The Cleopatra Murders

by Mic Palmer

  Functional enough to exist, but not enough to function, Jack toyed with the idea that perhaps he was meant to be alone. Nevertheless, there was a small part of him that continued to believe he might just have something to offer, if not to the world than at least to opposite sex. With his youthful good looks still fresh in his mind, he found it mindboggling that a few short years could make such a difference, but the truth was he had changed, so much so, as a matter of fact, that for most women, he wasn’t even a blip on the radar.

  “I’m through,” he’d half joke to Gomez. “Now it’s just a matter of making myself comfortable.”

  “It’s all in your head man,” Gomez would angrily tell him. “It’s a matter of attitude.”

  Staring blankly into a bright yellow swirl of egg yolk, Jack shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth. “What a waste,” he muttered.

  If only he had realized that his flirtations with artistic achievement would soon be rebuffed and that his appeal to women would all but evaporate – how differently he would have handled things.

  “Susan,” he said out loud, almost out of reflex.

  Growing in his estimation with each passing year, she had almost become a figure of worship to him – especially during moments such as these, when he needed to be reminded that there was a time when he was wanted. Sitting there in his kitchen, he could almost see her. The exuberant grin that touched everyone around her, the delicate yet broad shoulders that accentuated the cut of her waist, the flowing hair that turned to gold in the sunlight, – she was like an oasis in the desert of his blazing hot mind, the raging intensity of which focused itself like a laser into one salient question: how could he have possibly let her go?

  Oddly, it wasn’t a snap decision. Rather, he thought long and hard about it, after which he spent nearly a year trying to get her to break up with him.

  Being a coward, he had mastered the art of doing just enough to keep a relationship on life support, but not enough to keep the other party from pulling the plug. That way he couldn’t be blamed.

  In this particular case, however, his usual methods proved fruitless. Having taken a job at the insurance company, she could see him whenever she liked, making his efforts to create some degree of distance rather complicated. His only choice therefore was to bring in a third party – a cop he had met on one of his assignments.

  The pretext for the introduction had to do with her work as an accountant. Having discovered an embezzler, she was about to go to the authorities.

  “Have lunch with my friend,” Jack insisted. “He’ll tell you what you need to do. And by the way he’s not bad looking.”

  Susan’s eyes flashed with anger. He had given hints like this before, and she was sick of it, even while he pretended to be joking.

  “Enough!” she told him. Nevertheless, she took him up on it, and within a week they were through. Six months after that she was married.

  “That worked well,” mused Jack, somewhat ambiguously. At the time, however, he didn’t really care. Back then her exuberant smile was a bit too exuberant, almost inappropriately so, as if she was attempting to compensate for an almost pathological reticence. Unwilling or unable to respond to the simplest of statements, she’d instead beam and chuckle to the point where the sight of her beautiful yet overly numerous teeth actually got on his nerves.

  Crunching on a piece of toast, he contemplated how stupid he had been. “I had a girl that laughed too much. What a nightmare.”

  Speckled with egg yolk, the want ads were spread all over the kitchen table. Although he would have preferred to take a few months off, he sadly recognized the fact that he couldn’t afford it, not without using up most of his savings. Thus, he reluctantly circled yet another ad for a job as a claims adjuster.

  “SHE WAS FOUND ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE,” announced a voice from the television, but Jack wasn’t listening. He had come across a truck driving gig and was already contemplating life on the road. Sure it involved long hours, but the money was good, and most importantly he’d have some independence. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was being cooped up in an office.

  Feeling that he at least had some options, he began to yawn, at which time he looked up at the screen. There he saw a photograph of a woman who looked a lot like his latest date. The only difference was that she had dark hair and was about ten years younger.

  “That’s odd,” he thought to himself.

  Wearing jeans and a sweater, she was said to have been a dedicated nurse and mother of two, from Park Slope, Brooklyn.

  “What the hell?” he uttered, still somewhat incredulous.

