Book of Nathan (20 page)

I wasn’t happy. I’d wasted gas and time hauling my Buick
from New Brunswick to the hills of Somerset County. Plus I had an accumulated
sleep debt that was making me cranky.

“You couldn’t have picked up the damn phone and rescheduled
the meeting?”

“Mr. Silverstein sends his apologies. Did you forget the
arrangement, Mr. Bullock?”

“What arrangement?”

“Mr. Silverstein instructed you to work through me.”

That’s not exactly how I recalled the deal. To be truthful,
though, I had stopped listening when Arthur plunked two ten thousand dollar
checks in my paw.
 

“So, let me ask you again. What about the CD?”

“I’ll tell you what happened last night. But what I can’t
tell you is anything about a CD.”

“Perhaps you missed what I said. We know what happened last
night.”

I decided to toss Arcontius a cryptic question or two as a
defense.

“Last night’s meeting. How do you know what happened?”

“That’s not information we need to disclose.”
 

“Really? Well, then there’s no point in wasting any more of
your time or mine.”

Arcontius took a different tack. “When you and Mr.
Silverstein met, you had a conversation about the
Book of Nathan.
”

I drawled out a “So?”

“You were told Benjamin Kurios would be going public with
the
Book of Nathan
at his revival meeting in Orlando.”

“You’re right—that’s what I was told.”
 

“And Mr. Silverstein mentioned the book’s text had been
transcribed onto an encrypted CD that Dr. Kurios had with him the night he
died—a CD that’s now missing.”

Dealing with Arcontius was like swimming in pond scum. If I
couldn’t have face time with Silverstein, then I wanted out of the pond.
Continuing this little dance with Silverstein’s lieutenant was as pointless as
it was frustrating. I was about to end the morning meeting when the snake
unwound his skinny frame and leaned over his desk.

“Let’s not stretch this lunacy out any longer,” Arcontius
said. “Yesterday afternoon, we received a message telling us the
Book of Nathan
disk is for sale.”

This was news I didn’t expect. My interest in making a quick
escape vanished. Whoever was shopping the stolen disk had to have something to
do with the Benjamin Kurios murder. As much as I wanted to get out of
Arcontius’s office and take a shower, I stayed put.

“Does the price include delivery and tax?”

“I’m so pleased you’re enjoying yourself,” Arcontius
grumbled. “Good humor is hard to come by when you’re facing the prospect of
paying five million dollars for a computer disk.”

“Five million—” Arthur Silverstein had piqued my curiosity
with his story about the
Book
of Nathan
disk. But there’s nothing like a multimillion dollar
price tag to really
perk
up one’s interest.

“Very clever marketing deal. The nonencrypted first part of
Le Campion’s disk gets sent to us in installments. Five separate e-mail
attachments. If we like what we see, each installment costs us five hundred
thousand, which we wire to an offshore account. Five installments. Two point
five million. Once all the earnest money is sent, we’re told where we can pick
up the actual disk—provided, of course, we cough up another two point five
million.”

Shades of my Madison Avenue days. Use the big tease to lure
in a buyer.
 

“Here’s where I think we are,” Arcontius went on. “You went
to the
Quia Vita
meeting last night to see how much money was in the room because maybe—just
maybe—the people connected to
Quia
Vita
’s
Order of Visio Dei could come up with more
than
the five million you want from Silverstein. In other words, I smell the start
of a bidding war. Am I heading in the right direction?”

“You’re walking backward. I don’t have the CD.”

“We both know better. Let me guess what happened in Orlando
on that fateful night. Your man, Mr. Zellendickol—

“Zeusenoerdorf. And he’s not my man.”

“Regardless. He did indeed kill Benjamin. Then he stole the
disk and handed it off to some other homeless bottom dweller who eventually
delivered the CD to you.”

“I’m not the guy with the CD.”

“Then I think you probably know who has it,” said Arcontius.
“However, let’s go with the remote possibility that you’re telling the truth.”

“Welcome to the world of reality.”

“It would be a healthy decision on your part to prove to Mr.
Silverstein and me that you don’t have the disk and you don’t know who does.”

“How do I do that?”

“Mr. Silverstein and I would like you to press Mr. Zeus— to
press your homeless friend to tell us what he
knows
about the disk. If he helps us find it along with the person or persons trying
to sell it, your chances of staying in Mr. Silverstein’s good graces go much
higher.”

I wasn’t about to let Arcontius know Zeus never mentioned a
CD. Of course, to my knowledge, he was never asked. And unless Zeus was
confronted with a specific question, he rarely contributed.

“Could be that by now, your CD has been copied,” I noted.

“Again, my compliments if you’re acting. But I think you
know as well as I do that half the disk is coded to permanently corrupt itself
if any attempt is made to copy its contents.”

I was no computer whiz kid, but even I could appreciate Le
Campion’s genius. I fished for more information. “If the book’s translation is
encrypted, figuring out what’s on the disk is going to be next to impossible.”

Arcontius sighed. “The text requires a translation key—a key
Benjamin had on his computer, which, you might be interested to know, we’ve
managed to acquire. We believe
Quia
Vita
also has the know-how to decode the disk if it’s ever located.”

