Oh dear dear, Geoffrey thought.
“Which are almost certainly false names,” Heatherton said, “since, you see, the passport numbers are identical.”
Geoffrey glanced at the number he’d copied from Angela Cartwright’s passport before making his call to London this morning.
“Which number,” Heatherton said, “is the number of a passport issued to the same Hamish Innes McIntosh.”
Born in Glasgow, Geoffrey remembered.
“Born in Glasgow,” Heatherton said.
In 1854, Geoffrey remembered.
“In 1854,” Heatherton said. “So what we have here is a case of two women claiming to be British subjects, for reason or reasons as yet unknown, seemingly unrelated save for the identical passport number and the rather curious tattoo adorning their, ah, respective bosoms.”
Geoffrey sighed audibly.
“I’ve turned this over to MI6,” Heatherton said flatly. “I rather imagine someone in New York will be contacting you.”
Geoffrey looked at the calendar.
“When?” he asked.
“Depends how urgent they feel it is, wouldn’t you say?” Heatherton said. “There are two corpses already, you know...”
But not British subjects, Geoffrey thought. So why...?
“So perhaps they’d like to move on this before there are any more of them, eh?” Heatherton said. “How’s the weather there in New York?”
“Beastly,” Geoffrey said.
“Quite the same here,” Heatherton said, “but in a different way, I’m sure. I wouldn’t plan on dashing off to the mountains, by the way...”
Shit, Geoffrey thought.
“... or the seashore,” Heatherton said, “until the man from MI6 has made contact. Shouldn’t want him to think you rude, eh?”
Geoffrey looked at the calendar again.
Friday, the twenty-sixth day of June. He had, in fact, planned to go to the seashore tomorrow. A friend in New Jersey...
“What do you think those bloody scimitars represent?” Heatherton asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Geoffrey said. “When do you think this chap will be contacting me? To be quite frank, I’d made arrangements for the weekend, and the thought of hanging about in New York, waiting for a telephone call...”
“I shouldn’t think it would be before Monday,” Heatherton said. “But, Geoff...” His voice lowered. “I really wouldn’t leave the city, were I you. Truly.”
Shit, he thought again.
“Toodle-oo,” Heatherton said, and hung up.
5
It was still only a little past one on Friday afternoon, but Santorini felt like he’d been sitting here in front of the computer for a month and a half. The computer was called Fat Nellie, for the letters FATN stamped into a metal plate screwed onto its back. Santorini didn’t know what the letters actually stood for, and he didn’t give a damn. He had trouble enough working the damn thing, without having to concern himself with technicalities.
The fucking computer was driving him crazy.
First of all, because he wasn’t sure how you spelled scimitar.
It took him close to half an hour to realize that just possibly the word was spelled with an s-c like in scissors instead of just a plain s like in simple, or a p-s like in psycho, this was some fuckin’ language, English.
What he was trying to do was come up with a scimitar tattoo, preferably, if there was any such thing in the files. But in addition to scimitar tattoos, he asked the computer to locate any sword-shaped tattoo because he was willing to settle for anything that even looked like a scimitar. And then, for good measure, he threw in sword-shaped scars or birthmarks as well, which he hoped might possibly give him something that related to the two dead broads with scimitar tattoos on their tits, stranger things had happened.
He had started his search by limiting it to New York City and by further restricting it to felony arrests over the past five years. Those arrests would of course include murders, since homicide was a felony as every schoolboy and schoolgirl in this city knew from watching television and movies and — in some instances — from having committed one or two themselves, murders. The same way that every kid in this city, from the third grade on up, knew that a kilo was the equivalent of two point two pounds. Never mind any other mathematical formulas; they could be failing algebra and geometry or even elementary-school arithmetic, but they all knew for sure that a kilo of cocaine or heroin was two point two pounds of the shit.
Which is why Santorini suspected he should try spelling scimitar with an s-c, stranger things were possible.
Bingo! Right off the bat, he came up with more scimitars than he could shake a sword at.
There were two street gangs in Brooklyn named Scimitar. One of them was the Scimitar S.A.C., which letters stood for Social and Athletic Club, like fun. The other was just plain Scimitar, but the computer indicated the gang was now defunct; Santorini wondered if the Scimitar S.A.C. had taken over the name of the gang that had preceded it in time and exceeded it in reputation. Both gangs, past and present, tattooed these funny little swords on their right hands, on the ball of flesh where thumb joined index finger.
There was also a street gang in the Bronx that called itself Scimitar Psychos, but they preferred tattooing the Persian sword on the forearm — except for the gang’s female members. The debs called themselves Scimitar Psycho Bytches, and they preferred to tattoo the little curved sword — well, well, well — on the upper slope of the breast, where the tattoo would be visible in a bikini, a halter top, or even a low-cut blouse. But the computer indicated that the oldest of the Bytches was only nineteen, scratch Gillian Holmes and Angela Cartwright, or whatever their square handles were.
Santorini kept scrolling.
A guy named Curtis Langdon had slain three nurses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn four years ago and had carved onto their cheeks a mark that faintly resembled a curved sword. The newspaper had taken to calling him the Scimitar Killer. According to the computer, though, Langdon was languishing upstate at Attica, where he was doing life plus ninety-nine.
A woman named Alice Hermann had drowned her six-day-old infant in the bathtub of her apartment in a Queens housing project a year and a half ago. Among the physical characteristics identifying her was a tattoo on her left arm showing a heart pierced by a curving sword. Well, who the hell knew? Except that she, too, was doing time in the Women’s Division of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
There were several other men and women with similar sword-in-heart tattoos... that was the trouble with such a wide search... and a man with a scar that resembled a curved sword or scimitar... and a remarkable number of men and women alike who had birthmarks shaped like curved swords or scimitars... and...
Santorini leaned closer to the screen.
In Manhattan, three years ago, a terrorist group named Simsir had claimed credit for planting an explosive device that detonated in the Iraqi airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy airport. One of the group had eventually been arrested, convicted of arson and reckless endangerment, and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He had escaped last fall and had not surfaced again. His name was Mustapha Hayiz and he was listed as an Iranian national.
In Persian, the word simsir meant scimitar.