The Witch of Babylon

by Dorothy J. Mcintosh

  Was he suggesting I intended to sell it myself, in the same breath as he invoked my dead brother? What a prick. I certainly wasn’t prepared to just hand it over to him. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I said icily. “Let’s see whether I can find it first.”

  We ended in a stalemate. Clearly, neither of us had any intention of volunteering more information. He checked his watch and said he had to go, scrambling to pick up his backpack. He scribbled a number on his business card and stood up. “You can call me at this number. The bill’s taken care of. How do I reach you?”

  I gave him my email address and phone number. After he left I waited for a minute or so before following him. Rounding the corner onto Second Avenue, I spotted him leaning into a car, his arm resting on the open window of the driver’s side, talking to whoever was inside. He walked around to the passenger side and got in. The driver gunned it and took off. I walked away knowing he’d given me only a sliver of the truth. But I was determined to get the whole story.

  Nine

  I’d planned to head for home and take another shot at the puzzle, but a better idea surfaced and I ventured instead back to Hal’s townhouse on West Twentieth. The street felt relatively safe, with people coming home from the restaurants sauntering along the sidewalks. It was a perfectly unremarkable evening. And yet the feeling of something malevolent at my back crept over me again.

  I leaned against the iron fence of the school opposite Hal’s house and surveyed my surroundings. St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, with its handsome gray limestone, bright red doors, and graceful clock tower, lay just to the west. The tall, black iron church gate stood open, as it often did when some arts or music group had an event on. Beside the church was the brick facade of the Atlantic Theater.

  Seeing nothing out of place, I crossed the street to Hal’s townhouse. It was a typical four-story home, less elaborate than most, with a plain stucco finish in faded rose and black trim. The first floor was at street level, not half a story up as in the grander brownstones. Yellow police tape stretched in an X over the front door. I glanced around to make sure no one was watching and punched in the numbers to the lock code. Peter had once installed a much more elaborate security system, but Hal had let it drop, along with a lot of other things he could no longer afford. The door clicked open and I slid under the tape, closing the door behind me.

  I’d decided to come because there had to be some kind of trail among Hal’s papers pointing to the hiding place, even an outside chance he’d actually stashed the engraving in a location I knew about.

  The interior was dim, but I knew the place as a hare knows the dark tunnels of its warren. I moved around the ground floor, the rooms still reeking of booze and weed from last night’s party, and made sure the windows and doors were locked. I was glad to see the police had done their job well. Everything appeared secure on the second floor too. A stale smell hit me as I passed by Peter’s bedroom, with its accumulation of spilled food, dust, and nocturnal accidents. Hal had been no housekeeper. He’d probably not even bothered to change the bedclothes after his father went to the nursing home.

  Hal’s study occupied a windowless alcove midway on the second floor, so I had no concerns about clicking on the desk light. The room was furnished with a heavy, Dutch-designed oak desk, no doubt belonging to one of his illustrious ancestors, and a matching wooden chair. An IKEA bookshelf stood in odd contrast against a side wall, crammed with tomes on philosophy, physics, and game theory. I rooted through them and found several volumes on alchemy.

  The walls had been stripped of the valuable paintings, pale rectangles signaling their absence. The one picture left, a Dürer reproduction print titled Melencolia 1, wasn’t worth enough to bother selling.

  Hal’s laptop was missing. I hunted around his papers, looking for some kind of trail pointing to the engraving’s hiding place. Just as I’d guessed, a copy of the first notice from Teras Distributing sat near the top of an unruly pile littering his desk. Clipped to the letter was a note from Walter Taylor, a cultural attaché in Jordan and an old friend of Samuel’s.

  Samuel, I’ve sent your package through our diplomatic carrier as you asked. It should arrive at Teras Distributing in June. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d say all that arak you’ve consumed over the years has finally taken its toll. But seriously, you may well have uncovered a rare find. What a fitting denouement to your career. Let’s discuss this further when I’m back home on terra firma. Keep some gin on ice for me. Don’t even think about returning to Iraq, my friend. The place is set to detonate.

