Robert Tanenbaum - Justice Denied

“You’re a very stupid man,” she said. “I think maybe Ersoy was the brains of this operation. After you killed him, the two of you have been stumbling around like a pair of idiots. Once we knew about the art theft and forgery ring, it was no problem finding you. And nailing you. You understand that expression, ‘nailing’? You’re nailed.

“You had a nice little operation going, but the Mask of Gregory was too big for you. Too much cash involved. You figured, why split three ways when you could have half each? So you killed Ersoy, probably with that pistol you brought along tonight….”

She gestured toward a low table, where his gun sat in a clear plastic bag. His mouth sagged.

“Yeah, I figured. It’s the same gun. Dumb. Bone stupid. You thought you were smart pinning it on the Armenians, but it turns out that was really stupid. That’s what got us started on the trail that led to the art scam. If you’d’ve just shot him on a dark street and lifted his watch and wallet, nobody would have asked any questions.

“But that’s not the stupidest thing you did. No, the stupidest thing was to think that half of what you were going to get from Joey Castles for the gold and jewels from the mask was more than a third of what Kerbussyan would’ve paid for the mask itself. The two of you outsmarted yourselves out of about ten million dollars.” She laughed in his face.

He broke. Djelal jerked himself upright and roared and lunged at Marlene with his teeth, his mouth throwing ropes of spit. She kicked her chair backward to avoid him, and instantly Harry Bello was between them with his pistol pressed hard against Djelal’s skull and his arm locked around his neck.

“It was not the money, whore!” the Turk shrieked. “ Piç! It was the Armeniy! Ersoy was going to sell the filthy saint to the Armenians! We were going to cheat them, like they cheated us. But he said, no, Kerbussyan would not be fooled. We can get more if we sell it. But we are real Turks. How could we give this filthy thing to our enemies, for them to glory in it and defame us more? Melt it, I said. But no, he wouldn’t. He was corrupt, a politician! So we had men to steal it and we …”

“You killed him.”

“He deserved death. He was a traitor.”

Marlene said, “Wrap him up, Harry. We can get a statement from him in the morning. Did you get all that, Butch?”

Karp was no shorthand expert, but he could write like blazes when necessary; few who can’t get through law school. He finished his scribbling and said, “Yeah, I think so. Except he said something like ‘peach’ at the start. Right after ‘whore.’

“I bet it was something nasty, right, Ahmet?”

But Djelal had sunk into morose silence. He did not resist when Bello led him out of the loft.

“That was quite a performance,” said Karp. “Did you plan that whole thing? Like, how did he know to come here?”

“Harry planted a charge slip at the storage locker. I got the idea from the Russell case. Funny, isn’t it? It was patriotism, not greed, that killed Ersoy. God protect us all from noble motives.”

“Look who’s talking,” said Karp. He got up from the table and hopped over to the wall phone.

“Who are you calling? It’s two A.M.”

“Roland. I’m going to get him out of bed and get him down to Centre Street to spring Tomasian and write up Djelal.”

“Oooh, nasty!”

“No, it’s his case. He should handle it.”

“You think he’ll ever forgive you?”

“Roland isn’t into grudges. Tomorrow there’ll be a check in an envelope on my desk, and he’ll never mention it again and neither will I.”

Karp made his call, which was terse. He hung up and went back to the couch. Marlene put a kettle on to boil. She made tea, and they sat down at the porcelain-topped table in the kitchen to drink it.

“I’ve been thinking,” Karp said. “All’s well that ends well, but did you ever think that our guy might not have come alone? What if old Ahmet there’d brought three guys with machine guns along? Harry didn’t have any cops backing him up, did he?”

“Not cops,” said Marlene carefully. “Not as such. But there’s backup, and more than three guys with machine guns.”

“Kerbussyan! You tipped the Armenians this was going down. But that means …”

She sipped from her mug and waited.

“You’re going to give the thing to Kerbussyan?”

“What thing is that, Butchie?” asked Marlene, giving him a hooded look, of just the kind that some ancestress of hers might have produced in the aftermath of an affair of poisoned daggers at the Palermo court of Robert the Devil.

Kerbussyan arrived ten minutes later in the company of two silent, mustached men, the same ones Karp had seen at the house above the Hudson many months ago. They wore field jackets, though it was a warm night. They clanked with weapons.

The old man embraced Marlene warmly and kissed her hand.

“My dear, I have no words-”

“No problem, Mr. K,” said Marlene, “but before we get all excited, let’s check what’s in the box.”

Kebussyan’s two shadows followed her back through the loft and returned bearing the crate. She gave one of them a short wrecking bar, and he took the top off the crate. Inside, in a nest of straw, was a package wrapped in padded cotton, secured with rigger’s tape. One of the shadows drew it out and placed it on the dining room table. It was about the size and shape of a loveseat cushion, but obviously very heavy. The man grunted with the effort.

Kerbussyan approached the thing and studied it, as if he could see through the wrappings, through the centuries. He was pale and white around the nostrils. Marlene handed him scissors. Carefully and slowly he cut the tape and unwrapped layer after layer of gray padding.

Gold glinted as the last of the wrapping fell away.

“It is. It is !” cried the old man.

The cloth was swept aside and it stood there, a golden block the size of an atlas and as thick as an unabridged dictionary. On the closed doors of the reliquary triptych were embossed the figures of a man and a woman in Byzantine imperial regalia. They stood out, grave and holy, from a background studded with pearls and small diamonds.

“The emperor Zeno and the empress Ariadne,” breathed Kerbussyan. “The donors.” His fingers fumbled at the central catch, and then he threw open the doors of the reliquary.

Numen flooded off it like water off a broaching whale, filling the room with emotional power, like light for the deeper feelings. The door on the left was inscribed with a gold and enamel-work martyrdom of St. Hrip’sime, and on the right was St. Gregory preaching to the Armenian nobles, assisted by angels. In the center, the golden face of the Illuminator stared out, terrible and marvelous, his eyes great sapphires, alive with blue flames.

The three Armenians fell to their knees and crossed themselves, and there was a chorused prayer in the ancient tongue. Marlene felt her own knees dip involuntarily, and her hand twitched to make the cross. Karp, the Jewish pagan, just watched, fascinated in spite of himself.

After some time, they shut the doors and wrapped up the soul of Armenia in its padding. Kerbussyan was nearly speechless with gratitude.

“Please,” he said, “what can I do for you? You must let me give you some-anything … anything I have.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kerbussyan, but I can’t accept anything. It’s just my job. We return stolen property, and the fact that it was stolen a long time ago doesn’t enter. I’m glad you got it back.”

She walked them to the door. They were going to go to Centre Street to pick up Aram Tomasian. Marlene was thinking, naturally enough, about roots, about lost homelands, and a thought flashed into her mind.