Artful Murder in the Hamptons: A Novel

By Robert Lockwood

Two-hundred long-forgotten French impressionist masterpieces, stashed
away in the attic of a New York City brownstone, and valued at $1.6
billion in the festering Asian art markets. Zach ben Meier, the globally
prominent art dealer, learns of their existence after reading the deceased
painters memoirs in the musty archives of Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Ben Meier ostentatiously implants himself in the Hamptons; what
better blind to steal this quarry of art works. The tendrils of Zachs
pursuits become complicated. Obstacles emerge everywhere: on Long
Island, in New York City, in Monte Carlo; even on the streets of Paris.
He forms a bizarre relationship with Adrielle, a former assassin forced
into early retirement by the Mossad because of her cloying savagery.
Together they fashion and execute a scheme that degenerates into mutual
self-entrapment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483675169

Robert Lockwood

Robert Lockwood, a reformed Washington lobbyist, represented many Fortune 500 companies and institutions on matters of taxation, international trade, and defense.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

A story in saturnalian settings: the savoir vivre of Monte Carlo and the French Riviera, from which it hereditarily separates itself; an Israeli French art dealer targeting his victims from perches in New York City, Paris, and Montreux; and the hedgerows of the Hamptons—all synonyms for his murderous deceptions. The quest for personal aggrandizement is awash in flailing human passions, like the sensual strokes of impressionist brushes flickering in the perfect light.

The rhapsodic appeal of La Renaissance Impressioniste, a resurgent art movement, stylistically adapted to the twenty-first century. The movement feeds the speculative flurries of a dealer who veils his treachery and casino-like motives with pretentious altruism.

Henri Lambert, né Henri de l’Ambert (1930-2003), the seventeenth Vicomte de Montolivo, was a French aristocrat whose family wisely modified its surname during the French Revolution. A committed impressionist, he futilely devoted his working life trying to revive the movement. He meets Ann Mayer (1940-2009) at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in 1965, where he was a studio master and professor. The young Barnard graduate and department store heiress from New York City shared Lambert’s artistic as well as romantic passions. Their relationship thrived despite distance. They enjoyed a three-year interlude when Lambert lived with Ann in New York, during which time they produced a son, Morris Mayer-Lambert (b. 1983).

Moving ahead to 2013, Morey is a Wesleyan University assistant professor of international relations. But he had assumed his inherited title and property as the eighteenth Vicomte de Montolivo, the first in the distinguished family line with Jewish blood. He organizes Wesleyan’s international studies program in Monte Carlo, occupying his sixteenth-century family estate, the Chateau de Montolivo, just over the French border and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea at Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Now the absentee owner of his mother’s art gallery in New York City, he occupies his deceased mother’s townhouse on East Seventy-First Street during brief visits.

Zach ben Meier, an Israeli French art dealer with galleries in Paris and Montreux, caught the tail of the impressionistic revival’s rising star. He hoarded as many remnants of the movement as he could acquire by any means—negotiation, treachery, even theft. But the real trove was cached in the musty attic of Morey’s townhouse, where Henri left more than his seed in the city during his three-year cohabitation with Ann. Two hundred Lambert canvasses awaited discovery, their worth—nearly $1.6 billion in the ostentatious Asian markets. Their existence, discovered by Zach from reading Henri’s memoirs, reposed in the Palais des Etudes, the library of Beaux-Arts.

Zach, a maestro of intrigue in the ever-tainted international art markets, would deftly implant himself in the Hamptons. What better blind for the hunt? Close to his quarry, he would stalk his prey with elaborate and costly schemes eminently worth his efforts. The light at Mecox Bay had been luring neo-impressionists and other artists for nearly eighty years. Establishing the Mecox Art Centre, his revivalist movement would self-ordain, a salon for the recognition of its practitioners and, of course, Zach himself. His presence in the Hamptons becomes a social cachet, drawing media predators and recognition-craving neighbors like flies to honey.

He carefully engineered the acquisition of an impressive chateau-like house neighboring the family estate of newly elected U.S. president Sophia Kallias. He befriended Kallias and her fiancé, former president Earl Eastwood, now awaiting his installation as Global President of the United Nations. The couple enjoys Zach’s erudite wit, sharing an interest in art. The relationship provides the perfect buffer against suspicious inquiries, including those of law enforcement officials. Moreover, not a moneyed swell with a reputation to nurture could ignore him or his outrageously overpriced artworks. And gallery sales were but a token of the real gains expected to follow.

He continues embellishing his own image. He acquires a magnificent one-hundred-foot Hatteras yacht, retrofitted with a landing pad on the flying bridge for his small helicopter; Zach was a chopper pilot during his service with the Israeli Defense Forces. The Pirouette was amusingly named, secretively suggesting its role in swirling smuggled artworks between the U.S. and offshore destinations.

The friendship with Kallias and Eastwood quickly caught fire. Zach provided legendary art pieces for their several social events in Washington and at Kallias’s Mecox estate, now a heavily guarded presidential retreat much preferable to the quaint and dismal setting of Camp David. Zach was always present at these cameo events. Eastwood found him a likable companion; they had somewhat common life experiences in military service, commitments to Israel, and pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps.

