Book of Nathan (29 page)

“You’re gonna have to pay for the office visit,” Mildred
warned. “And the penicillin.”

“See, this is what I go through,” Maglio said once we were
alone again. “The thing of it is, it’s always like this. Never stops. Never.”

I leaned forward trying to capture Maglio’s full attention.
“You know I’m watching out for your niece until she starts work at Universal in
Orlando, right?”

“Yeah, and I really appreciate it. Doin’ a hell of a job.”

“Twyla’s with me a lot,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Which is good. It’s a good thing.”

“Neither one of us wants her hurt.”

Maglio spread his arms. “I told ya it’s all over. The
contract’s been pulled, and there ain’t gonna be nobody screwin’ with nobody no
more.”

“Glad to hear that,” I said. “But what I don’t understand is
why a couple of Dominicans would want me dead.”

Maglio looked at me like I was from Uranus. “Who said they
wanted you dead?”

“What?”

“Are you dense or somethin’? The target was always that
snitch bastard, One Nut Waters. If he didn’t clamp himself on you like a
jockstrap, there wouldn’t be no problem. He’d be dead and you’d be helpin’ my
niece get a new start in Florida.”

I felt a rush of relief—or was it stupidity? The Hispanic
assassins had nothing to do with the Kurios case or the
Book of Nathan.
It
was sheer happenstance that Twyla, Maurice, Four Putt Gonzales, and I had been
hanging around with a man who years ago had kicked the mob in the groin. When
Doc made an unexpected appearance in Orlando, he apparently jogged the memory
of a few Philly gangsters who had taken up retirement in the area. The bloodbath
that followed was all about payback and it was a miracle I was still alive.

“Why didn’t you ask Doc Waters to come here?” I asked. “You
could have told all this to his face.”

“The guy’s been runnin’ scared for years. Think he’d come
here knowin’ I was connected?”

Mildred reappeared carrying two sheets of paper that she
slapped on Maglio’s desk. They were legal-looking documents with a few words
marked by a yellow highlighter: lewd acts, exposure of genitalia, cease and
desist.

“Besides,” Maglio said and pushed the papers aside, “I
wouldn’t want that piece of garbage stinkin’ up my place. So, you go back and
tell that fart I saved his ass and the one nut he’s got left. You be sure an’
tell him that.”

Chapter 19

A
thin layer of smog caught the early rays of Thursday’s sun and turned the
Jersey horizon into a painter’s palette. It was six thirty a.m. and I was too
exhausted to catch the irony of how the coupling of Mother Nature and air
pollution could produce something so beautiful. Thanks to Doug Kool and Manny
Maglio, the only contemplation I could handle was where to find a strong cup of
coffee and a newspaper. I was about to take another unexpected trip to Florida,
and that impending reality along with yesterday’s meeting with Maglio had put
me in a stupor.

I walked three blocks to a convenience store and bought a
large Brazilian Brew
plus
a
New York Times.
Maglio’s
people had wasted no time. The front-page headline read:

Found Shot in Camden, NJ

Dominican
Drug Dealers

Linked
to Orlando Bombing

The paper reported that each man had been killed
execution-style, a single bullet through the back of the skull. An anonymous
phone call had led police to the murder scene—the caller also claiming the two
men were responsible for the Orlando airport disaster. Traces of C-4 were found
in the trunk of the car. An unnamed FBI spokesman said the explosive had
characteristics that matched samples taken from the Continental terminal blast.
Asked if the Jordanian graduate student being held in connection with the
airport bombing would be released, the FBI said authorities were checking to
determine if there were any connection between the student and the Dominicans.

At seven o’clock, I was back at the Gateway and Yigal
Rosenblatt drove to the front entrance exactly as planned. If it weren’t for an
interest in talking to Conway Kyzwoski’s wife, I would never have balled myself
up in the backseat of the lawyer’s Ford Taurus. A nonstop flight out of Newark
would have been the logical way to transport Twyla to Florida. But since Zeus’s
lawyer was reluctantly returning to Orlando, and since widow Kyzwoski lived in
a town close to the Route 95 interstate, I hitched a ride with Yigal and Twyla,
who was half asleep in the front passenger seat. Twelve hours later, we were cruising
into South Carolina.

“Take the next exit,” I told Yigal after we’d traveled about
a hundred miles through the Palmetto State. “Follow the signs to Goose Creek.”

“Why are we stopping here?” Twyla asked. I knew she was
fixated on Universal Studios, and anything that sidetracked us from getting to
Orlando would make her unhappy.
 

“Goose Creek’s where Conway Kyzwoski lives—or used to live,”
I said.
 

“Oh, God, poor Conway,” moaned Twyla with a kind of sadness
that comes from losing one’s pet dog, an intimate friend—or a client.

“This won’t take long. I have a few questions for Kyzwoski’s
wife.”
 

“So sorry for her.” It looked like Twyla had pushed the
rewind on her mental TiVo and was playing back that memorable moment when she
met Conway’s wife at the Wayside Motel. “Lost her husband and all. Glad she’s
got the Bible thing going. She’s got plenty of faith, which is what you need if
your spouse gets run over by a sausage.”

“Very religious woman,” Yigal reminded Twyla and me. “Faith
will help her heal even if she’s not Jewish.”

My memory flashed a picture of the bland-looking Ida
spouting scripture in her muumuu just as Yigal hooked left off of a main
east-west highway and onto a backwoods road.

