Canto for a Gypsy

  Isadore put the slide machine on the floor and replaced it with a film projector. The lights went out again.

  The scene was a hotel room and the actors were two young couples. The dominant color was flesh. One of the girls was a natural blonde. The action was nonstop. The viewers in the cardinal’s office squirmed, though with none of the imagination of the performers.

  “I guess this explains why this guy never picked up his camera,” Lynch remarked. “Can you speed the film up a bit, Sergeant?”

  Isadore moved to the 16-mm gear.

  “We took this in the church. There must be something from it,” he hoped grimly.

  Bodies parted and collided like two, three or four hands clapping. Mutely, endlessly. Roman resisted the impulse to ask what the North American record was. The prevalent embarrassment warned him against it. There wasn’t a single frame from the church.

  “I have to beg Your Eminence’s pardon about that,” Lynch said, adding that he thought the people were from out of town. Roman glanced over at Isadore. Was it possible the commissioner concealed a sense of humor?

  Isadore put the second reel of film on. At once they were looking at the exterior of St. Patrick’s. The camera dwelt on each linden and elm planted on the sidewalk and on the islands of grass beside the buttresses. Then they were inside watching the priests enter the sanctuary. The film was of surprisingly good quality using available light. Crown and priests stood out clearly.

  “Don’t take his camera away,” Isadore prayed.

  The owner of the camera seemed to be trying to squeeze the whole service into one reel, giving the viewer selected highlights. Isadore knew the type, someone who put real titles on his home movies. Mass moved briskly along, cutting from the sermon as soon as the priest opened his mouth.

  Communicants spread out along the rail. A priest raising the host. A chalice passed to the backs of heads. Another priest bringing a full one.

  “There! Run it back.”

  Lynch was on his feet.

  Isadore put the film in reverse and started again at the ciborium chalice being passed along the Communion rail. As the first priest carried his emptied chalice to the altar, a second brought his full one forward. The camera veered to the side and back to the sanctuary.

  “What happened then?”

  “Somebody pushed his arm,” Isadore suggested.

  “No,” Reggel said. “I remember. There was an argument at the pamphlet counter. It was over in a second and the man was thrown out.”

  “That’s right,” Isadore agreed. “He said he was short-changed, but he admitted he was wrong when he got outside.”

  A third time, frame by frame. One priest going from the rail and the other from the altar. The crown cut off from view by two cross-emblazoned backs. A frame moving to the side. The empty choir stalls. The transept. Choir stalls. The approaching priest. The crown seen between the priests, each a foot past on either side.

  “Again. Can’t you get it any bigger?”

  Isadore moved the projector against one wall and the screen against the other.

  The film repeated to the same frame of the priests’ passing. The elbows were those of the priest returning to the altar, the fingers of his left hand on top of the chalice.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Covering the chalice with linen,” Killane answered Lynch.

  “How long?”

  “It’s a little faster on film,” Isadore said. “About two seconds’ worth of diversion. If anyone had been in the choir stalls, they would have seen it.”

  “What about the people along the Communion rail?” Roman asked. “Why didn’t they?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen people taking Communion?” the cardinal asked him in return. “Their heads are bowed or looking up. One doesn’t look ahead.”

  And once again. By now they could almost hear the outraged shout at the rear of the cathedral, see the empty chalice in the right hand move toward the crown, the silver mouth engulfing gold, the left hand following with the replacement, the screen of stiff, embroidered chasubles parting to reveal a new crown and reassure the barely alarmed eye. Reggel still stared after the lights went on.

  “It took nerve,” Isadore admitted ungrudgingly.

  “Planning.” The administrator had been replaced by the cop in Jack Lynch. “God, imagine the planning.”

  He wandered to the cardinal’s desk and looked at the watch. It was 4 A.M.

  “What did he need? Church plans, keys, a list of the visiting priests.”

  “A dead boy,” Isadore added.

