For Samuel to take the huge risk of bringing a relic over here suggested that it was a very valuable piece indeed. Mesopotamian artifacts could range in value from thousands to many millions of dollars, depending on their condition and inscriptions. Though the looting was over, for some reason this object must still have been under threat. Otherwise, Samuel would have returned it. Through a process of elimination, I thought I could narrow down the possibilities, but at least fifteen major objects and close to ten thousand small ones—cylinder seals, jewelry, and figurines—were still missing. The precious Lion of Nimrud, an 850 B.C. ivory relief, was gone, along with an exquisite copper head of the Roman goddess of Victory found in the Parthian ruins at the Hatra site. Had he rescued either of those?
In one of our last phone calls before he came home, Samuel told me about the devastation at the museum. “It could have been worse,” he’d said. “Mercifully, the museum staff had the foresight to empty several galleries and conceal hundreds of objects beforehand. The American investigation team that went in afterward was brilliant. They devised a ‘no questions asked’ return policy and spent a lot of time publicizing it in the markets and mosques. This got really good results, but they paled in comparison to the scope of the loss.”
So if the staff had hidden many of the important objects, why did Samuel feel the need to take one of them? Until I had more information, I couldn’t sort out my brother’s motive. When we’d talked about the museum looting he’d broken down and cried on the phone. Sacrificing his values to keep a stolen object must have torn him apart.
The phone rang. My landline. Few people had that number, and fewer people used it.
“John Madison here.”
“John, it’s Andy Stein. How’re you doing?”
“Well, things have certainly been piling up. I appreciate your calling me on a Sunday, Andy.”
“No problem. Listen, you know I’m commercial; I can’t help you with your … matter, but I’ve been in touch with a criminal attorney. Joseph Reznick. He’s one of the best. I briefed him about your situation. You should talk to him—soon.”
“Sure. How can I reach him?” I scribbled down the guy’s number and email address while Andy spoke.
“Oh, and one more thing. He’s not cheap.”
“What are we talking about here?”
“I couldn’t guess. It’s not a straightforward situation, is it? He’ll want a retainer for a start.”
“So what do you think that would run?”
“A couple of thou at least.”
I had five credit cards. Only one had any space left, and not much at that. Where the money would come from was anyone’s guess. My job was feast or famine, and right now I was on the brink of starvation. In the past Samuel had always been good to tide me over, but that option was lost to me until his estate was settled.
“Do you have any idea how long it will take to get Samuel’s estate cleared up?”
“Under these circumstances? If there’s culpability over the accident, it’s unclear. I don’t do estates, but you could be waiting for a long time.”
The intercom buzzed as I hung up. Amir, calling to say that an envelope had just been couriered to me and he’d bring it up.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” I said when I opened the door.
Amir looked wiped out. “The day man came really late so I had no choice. I wanted to get this to you before I left.” He handed me a plain white business envelope with my name and address typed on it.
“Who brought this?”
“A bike courier. I’m really sorry, but he took off so fast I couldn’t ask him to sign for it.”
I thanked Amir and he left. Inside the envelope I found a USB flash drive enclosed in bubble wrap. No indication of who’d sent it. I got my laptop booted up and inserted the device. A page opened up on the screen.
John, greetings.
Consider this a treasure map of sorts. I’ve entrusted my law firm to send this to you should anything happen to me.
By now you probably know I acquired an object of great value, a seventh-century B.C. Neo-Assyrian stone tablet engraved in cuneiform. A famous biblical prophecy, as it turns out. I employ the word “acquire” with some latitude. In fact, it belonged to Samuel.
To my way of thinking, you didn’t deserve it.
I set out to sell it and reap the rewards. Upon receiving a promising inquiry, I commenced negotiations. The prospect of so much money clouded my judgment. Carelessly, I disclosed my identity. I now know my knowledge of the object’s existence has condemned me.
When I first became aware of the danger, I designed this little game. Solve the four puzzles in order, and you’ll find the engraving. You might well ask, why the change of heart? Wouldn’t you be the last person I’d choose for a beneficiary? Put it down to my quixotic nature, I suppose. Each time you face one of my puzzles, if you listen hard, you’ll hear me laughing at you from beyond the grave.
Your opponents in this game are clever. I can feel them closing in on me now. There are five of them, and I dread to think they’ll win. My only solace is knowing the same fate awaits you.
