Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

When I checked my phone I saw the message that the network could not be found. “I’ll go to the police then.”

“They didn’t even believe you about Hal. They’d need a warrant to search my gallery, and that has to be based on evidence. The engraving will be long gone before that eventuality.”

Laurel lifted her shoulders slightly as if to say there was nothing she could do, the matter was out of her hands.

I could feel the dam cracking, my anger breaking out again. “Do Ari and Samuel mean nothing to you?”

“Don’t start preaching, John. You just wanted it for yourself. You went to that cemetery the first time without anyone knowing. The caretaker described you.” There was no malice in her tone, if anything, only a slight air of amusement that she’d put one over on me. It seemed schizophrenic, a kind of moral blankness, her ability to treat all this as a game, utterly oblivious to the consequences.

Phillip let me out. I walked a half block east to an electrician’s van, checked to make sure neither Laurel nor Phillip were watching, and called out. The side door of the van cranked open. Gentile looked worried. “We got nothing but static,” he said.

“Phillip Anthony blocked his office for wireless.” I undid my shirt, pulled at the wires and tape, and handed him the tape recorder.

I didn’t know the man well, but I’d have thought smiling was a foreign expression for him. He proved me wrong when a broad grin lit up his face. “I’ll take the old-fashioned stuff any day. Smart of you to think about doing both; otherwise, he might have suspected something. Did you get it all?”

“Everything. They’re hung, drawn, and quartered.”

While he and an agent from the FBI’s Art Theft Program listened to the recording, I watched the screen inside the van broadcasting views of the gallery’s front door. Light filtered through the window grate, and I thought I could detect shadows of the two of them moving around inside. There was no back exit. Neither Laurel nor Phillip ventured out. With any luck this would turn out to be a triple win if the Vermeer and Michelangelo drawing shared equally dubious origins.

“Okay, that sounds great,” Gentile said. The FBI agent signaled his agreement and made a call. Within minutes a couple of unmarked cars pulled up at the curb in front of the gallery. I stayed for the pleasure of seeing Phillip and Laurel hauled out in restraints.

Before meeting Gentile at his office the next day for a full report, I decided I needed to cool down and trudged the eight or so blocks to Kenny’s.

Diane was tending bar when I sauntered through the front door. She could manage only a weak smile after I sat down, which told me her feelings were still tender about the incident with the police.

“I came to make up,” I said.

She acknowledged me with a curt nod, got a cloth from under the bar, and began zealously wiping down the counter. I noticed, though, that she hadn’t moved very far away.

“Hey,” I said. “Is this the end of a great relationship?”

“Lying. That’s not my definition of a great relationship.”

“There were extenuating circumstances.”

“That’s what they always say.”

“Your fortune was dead on. Sadly for me.”

This sparked her interest. “Why?” Then she noticed my face.

“What happened to you?”

“I was hunted by five masked assassins, one of whom fried himself trying to make gold. I was shot at, Tasered, nearly bitten by a giant spider, kidnapped, and whisked away to a foreign land.”

She had trouble suppressing a grin and tried to hide it by shaking her head. “John, you’re too much. Dare I ask why you were singled out for such punishment?”

“They believed I held the secret to King Midas’s treasure.”

Diane couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.

“Well, that’s so off the wall it doesn’t qualify as a lie. I’ve missed you despite everything, but we have to make a pact.”

“I don’t have any razors on me. We’d need that for the exchange of blood.”

“Verbal is just fine. In all seriousness, I want your promise you won’t lie to me again.”

I held out my hand; she reached for it and closed her own over mine.

“And we’ll have to agree on no more fortunes.”

“Done,” she said.

We chatted for a while longer before a flock of new customers took up her attention. I recalled her last prophecy: happiness follows sorrow. However much joy I got from achieving retribution, seeing Laurel and Phillip under arrest just plugged the hole temporarily. Losing my brother and Ari to them would always remain a searing wound.

From Iraq, I’d brought one memento home. I took it out and held it in the palm of my hand. A golden apple, every pucker in the skin, the creases, veins, and finely serrated edge of its one leaf so perfectly formed you would have sworn someone had, with the touch of a finger, turned a piece of real fruit into gold.

I stayed until closing time. Bleecker even at this late hour was teeming with people. Already I felt a little out of place here. Subtle changes. Like the slowing of a friendship when one of you moves on to other things. The night air had a touch of chill. A few leaves drifted onto the sidewalk, early harbingers of the year closing in on itself. I looked up to see the lighted windows of my old home. A stranger leaned on the balcony railing the way I used to, a drink in his hand. I waved to him. He tipped his glass to me. A small omen, I hoped, of better things to come.

Mesopotamian Culture

Mesopotamia is a Greek word describing the “land between two rivers”—the region bounded by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers approximately corresponding to modern-day Iraq. Professor Leo Oppenheim’s highly regarded book Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization is recommended as a starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the early history of this region. What follows is the briefest of snapshots of the three pre-eminent Mesopotamian cultures.

SUMERIANS

It is not known whether Sumerians were indigenous to southern Mesopotamia or migrated there. Their language group is not Semitic and has no proven affiliates. Intensive agriculture, irrigation, and the specialization of labor created conditions for Sumerians to develop the first city-states ruled by priest-kings. Cities were temple-centered and under the protection of a specific deity.

Sumerian achievements were so exceptional as to represent almost an evolutionary advance in human accomplishment. The Sumerians developed geometry and the sexagesimal (base sixty) numeral system still used today (for example, measurement of angles, the minute); the lunar/solar calendar; the wheel; the early chariot; and cuneiform, the first writing system.

Periods of Sumerian Dominance (B.C.)

Early Dynastic (Sumerian city-states)

3100–2390

Neo-Sumerian

2168–2050

ASSYRIANS

The Assyrian homeland occupied the territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in northern Mesopotamia (the area just north of Baghdad today), which had sufficient rainfall to carry out agriculture without need for intensive irrigation. Ancient Assyrians were Semitic-speaking tribes noted for their prowess with the bow and superb horseman-ship. Assyrian dominance ebbed and flowed, but at the height of their power in the seventh century

B.C.

, they controlled the entire Levant area of the Near East, Egypt, Phrygia, and what is now southwestern Iran. Assyrians developed a complex system of government and are considered to have built the first empire.