Book of Nathan (41 page)

Chapter 28

I
was there the night a sixteen-year-old kid shot Maurice Tyson’s cousin,
Roosevelt Mull, in the chest. When two .44 Magnum slugs shattered Roosevelt’s
rib cage, ripped open one lung, and pulverized his heart, I remember listening
to the drawn-out moan of misery blow out of his body.

That wasn’t a sound I wanted to hear again, but when Arthur
Silverstein gave in to his dementia, I got a replay. The old man was being
tortured, his conscience eviscerated by a painful realization of what he had
done to Benjamin Kurios. Even Dong was shaken by the long howl of anguish that
filled the Ellis Island Research Library.

Then the wail fell away to the murmur of a single word.

“Benjamin.”

Then Silverstein’s tremors returned full force and his
speech clicked back in with a bellow. “Selfish, self-centered bastard. He was a
stain on his sister’s memory.
The
Book of Nathan.
Only wanted it to glorify his own goddamned name. It had to
be done. It had to be done.”

Eight thirty.

I gave Dong a “what now?”
look.
For the first time, I saw a hint of expression in the Asian’s eyes. Finding out
about the bloodline between Benjamin Kurios and Silverstein surprised him.
Something about a father having a role in the death of his son appeared to be
nagging at Dong’s miniscule moral core.
 

“Couldn’t trust him,” Silverstein continued. “My own son.”

Hairline cracks cut through Dong’s exterior. He ran his
tongue over his thick lips.

“They’ll be coming to get him,” I told Dong, trying to
capitalize on his uneasiness. “To bring him downstairs.”

“Shut up,” Dong growled.

Silverstein’s mumbling disintegrated into a string of
unintelligible sounds.

“Not much time,” I warned Dong.

“I said, shut up. He’ll come out of it. Five, maybe ten
minutes, and it’ll be finished.”

Dong spoke like a man who had seen his boss disintegrate
many times before. Apparently Silverstein’s mental lapses were usually short,
and if the old man kept to his usual schedule, he would snap back in just a
matter of minutes. Which meant there would be time for Silverstein to collect
himself before being put on stage.
 

Eight thirty five.

Silverstein had pumped out enough cigar smoke to permeate
the Research Library with a light fog. Other than the well-lit corner where the
old man was parked, the haze added to the murkiness of the rest of the library.
We heard a weird clatter from some unseen part of the room, a bizarre thumping
and clumping that edged toward us from behind a row of seven-foot-high
bookshelves. Dong froze and stared into the semidarkness. A lone figure darted
into view.

“What the hell—” Dong wheezed.

“Heard talking is what I heard,” said Yigal Rosenblatt. The
lawyer wore a long black robe which I guessed came from Albert Martone’s
costume collection. He was a pulsating shadow—his black beard, hair, and robe
turning him into a specter.
 

Dong repositioned himself so Yigal was unable to spot the
pistol still attached to my back. “Nobody comes in this room,” Dong shouted.
“It’s private. Get the hell outta here.”

“Door wasn’t locked,” Yigal explained. “Just checking is all
I was doing.”

Dong’s brain was not as well developed as his body. He’d
apparently forgot to deadbolt the door. Even more surprising, Yigal had
followed my instructions and had showed up at the library. I couldn’t have
asked for a better distraction. If there were a time to make a move, it was
now. The library’s maze of book stacks and shelving would make it difficult for
Dong to do much damage with his Glock if Yigal and I could get lost in the
labyrinth. I was about to try a fast break when Arthur Silverstein blew my plan
to pieces.

“A
bekishe,
”
he squeaked, waving at Yigal. “Come closer. Closer.”

Yigal inched his way forward until he was practically
sitting in Silverstein’s lap. The old man fingered Yigal’s black silk robe.

“You’re Hasidic!” said Silverstein. He was practically
giddy.

“Not Hasidic,” Yigal corrected. “Orthodox. Orthodox is what
I am.”

“But you’re wearing a
bekishe.
”

“For your dinner,” Yigal explained. “They asked me to wear
it just for tonight, is what they did. Put on a
bekishe
,
they said, like the Jews who came to Ellis Island in the old days.”

“I see, I see! Ah, those Hasidics—I’m Reform, you know.”

Yigal sputtered something in English and Yiddish about how
it was man, not God, who wrote the Torah, which apparently put him in the same
reform camp as the billionaire.

Silverstein seemed to take an instant liking to Yigal. His
shaking subsided and he smiled warmly. “But the
Halakhah
leaves
room for our differences
,
doesn’t it? At the end of the day, Hasidics, you, me—we’re all Jews.”

Yigal grinned.

“You should put on
Halb-Hoyzn,
”
the old man said gleefully. “You know—those knee pants that Hasidics used to
wear.”

“Don’t look good in knee pants, no I don’t.”

“The past has so much to teach us,” Silverstein mused
without adding any explanation of what was whirling through his head. His eyes
moved from Yigal to Henri Le Campion’s disk parked on the side table. “Ahh,” he
whispered, making a valiant but failed attempt to return his glass to the side
table. It shook out of his hands and what little Scotch was left in the glass
sloshed on to his already liquor-soaked lap. Silverstein reached for the
Book of Nathan
disk,
scraped it off the table, and fumbled the CD into the pocket of his tux.

“If we could only push replay
and start again,” he said to Yigal who
was bounding from one foot to another looking as confounded as I was worried.
“Would we make the same mistakes?”

