Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

The faint hope crossed my mind that he’d fallen victim to a hoax. But he’d been killed for it so his foes must have believed the object was genuine. How pathetic, wasting the last few days of his life to set such an evil trap for me.

People always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Hal had envied me. He’d never known how lonely I felt when Samuel was away at work for such long stretches of time. A cerebral, self-effacing boy, he’d been no match for his father. Peter had wanted an alpha male and got instead a shy, introverted boy. After one particular cringe-inducing put-down by his father, Hal had turned on me. “He said he wished you were his son instead of a pathetic kid like me.” His resentment had simmered all these years.

Hal was exacting a heavy price for that now.

When I looked at the screen again, the letter had faded away and a new page came up displaying the first step in Hal’s game.

I liked games, but my natural impatience didn’t allow for good strategy, and I hated losing. It was Hal who’d loved the intrigue, the battle of wits. So he’d know that right off the bat he had me at a disadvantage. I grew more annoyed and angry the longer I studied it.

This was another throwback to our childhood. We couldn’t just play hide-and-seek like ordinary kids. Hal would insist on devising intricate games—games where he knew he’d have the upper hand. He’d once worked all morning setting up a scavenger hunt. The trail led up to his attic, where he promised a twenty-dollar bill was waiting if I could read the clues. There was no money in the end, only the desiccated body of a dead mouse. Hal had laughed uproariously when I found it.

After studying the puzzle for a few moments, I realized I wouldn’t be able to solve it easily and turned my attention to the actual artifact. Hal’s description gave me next to nothing to go on, but it was worth doing a search to see if I could find any references online. Interpol’s database of stolen art, the Art Loss Register, and the FBI’s Art Theft Program were all tools of the art trade. I knew one dealer with a bad rep who regularly checked these sources to gauge how hot an object was before he’d touch it. If it was listed, he’d triple his commission.

Nothing on Interpol remotely described a missing Neo-Assyrian engraving. This came as no great surprise because with the Baghdad Museum records burned, it would take some time, even for the top police agencies, to document all the missing objects. The FBI listed some of the most prominent stolen pieces. As I expected, the ivory plaque of a lion killing a nubian, a stunning work of art, was listed among the top ten missing works, but I found no reference to the engraving here either. I had higher hopes for the Art Loss Register because I knew it documented at least 200,000 objects, antiquities, and collectibles. But combing the site again brought up nothing resembling the piece I sought.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I’d have to leave for my appointment with the detective. Should I bring the letter to show him? I had no proof it had come from Hal and I could have made the whole thing up. I settled for printing off a copy of the puzzle and stuck it in my pants pocket, thinking I could play around with it if my meeting was delayed. I downloaded Hal’s file to my BlackBerry and got a new envelope for the flash drive, scribbling my name on it.

That left one more urgent task.

Nina, who owned the condo across the hall, often looked after our place, watering the plants and checking the air conditioning while Samuel and I were away. I assumed she’d still be at home on a Sunday morning.

A quizzical smile crossed her face when I asked her to hold on to the envelope for me. Not the best solution, but all I had time for at the moment. She pressed the paper. “It’s not your stash or anything, is it? I don’t think you’d trust me with that.” She gave the envelope a gentle shake. “I’ll peek, you know.”

“It’s stolen jewelry. Twenty-carat diamonds. They’re worth a fortune.”

“Oh, no problem then.” She laughed and promised to keep it safe. “You haven’t forgotten about tonight, have you?”

I looked at her blankly. “Sorry, Nina, it’s been a rough twenty-four hours. Remind me again?”

“My party. You’ve been stuck in that place of yours for way too long. It’ll do you good to be social again.”

“Oh, right. I’m not sure I can. Something’s come up. But I’ll try my best.” I thanked her and walked to the elevator.

After waiting for close to an hour at the Tenth Precinct station, I was finally summoned by a uniformed cop, who took me down the hallway to a clerk’s desk. No sign of Detective Gentile. The cop checked my pockets and waved a wand over my body. When the clerk started asking questions to update my old file, I protested.

“Gentile ordered it,” was all she said in reply. She shot another photo and confirmed the color of my eyes, my height and weight. I pointed out that my eyes hadn’t changed color in the last fourteen years, and told her a woman had once said they were like dark velvet.

The clerk frowned and looked over the top of her glasses. Bending her head again, she wrote down “brown.”

“You look better with the beard, though,” she said. “On your driver’s license, your name is spelled Madak; on your Visa card it’s Madison. Why the difference?”

“Legally, it’s the one on the license. It’s Turkish. My brother changed it to Madison when I came to America.”

“Named you after an American president, did he?” She hunched her shoulders up to her ears and let them drop. I wasn’t sure whether this was a tension reliever or a gesture to show she needed more clarification. “So the correct version is on your license?”

“That’s right.”

“Your given name is Jonathan?”

“Yes.”

“What about the second name? K-E-N-I-T-E. Is that right, too?”

“Yes. Actually that’s supposed to be my Turkish given name. It’s pronounced Ken-it-ee.”

“If I were your mother I would have stuck to Ken.” She chortled as if this were the most brilliant joke ever.

I let it pass.

The uniformed cop, Vernon, steered me to an interview room furnished with an ancient metal table and chairs, white walls the color of old eggshells, and cheap gray carpeting. The room was freezing, with the air conditioning jacked up, and smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. I guessed this place was a law unto itself, like the Vatican or something.

Vernon left the room, secured the door, and leaned against it. Through the textured glass I could see the wavy blur of his shirt. I was able to make out people passing by and hear them exchange a few words. Among other things, I learned Detective Paul Gentile’s nickname was Genitalia—and it didn’t have a positive connotation.

Coming here had turned out to be a miscalculation. So much for good intentions. Were they going to try to pin Hal’s death on me somehow? I spent the rest of the time rehearsing the story I wanted to give them, making sure there were no rough edges to it or inconsistencies. I wanted to get the message across about Eris and her brute without admitting I’d left the scene.

When the door finally clicked open, in walked the inquisitors— two men. Vernon nodded a greeting to the first man, “Lieutenant Gentile,” and shut the door, propping himself up against it, this time inside the room. Gentile and the other man took seats across from me, plunking their file folders down.