The Curse

by Harold Robbins

  “I don’t make reproductions,” he snapped, “I make duplicate originals.”

  “Having seen your work, I don’t doubt it. It would have taken a scientific test to determine that the scarab you made was a fake.”

  He scoffed. “It would have passed the test. I use stone from where the original object would have been quarried and get many slabs to make a perfect match.”

  I knew a perfect match wasn’t possible when there are thousands of tiny flakes of gold-covered dust scattered in a piece, but I didn’t correct him.

  “I shape it only with the same type of tools used by the ancients. I do my own chemical analysis of the patina to make sure my mix will match. When I’m finished, God wouldn’t be able to tell the difference,” he said with pride in his voice.

  Like all crooks—and ex-crooks—Botwell believed he was infinitely more clever than the rest of us. Apparently he hadn’t been clever enough one time to stay out of jail.

  “Was a second duplicate made?” I asked.

  “No. Of course not. I never do that, I do honest work. I need to get back to work now.”

  I don’t know why I bothered to ask the question, it just popped out, but his response pinged false in the lie detector at the back of my head.

  “Is your assistant available? Miss Radcliff wanted me to ask him some questions.”

  “He’s gone. No longer works here.”

  “Why?”

  “Why is none of your business.”

  I could see he was ready to throw me out if I asked another question. I had run the Radcliff promise of business as far as it would go.

  It was time for another turn of the screw.

  “Mr. Botwell, I know you do incredible work, and what I’ve seen was pure genius. But a problem has arisen. I’m a private inquiry agent—”

  “Take your inquiries elsewhere.”

  “Who has been called in by Miss Radcliff to investigate the matter. Unless she gets some answers that satisfy her, I’m afraid her next call will be to Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiquities Theft unit.”

  “I had nothing to do w-with-with anything,” he stammered.

  “So you knew about the theft?”

  “Theft? What theft? I’m talking about the copy the woman wanted.”

  “What woman?”

  “I don’t know. She was Middle Eastern.”

  “Fatima Sari?”

  “No, of course not, I know Fatima. It was another woman, but she had a dark complexion like Fatima.”

  “Egyptian?”

  “I don’t know. She came in one day and asked us to do a copy of the heart scarab. I wouldn’t do it and sent her packing.”

  “You said she asked ‘us.’ She asked Quintin Rees, also?”

  “She spoke to him first, yes. But I sent her packing.”

  I nodded and chewed on my lip. Botwell sent her packing, but what did Rees do?

  “Your assistant spoke with her. Privately.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Botwell surrendered.

  “Look, I used to make things and sell them as something they weren’t, but I found the perfect business for me doing it the honest way. I am straight, you understand. But that worthless scum has a drug problem and a drinking one. I was going to get rid of him anyway, but when I found out he talked to the woman on his own outside of the shop, I fired him immediately.”

  “Did he take a copy of the photos with him?”

  “No.”

  His answer didn’t sound too convincing.

  “Tell me more about this other woman. Her name?”

  He threw up his hands. “We weren’t introduced. Never got as far as getting names.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “I told you, Middle Eastern, dark hair, maybe in her late twenties. That’s all I know. I told her no, showed her the door, she never came back.”

  “How did you know Quintin talked to her?”

  “His wife. She called here in a rage saying Quintin had been out all night with some bitch who wanted him to make a copy of a scarab. His wife wanted me to tell her who the woman was.”

  “Did the woman say why she wanted the copy made?”

  “Said she collects Egyptian stuff.”

  “I need to talk to Quintin. How can I contact him?”

  “You’ll find him in the gutter, rehab again, or on his way back to the gutter.”

  “Thanks for all your help.”

  I was on my way out the door when he said, “Hey, why don’t you ask Radcliff’s curator? The woman said Fuad sent her, but when I called him, he denied it. Lied to me, he did. I’ve lied enough times myself to know one when I hear it.”

  I was speechless.

  “Shut the door on your way out.”

  30

  I dutifully shut the door behind me and walked up the street with questions, facts, and theories bumping into one another in my head like jalopies at a demolition derby.

  Quintin was gone. He obviously made duplicates of the pictures. He’d made a copy of the heart for a woman. And Fuad might have sent her.

  The question burning in my mind, though, was why the mystery woman wanted a copy of the scarab.

  Was she one of the thieves, planning to tender the copy rather than the original when a deal was cut? For what purpose? No one was going to pay a second ransom if the thieves reneged on the promise to hand it over.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that passing off the copy might work in some scenarios.

  There were two very interested buyers for the heart—Kaseem and the Egyptian government. While the government would pay a hefty amount for the scarab, it wouldn’t match the millions that Kaseem was willing to pay.

  Still, picking up another million from the government for the gang of thieves or herself would be clever. It could be done by offering the scarab to both Kaseem and the government at the same time. And collecting from both, passing one as the copy and the other the original.

  If the mystery woman was in fact in with the thieves, she might even have planned a double cross with the copy: switch it for the original and collect the ransom herself.

