Gypsy in Amber

  Chapter One

  God had made Man in His image, Roman had heard. He wondered which god would claim the body on the aluminum table.

  ‘Caucasian female, age approximately twenty to twenty-five. Hair brown, eyes blue.’ The medical examiner spoke into a microphone clipped onto the lapel of his white smock. A wire from it led to the tape recorder in a roomy pocket.

  ‘The body has been dismembered into six separate parts,’ he went on in a monotone. ‘Otherwise it appears to be that of a healthy female. All the teeth are present, although there are silver fillings on each of the upper right molars. There is a small, old diagonal scar under the chin. No digits are missing. There is some bruising of tissue on the knuckle of the fourth metacarpal, where a ring has been removed while alive or shortly afterward. There are no other scars, birthmarks or moles.’

  There were four men around the table. Roman wasn’t a weak man; he’d seen death before. But the others, including Isadore, had professional objectivity to fall back on. He didn’t, and the disassembled horror of the sterile room was a revelation to him. He’d never considered that put back together, the human body resembled a misshapen octopus more than anything else.

  The examiner had pulled back a flap of scalp and sawed through the skull for the brain. One cuff raised an eyelid to reveal a blue eye that stared at Roman with a madly askew iris.

  ‘There is no sign of hematoma.’

  The brain, a convoluted ruby, was weighed and deposited in a glass jar. The examiner’s assistant wrote out a label, licked the back and applied it to the jar.

  Sergeant Harry Isadore looked out of place, a long-suffering snowman. His cheeks and nose were contrasting hues of blue and pink, and he slapped his thick hands together to encourage circulation. He had dressed for a warm summer day, and going into the mortuary on First Avenue had loosened his sinuses.

  ‘You’ve got to admit it’s easier this way,’ the assistant said as he pushed the legs and arms to one side.

  The examiner opened the chest cavity and removed the heart and lungs and studied the interior of the cavity for fractured ribs. As a team, he and the assistant cut out the intestinal tract, the liver, spleen, pancreas and kidneys. When they had finished examining them, they placed the organs in glass-top fruit jars and sealed the tops with wax. The assistant wrote out more labels while the examiner drew blood for a typing, two men cataloguing a treasure.

  The police reported the girl had come from the Cadillac Eldorado driven by Nanoosh Pulneshti. Nanoosh had started from Montevideo, Uruguay, gathering pieces for Roman. In Cuzco he bought Incan statuettes, in Manaus a crate of gold Empire service brought up the Amazon by a nineteenth-century rubber baron; in Maracaibo he stole silver candlesticks from an abandoned Jesuit fortress. He crossed the Rio Grande without passing through U.S. Customs, and three days later Nanoosh was on the Palisades Parkway approaching the George Washington Bridge. One of those everyday accidents occurred between the Eldorado and a U-Haul bringing antiques down from Newton, Massachusetts, to the Armory Show. Both Nanoosh and the U-Haul driver had died as the car jackknifed over the van. It would have been a simple case for the highway patrol except for the neat, scarcely bruised pieces of the girl they found strewn over the roadside.

  ‘No spermatozoa,’ the assistant said after looking at a smear under the microscope.

  ‘Can you give me a closer age, Doctor?’ Isadore asked.

  The examiner prodded the jaw open again while the assistant held the head steady.

  ‘From the wear on the teeth’ – he cut a thin line into the gum – ‘and the immaturity of the roots of the third molar, I would venture closer to twenty years than twenty-five.’ He pushed the jaw closed and shrugged. ‘She’s not a virgin, but she’s never borne a child or had an abortion. No evidence of drugs. Hardly any cavities. She must have been a clean liver.’

  Isadore had brought Roman down to identify Nanoosh in his stainless-steel filing cabinet. Roman didn’t know what the point was in asking him to witness this gruesome theater. He refused to watch, looking instead at the curved tile floor with its black, grooved borders.

