by Curt Weeden
“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.
I forced myself to look away from the photograph and turned to Doc. Then I motioned to the Gateway house rules posted outside the office entrance. “So, what’s going on?” I asked, checking my watch. Two o’clock.
Doc knew the drill: all residents were to be out the door by nine in the morning with no reentry until after five in the afternoon. Exceptions: illness or special projects designated by the director. Doc wasn’t sick, and I didn’t need another pair of hands helping Zeus.
“I’m freeing up one of your beds,” Doc explained. “Got a textbook publisher to hire me on as
a fact checker.”
I scrambled out of my chair and shook Doc’s hand like he had just received another graduate degree. This had to be the perfect job for a man with a Wikipedia brain.
“More good news,” the professor continued. “There’s this lady I met who lives in Milltown. She has a spare room she’s willing to rent out.”
“That’s fantastic,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” Doc answered quietly. I wondered if his mixed feelings matched mine. I couldn’t be happier that the professor was leaving the Gateway—but at the same time, I wasn’t looking forward to the void when he was gone. “Can’t recall if I told you before,” Doc went on. “Most everybody who’s been at the Gateway knows what a tough job you have.”
“Hard work, but somebody has to do it,” I laughed and put my hand on Doc’s shoulder. The professor looked more at ease than I had ever seen him. Difficult to tell whether he was more pumped up by employment and a place to live or by the news I had passed along days ago—that Manny Maglio had erased his name from the mob’s hit list
“No—it’s not work somebody has to do,” Doc said. “Truth is, you do your job because you want to do it. You belong to a very small club, Bullet.”
I shrugged off the compliment. Seeing Doc walk out the Gateway door for the last time was thanks enough for me.
“Question is—will you keep doing what you’re doing?” Doc asked. “Or are you on to bigger and better things?” Doc nodded to a Post-It note near my phone. I recognized his handwriting.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A call from FEMA at Homeland Security in Washington. I took the message just before you got back to the office.”
I was constantly fielding calls from different private and public agencies around the country, usually about homeless policies and strategies. This could have been more of the same. Except Doc’s demeanor made it apparent that it wasn’t.
“The guy from FEMA thought I was your assistant,” Doc said. “Told me he wanted to talk to you about a job in DC. Seems the Kurios case has turned you into a star.”
The three-by-three-inch note suddenly took on the proportions of a billboard.
“Washington’s looking for a celebrity,” Doc went on. “The feds think they need a tsar who can link up government and nonprofit programs so they’re more efficient. Somebody who can kick ass when things have to get done.”
I stared at the 202 area code and phone number.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” asked Doc. “You could be a big-picture honcho. Like Kurios, Silverstein, Arcontius, and Russet. People who fight at the top of the pile where it’s about ideas and ideals. No more trench work where things get messy and bloody. No more saving the world one man at a time.”
Doc hoisted the duffel bag to his shoulder and walked to the Gateway front door. “So what’s it going to be, Bullet?”
I glanced at the note another time, then looked up. Doc Waters was gone.
Table of Contents
Copyright
dedication
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part II
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part III
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29