The Curse

by Harold Robbins

  He looked hurt. “She’s not a sex toy. She’s my friend.”

  I immediately felt sorry for him. Having to buy a friend. Poor bastard. He should have invested the money in a charm school class.

  “Do you want to see what she can do?” He grinned.

  I fled.

  18

  Mike was already at the bar with a beer in his hand. I plopped down next to him.

  “God, I’ve been to hell and back and the night’s still young. I spent the day running from an ancient curse that won’t be satisfied until it sticks pins in my eyes and drains my blood.”

  “I can tell you some horror stories, too,” he said.

  “I don’t want to hear your horror stories. I have enough of my own.”

  “We can go back to your place, and you can tell me all about it in bed,” he said, nuzzling my ear and working his hand up my thigh. “I know how to make you feel better.”

  He could but I wasn’t in the mood at the moment. I ordered a glass of wine. And moved his hand away. “Not now.”

  Michelangelo’s real name was Michael Anthony. He was a detective with the NYPD, head of their art theft squad. It goes without saying that as usual with my first encounters with police officers, my first meeting with Mike, about a year ago, was not pleasant—a rather nasty misunderstanding about pad thai noodles and looted Cambodian artifacts. But that’s another story.

  The news media called him Michelangelo because he was also a painter and because his real name was vaguely similar to the great Italian Renaissance artist. Having seen his artwork, the only similarity between him and the real Michelangelo were their names. The guy couldn’t have made a living doing family portraits, but it wasn’t something you’d want to say to a guy who packs muscles and a gun or two.

  He claimed we had a “booty call” relationship. That was a modern term for people who call each other up late at night when they can’t sleep and need sex but otherwise go their own ways the rest of the day.

  I hated the description, it was cold and mean and bloodless, but I had to admit that it was accurate.

  “Okay,” he said, “shoot. I’m all ears.”

  “I need my drink first.”

  After I got my Pinot Noir and took a few sips, I started to tell him about the computer fiasco.

  It was avoidance behavior. I needed to build up to being a murder suspect slowly or I’d break down. Thinking about that poor woman was also a bummer.

  “I finally threw the damn thing out the window.”

  He thought the whole thing was hilarious.

  “It’s actually funny,” he said after he stopped laughing.

  “Bizarre is more like it. It gets better. Then I was attacked by a crazy woman.”

  “What!” He looked at me and almost choked on his drink. “On the street?”

  “No! Inside my goddamn apartment building. Good old Arnie hasn’t fixed the lock on the front door yet.”

  “You should report that guy.”

  “Naw, he’s not a bad guy really.”

  Then I told him about the attack on me.

  “So you filed a report on this crazy woman.”

  “Yeah, but it won’t do any good.”

  “They’ll get her.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Sure they will.” He took a gulp of his beer.

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  He covered his mouth as he started to spit out beer.

  I told him about what happened that day without mentioning Kaseem by name or the fact I had had a big payday.

  “I just finished having lunch and was on my way home. And there she was again.”

  “So she was following you.”

  “Evidently. The woman had serious mental problems. Something was definitely wrong with her.”

  “Whatever she was—drug addict, sick, demented, crazy—it’s over.”

  “No, it isn’t. They say I pushed her in front of the train.”

  He listened quietly as I described the grilling at the police station.

  “This bastard cop is trying to hang me,” I told Mike.

  “Just because he considers you a person of interest in a suspicious death doesn’t make him a bastard.”

  “Person of interest, suspicious death, your damn cop jargon has become bureaucratic double-talk. This guy is trying to prove the woman was murdered and that I did it. Maybe he needs a promotion, maybe he has a fetish for framing people, maybe—”

  “Hey, calm down. The security tape will tell the story.”

  “He lied when he said the camera shows me pushing her. I’d be pretty stupid to sit here and lie to you I if did something that was caught on tape, wouldn’t I? I didn’t push her. I want you to get ahold of that tape before he destroys it.”

  “Your paranoia is running rampant. He’s not going to destroy the tape, and he’s not out to frame you.”

  I tried to keep from exploding and spoke as calmly as I could.

  “The man told me that the security tape shows I gave her a push. That is a lie. Now, with all that logic and reasonableness you manage to maintain when it’s not your tush on the line, why don’t you explain to me how that could possibly be when I know I didn’t push her and neither did anyone else?”

  “I’d have to see the security tape—”

  “Bullshit! I just told you, she wasn’t pushed. She jumped. Actually ran off the platform and in front of the train.”

  The woman had her back to the train when she suddenly bolted but I didn’t speculate with him as to whether in her confused state of mind she even realized the train was coming. Right at the moment her suicide fit nicely because it eliminated any connection to me and the money.

  “Okay, stay calm. Maybe he’s pulling your string to see what you blurt out.”

  “Why would he do that? And don’t tell me to stay calm.”

  “Come on, Maddy, pervs don’t run up to cops and confess their crimes the minute we show up at the scene flashing badges. They need a little nudging, so sometimes we say there’s a witness when there isn’t or that they left their DNA before evidence is even tested, something to rattle them and get them to think they’re nailed so they start incriminating themselves as they justify what they did.”