  The next clip depicted a back alley, not far from where Jack lived. The area was roped off with yellow tape, beyond which members of a boisterous crowd could be seen gaping, chatting, and most inappropriately, smiling with excitement. At the center of it all was Michelle. Still dressed in the clothes she had worn on their date, she was sprawled out on a carpet, with her hands over her heart. If Jack didn’t know better, he would have thought that she was sleeping.

  “THE SECOND MURDER TOOK PLACE SHORTLY THEREAFTER,” the newscaster went on, BUT AS PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, THE VICTIM WAS FOUND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE EAST RIVER, IN WILLIAMSBURG. UNLIKE MICHELLE LAWRENCE, WHO APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN STRANGLED, THE BODY OF THE SECOND VICTIM WAS SEVERELY MUTILATED, AND THE POLICE HAVE STILL NOT RELEASED HER IDENTITY. EXPERTS HAVE LABELED THE CRIMES, “A DOUBLE EVENT,” IN THE VEIN OF THE INFAMOUS JACK THE RIPPER, WHO DURING THE EARLY MORNING HOURS OF SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1888, MURDERED TWO WOMEN IN THE IMPOVERISHED CITY OF WHITECHAPEL, LONDON. SIMILAR TO WHAT OCCURRED LAST NIGHT, JACK THE RIPPER’S FIRST VICTIM WAS FOUND TO BE WHOLE, WHILE THE SECOND WAS BRUTALLY DISFIGURED. THE DIFFERING METHODS HAVE BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO TIME AND OPPORTUNITY, WHICH MAY ALSO BE THE CASE IN THE MORE RECENT KILLINGS.”

  Feeling sick, Jack approached the screen. How could this be?

  “SOURCES INSIDE THE POLICE DEPARTMENT HAVE BEEN REFERRING TO THE PERPETRATOR AS THE CLEOPATRA KILLER, FOR THE FACT THAT BOTH BODIES WERE FOUND WRAPPED IN CARPETS.”

  The reporter had a wry tone, and Jack didn’t like it. This wasn’t just another bizarre happening of the kind that he loved to talk about over a cheeseburger and beer. It was personal and real. Nevertheless, it wasn’t just about Michelle.

  Before his conscious mind could even catch up, he had begun to feel anxious, afraid, trapped. Absentmindedly touching his index finger to the wound on his cheek, he immediately wrote a headline for himself:

  RECENTLY FIRED, FAILED LOVER GOES ON KILLING SPREE

  Pacing back and forth, he worked the channel changer, hoping that somewhere he could find something new, something useful – a suspect, a clue, better yet an eyewitness. Just then, as if he had willed it, there he was.

  “He was kind of tall and stocky,” said the nettlesome little fellow, who had seen them arguing.

  “Stocky beats fat,” Jack thought to himself, but the only reason he said it was to make the assailant sound more intimidating.

  “And he was kind of balding,” went on the witness. “You know the way people comb their hair forward to cover it up. That was him.”

  “Gossipy little creep,” muttered Jack.

  As the witness spoke, you could see the cartilage moving below a rather scrawny neck. With a small face and violet tinted hair, he appeared sluggish, even lazy. Words oozed from his mouth like molasses, all slow and glutinous. Nevertheless, he didn’t appear to be thinking about what he was saying.

  Standing now, Jack gripped the back of his chair as if he were on the deck of a ship during a violent storm. This, he thought to himself, was just the sort of person who saw what he wanted.

  “But it was dark,” the witness offered, “so I really didn’t get a good look at him. What I did see though was that he was yelling at her and roughing her up. So I told him to back off, which gave her a chance to get away.”

  “Bullshit!” Jack shouted.

  Now they had DNA – and a witness! “I’m screwed,”
he said out loud. “There’s no two ways about it.”

  Chapter Seven

  After several false starts toward the bedroom, the kitchen, and the front door, which had him going around in circles, he finally doubled back toward the bedroom.

  Jammed in the back shelf of an overcrowded closet was a large duffel bag. Yanking on it, he was showered with clothes, CDs and magazines, all of which he uncharacteristically left on the floor.

  “Slow down,” he told himself. “Think for a second!”