  “Impersonation and a simple diversion,” Lynch concluded. “Everything thought out probably before the crown ever got here. And it couldn’t leave the church and we can’t find it. That’s about as neat as you can get.”

  “Not that neat. He failed to run Reggel and me off the road,” Roman observed.

  “In the greater scheme of things, a small failure.” Lynch shrugged.

  “No. It means that Captain Reggel, of all people, was supposed to be put out of the way, and it makes me wonder why. And there’s the mistake of the copy—not that it’s a bad one, but that there is one at all.”

  The Hungarian turned from the screen.

  “The copy, Reggel,” Roman shook his head sadly. “Nobody can make one from pictures; you have to work from the real thing. But how could anyone if the Holy Crown has been locked up for a hundred years? See, that’s the question you were supposed to ask, and you never have.”

  Reggel returned and sat in the chair opposite Roman. He put his hand out and Roman gave him his cigarette. The captain took a deep drag on it.

  “So you think the time has come?” he asked.

  “Come and gone.”

  Reggel handed the cigarette back.

  “It’s amazing. I’ve waited all this time, all this time, and I never recognized him.” He was on the point of laughing. “The priest in the film, the one who stole the crown, is named Odrich.”

  Isadore was the first to react.

  “Could you spell that for me?”

  18

  “What did you want me to tell you? That I was a war hero of the Nazis? That of course I knew there was a copy, I arranged for it to be made by condemned Jews? Or just to watch out for my old friend, he’s a murderer and a thief?

  “How do you explain to Americans that Hungary owes nothing to them and never has? You took away three-quarters of our land after the First World War and wonder how we could have accepted the land back from Hitler. The rape of Czechoslovakia and Rumania? It was our land!

  “The Germans asked for nothing more than thirteen divisions on the Eastern Front. I volunteered, eighteen-year-old lieutenant. I saw the Second Hungarian Army vanish between Voronezh and Stalingrad. Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards, all vanished. I survived and they gave me some medals and sent me to a German company. That was where I met Eric Odrich.”

  “What was he?”

  “The company commander, a captain at twenty-one. An aristocrat like me, believe it or not. But he had been to school in England and, more important, to the Order Castles. You know the Order Castles?”

  His answer was a blank response.

  “Ah, well, the Order Castles were Hitler’s version of the Teutonic Knights, with fencing and mountain climbing and, above all, study of the German race’s right to rule the Slavs. A six-year course, and Odrich graduated in four. You see, he was a born leader.”

  Reggel paused to take another cigarette from Roman. Isadore stared coldly.

  “During the disasters of that first retreat we became quite close. Eric was a compelling man. When they withdrew him from the front lines and sent him to the rear to enjoy the fresh air of the Alpine Korps, he took me with him. I stayed for a year, until Budapest started recalling every officer it could find to meet the Russians. br />
  “We didn’t meet again until the summer of forty-three in Budapest. From his uniform I thought he was with the SS, but he was a colonel in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Rosenberg’s group was safeguarding the artworks of Europe. In occupied countries like France this meant confiscation. But for an ally like Hungary, Odrich told me, he would only catalog and copy.

  “I was a captain in the special guard assembled for the protection of the Holy Crown. He convinced me to persuade the rest of the special guard to let him make a copy. I even found the Jewish prisoners to do it, and he made them special artists of the Kuntschutz artists institute. Just as other Kuntschutz artists had made a copy of the Louvre’s Bayeux tapestry that was nearly indistinguishable from the original, the Jews would earn their freedom by re-creating the symbol of the Hungarian nation. And so, while the war was busy being lost, our work progressed.

  “Then the retreat when the Russians encircled Budapest. Twenty boxcars of the great Hungarian works of art were dispatched to Munich. Odrich would personally lead us and the Holy Crown to a haven in Switzerland. Who noticed in the rush that he had the Jews killed? That same night we left the palace in the last three armored cars of the Hungarian Army and two SS cars commandeered by Odrich.

