6 - The Eye of the Virgin: Ike Schwartz Mystery 6

by Frederick Ramsay

  Before she’d copied the files, she’d disabled the logger. She’d copied the data to a flash drive, then shut down and rebooted and enabled the logger again. Its record would be seamless if anyone were to look. Apparently, someone had.

  ***

  The car had been parked a block farther down the street from Dakis’ house. Amos had noticed it, jotted down its license number, and put it in his report. It would only be important if he could make a connection between it and Dakis. He couldn’t. At least not until it pulled away from the curb and followed Dakis when he left the house in the afternoon. Amos left a message for Ike with Essie.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Louis Dakis arrived at the sheriff’s office after three. He’d made a stop beforehand at the church, and delivered the first of his two newly created icons to the Reverend Fisher. The clergyman seemed very pleased with it, his wife, less so. She mentioned, by way of explanation, that she was raised a Methodist. He supposed that meant something to her. Not to him, however. He waited until the icon had been installed temporarily on a stand on the left-hand side of the church, the Gospel side, the Reverend Fisher had insisted, and left. He did not notice the car that had followed him to the church and then to the sheriff’s office. Even if he had been suspicious, the fact that the car continued south on Main Street when he turned into the town parking lot would have allayed any thoughts he might have had about it.

  What he did notice was a familiar looking Volvo pulled up to the side when he’d turned in, but its full significance wasn’t apparent until he walked in the door. Lorraine glared at him as he entered.

  “You bastard, you killed him.” Lorraine Dakis launched herself from her chair and charged across the room, hands high and, he supposed, nails at the ready to claw out his eyes.

  “Killed who? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me. Franco came here to retrieve the Virgin of Tenderness that I bought in Egypt and you…what? You argued and you killed him. Sheriff, this man killed Franco Sacci. Arrest him.”

  “I might do that,” Ike said, “But not right now. There are some things that need clearing up first.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like how he managed to put Sacci’s body in the urgent care waiting room without anyone seeing him. Like how he managed to do that in the presence of two or three other men at the Dogwood Motel. There are a few other problems with this, but you get the picture.”

  Dakis had listened to Lorraine and then Ike. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on? Franco Sacci is dead?”

  “What other men?” Lorraine said. “He had help?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ike waved Frank Sutherlin and the two of them into his office. “You two take a seat and we’ll sort this business out eventually. Frank, do you have some names for me?”

  Frank deposited a slip of paper on Ike’s desk and positioned himself in the corner where he could monitor the two Dakises.

  “Now, Mrs. Dakis, why would your husband want to kill Sacci?

  “Estranged…not husband anymore.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Estranged husband, then, Why would he want to do in Franco Sacci?”

  “Isn’t that obvious? We were getting a divorce. Louis didn’t like that. He was jealous. He was trying to ruin my business. He was—”

  “Our business, Lorraine. No matter what was going on between us, between you and the creep, it was and for the time being remains our business.”

  “We, Franco and I, planned to buy you out.”

  “And I told you my half wasn’t for sale even if you could raise the purchase price, which you can’t.” Louis Dakis leaned forward and addressed Ike. “You see how it is. She will accuse me of anything. This Sacci guy was like having termites in the basement. Left alone, the whole business would have collapsed. I didn’t want that. There’s a right way and a wrong way to take a business down. They,” he jerked his head in Lorraine’s direction, “would have ruined it.”

  “We would not. You see, Sheriff, he’s insanely jealous. For years I’m like a doormat and then, when I do something about me, he goes nuts. Besides, who else could have any reason to kill Franco?”

  Ike picked up the paper Frank had placed on his desk and studied it. Lorraine Dakis opened her mouth to speak again but Ike silenced her with a raised hand. He reached for his telephone, grumbled something about buttons, selected and punched one of them on the phone’s base and picked up.

  “Sam, what did you get on the credit cards?” He listened and then made a check mark on the same piece of paper. “Thanks. If he hasn’t left yet, why don’t you slip home and say goodbye to Karl.” He turned his attention back to the couple.