It was during a private cruise with Kallias and Eastwood from Pirouette’s summer port at Sag Harbor that Zach would meet Monica Howard. Despite their formerly romantic links, Monica and Eastwood had reconciled; moreover, Kallias liked her immensely. Eastwood invited her to round out the foursome on the late April afternoon cruise around Gardiners Island and back through Napeague Bay. The connection seemed promising at first. Monica—forty; a medical doctor, now a pharmaceutical company executive; and former secretary of health and human services—gradually found the fifty-seven-year-old Zach a bit too mysterious and somewhat physically unfit for her highly active lifestyle.

In June, Monica’s several social encounters with Morey evolved into a romantic relationship that offended Zach; yet he accepted Monica’s honest disclosure of her new attraction. Zach needed them both quite obviously and could not risk disrupting his well-laid plan which had been executing with near perfection. He accommodated the young couple, in fact routinely offering the use of his dock and other conveniences of his property that fronted Mecox Bay’s Burnett Creek and Cobb Island Cove South. Then there was that quiet Saturday morning on Mecox Bay. Monica was searching for shoreline properties with a realtor on Zach’s Hinckley. She spotted an attractively athletic woman on a Jet Ski. The woman was skimming the perimeter of the bay as if reconnoitering. As they approached each other, Monica recognized her—Adrielle.

The flashback was instantaneous—Adrielle, the Mossad operative in the intelligence organization’s Metsada assassination department. Monica had met her in Paris in 2009. At the request of her father, Yehuda Howard, the distinguished Columbia-Cornell Medical Center transplant surgeon, she had reluctantly and tearfully cooperated with the Mossad; she reported the contacts of a United States senator with a Paris-based terrorist band. She hesitated at first, then mentioned Adrielle’s sighting to Yehuda while wondering why Adrielle was even there. She shuddered at the thought. But Yehuda lost little time in advising the Israeli Intelligence Agency’s station chief at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC of Adrielle’s presence.

Now thirty-five, Adrielle Nadav employed cloying savagery in pursuing her Mossad assassination tasks. Her behavior led to the unprecedented decision of the intelligence service to retire her and subsidize her exiled life in Paris. Adrielle’s specialty had a brutalizing and psychotic charm that she found almost ballet-like. Her weapon of choice was a double-edged commando knife with a saw-toothed upper blade. Deftly maneuvered, she would sever the skull from the spine with a single quick stroke.

Zach, of course, knew only too well why Adrielle was at Mecox that day. He was planning Morey’s murder. The issue in his mind was location: the Hamptons, New York, France. Adrielle, now exiled and a medical doctor at a privileged government clinic in Paris for high-ranking French government officials, used the pseudonym Sabine Savine. Her encounter with Zach had been entirely accidental, but her value to his nefarious scheme became indispensable.

Zach disliked fugues, whether in music or in life. His attention was riveted on one thing: Lambert’s canvasses in Morey’s townhouse. Morey would be inadvertently and innocently accommodating. As a young professor at Wesleyan, his youth defied quick advancement as tenure ruled. He would sidestep the process, establishing himself as dean of the Wesleyan Centre des Recherches International de Monaco. CRIM, as it became known, was funded entirely from Morey’s substantial resources and gained immediate acceptance among the Wesleyan staff and faculty. It enhanced the school’s prestige and, perhaps more importantly, offered some faculty a chance to spend a year or more on the French Riviera. Housed jointly with the Prince Rainier III research center in Monte Carlo, Morey had negotiated the arrangement with Price Albert II, the son of Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier. Albert was an Amherst graduate and a generous supporter of the small Ivy quartet of Williams, Wesleyan, Trinity, and Amherst. To Morey’s project, Zach would contribute the use of Pirouette as a two-week floating classroom, visiting several Mediterranean ports of call. Under this seemingly perfect cover of an educational enterprise, Zach would also conduct a major smuggling operation. With Morey in Europe, the canvases in his attic would be more accessible. And his presence there offered yet another option for a murderous venue.

CHAPTER 1

MURDER BY DEFAULT

Ten o’clock, he’ll be here in a few minutes. I think we’re ready, thought Adrielle Nadav. She sat alone that Monday night, September 3, 2013, in the kitchen of a townhouse at 124 East Seventy-First Street on New York’s Upper East Side. The chiaroscuro setting of the place, occupied barely two months a year by its owner, showed its neglect. Evidently, the housemaid took time off when Morey was out of the country. Starkly grey walls needing repainting, an old gas stove, the refrigerator door ajar, and stinking food remnants never entirely cleaned out made her laugh to herself. Clearly Morey’s house, he would never lift a finger to clean anything. This is his cave, she mused.

The house owner, Morris Mayer-Lambert, had inherited the place from his mother Ann. Morey was the progeny of her on-and-off relationship with Henri Lambert, a postimpressionist French painter who led an ill-fated attempt to revive the popular art form of the late 1800s-early 1900s as yet another version of postimpressionism. It’s not that he failed entirely; it just took off after Henri died. Morey cared little about the doughty artistic efforts of both Ann and Henri, even giving little attention to the family’s Stern-Mayer Art Gallery. Ann had managed the gallery after returning from her own sojourn at the esteemed École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where she met Henri.

