Book of Nathan (42 page)

“Which means?”

“Has to do with a promise Arthur made to his daughter. A
promise that was more important than his or anyone else’s life.”

“Yeah?” Paula gave me an inquisitive look. “Must have been
some promise.”

“It had to do with coat hangers and back alleys. Silverstein
was looking for something that would keep women from dying the way his daughter
was butchered.”

Paula turned her attention back to the charred body. “Did he
find it? Whatever he was looking for?”

I stared at the puddle of plastic leaking out of
Silverstein’s tuxedo jacket. The liquefied remains of the
Book of Nathan
disk.

“We’ll never know.”
  

Chapter 29

Doug
ordered the Colonel’s extra crispy drumstick, one hot and spicy breast, two
original-recipe wings, sides of coleslaw, fried potato wedges, and a hot
biscuit.

“Which unlucky artery gets clogged today?” I asked. We were
parked opposite each other at one of the few unoccupied tables inside a
Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on the outskirts of New Brunswick.

“Don’t hassle me, Bullet.” Doug gave me a flip of his right
hand as he talked. Mistake. His thumb caught the edge of his tray and sent it
skidding over a thin layer of grease that coated the tabletop. Doug lunged and made
a miraculous save.

“After everything I’ve done for you? I have a right to
hassle.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Manny Maglio put a lot of zeroes on his check to the United
Way, didn’t he? When you get your bonus this year from Harris & Gilbarton,
buy me dinner. And forget about fast food.”

“Give me a break.” Doug dropped his chicken wing. “You
roasted a billionaire who could have put the United Way on easy street for the
next century.”

“If Silverstein hadn’t died, he’d have been slammed with all
kinds of charges, including murder and attempted murder. After the justice
system got through with him, the United Way would be looking at leftovers at
best.”

“Where are you from—Mars?” Doug asked. “Silverstein wouldn’t
have been found guilty of anything. Remember the O.J. equation? Put money in
the mitt and you have to acquit. Silverstein could have bought his way out of
any courtroom in America.”

“You’re forgetting about Thaddeus Dong. He would have taken
his boss down with him.”

“Nice theory,” countered Doug, “but Dong isn’t doing much
talking, is he? And I doubt he ever will since nobody’s been able to find the
bastard.”

How a man the size of a water tower could have gotten off
Ellis Island the night Arcontius was murdered and Silverstein incinerated was a
question that continued to be an embarrassment to police departments on either
side of the Hudson River. A DNA check of the blood splattered on the floor of
the main building’s Research Library confirmed Dong had been injured. With or
without outside assistance, the Asian had disentangled himself from the heavy
steel shelving I had used to disable him and then did a disappearing act.

“You know, it’s amazing how no one buys my story,” I
grumbled.

“They bought half of it,” noted Doug.

He was right. Fifty percent of what I had to say was about
Thaddeus Dong, and that information was considered credible mainly because it
was backed by two Venezuelans who once worked for Silverstein. After their
arrest on unrelated charges, they plea bargained for a reduced sentence by
telling police when and how Dong wandered over to the dark side. That news
prompted a second autopsy of Abraham Arcontius’s remains and a conclusion that
his neck injuries were not consistent with a fall down a flight of stairs. More
importantly, the two men disclosed that it was Arcontius who hired a Caracas
hit man to do damage to Benjamin Kurios for reasons unknown. A warrant was
issued for Dong, but he was still among the missing. I wondered if he were
playing basketball in Myanmar or pushing up daisies in Jersey. Either way, it
wasn’t likely he would be going to trial.

The other half of my story—the part about Arthur
Silverstein—was tucked away in a “don’t tarnish a great man’s image” drawer.
Seems nobody wanted to believe the billionaire was crazy enough to order
Abraham Arcontius’s execution. And the possibility that Arthur had something to
do with Benjamin Kurios’s murder was absurd. When I claimed that Kurios was
actually Silverstein’s son, there was a lot of laughter followed by a warning
that libeling a deceased, wealthy man, not to mention the country’s greatest
evangelist, bordered on heresy.

“Arthur was a rich coot who had Lewy body dementia,” Doug
reminded me. “His problem was that he went a little haywire now and then. Poor s.o.b.
See, that’s the kind of thing that gets you pitied not vilified.”

“So, Silverstein goes to his grave unscathed,” I bitched.

“And you go back to running the Get-Away.” Doug paused to
attack his chicken. “Does he know it was you who saved his weird-looking ass?”

“Who?”

“Zeuzamobroth.”

“Zeusenoerdorf. And it was a team effort that got him out of
jail, not just me. Doc Waters, Yigal Rosenblatt, Maurice Tyson. Even Twyla
Tharp. They all did their thing.”

“You hang with some strange people, Bullet,” said Doug. “I’m
curious—do you buy the FBI’s theory? That a bad cop stole the
Book of Nathan
disk
and milked it for a few million?”
  
 

“Could have happened that way.”

“Want to know what I think?”

“Not really.”

Doug folded his arms. “I’m going to tell you anyway. I don’t
believe for a minute that there’s a cop counting his chips in the Grand
Caymans.”

“Really?”

“I understand Yigal Rosenblatt and Twyla Tharp are engaged.”

“Change of subject?”

Doug cracked a half smile. “No—the subjects are
interconnected.”

“Hey, you should be jumping for joy. Twyla’s getting
married—to a lawyer
.
That’s got to be worth another mega-donation from Manny Maglio.”