  My gut and paranoia were churning with conspiracy theories, but there were too many possibilities to nail one down.

  I needed to find out who this mysterious woman was and why she wanted a copy of the scarab made.

  I called the Radcliff manor house and asked to speak to the curator.

  “Fuad, why did you tell me only one copy of the scarab was made?”

  I took his stunned silence as an admission of guilt.

  “I can’t talk right now,” he said in a hushed tone. “But believe me, please, I—I—”

  “I know you would never do anything to hurt Fatima or keep the scarab from being returned. Who is the woman who had the copy made?”

  “I can’t talk now,” he said in a barely audible tone.

  “Fuad, I need to—”

  “Tomorrow night, eight o’clock, at the fair.”

  He hung up before I could say any more.

  What was that all about? I wondered. What had he gotten himself mixed up in?

  Quintin Rees was my next objective. If I found him, I knew I could get all the information I needed because he had a habit and I had the money for his next fix.

  31

  I was in a taxi on the Royal Crescent, but too engrossed in a brown study to appreciate that the street is one of the most picturesque in Britain, when Michelangelo called.

  “Thanks for returning my many calls,” I said.

  “Blame it on the time difference. You only call when this part of the world is asleep.”

  “Have you e-mailed me a copy of the subway tape?”

  “I haven’t got a copy yet.”

  Something in his voice told me that wasn’t the end of the subject.

  “What did that subway cop tell you now? That I pulled out a gun and shot the woman before she took her dive?”

  “I saw the tape. It’s i
nconclusive.”

  “What?”

  I startled the taxi driver and he jerked the wheel.

  “Calm down,” Michelangelo said.

  “What are you talking about? I told you I never touched the woman.”

  “The problem is it’s a small station with only one camera. The woman was between you and the camera. Your arm comes up—”

  “I told you I never touched her.”

  “And I’m telling you that you can’t see that on the tape. She’s between you and the camera.”

  “Are you telling me that I’m in trouble because the damn city’s too cheap to put more cameras in their subway stations? I want to see that tape for myself.”

  “I’m waiting for it. Gerdy said he’d e-mail me a copy when he gets it from forensics. I’ll send you a copy when I get it. If Gerdy calls you, remember what I said about not talking unless a lawyer is present.”

  “Tell me what you saw on the tape.”

  “The woman has her back to the camera as she approaches you.” Your arm goes out and suddenly she’s careening toward the tracks.”

  “That’s exactly what happened—but I never touched her. She wasn’t even looking at me when she turned and ran at the train.”

  “I believe you. You know how punches are done in movies? A guy throws a punch at the other guy’s face and they film it from the opposite side so the guy’s head blocks a view of the punch. The fist doesn’t get even close, but on film it looks like—”

  I gave him my uncensored opinion of his Hollywood stunts analogy and I hung up.

  “Just drive,” I warned the driver, who shot a look back at me.

  I thought about my next move.

  “If I wanted to find someone and only had the name, where’s the best place to start?” I asked the driver.

  “Might try the phone book.”

  Now why didn’t I think of that?

  32

  Quintin Rees lived in a neighborhood that wouldn’t have qualified as one of the most picturesque in Britain even though the area was in one of the loveliest cities in a beautiful country. The building was a step or two down from my cusp of SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy flat, which was a few steps down from pristine.

  Rather than calling myself and risking the ire or suspicion if a woman answered, I had the cabbie phone the listed telephone number.

  “Disconnected,” the cabbie told me. “Probably didn’t pay his bill.”

  The cabbie and I were on good terms after I explained that the person on the phone I had used unladylike language on had been my cheating husband. The line always worked like a charm to rally men in my favor regardless of how often they cheated on their own wives.

  “Looks like a place where most of the occupants are roaches,” the cabbie said as we pulled up in front of the address.

  From the appearance of the two guys hanging around a liquor store a couple doors down, the neighborhood wasn’t Dickensian poor but crystal meth blighted.

  “Don’t go far,” I told the driver.

  “Rees” was scribbled in pencil next to the mail slot of apartment number 4. The building door was not locked and the apartment was on the first floor, down a dim stale hallway that needed a strong breath of fresh air through it to make it breathable.

  A middle-aged woman answered the door. She looked like a poster child for the slogan “life’s a bitch and then you die.”

  “What do you want?” she asked as soon as she opened the door and shortly before she was able to focus on me.

  A wave of alcohol hit me. Maybe she used it for perfume.

  “I need to talk to Quintin Rees.”

  “Piss off.”

  “I have money for him,” I told the door closing on me.

  The door popped back open immediately.

  “You can give it to me,” she said.

  “I have to hand it to him.”

  “Piss off.”

  The door started to close again.

  “I can give you something.”

  The door swung back open.

  She gave me a long, bleary-eyed look. “What’d you want?”

  “Information about a reproduction that Quintin did.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “I’ll pay you to tell me where he is.”

