The Missing Piece (32 page)

“Mike, don't start playing games with me.”

“I'm not. I found the fucker.”

“Where?”

“In the plenum,” said McQueen. “Remember when I told you I thought Ivan was involved? I took a gamble on that. I figured if he's hiding the piece and he knows I'm looking for it, he might move it somewhere he knows I already looked. Turned out I was right.”

“Jesus, Mike, you really have it?” Gary sounded fully alive now.

“I do, Gary. We're gonna be rich. We're gonna be fuckin' rich.”

“Not so fast, Mike. Get a hold of yourself. Where is it now?”

“In my locker.”

“Mike…”

“Nobody saw me. I wrapped it in a plastic bag and got it into my locker without anyone seeing me. And it doesn't look like it looked in the courtroom or on the internet. Ivan must have covered it with wax. But I chipped some away, and it's silver underneath.”

“This is good. This is great.” Gary spoke slowly, as if mulling many thoughts at once. “You need to bring it to me tonight. Not too early. Wait till after dark. I gotta be sure it's just you and me.”

“You just name the time, Gary, and I'm there.”

“Eight. I'll call if I want you earlier. And make sure you carry your gun. I don't want anything happening to you on the way up.”

“You got it, Gary. We're gonna be fuckin' rich.”

“We're at first base, Mike. We still need a hit or two to get us home.”

“We'll get those hits, Gary. I know we will.”

“Eight o'clock,” said Gary. “Not a minute earlier unless I call.”

*   *   *

After a brief recess, Linda went back on the bench as the courtroom clock jumped to 10:45. The lawyers sat at counsels' table with Billy Cokeley closest to the jury box and the attorney for the auction house the farthest away. Pinter, Braman, and Darius took up the middle. There were no spectators in the gallery, no Lord Leinster minding Braman's every word and every move, and no treasure piece on display.

An officer slipped in through the jury entrance, holding the door so that it closed without a sound. He nodded to the judge, meaning that the last of the jurors had arrived. At the back of the courtroom, Foxx pushed open one of the double doors and spoke to the officer in the corridor. He came back in and shook his head, meaning that there was no sign of the protestors.

“I'm told the jury is here and the protestors aren't,” Linda announced. “Therefore, unless there are any preliminary matters, we will begin.”

Arthur Braman rose to his feet.

“Your Honor, my associate arrived during the recess, and I now have copies of the order to show cause. I request that you sign it now and I can serve all counsel.”

“The original hasn't turned up,” said Linda. “Do you represent that the copies are true copies of the original submitted on Friday?”

“I do, Your Honor.”

“Give it here,” said Linda.

Braman gave the order to Foxx, who handed it up to Linda.

“Don't go away,” she whispered. She took a pen and, without giving the order a look, scratched a big X across the top page and signed her name in the corner.

Foxx handed the order back to Braman.

“You didn't even look at it,” said Braman.

“Didn't need to,” said Linda.

“Then I request permission to go to the Appellate Division and apply for a stay of this trial pending an appeal of your denial of my order to show cause.”

“You have my permission to go up whenever you please,” said Linda. “But I will not stop the trial in the meantime. You get a stay from the Appellate Division, and of course I will abide by it. But I'm not going to deny your order to show cause, then adjourn the trial so you can rush uptown and appeal it. That would be granting your relief by other means.”

Braman leaned down to whisper to Darius, then finally sat.

“In that case,” said Linda, “bring down the jury.”

The officer disappeared through the jury entrance and climbed half a flight to the jury room. He returned a few minutes later, announcing, “Jury entering,” and holding the door as the eight jurors filed in and took their seats in the jury box. He then handed the ballot cards to the judge, who quickly scanned the cards and attached names to faces. These were all routine steps at the start of any trial, but today freighted with drama because each was a step closer to the point in the first trial when everything went wrong.

Linda began her welcoming speech to the jury. Her early versions were verbatim knockoffs of Judge Johnstone's canned speech, but her more recent endeavors contained enough personal flourishes to make them her own. The question today was whether to make any reference to the first trial. She opted against that, and as she finished she felt confident in her decision.

