City of Whispering Stone Page 6

  Everything Simpson had been carrying with him was in the file, but most of it was gray mush; a set of keys and a few laminated cards were the only items that had survived the immersion in the East River. There were the usual host of credit cards, a laminated Social Security card and two plastic business cards: Simpson’s card and that of an import-export company on the East Side. Everything that was paper was illegible. I copied what I needed from the report. “Did he carry a gun?”

  “He was wearing an empty shoulder holster when we fished him out.”

  “You did say somebody had at least taken a look inside the office before it was sealed?”

  “Right. From what they tell me, he was a great filer. We just didn’t have the manpower to sort through everything.”

  “And that’s exactly why I want to take a look at what’s there. Remember, whoever searched through there before didn’t know what Simpson was working on; they wouldn’t have known what to look for.”

  “Sorry, Mongo. That brownstone’s off limits.”

  “Well,” I said, rising, “I certainly wouldn’t want to get in bad with the New York City Police Department.”

  “Damn straight, brother. Try not to get caught.”

  It took me forty-five minutes to work my way through the police lock they’d put on the door. By then I was running short on time; it was getting dark, and I couldn’t risk lights.

  I went for the filing cabinets first. It was only then that I realized Garth had been practicing some of his subtle sarcasm when he’d described Simpson as a great filer; Simpson had apparently filed literally everything he could get his hands on, then promptly forgotten about it. The files were a paper jungle.

  Such people didn’t usually put things they wanted to lay their hands on in their files, but I went through Simpson’s anyway. In the bottom drawer of one cabinet I found a folder marked with the initials M.Z. I sat down at Simpson’s desk and began looking through it. Checking the files on Mehdi Zahedi quickly turned out to be tedious work; it was obvious most of the information in the file had come from Ali Azad, and Ali had been very thorough, giving Simpson a volume of information on Zahedi’s public activities, habits and life-style; but it struck me that there seemed to be very little on Zahedi’s personal life. Zahedi the man was completely overshadowed by Zahedi the political activist. I would have loved to find the name of a woman, but there wasn’t any.

  In the back of the folder was a small, ten-cent spiral notebook filled with scribbled notes that were mostly illegible and looked old. It was beginning to look as if John Simpson had kept most of his notes in his head—in which case the lead he’d mentioned to Ali had died with him.

  Toward the back of the notebook I found one page marked with Zahedi’s initials again, and underlined; the notebook had apparently changed files a good many times. At the bottom of the page was a phone number. I picked up the phone on his desk and got a dial tone. I dialed the number and a lilting, professionally trained woman’s voice came on at the other end.

  “Good evening. Iran Air. May I help you?”

  No. Not yet, at any rate. I hung up the phone and started through the Zahedi file again. This time I had a little better idea of what to look for, and I found it folded into another set of papers that had been stapled together. The sheet was a photocopy of the first-class passenger list for Flight 19, New York to Tehran. There were twelve names on the list, and Mehdi Zahedi wasn’t one of them. However, Simpson had circled one of the names in red ink: Nasser Razvan.

  Flight 19 had left John F. Kennedy Airport on the evening of February 22—the same day Mehdi Zahedi had disappeared.

  When I called the office of the Confederation of Iranian Students, I got Anna. She got Ali.

  “Ali,” I said, “what would happen to your boy if he decided to go back to Iran?”

  “You’re joking, of course.”

  “I’ll let you know when I’m joking. What I am is in a hurry.”

  “It would be suicide,” he said after a slight pause. “Iran is a death trap for Mehdi. At the very least he would spend the next twenty years rotting in prison.”

  “Then you don’t think he would have taken a first-class seat on Iran Air to Tehran?”

  “It would be madness.”

  “Maybe he went under an assumed name.”

  “Impossible. The SAVAK checks and double-checks all papers.”

  “Does the name Nasser Razvan mean anything to you?”

  “No,” Ali said after a moment. “It is an Iranian name, but I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. I think Simpson found out, and it cost him his life. Now, did any other Iranian at the university drop out of sight in February?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a big campus.”

  “Yes, but there aren’t that many Iranians here, and I know every one of them. Mehdi is the only one who is missing. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “Someone calling himself Nasser Razvan left New York for Tehran on the night of February twenty-second. Simpson thought it was important. Nasser Razvan may not have been his real name, and it wasn’t Hassan Khordad, because Khordad was with the circus at the time.”

  “It wasn’t Mehdi; it couldn’t have been.”

  “But there could be some connection. Simpson obviously thought so.”

  “I don’t see how there could be.” Ali’s voice was digging its heels into my ear.

  “I need a few things from you,” I said curtly. “For openers, I want a complete list of your membership and an indication of how long each member has been at the university.”

  “Why?” The old suspicion was back, humming like a hot wire on a summer day.

  “Because it’s possible one of them is an informer. I remember what you said about half of every Iranian twosome being SAVAK.”

  “I wasn’t talking about us!”

  “Start considering that possibility.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Just bring me the list,” I said wearily. “If you’re nervous about advertising your membership, remember that the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the SAVAK probably have it anyway. That’s if you’re to be believed. Also, I need a good picture of Zahedi. On second thought, don’t bring them: I’ll be by in half an hour to pick them up. Okay?”

