scotch from her room minibar.
"If your friend has a lead on the Reichsmarschall dagger, I'm the guy he needs," he told her, emptying the bottles into glasses. "I'm one of the few guys who can tell him whether it's real."
"I know," she said, toasting him. "I told him about you. He has a proposition for you. He's here now in the hotel. We can go down to his room right now and talk, but you should know upfront you won't meet him face to face. He insists on speaking through a partially opened door. Hope that doesn't put you off."
It did put Hank off. Among his rules: Always know your client. But this time he relented on account of his loss, and the possibility of making a find on such a scale. He'd been remarkably lucky in his career, but turning up the Göring Reichsmarschall dagger would be a huge achievement. If there was even an off-chance of finding it, he wanted in.
The detective's name was Luis DiPinto. His office was on the one of the upper floors of the Barolo, down a long corridor which, consistent with the concierge's description, appeared to be lined end to end with small private detective agencies.
There was an outer office presided over by a secretary-receptionist, a plump redhead named Laura. DiPinto occupied a small inner office, which had an Aerolineas Argentinas calendar on the wall, two chairs, a beaten-up wooden desk and a couple of scratched up filing cabinets with combination locks.
City of Knives Page 12