“Sounds like it might be worth it for Silverstein to pay
five million to make sure
Quia
Vita
doesn’t get the disk.”

Arcontius gave me a hard look. “I’m sure you’d like me to
agree and hand over a check. Well, we’re not quite there yet, Mr. Bullock. For
the time being, let’s just say we’re considering the request.”

Arcontius’s well was just about dry. Time to push for a
close. “Where do we go from here?”

“That’s largely up to you. Get back to me within the next
twenty-four hours. Either admit you have the disk or tell us when you’ll be
making another trip to Orlando. And we want to discuss lowering the price. Five
million is too steep.”

I fought off the urge to squeeze Arcontius’s rope-like neck.
“You want me to jump through your hoop by this time tomorrow.”

“It’s in your best interest.”

“And if I don’t?”

Arcontius flicked out his tongue and ran it across his thin
lips. “Then we’ll know you can’t or won’t do much to solve our problem.”

“And what would that mean?”

“Terminating your consulting agreement.”

“You know what? I’m not happy about this
Abraham-in-the-middle arrangement. Whatever I have to say from here on will be
to Arthur Silverstein.”

Arcontius showed his teeth, a cross between a smile and a
sneer. “If you want to talk, you’ll do it through me. That’s the way Mr.
Silverstein wants it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then Mr. Dong gets involved. He’s very good at ensuring the
only people who enter Mr. Silverstein’s world do so through the chief of
staff’s door.”

I remembered Doug’s explanation of Arcontius’s blurry role
in the Silverstein organization. “I see.”

“I hope you do,” Arcontius said. He pressed an intercom
button on his phone and Dong appeared. “Show him out,” Arcontius instructed.

The sumo wrestler gripped my arm and hoisted me to my feet.

“Mr. Bullock,” Arcontius called as I was being pushed into
the mansion’s foyer. “Tomorrow. Don’t disappoint me.”
 

Chapter 13

Saturday
night’s eleven o’clock news opened with new developments in the Orlando Airport
bombing investigation. The FBI announced it was holding a twenty-five-year-old
Jordanian graduate student as a “person of interest.” Witnesses had spotted the
man leaving the airport minutes after the Continental ticket counter had been
decimated. The suspect was a member of a Tampa mosque that had been under
surveillance by the feds because of its “radical Islamic teachings.”

It was a relatively quiet weekend night at the Gateway. One
of my men was in the lockup on a drunk-and-disorderly charge and another was
getting stitches at a downtown health clinic after a run-in with six Rutgers
students. Doc Waters was helping me do a final nose count before we closed the
Gateway doors for the night. That’s when Four Putt Gonzales from the Hyatt
called.

“This thing is outta control,” he wailed. “Way
outta control. You gotta get down here,
Bullet. Right now.”

I figured whatever was bothering him must have something to
do with Twyla. Four Putt told me to meet him in the Hyatt parking garage in a
half hour. It was a pleasant enough night so I invited the professor to join me
for the fifteen-minute walk to the hotel.

The first level of the hotel’s multideck garage was dimly
lit and it took me a couple of minutes to spot Four Putt’s vintage Ford Crown
Victoria. Gonzales was as good at restoring old cars as he was bad at playing
golf.

I introduced Four Putt to the professor, which turned out to
be unnecessary since the two were acquainted.
 

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Four Putt opened the Ford’s front door. The dome light
ignited and I saw several cardboard boxes crammed into the backseat. “I got
more of these in the trunk!” Four Putt said.

“More what?”

“These.”
He
pulled a box out of the car and dropped it on the cement floor of the parking
deck. Four Putt leaned over to open the carton. “I don’t want her here, Bullet!
You told me there wasn’t gonna be no problems, right? Then I find out that not
only is she in the business, she’s doin’
business!”

The last time I saw Four Putt this animated was when he
hooked a new Titleist into a water hazard. “I don’t know what the hell you’re
talking about,” I said.

Four Putt stopped clawing at the top of the box. “Two goons show
up earlier tonight, drag me out here, and tell me this shit belongs to Twyla
Tharp. Said the stuff can’t stay in her apartment because it’s full of
fleas—some of which are probably hitchhiking their way into my
damn hotel.”

I glanced at Doc. The professor looked as confused as I did.

Four Putt finally ripped open the top of the carton and
straightened. “There.” He pointed at dozens of silver balls each about an inch
and a half in diameter.

Doc lifted one of the small globes out of the box. “Amazing!
I haven’t seen these since I was in China.”

“First, I thought they were ball bearings, for chrissakes,”
said Four Putt. “Felt like an idiot.”

“They’re Ben Wa balls,” Doc explained.

Four Putt threw up his hands. “Jesus, Bullet. She’s gonna be
selling these out of a room on the third floor.”

The professor lifted two balls from the box. “Premium grade.
Hollow with a small weight inside. Insert two of these in the vagina and it’s
magic time.”

I did another quick inspection of the Crown Victoria’s
interior. “These couldn’t all be Ben Was,” I said, all the while trying to
remember the last time I had seen the things. It was when I was a freshman in
college and Tracy Glivitz gave me tutoring lessons on everything erotic. She
said her pair of Ben Was never delivered an orgasm. Not once. We ended up using
them as marbles.