The Witch of Babylon

by Dorothy J. Mcintosh

He pulled a ziplock bag out of the glove compartment and dropped in the Glock, then peeled off his gloves.

  “Haven’t you got anything to put it in? I can hardly walk around carrying it in my hand.”

  He shook his head and rooted around behind the driver’s seat, pulling up a small canvas satchel. “Should charge you more for this. Take it,” he said. “Now beat it.”

  When I got out I left the door open a crack. Rap’s half-eaten sandwich sat on the dash. I waited until I could see him walk to the open panel of his truck and engage in a heated conversation with another customer, his lanky body framed by the backdrop of chocolate bars, wrapped white-bread sandwiches, soda cans, and juice cartons.

  Stealing back into the truck, I took out the evil seed Eris had planted in my back and stuck it between the lettuce leaves in Rap’s sandwich and walked away.

  I found a hole-in-the-ground restaurant near the ass end of Penn Station and drank two cups of muddy coffee that tasted like it had been boiled all day. I hoped that had concentrated the caffeine and indeed it took away most of the tiredness, even though it set my nerves more on edge. My ship was sailing again and ready to plow the rough seas.

  I went to check my watch, forgetting for a moment it had been confiscated by Rapunzel. My phone told me it was almost 11 P.M. I walked away, uncertain what my next move should be. In a rage over missing out twice, Eris would be setting the dogs loose now. My life had taken such a bizarre turn. To be hunted in my own city, unable to stay in my own home, my life run by Hal’s game. I hated the whole situation but could see no way to extricate myself.

  I called Laurel. The message center came on, indicating she wasn’t in her room. After a few moments of quaking alarm I tried her again. This time she answered.

  “Where did you go? You promised to stay in your room; don’t scare me like that.”

  She laughed in that loose way people have when they’ve been drinking for the better part of the evening. “I couldn’t bear staring at four walls. The Zakars and I went to the bar. A couple of drinks drowned my boredom beautifully.”

  Male voices spoke in the background. “Is that Ari and Tomas?”

  “One moment. Tomas is saying goodbye now.” I could hear Laurel’s higher-pitched tones blending with theirs. A minute or so ticked by.

  Laurel came back on the line. “I feel totally dumb now, suspecting them. They’re Assyrian.”

  “Oh?”

  A rush of words followed. “Ari’s won tons of awards for his photography. And Tomas once planned to become a priest. He’d entered a seminary before he went to Oxford.”

  “Why the change?”

  “He fell in love but the woman ended up with someone else. Kind of bittersweet romantic, actually.”

  “Well, I’m glad you feel reassured.” I didn’t mean this sarcastically but she took it that way.

  “Is there no way to please you? I thought you wanted me to like them.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just on edge. The guy we saw in Washington Square, the jester, tracked me down.”

  I could hear her sharp intake of breath. “Oh shit. John, you’ve got to get away from this. You’ve used up your quota of narrow misses.”

  “That’s a good idea—for you. I wanted you to do that before, remember? For me, there’s only one way out I can see. Find what they’re after and get it over with.”

  The line fell silent and for a minute I thought she’d hung up. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I’m going to put in a few calls to friends, see if I can find somewhere else to stay.”

  “Laurel, if you’re still here tomorrow I’m going to try to get all of us an appointment with Claire Talbot at MoMA.”

  “You want to see her after all?”

  “I’m not getting anywhere with working out the meaning of the Senate Seal. May as well give an art expert a try. And I’d rather not talk to Phillip again.”

  “Tomas wants to see a professor, Jacob Ward, tomorrow morning. He’s a biblical scholar at Columbia who knows Hanna Jaffrey. He’s an expert on the Minor Prophets.”

  His name wasn’t familiar, so he must have begun teaching at Columbia after I left. “Does he have any idea where Jaffrey is?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I thought Tomas wanted to keep a low profile. Does he trust this Ward guy?”

  “Yes, he does. I’ll tell him to change the time. Ward in the afternoon and Claire in the morning.”

  I said goodnight to her and hung up feeling a bit cheated. While I’d been the knight errant out doing battle, Laurel and the Zakars had gone partying.