  I chewed on spaghetti Bolognese and tried to digest what Mike was saying, that the subway cop would lie to me so I would blurt out a confession.

  “What about this guy who hired you—what does he say about the crazy woman?”

  “I didn’t get any answer at the number when I called after the incident.”

  “He probably had a cell phone that he picked up at the airport and dumped after he used up the time.”

  For sure, there was a connection between Kaseem and Fatima Sari, but I knew that he hadn’t harmed her. She did it to herself. I wasn’t ready to kill my one source of income by giving up his name to the cops, especially these days when a Middle Eastern appearance or name was liable to get you tagged as a terrorist.

  He gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t get crazy about it. I’ll talk to the guy, see what he really has. I have a great in—you’ve been a person of interest in so damn many art deals that have gone—”

  “Call him now.”

  “He’s probably not on duty—”

  “He’s always on duty, the guy has no life.”

  I gave him Detective Gerdy’s card. “His cell phone’s on it. Call him now or I won’t get any sleep tonight.”

  Mike started to leave and I grabbed his arm. “Where you going?”

  “Outside, where I can hear better.”

  That was only half true—the bar was a little noisy, but he was getting far enough away to where the subway cop wouldn’t hear me growling in the background.

  He came back and slipped into the seat next to me and signaled the bartender for another beer.

  “Gerdy doesn’t have the tape yet, but he said he’ll let me see it when he gets it. It has to be processed in forensics, so he’ll probably get it tomo
rrow or the next day.”

  I didn’t like his neutral tone. Something was wrong.

  “Is he still claiming I pushed her?”

  “He hasn’t seen the tape, but he says that’s what the video tech told him.”

  My life was spinning out of control, but I was suddenly calm. “What else did he tell you? That he’s going to arrest me?”

  “He said he was going to view the tape before he does anything, but because there’s a foreign connection, he’s coming to ask you to hand over your passport.”

  “What? Is he crazy? I’m not giving him my passport. Let him get a court order.”

  “It’s standard procedure. If he arrested you, a judge wouldn’t set bail unless you surrendered your passport because you do work that takes you out of the country.”

  Good God. Being arrested. Stuck in jail. I’d be homeless for sure when I got out if that bastard did that.

  “This is insane. I didn’t do anything. Some crazy woman tries to stab me with a letter opener and then jumps in front of a train. I didn’t even know her name, never saw her before.”

  I hid my face in my hands.

  “I don’t know even know who I am at the moment. I should have stayed in bed this morning.”

  He squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you. The forensics tech may not even know who you are on the tape. I’ll take a look at it. In the meantime, don’t talk to Gerdy without a lawyer present.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that, Maddy.… Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”

  “Would I do something stupid?”

  “Do chickens have lips?”

  19

  I didn’t do anything stupid until after I let him know I wasn’t in the mood for any sex that night and went home just long enough to pack a carry-on and give Morty a hug and extra food and water.

  I was on board a red-eye to London and the plane was starting to taxi on the runway before I called Mike and told him I left my apartment door unlocked and needed him to feed Morty until I got back.

  “You have to take care of my pussy,” I reminded him, deliberately loud enough so the guy next to me who was already trying to get friendly would hear that I had a man in my life.

  When he asked me where I’d skipped off to, I told him the truth only because it would be so easy for the police to find out.

  “London.”

  I cut off his questions. “That’s where I’ve been paid to go, where the woman flew in from, and where I’ll find the answers.”

  “Detective Gerdy will consider it an admission of guilt.”

  “Look at the security tape. If I gave that woman a shove, I’ll put the rope around my neck myself.”

  I hung up and turned off the phone to end his rebuttals and recriminations.

  I smiled sweetly at the flight attendant who had told me twice to turn off my phone.

  “Sorry. My baby’s sick.”

  A little lie was better than getting caught offending a flight attendant nowadays because their job had gone from being nice to people to tyrants who order the captain to slam on the brakes and call airport security whenever a passenger looked cross-eyed at one of them.

  Britain is a civilized country, I reminded myself again as the plane lifted off.

  I shouldn’t have a problem unless someone checks and finds out that the last time I was there I left in a hurry with a burning art gallery and dead bodies behind me.

  CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS

  After visiting Howard Carter and the tomb of King Tut, anthropologist Henry Field wrote that Sir Bruce Ingham, a friend of Carter’s, had been given a mummified hand to use as a paperweight.

  A scarab on a bracelet attached to the hand said, “Cursed be who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water, and pestilence.”

  Not long after receiving the scarab bracelet, Ingham’s house burned down and then flooded after it was rebuilt.

  20

  Salisbury Plain, England

  Fuad Hassan squeezed his cell phone tightly and whispered to himself, “Fatima, where are you?”

  He snapped the phone closed and stuck it in his pocket when he got her voice mail recording again.