  All of his correspondence had been sent through the computer at work, and the date was made the old fashioned way, by telephone, days before they were supposed to meet. The only way, therefore, the police would be able to quickly confirm that he had been out with her was through the witness, but that would require Jack’s website photo, which thanks to Gomez was old, and as Michelle made abundantly clear, not particularly representative.

  Nevertheless, they’d soon make the connection. By then, however, he’d be long gone.

  Having grabbed the straw cowboy hat he had won at a carnival, he jogged down the stairs contemplating how he could best avoid making one of his boneheaded mistakes. With a suit case in one hand and a duffel bag in the other, he decided that his only hope was to conduct himself as if he were already under scrutiny, and like a good method actor, he suddenly felt claustrophobic.

  The duck hanging in the window of Mr. Ming’s looked as delectable as ever, and he actually toyed with the idea of one last take out order. It made him feel more relaxed, almost normal to even consider it. Nevertheless, he passed it by and within moments was on the road.

  “Where to?” he panicked, having completely abandoned the idea of clearing himself.

  His first impulse was to hop a plane to Puerto Vallarta. By the time he got down there, the rainy season would just be ending. Perhaps he could find a job, meet a woman, make a fresh start.

  Indeed, Mexico had been good to him. As a matter of fact, it was the last time he felt consistently whole, even in the face of demanding teachers and subpar grades.

  What was with all those essays anyway? He was there to become an artist, not a writer, but the curriculum required that he spend half his time interpreting the works of others, many of whom he didn’t even like. He recalled in particular a mural by Diego Rivera, for its lifeless faces and primitive sense of proportion. Like so many of his works, it depicted natives and conquistadors, but what stood out in Jack’s mind was how flat and unnatural they appeared, much like what one might have expected just before the Renaissance.

  Entitled The Arrival of Cortes, it had a conscious medieval quality, which his instructor attributed to Rivera’s studies in Europe; then again it also reminded Jack of Bruegel, for its myriad characters and stories – but whereas the Flemish artist depicted minor brawls, gambling and licentiousness, Rivera’s purpose was to document a period of abuse and domination.

  That much Jack could understand. What had always perplexed him, however, was why the Mexican artist chose the outmoded European style over that of the very people he was trying to explain.

  Out of the need to survive, Jack suddenly found himself plunging into the minds of his would be captors; whether it was the facts they had to deal with, the prejudices they naturally harbored, or the methods they would irresistibly employ, his perspective had begun to shift; like a premature form of Stockholm syndrome, he had begun to see himself as the authorities would.

  “Could have Rivera meant the European genre as another form of subjugation?” he wondered.

  Slowly turning onto Canal Street, he regretted not having thought of this when he was back in school, and yet there was one artist who would continue to confound him. If only he could think of his name.

  “How could I possibly forget?” Jack wondered. “It’s all I heard!”

  Suddenly, he envisioned one of his more famous works – a skeleton giving birth to a stack of books – and before long it came to him: “Jose Clemente Orozco,” he said out loud, so as not to forget. He even rolled the R. Nevertheless, he remained baffled.

  As a faculty favorite, who like Rivera showed no qualms about the number of times he unleashed his conquistadors, Orozco was a constant source of irritation. Never quite understanding what he was driving at, Jack would compensate with sarcasm, the result of which was usually an F.

  If only they had spent more time on Frida Kahlo, perhaps he would have passed. Finding her to be not only accessible, but humorous, Jack recalled a portrait in which she depicted herself as a hunted deer. That he could understand. Sadly, however, she was all but ignored. In fact his teacher, Mr. Orlando, a tall limber fellow, with dark curly hair, a goatee, Elvis sideburns, and a penchant for bragging about his karate skills, mocked her for how petty and self absorbed she was.

  Indeed, the famous work in which the front of her nail ridden body is torn open, revealing a broken pillar in the place of her spinal column, reeks if not of self pity then at least self indulgence. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating. With long dark hair and communicating eyebrows, her face is small yet well proportioned, expressing just the slightest hint of resentment. Held together by white straps, running horizontally, above and below her perfectly formed breasts, she is at once disturbing yet beautiful.

