by Curt Weeden
Yes, there’s bad news.” The old disagreeable Agnes had returned. “Both Ms. Tharp’s suits are going to require alterations.” She put her hands on her hips. “Plan to pick them up tomorrow morning.”
I sucked in a lungful of purified Nordstrom’s air. “That won’t do. The reason we’re here is for Ms. Tharp to have at least one of those dresses—”
“Suits, Mr. Bullock.”
“Regardless, one of those things has to be ready to wear in time for Ms. Tharp to make a meeting at three o’clock this afternoon.”
“Quite impossible.”
“I can help out, Miss Agnes,” Twyla piped up. “I love to sew. My friends tell me I stitch like a bitch.”
Agnes may have had the same vision as I did because her knees began to wobble.
“Nothing leaves this store unless our staff does the necessary alterations.”
I could see the rigidity setting in. If I didn’t act pronto, the woman’s rigor mortis could make the entire Nordstrom visit futile.
“Could we talk?” I asked, leading her to the same neutral corner where my waste-management system had nearly broken down more than an hour ago.
“Nordstrom’s has a tailor somewhere on the premises?” I inquired.
“We have a seamstress in our department, but she’s completely backed up . . .”
I cut her off. “Manny Maglio.”
“What?”
“The Manny Maglio that Miss Thorpe was talking about a couple of minutes ago. He’s a very dangerous man who has a connection to your store. You don’t want to lose your job, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then we have to make sure Ms. Tharp is dressed in her new wardrobe by two p.m. at the latest.”
“Yes, but—”
“There can’t be any ‘buts.’ Somebody has put a boot on Nordstrom’s neck. They want Ms. Tharp to show up in the right clothing for an interview she has later today.”
Irritation and anger turned Agnes’s eyes to little balls of fire. “The garments will be altered, and you can pick them up after lunch,” she said quietly. “No earlier than one thirty.” She turned her back and vanished behind a rack of Eileen Fisher dresses.
“Thanks!” I said, hoping Agnes might hear me. Even if she happened to, thanks didn’t seem to be something that came her way all that often.
Chapter 6
Twyla Tharp pushed a red M&M through her high-glossed lips a few minutes after we left the Florida Mall parking lot. “What exactly is kosher?”
“Food approved under Jewish dietary laws,” Doc Waters answered while digging into the bag of candy I had bought earlier in the morning.
“Yigal says he’s kosher and Jewish,” Twyla said. “I told him I used to be a Catholic and in CYO. But then when the bishop said I was going to hell because of what me and him did, I turned Presbyterian.”
There was a long story locked behind Twyla’s words, but I was too tired to open the door.
“Yigal says there’s no reason why I couldn’t go kosher,” Twyla continued.
“If anyone could help make that happen, Yigal would be the man,” I said.
“Well anyway, thanks for buyin’ the M&Ms, Bullet.” Twyla leaned across the front seat of the rented Mitsubishi to stroke my right shoulder.
“Yeah, thanks, man,” Maurice called out from the backseat. The professor pitched in his own few words of appreciation. It was noon, and after fasting all morning, a couple of handfuls of confectionaries had just made me a minihero. Ironic. Working my tail off to save the life of some social outcast wasn’t likely to buy me so much as a tip of the hat.
“Where we going now?” Maurice asked.
“Lunch at Friedman’s Restaurant. So go easy on the candy.” The older I got, the more I sounded like my mother. If only—
Catherine Manchester Bullock never saw a socially relevant finish line she didn’t want to cross. It didn’t matter how many hurdles stood in the way. The goal was to get to the end no matter how much energy and personal sacrifice it took. My mother had a supply of grit and determination that made her as tough as she was inspirational.
My parents believed experience was a far better instructor than talk. So, from age ten until I was out of high school, my mother hauled me to a soup kitchen at Camden’s Fourth Street Mission. Each Monday and Thursday evening, I helped feed a long line of community castoffs. And although it was my late wife who turned me into a hardcore advocate for the homeless, it was my mother who first opened my eyes to what it was like to be destitute in America.
