Book of Nathan

by Curt Weeden

  “No,” I said. “There’s a man in prison about to be convicted for a crime he didn’t commit. You know Zeusenoerdorf didn’t kill Kurios.”

  On the deck above, Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” overrode the whir of the yacht engines. The Resolution was making a slow semicircle around the east side of the Statue of Liberty’s twelve-acre island.

  “Our job is to fight a war,” Arcontius said. “And as in any war, there’s always collateral damage. Zeusenoerdorf falls in that category.”

  “He could be executed for something he didn’t do.”

  Arcontius shrugged. “Sacrificing one life to keep millions of children from being butchered is a price worth paying.”

  “Depends on whose life is on the line, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, mine isn’t.”

  Arcontius was growing tired of my interrogation. With time running short, I took a chance. “Where’d you come up with the money to pay for the disk?”

  “You figure it out.”

  I already had. Arcontius certainly wasn’t using Quia Vita money, and it was doubtful the Almiras Society had millions at its disposal.

  “You filtered out a few crumbs from Silverstein’s bank account to finance this deal. It couldn’t have been that difficult to siphon four or five million bucks from a pot that’s worth billions—especially when the pot belongs to a man who’s crazy one minute and drunk the next.”

  Arcontius blinked. This was another revelation that was unexpected. “Very few people know about Silverstein’s condition.”

  “The list is getting longer. Silverstein’s dementia made it easy for you to pick his pocket.”

  “Not so easy,” said Arcontius, his voice rattled by irritation and anger. “Dementia with Lewy body is an unpredictable condition. Arthur can be cogent in the morning and a lunatic in the afternoon.”

  “How hard could it be? If your boss wasn’t hallucinating, he was drunk.”

  The inference that milking Silverstein for a small fortune was simple clearly aggravated Arcontius. “How we’re financing this deal is not your concern.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to do business with the Almiras Society. Maybe I’d rather talk Arthur into shelling out the full two point five million second payment. He hired me to find the CD in the first place.”

  “Maybe you need to think about what you’re saying,” warned Arcontius. “Maybe you should consider what will happen if you don’t come through with the disk.”

  I didn’t need to consider—I knew what Arcontius would do if Le Campion’s transcription didn’t land in his pocket. “I told you—if you take me out, the disk is history.”

  Arcontius tugged at his jacket to remind me he was armed. “Just to be clear—we’d rather the disk rot in obscurity than risk having it used by anyone who’s pro-choice.”

  I let the sound of the Resolution’s hull cutting through New York Harbor fill a few moments while I pretended to ponder what Arcontius had said. I was getting accustomed to ducking threats and intimidation. Even handguns had lost most of their shock value. Running a men’s shelter has a way of hardening the body and soul to these kinds of things. Still, I wanted Arcontius to think his tactics were giving me second thoughts.

  “All right,” I said at last. “Pay up and the disk is yours.”

  Arcontius retrieved his BlackBerry from his jacket pocket. “Hand it over and I’ll activate the transfer to your account. I assume you have some way of validating the receipt of funds?”

  “Contrary to public opinion, people who run homeless shelters aren’t all idiots,” I said. “The disk isn’t on me—or this yacht, for that matter.”

  Arcontius pursed his thin lips. “More games?”

  “Osman Seleucus,” I said quietly.

  “Who?”

  Arcontius gave me a blank look that reconfirmed he had not been brought into Quia Vita’s plan to acquire the stolen disk.

  “Somebody who’ll be helping out tonight,” I explained. “When we get to Ellis Island.”

  “An accomplice?”

  “Safety in numbers.”

  “Seleucus has the disk?”

  I ignored the question. “Later on tonight, I’ll tell you where we’ll make the exchange. Give me your cell number.”

  Arcontius took a gold fountain pen from his jacket pocket and scribbled on the back of a business card. “Just so you know, Dong will be with me.”

  Hardly a surprise. The pair were pro-life’s Cheech and Chong. “Until I call you, I don’t want either Dong or you on my ass. If you don’t give me some space, the deal’s off.”