  “We didn’t get far. The next day your planes strafed the road and destroyed one of the German cars. In the wreck was fifty thousand dollars in American money. My good friend, you see, was selling the Holy Crown. The Kuntschutz copy would go with us to Rosenberg, the real crown with Odrich to a buyer.

  “This we learned when we surrounded his car. He tried to buy us off, and he convinced one member of the guard, a man named Martinovics, who was the younger brother of a well-known émigré in this city. Then your planes returned. Odrich, with both crowns, drove through us. I was the first one in a car to go after him. The planes followed both of us and we chased, the cars and the planes, over the roads.

  “I don’t know whether I hit him or the planes did, but his car overturned. We recovered the Holy Crown, the top separated from the bottom, and killed all the Germans and Martinovics. All but Odrich. He and the copy of the crown had disappeared. See, he was fooled. He took the wrong crown.”

  It was almost 6:00. A false dawn touched the windows and left a residue of blue. Reggel’s voice was hoarse from cigarettes.

  “Now, does that make you any wiser?” he asked.

  “You should have told us before. It would have helped,” Isadore said.

  “How? He preached a sermon and I didn’t know him.”

  “Why did you now, then?” Isadore persisted.

  “When you made the picture larger,” Reggel confessed, “I saw that triumphant smile.”

  Lynch broke into the reverie.

  “Odrich kept the copy thirty years so he could steal the real one? What did he do in the meantime?”

  “People find their callings. I became a policeman of sorts. Odrich had some English schooling; he had taste. He was trained by the Nazis; he became an art thief.”

  “I never heard of him.”

  “Here you steal stock certificates,” Reggel said tolerantly.

  The phone rang. Killane answered it, then handed it to Lynch, who spoke for a few seconds and hung up.

  “It looks like he got away with the real crown this time,” he told Reggel. “The bomb squad swears there is no bomb or anything else in St. Patrick’s.”

  His hand rested on the receiver, ready to pick it up. There had been no calls to the deputy mayor or the mission and now there were no more reasons not to call. Second dawn hit the windows with a brightness that made their eyes water.

  “Well, Captain?” Lynch pushed the phone toward him.

  “Fakes.” Isadore watched the motes in the sunlight. ­“Everything is a fake. The crowns. Priests. The way the boy was killed. Why do we start believing them now?”

  Lynch waited, holding the phone.

  “Everything they do is a fake,” Isadore said, “a diversion. And it works. We forget what we know is real. Odrich was at the Mass and made the switch. He returns a few hours later for only one reason—he wasn’t able to take the crown out before. He and his friends are in the church for half an hour and leave again. The next day we search St. Patrick’s and can’t find the crown. But why do we think it’s gone? He had to walk out of the church in front of the same detector he passed a couple of hours earlier, and I know for real that if he could have gotten the crown through he would have done it the first time. The crown’s not gone. We can’t find it.”

  Lynch rubbed his eyes to cool them. At last, he put the phone down.

  “It’s your crown, Reggel. What do you want to do?”

  “The Gypsy will fool the experts. We can keep the fake on display, and it will all seem according to plan.”

  “A police commissioner in my office all night will hardly be according to plan,” Killane pointed out. “Odrich must be keeping an eye on the church.”

  “I know, I know.” Lynch picked up the fake crown and contemplated its saints. “Can you make something that looks like a bomb?” he asked Roman. “Can you find it?” he asked Isadore.

  19

  On the observation platform of the RCA Building, boys operated heavy, dime-fed telescopes like machine guns, creating carnage from Jersey City to Wall Street while parents counted their change. Roman stood alone.

  The elevator opened and new sightseers poured out on the platform. A grinning Isadore was among them.

  “You did it. They swallowed the fake.”

  “Really.”

  “Well, a couple of the experts said the crown almost looked too good. Maybe it’s just as well you weren’t there. Damn, you should have seen it, though. I was pretty proud. You going to come down now?”

  “Why should I? I finally found the perfect hideout.”

