The Cleopatra Murders

by Mic Palmer

  Panicking for a moment, he miraculously recalled a television show he had seen featuring some sort of a commando teaching the host how to deal with exactly this sort of situation, only with a knife. The crucial point, however, was to simultaneously strike the weapon while punching the man in the face.

  “Wake up,” repeated Ernesto.

  Opening his eyes, Jack was disappointed to see a gun pointed at his face. “Ohhhhh,” he moaned. “What happened?”

  “Just get the fuck back in the chair,” said his captor, as he assisted him with his left hand.

  “Alright,” Jack told himself. “It’s now or never. Once you’re on your feet, knock the gun to the left while punching him in the chin – no, the nose – less chance of missing.”

  Jack slowly rose, pretending to be groggy. Then suddenly, with his eyes half closed, he parried the weapon and struck his opponent in the cheek.

  Ernesto barely flinched and within a millisecond repositioned the gun in the direction of Jack’s face, but before he could fire Jack grabbed it with both hands, so that the barrel pointed at the ceiling.

  A shot rang out. Striking a pipe, it released a steady flow of hot vapor, and before long the men were dripping wet, making it difficult for them to get a good grip on one another.

  Jack attempted to pound the man’s head with his own, but couldn’t get off a clean shot. “Shit,” he yelled, having again been blocked.

  At that moment, he was an animal. He wanted to bloody the bastard, crack his skull, leave him for dead.

  Hating Ernesto, the situation, and himself, for his incomprehensible stupidity, he again reared his head back. “Ahhhhh,” he roared. Glistening with perspiration, their skulls skimmed off one another liked greased bowling balls.

  Nevertheless, Jack managed to slide his trigger finger over Ernesto’s, meaning either man could fire.

  “I’m gonna fuck’n blow your head off,” said the panting little psychopath, inches from Jack’s face.

  Jack attempted to turn the gun toward his opponent’s chest, but the son of a bitch was strong. It was like trying to bend steel. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled at the trigger, again and again, until the magazine was empty.

  Bogie, however, had finally returned, and all Jack could do was watch as the side of his Tec-9 knocked him into oblivion.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Waking to the sound of police sirens, Jack found he couldn’t move his legs – the reason being Ernesto. Lying on top of them like a sack of potatoes, he had just had a bowel movement the stench of which was absolutely nauseating. Clearly, he was dead, his chest so riddled with bullets that his insides were coming out.

  “Piece of shit,” Jack muttered, still on the floor.

  Just an hour ago he probably would have had trouble even glancing at such a scene, but now he took it in slowly as if trying to savor it.

  All at once, however, he became violently ill, not so much because of the carnage in and of itself, but because of some poorly defined sense that something was wrong, that he wasn’t himself, that in some strange way he had a hand in this.

  With the sirens becoming progressively louder, he rolled the dead man off of his legs and rose to his feet, the achievement of which caused him to feel he was about to fall down again.

  It was then that he got a good look at Bogie, who having been thrown through the storm door was sprawled out across the concrete steps like a rag doll. Next to him was his gun, the butt of which had been used to beat his face into an unrecognizable pulp of mangled flesh.

  Pausing for a moment Jack couldn’t help but marvel at how arrogant he had seemed, how menacing, how invulnerable. Guys like that aren’t suppose to go out that easy. Rather, they urge themselves forward, dominate their environment, make their own fate, unless of course they come up against a will even more powerful than their own.

  Just then Jack heard a sound coming from the other room, as if someone attempting to speak. It was the skinny blond kid who had gone looking for his car. His upper back had been impaled by several coat hooks next to the front door, and so he was suspended about a foot off the ground.

  “What is it?” asked Jack, seeing that he was trying to say something.

  Clearly, however, his neck had been broken, leaving his head drooping against his chest. Nevertheless, he managed one final word, all whispery and weak: “Monster.”

  Bending over and placing his head between his knees, Jack felt as if he couldn’t breathe, but then he heard the murmur of a growl and snapped out of it.

  Having been knocked unconscious, the Pit Bull was now coming to, which was just the impetus Jack needed to flee.

  Quickly, however, he would wash himself off, just in case he was spotted by the police, who based on the sound of the approaching siren were only blocks away.

  Stepping over Bogie’s mangled body onto the back steps, he was bathed in a misty rain and without even realizing it began jogging to his car.

  Surprisingly, his back felt looser than it had in years. Having briefly worried about it going out at the precise moment when he would need it most, he attributed its resilience to the rush of adrenaline.

  “What the hell just happened?” he thought to himself.

  Although the whole episode didn’t last more than ten minutes, it seemed to occupy every possible thought and consideration, as if the rest of his life had never existed, and yet the details were sketchy, like a dream, but for one.

  While sitting in the middle of that swirling blue nightmare of a kitchen, with Ernesto’s gun to his head, he had vowed that if he ever made it out of there alive, he’d go straight to the police.

  Compared to what he had just been through, the possibility of fighting for his life from a jail cell, with the aid of a lawyer and three meals a day didn’t seem that bad to him, especially since he was innocent.