  ‘Rigor mortis has set into the entire body. Since the face is still rigid, the victim may have been dead for from eighteen to twenty-four hours. However, there also seems to be little lividity, and the in situ report states that specimens of dry ice were found at the scene of the accident and it’s possible the ice was used to preserve the body. So the time range can be stretched to about ten to thirty hours to account for the possible effect of a lower temperature on the muscles.’

  Roman cried for Nanoosh, for the arrogance and daring reduced to a filing drawer. But this was another kind of reduction beyond grief, the butcher’s secret.

  ‘There are nine great wounds of dismemberment. Since there is a lack of bruises or lacerations to indicate a struggle, it is likely that separation of the head was first. The wound entry is from the back of the neck at the second cervical vertebra. The sinews and muscles are cleanly cut, and strands of the victim’s hair are embedded in the flesh. Separation of the spinal cord, not to mention the jugular, indicates death was instantaneous. The weapon used was sharp, clean and heavy and used with great force. There is no indication of a second blow. The wound entries for dismemberment of the arms are at the armpits. The arms would appear to have been drawn back, and again there is no indication that more than one blow was used. In each case, the greater tubercles have been crushed. Likewise, the olecranons in the separation of the biceps from the forearms.

  ‘The patella was shattered in each leg in the separation of the thighs from the calves. Separating the thigh from the pelvis was not such an easy matter. The thigh appears to have been spread back, and the wound entry is in the front at the origin of the rectus femoris; but the neck of the fovea capitus seems to have resisted, particularly in the right leg, and several blows were necessary to disengage the femur from the pelvis.

  ‘There are no in-and-out wounds to describe the assailant’s weapon. There are no marks indicating a point on it. The assailant appears to have had a basic knowledge of anatomy and great strength. There are no hesitation wounds.’

  At the end of all this the examiner paused and glanced at Isadore. His assistant was at the ready, rolling forward a tray with its container of formalin, alcohol and carmine to embalm the parts. Isadore stopped the tray. He took a toothpick and ran its flat end under the girl’s polished fingernails. He held the toothpick up to the light and inspected it.

  ‘Nothing. She didn’t suspect a thing. She thought she was with a friend.’

  ‘Is that all, Sergeant? We’d like to clean up.’

  ‘Hold it.’ He gestured for Roman. ‘One last thing.’

  Roman stood next to Isadore above the cool table with its display of meat.

  ‘Is she Gypsy?’ Isadore asked.

  There was no way of avoiding it now. Roman looked, concentrating on minute points, refusing the whole. Finally, he looked at the fingernails Isadore had just held.

  ‘No. There’d be a brown moon around the cuticle at the very least.’

  ‘Then how do you explain it?’ Isadore asked.

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘How she could think your friend Nanoosh was her friend?’

  Roman didn’t know what to say. Isadore was Roman’s friend, too.

  Chapter Two

  There were five faces visible in the window of ‘R. Grey – Antiques’ when Isadore parked in front of it that morning. One was of a Siennese madonna, the perfect oval of her face outlined by her black hood, the hood set in a golden halo. The wings of joyous seraphim touched her shoulders as she ascended to heaven.

  On the other side of the window was a Florentine banker captured in all his intelligent avarice. A rich fu
r hat mimicked the hands that weighed gold coins, and a greyhound’s luminescent eyes watched the glittering money. In a corner was the inscription in red ‘Bottega del Ghirlandaio’.

  Next to the sixteenth-century banker was another who could have been his brother, except that this head was set on shoulders of Dunhill pinstripe, and it was alive. Isadore recognized the senior member of the board of the American Stock Exchange as the man ran his hand tenderly down the carved frame. A look of anxiety was in the senior member’s rimless glasses, and Isadore got an inkling of the painting’s value. The fourth face was Roman’s, and it was as Byzantine and mysterious as the madonna’s. The fifth was that of Beng, Roman’s solid black cat that paced from one painting to the other.

  The stock market was down. Isadore didn’t know how much until Roman put his arm around the broker’s shoulders the way a sweetshop owner would put his arm around a penniless boy. Beng disappeared from the window, a sign that the bargaining was over. If it had been any other Gypsy, Isadore would have been alert for a traveling wallet. With Roman he knew the customer would end up signing a check eagerly another day, and in the meantime Isadore couldn’t help enjoying the tableau. The Gypsy was one of his few indulgences.