Billy Cokeley moved to the podium. As Cokeley gave his opening statement, Linda scanned the courtroom: the court officer standing with arms folded at the jury room door, the head and shoulders of the other officer in the corridor outside, Foxx at the corner of the well. She listened as Cokeley reached that exact point in his opening, the words that had haunted her for three years, “… evidence to prove that this treasure, wherever it may have traveled during its sixteen-hundred-year journey to this courtroom in New York City, was last unearthed within the borders of Croatia. We will…”

The skies did not darken, the courtroom did not explode, no gunmen burst in through the doors. As Cokeley promised credible eyewitness testimony from a man who had been a distinguished officer in the Yugoslav army, Linda found herself breathing normally again. She already had gone further in this trial than Judge Johnstone in the last.

*   *   *

McQueen was not good at estimating numbers of people. There could have been fifty, there could have been one hundred. But whatever the number, it was large enough that McQueen and the seven other officers fit themselves into the group without being noticed.

A man in charge of the protestors shouted some commands, and the protestors ambled toward a set of metal stanchions. The stanchions were positioned to funnel them to a point at the curb where they would cross the street two-by-two to another set of stanchions that would shunt them to the brass rails running up the center of the steps. Eight officers wearing bulky flak jackets waited on the other side.

McQueen fell in behind a man with a thick neck, broad shoulders, and a pronounced limp. The protestors moved slowly, across the street, onto the sidewalk, up the many steps. The revolving doors were pinned back to create a free-flowing entrance. Officers in the lobby waved the protestors through, then distributed them in the three mag lines. McQueen moved past the man with the limp and settled in behind a pair of protestors who appeared to be husband and wife.

Beyond the mags, the three lines joined and curved into the rotunda. An officer separated the protestors into groups of ten, each group standing in front of one of the three elevators programmed to stop only at the second floor and then return to the lobby.

McQueen cleared the mags. An officer swept him with an electric wand, so poker-faced that McQueen wondered if he recognized him. McQueen shuffled onto an elevator and rode up. From the elevator, he and nine homeless protestors followed signs halfway around the inner circle to the corridor that led to Judge Conover's courtroom. A court officer stood outside the doors. Inside, Foxx directed the protestors to the gallery benches. McQueen ended up seated on the center aisle. He looked around: Linda Conover on the bench, the lawyers at counsels' table, the jury in the box. Arthur Braman stood at the podium, waiting for the commotion to subside before continuing his opening statement.

Is this ever weird, thought McQueen.

*   *   *

The man with the limp was in the third car to open on the second floor after McQueen's. He lagged behind the other protestors, then peeled off into the A stairwell. He climbed quietly to the third floor, limped into the circular corridor, then down one of the spokes. There was a doorway at the end of the corridor. Beyond that was a set of stairs leading up to a men's room, and beyond the stairs was the door to Ivan's supply closet.

“Hey, you,” called a man dressed in striped pirate pants and a basketball jersey.

The man with the limp broke into a run, reached the stairs, and took them two at a time. The stairs went up half a flight to a small landing, then reversed up to the men's room. He stopped midway up the second flight and crouched alongside the wall to wait for the man in the pirate pants, who he knew was a guard dressed to blend in with the protestors. Footsteps approached, paused, then padded on the stairs. As the guard turned up the second flight, Andreas's uppercut caught him under the ribs and lifted him into the air. The guard hit the wall and melted to the landing.

Andreas hurried up into the men's room. According to Ivan, it was rarely used by anyone except the few employees who knew it existed. Andreas opened the door to the third stall. The gun, wrapped in a nylon warm-up suit, was lodged behind the base of the toilet. Andreas tossed the warm-up suit aside and shoved the gun into his belt.

Down on the landing, the guard began to stir. Andreas stepped over him, then turned back. He pulled the guard up by the shirt, waited for his eyes to open, then grinned before slugging him in the jaw.

