by Curt Weeden
Russet let the group ponder the picture she had painted. Then she opened the floor for questions. A few hands went up, and soon there was discussion about the responsibilities and price tag for a Visio Dei membership. The Quia Vita CEO distributed a handsome folder stuffed with brochures and leaflets. One insert explained the financial hurdle that needed to be cleared if one were to make it into the top tier of the organization. While there were different ways to join the club (tithing, living trust, property transfers), it would take a minimum of $7,500 a year to remain a member in good standing.
An hour into the meeting, Russet unfolded a note that had been left on the podium. Had she arrived for the meeting on time, she probably would have read the message earlier. The way she glared at Doc and me after scanning the note, I was relieved she had waited.
The crowd split in two. Half surrounded Russet and half headed for a roll-in table loaded with desserts, coffee, tea, and an assortment of after-dinner liqueurs.
The commotion made it easy for Doc and me to slip out. We took a few steps into the adjacent hallway before Russet rumbled through the doorway.
“Follow me,” she ordered. There was no salutation—just a requirement. We trailed the woman into a small room two doors down from where the prospective Visio Dei members were stuffing themselves with cream puffs and petit fours. Jane, the Hyatt group account manager, was alone in the room.
“Do you know these men?” Russet asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane said. “Well, not really, ma’am.”
“Not really is the right answer,” Russet snapped. “You’re the gatekeeper to Visio Dei. I trusted you to make sure only the right people get into the meetings. And you let us down. You opened the door to two men whose mission is to stop us from defending the unborn.”
“But they’re pro-life,” Jane said. “That’s what I was told. They’re pro-life.”
Russet approached her like a demon from hell. “Told by whom?”
Jane could have mentioned Douglas Kool, but she didn’t cave, mainly because she was crying so hard she had lost the power of speech.
“I want to make it clear to you what you’ve done,” Russet said, three inches from Jane’s face. “You let these two steal information—information they can twist and warp in a way that could prevent hundreds or thousands of babies from being born.”
“But, I—”
“I want you to leave,” Russet demanded. “Now!”
Jane tried to muffle her hysterics with a hanky the size of a credit card and then dashed out the door.
Russet turned to Doc and me.
“I know who you are.”
“And we know who you are,” I said calmly.
“You got lucky, Mr. Bullock. Lucky I didn’t get the message about you and your friend here until minutes before the meeting ended. Had I known, I’d have exposed you to the others in the room. And I can assure you, it would have been a most unpleasant experience.”
My curiosity plowed through my fury. Who sent the note that tipped Russet off? Who gave us away? It certainly wasn’t Jane. Best guess was that Doug had slipped the information to Silverstein who, in turn, made contact with Russet. But it didn’t make sense that the billionaire would let Quia Vita know two interlopers had penetrated its defenses. Which brought me back to Doug. There was no good reason to think he ratted me out on purpose, but my friend was notorious for his loose lips.
“Why are you here?” Russet asked.
“Fact finding.”
“And I know the facts you’re looking for. You’re checking out just how deep Quia Vita’s pockets are. Well, I’m happy to give you that information. All you have to know is that we have sufficient funds to pay for whatever God tells us we need to purchase.”
“Enough funds to buy some common sense?” Doc asked.
“I’m not going to stand here and wallow in your insults.”
Doc returned fire. “Why not? We spent an hour wallowing in your pro-life twaddle.”
“Pardon me?”
Here we go I thought.
The professor stretched out his arms to make sure he had Russet’s attention. “Where do you find all these people who have more money than brains?”
“What each of them has is a soul. Something you appear to be lacking.”
“The world has its share of fanatics. You happen to be one of them and so be it. What turns me purple are the people who sit there and soak up your drivel as if it were nectar.”
Russet was unflappable. “The nectar you’re talking about has another name. The truth.”
“Half truths, at best. You let people think there’s no difference between a single-cell zygote and a six-year-old kid.”