Rather, Morey picked up his PhD in international relations from Yale. He had taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, before persuading the institution to allow him to manage his own Centre de Recherches Internationales de Monaco, or CRIM, as it was called. Conveniently, Henri endowed him with more than a genetic disposition toward intellectual pursuits: In Europe, Morey was known as Morris Mayer-Lambert, eighteenth Vicomte de Montolivo. The inherited landed title was anchored in the sixteenth-century chateau perched on the Plateau de St. Michel above Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the French Département des Alpes Maritimes, slightly more than ten miles from CRIM, which was precisely the convenient location of Morey at this very moment.

Adrielle had spent the day hauling two hundred canvases, twenty packages with ten paintings each, through the dusty, cobwebbed attic down one flight to the elevator and then to the house’s first floor. The art was the work of Henri Lambert who created them during the three years he lived with Ann in the residence she had inherited from her parents. Lambert’s postimpressionist works were now the rage, and this stash alone was estimated to be worth $800 million in the legitimate global markets and perhaps even as much as $1.2 billion in the shadowy Chinese or other Asian markets.

Adrielle had little direct interest in the artworks. But she was an indispensable cog in the plan of Zach ben Meier to acquire the Lambert cache. Zach’s art galleries on Avenue Montaigne in Paris and in the row of boutiques of the Palais Fairmont Hotel on the Grand Rue in Montreux, Switzerland, were the major purveyors to postimpressionist and impressionist revival art collectors around the world. Adrielle Nadav, a former Mossad assassin who by chance had been befriended by Zach, had masterminded the theft of the Lambert paintings.

*     *     *

Tonight, Adrielle Nadav was Sue Unter, part of the Medical Service Company’s delivery team. She was awaiting her partner Ernie Struck a.k.a Zach ben Meier, the van driver and Sue’s boss. Adrielle’s intelligence background facilitated all aspects of the theft. Having affirmed the presence of the paintings by surreptitiously entering the house back in March, she glided in quite easily, deftly disabling security alarm system: the siren was silenced, the backup battery removed, and the circuit box power source to all parts of the house—except for the elevator—cut off. The paintings were taken from the elevator through the back cellar door to the house next door, at 130 East Seventy-First Street, where they were neatly placed under the landing of the rear fire escape. The house owner, Dr. David Liebknecht, who was also the medical director and CEO of the East Side ENT Medical Center, referred to as EntMed, was at his Sagaponack residence on Hedges Lane in the Hamptons. He was not expected back until the medical center resumed business on Wednesday, September 5, the end of the long Labor Day weekend.

EntMed, at 135 East Seventy-First Street, was directly across Dr. Liebknecht’s house. In front of which, Zach would position the van of the Medical Service Company, a subsidiary delivery service owned by Liebknecht and temporarily headquartered on Long Island in Wainscott. Adrielle had placed traffic cones in front of Liebknecht’s residence, a convenience secured by a police permit generally to granted medical services. The Nineteenth Precinct of NYPD on East Sixty-Seventh Street took special care of its Upper East Side residents, and the police officers received special treatment in return from the thousands of highly affluent residents, including many dignitaries and diplomats. EntMed, for example, like many city medical offices and institutions, didn’t take Medicare or other government health-insured patients. But for the police staff at the Nineteenth Precinct, nothing but the finest health care for New York’s Finest, the medical center boasted in a letter to the precinct’s deputy inspector, Norm Reis, and at some remarkably low rates.

The Medical Service Company van driven by Zach arrived mere minutes before eleven o’clock. Adrielle assured him on their secure mobile phone system that everything was in order. He parked facing west on one-way East Seventy-First Street. The steady beam of the van’s brake light signaled an all clear as Adrielle emerged from the narrow passageway with the first two of the twenty packages of canvasses. The rear door of the 2009 Chevrolet Express Cargo Van, a former FedEx van bought online, opened to receive them. Zach took the brown oil-papered parcels, moving them to the front of the van, placing them in a specially crafted twenty-groove pallet to keep them upright. Adrielle walked quickly back to the passageway between the houses and to the rear of the Liebknecht house to retrieve more canvasses.

Adrielle completed her third trip, accumulating six parcels or sixty of the canvasses now secured in the van. As she crossed the street and entered the passageway, Zach, now back in the driver’s seat, was somewhat startled by the appearance of a shadowy male figure at his side window. The man gestured that he wanted to talk to Zach.

Evenin’, sir, Tony Azura. I’m the ‘Community on Patrol’ officer, ‘cop’ as we call ourselves. Can I help you?

Azura was a type of neighborhood watch person informally deputized under the Nineteenth Precinct’s agreement with the Community Council, a group of East Side residents that met monthly with the precinct. The Community on Patrol officers, informally called cops, as Azura had said, had no arrest or other police powers. They would merely report to the Nineteenth Precinct on any suspicious activity in their jurisdictions. None of the so-called cops were actual residents but, like Azura, hired by the neighborhoods they patrolled. A few were equipped with police apps on their cell phones; Azura had no such direct line, however, as the crime statistics for the area he worked were well below average.