  “You’re not a man we can trust,” Arcontius said. Funny, Judith Russet came to the opposite conclusion. No wonder the disk was being sold to Quia Vita and not this bony piece of trash.

  “It’s an island,” I spat back. “I’m not going anywhere for the next four hours. Just don’t crowd me. Makes me nervous.”

  “Here’s what should make you nervous,” Arcontius said and cocked his head at his .38. “I want you to remember another Latin phrase—quod incepimus conficiemus. It means, ‘what we have begun, we will finish.’ ”

  Chapter 25

  Ellis Island. An hour ago, during the drive to Liberty State Park, Doc Waters had given me an unsolicited, ten-minute tutorial. The island was the immigration gateway to the U.S. for fifty-one years until it was converted to an immigration detention center in 1943. “One of the most romanticized sandbars in history,” was how Doc described it, explaining that for many of the twelve million people looking for a welcome when they disembarked, it wasn’t there. “It was a gauntlet,” the professor contended. “Some made it through the turnstile, some didn’t.” The three-acre stretch of land once used by the British to hang pirates and criminals was where America turned back one in six immigrants. “History books call it the Isle of Hope,” Doc said. “For a lot of people, it was the Isle of Tears.”

  The Resolution made a smooth approach to a landing a short distance from the entrance to Ellis Island’s main building. Four tall towers jutted above the roofline looming into the now dusky sky like shadowy sentinels. The high-stakes crowd meandered onto a wide walkway that separated the harbor from the front of the building. I inserted myself into the thicket of handsomely dressed dignitaries, trying to make it difficult for Arcontius and Dong to keep me in sight. A column of male and female models sporting nineteenth- and early twentieth-century costumes directed the Resolution’s passengers toward the main building’s baggage room—the same entryway used by immigrants decades ago when they first showed up on the island.

  Before stepping inside, I saw Arthur Silverstein make his exit. Although I was at least a football field away from the yacht, I could see Arcontius, Dong, and a small group of other minions hustling the banker to a small vehicle about the size of a Mini Cooper. Cigar in hand, Silverstein waved to a contingent of guests who had been slow to leave the boat. Then he was whisked off toward the west side of the main building. Scurrying behind was one of Albert Martone’s workers wearing a standard tux, perhaps a size too large for his frame. If it hadn’t been for the thick white hair stuffed under his maritime cap, I probably wouldn’t have recognized Doc.

  Inside the baggage room, a young United Way employee dressed in a long, dark blue gown greeted me with a pasted-on smile. “Beautiful building, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  “It’s French Renaissance made from brick and limestone.” Her eyes darted to a cheat sheet on a skirted table covered with nametags.

  “Quite a place.”

  “Your name?” The woman seemed to have a nose for money, and her suspicious look made it apparent I had the wrong scent. I told her who I was and she ran a polished fingernail down the list of invited guests.

  “Oh, Mr. Bullock,” she said when she found my name. Her smile reappeared. “You’ll be at Sir Howard Stringer’s table. Table twenty-six.”

  “Stringer?”

  “Sony’s CEO. Do you know him?”

  “
Not really. But I bet he put his pants on the same way you and I did this morning.”

  The woman blushed and glanced at her nether region. “Oh, well, welcome to Ellis Island.”

  “Could you tell me if Mr. Seleucus has arrived yet?”

  “I’m sorry,” the lady said. “What was his name again?”

  “Osman Seleucus.”

  The woman eyeballed the printout. “I don’t see a Mr. Seleucus on our list.” Her edginess over my pants remark was replaced by a deeper concern. “Oh, God. Did we miss one of the guests? We don’t have his name. Dr. Kool’s going to have a conniption.”

  “No, no,” I said. “Osman wasn’t sure if he could make it tonight. I guess it didn’t work out.”

  I mumbled a thank you and headed for a stairway that took me to the Registry Room, also known as the Great Hall, the cavernous belly of the main building and ground zero for Silverstein’s testimonial dinner. Docents recruited as tour guides for the night towed small groups of guests through the room pointing out the hall’s vaulted ceiling with its twenty-eight thousand interlocking terra-cotta tiles. Martone’s models were stationed in different parts of the hall, showing off period clothing and antique jewelry.