  Fuad had not heard from Fatima Sari, his assistant, for two days now and his last conversation with her had left him shaken. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate on his work as he worried about her.

  For the last twelve years he had been the curator for the Radcliff Collection, a private museum founded by Sir Jacob Radcliff. The world’s largest private collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts, it now rested in the hands of Radcliff’s great-granddaughter, Heather Radcliff.

  Fortunately for the museum, Heather, who knew infinitely more about the latest fashions than antiquities or anything else for that matter that required even rudimentary book learning, never strayed into the museum unless she was showing a visitor her unique collection.

  The fact that she was very rich usually impressed her visitors, who were suitably complimentary about her knowledge of ancient Egyptian artifacts, even if she did call the collection’s sarcophagus her mummy’s bed.

  She floated through a life in which the high points were sexual relationships with men and women, few of which lasted more than six weeks, and the quality of cocaine she sniffed.

  In between attending parties in Manhattan, Paris, and London, she spent time trying to find out her purpose in life and why she was put on this earth. That quest to find the meaning in her existence had taken her from mind-spirit awakenings in the red rocks of Sedona to the white-capped Himalayas, all at great cost that produced little insight as to her place in the universe other than having done little to have so much.

  Currently she was searching for herself in the Druid spirituality that many believed existed in Stonehenge and other megalithic circles and trilithons found in the Salisbury Plain that her estate laid upon.

  To Fuad, whose life was dedicated to the protection and preservation of the historical treasures of Egypt’s brilliant history, Heather Radcliff was a vain, foolish woman whose only redeeming qualities were that she paid him to oversee her antiquities collection and that she had absolutely no interest in it except to occasionally flaunt the brilliance of her objects.

  The costume party at the Radcliff estate had already lasted several hours now and Fuad had gone into the garden to make his call to Fatima to avoid the possibility of being overheard by the two guards that had been hired to watch any guests that wandered into the museum.

  He wanted the museum to be locked up that evening in order to keep out drunken guests, but Heather Radcliff wasn’t about to keep her most famous possessions out of sight.

  Fuad was frightened for Fatima, and also for himself, but he didn’t know who he could trust at the museum. The two of them were the only foreigners employed on the estate. Their language, religion, Egyptology backgrounds, even their own rather timid, reserved natures, kept them from assimilating with the servants, gardeners, and other staff.

  Keenly aware that their inhibitions had kept them from intimacy with each other, Fuad regretted that he hadn’t pursued his feelings for Fatima. Had they married, he would have forbade her from assuming the task of returning the heart back to Egypt.

  Now he wished that he had argued with her more about not going, persisted harder at trying to persuade her from getting involved. He should have taken up the duty himself to protect her.

  Fuad hadn’t felt right about it from the beginning. The sacred scarab should have been returned to the chest of King Tutankhamen in great fanfare, not surreptitiously.

  He turned away, disgusted, as a woman burst out of the house with a man following her, throwing off their clothes as they raced for the pool through the garden, laughing and shouting.

  That the costume party had a Druid “fertility” theme, a thinly disguised excuse for an orgy, offended Fuad but didn’t surprise him. Heather Radcliff had recently “discovered” that in a past life she had been a goddes
s of fertility, which in her mind translated to sex.

  Fuad found the lascivious horseplay between the guests not only offensive to his sense of decency but also juvenile.

  Back in the museum wing, he nodded politely at the two guards who were arguing over a soccer match and went into his office to check the monitors to see if the guards or anyone else had secretly pocketed something while he had stepped out.

  Nothing had been taken and he credited his own doubts about the honest nature of mankind for having never had an item stolen. As important as the security cameras were, anything small enough to be pocketed was housed in locked glass-topped cases.

  The museum was one long gallery, occupying what had originally contained the manor’s armory, military uniforms, and hunting equipment.

  It was an eclectic collection that included several large pieces—a ram’s-headed sphinx from Karnak, the mummified remains of a Twenty-sixth Dynasty high priest in his sarcophagus, a chariot from the Ptolemaic Dynasty—and many smaller pieces, such as weapons, jewelry, amulets like scarabs, gems, stones in the shape of animals, and the like.

  The Radcliff Collection was dwarfed by the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum, New York’s Metropolitan, and the Louvre, but it was unmatched by any private collection in the world.

  How a rich man like Sir Jacob Radcliff had been able to acquire an enormous collection of Egyptian treasures was a reflection of Radcliff’s times and the history of archaeology.

  It was a piece of history that Fuad reflected upon as he hid away in his small museum office and stared blankly at the security monitors. If the Heart of Egypt had been rightfully stored in the Egyptian Museum instead of secreted out of the country by Radcliff, Fatima would be safe now.

  Unlike most of his fellow countrymen who wanted everything ever taken or stolen from Egypt—the incredible collections in the great museums of the world and the countless number of pieces held in private hands—returned to Egypt, Fuad had a sense of history and understood that much of the great treasures of Egyptian antiquity would have been destroyed long ago if the relics hadn’t been stored in museums and with people who could afford to safeguard and preserve them.