Hi, Ernie Struck. We’re okay, doin’ a pick up for the medical center. Thanks for asking, Zach said. Having been born and raised in Chicago until he was seventeen, he had a slight Midwestern accent.

But you’re parked away from the curb in the street, although I see you have permit from the precinct, Azura said.

Oh yeah, Zach said, laughed. I forgot to add somethin’ important. We’re movin’ some of Dr. Liebknecht’s items for the new medical center in Sag Harbor, he added, deliberately dropping the final g on most words ending in ing.

I have the work order right here if you want it? Zach added, pulling out a document that he had easily counterfeited.

I may need it for my report. Do you have a spare copy for yourself? Azura asked.

Hell, we’re done when we’re done. I ain’t gonna need it, Zach said again, laughing.

The laughter was joined by Azura who added, It’s a miserable job to do at night. By the way, I won’t need your work order. The precinct will have a copy of the permit. That’s all we need.

Okay. Yeah, it’s miserable, all right, doin’ this work at night. But I don’t wanna face the Queens-Midtown Tunnel or bridges in morning traffic, and he wants the stuff out there A-S-A-P, Zach added while glancing at his side-view mirror turned toward the passageway to watch for Adrielle. Not seeing her, he continued the conversation.

You’re takin’ the stuff to Sag Harbor? I’m from the Montauk area, Azura said.

No kiddin’? So you must know our temporary location on Route 27 in the old DeSoto showroom, Zach said.

Oh yeah. I see the place all the time out there. It became somethin’ else—what, a Ford dealership? Azura lied, thinking, I gotta fake it, figure out if this guy is legit.

You must be thinkin’ of somethin’ else. Our place is in Wainscott, out near the Georgica Drive intersection with Montauk Highway, Zach added, thinking, He’s asking me leading questions, too suspicious.

Where’s your other delivery person? Azura asked.

She’s doin’ the haulin’, you know, R-H-I-P, Zach said, chuckling a bit.

So you’re the boss, Azura said, joining the light laughter. Ain’t heard that expression since I was in the army, ‘rank has its privileges,’ he repeated, continuing to laugh.

As they bantered, he spotted Adrielle hauling two packages. He depressed the brake pedal transmitting two quick winks on the rear lights. This was their preplanned signal for caution. Three blinks met avoid contact or approach with extreme care.

Here comes my assistant. I need to get back there and help her, Zach said, dismounting from the driver’s seat and opening the van’s rear doors.

Adrielle spotted the bright orange jacket of the security patrol person, realizing immediately it was not the police.

Hi, she said as she lugged the two parcels into Zach’s hands. How’s it goin’? she added in her somewhat accented vernacular to Azura.

Okay, thanks. I see the boss has you doin’ the leg work while he sits around, Azura said with a grin. Nice lookin’ babe, good body. They’re probably usin’ that van for more than just haulin’, Azura thought to himself, his grin widening.

Well, we can’t leave the van unguarded, you know. We figured it’s better to have a guy with the van, Adrielle said. Turning to Zach, she asked, How many do we have now, Ernie?

Let’s see, sixteen on board, four more to go, Sue. Why don’t you take Tony back to show him what we’ve been doin’? Zach added.

Adrielle immediately got the message. Her customized commando fighting dagger was holstered in the waistband of her delivery uniform, concealed by her jacket. It’s an eight-inch double blade with added saw-tooth grooves on the upper side. She dropped her right elbow against the handle as if gently caressing a lover’s arm.

Sure, please, follow me, she said.

You bet I will. I’d follow you anywhere, Azura thought, saying, Sure, lead the way.

She walked several steps in front of him, explaining the reasons for the late delivery and the generosity of Dr. Liebknecht, who, she said, owned the medical delivery business as well. They moved through the darkened narrow alley to the rear of the house. The cellar door was entered down a stairwell and through a five-foot-by-five-foot concrete stairwell about three feet below the surface of the backyard. At the top of the stairwell were the remaining four packages of canvasses. She directed her halogen light beam to the packages.

You’re welcome to open one to see what we’re moving, she said. Watch your head. Here, give me your hat, she added, suggesting the low level of the fire escape landing might make it difficult for him to inspect the packages.

Yeah, thanks. It’ll help my report if I look at them. Here’s my hat, Azura said.

As Azura leaned forward to pull the paper back from the parcel, Adrielle slammed her right knee into his L-1 vertebra with devastating force. It thrust the shattered bone forward, severing the conus medullaris segment of the spinal cord and the critical ilioinguinal nerve dangling from it. Azura’s legs were instantaneously paralyzed as he slumped backward. At that precise moment, Adrielle grabbed his hair, yanking his head backward and upward as she plunged the dagger into the soft region at the juncture of the neck and jaw. As it slid up beneath the lower jaw, she would flick and twist her wrist, severing the temporomandibular joint and the stylomandibular ligaments that control it, disconnecting the skull from the spinal column. Then pulling the blade out to her right, she sliced the saw-toothed side of the blade through the internal and external jugulars. The expertly executed procedure had been routinely practiced and even employed a dozen times before. It was swift, certain, and silent as the victim had neither time nor ability to shout, his airways detached from his lungs. He was a corpse as she nudged the motionless body, falling under its own weight into the stairwell to the cellar. It collapsed into the pool of blood cascading from the torso’s pulsating heart pumping through exposed arteries.

