[Lady Justice 17] - Lady Justice and the Pharaoh's Curse

by Robert Thornhill

  The Professor was the first to arrive. In my younger days, I had taken his psychology and philosophy classes at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. We became good friends and when he retired, I encouraged him to rent one of the apartments in my building on Armour Boulevard.

  Dad and Bernice were right behind him. I hadn’t seen my dad for years, but one day, four years ago, I received a call from out of the blue. He was being tossed from a retirement home in Arizona due to his lewd and lascivious behavior. Maggie talked me into giving him an apartment in our building which, I’ll have to admit, has turned out quite well. He immediately latched onto Bernice, another of my long-term tenants, and the two have been inseparable. Dad, Bernice and the Professor are all in their eighties.

  Willie, my maintenance man and good friend, lives in a small studio in the basement. Years ago, he gave up the life of a con man to help take care of the apartment buildings I used to own. He sort of retired when I sold everything but the building we occupy and a flop house over on Linwood. Since I became a cop, Willie has pulled my fat out of the fire more times than I can count.

  The last to arrive was Jerry the Joker. We call him that because all the world is Dean Martin to his Jerry Lewis. No matter the subject being discussed, he has a joke or riddle to throw into the conversation. He arrived a little bleary-eyed with the excuse that the previous evening was amateur night at the comedy club, an event he would only miss if he was on his death bed.

  As I looked at the gaggle of senior citizens gathered in my living room, it occurred to me that Ox, toiling away at the fitness center, might be the lucky one after all.

  Bernice is a real sweetheart, but Alzheimer’s is slowly creeping up on her, making her forgetful. Most of the time she’s quite lucid. Other times she’s in a muddled haze.

  I could see the confusion on her face as she tapped Dad on the shoulder. “John, why is everyone here? Is it somebody’s birthday?”

  Dad had certainly mellowed over the past few years. He patted Bernice’s hand. “No Dear. We’re going to Union Station to see King Tutankhamen’s mummy.”

  Bernice giggled. “Tuten --- Tuten --- Tuten what? That’s a really funny name.”

  Dad was about to help her when Jerry jumped in. “Let me help with that,” he said. “Think about what you would have if two pharaohs farted at the same time --- a toot in common!”

  At first, she seemed to get it, but then she frowned. “John, can mummies really fart all wrapped up like that?”

  Dad just sighed.

  “Okay,” I said, “time to go. We won’t all fit in one vehicle so Dad, you, Bernice and the Professor can ride with Maggie. Willie and Jerry can ride with me. I’ll be picking Mary up at the hotel and meet you in the parking lot.”

  Mary Murphy is the house mother at my Three Trails Hotel. Actually, ‘hotel’ is kind of a misnomer. It’s actually a flop house. Twenty sleeping rooms share four hall baths. The tenants are either old retired guys on Social Security or young guys working out of the day labor pool. They’re a pretty crusty bunch so someone has to be on site to keep a lid on things. That person is Mary. Although in her seventies, she rules the place with an iron hand. She is the personification of an ad I saw for a novelty item, John Wayne toilet paper. “It’s rough! It’s tough and it don’t take no crap off anybody!”

  We had just pulled away from the curb when Jerry started again. “What did King Tut say when he had a nightmare? I want my mummy!”

  Willie looked at me pleadingly, “Mr. Walt. Do we gotta lissn’ to dat all day?”

  I pulled over to the curb. “Jerry, it’s going to be a really long day. No more King Tut jokes!”

  Jerry was crestfallen. “But I have so many more.”

  “Sorry. Like Archie Bunker used to say to Edith, ‘Stifle it!’ One more and you’ll be walking home.”

  Jerry slumped back in his seat and kept his mouth shut, but it was too late. Stupid King Tut stuff kept popping into my head. The very best was by one of my all-time favorite comedians, Steve Martin. It was a big musical production on Saturday Night Live back in the seventies. Martin was dressed as a pharaoh and surrounded by dancing girls. His King Tut song was hilarious. I could only remember a few lines, but I could still vividly picture Martin doing his thing.