  Behind a cordoned-off section of prime floor space were linen-covered tables, floral centerpieces, and a stage backed by a twenty-by-twenty rear-screen audio-visual setup. For the next forty-five minutes, though, it was cocktail time with bars strategically stationed along the perimeter of the Registry Room. In deference to Arthur Silverstein, Doug Kool had, indeed, created an atmosphere fit for a billionaire.

  The Registry Room was crowded and it took me five minutes to locate Doc. He and Maurice were clearing used glasses and hors d’oeuvres dishes from scores of small cocktail tables.

  “Silverstein’s in the research library,” Doc said softly. He continued loading champagne glasses onto an oval tray and avoided eye contact. The collar on Doc’s tux shirt was wet with sweat and his black bow tie looked as limp as a piece of cooked pasta.

  “The research library—where is it?”

  “West wing—third floor.”

  “A change of plans,” I announced. “Before you two block and tackle Arcontius, there are a couple of other things we need to do.”

  Doc gave me a mistrustful look. “We? If we means Maurice and me, forget it. That fascist pig, Martone, has us busting our collective asses picking up after these upper-class dorks. Sorry, Bullet. Stopping Arcontius is enough.”

  I took a stab at his conscience. “Remember Zeus? You know—the guy canned up in some stink hole in Florida? Come on, Doc. Don’t lose sight of what this is all about.”

  Doc hung his head. “All right, let’s hear it.”

  Dodging the question, I looked at Maurice. “Yigal and Twyla—have you seen them?”

  “Back of the buildin’,” Maurice said. “In a trailer.”

  “What trailer?” I asked.

  “Where the models get their costumes.”

  “Maurice, I want you to find them and tell them both to stay put. Give Yigal your cell phone.”

  “My cell?” Tyson protested. “I don’t give nobody my cell.”

  “Do it for Zeus.”

  “Why can’t Figgy use his own phone?” Waters asked.

  “Broken,” I answered without getting into Yigal’s explanation as to why.

  “Shit, man,” Maurice sighed. He begrudgingly agreed to do what I had asked.

  “Tell Yigal to stay where he is until I give him a call.”

  “Anythin’ else?”

  There was. A weird idea that had its roots in what Doug had told me about Silverstein’s dementia. “Tell Twyla to look for a red dress. If she finds one, she should put it on.”

  I had piqued Doc’s curiosity. “Red dress?”

  I ducked around the question. “Ever hear of Lewy body disease? Some kind of dementia?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Give me a ten-second explanation.”

  “LBD—Lewy body dementia. Common kind of neurological problem that hits older people. Lewy bodies are globs of protein in the brain that control memory and motor control. If you’ve got LBD, you’re probably fluctuating between being sane and totally out to lunch, hallucinations included.”

  The Gateway’s human encyclopedia was once again amazing. “Thanks.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’ll explain later. Listen, I need you to track someone down—fast.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Osman Seleucus. Don’t know what he looks like or anything about him. He’s not on the guest list, so I’m thinking Albert Martone has him on his payroll. Or maybe he’s one of the models. Is there a way you can find out?”

  Doc thought for a moment. “Martone has a lieutenant who keeps track of personnel. Let me see what I can do.”

  “There’s something else,” I said. “Arcontius has a sidekick called Thaddeus Dong—a Chinese guy who sticks to him like Velcro. When it comes time to bump Arcontius out of the way, do the same to Dong.”

  “I don’ know, man,” Maurice said. I could read his mind. He and Doc were planning to double team Arcontius. Adding Dong meant a change of strategy. “What’s he look like?”

  I opted not to make Tyson more uptight. “He’s Asian,” I said. “You’ll know him when you see him.”

  The Registry Room was a sound chamber that squeezed the volume out of each note of music delivered by a nine-piece orchestra and turned civil conversations into shouting matches. The noise drove most of the United Way’s elite into other parts of the building. But for seventy or eighty couples, the band’s rendition of the Village People’s “YMCA” elicited a primeval urge that drove them to the dance floor.