  When the broker had left with one last lingering pause in front of the window, Isadore gave himself a second to erase the smile from his lips. It wasn’t a funny day. He got out of his car, slowly, for once not wanting to talk to the dealer, taking in the narrow, expensive East Side street with its picture townhouses where newsboys delivered the Times and Woman’s Wear Daily in foyers.

  The door to Roman’s shop did not have an automatic lock, making it a curiosity in the New York antique trade.

  ‘Sarisban,’ Roman said. ‘I saw the long arm of the law skulking across the street, so I put some tea on.’

  He was in the back of the shop barely visible past a Chinese screen, but Isadore could see him grinning as he set two cups and saucers beside a teapot.

  ‘Morning,’ Isadore replied. He wasn’t in the mood to reciprocate their usual greeting. Roman came to the front of the store with the cups. He had an exaggerated frown.

  ‘Official business again. I never knew police work was so dull until I met you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Hot tea, Christ,’ Isadore muttered. ‘On a day like today. It’s already eighty out there.’ Just holding the saucer made Isadore sweat.

  ‘You’re turning into a dilettante on me,’ Roman told him, taking a healthy sip from his cup. He pushed a chair over to Isadore with his foot.

  ‘Incidentally, what are those paintings worth?’ Isadore asked. He refused to sit, another compromise with his job. He would have put the cup down on the table next to him, but he didn’t want to leave a ring.

  ‘Whatever I can get. Michelangelo’s teacher may have done the portrait if that gives you an idea.’

  ‘And you just leave them in the window?’

  ‘I put them there so the customer could see them in daylight. I don’t usually handle paintings, so I don’t have any place to hang them.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Isadore looked around the interior. It had the haphazard jumble of a pawnshop; but he’d learned the prices of some of the pieces, and Roman had explained the salutary effect of the mess on the clientele’s imagination. Inlaid chests lined the walls under suspended side chairs, partially unrolled tapestries and showcases of Oriental porcelain. It always reminded him of a museum tilted on its side.

  ‘These paintings just sort of came into hand like everything else?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that all it is?’ Roman said. ‘You want to see the bills of sale? Why didn’t you say so when you came in?’

  ‘No.’ Isadore sighed and sat down. He rested his cup on his lap. ‘Look, what was Nanoosh Pulneshti doing for you?’

  Roman tried to read the cop’s face, but Isadore was staring at his tea.

  ‘Nothing. Nanoosh is a friend of mine, you know that. What’s the matter, is he in trouble?’

  ‘Not anymore. He’s dead.’

  Isadore looked up, trying to catch Roman’s reaction. It was too late; all he saw was brown mask calm. If it had been another Rom bringing the news, Roman would have cried openly. For a callous moment Isadore found himself resenting the limits on friendship between Rom and gajo, but he went on.

  ‘He died in a car accident. Witnesses say he was trying to get onto the exit ramp for the George Washington Bridge the same time as a van. You know what happens: Neither one wanted to give way, so they’re both dead now.’

  ‘Nanoosh was a good driver.’

  ‘Maybe the other driver was at fault. So what? The thing is, we found another body in Nanoosh’s car. A girl, she’d been murdered. Brunette, pretty, I don’t think she’s Gypsy. Young, blue eyes.’

  ‘What are you driving at?’ Roman asked. Isadore kept his face averted to keep from clueing him.

  ‘You might know who she is. I want you to take a look at her; it’s as simple as that.’

  Roman shrugged. Beng threaded his way through a set of Meissen.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sergeant. Besides, how do you know the girl wasn’t killed in the accident?’

  ‘Take a look at her and you’ll know. The bastard was carting her around the whole day, Roman. Maybe he was a pal of yours; but Nanoosh didn’t have a driver’s license, the plates on the car were bad, and he had a knife.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘They’re wrong to me. I’m not trying to pin this on him just because of that, though. We found a whole bunch of stuff from his car all over the road. Silver plates, candlesticks, statues. And the girl. His Cadillac was split open like a beer can.’