  Now when I die, don’t think I’m a nut

  Don’t want no fancy funeral. Just one like ole King Tut

  King Tut

  He coulda won a Grammy

  Buried in his jammies

  King Tut

  yhoo.it/1sI5JGh

  Mary was waiting on the front porch. Willie had grabbed shotgun, so Mary slid into the back seat beside Jerry.

  She gave him a long, expectant look. “What? No wise cracks?”

  Willie turned and gave Mary a gold-toothed smile. “Mr. Walt done tole ‘em iffin’ he didn’ button his lip he’d t’row his skinny white ass out in de street.”

  “Works for me,” Mary replied, giving Willie a high five.

  I found an empty space in the parking lot, poked my four dollars in the slot and spotted the rest of our gang waiting for us by the front entrance.

  Union Station was built in 1914. It is one of the grand old buildings in Kansas City. It is elegant and steeped in history.

  My friends were standing by a plaque commemorating one of the most bizarre events to take place there, the Union Station Massacre.

  The Massacre took place on the morning of June 17, 1933. Convicted bank robber Frank Nash had escaped from the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, only to be recaptured in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was brought by train back to Kansas City, and from there, federal and local law enforcement officers planned to drive him back to Leavenworth.

  As Nash’s custodians led him in handcuffs across the Union Station parking lot to a waiting car, three Nash allies, one purported to be ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, drove up in another car. The resulting gunfight led to the deaths of Nash, a federal agent, two Kansas City, Missouri police officers, and a police chief from Oklahoma. Two more federal agents were wounded in the clash.

  Bullet holes from the gunfight are still plainly visible in the marble by the door.

  Every time I go to Union Station, I pause and reflect on the blood that had been shed there so many years ago.

  Once inside, we followed the signs that led to the exhibit. We were about to climb on the escalator that would take us down to the lower level which housed the exhibit, when the Professor spoke up.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot. I knew we would be coming today so I brought some letters to drop off at the post office.”

  “What post office?” Dad asked. “I didn’t know there was one here.”

  “Oh yes. It occupies the whole west wing of the first floor. I’ll just be a minute.”

  The Professor returned and we all climbed aboard the escalator that would take us to the lower level where the exhibit was displayed.

  Once on the lower level, we were directed down a ramp where a young man was standing in front of a bin holding what looked like TV remotes.

  He welcomed us to the exhibit and handed one of the gizmos to each of us explaining that many of the exhibits were numbered and we were to punch the exhibit number into the handset and hold it to our ear. There would be a narrative explaining what was in that particular exhibit.

  We thanked the young man and headed into the first hall. The walls were covered with maps showing the Valley of the Kings where the tomb was found, along with a pictorial history of the many Egyptian dynasties.

  From there we were escorted into a small movie theatre where actual footage of the excavation of the tomb was carried out by Howard Carter in 1922. There were dozens of photos of Carter accompanied by Lord Carnarvon who financed the expedition.

  In the film, we learned that the tomb actually contained four chambers, the antechamber, the annex, the golden shrine and the treasure chamber. Our next stop was the antechamber, which in itself, contained hundreds of valuable artifacts.

  We were just
a few feet away from the glittering treasures and only a low glass wall held us back.

  Dad looked around. “How come there’s no guards? What’s stopping crooks from hopping this wall and taking off with the gold?”

  “Not all that glitters is gold,” the Professor replied. “Everything in the exhibit is a replica of the original. The solid gold has been replaced by wood and plaster and the gold is simply gold paint. The replicas are exquisite to be sure, but certainly not valuable enough to tempt a common thief.”

  Dad took a closer look. “Well, I’ll be damned. You coulda fooled me.”

  The next room was the actual burial chamber.

  It contained the most splendid architectural find of the whole expedition, a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, made of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years.