She wiped the knife on her victim’s hat which was then tossed on to Azura’s body, landing on its buttocks. Adrielle chuckled to herself at the sight. Then realizing the importance of time, she grabbed two more parcels and walked quickly back to the street.

Zach saw her coming and flashed the brake lights.

Three flashes, what now? Adrielle thought. As she approached the van she saw Zach, still in the driver’s seat, talking to what looked like a corporate security guard, uniformed but unarmed.

Zach dismounted from the van and walked back with the security guard, talking casually to him, it seemed.

Okay, boss, two more, Adrielle said as she joined the twosome.

Sue, this is Ralph Tomaso. He’s the security guard at the ENT Medical Center, Zach said.

Hi, I’m Sue. Everything okay around here? she asked.

Yeah. I had been called earlier by our neighborhood patrol, Tony Azura. He said he was gonna talk to you folks. I guess he was here? Tomaso asked.

Yeah, I was just with him, showed him what we’re movin’. He left through the back gate in the fence, said he had another call, she said.

He covers East Seventy and Seventy-First streets, must have taken the shortcut. You’re movin’ Dr. Liebknecht’s own stuff for the new Sag Harbor facility? he said. Answering his own question with a question, he added, Probably why we weren’t involved. I’m the weekend security guard at EntMed, turning and pointing to the medical building across the street behind him.

Sue, can you show him what we’re doin’? We’re just about finished, just one more load to go, Zach said.

Yeah. Would that be helpful for you? she asked.

I guess, Tomaso said, adding, It wouldn’t hurt to file a complete report about what’s goin’ on, he said. I left the building door unlocked. Just watch it for me, Ernie, would ya?

Sure thing, we’re anxious to get on the road anyway, Zach replied.

Following the procedures involving her immediate past victim, Adrielle guided her unsuspecting, and rather disinterested prey to the back of the Liebknecht house where the remaining two parcels awaited her. She kept her light beam away from the cellar entrance where Azura’s body lay, not easily seen from above ground until they approached the packages.

Go ahead and take a look, Adrielle said. Some of the paper has been torn away. They’re just artworks.

Tomaso casually walked up to the brown paper package, then noticing the damp red blotches on it, remnants of Azura’s spraying arteries, saying, Looks like the oils or somethin’ are leakin’. These were his last words as Adrielle did a repeat performance, this time, shifting the body to the right as she drove the dagger into his neck, twisting the blade, and drawing it across Tomaso’s jugulars as she maneuvered the falling body down upon that of Azura.

I’m out of here! she muttered to herself. She dashed the blood-soaked blade, its saw toothed edge with ligament fragments into the grassy surface of the yard to quickly clean it. Then holstering the dagger, she grabbed the two packages and walked quickly to the van. Loading them in haste, they departed the scene within two minutes, barely having time to grab the traffic cones as the van moved west across East Seventy-First Street toward Park Avenue.

*     *     *

It was 6:30 a.m., Tuesday, September 4, when the Liebknechts returned from their Sagaponack residence. Hurrying to beat the morning Manhattan-bound traffic, they had departed at 4:00 a.m. The early hour was a small price to pay for the extended weekend in glorious weather and along Peter’s Pond Beach a few blocks from their Hedges Lane house. They carried their garbage with them, having cancelled the seasonal trash service in the Hamptons. Ella, Dr. Liebknecht’s wife, opened the basement door and descended the several steps into the apartment-like suite usually reserved for visiting family members. She moved quickly through the room toward the door leading to the cellar section of the basement where they kept freezers, laundry equipment, and medical waste cans which the Liebknecht family used for daily garbage disposal.

My god, that stench . . . Don’t tell me we left a freezer door open, she thought, fearing that stored meat products had thawed. Opening the door to the back basement, a strong draft accentuated the odor that putrefied the air. The door to the outside had been left ajar.

What—did we leave the door unlocked, or did someone break in? Everything looked in order upstairs. We must have left it unlocked, she reasoned, moving to close the door, the large plastic bag of garbage still in her hand. As she drew within a few feet of the opened outside door, she saw the dark red stain of dried blood extended over the threshold. Pulling back the door, she gasped. Oh my god! she exclaimed aloud. She threw the garbage bag aside and raced back through the basement, yelling frantically, David, David, there are bodies at the back door!

Dr. Liebknecht dropped the armful of summer clothing he was returning to Manhattan. I’m coming! he said loudly, not having fully understood what she was screaming about. The draft from the open basement doors punctuated the odor in his nostrils as the fit sixty-five-year-old medical doctor moved down the stairs. What the devil is that smell—must be a dead rat or something? Damn exterminators! he thought as he encountered his wife in a state of panic, her arms tightly folded across her chest, one hand on her face.

Bodies, there are dead bodies by the cellar door, she said, her eyes widened with stark fear.