  So impressed was Jack by the painting that it served as inspiration for his end of year project – a self portrait in which one could see, through a window in his head, a broken mainspring and rusted gears.

  Orlando’s response, however, was not quite what he had hoped for. “Open your eyes,” he told him. “Art’s not about you or me; it’s about expanding our world.”

  “More like making it up,” Jack thought to himself.

  Dali for example was said to have unlocked the door to our unconscious with his melted watches and alien landscapes, but dreams aren’t like that at all. Rather, they are echos, remnants, attenuated reproductions, only mixed up and distorted, making for a whole array of associations and substitutions – but dripping timepieces? Sheer metaphor, more the product of the surrealist than anything that happens while we’re asleep.

  As for Braque and the rest, Jack couldn’t see what Cubism had to do with anything. Did rendering an object from a multitude of angles actually do a better job in conveying the context and therefore truth of it anymore than conventional studies, or was it just a gimmick used to line the pockets of the so called artist?

  Even more troubling, however, were the Futurists, whose skipped frames and blurred images had all the charm of a reel of film through a broken projector. Did Marinetti and his acolytes really believe that the best way to describe the world was in terms of rabid ethnocentrism, transformative technology, and ever increasing movement? Ok, maybe they had a point, but that doesn’t make what they produced worth looking at. But for a few exceptions, like Boccioni’s bronze precursor to Ironman, they were all viewpoint and no view, all imagination and no image, all concept and no conception, whereas Jack was the complete opposite. Above all else, he wanted to capture what he saw; that there may have been more to see never dawned on him.

  Making a left on Delancey, he stopped at his bank. His gait was slow, his eyes attentive. He felt as if everyone, no less the guards, were staring at him.

  “I’m buying a car,” he irresistibly blurted.

  “Good luck,” said the teller, as he slid over about six thousand in cash.

  Although never one for money, the figure somehow put things in perspective. “That’s it?” he grumbled. “After twenty years?”

  With his eyes peeled for the police, he decided to catch a flight to El Paso, Texas, which just so happened to be right on the border with Mexico. From there he’d make his way south, to Salina Cruz, where if necessary he could flee to nearby Central America, get lost in the jungles, disappear. “Why not,” he thought to himself.

  Breathing a bit more slowly at this point, he could almost taste the sweet air of the pacific. Soporific in its effect, he recalled how peacefully he used to sleep, as if blanke
ted in some sort of honey tinged sedative.

  For a nice Saturday afternoon the traffic was uncharacteristically light, even on the Williamsburg Bridge. With any luck he’d make it to Kennedy Airport in about a half hour. “Phew,” he exhaled, imagining himself in the air, with a cocktail in his hand.

  Suddenly, however, just before the bridge, he found himself pulling over. “Damn it,” he groaned.

  Who was he kidding? A two hour wait, a five hour flight. Most likely he’d be arrested before even stepping off the plane, and even if he made it, who’s to say he wouldn’t be hunted in Mexico?

  “What to do, what to do?” he frantically mumbled. “Maybe I should just keep driving. Georgia’s nice. I could buy a trailer, move to a swamp, live off my savings, wait for things to blow over.”

  But even while he was telling himself this, another part of his mind was hatching a plan.

  The fact was that if he was careful he could disappear right there in the city, with the advantage being that he could take matters into his own hands.

  Even while the police had an advantage in terms of manpower and experience, he had one thing going for him that they didn’t: he knew it wasn’t him. Unfortunately, he only had six grand to prove it.

  Remembering to wear his cowboy hat, he ran into a local drug store to do something about his appearance. Quickly his basket was filled black hair dye, coloring for his beard, which he had decided to let grow, an electric trimmer, rubber gloves, plastic bags, and several roles of duct tape. “That should do the trick,” he thought to himself.

  Draped from a hanger, the boy at the counter had little substance to him, just a long pimpled face on an empty shirt, but he had sharp intelligent eyes, making Jack a bit wary of having picked up the stuff for his whiskers. Had he just stuck with the hair dye, which had a woman’s face on the box, the kid would have assumed it was for his wife or girlfriend, but this combined with the goop for his beard made his metamorphic intentions rather obvious.