Authors: Curt Weeden,Richard Marek
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 Bullock. 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.
“What is it?”
“I know where to find Seleucus.”
Chapter 26
Doc
opened the double glass doors of Ellis Island’s Hearing Room
and
motioned me inside. The room was the last stop for prospective immigrants who
didn’t pass the medical, psychological, or morality requirements. They were
given a final chance to persuade the island’s gatekeepers to let them cross
America’s threshold. Historians like Doc had to be impressed by how carefully
the room had been restored to its early-1900’s look. For me, the room’s best
quality was the way it muted the racket coming from the Main Hall only a
corridor away.
“Where’s Seleucus?” I asked Doc.
“I think I know.”
“What do you mean you think?”
“The hard-ass woman you were trying to pick up—”
“Whoa,” I stopped him. “That wasn’t what was happening.”
“Whatever you say. Anyway, she’s right. About Seleucus, I
mean.”
“Doc, she was talking about some king in Asia Minor. The man
I’m looking for is walking around Ellis Island, probably carrying a small
computer disk.”
Doc removed his mandatory waitstaff maritime hat. “Don’t
think so.”
What little music penetrated the Hearing Room stopped and I
heard the first call for dinner. In five minutes, a rabbi from Yeshiva University
would be intoning the invocation and Doug would be wondering why there was an
empty seat next to Paula Parsons.
“I’ve got no time. Explain.”
“The lady had it right—about Asia Minor. In Anatolia,
Seleucus is a common last name.”
“How did we get from Asia Minor to Anatolia?”
“Turkey took over a part of Asia Minor centuries ago. It’s
called Anatolia.”
“So?”
“If you did a survey of given names of boys and men living
in that part of Turkey during the early nineteen hundreds, Osman would pop up
as one of the most popular.”
I looked at my watch. “Where’s this going?”
“To the Immigrant Wall of Honor.”
“What?”
“That’s where you’ll find Osman Seleucus. He was an
immigrant from Turkey. At least, I think he was.”
Most of my Gateway clientele were not that hard to read. The
professor, on the other hand, had an intellect that could spin you in circles.
“What are you talking about, Doc?”
“An outdoor wall that runs around the back of this place.
It’s called the American Immigrant Wall of Honor. There are six hundred
thousand immigrant names chiseled into it.”
“And you’re telling me Osman Seleucus is one of the names on
that wall?”
“It’s a good bet.”
“Betting isn’t your strong suit.” Doc’s mouth twitched,
which might have had something to do with a gambling debt that had cost him a
testicle.
“Even so, you should check it out.”
“And I’m supposed to spend the rest of the night going
through six hundred thousand names? I don’t think so.”
“It won’t take long.” Doc told me to go back to the
reception desk in the Baggage Room and ask one of the Ellis Island staff
members to do a computer search for Seleucus. “If he’s in the database, they’ll
tell you where to find the name on the wall.”
I was again impressed by the professor’s brain. Even if he
was wrong about Seleucus, which was unlikely, his memory was awesome. The fact
that I so frequently Googled Doc’s storehouse of information sharpened the pang
of guilt I had been feeling since my meeting with Manny Maglio. I had yet to
tell the professor that Twyla’s uncle had quashed the mob contract that had
been hanging around Doc’s neck for years. He was a free man, but didn’t know
it. I was holding back the good news because I wanted the professor to stay on
high alert; to catch the scent of anything suspicious. Admittedly, it was a
selfish decision but until my “free Zeus” campaign was over, I didn’t want Doc
slipping into complacency.