Diane put a finger to her lips. Her long nails were painted purplish black, each with a different zodiac sign detailed in white. “They think the game is a forerunner of backgammon.”
“I know that, Diane. Listen, I’m not in a game-playing mood tonight. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
As she shifted in her seat, the little silver hoops and charms lining her ear jingled. “If you want to get over your troubles you need to focus your mind on something else. Give your emotions a rest. Anyway, I wasn’t going to suggest we play the game. After I got it I found out it was also used for prophecy. You didn’t know that, I’ll bet.”
“You’re into telling fortunes?”
“Just a hobby. It’s my new thing.” Diane smiled with a glint in her eyes. “Why don’t you give it a try? Another friend of mine had a run of bad luck recently. I told her fortune and everything turned around for her.”
The Royal Game of Ur
“I’m too superstitious.”
“Not to worry.” She took out seven red playing pieces, each about the size of a penny, and handed them to me. She set three odd-looking dice shaped like pyramids on the bar. “Sumerians treated divination as a science. They’d look for celestial omens, examine animal livers, or interpret patterns that oil made on water.”
“I know.”
“Your future’s not fixed,” she continued. “The fortune only suggests a direction, or warns about certain people or behaviors to avoid.”
I was on the point of telling her to forget it when I realized I’d need a major favor from her, so I decided to go along with what she wanted.
“We’ll just do a short version because it’s late.”
“How did you figure out the rules? No one has ever found them for the game.”
“Trust me.” She gave me a lopsided smile and pushed the little pyramids toward me.
I shook them and let them spill onto the bar.
Diane leaned over and peered at the dice. “Okay, move four spaces.”
I took one of the playing pieces and placed it on the first space in the second row of three squares.
“You’re one short of landing on a rosette.”
“Is that bad?”
“You could say so. It’s a penalty space. It means to expect a secret communication; the news won’t be good.”
“Well, that’s appropriate for tonight.” I picked up the dice and threw them again.
Her face blanched.
“What is it? I thought you said there were no good or bad choices.”
“You threw six. You’ve missed another rosette and landed again on the eyes. One of the worst spaces.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It foretells betrayal and violent death.”
This gave me a jolt and for a minute words deserted me. Fortune-telling is a con, but coming after a day that had turned into a nightmare it didn’t take much to unsettle me.
“There is hope,” Diane said quickly. “The talisman of Sol is also associated with the space. Only the sign of the sun can save you.”
“From what?”
“It protects you from murder.”
This was getting bizarre. Surely she couldn’t know about Hal.
My expression must have betrayed my thoughts because she added, “I’m not making this up, if that’s what you think.”
I cast around for something to say: “So … why choose Sol? He’s a Roman god, not Mesopotamian.”
Diane seemed a bit miffed by my skepticism. “Sometimes you have to improvise.”
On the next throw one of the dice fell onto the floor on her side of the counter.
“That won’t count.” She bent down to pick it up. “I’m curious whether the love sign will turn up. Let’s see what it would have foretold. Together with the other die you’d have moved three more spaces. That position is kind of interesting. It would have meant ‘happiness follows sorrow.’ Kind of oblique. I’m not sure how to read it.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in here with anyone special.”
“I go out on dates and everything seems good, but they don’t call me back.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. You’re the one who doesn’t call back. The last time you were in, two women actually offered me money to get your phone number, going on about how hot you were. So good-looking, they kept saying. It got totally boring having to listen to them. Then they bet which one would go home with you. It’s those dark eyes of yours. And your beard, I guess. It gives you kind of a European look.”
“So who did?”
“Go home with you? You can’t even remember, can you?” She shook her head and smiled flirtatiously.
Under ordinary circumstances I’d have thought about pursuing her. Tonight I could barely keep my act together. “Diane, I really appreciate the compliment but I’m stretched too thin right now. I don’t have the energy for this.” I gathered up the dice and playing pieces and put them back in the box.
“Fine.” She flattened her hands and pushed herself away in a huff. “Lighten up. You’re not helping yourself by taking everything so seriously.”
