The Kills Read online

  As I assembled a case folder to take with me, I came across Dulles’s Yankees jacket in the rear of my file drawer. Returning it to me had been a last act of kindness by Paige Vallis that I had hoped to use to warm my introduction to the boy. I stuffed it in a folder to return to Robelon or Hoyt, now that I would not need to interview him.

  “I’m probably going to go right from this meeting to the airport, Laura. I’ll be on the Vineyard for the next couple of days, if anyone’s looking for me. I’m hoping to clear my head. Sarah’s in charge,” I said, locking up behind me.

  The Jacob Javits Federal Offices were just a few blocks south of our building, in the middle of Foley Square. A modern high-rise mix of granite and glass, it was home to a host of government agencies, and I had made frequent visits there for conferences, most of them with the FBI on cases involving joint investigations.

  Security had always been tight at Federal Plaza. I readied my photo ID and headed for the queue that allowed government employees access. I was reclaiming my folder and cell phone from the metal detector when I looked up and saw a familiar face across the lobby. I was sure it was the man Paige Vallis had known as Harry Strait.

  I grabbed my things and hurried across the tiled floors, slick from the water-soaked shoes that had traipsed through the corridors all morning. Dozens of people crisscrossed my path, coming into the building for work or appointments, leaving the area to go to lunch or run errands.

  I didn’t want to break into a run as long as I had Strait in my sights. I knew there were enough armed men around to pull me aside and see what my problem was if I looked hysterical or unstrung.

  He seemed to be alone, heading for an exit on Duane Street, a narrow one-way road that cut across Broadway and ended in Foley Square, at the foot of the federal courthouse. He went out the door and stood at the top of the steps, looking about before trotting down to the sidewalk.

  Strait’s brief pause allowed me to get within twenty feet of him. My eyes swept the crowd for a sign of any other friendly face to help me try to corner and identify the guy. I was running a bit late for the meeting, and I hoped that Mike or Mercer would also be late.

  I flashed my badge at a uniformed guard standing near the door. “You work here?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “I’ve got to catch up with my old boss,” I said, handing him my folder. “Could you hold on to this for me?”

  He didn’t know how to respond, but looked at the logo stamped on the label with the words: OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY-HOMICIDE.

  He took it from me and called after me, “I get relieved at two o’clock.”

  I turned and gave him a thumbs-up and continued on out the door. Strait was walking west now and I started after him. When I closed within five feet, I yelled out his name.

  “Harry?”

  There was no response to my tentative call.

  “Harry Strait,” I said, in a louder voice.

  Without breaking his stride, the man turned his head and looked directly at me. He said nothing but veered left into the street, past the African burial ground, and quickened his pace. Cars were stopped at the traffic light and I cut between them, keeping him in my sights.

  Now he began to run, and I ran behind him, watching as the distance grew between us. He pushed people on the sidewalk out of his way, but was gone before they could express their annoyance at him. It was I at whom they hurled insults when I passed them. “Where the hell do you think you’re going in such a hurry?” “Why don’t you slow it down, lady?”

  When he reached Broadway, he had the light in his favor and crossed with it. I couldn’t make it in time, cars honking at me madly as I ventured too far into the roadway, waiting for traffic to let up. Then I got snarled in the line waiting outside McDonald’s. I was sure I could see the top of Strait’s head making for Church Street.

  Another sharp turn and I followed him around the corner from Duane Street into the alleyway of Thimble Place. I was completely winded now, going too slowly to catch him. I had been a long-distance speed swimmer in high school, but had never sprinted well enough to make this effort worthwhile.

  I caught my breath after I made the turn from Thimble onto Thomas Street. A black sedan pulled out of a parking space and stopped at an angle. I took a deep breath and rushed toward the car, as Strait-or whoever he really was-pulled at the door handle with his left hand. I heard him yell, “Unlock it, dammit!” at the driver.

  I rushed toward him and he turned to face me, pointing a gun at me with his right hand. “Back up and get the hell out of here,” he screamed.

  He got into the passenger seat and the car sped off toward Broadway. I could have sworn Peter Robelon was driving.

  30

  “Of course he has a gun,” Mike said. “He’s an agent.”

  He, Mercer, and I were in the reception area of the Secret Service offices. “How the hell do you know he’s an agent?” I asked. “We don’t have a clue who he is. He pulled a gun on me a couple of hours ago and you’re defending him already?”

  “Yo, blondie. You saw him right here in this building, at high noon, where security’s tighter than the inseam on your slacks. I assume he’s legit. Maybe old Harry had a son. Maybe he’s a junior-Little Mister Agent Strait the Second. He must have had some way to get in and out of this building without causing a stink. I truly doubt he pulled a gun on you. He must have had it drawn for a good reason.”

  “And I’m telling you that I was that very reason.”

  “Fine. So we made a report. You got a partial plate, and there’ll be a make on the car by the end of the day. You’re chasing the guy down the street like a banshee. Maybe he thought he had to defend himself.”

  “How do we figure out who he is? There must be photo IDs of everyone who works here in Federal Plaza.”