  ‘Then you didn’t find her in Nanoosh’s car.’

  Beng had settled beside a ceramic view of the Rhine and glared at Isadore.

  ‘Not in it, no. You don’t put a seat belt on a corpse.’

  ‘And the other car?’

  ‘It was a small truck, a U-Haul. That was open, too, but no luck. It was checked from top to bottom right before the crash by an insurance examiner. That’s the problem, Roman; no insurance examiners are around when your friends are delivering antiques to you. You operate differently.’

  ‘There were antiques in the van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s interesting. You don’t think so?’

  ‘No. Damn it, Roman, this isn’t a game. I came here to tell you that the delivery boy in your little operation has killed somebody. I know how you got that chandelier over there and that tapestry. I haven’t been able to prove it; but I know, and maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough because it was only a matter of you milking a few snobs. This time it’s murder. Nanoosh was bringing his cargo to you, body and all.’

  ‘There are over a thousand antique dealers between Wall Street and Eighty-sixth Street.’

  ‘But you’re the only Gypsy. He was coming here, this shop.’

  ‘The only Gypsy,’ Roman repeated. He looked at Isadore with some sorrow. ‘That’s why you came here. Are you going to arrest me because I’m the only Gypsy?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Do you deny that you operate outside the law for the stuff you sell? Come on, be honest with me.’

  ‘As a friend? No, I won’t deny I operate outside your laws. As a suspect I deny everything. Now I get a question. This accident didn’t happen in New York. It happened in New Jersey – didn’t it? – while Nanoosh was getting on the bridge for the city. What have the New York police and you got to do with it?’

  It took a moment for Isadore to answer, but there was no chance of evasion. Roman already knew the answer.

  ‘They gave it to us because I’m the Gypsy expert,’ Isadore said. ‘They thought you’d talk to me.’

  Roman left without a word and went to the rear of the store. Isadore sat in his chair feeling angry and foolish. The shock of Nanoosh’s death hadn’t worked, and the threat about the merchandise had failed as miserably as the first time he tried it
when Roman opened the store years ago. Beng leaped from the porcelain to the top of a secretary desk. The cat looked at Isadore complacently, then shut its eyes and went to sleep. Its whiskers looked almost white against its fur. Isadore, the Gypsy expert, remembered that Beng was named for the devil of the Ganges. Otherwise, he knew as much about the cat as he did about its owner. Roman came back and dropped an ice cube into Isadore’s cup.

  ‘You should have told me before you wanted your tea another way,’ he said. He wiped his dark hands on a handkerchief.

  ‘If you want some help, here it is,’ he went on. ‘Nanoosh was a Gypsy, just like me. He broke laws. He stole cars, and he liked girls, too. Gypsy girls. But he was no killer. You have my word.’

  A Gypsy’s word, Isadore thought. That was like a contradiction. On the other hand, Roman Grey was a contradiction.

  ‘That’s not enough.’

  ‘That’s all you’re going to get. Nanoosh didn’t waste his time with gaja; he trusted only Gypsies. As for gaja women, he despised them; he said they were milk, and a gaja man was a thief who made his own rules. He wouldn’t touch either of them. If you want to find out who killed the girl, you look for her kind of man.’

  ‘So far as I know, you’re an accomplice to murder,’ Isadore said. He was out of his chair, and his face was flushed. He looked for some place to put the cup down.

  ‘I don’t have anything left to say to you, Sergeant. That’s a Hancock Worcester you have in your hand, try not to break it.’ He took the cup from Isadore.

  ‘I could pull you in right now. You’ve already admitted dealing in unregistered antiques.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ the Gypsy said. ‘You were one gajo I trusted.’

  Isadore’s hand had reflexively gone to his chrome cuffs for the arrest when the shop door opened. A girl came in. She was dressed in Saks’ version of a fringed Indian dress, and she wore a beaded headband around her brown hair. She was beautiful and vaguely familiar. It wasn’t just that Isadore had the sense he’d seen her on a dozen television commercials. She was what all his son’s dates tried to look like.