  So Samuel had confided in someone other than his assistants. In Jordan it would be after three in the morning. I’d have to put off calling Taylor for now.

  Stuck in a drawer was a computer printout:

  Neo-Assyrian stone engraving originating from Kuyunjik mound, Nineveh. Seventh century B.C. Full description upon expression of interest. Rare antiquity.

  A contact number underneath had been scratched out. A draft, perhaps, of the advertisement Hal circulated to sell the engraving. So amateurish. No legitimate dealer would touch an item like that without at least a full description, an indication of the value, and some guarantee of provenance. If Hal thought he could get away with a sale, he was crazy. Whatever address he came up with, Interpol could trace it in minutes. He might as well have put up a billboard in Times Square. Ever since the Baghdad Museum was trashed they’d been watching all the Iraqi-origin stuff closely. His lack of judgment was stunning.

  For the next half hour I pawed through the rest of Hal’s bills and letters. He was far deeper into credit than I’d realized, letting even basic things like phone and cable payments slip. I pitied him. The months before he died must have been dismal.

  When I found nothing in Hal’s desk I climbed the stairs to the top floor. Almost all of it was taken up with the place I called the vanishing room. It had been used by Hal’s grandfather for fencing practice. “His fencing teacher was badly wounded, right over here.” More fable than reality. I remember Hal relating this story with gusto when we were boys and me staring hard at the floor, trying to spot old bloodstains among the grooves of the blond hardwood, imagining the fencing master falling, his sword clattering to the floor, a flare of crimson on his white shirt, the way it happened in Zorro.

  The slatted wooden blinds on the two front windows were closed, so I could safely turn on a wall light. It cast a soft buttery glow, the light glancing back from the mirrors. The room was bare of furniture; I’d never known it to have any aside from the cabinets flanking the rear wall where Peter had housed the bulk of his collection. On the front wall beside the window, fencing masks and swords hung from a custom-made rack—lightweight dry foils, épées, and the deadlier sabers. Hal and I were caught playing with them once and were banished from the room for months afterward.

  The cabinet shelves were bare now and thick with grime. I groped for the switch hidden in a curl of decorative wood at the top of the first cabinet and heard the snap of the lock releasing. The back slid behind its neighbor, revealing a large closet. I felt a surge of anticipation—I was almost certain Hal would have stored the engraving here, as his father had with his most precious pieces. A couple of large cardboard boxes sat against the back wall of the closet, their flaps open. The boxes were empty. I swore out loud.

  The only other object was a small bronze urn sitting on a shelf about two feet below the ceiling. I brought it down and opened the lid. Inside were some yellowish gems. I took one out. Precious stones of some kind. Why had Hal kept them in here? They were quite small and uncut so wouldn’t be worth much.

  Upset and preoccupied by my failure to find anything, I relaxed my vigilance as I left the house. That was all it took. As I passed by the recess between a townhouse and the churchyard a figure lurched out of the shadows, locking his thick arm around my neck. He gripped my jacket, pulling me hard against his chest, so tight I could actually feel his diaphragm rise and fall.

  I jerked my body
away and felt his grip slacken slightly. I swung my arm around and struck out, hitting him with all my strength. My jacket came off as I tore myself away. I was free.

  With only a split second to react I opted not to run down the street, thinking Eris might be waiting there and armed. Instead I charged through the church gate and flung open the wooden front door, hoping whoever was inside might help. But the interior was dark and silent.

  I darted up the stairway of blackened wood that led to the second-story galleries. Tucked into one corner of the landing was a small door, like the entrance to a monk’s cell. I pressed against it, felt it give, and slammed my body into it, hard. It sprang open.

  Shutting it as quietly as possible, I found myself in a tube of yellow brick so narrow I couldn’t spread out my arms. I felt for my cell to call the police and realized it was in my jacket pocket. Only one option left then—to hide.

