The Curse Read Free Page B

wasn’t easy to keep a low profile when you had once run with the big dogs.
    Since nobody wanted to hire me I became self-employed as an art appraiser and investigator; that meant I got paid when clients wrote a check, which usually didn’t always happen in a timely manner.
    Morty eyed me as I came back to bed. He didn’t seem to care that I had just lost my computer and my flash drive. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
    He had the right idea.
    I was about to crawl back under the covers and cover my head when I saw the white envelope that had been slipped under my door.
    My first thought was that it was an eviction notice from my landlord, but I quickly rejected that notion. As bad as the geek bastard with the bullhorn, he would have served the notice by pounding on my door and yelling so the whole damn building could hear him, which is what he’ll be doing when he finds my window broken.
    A bill collector was also definitely high on my list, but there were other candidates. The lock on the entry door hadn’t been working longer than my shower had been dripping, permitting entry by the army of restaurant menu distributors that littered the city, along with muggers, rapists, and anyone else who wanted to step inside where the hallways were dark because the landlord used refrigerator bulbs to light them.
    As I bent to pick up the envelope, I heard a tiny, almost timid tap on the door.
    I took a peek through the door peephole and saw a woman with cinnamon-colored skin, rather dark wild hair, and Middle Eastern features.
    I couldn’t see much through the little round opening but I could see that she looked nervous and stressed.
    I opened the door a little, keeping my shoulder against it, and asked, “Can I help you?”
    She stared at me as if she was puzzled, even dazed. The first thing that struck me was that she’d had a bad drug trip.
    â€œAre you all right?” I asked.
    She pulled a blade out of her pocket and lurched forward, jabbing it at me.
    I immediately shoved the door forward with my shoulder. The pointed end of what looked like a letter opener went into the wood.
    She pushed against the door and I pushed back in panic as hard as I could. The door finally closed and the latch caught. She kicked at the door as I ran for my phone.
    As I frantically pressed 911 on my cell phone, I raced for the window.
    This was New York—I could be sliced and diced by this crazy woman by the time it took police to arrive.
    I shouted “Help!” out the window as the 911 line rang and rang and then I got an inspired idea, remembering what I’d been told at a self-defense class to shout in an emergency: Don’t shout help because no one wants to get involved.
    Instead, I screamed, “Fire! Fire!”
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    The sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one.
    â€”RUDYARD KIPLING, “TOMLINSON”

5
    Cursed . That’s how I felt about my life. A computer geek bill collector disgraces me to the whole city and a wild-eyed woman tries to ventilate me with a letter opener—all on the same morning.
    Some sort of biblical retribution for a life not well spent?
    Bad karma for something I did in a past life?
    Did I offend those three goddesses the Greeks called the Fates?
    Someone who didn’t like my art advice tormenting me with a Gypsy’s evil eye?
    A woman paying me back for sleeping with her man by sticking pins in a voodoo doll?
    Getting involved with the gold mask of that Babylonian queen that’s said to have caused more misfortune than God smit Egypt with?
    The list seemed endless.
    I didn’t know the source of the damnation, but it seemed obvious that I was throwing snake eyes and it wasn’t even Friday the thirteenth.
    After I screamed “Fire!” I shouted to the maniacal woman on the other side of the door that the cops were on their way.
    As I cautiously went back to the door with a butcher knife in hand and looked