  “Let me see the money first.”

  I took a fifty-pound note out of my pocket and showed it to her.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the truth. He’s been gone about a week. Said he had a big-paying assignment.”

  “What kind of assignment?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “When’s he coming back?”

  “He won’t be back until he’s spent every bloody quid of it and then he’ll be crying on me shoulder for more.”

  “You’re going to have to tell me something about that assignment to get the money.”

  “I don’t know any—wait, there was a woman, that’s who he said hired him, it was a woman.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “I don’t know, just a woman.”

  “Middle Eastern woman?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, a Middle Eastern woman.”

  I made a mistake of suggesting it and couldn’t trust her response. Sure that the well was dry, I gave her the fifty pounds.

  I got exactly nothing from her except that he came into money and was MIA.

  33

  Quintin Rees hurried through the dark park to the place where the woman had told him the exchange would take place—her money for his work.

  The area was cold and damp, with a light mist falling and a bit of fog gathering on the stretch of green that ran along the river. Used during the day by joggers and mothers with their kids, on summer nights there would be lovers strolling about, but on this soggy night it was lonely and deserted.

  Quintin had asked to meet in a pub, but the woman had refused, saying that she didn’t want to make the exchange in public.

  He carried a small shopping bag and had his laptop strapped over his shoulder. The scarab he had made for her was wrapped in a towel and inside the shopping bag. He had done a good job on it despite having to make it in less ideal circumstances than the first one that had been made in Botwell’s shop. But Quintin had done most of the work on the first copy and still had the pictures on his computer. That made the second one easier to reproduce.

  Botwell would know that Quintin had accepted the woman’s offer to make the copy in return for a big payday the moment Botwell found that the rest of the lapis lazuli that he had obtained from Afghanistan was missing.

  Quintin was sweating and it wasn’t just because he needed a fix. The woman for whom he had made a duplicate scarab scared him. Not with words or threats, but with the stern presence she conveyed. But many things in life caused him discomfort and sent him to find a chemical or alcoholic relief.

  He understood the compulsion of addiction better than most people. He had been enslaved to food, narcotics, alcohol, and fear almost continuously since adolescence. He had a talent to imitate art pieces with his hands, would have made a good sculptor and created original pieces if his creative juices hadn’t been fried by crack and crank and wet from booze.

  He nervously paced back and forth by a World War I statue of an infantryman where the woman had told him to meet her.

  Quintin stopped and waited when he saw her coming. His body ached with the need to give it a jolt of pleasure and he had to fight the impulse to throw the bag containing the duplicate scarab at her and grab the money she contracted to pay and run for the closest fix.

  “I have it,” he said, showing her the bag as she approached.

  “It better be good.”

  “It is. Better than the one I did for the Radcliff woman.”

  “Let me see.”

  “The money, give me the money.”

  “Yes, your payment.”

  She pulled a small-caliber revolver out of her pocket a
nd shot him in the chest. As he staggered back, she moved forward and shot him in the forehead, then emptied the gun in his head and face.

  She walked away with the bag containing the scarab, tossing the gun and Quintin’s computer into the river.

  34

  I headed back to my hotel in Bath with my thoughts still tripping over each other as I tried to imagine how the subway tape could show me giving Fatima Sari a shove, while trying to concentrate on what appeared to be a mystery wrapped inside a puzzle in regard to the scarab.

  I tried to get my head around Michelangelo’s explanation that Fatima had gotten in the way of the camera leaving the impression that I had given her a shove.

  I hated Michelangelo’s contention that the camera didn’t record the fact that I hadn’t made contact with Fatima.

  Knowing that I was on the run for something I didn’t do gave me a knot in my stomach that made me feel like I’d been punched. And angry enough to punch whoever put me in the spot.

  The problem was the list of suspects that seemed to be growing as I stumbled along trying to find answers.

  So far all I knew about the woman who had hired Quintin the counterfeiter was that she was Middle Eastern, and probably Egyptian. Why she wanted a copy of the scarab was still at issue, despite my laundry list of possible motives.

  The other thing I knew for sure was that the scarab theft was becoming more and more a murky morass. I felt as if I were in an Agatha Christie story where everyone present had motive and opportunity.

  Even Fuad, who seemed to be innocence incarnate, was sitting on a secret, one that spelled out more involvement than he had let on.

  I couldn’t believe that Fuad was involved in anything criminal, at least not intentionally, but he was burning up not just with the loss of Fatima who he obviously loved, but with a load of guilt.

  And I felt confident that finding out what that guilt was would open up a lot of doors and windows of the mystery surrounding the scarab.

  * * *

  FUAD’S HAND SHOOK AS he called the woman named Sphinx on his cell phone. The phone rang ten times before a computerized voice offered to let him leave a voice mail message.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said. “You told me getting a copy would help Fatima. Now she’s dead and I have to tell the American woman. I’m meeting her at eight tomorrow night at the tower. Call me.”