  Back in my hotel room I ran a washcloth under hot water and dabbed at the cut where the wire had bitten into my shoulder. I lay down on the bed but sleep eluded me. I was restless and on edge.

  I checked out Jacob Ward on my cell and found that he was quite the star in his particular scholastic universe, with academic credits up the yinyang, articles published in all the best journals, and ringing endorsements from his students. Some of his colleagues disputed his views, but other than that, I couldn’t find one negative comment about him. It would be interesting to actually meet the guy and see for myself. No one was that perfect.

  Next, I leafed through Samuel’s journal, as much for the comfort of reading his handwriting as for finding clues. I hoped something might pop out. And something did.

  Samuel had pasted in a picture of the Dürer woodcut Woman of Babylon from his Apocalypse series. Underneath it he’d written,

  Woman of Babylon by Albrecht Dürer, 1498

  Note Dürer’s portrayal of the Whore of Babylon, lower right-hand corner of the picture. She is the cupbearer and originally the goddess Ishtar—prototype for Aphrodite, Venus, and Ashtoreth. The Bible converts her from a goddess to a witch and a whore. Dürer’s beast does not match the Book of Revelation’s description.

  A few more pages on, another image had been pasted in with a further note.

  Like the Seal of Solomon (the six-pointed star), Ishtar’s eight-pointed star represents the conjoining of heaven and earth—the symbol for transmutation.

  I’d never known my brother to have much interest in religion. Yet here was direct evidence, in Samuel’s own hand, linking alchemy with an Assyrian deity. What did Ishtar’s eight-pointed star and the Whore of Babylon have in common? How was a hidden Assyrian treasure connected to this?

  I closed the journal and sat back, mulling it over. All I had right now was fragments. I felt deeply frustrated at my inability to knit the whole picture together. Was Tomas still holding information back, or had all the talk about treasure simply been a decoy to steer me away from the truth? Samuel had referred to transmutation. Perhaps the final destination my brother had in mind was not treasure at all but a formula to convert base metals into gold.

  Nineteen

  Tuesday, August 5, 2003, 7:30 A.M.

  As it turned out, on Tuesdays MoMA was closed to the public. I reached Claire at home. She said she could meet us around noon at MoMA’s temporary site in Queens.

  I put in a quick call to Laurel, who said she’d barely been able to sleep after talking to me last night. She hadn’t made a connection with any friends yet so would remain in town. She assured me she’d spend the morning with Tomas and Ari, and we agreed to regroup at MoMA.

  While I dressed I turned on NY1. An intro about the Iraq war reported that bodies of civilians were being found at a rate of twenty per day and the kidnappings and executions were expected to get a lot worse. A few items later, I caught a story about gunfire erupting near Penn Station. The camera zoomed in to a catering truck with bullet holes scored into its aluminum panels, panning out to show Rapunzel being led toward a police van, a chain criss-crossed around his back pinning his arms to his waist. As I’d hoped, Eris and the jester had tracked the transmitter to Rapunzel’s van. The news piece reported that Rap was charged with sale of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a weapon. No mention of Eris or her thugs.
/>
  Finally a piece of good news.

  I had a debate with myself about whether to take the pistol with me. I’d gained a certain measure of comfort knowing that Eris had probably lost me, and unlicensed guns were illegal in New York—I couldn’t afford to be caught with it. Even if they did pick up my trail again, I could hardly stage a shootout and run the risk of harming innocent people. I reluctantly wrapped the gun in a towel and shoved it in my suitcase before heading down to the lobby.

  Outside, the morning air was fresh and clear. I bought a Times and headed to the Westway Diner for breakfast.

  Emblazoned above the window, a banner ad boasted that the diner had been voted best in Manhattan. Doubtless, tourists would be impressed since New Yorkers knew their food, but only until they walked past other diners and discovered those too had been voted best in Manhattan. The details were in the who, what, and when of the vote. I had no quarrel with the breakfast, though, and the fresh coffee revived me.