*   *   *

After he rang off with McQueen, Gary rolled the battle chair to the computer table. At first, he considered rolling right under the tabletop and activating the lift control. But somehow the vision of components toppling like buildings in the wake of Godzilla did not match his euphoria. Instead, he cupped his right hand around the base of the left monitor and swept it off the table. Then he cupped his left hand around the base of the right monitor and swept that off the table, too. Both monitors shattered on impact, sending thousands of glittering black shards across the hardwood floor. He dropped the keyboard beneath his feet and rolled the battle chair over it, back and forth, back and forth. The frame cracked and the keys flew off like kernels of popcorn. He pummeled the mouse with his fist.

He drove into the bedroom, opened the drawer, and lifted the treasure chest onto the bed. He sifted through the souvenirs, no longer concerned about dissipating the half-lives of these memories. He took the book onto his lap and read it cover to cover.

Later, he heard Ursula let herself into the apartment. Quickly and quietly, he returned the book to the chest and the chest to the drawer.

“Oh my God!” Ursula cried. “Gary! Gary!”

“In here,” he called.

He heard a rush of footsteps. She burst into the bedroom, a look of horror on her face that dialed back into confusion when she saw him calmly parked beside the bed.

“Gary, I … the computer…”

“I know, Urse, I know. Don't worry.”

She leaned against the battle chair and hugged him hard at the shoulders. He inclined his head against her and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“I'm turning over a completely new leaf,” he said.

 

CHAPTER 38

The protestors kept straggling in. The officer who had been in the corridor was now in the courtroom, acting like a church usher squeezing parishioners into crowded pews. Foxx marked each of the undercover officers in his head—he counted seven of the eight, but except for McQueen they were easy to miss.

“Call your first witness, Mr. Cokeley,” said Linda.

Cokeley stood. “Croatia calls Colonel Orkan Stjepanovic.”

The officer at the door leaned out into the corridor. A few moments later, Stjepanovic stepped through. He was very tall with an erect bearing and a slow, stately gait. He wore a full uniform, which was too big for what remained of his bony frame. He crossed the well, mounted the witness stand, and took the oath with the help of a Croatian interpreter.

“Good morning, Colonel Stjepanovic,” said Cokeley. “I want to ask you about an incident that occurred near the city of Pula in 1980.”

Stjepanovic listened to the interpreter's translation, then leaned back in the witness chair as if to divorce himself from a scene he plainly felt was beneath him. A big man with a bad limp came through the courtroom door. Stjepanovic watched as the officer jammed the man beside McQueen.

“First,” said Cokeley. “Where is Pula?”

“It is on the Istria peninsula in the Adriatic Sea.”

“At that time, it was part of Yugoslavia, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

“Objection,” said Arthur Braman.

“Overruled,” said Linda. “The witness is a colonel in the army. He can read a map.”

“And now?” continued Cokeley. “In what country is Pula now?”

“Croatia,” said Stjepanovic.

“And what were you doing in Pula in 1980?”

“I was assigned to a detachment that acted as personal bodyguards for the Marshal.”

“That would be Marshal Tito?” said Cokeley.

“Correct.”

“Now, I direct you to a day in March of that year. Do you remember what happened?”

“The Marshal wanted to build a small swimming pool,” said Stjepanovic. “His estate already had a large one, but he wanted one that would be filled with saltwater for health reasons. Our detachment was to dig out the area for the pool. We worked in two-man shifts. The shift before ours defined the perimeter of the pool. We were digging down within that perimeter.”

“You said
we
,” said Cokeley. “Who else was on your shift?”

“Anton Fleiss,” said Stjepanovic. “We were down over one meter when his shovel struck something hard. We had struck rocks through the entire shift, but this was much bigger. We dug around it and realized that it was not a rock but some sort of metal. It was smooth and round like a lid.”

“A lid to what?”

“A cauldron.”

Cokeley lifted a remote control from the podium. An image of a cauldron appeared on a flat-screen monitor on the wall behind Stjepanovic. The cauldron was large and pockmarked, bronze in color except for black charring on its bottom and lower sides.