Shark and Octopus Read online

  “The dungeon walls are three feet thick. The walls around the room at the back are even thicker. The castle was damaged in the Second World War. The dungeon survived intact. It was so safe the Ferlinghetti family huddled there during air raids.”

  Griffin pushed himself away from the dining room table. Annie often accused him of having the sitting still skills of a kindergartener. He began circling the table.

  “Grace?” Griffin called as he moved. “Can you hear me now?”

  She missed the joke, as Griffin would have predicted. Grace was the place humor went to die. She asked, “You have a question, Mr. Gilmore?”

  “The room is well outside camera range, right?”

  Grace conceded it was.

  “The man in white wasn’t searched after ducking into the dungeon, was he?” Griffin asked. “I mean, why would he be? When he was there Saturday afternoon, no one at Arazzo Castle had any reason to believe he was anything other than a tourist like everyone else.”

  No, he wasn’t searched, Grace allowed, for the reason you suggest.

  “Then how,” Griffin concluded, in what Annie called his Any Moron Can See So Why Can’t You voice, “do you know he came out of that room empty handed?”

  “Because-”she began, and Griffin finished for her, “because you have the pictures to prove it.”

  “This will be easiest,” Grace said, “if I send the film electronically. You ready?”

  “Bring it, Grace.”

  “Are you sure? It’s a somewhat sophisticated software which shows the film while allowing us to maintain a video link. Are you sure can you handle that?”

  “Well, I, uh-”

  “Why don’t I take that,” Saif offered. “I’ll save the film to your hard drive, Griffin, in case you want to look at it again. Let me handle this.”

  “Good idea,” Griffin agreed. “I’ll clear the table. That’s something I’m sure I can do just fine.”

  EIGHT

  June 9

  7:12 pm

  “This film,” Grace explained, as it began to run, “has been spliced together to show this man, still John Doe to us, continuously. Our tech people had a busy time putting this together.”

  “That’s him,” Griffin said, as he watched the man in white approach the castle doors. “No question.”

  Griffin and Annie were to the left of Saif; Bobby and Kit to Saif’s right. Saif had the chair. The other four crouched. Five sets of eyes watched the screen on Saif’s laptop, which rested in the middle of the dining room table where the speaker phone had been.

  On the film, the man walked from the parking lot, across a wooden drawbridge over a moat, and through the portcullis into the castle. He walked in the midst of a good-sized gaggle of tourists. He moved with a limp. The tourists wore fanny packs and tee shirts which did not always cover their jiggling stomachs. Some were in sweatpants. The tape gave a slightly greenish tint to the scene.

  “That’s a different suit than he had on in the museum,” Griffin told everyone. “Different cut.”

  “Italian,” Kit said. “That suit is not off the rack. Love the Panama hat, by the way.”

  “It works for him, doesn’t it,” Bobby agreed. “He’s making himself inconspicuous by standing out in a crowd.” Bobby was clearly enjoying the man’s performance. “Look at the glances the older women in the group are giving him.”

  Bobby smiled, then touched the screen.

  “See the woman right here?” Bobby pointed to a heavyset woman, round as a muffin, pushing fifty. She was so overweight she wore baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt. “See the lust in that woman’s eyes? Before the tour is over I predict this woman makes a play for our man here.”

  By this time the man in white had entered the castle itself. He limped past suits of armor, which he towered over. The woman in the baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt steadily edged closer.

  On the film the tour began.

  *

  “What you can’t quite get from the film,” Griffin said, “is how he carries himself. Like an aristocrat. He wore a ring. In other circumstances, you’d think you were expected to kiss it.”

  “It’s a role, Griffin,” Bobby stated confidently. “That’s a role he’s playing. He’s carrying himself in a way that projects an image of aristocracy. He’s not born to it.”

  “Grace?” Griffin interrupted. “Bobby has studied actors and acting as long as I’ve known him. If he says this is a performance, then that’s what this is. A performance.”

  “Then what’s his real background?” Grace asked. Her voice caused her picture to break into the upper right corner of the screen. She was sitting at her desk, in her hyper-upright way, her body a rigid L-shape. “He’s a blank sheet of paper to us. What’s his background?”

  “Not aristocratic. Something very, very different,” Bobby answered. He shrugged. “That’s all I can say now.”

  They watched the film some more.

  “That gentleman standing to the side as the tour passes?” Grace said. “That’s a security guard. When Arazzo Castle is open to the public, there are at least three and as many as five security guards on duty. When the castle is closed there are one or two guards at all times.”

  The woman in the baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt edged closer to the man in white. The tour stopped by a large painting, a battle scene. The tour guide gestured at the painting as he spoke. Someone in the tour asked a question which caused the guide to shake his head, unable to answer.

  “See that?” said Bobby, pointing to the man in white. “Grace, can you run that again?”

  “Will do,” she said.

  Her picture flashed again on the screen briefly. Griffin wondered how he’d describe Grace’s way of sitting. By no means was she perching on the seat. And Griffin strongly suspected Grace had never lounged or lolled and certainly not plopped down anytime in her life. The best he could up with was the phrase like a statue sitting.