  “You weren’t even able to describe him with any detail when the agents came to your office the other day. What are you gonna do now? Sit here and look at thousands of pictures of buzz-cut pasty-faced white men and hope for a match?”

  “Yeah, I could do that. I didn’t have any trouble picking him out of the crowd today.”

  It was going on two o’clock. My delay had taken us into the lunch hour, and the agent who had agreed to meet us had stepped away to keep another appointment.

  A trim woman, younger than I, came through reception and directly over to the three of us. “Alvino. Lori Alvino. Sorry about your problem today. You ever get your man?” she asked, greeting me with a handshake.

  “She never does, for very long. Don’t you start worrying about that, too. I’m Mike Chapman. This is Mercer Wallace, and that’s Alex Cooper.”

  She guided us into her suite, a good bit larger than most of the agent cubicles I had visited over the years, suggesting the importance of her position.

  “You must have some juice, Lori,” Mike said. “Big digs, glass partition, nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “I show them the money,” she said, grinning back at him. “That’s why the feds love me. I’m the agent in charge of recovering all assets related to the National Mint, here and abroad. My boss says you need everything I can give you on the coin collection of King Farouk, is that right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Alvino established what we knew of the story from Bernard Stark and picked it up from there. “The U.S. government worked with Farouk’s people on a regular basis back then. We’re talking 1944 and thereabouts, during World War Two. He had already become the king then-just twenty-four years old and richer than Croesus.”

  “Had he started collecting coins by that time?”

  “Absolutely. He had dealers all over the States. They tripped over themselves whenever they had something unusual to unload, trying to get it under the royal nose. The more expensive, the better.”

  “How did they get the coins to Egypt? Did you just ship things as valuable and as small as that?”

  “No way. Farouk used his royal legation to make pu
rchases, which were sent to him regularly by diplomatic pouch. Just about every week. And his staff knew all the rules, believe me.”

  “What rules?”

  “After FDR’s Gold Reserve Act became law, it was illegal to export gold, unless the Treasury specifically issued you a license.”

  “Even a single piece of gold?” I asked. “A single coin?”

  “You bet,” Lori Alvino answered. “To get that license, you had to be able to establish that the coin being sent abroad had special, collector’s value before 1933, before we went off the gold standard.”

  “How’d they prove that?”

  “The keepers of the Castle, that was their territory.”

  “What castle?” I asked.

  “Sorry. The old Smithsonian Institution-our guys always referred to it as the Castle. Experts at the Smithsonian decided on the uniqueness of whatever coin was in question.”

  “This happened often?” I asked.

  “Pretty infrequently, actually,” Alvino answered. “There weren’t a lot of people during the war who were terribly concerned about their coin collections while the world was turned upside down. The entire European market was virtually shut down. It left the field wide-open for Farouk.”

  Mercer leaned in to speak. “This stuff doesn’t quite qualify as ancient history, but it’s a bit remote from what you’re handling today. How come you know so much about all this? You had a refresher course recently?”

  Alvino blushed. “I had a chance to look over the files a couple of weeks back. I had to pull all this paperwork together for someone else who came in for a briefing,” she said, gesturing to the several folders full of documents related to the Farouk collection.

  Chapman gave her his best trust-me-and-you-won’t-know-I’m-working-you-over grin. “Anyone I know, Lori?”

  She returned the smile and shrugged. “Can’t help you there. My boss gave me orders to arrange all this for a presentation he had to make to some government officials. But I wasn’t invited to the actual meeting, so I don’t know who was involved.”

  Now he ran his fingers through his thick mane of black hair, moving on to his most serious mode. Mike was about to try to bluff her out of some information. “I’ve got a homicide to solve. The lieutenant told me those guys were a real threat,” he said, flashing Mercer a glance. “Now I’m wasting precious time trying to catch up with what they already know.”

  Lori caught his sense of urgency. She wanted to be helpful. “Are-are we talking about the same people, do you think?”

  “They were here to talk to your boss about Farouk, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s make sure we’re on the same wavelength. Which coins from his collection were you focusing on?” Mike asked, flipping through his notepad as though looking for specific names to match against things she said.

  “I gave them a bunch of information-some silver pieces from the Civil War period, some gold ingots from San Francisco, circa 1849. The only kudos I got from my boss was for the research I came up with on the Double Eagle.”

  Mike slapped the pad against his knee. “Damn if I don’t owe you for this one, Lori. I think we’ve already got all we need about his Civil War items. It’s the other two we’re after as well. Ever solve a murder before?”

  “No, no, I haven’t.” She was grave as a stone now.

  “Most satisfying thing you can ever be involved in. Give us what you got on the ingots and the big bird. I’ve always wanted a partner like you.”

  “Sure,” Lori Alvino said. She spent the next ten minutes explaining the provenance and descriptions of some of the objects Farouk had purchased that had come out of the Gold Rush. Although handsome and somewhat unusual, they were far too plentiful-and probably too large-to have been part of McQueen Ransome’s stash.

  “Did you ever hear of Max Mehl?” Alvino asked.

  The three of us shook our heads.

  “He was a dealer. From Texas, I think. He’s the one who first made contact with King Farouk about this fabulous twenty-dollar gold piece that he wanted to sell.”