  Recalling the questions I’d mulled over last night, I sensed something hovering just outside my awareness. As I ate I let my thoughts flow, helter-skelter. Then it came. I felt as if instead of handing me the bill, the waiter had just tipped a bag of gold onto my plate.

  It was Corinne’s remark about Hal’s mother’s funeral. Although I’d been out of town at the time, I knew that Mina’s funeral had been held at the Church of the Intercession in Hamilton Heights. If there was a family mausoleum, Hal would have had unlimited access to it. It would make a brilliant hiding place.

  I threw some cash down on the table to cover my tab and ran to the subway. I got off at the 155th Street station and rushed the two blocks to the Church of the Intercession.

  A wall of dove-gray limestone closed off the cemetery from the street. Stationed inside the entrance, a tall Celtic cross with birds and animals sculpted in relief had been installed as a tribute to John Audubon, who’d once owned the land. The grounds had a serene, parklike feel; ancient elms shaded the lawn, still quite green despite the prolonged heat. The gravestones ranged from prominent headstones surrounded by picket fences to simple markers. Many were so old, the names had blurred into the stone. No one else was around.

  Seeing all those headstones reminded me I had no family left. With Samuel gone, the nearest person I had to a relative was Evelyn. I should have gone to see her by now. Only in her mid-fifties, her arthritis had worsened to the point that she needed extended care. She’d come to us a few weeks after my fourth birthday. It was a surprise Samuel had lasted that long. A studious older man with a penchant for quiet and order could not have coped easily with a boisterous toddler. The story of Evelyn’s origins remained a mystery to me because she never spoke about growing up in the Middle East. Children are hypersensitive to secrets withheld, but somehow I always knew that questions about her early years or why she’d fled her country were forbidden.

  During grade school, every morning she’d carefully wrap a homemade lunch in waxed paper and a brown paper bag she’d saved from shopping, tuck it into my knapsack, and walk the five blocks to school with me. When I was older I grew to resent this. She always wore black, and like a great black crow fluttered around my shoulders, never letting me out of her sight. Even in winter, which she hated, on would go her oversized galoshes and she’d set out beside me, moaning all the way about the slippery ice and mounds of snow. I couldn’t bear the contrast to the other kids’ mothers and tried everything to get rid of that plodding presence by my side, but despite her quiet nature, I could never shake her off.

  It was only when I went to boarding school in my teens that I realized how much she meant to me. Of all people, she’d been the hardest one to face after Samuel died.

  A circular path led to a group of large mausoleums. Only these were big enough to hide anything. Like miniature mansions, they sat in a row around the walkway. Two of them caught my eye but they had the wrong names: Garret Storm and Stephen Storm. Garret’s resting place was an elaborate gothic folly with a lacy wrought-iron door and a pitched roof flanked by spires and topped with a cross.

  I looked for Mina’s tomb under Vanderlin, her married name, and Janssen, her maiden name. But fifteen minutes of searching proved fruitless. One of the largest mausoleums, built of aged brownstone the color of milk chocolate and mossy with age, had no name at all. Its door was fastened with a rusty padlock. If Mina was interred in a mausoleum, this would have to be the one. I took a few steps forward to see whether it had been recently opened.

  “Hey there.”

  A man marched toward me. He wore a black leather vest, blue jeans, and a satin shirt. Chunky necklaces flopped around his neck. “Sir,” he said, “you’re not supposed to be in here.”

  “I thought it was public. The gate was wide open.”

  “Don’t you read signs? It says you need permission from the cemetery office. Appointments only.”

  “I’m sorry. My great-aunt died recently while I was out of the country. She’s supposed to be buried here.”

  “I see.” He crinkled his eyes, trying to take my measure. “What was her secret?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Her secret to a long life. People would pay serious money for that.”

  He was making some kind of joke at my expense. I waited for the punch line.

  “The last person buried here was born in 1836. Now, that would put your aunt at a ripe one hundred and sixty-seven years old. I just hope for your sake you got her genes.” He burst out laughing.

  “I must have been told the wrong location.”

  Tears glinted at the edges of his eyes, but not of sorrow. “Did they say Trinity?”