“We might,” Yigal replied. “But then again, we might not.”

Silverstein shrugged. His unexpected partiality to Yigal was
making Dong nervous. Silverstein tried retrieving his cigar that was perched on
the edge of the Bugatti ashtray. It took three attempts, but he finally snagged
the figurado, plugged it into his mouth, and astonishingly was able to relight
it with the first snap of his lighter.

“If I could go back—” Silverstein began, but his fantasy
slammed into a brick wall as he went wide-eyed and let out a high-pitched yelp.
He was looking past Yigal, staring into the grey black haze that darkened
everything outside the patch of light in the back corner of the library. Dong,
Yigal, and I followed the old man’s line of sight. Standing at the far end of
an alley between two rows of steel bookshelves was a blonde woman dressed in a
Venetian red floor-length gown. Distance, dim lighting, and polluted air made
it impossible to get a clear view, but what we could see sent a jolt through
the room. It was as if Ruth Silverstein had escaped from her life-sized portrait
hanging behind Arthur Silverstein’s desk and walked into the Ellis Island
research library.
    

“Ohhh,” Silverstein wailed.

He leapt out of the chair and kicked aside the ottoman. His
quick movement jarred the cigar from his mouth and the stogie’s lit end hit on
the bottom of his tux jacket. The Glen Garioch Highland that had seeped into
Arthur’s clothing ignited. In a split second, flames were shooting up
Silverstein’s chest.

The fireball drove Dong back a step, and I felt the Glock
detach from my vertebrae. I made a hard turn to the left and rammed Dong’s
right hand against one of the library’s metal cantilever shelves. The Glock
dropped to the floor just before I drove a shoulder into Dong’s chest. Dong
stumbled backward over the ottoman and landed with a floor-vibrating crash.
Before Dong could recover, I lunged at a bookshelf loaded with archived
materials and sent it hurtling toward him. Dong tried to roll to one side, but
he wasn’t fast enough. Most of the debris that hit him did little damage except
for one heavy-duty metal plate that caught him on the side of his neck. Dong’s
body went slack.

I grabbed Dong’s pistol and flew toward the library door.
Yigal was a good twenty yards in back of Silverstein, who was about the same
distance behind Twyla. She had kicked off her spiked heels and was running like
hell trying to stay ahead of the firestorm.

“Ruth,” Silverstein wheezed through the flames that were now
licking his face. “Ruth.”
The
old man’s drunkenness, obsession, or a combination of the two seemed to block
his pain. He kept moving forward.

Silverstein pursued Twyla through the main building’s west
wing corridor and onto a narrow third floor balcony. “Oh God,” she screeched
back at us. “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

Silverstein still had enough left to follow Twyla across the
balcony to the main building’s east wing stairway. I closed in on him, but he
stumbled down the long staircase. Some unfathomable force kept him standing.

Twyla stopped, expecting Silverstein to fall. When the old
man staggered ahead, she stepped into the Registry Room and shrieked—a piercing
cry that brought most of the United Way table talk to a standstill. Some of the
crowd stood, trying to catch a better view of the blonde in the red dress. When
Silverstein lurched into the room, his tuxedo still a wick for the fire that
engulfed him, curiosity turned to horror. Screams drowned out the orchestra,
and those United Way guests anywhere near the night’s guest of honor scrambled
to distance themselves from the human torch cutting a path through the room.

The main hall was in chaos when I raced down the east wing
stairway. I saw Twyla running to the head table desperately looking for help.
But most of the crème de la crème, including Doug Kool, had already scattered,
which left Twyla on her own. Silverstein drew closer.

“Ruthy—” the old man cried as he stumbled into table
twenty-six and crumpled to the floor. “Keeping my promise. Keeping my promise.”

Paula Parsons became Silverstein’s first responder. She yanked
a tablecloth from the ten-foot round table, sending dishes, silverware, and
floral arrangements flying, then threw the fabric and herself on the
billionaire who was now lying face up and motionless. There wasn’t a lot left
to burn on Silverstein’s body so the fire was quickly extinguished.

I worked my way to Silverstein’s side and knelt over him
with Paula at my side. Yigal skidded past us and wrapped his
bekishe
around Twyla who was shuddering uncontrollably.

The scorched body on the floor had traumatized the Registry
Room into silence. For a few seconds, there was no sound. No movement. Hundreds
stood mute, gawking at what remained of one of the world’s richest men. Then
the room exploded.
  
 
 

Paula kept one hand pressed against Silverstein’s charred
neck. “I’ll be damned,” she said to me. “He’s still alive!”

I leaned over the United Way’s Man of the Year.
Silverstein’s eyes were thin, watery slits and his mouth nothing more than a
lipless, dark hole.

“
Exitus acta probat,
”
the old man whispered. He was using what little life he had left to push out
each word.
 

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“The outcome,” the old man wheezed. He strained to draw in
another breath. “The outcome . . . the outcome justifies the deed.”
Silverstein’s body convulsed and he went silent.

One of several doctors in the room confirmed the obvious—the
United Way’s honoree was dead. The news cut through the crowd, turning shock
and alarm into hysteria. A squad of uniformed security personnel added to the
mayhem as they charged into the room and set up a perimeter around the lifeless
body. Paula and I were pushed into a ring of horrified spectators who stood
gaping at the remains of Arthur Silverstein.
 

“I couldn’t make out what he was saying,” Paula said.

“He said there are some ends that justify using any
means—legal or otherwise.”