  “What was I thinking?” he carped. “Did I really believe I could do this?”

  Despite all of his careful planning, he had wound up at the wrong house with not one but two groups of killers, and the only reason he had escaped was sheer dumb luck.

  The whining drone of a siren now filled the air, and a flashing light could be seen through a hazy fog. Racing toward him, the police car bounced and shimmed over the rough pavement.

  Jack slowed down to a leisurely walk until it passed. Soon they’d have his DNA, he thought to himself. Then what?

  Spotting the coal black Mustang, he was impressed with how different it looked, and for a moment he felt proud of himself.

  “You know what,” he reconsidered. “I went toe to toe with a house full of killers and came out on top.”

  Sure, a rival gang had come to his rescue, but what if he hadn’t emptied the little maniac’s gun, sent Chuck on a wild goose chase, distracted Bogie before being knocked out? Things might have turned out all together differently.

  As a person who frequently misplaced his keys, Jack kept a spare set duct taped to the underbody. Nevertheless, he was relieved to find them to be where he thought they were.

  Quickly, he started the engine, and the more he drove, the more comfortable he felt.

  “Basically,” he rationalized, “all that happened was that I lost about twenty minutes.” There’s still plenty of time to do exactly what I wanted, only I’ll have to get the address.”

  Pulling over to the side of the road, in front of a bodega, he put a quarter in the payphone and dialed 411, but just as he had expected, Gomez was unlisted, leaving him no choice but to find a library. Thirty seconds on a computer and he’d have his friend’s address, assuming of course his former employer hadn’t yet changed the password.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Flattening down some unruly locks in the rear view mirror, Jack didn’t appear as beat up as he felt. But for some redness and swelling over his left cheek, most of his wounds were hidden below a preternaturally thick patch of coal black hair.

  His clothes, however, would never do, so he reached into the back seat and grabbed his
duffel bag. Replacing his torn windbreaker with a sweatshirt and his blood soaked jeans with some sweatpants, he almost looked presentable.

  Within seconds of stepping out of his car, however, he felt the blood rushing out of his face. Suddenly, he saw the carnage, the bloodshed, the violence, and he again became nauseated. The sensation, however, was soon beaten back by an uncharacteristic flash of determination.

  “You’re running out of time,” he told himself. “Keep moving.”

  Having the look of a small two story apartment building, the library had a surprisingly large selection of books. There must have been at least twenty aisles, none of which contained a soul.

  Rather everyone seemed to be in the areas containing the movies and music, and as for the six computer terminals, every single one of them was occupied, all with teenagers, a couple of which actually appeared to be doing homework.

  Pacing behind them, Jack felt like ripping the keyboards out from under their dexterous little hands.

  One student in particular grated on him, a pretty little Middle Eastern girl, with thick black glasses and her hair up in a bun. She must have been about sixteen – old enough Jack thought to pick up a book. Search engines, however, were all she knew, and so she looked upon the tiny digital article before her as if it were not only the epitome of scholarship, but the final word on the matter.

  “Are you just about through?” asked Jack.

  “Sorry, not for a while.”

  Glancing at the monitor, he detected the image of FDR shaking hands with Stalin. “Now there’s a serial killer,” he reflected, but what really annoyed him was the fact that hundreds maybe thousands of authors had wasted years of their lives researching and writing about these guys, only to have everything they worked so hard on, all of their reading, all of their insights, all of their psychological and historical connections, distilled down to a few paragraphs on a computer screen.

  “What could you possibly learn from a couple of paragraphs?” thought Jack, not at all realizing how hypocritical he was being. “Why have books? Why call it a library?”

  Suddenly, he was a scholar, but this didn’t stop him from interrupting their studies. Approaching a freckle faced boy with short red hair and pointy ears, Jack offered him twenty dollars to use his computer.

  “I want a hundred,” he immediately responded.

  “What are you kidding? I’ll ask someone else.”

  “What if the librarian finds out?”

  “Finds out what? I’m not breaking the law.”

  “Something’s not right about you. Why’s your cheek all puffy?”

  “Whatever,” said Jack, as he walked away.

  Just then the child stood up. “Are you sure?”

  “Alright, alright,” muttered Jack, as the librarian, a light-skinned, green-eyed black woman, suspiciously glanced over at him. She knew he didn’t belong there. Unfortunately, so did the boy, who in the end got not only triple what he was offered, but Jack’s thirty-dollar watch as well.

  “Nice doing business with you,” said the child.

  “You’ve got a future,” said Jack, and with that he sat down to begin his search.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Whatever Jack had in mind about the location and appearance of his friend’s house proved completely wrong. Instead of being southeast of Yankee Stadium, it was northwest, which represented a totally different neighborhood. As for the yellow door and hammock, Jack preferred to believe that even if they weren’t there now, they had been during his last visit.

  “Gomez must have painted,” he told himself, doing his best to maintain his confidence. During the next few days he’d probably have to take some rather major leaps, based on nothing more than his observational skills. If he wasn’t able to trust himself, why even bother. He might as well have packed it in right then and there.