  “To answer your question, Mrs. Dakis, the list of possible killers is as follows: Avriam Kolb; two other men, to wit, Sandor Brown and Paul Wentz; and a possible third who calls himself Bob Smith. I wouldn’t hold out much hope on the last one. It’s a phony and belongs to either Brown or Wentz, or to yet another party we don’t know about who could be complicit but not present.”

  Lorraine Dakis sat with her mouth open. Then, something approaching comprehension crossed her face. She wheeled on her husband. “You hired thugs to kill Franco. You couldn’t do it yourself and so—”

  Ike held up his hand. “Not likely, Mrs. Dakis. Possible, but not likely. There are things at play here we do not yet understand, but I think for the nonce your husband, irrespective of how he might have felt about Sacci and how much you might wish it to be so, did not have anything to do with his death. We might have to revisit that later, Mr. Dakis, but for now I think you are in the clear. I want some information about your gun collection and may want to see it in the future. Now, what can you both tell me about this icon?” Ike held up The Virgin of Tenderness.

  The two of them began to speak at once. Louis Dakis cut his wife a look. Thin-lipped, she nodded to Dakis.

  “We were lucky with that one. I had a contact in Cairo who heard it was coming on the market and e-mailed me the catalog from the sale. Lorraine was in Rome at the time, and she hopped on a plane, flew over to Egypt, and scooped it up before the catalog was widely circulated. It was a coup, I can tell you.”

  “Did you have a buyer or one in mind?”

  “No, but an icon of this quality will sell quickly. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “I’ve had several inquiries in the last week,” she said, and scowled at her husband. “I could have sold it a couple of times over, except he,” she pointed at Louis, “took it with him when he ran off to this jerkwater town.”

  “We think it’s a very nice town. The only real problem we seem to have here has to do with strangers coming in and getting themselves murdered. It could be worse. We could be losing locals, but so far we’ve been lucky that way. Tell me, do you have any idea why someone would want to steal it, Mrs. Dakis?”

  “It’s very valuable. Why wouldn’t they?”

  “So how does Sacci fit into the picture?”

  Louis hung his head and glowered at his wife. “Sometime before she was due to return to the states, that guy showed up and…”

  “We weren’t getting along all that well, Louis and I,” she said, “he was always working or at the shop doing this and that. We never…Well, you don’t need to hear all this, but then Franco showed up and I don’t know, I…I don’t know…”

  “Swept you off your feet?”

  “It’s a terrible cliché, but, yes, maybe you could say that.”

  “How well did you know him before you were ‘swept,’ would you say?”

  “Not very, but, well you know about those things instinctively, don’t you? I mean things clicked, and, you know how those things happen.”

  “It’s possible. You vouched for him to obtain a visa, is that right?”

  “Yes. What has this to do with his murder? Since you insist that he,” she wagged her finger at her husband again, “didn’t have anything to do wi
th it, have you made any progress? I mean who else would want to?”

  “Well, we’re not sure about that yet, but we have some ideas. But back to Franco Sacci. Were you aware his real name was Farouk Zaki?”

  “What? No. That’s not possible. I saw his passport. I had to if I wanted to obtain the visa. His name was Franco Sacci. He’s Italian, born in Milan and—”

  “His name was Farouk Zaki. He was born in a small village in the Sinai near Gaza. His father was killed in the Six Days War and he has been connected to groups that are suspected of or associated with international terrorism. He was on the Homeland Security watch list. Your sponsorship provided the only way he was ever going to enter the country.”

  “No!”

  “Sorry, but yes. Now I have to ask you again, how well did you know this man? Were you in on his plan to slip into the country and if so, why?”

  “In on, I don’t…You’re saying I was used? I don’t believe you. This is a mistake. His plan to slip into the country? What does that mean?”

  “Mrs. Dakis, I know all of this is upsetting but this is important. Did you two enter the country, the US, together?”