  “From who?”

  “You, until a second ago. And Reggel and the cardinal. I can’t go home because Dany and Kore are there and I’m sick of lying to them.”

  A seagull teetered in the updraft from the street one hundred floors below. Its wings were soiled and its head darted from side to side looking for scraps from the platform.

  “Sergeant, did you know that Hungary has the highest suicide rate in the world? That’s what Reggel’s doing right now, and he’s got you and Killane helping him. I don’t want to.”

  “Suicide? We’re dealing with a murderer. Here.” He gave Roman a typed sheet of paper. It read:

  “Erich Ordich, a.k.a. Eric Wilhelm von Odrich. Age: 54. Race: White. Nat.: German. Ht.: App. 5-11. Wt.: App. 175. Hair: Gray (?). Eyes: Blue (but may wear colored contacts). Speaks English with no accent. Also: Ger., Hung., Ital., maybe others. Military background: Wehrmacht. Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). ERR responsible for theft of artworks later located at Thuringia (also gold bullion), Werfen (Hungarian art train), Neuschwanstein, other sites. Still missing: 8,740 pictures, 423 tapestries, 634 marble sculptures, 1,096 bronzes (Repertoire des Biens Spolies Durant la Guerre 1939–45). Odrich reported missing in action, now considered residing in Italy under assumed name. Losses of Italian art today put at $10,000,000 per year. Most thefts from churches.”

  There were photos clipped to the paper, all from the Communion movie. The largest was of a man in middle age as meek as an out-of-town priest could be, a face of sandstone rubbed free of half its hair and all individuality. The smaller photos were of the other priests, all younger men.

  Isadore swiveled one of the telescopes up Fifth Avenue and dialed St. Patrick’s into focus. Its architect had omitted one feature from the cathedral: flying buttresses. For that reason, St. Patrick’s looked like a fortress. Even down the spine of the roof there rose a protective crest of gilded metal.

  “That’s nice.” Roman handed the paper back.

  “I made shorter ones up for the surveillance teams. Take a look.”
r />   Roman reluctantly took the detective’s place behind the telescope and followed Isadore’s finger.

  “There are four teams for each side. One on the second floor of the archdiocese headquarters.” Roman trained on the brownstone Vuillard mansions. “One above the French restaurant on Fifty-first Street.” The telescope magnified a man reading a paper in the indicated window. As he turned a page Roman caught the glint of a rifle barrel. “One on Fifth in the Associated Press Building, and the last one in Saks on Fiftieth Street.”

  The dime ran out and the telescope clicked off.

  “See, Roman, they’ve got to come back tonight or ­tomorrow. On Monday St. Patrick’s gets its annual cleaning. There’ll be industrial cleaners all over the place. Morton must have told Odrich about it, and Odrich can’t take a chance the cleaners won’t find it.”

  “You’ve figured it all out.”

  “I’ll have the surveillance teams and four backup cars. Reggel and his men will watch the doors from the inside.”

  Someone had left half a candy bar beside the telescope. Roman broke off a piece and threw it in the air. The sea gull dropped like an elevator and snatched the candy in its beak.

  “Sometimes, for a Gypsy, you’re a real wet blanket,” Isadore complained.

  Roman’s laugh ruined his next throw. The gull squealed as the candy flew by out of reach.

  “Okay, you’ve got this trap with a bait you can’t find and a man who exists on paper. The problem is that the fake crown goes to Budapest tonight. It’s going to be very suspicious that Reggel isn’t on the plane. They’re going to know why he wasn’t by noon tomorrow. That’ll be morning by our time. Reggel will be arrested at the mission and you’ll be left explaining your story about the invisible crown to some much wetter blankets than me.”

  “If we can come up with the crown—”

  “The hell with the crown.”

  Roman scored a bull’s-eye right in the gull’s mouth.

  “I have to keep Reggel alive. Do you think I took this job because of the Holy Crown? I’m just sorry I dragged you into it.”