Book of Nathan Read online

  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.”

  I wasn’t happy. I’d wasted gas and time hauling my Buick from New Brunswick to the hills of Somerset County. Plus I had an accumulated sleep debt that was making me cranky.

  “You couldn’t have picked up the damn phone and rescheduled the meeting?”

  “Mr. Silverstein sends his apologies. Did you forget the arrangement, Mr. Bullock?”

  “What arrangement?”

  “Mr. Silverstein instructed you to work through me.”

  That’s not exactly how I recalled the deal. To be truthful, though, I had stopped listening when Arthur plunked two ten thousand dollar checks in my paw.

  “So, let me ask you again. What about the CD?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened last night. But what I can’t tell you is anything about a CD.”

  “Perhaps you missed what I said. We know what happened last night.”

  I decided to toss Arcontius a cryptic question or two as a defense.

  “Last night’s meeting. How do you know what happened?”

  “That’s not information we need to disclose.”

  “Really? Well, then there’s no point in wasting any more of your time or mine.”

  Arcontius took a different tack. “When you and Mr. Silverstein met, you had a conversation about the Book of Nathan.”

  I drawled out a “So?”

  “You were told Benjamin Kurios would be going public with the Book of Nathan at his revival meeting in Orlando.”

  “You’re right—that’s what I was told.”

  “And Mr. Silverstein mentioned the book’s text had been transcribed onto an encrypted CD that Dr. Kurios had with him the night he died—a CD that’s now missing.”

  Dealing with Arcontius was like swimming in pond scum. If I couldn’t have face time with Silverstein, then I wanted out of the pond. Continuing this little dance with Silverstein’s lieutenant was as pointless as it was frustrating. I was about to end the morning meeting when the snake unwound his skinny frame and leaned over his desk.

  “Let’s not stretch this lunacy out any longer,” Arcontius said. “Yesterday afternoon, we received a message telling us the Book of Nathan disk is for sale.”

  This was news I didn’t expect. My interest in making a quick escape vanished. Whoever was shopping the stolen disk had to have something to do with the Benjamin Kurios murder. As much as I wanted to get out of Arcontius’s office and take a shower, I stayed put.

  “Does the price include delivery and tax?”

  “I’m so pleased you’re enjoying yourself,” Arcontius grumbled. “Good humor is hard to come by when you’re facing the prospect of paying five million dollars for a computer disk.”

  “Five million—” Arthur Silverstein had piqued my curiosity with his story about the Book of Nathan disk. But there’s nothing like a multimillion dollar price tag to really perk up one’s interest.

  “Very clever marketing deal. The nonencrypted first part of Le Campion’s disk gets sent to us in installments. Five separate e-mail attachments. If we like what we see, each installment costs us five hundred thousand, which we wire to an offshore account. Five installments. Two point five million. Once all the earnest money is sent, we’re told where we can pick up the actual disk—provided, of course, we cough up another two point five million.”

  Shades of my Madison Avenue days. Use the big tease to lure in a buyer.

  “Here’s where I think we are,” Arcontius went on. “You went to the Quia Vita meeting last night to see how much money was in the room because maybe—just maybe—the people connected to Quia Vita’s Order of Visio Dei could come up with more than the five million you want from Silverstein. In other words, I smell the start of a bidding war. Am I heading in the right direction?”

  “You’re walking backward. I don’t have the CD.”

  “We both know better. Let me guess what happened in Orlando on that fateful night. Your man, Mr. Zellendickol—

  “Zeusenoerdorf. And he’s not my man.”

  “Regardless. He did indeed kill Benjamin. Then he stole
the disk and handed it off to some other homeless bottom dweller who eventually delivered the CD to you.”

  “I’m not the guy with the CD.”

  “Then I think you probably know who has it,” said Arcontius. “However, let’s go with the remote possibility that you’re telling the truth.”

  “Welcome to the world of reality.”