Go call the police, get Inspector Reis, the number’s by the phone, he instructed her as he glanced at a human head just visible beyond the doorway.

Still shaking, even feeling faint, Ella managed to negotiate the stairs, closing the doors along the way to isolate the deathly stench.

Dr. Liebknecht reached the backdoor. His thirty-five years of medical practice, most as an ear-nose-throat specialist, including two years in the U.S. Army and one in Vietnam, barely prepared him for the sight. My god, what in hell went on here? he asked himself as his emotions submitted to more reasoned analysis. Juglars sluiced, they would have bled to death, he figured correctly. The drain in the outside stairwell, clogged by the bodies on top of it, caused the blood to pool around the corpses.

Two adult males, each with five or more liters of blood completely drained, over two gallons—that’s what caused the overflow into the house. He then glanced at the shoulder patch of the top victim.

It read, EntMed/Security.

Oh no, it’s Ralph! he said to himself, carefully turning the head of the corpse, his hands soaked from the blood-dampened hair of the victim, and recognizing the security guard from his medical center across the street.

Bracing himself on the door frame, he leaned over, trying to see some identifying characteristics of the body beneath Ralph. He saw the orange jacket of the Community on Patrol, the neighborhood watch cop. Is that… Is that Tony? he queried himself. Like Ralph, the head was facing down but pale white from the loss of blood. Very agile for his age, he put his right leg on the edge of the stairwell, trying to avoid stepping in the pooled blood or dried bloodstains. He could see a good enough profile to realize it was indeed Tony Azura.

Dr. Liebknecht held his awkward position for several minutes as he looked down at Azura’s head. Something’s odd. It’s more than just cut jugulars. That head position—his neck is broken, I’m sure, Liebknecht concluded, then retreating back to the cellar door, looking again at the position of the medical center’s security guard’s head. Ralph’s head, it moved without resistance when I grabbed it . . . His neck is broken too!

Liebknecht backed away from the door, closing it. I shouldn’t have touched the corpses at all. I hope it doesn’t weaken the forensics, he thought to himself. He could hear police sirens in the distance.

*     *     *

Ella Liebknecht was standing on the front sidewalk as the first of three police cars arrived. As a sergeant emerged, she signaled that he should follow her to the back of the house. As they walked, Ella, several steps in front of the sergeant, now being followed by two other NYPD officers, tried to explain the scene.

Two dead men piled on top of each other in the outside stairwell to our cellar door. Blood all over the place. David—Dr. Liebknecht is down there, she said to the police officers. They rounded the back of the house, moving toward the stairwell, as Ella backed away.

The NYPD sergeant looked at the bodies, whistling quietly under his breath and then turning to the other police officers who looked on with amazed expressions, breathing steadily through their slightly parted lips. I’ll contact the CSU, one said, then spoke into the mobile phone, removing it from the hitch on his shoulder, calling NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit.

Inspector Reis has been informed, Sergeant, said the officer. He’s on his way to work and will come by here first. Should be here in a few minutes. We’re settin’ up crime scene barricades now, he added as the other officer jogged back to the street.

Norm Reis, at fifty-two, was a rising star in the NYPD. A graduate of the highly distinguished John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1982, he had spent his entire professional life in police work, rising through the ranks from police academy cadet to deputy inspector, a springboard to command positions in the world’s largest police organization. He was relatively young at forty-six when he assumed the top job at the Nineteenth Precinct, a gem among the seventy-six police precincts in the department. The prerequisites for the job were steep: an excellent police record, cultivated background, slightly intellectual, diplomatic, and comfortable with all social classes, especially the more stellar ones. A son of a well-known family, his father was a labor leader and himself a son of one of the pioneers that conglomerated the AFL-CIO. His two brothers were popular figures in the financial sector and managed Norm’s substantial affluence, most inherited from his mother’s family that, as German Jews, had established a number of stock and bond-trading houses on the fringes of Wall Street. Norm was a resident of his own precinct that served the Upper East Side, living in a three-bedroom condo at East Sixty-Ninth Street and Lexington Avenue. Conveniently, he could walk to work, which he rarely did.

Reis arrived as the crime scene was being set up. In many ways, he was well known enough in the neighborhood that the residents approached him like one of their own as well as the top cop in their precinct. He was escorted to the back of the residence where Dr. Liebknecht was conferring with several police officers and an ambulance squad that had arrived only moments earlier than Reis.

Norm, good to see you, a real mess here, Liebknecht said, extending his hand.

Shaking hands, Reis replied, Sorry to have all this land in your backyard, Dr. Liebknecht. We’ll get it cleaned up. The bodies will be taken to the morgue, and I’ll have the yard and area searched then scrubbed down for you. I got a report from the investigating sergeant. My detective team is on its way also, and the CSU should be here pretty quickly. Their vehicles take a bit of time to assemble and dispatch.

Everyone’s been very cooperative, Norm. Ella’s taking it hard, and she’s a real trooper. But this got to her, Liebknecht said as they walked over, watching the ambulance crew planning to extract the blood-soaked corpses and repose them in rubberized body bags.