“That single-cell zygote has forty-six chromosomes and everything it needs to grow into that six-year-old child. You seem to have forgotten your biology. The only difference between a zygote and a baby is a trip down the birth canal.”
“Crap. That single-cell zygote also has the same DNA makeup as a hair follicle. Hello, Ms. Russet. We’re in Dolly the Sheep’s world. We’re a whisker away from taking a strand of your short, gray hair and turning it into a living, breathing thing.”
“Your immorality astounds me, professor,” said Russet. There was a reverberation in her words that reminded me of a volcano about to spout. Disgusted, she began working on me. “What about you, Mr. Bullock? Are you as determined to kill babies as your friend?”
I wasn’t here to get into a firefight over abortion. I knew my take on the issue would only fan Russet’s flames, so I picked my words carefully. What I wanted to say was that Quia Vita should spend more time in my world where squalor, alcoholism, drug addiction, and penury make for a lousy bassinette. I never castigated a woman who didn’t want a child born into such a morass. I didn’t find fault with a mother who ended an unwanted pregnancy because she had already produced too many kids who were pulling her into inescapable destitution. No one could sell me on the idea that the end product of rape or incest should be allowed to go full term. In my opinion, trying to pin down whether an abortion was appropriate or immoral three minutes after conception or three months down the line was much less important than figuring out how to stop people from conceiving by accident or stupidity. That’s what I could have said. Instead: “Given your religious beliefs, I can understand why you feel strongly about—”
“You don’t understand anything about me,” Russet charged. “What I understand is that both of you are here to inflict as much damage as you can on my organization.”
Doc threw a counterpunch. “Like you inflict guilt and shame on innocent women?”
“Make sure you hear me,” said Russet. “I know what you both want. Coming here hasn’t helped you. Not in the least. All that you accomplished tonight is to prove to me how disgusting each of you are.”
“If someone like you finds me disgusting, then I’ve been paid the ultimate compliment,” Doc roared.
It wasn’t a knockout blow, but it put the woman back on her heels. For the first time, I spotted something behind Russet’s iron-plate exterior. Sensitivity.
“You’re truly cursed,” she said to the professor.
“Cursed because I want you off the back of any woman who has the right to decide whether to continue or end a pregnancy? I don’t think so.”
Russet stormed out of the room. “Liberate te ex Inferis!” she called back to us.
“Advice you might want to heed yourself!” Doc yelled after her. “Oh, and if we should meet again, da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!”
I waited until Russet had disappeared. “I thought we agreed this wasn’t the time or place to get into an argument,” I said to the professor.
“Couldn’t help myself. Sorry.”
“What was the Latin shouting match about?”
“She told me to save myself from hell,” Doc translated.
“What was your comeback?”
“The only Latin phrase I could remember. Bring me a pizza with ever
ything on it.”
Chapter 12
“Enough bitching!” Doug snapped. “You were the one who wanted me to dig for whatever I could find about Silverstein’s daughter!”
“You could have done your digging without telling Silverstein I was going to Judith Russet’s meeting last night,” I yelled into the phone. It was nine a.m. and I was as exhausted as I was irritable.
“I didn’t tell him,” Doug said.
“Give me a break.”
“Look, I never talked to Arthur. He wasn’t in. I spent a half hour with Abraham Arcontius yanking out as much information as I could about Ruth Silverstein. Your name happened to come up.”
“Which is when you told Arcontius I’d be infiltrating Russet’s party.”
“What if I did? I tried to smooth things over between you and Silverstein. Arcontius says Arthur’s not sure he can trust you, and I wanted to put a little polish on your credibility. The old man thinks you’ve got a hidden agenda—that you’re out to do more than save Zeusipath’s ass.”
I can’t explain why I called Doug a friend. We weren’t bonded by trust, that’s for sure. Whatever commitment or promise Doug made usually came peppered with loopholes. Even so, I knew if I were really in trouble, Doug would be one of the first to hold out his hand.
“Just remember,” Doug went on, “if Arthur gets word I was asking about his kid because you wanted me to, then you and I both have a problem.”