For a goth, this seemed an overreaction. She ignored me and got busy tidying up the drink glasses, wiping down the bar, and adding up the evening’s take. Every time she bent over, her hip-huggers slipped down far enough to reveal the crease at the rise of her buttocks.
Her remark about the beard was flattering. I kept it cropped close to my face and it did fit my professional image, but I’d grown it for an entirely different reason. To hide the firebrand birthmark on my jaw. A source of extreme embarrassment throughout my teens, shaped like a rough letter Q, it stood out on my face like an ugly scar.
It was 4 A.M. by the time the waiter, Stan, set the locks and left and Diane finished her tasks. From the doorway I gave the street another scan, trying to decide whether it was safe to go home. At the intersection of Thompson and Bleecker, I saw a silver Range Rover stopped at the curb. Could that be Eris?
I decided not to take the chance and offered to walk Diane to the Chase Bank on Broadway to make the night deposit. Over the last couple of hours the temperature had soared. People still roamed the streets, refugees from cramped apartments with no air conditioning. A guy stood with his back pressed against a store window, holding five pet rats on his forearm, two white, two brown, and one pinto. Their long, pink, naked tails dangled below his arm and twitched when he stroked them. His baseball cap sat upturned on the sidewalk.
“He’s always here at night,” Diane said. “He clears out in the morning because a hot dog vendor has a permit for this spot. People give him money to pet the rats.”
She put the brown envelope with the take from the till in the bank’s night deposit box and closed the drawer. I took her arm gently. I needed to ask her for the favor before she left.
“Diane, I’m wondering if you could help me out with something.”
“Sure, what?”
“I ran into a problem tonight. I had nothing to do with what went down, but I want to stay out of it. If anyone asks, could you say I showed up at Kenny’s around midnight?”
“If anyone asks? Like who? The police?”
“It’s possible.”
“You swear you weren’t involved in this … problem?”
“I swear. Chances are no one will ask you anything anyway.”
“I guess it’s okay.”
“What about Stan?”
“Not to worry, he’s cool.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Hey Diane, thanks a lot.”
She flagged a cab and climbed in, blowing me a kiss as it drove off.
I lingered at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker, then I began walking the block to my building, and seeing club-goers still milling around, decided to take the risk. The doorman, Amir, on overnight duty this week, trotted over the minute I stepped into the lobby. “John! Did you leave town or something? It’s been ages since I’ve s
een you.”
“I’ve been keeping my head down since the accident.”
He lowered his voice. “So terrible about your brother. A wonderful man.”
“He was. It’s hard for me to believe he’s gone. Amir, has anyone been around tonight asking about me?”
“A lady came to see you. She waited and waited. She must have asked me to call you a dozen times. I finally agreed to help her upstairs so she could knock on your door.”
“You what?”
Amir held up his hands, palms facing out. “What else could I do? She was frantic. She said she’d been trying to get hold of you for weeks.”
“She can be very persuasive, Amir. That was just an act. If you ever see her again, get her out of here. Don’t let her anywhere near me.”
“All right,” he said, obviously hurt that he’d gone overboard to be courteous to someone he thought was a friend of mine. “She was in a wheelchair. What else did you expect me to do?”
“A wheelchair? What did she look like?”
“Older. Dressed in black. A black jacket and long dress. Too hot for this kind of weather. One of those wheelchair-accessible vans dropped her off at the front door.”
He hadn’t been talking about Eris after all but rather Evelyn, our former housekeeper.
“Sorry, Amir. I’m dead tired and misunderstood you. It would have been fine to bring Evelyn upstairs. Did she leave a message?”
“When you didn’t answer she gave up and left.”
I described Eris and asked him to call me immediately if he spotted her. Amir couldn’t leave his desk, so we woke the superintendent and asked him to accompany me upstairs. I wanted to make sure no more surprises awaited me.