Will you learn who they are in time? On the slim chance you do succeed, will greed take over, or will you do the right thing and return the engraving? My guess is you have no finer instincts and will choose the path that directly benefits you.
Feel free to prove me wrong …
Hal
I gaped at the screen. Score one for Diane Chen. Here was the secret message.
Hal’s deceit had run much deeper than I’d thought. This wasn’t about Samuel at all. Hal had targeted me. Believing himself in danger, he’d purposely sent his enemies after me, actually getting off on the prospect. I hated being manipulated like this.
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.
Gentile fumbled with the switches of the auto cam and turned it on, then announced the time, date, and the interview participants. The second man was Louis Peres, another detective.
In an earlier life Gentile could have played defense for pro football. Maybe his suit jacket was too small, but his muscles bulged and strained against the pinstripes. His cheeks were pockmarked, his hair cropped close to the head and stone white. He wore a Rolex Cellini Classic and a silver ring on his baby finger. He looked to be pushing sixty. Old for a cop. Gentile locked his gaze on me; Peres flipped through the material in his file without bothering to acknowledge my presence.
A female civilian clerk entered with a pitcher full of ice water and some glasses. She set the glasses in front of the detectives, put the pitcher on the table, and left.
“Okay,” Gentile said. “Let’s get started. Tell us what happened.” He lifted his eyebrows, stared at me, and jutted out his chin like a wrestler setting me up for the first chokehold.
“Before we get into that, I came here voluntarily. Why are you treating me like a criminal?”
“We’re just trying to get the facts here, Mr. Madison. A man is dead. Let’s hear what you have to say.”
His attitude didn’t fill me with confidence. “All right. I came because someone deliberately shot Hal full of high-grade heroin, a woman I met at Hal’s party. I heard her and another guy arguing with him as I was leaving the party.”
“Oh? What time would that have been?”
“Around midnight. I went straight to a club. You can check on that if you want.”
I knew Diane would back me up, and the time frames should easily rule me out for the murder. I gave him the name of the club and told him how to reach Diane. Gentile scribbled something down on a piece of notepaper and handed it to Peres, who left the room. I prayed Diane had already made it in to work.
Gentile continued, “So, can you identify these people?”
“The woman’s name was Eris; I don’t know her last name. Attractive, late twenties, fit, probably around five seven. The guy with her was pushing seven feet and heavyset.”
Gentile ran a hand over his forehead. Even though the room was cold he was sweating. His face was the color of raw beef. “Colin Reed talked about a woman like that. Claimed she left the party before he did.”
Of course, Reed, a married man, would say that rather than admit he wanted to ball her. “If she left, she must have returned later. I saw her there.”
More scribbles on Gentile’s notepad, but I could tell he wasn’t buying my story. “Are you back in business again? How did Vanderlin obtain his drugs?”
“Check that file you have. You know I was never involved with opiates.”
Gentile made a pretense of opening the folder, a bullshit move because he’d have reviewed the whole thing before he even walked in here. He flipped through several pages. “Convicted for fourth-degree grand larceny, 1
989, selling marijuana. In 1990, charged with third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, twenty-two grams of cocaine. You managed to weasel out of that one. Maybe this time you’ve just graduated.”
“That was my wild youth. I was still a kid. I turned the corner on all that long ago. Anyway, those amounts are nothing.”
“What was your relationship with Vanderlin?”
I could have answered this easily twenty-four hours ago. The friendship had certainly been rocky at times, but I’d discovered depths of bitterness in Hal’s feelings about me I’d never known existed. All the same, I gave Gentile the short answer. “My brother and his father were friends. Hal and I grew up together.”
“That would be your brother, Samuel Diakos, and his father, Peter Vanderlin.”
“Right. Samuel was my half-brother, forty years older; more like a father, really.”
“Why is your last name different?”
“That’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Samuel and I had the same father, a World War II resistance fighter with ELAS, the Greek People’s Liberation Army. He and Samuel were caught by the Nazis and sent to a labor camp. When camp officials learned my father was a goldsmith, they sent him to the Deutsche Gold und Silberscheideanstalt, a re-smelting company. He was forced to sort through trays of jewelry stolen from prisoners and assess its quality.”
The Witch of Babylon Page 5