I still remember the ragged, hungry army that drifted into the mission. First were the women worn down by the ghetto and too many kids. They dragged themselves into the dining hall looking haggard and exhausted. Most ate dead-eyed and sad, oblivious to their whining and screaming offspring doomed by a gene pool and an environment to repeat the fate of their moms.
Next came the surly young men who usually showed up with an attitude that Mrs. Bullock wouldn’t let in the front door. They had to leave their boom boxes and swagger outside if they expected a hot meal. Most of the time, my mother got her way plus a reluctant dose of respect.
Last to arrive were the street people—the men and occasional women who smelled as bad as they looked. They hobbled up to the food line mumbling incoherently and scratching lice from their oily hair. In the early years, I was sickened by the grossness and putrid odor. But my mother taught me that mental illness or misfortune didn’t justify avoidance or contempt. In time, I traded my fear and loathing for as much understanding and compassion as a teenager could muster.
A hot meal didn’t come without a price. After dinner, there was a requisite processional to the chapel where the poorest of the poor sat on wooden benches half listening to a preacher sermonize about the apostles, heaven, and hell. My mother resented the proselytizing, but she was as much a pragmatist as she was an agnostic. She knew it was religion that put the mission in the ghetto. If it weren’t there, hunger would take its place. It was a matter of capitalizing on the opportunity and minimizing the downside—another one of life’s lessons passed along to her son.
While Mrs. Bullock forced herself to live with the mandatory after-dinner homilies, she wasn’t shy about debating religion with the mission’s born-again director, a recovering alcoholic who credited his six years of sobriety to Jesus Christ his Savior. They were an odd couple, this man and my mother. For some inexplicable reason, they became close friends who thoroughly enjoyed arguing their polar opposite positions. He never strayed from his religious dogma while my mother plucked the inconsistencies from the Old and New Testaments. But there were also issues that put them on common ground.
Both were incensed by the nation’s miserable treatment of the three million homeless men and women who wandered the nation’s streets and back alleys. They saw firsthand how poverty and disease walked together. The homeless who rambled into the mission each night weren’t just poor, they were sick with tuberculosis, AIDS, malnutrition, infections, and a long list of other ailments. Alcohol, drugs, and mental illness were demons for over half of them; physical disabilities and bad luck plagued the rest.
The director and my mom agreed overpopulation was the root of most of the world’s problems. They talked about how the world had to absorb 210,000 new lives every day—and how this extraordinary population growth was stressing the planet. The director was for distributing condoms and tying tubes—but not for abortion. My mother insisted abortion had to be part of the solution. They went back and forth for years, never coming to terms.
My mother died a few months before I met Anne. Had she come to know her future daughter-in-law before a short, agonizing illness pummeled her body and eventually her spirit, she would have closed out her life with a smile. Her baton had been passed. Doug Kool once hinted that I married Anne because she was my mother incarnate, but I know that’s not true. There were too many differences between the two women. What I did marry, though, were my mother’s ideas and ideals.
Twyla snapped me out of my reverie. “You okay, Bullet?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Twyla applied another coat of lip gloss. “Is Friedman’s Restaurant kosher?”
“Kosher as they come.” Friedman’s Nosh & Grill was Yigal Rosenblatt’s idea. After Yigal had invited himself to lunch, he confessed to being “religiously constrained”—PC talk meaning he was kosher through and through. Which was why I was now turning into Friedman’s parking lot.
Yigal was waiting for us when we stopped in front of the nearly empty diner. Zeus’s attorney and Twyla reunited like they hadn’t seen each other in months and the happy couple led the way to a round table near the back of the restaurant.
“Yiggy,” Twyla purred, studying the menu, “this is all so foreign.”
She was right. The bread was Pas Yisroel and the meat, Debraciner. I had no idea what that meant. Even Yigal was confused. With my head still aching and my body feeling the effects of too little sleep, I was ready for anything that would give me some relief. A glass of an Israeli chardonnay got me moving in the right direction. Next, like everyone else at the table, I ordered a cup of soup.
“What are these things?” Twyla poked at a half dozen round objects bobbing up and down in the broth.