We don’t want to take them out until we’ve investigated the scene as we found it. Looks to me like an obvious double murder. You can see from the blood stains here that the victims were pushed into the stairwell after attacked on this spot, Reis said, pointing to the site where Adrielle had stabbed the victims.

And there’s a space between the bloodstain on fire escape column and that on the ground. Suggests to me that something or someone was between those two points. Maybe it was the other victim, but that would complicate any assumptions that there was just one killer, unless the victims were killed sequentially over what was probably a short period of time, Reis speculated. He was depending on his own extensive background as a homicide detective.

In the meantime, two white NYPD vehicles arrived, one a rolling CSU crime lab and the other a communications van. A white-shirted police lieutenant arrived in the backyard along with three white-suited technicians lugging large cases with forensic equipment. Traffic on to the East Seventy-First Street segment between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue was detoured and the street barricaded to all traffic, except that of residents on the block.

*     *     *

By noontime, Wednesday, September 6, Inspector Reis had received a preliminary report from his homicide investigation team. The detectives, having spoken with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, were informed that the slayings of the two security guards found in the Liebknecht backyard had unusual characteristics. Following the report’s recommendation, Reis met with Dr. James Hayes, the deputy CME, at the OCME’s modernistic glass and concrete-faced tower at 520 First Avenue on the northeast corner of Thirtieth Street.

OCME is part of the Milton Helpern Institute of Forensic Medicine of New York University and the city of New York. It is arguably the world’s most scientifically advanced facility of its type. Dr. Hayes, a medical pathologist and forensic anthropologist, greeted Insp. Norm Reis as he arrived on the third floor.

Nice to see you, Norm, Dr. Hayes said. Let’s go to the autopsy room, if that’s okay, he said, looking askance and knowing well that such visits are not exactly keenly welcomed by all visitors.

Not a problem, Jim. I’ve done my time in homicidal hell, Reis replied. Both laughed as they moved down the pristinely scrubbed corridor that reeked of Lysol, among other disinfectants.

They entered the room, both putting on lab coats as Hayes signaled to an investigative pathologist who had been prepped for the visit. The cadaver lift was activated as the remains of Tony Azura were gently ejected from the morgue refrigeration unit. The conveyor tray easily moved the corpse on to the necropsy work table. Around which, up to four persons could usually work together.

Norm, this is Dr. Gregg Carey who did the autopsy, Hayes said as the two shook hands as Dr. Carey put on rubberized gloves. Gregg finished his pathology residency at NYU and is with us for a couple of years on a National Institute of Justice fellowship. You have to be at the top of your game to get one of those, Hayes added.

Congratulations, Doctor, Reis said as Carey smiled back his gesture of gratitude.

Inspector, as you can see, the neck has full mobility, Dr. Carey said, gently lifting the head, turning it 180 degrees from side to side. The assailant knew what he was doing. He sliced omohyoid muscle here, he said, pointing to the neck. He then stopped. Excuse me, look at the monitor, I’ll use the probe," Carey added, then inserting a sinuous wire-guided camera through the cadaver’s nose and down the throat.

The monitor traced the probe’s light, showing the cleanly severed section of the neck. As you can see, Carey continued, sternohyoid muscle was also sliced through, as was the cricoid cartilage, shown here by the light beam. The finalizing thrust then must have severed the critical stylomandibular ligament seen here. Carey directed the light to the center section of neck anatomy. That controls the temporomandibular joint, which was then penetrated, essentially disconnecting the head from its position on the spinal column. The internal and external jugular veins were shredded, as if sawed rather than sliced, suggesting the use of a saw-toothed blade.

Dr. Liebknecht told me he believed the neck was broken when he first found and inspected the bodies, Reis said.

Indeed, he did, and I spoke to him later. He’s an ENT specialist who deals with this part of the body’s anatomy all the time. He was right for the reasons I just mentioned, Carey said.

The three backed away from the necropsy table; two pathology technicians appeared and reversed the process of returning the cadaver to its refrigeration storage unit.

They removed their lab coats in the autopsy room’s dressing closet and walked out on to the corridor, Dr. Carey with them. Reis spoke first.

I’ve never seen a killing like this, and both were slain the same way, right, Jim? Reis asked.

Yes, they were, and I can understand that you haven’t seen this killing procedure before, nor has Dr. Carey, but I have, Dr. Hayes said as Reis stopped suddenly at the threshold of his office door.

He looked at Hayes. Wha… what’d ya mean? he asked, suddenly reverting to cop talk vernacular.

"Back in 2000, I was doing a residency completion, like a ‘post-post-doc’ assignment during my last years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. The army paid for my medical residency training, and I owed them three years. By then, I had a wife and two kids and no money. I was with the Defense Assistance Group in Paris. We were working with the French army’s medical folks in coordinating field pathology procedures, trying to create a NATO standard.