I already had one problem—Twyla Tharp. I didn’t need another. I let my friend continue talking.
“Nailing down Ruth Silverstein’s history wasn’t easy. When I was on the phone with Arcontius, I fed him a fairytale about an auditor who was looking into an endowment Arthur set up with one of the charities he supports.”
“Keep going.”
“The endowment is restricted—it can only be used to fund the kind of medical and health care programs that could have prevented Ruth’s death or improved her treatment. I said the auditor wanted evidence the endowment was being used properly and that meant we had to revisit Ruth’s medical records.”
I could almost see Arcontius’s pencil-thin eyebrows cocking up like a minitent. “He fell for that load?”
“You forget who’s on my end of the phone. There’s nobody better at selling fiction as reality.”
I couldn’t debate that point. After all, Doug was a professional fundraiser, and being able to invent a storyline for any occasion was what made him so good at his profession. “Doesn’t sound like it took much pressure to convince Arcontius to dive into Ruth’s archives,” I said.
“You’re wrong. I had to kick him to get him to put in a couple of hours of search and find. He said that if he was going to do me a favor, he wanted something in return.”
“That’s when you rolled over and told him where I’d be last night.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Doug insisted. “Arcontius has orders from Silverstein to watch you. You never told me you signed a contract to keep the old man in the know about what’s happening with the Kurios murder investigation.”
“There’s no contract. Go on.”
“Arcontius said he needed a rough idea of your schedule so he could get Silverstein off his back in case the old man wanted an update on what you were up to.”
Who had manipulated whom? Doug had tugged information out of Arcontius, who had played Dr. Kool like a viola.
“That’s when you opened up about what Doc and I were planning to do last night.”
“Yeah, I did,” Doug confessed. “But Silverstein has no connection to Russet or Quia Vita. Never has. Never will. So, I didn’t think talking about your Hyatt adventure was any big deal.”
“I was ambushed—that’s the big deal,” I fumed. “Russet got word that a couple of uninvited guests named Waters and Bullock were in the room. Who could have clued her in, Doug?”
“Not Silverstein or anyone connected to him.”
“Yeah, well then that leaves only you. Did you tell anyone besides Arcontius where I was going to be last night?”
There was a long interlude. Too long. “No.”
“Who did you tell?” I screeched.
“All right, all right. A couple of my staff people helped make the arrangements with Jane. You met her, right?”
Apparently, Doug didn’t know Russet had forced Jane to take a long walk on a short professional plank. If the woman hadn’t slit her wrists by now, she was probably on her way to the local unemployment office.
“That’s great, Doug. A couple of your staffers talk to a couple of pals who talk to who knows who and suddenly, Doc and I are getting bushwhacked by the wicked witch of the west.”
Doug was through getting beat up. He moved our discussion in a different direction. “But the good news is that I got what you wanted about Ruth Silverstein. Want me to fax it over to you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll even throw in some press clips and a few other papers I dug out of my own files,” he added. I took the offer as a kind of peace offering. “Just don’t let anyone know any of this stuff came from me.”
“Uh-huh.” Typical Kool strategy. Put a little salve on the wound and hope the injured party stops crying.
“So what’s your next step?” Doug asked.
“Like I’m going to tell you.”
“You have a meeting at Arthur’s estate this morning, right?”
Good God! My life was stark naked. “According to your friend, Arcontius, I do.”
“He’s not my friend. But he has the old man’s ear. Arcontius can turn Arthur against you, Bullet. Don’t let that happen. Silverstein’s not somebody you want on your wrong side. He’s a powerful man.”
“And he’s a king-sized donor to United Way.”
“That too.”
My donated Hewlett-Packard fax machine churned out the multi-page document sent from Harris & Gilbarton’s New York office a few minutes after I finished screaming at Doug. I was flipping through pages marked personal and confidential, when Yigal Rosenblatt and Twyla Tharp showed up at nine thirty. Zeus’s lawyer was a little less frenzied than usual. I wrote it off as a postcoital letdown. Twyla, on the other hand, looked ready for more.