  A replica of the actual mummy was in a sealed glass box.

  It’s not often that my little group is speechless, but as we roamed the burial chamber, not a word was spoken. Even Jerry, the master of one line zingers was silent.

  We filed into the next room, the treasure chamber, and were greeted by a ferocious black jackal that seemed to be guarding a golden box.

  “Whoa, wouldn’t want to tangle with that guy in real life,” Dad said.

  “That’s Anubis,” the Professor replied. “You wouldn’t want to tangle with him in the afterlife either. He’s the guardian of the tomb and the origin of the mysteries surrounding the curse of the pharaohs.”

  So there it was again. Images of our ordeal in Hawaii flashed into my mind. “Curse of the pharaohs?” I said with a grimace. “Could you be more specific?”

  “Certainly,” the Professor replied. “The Anubis has been found in many tombs, protecting the remains buried therein. Almost always, including the tomb of Tutankhamen, there is a curse carved into a stone tablet warning of the dire consequences that would befall anyone defiling the tomb. One such inscription reads, ‘Cursed be those that disturb the rest of a Pharaoh. They that shall break the seal of this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose.’ ”

  Now the Professor really had my attention. “You said there was a curse associated with King Tut’s tomb. Did anything ever come from that?”

  “Indeed it did. Have you noticed the King Cobras on the headdress of every pharaoh mask?”

  I nodded.

  Then he pointed to the top of the gold box that the jackal was guarding. “See all the cobras on top of the box?”

  I hadn’t noticed before, but there they were.

  The Professor continued, “The King Cobra was the symbol of the Egyptian monarchy. The kings wore them on their heads to strike fear into their enemies. On the very day that Howard Carter broke into the king’s tomb, a messenger, sent to Carter’s home, found a cobra curled up in a birdcage with Carter’s canary in its mouth.”

  “That’s just creepy,” Mary said with a shudder.

  “But that’s not the last of it,” the Professor said. “Lord Carnarvon who had financed the expedition had reportedly been bitten by a mosquito. Apparently he cut the bite with his razor while shaving. The wound became infected and six weeks after the opening of the tomb, he was dead of a pathogen ‘that no doctor could diagnose.’ On another occasion, the anthropologist Henry Field visited the tomb and recalled the kindness and friendliness of Carter. He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter's friend Sir Bruce Ingham was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, ‘Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence.’ Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram's house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt.”

  I was about to respond when the Professor continued, “Oh, one more thing. Were you aware that an Egyptian mummy taken from its tomb was aboard the Titanic when it sunk?”

  Jerry had wandered away and had been listening to the recording in his headset.

  “Come here guys. You gotta see this!”

  We gathered around another gold box containing four statues.

  “Guess what’s inside those four guys. King Tut’s innards! The recording says that the liver, spleen, lungs and intestines were embalmed and placed inside those statues. Now that’s just weird!”

  “It wasn’t weird to the ancient Egyptians,” the Professor replied. “The whole idea of embalming was so that the pharaoh could exist in the afterlife. They believed that every night the king’s soul would return to its body which had to be preserved in its entirety. Without the body, there would be no afterlife.”

  I could see the wheels turning in Jerry’s head.

  “So that must be where the old saying originated.”

  “What saying?” Dad asked, puzzled.

  “No guts --- no glory!”

  Dad just groaned.

  The last stop was the King Tut gift shop.

  Dad bought Bernice a pair of Queen Nefertiti earrings and Mary bought a scepter with a cobra head which she declared would scare the bejesus out of the tenants at the hotel.

  All-in-all, it had been a successful field trip, but as I drove out of the parking lot past the shadow of the giant Anubis, something told me that I hadn’t heard the last of the curse of the pharaohs.

  CHAPTER 3

  After months of planning, Bernie Maloof was ready to claim the treasure that his uncle had hidden in the belly of the Anubis.