It seems that an Egyptian terrorist—I even remember his name, ‘Abu El-Tayeb’—was assassinated one morning as he walked his dog along the Seine. El-Tayeb was believed to have assassinated a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel named Raymond Budd who was with the Defense Attaché’s Office at the U.S. embassy. That had happened back in 1977. The French were more concerned at the time with getting El-Tayeb out of their hair than they were in solving the murder. When El-Tayeb fled, they pretty much closed the case. And when his body was pulled out of the Seine in 2000, they believed U.S. CIA or some other U.S. official organization had killed him. Of course, we adamantly denied it, citing, among other things, the manner in which he was killed, which is what we just witnessed by the way, he said to Reis who was listening with his lips slightly agape in amazement.

Why didn’t the U.S. work harder on the case? Reis asked.

We did, but it went nowhere. The Defense Department was convinced he was killed by either a rival terrorist or, Hayes hesitated, the Israelis.

The Israelis! Why the hell would they be involved? Reis asked.

"I learned that they never give up on a terrorist once they finger him. Even though he killed an American, he was still a potential threat. They’ll track known terrorists for the rest of their lives. El-Tayeb had returned to France twenty-three years after he killed Colonel Ray, if he killed him, which is probably the case. The U.S. on the other hand, especially during the Carter presidency were kissing up to the Egyptians," Hayes added.

Yeah, by damn, 1977, that was when the Camp David Accords were being negotiated. Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, they were practically living in the White House, Reis said. I can see why Carter wouldn’t want to rock that boat. Sadat had no control over the Islamic radicals in Egypt. But why would Israel have acted? I would think it might have jeopardized the talks, and Begin had to know of the assassination, even approve it. The Mossad would always coordinate something like that. I know that much about the way the Israelis operate.

As I say, I was just a captain in the medical corps. But I was called in by the French and encouraged by our government to examine El-Tayeb’s remains. I told the French it was not a typical U.S. operation. They believed I was lying, but our embassy officials appreciated having me there to offer professional judgment. They too believed it was the Mossad. The station chief, you know, the top CIA guy at the embassy, had told me in no uncertain terms that they had nothing to do with it because, as you’ll recall, Carter had vetoed CIA’s use of assassinations. Bill Clinton restored it years later, Hayes added.

But the big question now is, what in hell was the motive, whether the Mossad or anyone else killed these two guys? Reis asked aloud.

That’s where I get out of the driver’s seat and turn the wheel over to you, my friend, Dr. Hayes said. One more thing, less than a year ago this month, more or less, at the annual conference of the New York State Association of County Coroners and Medical Examiners in Albany, another bizarre case was put before us. Seems that early last September, a former U.S. attorney for the New York Eastern District Court mysteriously died while trying to dock his Jet Ski. The Suffolk County medical examiner’s report suggested that the muscolocutaneous nerve—you know, the system branch that controls the use of one’s arms—was traumatically ruptured, in that case by a severe overreach against a countervailing force, like grabbing on to a rail as you’re falling downstairs. The Soviets routinely used a martial arts technique to create that effect. You may recall a case years ago when they killed a Norwegian soldier who happened to cross into Soviet territory. They made it appear as an accident. But what I’m getting to is that the Mossad adopted the same technique.

Reis was stupefied, wordless.

Hayes continued, But maybe I can be of a little more help. I have a friend at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He’s on the staff at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. It’s now affiliated with the Columbia Medical Center and the Cornell Weill Medical Center. His name is Yehuda Howard, a former Israeli who immigrated here over forty years ago, one of the top transplant surgeons in the world. Maybe you should start there. If you’re interested, I’ll call and set you up with an appointment.

Not a bad idea, please make the call. I’d like to talk to him. Police work has changed. The TV image of detectives knowing everything and solving cases based upon instinct and sweat is illusory. Modern cops depend on experts, and we’re not ashamed about it. I appreciate the help, Jim. Thanks, Reis said as he got up, shook hands, and departed.

CHAPTER 2

A BLOODY QUANDARY

Deputy Inspector Norm Reis, chief of the NYPD’s Nineteenth Precinct was hopeful but uneasy with the prospect of discussing a murder investigation with Dr. Yehuda Howard at the Presbyterian-New York Hospital. The investigation had not been going well over the past few days. There were few leads, no suspects, only skimpy evidence that offended the high standards of NYPD and other parts of the city’s criminal justice system.

I don’t have much of a choice, he thought. Hayes was leading me to something I’m not exactly sure what. But suggesting Israeli intelligence involvement? C’mon, what in hell interest would the Israelis have in two security guards? But it was the type of killing procedure that troubled the coroner, he reasoned further as he reflected on his talk with Dr. Jim Hayes at the medical examiner’s morgue. And Hayes has set up the appointment. I better stick with it, he concluded, sensing that he may very well be wasting several hours that could be more usefully spent on other motives and leads.

It was nearly 10:15 a.m. on Friday, September 7, 2013, when Reis arrived at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital at the Columbia University Medical Center on West 168th Street. The supersize medical complex spread from Broadway west to the Hudson River and was situated on a landmass stretching one mile on a south to north axis. He parked easily, hanging his Official Police Business tag on the rearview mirror and headed toward the medical offices in the William Black Building of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He stopped momentarily, glancing at the medical center’s School of Nursing behind him, hoping by chance to catch sight of his daughter Jennifer, now twenty-two and in her last year of Columbia’s five-year nursing degree program.