“Pull in here,” I said, pointing to a dirt parking lot in
front of a run-down shack that housed the Pringletown Video and Bait Shop.
Yigal braked to a stop, and I ventured into the shabby store hoping to find
someone who could tell me where we were and where Goose Creek happened to be.
         

The shop was empty except for a puny woman wearing an apron
who sat behind an antique cash register.

“Happen to know where I can find the Paradise Mobile
Estates?” I asked. “It’s a trailer park in Goose Creek.”

The lady’s agate eyes scanned me from top to bottom. “Get
back on I-26, head east, and you’ll see signs for Goose Creek. The trailer
park’s on the main road not far off from Sonic.”

“Thanks.” I bought a pack of Twizzlers as a way of showing
my gratitude.

The woman wagged her finger at me. “You’re the one who was
on TV. Talkin’ about your wiener, wasn’t you?”

There are certain inalienable rights that come with being
anonymous and that suits me just fine. So, when an ABC news team had asked me
for a couple of comments about the Kielbasavan incident, it never occurred to
me that my remarks would be beamed coast to coast. But they were and I
unwittingly became an icon of stupidity even in the backwaters of America.

“It wasn’t my wiener,” I said softly. “It was actually a
kielbasa.”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

“So if it wasn’t your wiener, why was you talkin’ about it?”

“I made a mistake,” I admitted. “I should have kept my mouth
shut.”

“If it weren’t your wiener, that’s what you should-a done.”

I buried the urge to throw the old lady into the Pringletown
night crawler bin, barged out of the shop, and climbed into Yigal’s Taurus.

Fifteen minutes later, we spotted the sign:
Paradise Mobile Estates: A Friendly
Place for Friendly People
.
Yigal
turned left and we surveyed rows of doublewides, all of which were alike except
for the piles of junk in front of each.

“Excuse me,” I said to a kid who looked no more than
thirteen, but sauntered around like a punk twice his age. “Do you know where
the Kyzwoskis live?”

The South Carolina sun had long gone and the kid’s dark skin
blended into the night.

“Waccha want Ephraim for?”

“You know A-Frame?” Twyla squealed and turned on the car’s
dome light. “Where’s his house, honey?”

With Twyla’s torso fully illuminated, the kid’s temperament
turned. It’s hard to look surly when you’re wearing a smile that travels from
one pierced ear to the other. Without lifting his eyes from Twyla’s chest, the
kid gave us directions to the Kyzwoski residence.

Yigal rolled through Paradise Mobile Estates searching for a
white trailer with a partially dismantled Buick in the front yard. Recalling
that Conway was an auto repairman, I guessed the remains of the car had to be a
legacy to the late Mr. Kyzwoski. When we found the place, I told Yigal and
Twyla to stay in the Taurus while I conferred with Kyzwoski’s widow. The last
thing I needed was a confrontation between Twyla and Mrs. K. who, I remembered,
was a woman scorned.

I maneuvered my way around piles of litter and knocked on
the Kyzwoski door. A-Frame’s brother, Noah, answered, skittered away, and returned
with Ida who looked as happy to see me as a repo man.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Kyzwoski,” I opened. “My name
is Rick Bullock. We met in Orlando—”

“I know who you are.”

“Well, I wanted to stop by—and, uh, well, I’m very sorry
about your loss.”

“You din’t come all the way here to tell me that.”
 

“I was driving to Florida and happened to notice Goose Creek
wasn’t that far out of the way—”

“What is it you want?”

While I was struggling to fabricate a reason that wouldn’t
get the Kyzwoski door slammed in my face, Ephraim scooted up to the front door
on a battered bicycle.

“Ain’t you the one that got my pappy kilt?” he asked. He
wore a stained tee-shirt that bulged at the beltline—Conway’s kid, all right.

“No,” I said. “There was an accident and I just happened to
be there when your father died.”

“Yeah, well, mama says pappy got kilt ’cause of you.”

What I wanted to scream back was:
If your redneck pappy hadn’t been
shadowing me, he’d still be spitting tobacco and making home brew.
But
instead I turned my attention back to Ida.

“If I could have just a moment, Mrs. Kyzwoski,” I said.
“Without the children, I mean.”

Ida whacked the two boys away, then pushed open a ripped
screen door and nodded me into her home. What was supposed to be the living
room was a trash heap except for two adornments. First, a frosted acrylic
crucifix was standing tall on a shabby end table. It was lit from the inside
and its multicolor glow gave the cross a kind of disco look. The second was a
large color print of Jesus and a host of angels caught up in a swirl of white
clouds. A tiny spotlight tacked to the ceiling made the picture sparkle.

I couldn’t help but feel a tad sorry for the late Conway
Kyzwoski. His living quarters had been a shrine and his wife was having a love
affair with another man. Maybe Kyzwoski shelled out a few dollars for some
extramarital attention now and then because he couldn’t find what he needed at
home. What chance would a mortal have when competing with the Son of God?

Ida motioned to an upholstered chair that had long ago lost
most of its stuffing.

“You know I was with Conway when he died,” I began.

“I do.”

“He said some things before he passed away.” Passed away
were not words that went with Conway
Kyzwoski. Croaked
would
have been more fitting.

Ida’s hard shell started to crack. “Like what?”

“Well, at the end, he said he didn’t want the boys to know
what really happened in New Brunswick.”

“Go on.”

“He wanted me to tell you something, too.”