  The film returned to a few seconds earlier, then Grace froze the action.

  “See his face,” Bobby said. “The man in white knows the answer to the question, doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” Griffin agreed. “He clearly does. The tour guide didn’t know the answer to the question about some 18th century painting. But our guy did. It took some self-control to keep from supplying the answer. Still, he stayed silent. He doesn’t want to call attention to himself. Grace, can you send me that picture we’re seeing right now? That’s a nice full shot of his face. Might be I’ll need to show the picture to somebody, see if anyone can ID him.”

  Grace agreed she would.

  The tour went on. They passed through a chapel and the kitchen and into a gallery with floor to ceiling paintings filling the walls. In this gallery were two harpsichords. One man stood by each harpsichord. Another man was opening a violin case.

  Grace explained: “These men are part of a quartet who will be entertaining at a private party after the tour is over. The castle is sometimes rented out for private parties.”

  Griffin asked, “Grace, you think he was aware of the cameras?”

  “Had to be,” she replied. “The security cameras aren’t too terribly obvious, but they are spottable. And this guy is thorough, incredibly so. I’ve watched this film three times now, and I’ve never seen him touch anything. No fingerprints left behind. And he puts on surgical gloves later.”

  She kept going. “There are microphones scattered around the castle, wherever the tour goes. But he never speaks when he’s with the tour. In fact, he only says three words total. They’re coming up. That’s not enough for voice recognition. Without fingerprints or voice recognition, without a name or an alias, there is simply no way to even begin finding out who this guy is.”

  Remembering the accent, Griffin offered, “He’s probably from Spain.”

  “With a population of how many million, Mr. Gilmore? We’ll need far more than that before we can begin to track this guy down. Unless you have something more precise in mind?”<
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  Going one on one with Grace in this way wasn’t a good idea, Griffin knew, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted the man in white badly. Griffin offered, “He limps. You’ve pointed out he’s six-five. He’s a key thief.”

  “A specialty which did not even exist before this, I have learned. We are pursuing the angle of a European trading in stolen artifacts. Nothing yet, but we will keep looking. I have my doubts it will yield anything. We are also pursuing the evidence he left in his confrontation with you at the Baltimore Museum of Art.”

  “The bullet. The shell casing.”

  “The bullet and the shell casing. The ejection striations tell us the bullet was fired from a Bulgarian pistol.”

  “Bulgarian? Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Not as unusual as you might think, Mr. Gilmore. The pistol was a Makarov PMM semi-automatic. Made in Bulgaria, circa 1990, based on the old Soviet model. Spitcurl trigger. 26 ounces, a little over six inches long.”

  “It looks a good bit bigger when it’s pointed at you.”

  “Fires twelve rounds,” Grace went on, “from a detachable magazine. It is accurate up to 50 yards. The Makarov is often the pistol of choice for those who need to conceal their weapon. As your man in white had to at the museum fundraiser. That much makes sense.”

  After a pause Griffin replied, “By your last comment, can I conclude there is something about the pistol that surprises you?”

  “You can so conclude. The Makarov is old enough it is considered a relic by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Why would someone who has planned as thoroughly as he obviously had use a weapon more than two decades old?”

  Griffin thought a few seconds and then a few seconds more.

  “I have no idea, Grace. Any theory from where you’re sitting?”

  “Not yet. For now, the Makarov is being looked into further. But don’t get your expectations up. The pistol is unlikely to help identify the man using it.”

  “It probably doesn’t help, Grace, but he was an excellent marksman. And thank God he was. He put the bullet between my arm and hip. The space could not have been more than a few inches.”

  “His marksmanship is noted. Do you have anything else to add?”

  Griffin admitted he didn’t.

  Grace summed up: “To return to your question, Mr. Gilmore. Sure. He knew about the cameras.”

  “But he went to the castle anyway,” Annie said.

  “Whatever he’s after must be worth the risk to him,” Grace told them.

  This isn’t about money, came back to Griffin. They watched the tour resume.

  “Do you see the security guard walking through the hallway there?” Grace pointed out. “The guards generally are very active. They keep moving around quite a bit.”

  In the film the woman in baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt pushed closer to the man in white. Her cheeks shook like jello in the effort. Soon after, the man in white slipped away from the tour for the men’s room. When he emerged from the bathroom he was alone in a hallway. By this time the tour must have been well ahead.

  “What’s he doing?” Griffin wondered aloud.

  The man on the screen walked down one hall, then turned into a narrower hall. As he moved he pulled a pair of surgical gloves from the pocket of his suit coat.

  “He did that in the museum,” Griffin said.

  “That was on his way out,” Grace explained. “This is on his way in.”

  *

  The man in white then did something unexpected. He grabbed the handle of a chute protruding from the wall. While still walking he pulled the handle open slightly.

  “Is he nervous?” Griffin wondered, without much faith in the question. The man in white had been nowhere near nervous in the museum.

  “Could be,” replied Grace. She didn’t sound especially convinced either. “Not sure why he did that, pulling the chute handle. I can tell you the chute leads to the basement incinerator. The chute was installed in the mid-eighteen hundreds, when garbage removal was still dealt with by burning.”

