Book of Nathan (28 page)

Just
after six, the phone rang again. Thinking it might be Arcontius, I let the
answering machine collect the call. When I heard Doug’s voice, I picked up.

“You’re in,” he said.

“Meaning what?”

“You have a seat at the Silverstein testimonial dinner.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What about Doc Waters and Maurice Tyson?”

Doug coughed out the news like a piece of gristle. “They’ll
be working as bus boys. Remember—if either of them gets out of line, the United
Way’s going to feed me my family jewels.”

“Beats the crap you usually eat.”

“Hilarious. By the way, everyone on the island wears a tux.
That includes the worker bees. So get a couple for One Nut Waters and Mike
Tyson.”

“Maurice. It’s Maurice Tyson.”

“He still has to wear a tux.”

“That could be a budgetary problem.”

“Why aren’t I surprised? Call Hinkle’s in Edison. They owe
me a favor.”

“No charge?”

I could practically hear Doug compressing his lips. “I’ll
put a call in to Hinkle. I can’t believe how much I do for you.”

“Or to
me,”
I said. “What about Ruth Silverstein’s doc?”

“His name is Meseck. I’m working on him.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not welcome. By the way, Maglio wants Twyla on her
way to Florida by Friday.”

“Friday? Are you nuts? I can’t move her until Sunday—the day
after the Ellis Island dinner.”

“Not good enough. She has to be in Florida by Friday. If she
isn’t, plan on moving to Bosnia.”

“I’ve got a job, for godsakes. I need to find a stand-in and
I’ve got to—”

“I’ve done my bit,” Doug broke in. “Now do yours. Oh, yeah,
something else. Maglio wants to see you tomorrow afternoon. Any time before
five at his office in Edison.”

“Not a chance.” I wasn’t about to consort with an organized
crime icon unless such a meeting came with a monstrous payoff.

Doug understood what kind of carrot he needed to wave in
front of my nose. “Manny has something to tell you in person. He wouldn’t give
me any specifics. Only that it’s very important and it’s not about Twyla.
Something to do with what happened at the Orlando airport and the New Brunswick
Hyatt.”

Chapter 18

Manny
Maglio ran his seedy empire from a four-room office tacked on to Climax
—
a
stucco, windowless nudie bar that fronted on one of Edison’s busiest streets.
At two in the afternoon, there were only a few vehicles in the parking
lot—mostly pickups and a couple of beat-up sedans. I pulled my Buick to the
rear of the building and looked for a back door employee entrance.

I had tried calling Maglio earlier in the day, thinking I
could take care of business via the phone. Maglio’s assistant, who sounded like
Marilyn Monroe with asthma, told me her boss had to see me in person. So here I
was, face-to-face with a guard the size of the Statue of Liberty who conducted
a full-body pat down before he let me through the door.

Maglio’s office was surprisingly conservative. Dark paneling
dotted with framed certificates and awards from the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary
Club, Knights of Columbus, and United Way. I expected calendars with naked
women and lamps that looked like sex organs. Instead, there were pictures of a
dark-haired woman in her fifties and two girls, each a little on the heavy
side, who looked to be in their teens.

The woman who had answered the phone earlier in the day
walked into the room. She didn’t fit my mental profile of a porno king’s personal
assistant. The lady was plump, unattractive, and chewed gum with a vengeance.
She told me Maglio was handling a situation in another part of the building and
should be finished shortly. I wondered what the situation looked like and which
parts were being handled.

Maglio charged into his office a few minutes later. Twyla’s
uncle was fifty pounds overweight and wore what little hair he had in a shaggy
dark semicircle around a gleaming pink dome. His gray suit was wrinkled and a
pair of half-rim glasses hung by a black cord around his neck. In a lineup,
he’d be the last person picked as a mob boss and first as a CPA.

“Sorry.” Maglio was breathing heavily and the collar of his
white shirt looked damp. “Wednesday’s when we audition. Every man’s fantasy, right?
Twenty women takin’ their clothes off.”

Maglio gulped down a quarter can of Red Bull, licked his
puffy lips, and plopped into a high-back leather desk chair.

“Here’s the thing,” he went on. “I’d pay nineteen of them
broads to keep their clothes on.”

I threw back a smile, but I sensed Maglio wasn’t trolling
for laughs. He was looking for commiseration. “Hard job,” I said.

“It’s a bitch, is what. I got places from Tampa to Boston,
and it’s the same shit all over. Not enough talent. Top of that, you got cops
lookin’ up your ass twenty four seven.”

“Has to be tough.”

“Tough?
You
don’t wanna know. The thing of it is, I’m runnin’ an entertainment business, is
all. Like Disney, MGM, or Universal, for chrissakes. But think I get respect
for givin’ the public what it wants? Not a chance.”

I had opened up a wound, and Maglio was bleeding self-pity.
I nodded to the framed photo of the woman and two teenage girls. “At least your
family appreciates what you do.”

“Them? They could give a crap what I do as long as I pay the
bills and stay outta the news.”

I doubted he was exaggerating. Mrs. Maglio and her two
spoiled offspring were probably sitting comfortably a safe distance from
Edison, where friends and neighbors pretended Mr. Maglio was just another
run-of-the-mill businessman. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah,” Maglio said and shifted his large buttocks the way
people do when they either have hemorrhoids or are about to dive into an
awkward conversation. “The thing is, I can’t use the phone when I wanna talk private.
Which is why I had to set up this here meetin’. I got more people tapping me
than a hooker on Saturday night.”