  “No. He had some mix-up with his visa or something. He flew in a week after I did.”

  “But you brought in the icon, I assume. Did you have any difficulty?”

  “The icon? No…well, the usual . . I had to show the bill of sale and so on. Egypt, like so many Middle Eastern countries, is pretty careful about their antiquities. But this icon was originally from Russia, so they had no problem with letting it go. I’ve done this many times before and they know me by now.”

  “So, let me venture a guess, your husband was aware of your intention to split up before you arrived. Is that correct Mr. Dakis?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

  “Possibly it is immaterial. How long after your wife arrived did you remove the icon from the store, Mr. Dakis?”

  “Oh, a day or so, I think. Yes, two days later. She said she didn’t want me to…well, I don’t trust the legal system and so I took what I considered half of the assets. Not half of the stock but enough pieces to make up for my half in terms of monetary value.”

  “He took all the pieces worth anything.”

  “I see. And when Sacci arrived, how did he react to the icon having been taken?”

  “Same as me, Sheriff. He was furious.”

  “About them all or this one in particular?’

  Lorraine’s lower lip began to tremble. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”

  “Leave her be,” Louis said and patted Lorraine’s arm. “She didn’t know. No one did. Besides, what has this to do with us?”

  ***

  The two men sat in the parked car three blocks from the Town Center Building, home to Picketsville’s municipal government, the Sheriff’s Office and sundry other governmental services. The driver kept the building in sight in his rear view mirror. He did not see Dakis enter the building but was sure that he’d gone to the police. What now?

  “He took a flat package into that church.” His companion said. “If the icon wasn’t in his house, do you think he might have sold it to the priest?”

  “But he just now took it in. If he sold it to the priest, what was he doing now?”

  “They put them up in pairs, I think. At least that is what I saw in the last church job we did. They put a picture of the woman and baby on one side and the Jesus figure on the other, Sometimes there are more, I think, saints and so on. This might have been the Jesus one.”

  “We will need to go back to that church and see.” He put the car in gear and drove off. “Tonight.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Shmuel Gold listened to the messages in his voice mail. It had been years, how many…sometimes he lost track. There’s a reason why retirement eventually becomes mandatory rather than optional. Events begin to run together and only the past remains crisp in one’s memory. How long had it been since he’d heard from Isaac Schwartz—Ike? And now, two messages on his machine, one from him and one from Jerusalem about him. He pulled an old briar pipe from his cardigan pocket and filled the bowl tamping the rough cut shreds of tobacco carefully in place. Correctly packed, the pipe would stay lit for an hour or more. It would burn cool and slow. Pack it too tightly and it would go out, too loosely and it would be hot and dump ashes on his slacks which were already singed in places where he’d gotten careless with his smoking. After all, it wasn’t like he was in any hurry.

  He wouldn’t light yet. He’d wait until the strong Turkish coffee he preferred over the weak English stuff his housekeeper bought finished brewing and the sun came up. Then he would smoke his pipe, read the paper, and drink coffee until they wheeled him out to the main room and he could start his day. No hurry. He didn’t sleep much these days anyway. Old people don’t. Well, not until they started to disintegrate. That’s how he envisioned the process. You grew old, your muscles atrophied, your brain shrank, lungs failed and then you disintegrated, fell apart bit by bit like an old car rumbling down the road with bits and pieces, bolts and nuts, exhaust pipe sections dropping on the ground. He thought of his old friends, lined up in armchairs, nodding in the sun, their mouths agape, a little drool at the corners. Some had Alzheimer’s, some were…disintegrating. He hoped when his decline became obvious someone would have the decency to shoot him. He doubted they would, but he hoped. Perhaps that is why his daughter took away his service revolver. Smart woman, Rachael.

  So, what was this thing with Ike? And what did Jerusalem want? Somewhere in the desert the Mossad stirred restlessly, ferreting out plots, watching Israel’s enemies, its historical adversaries and its friends equally. Everyone had to be surveilled. Everyone had to be assumed to be a threat. Survival meant there could be no surprises, no interference. Never again.