  Without slowing, the man in white headed down a set of stone steps. Grace stopped the tape with the man’s Panama hat barely visible.

  “Those steps lead to the dungeon,” she explained. “Three minutes and fifty seven seconds pass between what you’re seeing now and his reappearance.”

  “In those nearly four minutes off camera,” Griffin said, “here’s what we believe happened: Let me know if you don’t agree. He descended the rest of the steps and crossed the dungeon floor. He used the key he got from me at the museum to unlock a door so old it fell off a hinge – as it was opened for the first time in who knows how long.

  “Next he looked around in the small room at the back of the dungeon for whatever he came for. And he came back up, limping all the way, in three fifty seven. Tight, I suppose, but doable. He knew what he was looking for and where it was supposed to be.”

  “Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there,” Grace said.

  “But how do you know that, Grace?” replied Griffin with some heat, “Why are you so sure that when he reappears he’s empty handed? He’s completely out of camera range in that room at the back of the dungeon. We have no clue what he’s looking for. Could be it’s small enough he just stuffed whatever it is in his pocket.”

  “Keep an eye on his face when he emerges from the dungeon, Mr. Gilmore. You tell me if your man in white got what he came for.”

  The film started again. The man came back up the steps. Grace froze the action and enlarged the man’s face to fill the computer screen. The look of disappointment on that face was crushing and unmistakable.

  “Is he acting, Bobby? Putting on a performance for the cameras he knows are there?”

  Bobby brought his face close to the screen before replying.

  “Not a chance is he acting, Griffin. See how the tendons in his face are flexed like little ropes? That’s not special effects or acting skills. That’s disappointment, disappointment so brutal he either forget or did not care he was on camera.”

  Bobby kept staring at the frozen image of the furiously straining face, fascinated.

  “He was expecting something to be in that room at the back of the dungeon, Mr. Gilmore. We don’t know what he was expecting – but whatever he was expecting was not there.”

  Griffin eyed the laptop screen and said, “That tells us this is about more than the Duke’s key. The man in white already has the key. What is he after with the key?”

  Griffin next asked Grace, “Is the rest of the film worth watching?”

  That If Only You Knew tone bounced back into her voice. Even more so: she was in an Until Now Everything Was An Appetizer, But This Is the Main Course mode. Grace said, “Oh, yes, the rest of the film is well worth watching,” and started the film again.

  *

  They watched as the man in white slipped the surgical gloves back into his pocket. From the same pocket he withdrew a phone.

  “Here’s where your man in white made a mistake, Mr. Gilmore. I’ve given the matter some consideration. Why did someone as careful as this man make such a glaring mistake? Maybe he was, as Bobby Lowell suggests, so distraught with disappointment he didn’t think or care.

  “Maybe, and this is my belief, he didn’t understand that the 40 cameras are placed around the museum so that many areas are covered by two cameras. At this time he’s in one of those areas. No amount of preparation could have taught him that. It’s a bit of luck for us.”

  Grace continued her narration as the film resumed.

  “He pulls out his phone. See him look up over his shoulder and spot the camera there? He turns his back to block the camera’s view of what he’s about to do.”

  Grace stopped the film once more.

  “He is, as we all see, about to make a call. What he doesn’t understand is that even with his back turned he is within camera range of another camera down the hall. Watch as I slow down the footage from the camera he didn’t know about. And we�
��ll enlarge the picture, centering on the phone.”

  When she restarted the film, the man’s phone and fingers filled the screen. He wore an oval signet ring, the same ring he wore in the museum. The ring had some sort of design that Griffin could not quite discern, since the man’s hand was partially turned away from the camera. The ring was too big for the man’s finger, that much was clear. Griffin wondered why such an otherwise stylish gentleman would wear a ring that did not nearly fit.

  Everyone in the dining room saw the number the man in white was dialing.

  “That’s his mistake. We can see who he is calling. The area code is New York, Mr. Gilmore. We know the number he’s dialing. It’s a company called Future-Ride. We’ve tracked the location. 54th Street in Manhattan. Now watch.

  “He’s waiting for the answering machine to pick up,” Grace went on. “He’ll say three words when it does. He speaks English, which, Mr. Gilmore, you already knew. Here it comes.”

  As he spoke, the man’s anger and desperation were unmistakable. Everyone in the dining room said the words along with the man in white: “Call me. Now.”

  NINE

  June 11

  10:48 am

  Thursday morning: Bobby and Griffin were on the Amtrack train to Manhattan discussing their previous client. “I can still remember our client, going” –Bobby shifted into a stiff British accent, ‘On behalf of her majesty’s government for services most ably rendered, thank you, sir.’ A check to Kit. ‘Thank you, sir.’ A check to you. ‘Thank you, sir.’ A check to me. A sizeable chunk of change, it was too. ‘Thank you, mu’um.’ A check to Annie.

  “Absolutely loved that mu’um. Remember his bowler hat and umbrella? It was like this bloke strolled into our lives from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, asking us to recover a sword for the British Museum.”