  He had watched the workers mount the four-foot jackal on its shrine. It was heavy. It had taken two men to lift the beast. He knew that he would need help to complete his task.

  During breaks in his volunteer duties, he had met Marty Ringer, a clerk at the Post Office on the first floor. A chance meeting at the coffee shop had turned into a regular thing for the two young men. They had much in common. Both were barely surviving financially, stuck in low-paying jobs with no future. Bernie saw a potential ally in Marty and over the weeks he worked to create a bond of mutual trust.

  Finally, when he felt that the time was right, he had confided to Marty that his uncle had been part of the team that had replicated the artifacts in the exhibit and that he had volunteered at the Union Station for the sole purpose of gaining access to the exhibit.

  He told Marty the story of his uncle’s sacrifice, abandoning his wife and family to work on the artifacts, and that he viewed the Anubis, his final work, as a family heirloom that rightfully belonged in the Maloof family.

  He shared his plan to steal the jackal and offered Marty five-hundred dollars to be his partner in crime.

  There was no mention of the treasure hidden inside. As far as Marty knew, Bernie’s motive for the theft was purely sentimental.

  Strapped for cash and believing Bernie’s plan was foolproof, Marty readily agreed.

  The plan was actually quite simple. The King Tut exhibit closed for the day at 7:00 in the evening. Union Station itself was open until midnight. From 11:00 until the doors were locked, there were few people roaming the massive halls.

  During all hours of the day, it was common to see postal trucks loading and unloading huge canvas bags filled with mail.

  Marty would simply wheel one of the postal floor trucks with an empty bag down the ramp and into the exhibit where Bernie would be waiting. They would place the Anubis into the mail bag and roll it out onto the dock where they would transfer it to Bernie’s old pickup.

  They were both well-known at the Station, one a trusted volunteer and the other a Federal Postal worker, so any chance encounter with others in the hallways shouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  The plan worked like a charm.

  With the bag safely loaded, Bernie closed the tailgate of the truck. “So far, so good. Meet me at my building. We’ll carry this thing up to my apartment, I’ll pay you and we’ll call it a night.”

  “See you there.”

  Bernie lived on the second floor of a converted two-story residence. After checking t
o make sure that his landlord was asleep, he whispered to Marty, “I’ll go on up and unlock the door. Be right back.”

  The two wrestled the heavy mailbag up the stairs and set it on the kitchen table.

  Bernie opened a kitchen drawer, pulled out an envelope and handed it to Marty.

  “Five hundred, just like I promised. Thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  It had taken him weeks to save the money, but he knew it was just a drop in the bucket compared to the riches that were sealed in the belly of the Anubis.

  “Glad I could help. Good luck with that thing.”

  After Marty was gone, Bernie stared at the canvas bag. Inside was a treasure bequeathed to him by his uncle that would change his life forever.

  He snapped open the clasp that held the bag closed and exposed the head of the Anubis. The obsidian eyes of the jackal stared back at him.

  He reached into the depths of the bag to get a grip to pull the statue free. He felt a jolting sting, and pain immediately radiated up his arm and into his chest.

  He pulled his arm free. It was turning red and beginning to swell and in the center of the swelling were two puncture wounds.

  He staggered back, already dizzy from vertigo. Through blurred vision, he saw movement at the opening of the mail bag. A King Cobra slithered out onto the table, its hood flared wide and tongue flicking in his direction.

  The serpent paused only a moment. Seeming to sense that it had accomplished its mission, it slipped off the table and across the floor.

  The pain was excruciating and Bernie could feel the tightness in his chest as the paralysis from the venom spread through his body.

  He reached for his cell phone, then remembered that he had put it on the counter by the kitchen sink. He staggered to the sink and had just grabbed the phone when his legs gave way. He slumped to the floor and barely had enough control of his hands to flip open the phone. He managed to dial a 9, then a 1, and then another 1 before the phone slipped from his hands. He knew that he had lost his chance to press ‘send.’