  Fortunately, there were certain things he could hang his hat on. For one, he was right about the existence of the porch. For another, he recalled the way the driveway went from the front of the place into the backyard, much like the configuration of the house where he had almost been killed.

  Even so, he couldn’t help but notice how odd the structure appeared. Details which would have ordinarily been lost upon him now came alive, no matter how minor or mundane.

  Consisting of a variety of shades and colors, except of course yellow, the house seemed to have been amended over the course of many years, with no consideration to style or symmetry.

  While the second floor had a severely pitched roof and coven windows, the downstairs was rather low and spread out, as if an old fashioned Cape Cod had been dropped from the sky onto a fifties’ ranch, but even more incongruous was the foyer, which having the quality of a tool shed that had been tacked onto the front door, seemed to go out of its way to mock all notions of harmony and nuance by crowning itself with a shiny gold railing.

  Indeed the neighborhood liked its terraces, all of which seemed to have been inserted wherever a flat piece of roof was available, even if it amounted to only a few square feet. Some of the homes had upwards of three or four, which like giant moles on a bland face, drew one in, even to the exclusion of what appeared to be an epidemic of sunken lintels and warped beams.

  From the side yard Jack could see Gomez through the space in the curtains. He was angry. Under the strains of overworked jaw muscles and engorged cheeks, his crimson face looked volcanic in its potential. If ever he was going to tear a piece of his overwrought skin, it was now. With hands flailing and veins popping, he was confronting his elder child, who although only thirteen was nearly the same size as his father.

  “I’d better wait till they’re done fighting,” thought Jack to himself, worried that someone might come running out of the house.

  “Is that how you plan on getting into college,” inquired Gomez, “by playing video games?”

  Possessing fine straight features like his mother, the boy smirked with every loaded question. “Yes I am,” he replied. Seated upon the sofa, with a leg over the armrest, he seemed to be enjoying himself. “It’s computer technology. I’m going to be tested on it.”

  Standing above him, Gomez paused for a moment, somewhat dumbfounded; he looked toward his wife, who was picking up some newspapers off of the coffee table.

  “He’s making it up,” she responded, with a disapproving flash from brown sapphire eyes.

  Gomez was furious. “You think this is funny!”

  “No,” said the child, trying to smother his laughter.

  “This is no joke. You’re fall’n behind, and I’m tired of hearing about tomorrow. That’s two “Ds” in a row, damn it!”

  “Geraldo!” scolded Mrs. Gomez, her pretty face contorted into a frown.

  “Maybe if I had someone to help me,” retorted the boy, knowing exactly what he was doing, “I wouldn’t be having so much trouble.”

  “Don’t gimme that,” contested Gomez. “You go to a good school. If you want extra help, they’ll give it to you.”

  “I can’t do math.”

  “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “How do you know? You never learned math; neither did mom. You two never even got through high school.”

  “Don’t start with that. You know we had to work. Totally different situation.”

  “Yeah, and how about now? You have time. Serrano’s father does his homework with him every night.”

  “He’s an architect,” interjected his mother. “And stop making excuses.”

  “You know we’d help you if we could,” apologized Gomez, “but trigonometry? What do you expect from me?”

  “So you can’t do it, but expect me to.”

  Gomez pulled the game out of his son’s hands. “I don’t have a teacher to explain it to me.”

  “Sounds like you’re just stupid.”

  Gomez grabbed the boy by the shirt, pulling him off the couch. “Whatchu say.”

  The boy’s mother gently put her hand on Gomez’s shoulder
, causing him to soften a bit, even while he held on to him.

  “Math sucks,” yelled the boy. “What’s the point? Who needs it?”

  “You know what,” said the father, “you’re the stupid one.”

  “Geraldo,” uttered the woman, wearing a thin house dress that was falling off her shoulders.

  Gomez let the boy go.

  “He didn’t mean that,” went on his mother. “It’s just that math decides everything – the cars we drive, the planes we fly, our military, our entertainment, our economy, even that game you’re playing. To think it’s unimportant, when it’s probably the most important thing there is, kind of surprises us.”

  The boy rolled his eyes.

  “You know how we fight?” Gomez went on. “How people debate things, how lawyers argue; well that’s all bullshit, cause there’s no definite way to say who’s right. People can say any damn thing they want, and if they say it good enough and smooth enough, people are gonna think they’re smart, even if they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. That’s what’s great about math. You’re gonna know. Lying and cheating ain’t gonna work, cause the plane’s gonna come down, or the missile’s gonna fizzle, or the computer’s gonna crash – you hear me? Math’s about truth. Don’t you see the beauty in that?”

  “No, I don’t,” said the boy, sick of being lectured.

  Gomez ran his hands through his coarse black hair. “It’s like talking to a wall.”

  “Listen to your father.”

  “I heard him, and he’s right. People can say anything, including him.”

  “You really think you’re a wise guy, don’t you?” uttered Jack’s exasperated former co-worker.

  The child, however, wouldn’t let up. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you prove to me what you’re saying, mathematically?”

  Gomez did the sign of the cross then waived his hands in the air. “I give up.”

  The child was feeling more secure at this point. “That’s cause you know it’s a bunch of bullshit.”