I did find something, though not the kind of surprise I’d feared. Inside I picked up a note that had been slipped under the door, a parchment-colored paper folded in half with my name scrawled on the front. It looked like something torn off a notepad. Security around here was about as reliable as a bent rifle.
Please meet me at the Khyber Pass Restaurant tomorrow at 6 P.M. I need to talk to you about Samuel—urgently.
It was signed by a Tomas S. Zakar. Zakar? The name sounded familiar. One of Samuel’s assistants in Iraq. I’d never met him, but my brother had mentioned him often enough. An Iraqi and a cultural anthropologist. “A very bright young man,” Samuel had said, “a tireless worker.”
I went into the living room and flipped through our photo albums. In his meticulous fashion, Samuel had labeled every picture, and I soon found some images shot at one of his sites. Several of these showed Zakar: measuring an artifact, kneeling by a trench alongside Samuel, the two of them raising a glass at day’s end in their tent.
Was it a coincidence the guy had shown up on the same night Hal died? I decided to accept his invitation, hoping he could shed some light on this mess.
The adrenalin boosting me throughout the night suddenly abandoned me. A profound weariness descended. I knew I couldn’t push myself any further. I lay on my bed and sank into the blessed oblivion of sleep.
Five
Sunday, August 3, 2003, 9 A.M.
The next morning I awoke with a ravenous appetite and the realization that I needed to talk to both my lawyer and the police. I’d panicked last night and would have to make up for that. I left an urgent message with my lawyer, Andy Stein, asking him to call me back first thing Monday morning.
Nothing showed up on News One, but the Times had devoted a couple of column inches to Hal. I couldn’t find any mention of Eris or her strange companion. The item quoted a Tenth Precinct detective, Paul Gentile, who said foul play wasn’t suspected. Code for when victims offed themselves. Normally, drug accidents like this wouldn’t merit any coverage, but when a rich person ODs, it makes the news.
It took me three calls to locate Paul Gentile’s office, only to be told he wouldn’t show up for a few hours. I made an appointment to see him at noon.
I showered and put on a summer-weight Prada shirt and jacket, and pants I’d had custom-made on my last trip to Milan. Might as well look presentable for the gendarmes. I perked a pot of coffee, got cereal and milk and ate a huge bowl. The towering backlog of mail piled up on my kitchen counter threatened to topple over. I hadn’t had the stomach to deal with even run-of-the-mill stuff since the accident. I pawed through it as I ate. Bills, more bills, cards of condolence. I found Diane’s handmade card in the pile.
The bills reminded me I’d done nothing about Samuel’s estate. That sad task was still before me. An envelope from a company I’d never heard of, Teras Distributing, showed up halfway through the pile, emblazoned with SECOND NOTICE JUNE 25TH in red type across the top. It confirmed that goods belonging to Samuel had been shipped to their New York warehouse through diplomatic courier. The package was being held in secure storage, waiting to be picked up.
After calling the number on the form, I told the man who answered that I was Samuel Diakos and gave him the claim number. He asked me to wait. When he came back on the line he said the package had already been picked up.
“Who signed for it?”
“You did.” He paused. “Sir?”
I hung up to the sound of the pennies dropping. I knew what Hal had done. He’d never returned my house keys when he stayed at my place after his mother died. He’d said at the time he needed to get away because he couldn’t stand all the reminders of her. I was going to be out of town anyway and took pity on him. He must have come in while I was in the hospital, searched through my mail, and found the first warehouse notice.
Samuel kept a duplicate set of ID in his study since a theft in his Beirut hotel room four years ago. It took me a few minutes to get up the nerve to enter his rooms. Once inside I yanked open his desk drawer. He kept his ID in a vinyl case, closed with a red rubber band. The rubber band was gone. Hal’s misstep told the tale. The object he’d stolen had belonged to Samuel. That explained the how, who, and approximately when. The why was simple. He needed the money.
Samuel had been like a kind uncle to Hal. Knowing how much it hurt when Hal’s own father mistreated him, my brother went out of his way to bridge the gap—remembering Hal’s birthday, bringing him along to the theater or on treks to museums. At times I’d felt jealous about having to share my brother’s attention with Hal. And this was how the bastard repaid us!