  A black iron spiral staircase curled up the tower’s center. Sconces fixed into the rounded walls produced a weak, yellowish illumination. My shadow preceded me as I corkscrewed up the stairs. I couldn’t see more than six feet ahead and had no idea how high it went. The air inside was warm and close, and my head buzzed with the turning motion. At the top of the stairway a plank door painted battleship gray opened onto a large room, about fifteen feet square. The space soared to a crumbling plaster ceiling. In places the plaster had fallen out, exposing the wood lath beneath.

  A steady pulsing sound off to my left turned out to be a huge iron pendulum enclosed in a wooden frame. Above this a collection of gears and pulleys whirred away. The drivers for the church clock. The pendulum swung back and forth with the slow sideways swish of a reaper’s scythe.

  Poe’s story surfaced. I imagined the walls and floor sliding in, crushing me flat.

  A full-dress army uniform, dusty with age, and Second World War military colors hung on one wall. Ghosts of dead soldiers whispered into the silence.

  I listened for any sounds of pursuit but could detect only the steady stroke of the clock, a soft boom, like the heartbeat of a giant. Flimsy steps led up to a closed hatch on the ceiling. I climbed them and pushed at the wooden covering. Something fell, and I pulled back as though it had been aimed at my head. A dead sparrow landed on the floor with a tiny thud.

  The hatch opened into an empty, dark space. The sour smell of bird droppings and mold lingered. I could hear the swish of wings. Pigeons? Bats? I felt gingerly around the wooden frame above the hatch to see whether enough secure flooring existed for me to clamber up. When I pulled my hand back it was covered with dust and the furry wings of dead moths.

  Could I hide there?

  Footsteps rang on the metal stair treads below the room, steadily gaining, interspersed with the ticktock of the giant pendulum, as if the clock were counting out the seconds left in my life. The door creaked open.

  The man’s leg extended over the threshold and then his entire body came into view. He could barely squeeze in. He tottered into the room and stopped.

  When he spotted me a tremor of excitement seemed to ripple through his body. Tortured sounds came out of his mouth, as though his vocal cords had corroded. Like a stone statue, he took slow, deliberate strides toward me. This I knew in my gut was the burned chemist. He was like some primeval creature who’d taken on human form, as if a god had fashioned a giant sculpture and breathed life into the stone. The ancient Greeks chained their statues to prevent them from escaping, believing they were alive. I realized now they did this out of fear, not to stop them from running away.

  His face was broad and abnormally flat beneath a completely shaved head. His skin had a grayish quality, like dried putty. He glared at me out of one eye. It filled me with revulsion. For an instant it seemed as though the Cyclops of my youthful imagination had come back to claim me.

  He turned his head and now I could see that he actually had two eyes, but the left was severely damaged and masked with scar tissue. Over the vacant space where his left eye should have been, waxy skin had been clumsily grafted back on.

  I had a couple of advantages. The guy was powerful but slow moving. My reaction time was much faster and I was above him. Always a good position to be in if you want to beat someone.

  He had trouble with the stairs, the weak wood of the steps sagging beneath his great weight, and his balance seemed off. I did my best to judge the optimum distance. When he got within reach, I gripped the rails to take the weight of my body and kicked his chest. He lost his footing and crashed down the stairs.

  It would have been a successful move, but when I grasped the frame of the hatch to pull myself into the cavity above, the worm-eaten wood splintered and came away in my hands. I plunged down a few steps, close enough for him to grab me. He caught my lower legs and pulled me the rest of the way down. This time I couldn’t break his grip.

  He forced me out of the room, down the twisting stairwell to the main floor of the church, and out the door. At the curb a Range Rover revved its motor.

  Someone opened the side door. The brute threw me face down on the floor, where the second bank of seats had been removed. Inside, I could make out the form of another man. When I tried to lift my head a heavy boot smashed my face into the floorboard. Blood flooded into my mouth as my incisors cut through the soft flesh of my bottom lip. I spat out dirt and motor oil.

  A hand dug into my trouser pocket. “Look up,” the guy said. “Where are your keys?”