Maglio would know.

“I couldn’t figure how to handle this exactly,” Maglio
continued. “So, I thought I’d lay it out to you. Man to man and all that shit.”

Wife and daughters excluded, how many people had ever seen
Maglio looking this ill at ease? Those who had were probably parked under a
headstone.

“The thing is, the two hit men who got the contract—”

Maglio’s chunky assistant broke into the room. “Baltimore’s
on the phone. Pasties never showed up.”

“Jesus, Mildred, can’t you see I’m in a meetin’ here?”

Mildred?
The
emperor of smut and God knows what else had an assistant named Mildred?

“It’s Wednesday, remember?” the lady croaked. “You know,
Wednesday.
Cop
night?”

“See, this is what I gotta deal with,” Maglio said, his face
tight with stress. “This dancer, Bambi—she’s got nipples as big as manhole
covers. Every Wednesday, Baltimore sends in its inspectors, right? If Bambi
doesn’t have them things covered, I get fined. Know how many times I had to pay
off that goddamned city just because they don’t make pasties the size of paper
plates?”

I checked my watch. “About why you wanted to see me—”

“Oh, yeah. Well the thing is, I din’t know nothin’ about the
contract until the two a-holes blew up the airport terminal in Orlando.”
Maglio’s eyes pointed to the floor as he talked.
 

“What contract?”

Maglio talked over my question. “Ten or fifteen years ago,
this wouldn’t-a happened. I mean, everybody knew where the lines were and you
din’t cross ’em.”

I had no idea where Maglio was heading but wherever it was,
he was taking the long way around.

“Let me make sure I have this right,” I said. “Two men were
hired to set off a bomb—”

Maglio shook his head. “No, no! Nobody told ’em to bomb
nothin’. See, that’s the thing. Most of the people ya hire today are worth
shit.”

“But the two are hit men, right?”

Manny nodded. “Imports. That’s the thing these days. Bring a
couple of illegals in for a hit and then ship ’em out when the job’s over.
Trouble is, you never know what these bastards are gonna do.”

The cloud was slowly lifting. The Hispanics brought in to
take care of business had used a bulldozer to squash a gnat. Decimating the
Continental ticket counter was a case of overkill that still missed the target.
So what about the incident that turned the Hyatt parking deck into a shooting
gallery?” I asked Maglio.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Jesus, can you believe it?” Manny took
a deep breath and whistled. “They said Four Putt Gonzales wasn’t supposed to
get popped. An accident. But that don’t matter. The thing of it is, they put a
bullet in somebody I know. Even worse, they did it on my turf!”

Two uncontrollable, incompetent wild men were on the loose
and at least one of them was still healthy enough to do more damage. Find out
who hired the Hispanics and maybe there was a way of calling off the dogs. “Who
put out the contract?” I asked.

“Yeah, well the thing is, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with
that. It was the Orlando family.” Maglio waved his left hand like he was wiping
a countertop. “No, no, that’s not right. Orlando was fine until the Philly boys
moved south. It’s them bastards from Philadelphia, who don’t give a squat about
nothin’ or nobody.”

Maglio seemed to be drifting toward a discourse on the
ethical erosion of America’s organized crime movement. Not what I wanted to
hear. “You know the Hispanics almost took out your niece.”

Maglio dabbed his brow. “I know. I know. Jesus—my brother
must be floppin’ around in his coffin. I’m supposed to be his kid’s guardian,
for chrissakes.”

“So how does this thing get fixed?”

Maglio pulled at his collar. “It’s done. Taken care of.
That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

“What?”

“The two Latin guys are finished. The contract’s off the
table. It’s over.”

Maglio had a reputation for being the alpha boss among the
mob set. Although he looked more like a government bureaucrat than a gangster,
he obviously had underworld pull. “Going to tell me how you worked this out?”

“Me and the old Philly family reached an understanding.
That’s all you need to know. ’Cept that I wouldn’t be doin’ this if it wasn’t
for my brother’s crazy daughter. I don’ want her getting’ whacked, which is why
I got this whole thing put back in the drawer.”
 

Maglio began fumbling with some papers on his desk that I
took as a signal that the meeting was over. But I wasn’t about to leave until a
couple of other issues were resolved.

“There’s a kid in jail who’s charged with the Orlando
airport bombing,” I said.

“The Arab?”

“He needs to be released.”

“It’ll happen,” Maglio promised. “Give it a day or so. The
cops are gonna try coverin’ their asses before the kid files a wrongful
detention lawsuit.”

It sounded like Maglio knew a lot about wrongful detention.

“What about Juan Perez?”

“Who?”

“Perez. The Venezuelan who was lit on fire in Orlando.”

Maglio gave me a blank stare. “Don’t know nothin’ about a
Venezuelan. The contract was with a couple of Dominicans.”

Now it was my turn to look puzzled. I thought for sure there
was a connection between the man Zeus had seen behind the wheel of the
mysterious blue sedan and the two murder-for-hire thugs. Maybe not.

Maglio’s assistant made another uninvited appearance.
“Crystal’s on the line.”

“Mildred, for godsakes.”

The woman yawned. “Needs a doctor in Atlanta. She’s got the
clap.”

Maglio brushed a few beads of sweat from his upper lip.
“Give me a couple a minutes, will ya?”