  “Bizarre, isn’t it?” Doug Kool asked. I bumped into my pal at one of the bars. He was nursing a Grey Goose martini.

  “What?” I shouted.

  “There’s probably three billion dollars flapping around out there,” Doug yelled back. He waved at the couples, most in their fifties and sixties, who were tracing the letters Y-M-C-A in the air. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, these people are so conservative they don’t pass gas. Bring ’em to a black-tie dinner, play the “Do the Bunny Hop” or “The Chicken Dance” and you end up with a room full of complete idiots.”

  “Spoken like someone who can’t say enough about United Way’s most generous donors.”

  “Just because I schmooze ’em doesn’t mean I have to love ’em.” Doug led me by the arm to an anteroom where the noise was only half as loud. I still had trouble hearing Harris & Gilbarton’s star performer. “You keeping an eye on your Get-Away boys?”

  “Constantly,” I fibbed. “I have a question. Who’s Osman Seleucus?”

  “What?”

  “Osman Seleucus,” I repeated.

  “Never heard of him. Jesus, there she is.”

  “Who?”

  “Paula Parsons. Over there in the Tom Ford gown.” Doug pointed to a woman in her mid to late forties. “Looks terrific, doesn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman you’re sitting next to at dinner.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Paula Parsons. You’re widowed. She’s divorced—three times. So, I put the two of you at table twenty-six.”

  Seventy-five linen-covered tables all encircled with ten chairs per table took up most of the Registry Room’s floor space, with the lower numbered tables reserved for the more important guests. Since table twenty-six was on the cusp of being in the top third of the evening’s Who’s Who list, Doug probably thought I would be flattered. I wasn’t.

  “Dammit, Doug, I don’t need—”

  Doug put his mouth two inches from my left ear. “Don’t screw this up. She’s the top female hedge fund manager in the country. Money’s coming out every orifice of her body. Paula. Got a second? I want to introduce you to your date!”

  “For God sakes.”

  Doug drew the woman toward me. “Meet Rick Bu
llock. Rick, this is Fortune’s twenty-third most powerful woman in the country.”

  “Twenty-second,” Paula Parsons snapped.

  “And you’ll be in the top ten by the end of the night,” Doug promised. Watching Dr. Kool remove his Donald Pliner leather shoe from his mouth reminded me of just how slick my pal really was.

  “What do you do?” Paula asked, giving me a vice-grip handshake. I had a feeling Ms. Parsons wasn’t into polite preliminaries like “hello” or “nice to meet you.”

  “I run a shelter.”

  “What?” screamed Paula.

  “Shelter.” I shrieked.

  “Jesus Christ,” the woman squealed. “Perfect. I need help setting up a tax-shelter division. My traders don’t know shit about shelters even though that’s what my fat-ass clients want. Lucky we’re sitting together.”

  “No, I—”

  “What?”

  “It’s a different kind of shelter!”

  “Must be! If you’re at table twenty-six, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. We need to talk.”

  “Yeah, we do,” I cried. Doug had melted away. Fortunately, Doc Waters showed up and threw me a life line.

  “Excuse me,” the professor yelled as he stepped between my date and me.

  “Can’t find him,” he announced.

  “Who’re you looking for?” Paula shouted.

  “Somebody I thought would be here,” I screamed back and pivoted to face Doc. “Maybe one of the waitstaff knows who he is.”

  “What’s the name?” Paula demanded.

  The deafening music must have clobbered my common sense because I blurted out, “Osman Seleucus.”

  Paula let out a horselaugh that rode over the band. “Hell, I haven’t heard Seleucus since college.”

  What?”

  “Seleucus,” she screeched. “The king of Asia Minor.” Paula was as bright as she was brash.

  Doc had a habit of standing with a slight stoop. But when he heard Paula Parsons’s words, the professor stood ramrod straight. “She’s right.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Doc said to Paula. “Would you excuse Mr. Bullock and me for a few moments?”

  Paula’s glare told me she wasn’t used to having the help get in the way. Nevertheless, Doc prevailed and tugged me back into the Registry Room.