  “It would be a healthy decision on your part to prove to Mr. Silverstein and me that you don’t have the disk and you don’t know who does.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Mr. Silverstein and I would like you to press Mr. Zeus— to press your homeless friend to tell us what he knows about the disk. If he helps us find it along with the person or persons trying to sell it, your chances of staying in Mr. Silverstein’s good graces go much higher.”

  I wasn’t about to let Arcontius know Zeus never mentioned a CD. Of course, to my knowledge, he was never asked. And unless Zeus was confronted with a specific question, he rarely contributed.

  “Could be that by now, your CD has been copied,” I noted.

  “Again, my compliments if you’re acting. But I think you know as well as I do that half the disk is coded to permanently corrupt itself if any attempt is made to copy its contents.”

  I was no computer whiz kid, but even I could appreciate Le Campion’s genius. I fished for more information. “If the book’s translation is encrypted, figuring out what’s on the disk is going to be next to impossible.”

  Arcontius sighed. “The text requires a translation key—a key Benjamin had on his computer, which, you might be interested to know, we’ve managed to acquire. We believe Quia Vita also has the know-how to decode the disk if it’s ever located.”

  “Sounds like it might be worth it for Silverstein to pay five million to make sure Quia Vita doesn’t get the disk.”

  Arcontius gave me a hard look. “I’m sure you’d like me to agree and hand over a check. Well, we’re not quite there yet, Mr. Bullock. For the time being, let’s just say we’re considering the request.”

  Arcontius’s well was just about dry. Time to push for a close. “Where do we go from here?”

  “That’s largely up to you. Get back to me within the next twenty-four hours. Either admit you have the disk or tell us when you’ll be making another trip to Orlando. And we want to discuss lowering the price. Five million is too steep.”

  I fought off the urge to squeeze Arcontius’s rope-like neck. “You want me to jump through your hoop by this time tomorrow.”

  “It’s in your best interest.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Arcontius flicked out his tongue and ran it across his thin lips. “Then we’ll know you can’t or won’t do much to solve our problem.”

  “And what would that mean?”

  “Terminating your consulting agreement.”

  “You know what? I’m not happy about this Abraham-in-the-middle arrangement. Whatever I have to say from here on will be to Arthur Silverstein.”

  Arcontius showed his teeth, a cross between a smile and a sneer. “If you want to talk, you’ll do it through me. That’s the way Mr. Silverstein wants it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then Mr. Dong gets involved. He’s very good at ensuring the only people who enter Mr. Silverstein’s world do so through the chief of staff’s door.”

  I remembered Doug’s explanation of Arcontius’s blurry role in the Silverstein organization. “I see.”

  “I hope you do,” Arcontius said. He pressed an intercom button on his phone and Dong appeared. “Show him out,” Arcontius instructed.

  The sumo wrestler gripped my arm and hoisted me to my feet.

  “Mr. Bullock,” Arcontius called as I was being pushed into the mansion’s foyer. “Tomorrow. Don’t disappoint me.”

  Chapter 13

  Saturday night’s eleven o’clock news opened with new developments in the Orlando Airport bombing investigation. The FBI announced it was holding a twenty-five-year-old Jordanian graduate student as a “person of interest.” Witnesses had spotted the man leaving the airport minutes after the Continental ticket counter had been decimated. The suspect was a member of a Tampa mosque that had been under surveillance by the feds because of its “radical Islamic teachings.”

  It was a relatively quiet weekend night at the Gateway. One of my men was in the lockup on a drunk-and-disorderly charge and another was getting stitches at a downtown health clinic after a run-in with six Rutgers students. Doc Waters was helping me do a final nose count before we closed the Gateway doors for the night. That’s when Four Putt Gonzales from the Hyatt called.

  “This thing is outta control,” he wailed. “Way outta control. You gotta get down here, Bullet. Right now.”

  I figured whatever was bothering him must have something to do with Twyla. Four Putt told me to meet him in the Hyatt parking garage in a half hour. It was a pleasant enough night so I invited the professor to join me for the fifteen-minute walk to the hotel.