  “Yes,” Ali said after a long pause. “I will do as you ask.”

  When I dropped by the C.I.S. office Ali was waiting for me with the list and picture. I fended off his questions, then got back into my Volkswagen and drove out toward the airport. The expressway was jammed, and my stomach churned all the way out. I parked the car and headed into the Iran Air office, where I picked out the prettiest girl I could find and walked to her counter. She was blond, blue-eyed, probably Scandinavian, with an Italian bustline and a French mouth. She was also close to six feet tall. I walked past the ticket counter and stood in the open area by the baggage scales.

  “Can I help you, sir?” The mouth on the face of this magic mountain smiled, and I smiled back.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I said, leaning on the scale. “I’m a private investigator trying to locate a missing person.”

  The name tag on her uniform said Miss LARSSON. Miss Larsson thought about it for a few moments, then nodded. The slight movement sent the golden hair rippling about her face like waves of liquid sunshine. “What would you like to know?”

  I handed her the flight list I’d taken from Simpson’s office. “First, I’d like to verify that this came from here.”

  Miss Larsson studied the paper. “Yes, it’s one of our first-class passenger lists.”

  “From New York to Tehran on the night of February twenty-second?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Were all these people definitely on that plane?”

  “Not necessarily, Mr.—?”

  “Frederickson. You, Miss Larsson, may call me Mongo.”

  Miss Larsson blinked rapidly; spots of color appear
ed high on her cheekbones. “Mr. Frederickson, this is only a preliminary list of the passengers originally scheduled for the flight. It’s possible for someone to cancel at the last moment and still appear on that list.”

  She leaned forward to hand the list back to me and I caught a whiff of something that smelled like mountain flowers. “Can you tell me who made up this list, or who issued the tickets?”

  “If the flight was direct to Tehran, Mike Carson probably handled it. I’ll get him for you.”

  Miss Larsson made a call, and we spent the next few minutes discussing the fact that Miss Larsson was fascinated by private detectives because she’d learned English with the help of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I was just beginning to regale her with tales of my own glorious deeds when Mike Carson arrived.

  Carson was a young man, prematurely bald, with the kind of bullet head on which baldness is becoming. He’d just given up smoking; his right hand kept fluttering toward his empty shirt pocket, and the left side of his mouth was filled with Life Savers that had a tendency to click around his vowels. He was a busy assistant manager on his way up; I hoped he had a good memory. I showed him the list.

  He looked at the paper and gave a perfunctory nod of his head. “You’re the second man who’s been here asking about this list.”

  I described Simpson.

  “That’s the guy; forty, forty-five years old, with a real eye for the women. He was checking out ass the whole time he was talking to me, but he never missed a thing I said.”

  “Did he have this list when he came to you?”

  “No. That’s what he wanted; he asked me for a copy of this specific list. I didn’t see any reason not to give it to him. I’ve got an eye for the women myself,” he added, as though that explained his cooperation.

  “He hadn’t been in touch with you before that?”

  “No. He just wanted the first-class flight list for Flight Nineteen. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for.”

  “Who issued the tickets for that flight?”

  “It could have been any one of a number of people. If you’re looking for somebody in particular, your best bet would be to talk to the stewardesses. That was a while ago, so it’s a long shot that anyone will remember, but they’re trained to remember faces; good for business.”

  “Where can I find them?”

  Carson thought about it a moment. “They’re in Shiraz now; should be back in about a week. I can find out the exact date, if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right. What about passports? They’re checked here before takeoff, aren’t they?”

  “Right; along with the required vaccination certificates.”

  “How easy do you think it would be to fake an Iranian passport?”

  “Any passport can be forged, but the Iranians are sticklers on the subject of passports. An Iranian can’t get into or out of Iran with any other passport. And the passports have to be renewed every year at the consulate. It would be damn hard to get into Iran on a fake passport.”

  “What if an Iranian became a citizen of another country?”

  He shook his head. “Iranians can’t become citizens of another country; not if they want to go back to Iran. As far as their government is concerned, once an Iranian always an Iranian. They make no exceptions. If an Iranian tries to get into Iran with a foreign passport, he stays in Iran; it takes months to wade through all the red tape necessary to get out again.”

  “There must be some Iranians who’ve become American citizens. You mean they can’t go back?”

  “Only if they travel on an Iranian passport, and that’s next to impossible to arrange.”

  “Somebody could still forge a foreign passport with a different place of birth, no?”

  “Sure, except that a visa is required for entry into Iran. If the name and place of birth are fictitious, well, that individual’s in trouble. The Iranian Government is very careful about who they let in. Even to get out requires an exit permit, and they check all records very carefully. Traveling to Iran on a fake passport—any fake passport—would be a risky business.”

  It looked as if I’d driven out to the airport for nothing. John Simpson had apparently lucked out in the beginning, stumbling over Nasser Razvan and knowing his true identity before he’d even asked for the flight list. But then, Simpson had ended up in the East River; I decided I’d rather be dry than lucky. I filled in a half hour showing Zahedi’s picture to the various personnel at the ticket counters and drew a blank, as expected.

