Book of Nathan (19 page)

“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 known 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.

One of the pages Doug sent me was as mystifying as it was
intriguing—a copy of a juvenile arrest record that had somehow been smuggled
out of a youth agency office in Manhattan. According to the report, Ruth was a
drug dealer’s dream come true before she hit seventeen. She notched a slew of
misdemeanors on her Coach suede belt, but Daddy was always there to shoo the
consequences away. There was, however, one felony charge that must have been
tough to keep under wraps. Just before her eighteenth birthday, Ruth burned
down a Long Beach Island shore house after the owner’s daughter stole the
affection of one of Ms. Silverstein’s boyfriends. Nothing in the report
explained how Ruth walked away from that one, although I’d lived long enough to
know what a pile of cash can do to the justice system.

The largest question mark was how Ruth died. According to a
clip from the obit page of the
Newark
Star Ledger,
the girl succumbed to an “undisclosed illness” at Overlook
Hospital in Summit. The tabloids interviewed a few of Ruth’s friends and put
together a convincing case that it was drugs that did Arthur’s daughter in.
However, the media may have gotten it wrong. The death certificate and a
physician’s notation that Arcontius had faxed to Doug listed the official cause
of death as: iochia followed by acute ischemia and cardiac arrest
.
I had no idea what
that
meant so I phoned one of my MD friends
who worked a few blocks away from the Rutgers Club at St. Peter’s Medical
Center.

“Blood problem,” he told me.

“Not a drug overdose?”

“Not according to what you just read,” he said. “Of course,
medical reports and death certificates have a reputation for leaving out a lot
of patient information.”

“So this says Ruth Silverstein died from—”

“She bled to death.”
 

•••

I
wasn’t intimidated by Arthur Silverstein and even less so by his right-hand
man. But I was curious about how much more information I could coax out of the
billionaire. So I made the morning drive to the Bedminster mansion just as
Arcontius had demanded.

I drove to the front of Silverstein’s home and was greeted
by Arcontius and an Asian man the size of a sumo wrestler. “This way,” the
Asian grunted without so much as a hint of an accent. I was led through the
main foyer, past Silverstein’s library, and into a modest-sized office at the
back of the residence.
 

“Sit down, Mr. Bullock,” Arcontius instructed and pointed to
a wooden chair. With a shove, the Asian hulk encouraged me to do what I was
told.

“Thank you, Mr. Dong,” Arcontius said, then motioned the man
out of the room.

“The strong, silent type,” I commented.
 

“An accurate description. Of course, Thaddeus has other
qualities as well.”

“Thaddeus? Thaddeus Dong?”

“It isn’t Mr. Dong’s odd name or lack of manners you should
be concerned about. It’s his penchant for solving problems with a heavy hand.”

“Okay,” I muttered. Of course, it was not
okay. Thanks to Manny Maglio, I already
had enough thugs in my life.

Silverstein’s aide-de-camp leaned toward me, his spike nose
pointed directly at my heart. “Do you have the CD?” he asked.

“What?”

“The computer disk. Do you have it?”

I looked behind me thinking Arcontius had to be talking to
someone else. Nope.
  

“Is it me or is it you who’s in the wrong meeting?” I asked.

“Tell me about the CD.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you forgot
why you asked me to show up today. Your boss wants a blow-by-blow of last
night’s
Quia Vita
meeting.”

“We know about last night’s meeting. What we want
is the CD?”

“You know
about
last night’s meeting? What exactly do you know
about it? Oh, and here’s another one
you can answer—where’s Silverstein?”

“He’s not coming. An unexpected business problem. Mr.
Silverstein asked that I act in his stead. Tell me about the CD.”