  It had always been that way. Joshua sent the spies into the land. Rehab, the harlot, revealed the secrets of the Canaanites and the people of Israel crossed over and took the land. Survival. His coffee ready, he poured his first of the day into a small porcelain cup, stirred it, and breathed in its aroma. He liked a little sugar and milk in it in the morning. Coffee, his pipe, and the Jerusalem Post because he needed to keep his English current.

  Maybe the call from Jerusalem signaled an assignment. Maybe he would have another day “in the sand.” That was how he described his early life to his grandchildren. The years fighting in the wars, in the intelligence gathering. The days in the Sinai—in the sand—the old days when things were straightforward, the enemy clearly defined, and the goals certain. These days? Who knew? But not likely. Not from a wheel chair.

  He jotted down the phone number Ike had left him, looked at his watch, the battered Rolex Mariner he’d liberated from a Palestinian border jumper in ninety-one, and called his old headquarters. There was protocol to be followed, after all. Protocol and procedures. He called the local number. He would find out what Jerusalem had to say. Isaac and the United States would have to wait. He would call Isaac afterwards.

  Perhaps.

  ***

  Besides the tech who’d retrieved the data, the only people to see the print-out of the documents on the microchip was the director, his deputy for mideastern operations, and Charlie. The tech did not need to be reminded he was sworn to secrecy, and the rest were even now debating whether or not to inform the President of the United States and the Secretary of State. The operative word in the discussion was deniability. What the President should and should not know, how much should he be able to reasonably deny? And then, if he were to be told anything, which version of the truth should it be? Charlie wondered, not for the first time, about an institution that withheld information about a sensitive area in foreign affairs from the President in order to protect him from the possibility of political attack by his own people as well as his foreign allies, never mind the country’s enemies. Somewhere in the country’s history, he thought, we mispla
ced the kernel of truth that shaped us in the first place.

  He stopped thinking in abstractions and concentrated on the problem that had been thrust on the Agency, on him. There was the immediate difficulty—the microchip and its contents— and the larger problem, the originals of the documents from which the documents had been generated. Fortunately for Charlie, the latter was not his to worry about. The director would either mount a black operation to retrieve and destroy them or he wouldn’t. Certainly the Israelis would, or perhaps already had. Indeed, they may have been found and destroyed by now. But that did not mean there were no more copies. He heaved a sigh. At this juncture, Charlie’s only task was to keep a lid on the local operation which, in turn, meant keeping a lid on Ike Schwartz. That would not be easy. Ike had that intuitive sense about things that would inevitably take him down the same road Charlie and the Agency were traveling. And unless he could find some device to quickly divert Ike, he was already on that journey or soon would be. Charlie let out an exasperated sigh. Why couldn’t things be easy for a change?

  He had to assume Ike had stumbled onto Tommy Wainwright’s possible involvement somehow. How much he’d turned up remained an unknown, but it was only a matter of time before he’d dig out all of it or at least enough of it to make trouble. Charlie shook his head and grunted. Unlike the President of the United States, Ike could not, would not accept an expedient version of the truth. What to do? Ike was his friend.

  He picked up the phone and called the techs that had been tasked to search Ike’s computer operation. Samantha Ryder was far too skillful for her own good. He’d been assured that her hard drive had been wiped clean and no data from her hacking into their database remained on it or anywhere else. They had run sophisticated decoding software on all her files to be sure she hadn’t encrypted the downloads and hidden them in an innocuous file. They insisted she was clean.

  She wouldn’t be happy about that when she found out what they’d done to her machine but, what the hell, who said life had to be fair. She and Ike were safer in ignorance. He called the techs and asked them to go back and be certain no copies had been made, and then be sure that if she ever ventured into their cyber world again, they could block her. They assured him that they had her signature and there was no way she could.