  When I pulled out of the parking lot, the same brown, vinyl-topped Chevrolet that had followed me to the airport was behind me. The driver and the man with him weren’t amateurs, but the peculiar vagaries of New York traffic dictated that they stay closer to me than they might in, say, Wabash. That meant no more than two or three cars to the rear, and I could catch glimpses of the car and the men in it when the traffic patterns behind me shifted or another car pulled by to pass.

  It wouldn’t have been hard to lose them, but I decided against it. For the moment, it was simply a matter of the blind leading the blind. Once they knew I was on to them, they’d be more careful the next time; I preferred knowing where they were. It was ten o’clock. I felt flat and stale, but there was one more stop I wanted to make: Madison Square Garden. I wanted to have another talk with Phil Statler.

  By the time I got to the Garden, the Statler Brothers Circus was into its Grand Finale. I found Phil in the wings, studying every detail of the swirling, glittering panorama of animals and men.

  “It looks good, Phil,” I said, astonished to find that I felt a twinge of nostalgia.

  “It’d look better if you were in there, Mongo,” Phil said without looking at me. The nostalgia passed. “What have you got on Khordad?”

  “He may be involved in some nasty business, like murder.”

  Now he looked at me. “I don’t follow you.”

  “Khordad may have been running his own little sideshow while he was with you. There’s a possibility he’s an Iranian agent specializing in assassinations, planned and impromptu. I think the police are looking for him now with a little more enthusiasm.”

  The show was over. Elephants, tumblers, horses, clowns and jugglers made one last circuit around the arena and filed out at the north end. For some time I wasn’t sure Phil had heard me above the din of applause, but when the last performer had filed out he turned and looked at me. His eyes were bright and hard. “Who’d he kill?”

  “Maybe an Iranian graduate student, maybe a private detective, maybe no one.”

  “And maybe he was using my circus as a front?”

  “It’s a possibility. There are still lots of unanswered questions. The point is that this looks like more than just a Missing Persons case. If the police think so, they’ll put men on it. That’s why I have to know if you want me to stay with it. I’m costing you money.”

  Statler pulled on his cigar. “Stick with it another week at least,” he said after a pause. “I don’t like being used.”

  “Fine. In that case, I want to take a look at what he left behind.”

  Statler took a key off a ring and jerked his thumb toward a large trailer that had been pulled in through the huge freight doors and parked alongside a rear wall. “It’s in there. What isn’t piled in the far corner is in the blue metal trunk on the left. Here’s the key to the trailer; you’ll have to figure out what to do with the lock on the trunk.”

  “Thanks, Phil. I’ll manage.”

  Inside the trailer, I rummaged around until I found Khordad’s blue trunk. It had a big lock of simple design, and I had it open in five minutes.

  There were a few changes of clothing stacked in neat piles. I went through the pockets, then carefully inspected the lining of each item. Aside from a few Juicy Fruit gum wrappers, I found nothing. Khordad traveled light: two suits, some sport shirts, slacks and underwear, one extra pair of black shoes and three performing costumes. There were no personal items to speak of,
except for a few trinkets and a stack of pornographic magazines he’d probably picked up on Forty-second Street on a previous visit to New York. It was strange; when a man carries the sum total of his life around in a trunk, there’s usually more.

  There was. In the bottom of the trunk, tucked into the folds of a new shirt, I found his passport. It was doubtful that Khordad would have had much success clearing up any visa problems without his passport; which meant he’d been lying about having trouble with the Immigration authorities. On the other hand, the presence of the passport indicated that he’d been telling the truth about planning to return in a few days; something had happened to change his plans.

  His performing equipment and three pairs of worn weight lifter’s shoes were piled in a corner of the trailer. I carefully checked through the items, but they were nothing more than what they seemed to be; they contained no clue as to who Khordad might really be, or where.

  There was still too much missing; the trunk was just too neat. A circus performer accumulates odds and ends of himself, and these fragments of personality are usually scattered about the only home he knows for most of the year—his trailer or his locker. There were the trinkets and magazines in the trunk, but it wasn’t enough. It was almost as if Hassan Khordad had been trained to leave as little of himself exposed as possible. I was convinced there had to be more, especially if he’d meant to return; the problem lay in finding it.

  I emptied the trunk of its contents and tapped along the sides. They were solid, and so was the thick lid. When I tipped the trunk over, I finally found what I was looking for. The bottom was about two inches thicker than it should have been and sounded hollow when I tapped it. There was a beveled metal plate screwed on over the original bottom.

  A screwdriver from the maintenance department took care of the plate, and a single nine-by-twelve manila envelope floated to the floor. I picked up the envelope and spilled the contents over the bottom of the empty trunk. There were a small notebook, a cheap scratch pad and an enlarged, glossy color photograph. The writing in the notebook was in what I could reasonably assume was Farsi, except for one English word that had been underlined several times: GEM. For the rest of it I’d need a translator, and I had someone in mind.