  We listened carefully as she started to tell the story. “Mehl knew about the king’s appetite for the rare and beautiful,” she went on. “He not only convinced Farouk of the uniqueness of the coin, but also guaranteed that he could get it out of the country because of its special designation.”

  “How did he manage that?” I asked.

  “Somehow, Mehl made a call to Treasury the very same day that Farouk expressed interest in the coin. The director of the Mint herself carried the Double Eagle to the Castle.”

  “Was that typical?” Mercer asked.

  “Are you kidding? There was nothing routine about this bird’s flight.”

  The more she talked about it, the more convinced I was that we were going in the right direction.

  “The same day,” Alvino said, “the curator examined the piece, declared it of special value dating back to before the presidential order of a decade earlier. To tell you the truth, he was under such pressure that my boss thinks he didn’t even know what he was signing.”

  “But he agreed to request the licensing that made the coin valid?” I asked.

  “Through ignorance, probably. No sign of a bribe, but that hasn’t stopped some folks from believing there was one. Either way, he asked for the license-or the monetization-that turned the twenty-dollar piece into a small fortune.”

  “From the secretary of the treasury himself?”

  “Exactly. Then the king’s representatives took possession of the coin, packed it securely in the diplomatic pouch, and delivered it personally to Cairo, to Farouk’s pleasure palace.”

  “What was the timing on all this?”

  “That’s what’s so ironic. The coins were minted in 1933, as you know, and a bunch of them stolen a few years thereafter. Thousands more were melted down because we went off the gold standard.”

  “Sure.”

  “The royal legation picked Farouk’s Double Eagle up from the Mint on March eleventh, 1944,” Alvino said, looking down at her notes. “Exactly one week later is when the Secret Service found out about the plans that the Stark brothers had to auction another of the supposedly nonexistent treasures. They were furious.”

  “Did our government ever try to get the coin back from Farouk?”

  “Yes, Detective. My predecessors knew that the license had been obtained from Morgenthau in error. They tried diplomatic measures to get it back,” Alvino said. “But think of the date. We were in the middle of the Second World War. Egypt was a pivotal piece of the map, controlling the Suez Canal and passage to the Indian Ocean. Nobody wanted to upset the applecart for a purloined Double Eagle.”

  How trivial a single piece of stolen gold, valued then at twenty dollars, would have seemed to diplomats in the middle of a raging war.

  “And after the war ended?” Mercer asked.

  She fingered papers on her desk. “I can show you the letter that the man who had my job drafted then, asking the king for the return of the Double Eagle. Unfortunately, protocol required that he send the document up to the State Department, to get approval to correspond with a foreign government. The powers-that-be at State denied his request to do that.”

  “Why so?”

  “‘Politically inadvisable’ is the language they used. The Arab-Israeli war in 1948 was the next international hot spot, and Farouk was widely unpopular-at home and abroad-by then. And he was way too distracted to be interested in the return of the Eagle.”

  “You think anybody could have predicted its future worth in those days?”

  She laughed. “Maybe to the tune of a few thousand dollars. Seven million was an astronomical figure back then. Nobody would have believed it possible.”

  “Seven million’s still pretty far over the top, as far as I’m concerned,” Mike said. “So the fat boy gets deposed in 1952. He’s exiled to���?”

  “Rome,” Alvino answered. “He loved la dolce vita. As a wild you
ng man, he used to be called the Night Crawler.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, “so we’ve heard.”

  “Old habits die hard. He still spent his nights club hopping-the Hunt Club, the Piccolo Slam, the Bo��te Pigalle, the Via Veneto. Flipped over to Monaco for Grace Kelly’s wedding to his royal buddy, Prince Rainier. Ever the playboy.”

  Mike said. “So when he fled from Egypt, does anybody know whether that was with or without the bird?”

  “Good question,” Alvino answered. “And I’m not sure that anyone really does know the answer. The Egyptian revolutionaries-led by General Nasser-made Farouk leave most of his toys behind. But it’s clear that in the months before his expulsion he got out enough money, enough jewels to sell, and some of his smaller treasures to allow him to live like a king, even in exile, for the rest of his life.”

  “The man without a country. But maybe with a Double Eagle,” Mike said, thinking about the chronology. “So, he got the coin in 1944, left Egypt in 1952-and the coin finally surfaced when?”

  “Not for almost fifty years, Mike. People assumed it had been left behind in Cairo when Sotheby’s included it for sale in an auction catalog of Farouk’s treasures in 1955. As soon as the Secret Service agents attached to the Mint saw that listing, they directed the American consul in Cairo to have the government remove the Double Eagle from the auction and return it to the U.S.”

  “So it never went on the block?”

  “Correct. But we didn’t get it back then either,” Alvino said. “Nasser’s aides claimed it was all a big mistake. That Farouk had taken it with him. That no one in Egypt had seen it in years. It disappeared completely-no explanation, no clue, no trace.”

  “The one the Stark brothers sold at auction in 2002-Farouk’s seven-million-dollar Eagle-when did that get back into this country?” Mike asked.