The knowledge of Hal’s theft plunged me into another black mood. A sharp reminder of how in such a short time I’d lost so much. Samuel’s study had the silent air of a place shut up and abandoned. I caught the faint whiff of tobacco from the rack of pipes on the shelf. His absence felt like a tangible force in the room. When I replaced his ID my eye caught the framed water-color sitting on his desk, the only possession left from his family home in Greece. His mother, who’d died when the Nazis torched their village, had painted it quite skillfully. She’d given it to a local man to repair the frame, and his work shed had escaped the flames. When Samuel returned for a visit, years after the war ended, he got the painting back.
I wanted to turn the clock back to the time before the accident, to hear Samuel come in the front door the way he used to, a Times folded beneath his arm, carrying breakfast and a couple of lattes. We’d alternate every Sunday. One week he’d make the trek to Katz’s and bring home salami and square potato knishes. The next, it would be my turn to go to Murray’s for fresh bagels and Nova Scotia lox.
Samuel had relished those trips to Katz’s, and not just because of the food. It gave him a reason to walk the Lower East Side, the first place he’d landed when a family sponsored him to come to America after the war. He loved the old red-brick tenements, now rapidly giving way to condo conversions, the streets wall to wall with discount stores, a spaghetti tangle of wires overhead.
I wished the thoughts away. For the first time in my life I wanted to be just like everyone else. To take the subway to a boring job. Sweat to make mortgage payments. Have a couple of beers with friends after work. To be anyone but me.
My
brother could always be counted on to be my anchor in the tempests swirling through my life. I summoned up his image: small in stature, fit from decades of coping with the demanding terrain of his profession, his skin weather-beaten, his eyes almost always carrying a hint of good humor. He was cautious and punctual, with a razor-sharp memory. The antithesis of the absentminded academic.
I recalled some of those long-ago summer evenings at home. Samuel would smoke his pipe and I’d play happily with my train cars, using the iron grid of the balcony for tracks. Friends told me my penchant for acting out came from lacking a father figure. Samuel was simply away too much to fill those shoes. But lately I’d come to a different conclusion. In my eyes he’d always been close to a god. And you can’t compete with that. I thought I knew what it must be like to have a celebrity for a father, a mega rock star or a sports hero. The light their sons shed on the world would always be a dim bulb in contrast.
In my younger years, the word saint popped up on a regular basis. “Your brother’s a saint for taking you on, you know,” people would say. “You’re family, of course, but he didn’t have to.” One of my private school headmasters once said, “I’m giving you a second chance out of respect for your brother. That man must have the patience of a saint.”
Now that I was older, thinking more clearly and not acting according to the impetuous appeal of the moment, I had to face up to my talent for self-destruction. Samuel always gave me the benefit of the doubt. “That’s your way,” he’d say after mopping up one of my calamities. “You’re young; you haven’t found your path in life. You have a brave disposition, John. I often wish I were more like you.”
That Samuel had died because of my actions was something I could confront only in brief moments. Had someone sideswiped my car, or was that just a trick played by my imagination, some fantasy I’d made up? I was unable to admit fault to the rest of the world. Let the pain eat a hole in my heart. I deserved no better.
I gave myself a mental shake and tried to concentrate on the new problem. What was the missing object? It could only have come from Iraq. The last time I’d spoken to Samuel he told me stolen pieces were being recovered. So if Samuel had taken something temporarily to protect it from looters, why hadn’t he just given it back? It wasn’t the famous Sumerian Uruk vase. That had been dropped off at the museum by three men in a car. The vase had been broken in fourteen pieces but was salvageable—it was well known in the trade that thieves would break an object and mail it to Europe or the States a few pieces at a time, reassembling it once they’d all been sent. Nor was it the Lyre of Ur. That had been ruined in the looting although its famous golden calf’s head attached to the sounding board had been removed for safekeeping beforehand.
The Witch of Babylon Page 4