  I wasn’t about to help him out. “Must have lost them in the tower.”

  The ploy didn’t work. He opened the window and said something to the thug outside, calling him Shim. That had to be George Shimsky, whom Tomas Zakar had mentioned. A minute later my jacket was thrown into the front seat. The keys were extracted and we took off, leaving Shim behind.

  If they were taking me back to my place, it was on the tip of my tongue to point out they’d never make it past the doorman. But I held back. Let them walk into their own trap.

  A ringtone. I heard the driver answer. “Yes?” A woman’s voice. “We have him and we’re on our way. Just a minute.” I heard her rustling for something. “Okay, I’ve got it with me. Yeah, we’re nearly there.” A space of silence while she listened. “Not this time,” she responded, snapping the phone shut.

  The voice belonged to Eris.

  We stopped in less than ten minutes. The interior lights came on. “Sit up,” the man ordered.

  The driver’s door opened and slammed shut again. Click, click, click—the sound of pumps on the asphalt. They tapped around the front of the vehicle and came to a halt opposite my door. When it opened Eris faced me. Her platinum hair shone under the streetlights.

  She scrutinized me. “You’ve got blood on your face. I can’t take you in like that.” She reached into her handbag and extracted a tissue, bending toward me. For an instant I considered making a grab for her, but the odds of failing were too high.

  I could smell the faint, spicy scent of her perfume as she leaned over. “Okay,” she said. “You’re going to put your arm around me and escort me to the elevator. The two of us are coming back from the clubs. We’re slightly drunk. When we see your doorman you’ll smile. Don’t bother trying to get away. You’re not tough enough to go against us.”

  “Really? I did last time.”

  That didn’t lighten her mood any. She tossed me my jacket, ordered me to put it on, and pulled out her gun, keeping it pressed against my side, too close to be visible to anyone else. We proceeded into the lobby while the second man drove away.

  I glanced toward the desk. No sign of Amir. On a slow night he’d duck out for a coffee. He couldn’t have chosen a worse moment.

  Eris moved abruptly away the minute we got on the elevator and leaned against the wall, aiming her gun at me. I tried to put on a brave face, but inside my heart flipped around like a broken bird’s. I consoled myself with the thought that this was happening because she wanted something from me. All I had to do was cooperate.

  We stepped off
the elevator into an empty corridor. Passing Nina’s door, I could hear Jay-Z booming out of her sound system, the chatter of party voices raised to full volume. If I yelled no one would hear. It seemed my entire building was in a conspiracy to defeat me.

  She handed me my keys to open the door and herded me straight into my bedroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the balcony door still open. I had a brief, crazy vision of flinging myself through it, ducking the inevitable bullets, swinging over the rail, and dropping to the balcony below. They did this in movies and somehow always survived.

  Eris got something out of her bag and walked toward me. A spray atomizer. I remember wanting to say something and opening my mouth as the mist hit my face. My chest tightened and the world slipped away.

  Ten

  “Move your legs,” the doctor ordered.

  I tried and could not.

  “You’re paralyzed; I was afraid of that.”

  It wasn’t the voice of the grim-faced surgeon who’d stitched me up in the hospital, but an angel doctor’s. Her hair shimmered silver in the light; her ice-blue eyes, fringed with blond lashes, were clear and beautiful.

  The angel’s face morphed into Eris’s.

  A wave of horror crashed through me.

  I lay prone on my bed, naked from the waist up, both wrists clamped onto the steel bed frame with handcuffs like giant twist ties. I tried to heave, roll over, move my legs, or even a toe. I urinated and couldn’t stop myself. From my pelvis down, my body lay like a dead weight.

  I tried to talk but my words came out like the bark of a dying seal. I cleared my throat a couple of times before I could manage to whisper, “What have you done to me?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “You bitch.”

  “Don’t use foul language around me.”

  “Tell me what you’ve done.”

  “You’ve been disabled. Like a car engine with a few spark plugs pulled out.”