“Should have something in a day or two,” Yigal informed me. “That’s what Morty Margolis said.”
Yesterday, Yigal had made a late afternoon trip to Jersey City, after I warned him that Twyla would be indisposed until a deal had been cut with the brother-in-law of Yigal’s law partner.
“Good,” I commended the lawyer. “So now you can head back to Orlando. Call me when Morty finishes his work.”
“Oh, Yiggy,” Twyla whined. “You’re not leaving so soon?”
“Maybe not so soon. No need to rush home.”
I concocted an excuse to pull Yigal aside. It was time for a heart-to-heart.
“Here’s the deal,” I began. Yigal must have known what was coming because he began bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. “You need a time out—from Twyla.”
If there were any doubt Yigal was up to his hairy chin with Manny Maglio’s niece, it was blown away by the painful expression that twisted his face.
“The thing is, you’re getting distracted. I need you focused. Your client needs you focused. Remember your client?” Yigal’s eyes were getting misty, so I lightened up. “Look, when the Zeus situation gets resolved and when Twyla starts her job in Florida—”
“Oh, yes,” Yigal interrupted. “Oh, yes.”
“For now, though, you have to remember we could be on to something that could prove Zeus had nothing to do with the Kurios killing.”
“Yes—we could be on to something.”
“Right. So, I’m asking you to get back to Orlando. It’s important. Somebody has to stay close to Zeus.”
Yigal said nothing, but I thought I saw him nod. It was tough to be sure.
“There’s something else.” I wanted to lay it on the line the same way my mother sat me down when I was in the ninth grade. ‘You’re kno
wn by the company you keep,’ was all I heard for weeks after she caught me in a compromising position with Lucy Klabesodel, my high school’s Miss Easy. “Twyla has an unusual assortment of relatives—the kind that could make a lawyer’s life miserable.”
“Not to worry. Misery doesn’t bother us at Gafstein & Rosenblatt.”
“There’s also Twyla’s dancing career and various side jobs. These kinds of things can complicate a man’s life.”
“I understand that.”
“And you know she’s not Jewish, right?”
Yigal snapped back to reality. Twyla’s religious standing was obviously more of a concern than her participation in the world’s oldest profession. “Have to work on that.”
“Work on it in Florida. Will you do that?”
Yigal mumbled something that sounded like okay and then hopped back to Twyla. She greeted him with a hug and a smile. Probably just bought-and-paid-for affection, I thought. But when I studied her more closely, it occurred to me she was giving the lawyer more than money could buy.
I had an hour to kill before my meeting with Arthur Silverstein. I took the twelve pages Doug had faxed me and retreated to the Rutgers Club, about a mile from the Gateway. The club was a roost for Rutgers University faculty, staff, and a few locals recognized as “good citizens” by the school. I knew but didn’t care that my access to the quiet oasis wasn’t about my citizenship, but about how I kept homeless shelter riffraff off the campus lawn.
The faxes included press releases about Ruth Silverstein that sugarcoated her short life and questionable death. They had been churned out by Silverstein’s public relations agency. A cup of coffee later, I was into some private correspondence Doug had pulled from his own confidential files. Although I was left feeling Ruth’s life story was a couple of chapters short, Doug’s information painted Arthur Silverstein’s kid in vivid colors.
Ruth was born to parents who were not quite billionaires at the time of her arrival. She was a spoiled brat from birth and sometime around her Bat Mitzvah, matured into a classic rich bitch whose irresponsibility made life dismal for everyone including herself. At age fourteen, Daddy’s little girl was shipped off to a private school in upstate New York. Her infrequent visits home usually coincided with her mother’s trips to an expensive rehabilitation retreat—aka psych ward. Nothing I read proved Ruth was responsible for her mother’s craziness. On the other hand, she seemed to have been the kind of unpleasant, ungrateful daughter who might inspire a mother to take a nosedive off the Queensboro Bridge.