“Matzo balls,” Yigal answered. “Definitely. That’s what they are. Matzo balls.”
“Balls?”
I could feel the conversation degenerating. I asked Yigal to tell us something about the leafy vegetable piled on a serving plate in the middle of the table. It was an unappealing mush that, so far, no one had touched.
Doc Waters picked at the greens. “Schav. Some people call it sour grass but it’s really sorrel leaf.”
“Really?” Yigal looked surprised. “Always wondered what it was. Never knew.”
Again, I found myself in awe of Doc’s span of knowledge. He was a gentile and yet here he was out-koshering Yigal.
“You think Zeus’s story holds up?” Doc asked later over coffee.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “It could have happened the way he said.”
“I’m thinking it’s too bizarre a story not to be true. Doesn’t matter. The cops are never going to buy it.” Doc paused to glance at Yigal who was talking to Twyla. “If this ends up in a courtroom, Zeus is history.”
“More than likely.”
“The college kids who saw what happened are Zeus’s biggest problem.”
Not that much of a problem if Zeus could afford a decent legal defense team. The witnesses were two well-oiled Rollins College juniors wandering around the wrong side of town at three in the morning. Dissecting the testimony of a couple of twenty-year-olds who were half in the bag when they bumped into Zeusenoerdorf and Kurios would be a cinch for most defense attorneys. But not for Yigal.
“So what happens now?” Doc asked.
“We drop Twyla off for her job interview, and visit the crime scene.”
“The crime scene. Why? Every FBI agent and meter maid within ten miles has probably been over that area.”
“Were they looking for evidence that could prove a blue car rammed a white van off the road?”
Doc ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe not.”
“Any idea what Kurios was talking about just before he died?”
“Father Nathan?”
I nodded. “Ever hear the name?”
“Never.”
Bad news. Doc, usually good for a hypothesis or two, left me dangling.
I paid the bill and walked outside. It was just after one o’clock—time to make a return trip to Nordstrom’s. Yigal asked if he could meet us at the department store to continue discussing the Zeusenoerdorf case. The lawyer’s ulterior motive, aka Twyla, was sliding seductively into my Mitsubishi and even Maurice chuckled at Yigal’s excuse.
I drove to Nordstrom’s with Yigal’s car in my rearview mirror. When we arrived at the store, I asked for Agnes but was directed to another saleswoman with no nametag. She informed us that Miss Tharp’s two suits were finished and so was Agnes—at least for the day. Manny Maglio had a way of inflicting a lot of collateral damage.
The saleslady escorted Twyla to the same changing room where she had been sequestered earlier. A few minutes later, Manny’s niece emerged wearing a stylish but still sexy suit with her wild blonde hair pulled back from her face and bunched with a stunning lacquered clip. She looked nothing short of stupendous.
“I don’t feel right in these clothes,” she carped.
“You look right,” I shot back. Maurice and Doc nodded in agreement. Yigal was vibrating like a pile driver.
“You think?” Twyla studied herself in a full-length mirror. “I look so different.”
Thank you, Agnes.
We headed for Universal Studios with Yigal still in my wake. The HR and Employee Recruitment office was easy to find—a large building adjacent to a mammoth parking lot.
“According to the interview schedule, Ms. Tharp is to stay with us through five p.m.,” a receptionist informed me.
“Okay,” I said. That would mean two hours of interviewing. Doug had assured me that Twyla was a shoo-in for a job. Even so, I had this not-so-funny feeling that the more exposure Universal had to Manny’s niece, the lower the odds for full-time employment. “Any chance she might be finished before five?”
“All interviews take at least two hours.”
“Ms. Tharp is not your usual applicant—”
“Two hours.”
Of all the thrill rides and amusements packed into Universal Orlando’s one hundred acres, I wondered if anything could quite match the entertainment value of a Twyla Tharp employment interview.
Universal: Previous employment?
Tharp: ‑Sin City Cabaret, Jersey Dolls, Bare Elegance, G-Spot and Jiggles Go-Go.
Universal: Convictions?
Tharp: Always use a condom.
