Book of Nathan (36 page)

“Then Zeusenoerdorf arrives.”

“Carrying a heavy piece of lumber.”

“It was a cross,” I plugged in the correction.

Arcontius took a couple of steps to the side, his skinny
frame between me and the door to the interior of the yacht. “So it was. The
street fight ended. Perez headed back to his car, but was shot twice by the van
driver.”

“Which is why Perez didn’t or couldn’t pick up the disk.”

Arcontius sighed. “Exactly. He drove a few miles from the
scene before he bled to death. Fortunately, there were other society members in
Orlando who we called in to clean up the mess. We removed the bullets from the
corpse then burned the car and body. A rainy night and a careless driver. Just
another accident.”

“Ever ask yourself why the van driver didn’t circle back and
pick up the disk?”

“Until you put the disk up for sale, we thought that’s just
what the van driver had done. Now we think the man either panicked when he saw
Zeusenoerdorf or was too disoriented because of his fight with Perez. Are we
finished?”

“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 M
ini
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.”