“Word is that Yigal wants his little woman to quit Universal
Studios and play housewife.”

“So I hear,” I replied. “Mrs. Rosenblatt will be giving up
her career.”

Doug unwound his arms and returned to his fried chicken.
“Which one?”

“Any and all,” I answered, hoping I was correct.

“I got word that Twyla’s going to be a stay-at-home wife
living in an expensive neighborhood just outside of Orlando,” Doug informed me.

“That right?” I pretended to be ignorant. Only two days ago,
Twyla had sent me a photo of the million-dollar pad the Rosenblatts planned to
purchase.

“Where do you think Yigal got the money to buy a pricey
home? And how’s he going to keep up his new lifestyle on what he makes?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he signed a book deal. Could be
Gafstein & Rosenblatt landed a bunch of new clients.”

“Or, it could be Yigal understood perfectly well what Zeus said
to him the first time the two met.”

“Understood what?”

“Zeus told Yigal that he stuck the
Book of Nathan
CD
under a rock not far from Kurios’s body. Rosenblatt claimed he couldn’t
understand a word Zeus was saying. But supposing that wasn’t true. Suppose
Yigal knew exactly where to find the disk and got his hands on it. Then he
decided to auction the disk off. Supposing it was Yigal Rosenblatt
who got
Quia Vita
to fork over two point five million dollars and pulled another two point five
million out of Abraham Arcontius’s pocket?”

“That’s conjecture gone wild,” I said.
 

“Is it? Didn’t you tell me that Yigal went to see some guy
in Weehawken a while back?”

“So?”

“So, he takes a little side trip while he’s in the
neighborhood. Hops on the ferry at Liberty State Park and heads for Ellis
Island. While he’s there, he visits the Immigrant Wall of Honor and sticks the
Book of Nathan
disk under the panel that has Osman Seleucus’s name on it. You and I both know
the rest.”

There were other chapters to the story that I was sure Doug
knew nothing about. Like the $40,000 donation Rosenblatt pledged to the Gateway
last week. Certain things are best left unspoken.

“We’ll probably never figure out what happened,” I said.

Doug gave me a how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am? look.
“Something else I’ve been thinking about.”

“Donating half your Harris & Gilbarton bonus to the
Gateway Shelter?”

“You’re hilarious. I’ve been thinking a lot about Henri Le
Campion. After translating the
Book
of Nathan,
Henri hid the original scrolls.”

“So they say.”

“Which means if they’re discovered, we get an answer.”

“To what?”

“Personhood, ensoulment, abortion. We’ll find out who’s
right and who’s not.”

“It won’t be that cut and dried,” I predicted.

Doug tapped a half-eaten drumstick on his plate. “Why not?
The book shows up, God speaks, and the world listens.”

“I’m telling you—it’s not going to happen.”

“You’re a cynic.”

“Just a realist. Depending on your point of view, you’ll
either buy what the book has to say or write it off as bullshit. That’s what
Silverstein, Arcontius, and Russet intended to do.”

Doug seemed disappointed. He was one of those people who
longed for clarity. “You could be wrong. Maybe the book will get people
thinking differently.”

“Doubtful. Flexible thinking doesn’t usually line up with
topics like ensoulment and abortion.”

Doug cocked his head. “I love your rosy outlook.”

“It comes from studying the human condition. And I’m in
class every day.”

“Yeah, you are. Every day.”

After lunch, I dropped Doug off at the New Brunswick train
station, made a U-turn, and pointed my Buick toward the Gateway. The car began
sputtering and bucking just as Doc had predicted it would. I didn’t mind. I had
a lot of practice being around things and people that didn’t work quite right.

Miklos
Zeusenoerdorf was where I had left him two hours ago—seated outside my office
stuffing first-aid products and toiletries into gift boxes that Johnson &
Johnson would be distributing at a dinner event later in the month. The Gateway
and Goodwill Industries competed for pick-and-pack contracts that were big on
repetition and light on intellect. We bid low on the J&J job mainly because
I wanted to keep Zeus busy for another week.
 

“He owes you his life,” Doc said, strolling into my office
holding a shabby canvas duffel bag. “And not just because you kept him from
being fried in Florida. It’s how you help keep him going every day. Fact is,
it’s how you help a lot of people.”

Doc wasn’t the kind to hand out compliments. This had to be
a warm-up to something else he wanted to say. He took another side trip before
getting to the point.

“The way you still talk about her—” Doc said, looking at the
framed photo of my wife that I kept on my desk. “Never met her, but I have this
feeling I know the lady.”

For the most part, I kept my personal life under wraps at
the Gateway. But there were occasions when I’d field questions about Anne and
my answers never failed to give away my feelings. “You two would have been good
friends,” I speculated.

“I think that’s true,” said Doc. “And I think that if she
were around, you’d be getting high marks.”

I glanced at Anne. A ray of afternoon sunlight leaked into
my office, and her picture seemed to radiate. Doc was right—my wife would have
been first in line to tell me that what I did for Zeus was worth a hundred
times what Harris & Gilbarton paid Doug Kool. The professor studied my face
as I looked at the picture of a woman who had literally changed my life. If he
expected to see an expression of contentment that came from knowing how proud
Anne might be, then I let him down. Contentment didn’t come easy to someone
haunted by a memory that left me with inconsolable loneliness.