  “Yes, that’s what they told me.”

  “Go to the columbarium. We’re the only cemetery left in Manhattan carrying out active interments, but it’s all cremations now. You’ll probably find your aunt’s remains there.”

  A niche in the columbarium would be too small to hide anything of significance, but I’d check it out anyway. Maybe Hal had left a note or other directions.

  The clerk on duty at the columbarium told me I’d need an appointment even for that viewing. When I explained I had to leave New York that afternoon she relented. “What was the name?”

  “Janssen.”

  She tapped a few words into the computer and checked the screen, then shook her head. “No record of a Janssen. Maybe in the cemetery but not here in the columbarium.”

  “Okay. Could you look up Minerva Vanderlin?” I spelled it out for her.

  “Oh yes, here it is. The niche is no longer assigned to her. Her son picked up the remains.”

  “When would that have been?”

  She peered at the screen again. “January 25—six months ago.”

  The urn I’d seen back in the closet at the townhouse had likely once held her cremation remains. He’d scattered her ashes, probably over some favorite spot of hers as people often do, and used the urn to stash the gemstones.

  I headed over to the subway, pissed as hell. Hal had trumped me once more. I was so sure I’d been on the right track. The disappointment weighed heavily on me.

  I waited for the train, hoping to get one of the cars with functioning air conditioning and a welcome blast of cold air. Even the short hike from the cemetery had me dripping with sweat. A few paces away, two kids were putting on a show for the waiting crowd. They both wore pants that had to be size XL, though neither one was heavyset, and oversized Ts, one with Tupac Shakur’s image silk-screened on the front; the other was a Sean John. The shorter kid had a pair of Air Jordan 18s that must have set him back two hundred bucks.

  I watched their moves, appreciating their skill. One kid suddenly grabbed the ankles of the other and flipped himself up. His partner caught his ankles in turn so that they formed a human O. They somersaulted down the platform and back again with a prowess that would have left professional acrobats gasping. The crowd clapped and threw quarters, the kids scooping up the change just before the train came shooting into the stat
ion. We rocked and rolled along the tracks at warp speed. I savored the meat-locker cold of the car.

  Twenty

  MoMA’s temporary site was located in a former Swingline staple factory. The good citizens of Queens had cheered when they found out the top prize in culture would hop over the East River and settle in their burg. They’d painted the building a rich blue.

  Near the front entrance, Ari stood taking nervous drags off his Gitane. Laurel, appearing a bit frail and worn, waited beside Tomas. On the one hand, knowing that he was watching out for her took a weight off me, but on the other, he looked proprietary and it got under my skin.

  Claire Talbot met us after we signed in. She gave me an emphatic double kiss and Tomas and Ari a handshake. Laurel received a frosty smile. She and the guard escorted us through the display of impressionist paintings from the permanent collection. We passed by Starry Night. The actual painting resonated all the more in the face of its many inferior reproductions. Van Gogh’s trademark style was on full display: violent brush strokes, turbulent spirals, strident ultramarines and apocalyptic blues. His moon stood out in vivid yellow, the sun, visible in the same sky, a pale and watery contrast. The dark image of his cypress pointed into the sky like an ancient obelisk.

  “There’s always a crowd around Starry Night,” Claire said. “No one ever seems to tire of his work. Imagine how many posters and prints must be scattered around the globe. All those sunflowers!” She gave a little trill of a laugh. “This period is not my specialty, as you know, love.” She lightly brushed her fingers on my jacket sleeve. I caught Laurel picking up on that.

  Claire had an intriguing look—alabaster skin; a mass of wiry copper hair just brushing her shoulders; hazel eyes; long, artistic fingers; and a body aesthetically thin. She loved wearing artsy, bold-patterned clothes and eye-catching handmade jewelry. I remember her wearing a dress made from fabric that was a direct copy of a Mondrian painting. After she broke up with Phillip our paths crossed many times at receptions and launches, where she’d go out of her way to shower me with compliments. I took the bait, once, until it became clear that her real goal was to steal one of my top clients.