Universal: No, I mean were you ever arrested?
Tharp: Only for soliciting, which doesn’t really count in Jersey.
And so it would go until the HR specialist happened upon the note clipped to Twyla’s file folder: Applicant preapproved. Recommend placement in back office. No exposure to park guests.
Since we were free for the next two hours, I told Doc and Maurice that it was time to scout out the spot where Zeus allegedly bludgeoned Benjamin Kurios to death. Yigal thought this was a brilliant idea.
“Wait a minute,” I said to Zeusenoerdorf’s lawyer. “You haven’t been to the crime scene yet?”
“Right now is when we should do it.”
I was still shaking my head when Yigal boarded my Mitsubishi and began rattling off directions. A few minutes later, Doc, Maurice, Rosenblatt, and I stepped onto what was an innocuous stretch of roadway that had now become a street of fame. Hundreds of people crowded the strip of asphalt where the most influential evangelist since Jesus had been murdered.
I pointed to the stanchions that supported the multibeam overpass that loomed above us. “Zeus said the white van was driven into one of those poles. The blue car chasing the van supposedly hit another. Look for streaks of paint and check the ground for metal or glass.”
We split up.
“Could be something,” Doc said, calling me to the street side of a steel column. The metal had been marked with a wide blue swath. The line of paint looked fresh so I used my nail clippers to scrape a few chips into a tissue.
“Keep looking.”
For the next few minutes, we worked our way through the flowers and cards piled on the side of the road. When Maurice pulled a half-dollar-sized silver medallion from a crack in the pavement near the steel column, my adrenaline spiked.
“Quia Vita?” Doc asked.
“Bingo.” It was identical to the emblem I had seen Ida Kyzwoski wearing at the Wayside Motel and the medallion Zeus described during his prison interview.
The professor studied Tyson’s discovery. “A lot of people have tramped through this place since Kurios was killed.�
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The inference went over Yigal’s head, but I understood what Doc was saying. The medallion might not belong to the driver of the blue sedan, which meant it didn’t necessarily validate Zeus’s story.
“The cops had to have searched every inch of this street,” Waters added. “If the medallion had been here then—”
“Got jammed in that crack,” Maurice explained. “Had to jimmy it out with my pocket knife.”
I carefully wrapped the medallion in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket. “I think we have the real thing here, Doc,” I said, trying to keep my excitement over Maurice’s discovery in check. Whether the medallion would prove to be the first turn of the key in Zeus’s jail cell door was unclear.
We took another half hour looking for anything else that might be connected to Kurios’s murder, but came up empty. When it was time to head back to Universal, I herded the team toward my rental car. Halfway to the Mitsubishi, a wave of prickly heat rolled up my back. I spotted two Hispanic men who stood out from the somber crowd that had come to pay their respects to Benjamin Kurios. I had a dozen years of watching predators stalk their quarry in the inner city and these men moved like hunters. Maybe it was my imagination, but I had an uncanny feeling I was their prey. The pair got into a nondescript black Toyota Camry. I could only see the three numbers on the car’s Florida license plate: 489.
A while later, when we pulled into the Universal parking lot, Twyla came barreling out of the Human Resources office. “Bullet, I got the job! I got the job! Yiggy. Doc. Can you believe it?”
“That’s wonderful,” I replied, trying to act surprised.
“I start in two weeks!” Twyla cried. “Can you imagine me working right here in Florida? And they said someday I might even get to sew things. Imagine that!”
Yigal wasn’t imagining Twyla working a needle and thread, that was for sure. The lawyer was all teeth. He sputtered an offer to help Twyla find a place to stay.
“Oh, thank you, Yiggy.”
With Twyla now gainfully employed, I was one night and an early morning flight away from fulfilling my obligations to Doug Kool and the mob. I told my crew to climb into the Mitsubishi because we were heading back to the Wayside for a quick pit stop, and later, a cheap dinner. If Yigal was expecting an invitation to tag along, he didn’t get it. There was a limit to how much hyperactivity I could handle in a day. We left the forlorn lawyer vibrating in the parking lot and headed to our motel.