  The first level of the hotel’s multideck garage was dimly lit and it took me a couple of minutes to spot Four Putt’s vintage Ford Crown Victoria. Gonzales was as good at restoring old cars as he was bad at playing golf.

  I introduced Four Putt to the professor, which turned out to be unnecessary since the two were acquainted.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Four Putt opened the Ford’s front door. The dome light ignited and I saw several cardboard boxes crammed into the backseat. “I got more of these in the trunk!” Four Putt said.

  “More what?”

  “These.” He pulled a box out of the car and dropped it on the cement floor of the parking deck. Four Putt leaned over to open the carton. “I don’t want her here, Bullet! You told me there wasn’t gonna be no problems, right? Then I find out that not only is she in the business, she’s doin’ business!”

  The last time I saw Four Putt this animated was when he hooked a new Titleist into a water hazard. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I said.

  Four Putt stopped clawing at the top of the box. “Two goons show up earlier tonight, drag me out here, and tell me this shit belongs to Twyla Tharp. Said the stuff can’t stay in her apartment because it’s full of fleas—some of which are probably hitchhiking their way into my damn hotel.”

  I glanced at Doc. The professor looked as confused as I did.

  Four Putt finally ripped open the top of the carton and straightened. “There.” He pointed at dozens of silver balls each about an inch and a half in diameter.

  Doc lifted one of the small globes out of the box. “Amazing! I haven’t seen these since I was in China.”

  “First, I thought they were ball bearings, for chrissakes,” said Four Putt. “Felt like an idiot.”

  “They’re Ben Wa balls,” Doc explained.

  Four Putt threw up his hands. “Jesus, Bullet. She’s gonna be selling these out of a room on the third floor.”

  The professor lifted two balls from the box. “Premium grade. Hollow with a small weight inside. Insert two of these in the vagina and it’s magic time.”

  I did another quick inspection of the Crown Victoria’s interior. “These couldn’t all be Ben Was,” I said, all the while trying to remember the last time I had seen the things. It was when I was a freshman in college and Tracy Glivitz gave me tutoring lessons on everything erotic. She said her pair of Ben Was never delivered an orgasm. Not once. We ended up using them as marbles.

  “You want to know what’s in them other boxes? Clitoral stimulators. Vibrating panties. In the trunk I got strap-ons and six different kinds of dildos. She’s sellin’ every kind of sex toy you can dream up. Outta my hotel.”

  “All right, relax, Four Putt. How do you know she’s going retail with these things?”

  “The guys who made the drop told me she called and wanted this stuff delivered here. She’s gonna turn her room into a goddamned triple X storefront.”

  Even before I fell in
to my job at the Gateway, I learned how easy it is to misread people. Twyla was more than just an exotic dancer and an occasional hooker. She was also an entrepreneur. I was starting to really like this woman.

  “What’s that?” I pointed to a four-foot gold pole lying across the Ford’s back seat.

  Four Putt pulled the rod from the car and held it like a shepherd’s staff. “A collapsible stripper’s pole. A few twists and it grows to ten feet. Screw it between the top of a door frame and the floor and start grindin’.”

  Four Putt dropped the pole next to the Ben Was.

  “So what do you want from me?” I asked. “You know who we’re dealing with.”

  “That’s the point—I know who we’re—” The look on my face stopped Four Putt midsentence.

  “What? What is it?” he asked.

  Sixty yards from where we were standing, a man walked under one of the parking deck’s dull overhead lights. I couldn’t make out his face but I recognized the thick gold chain and the tan shirt. It was one of the Hispanics I had seen at the Orlando Airport and earlier at the Benjamin Kurios murder site.

  “Get down!” I shouted and pushed Doc behind the Ford’s driver’s- side door Four Putt had left open.

  The Hyatt manager was too bewildered to move. “What?” he shouted at the same time the gunman fired six shots at the car. One bullet caught Four Putt in the left thigh sending him to the cement floor just behind the professor and me. Four Putt tried screaming, but shock and pain tied his vocal chords in a knot.

  The Hispanic’s hard-soled shoes clacked toward us. The man moved at a steady pace, obviously not in a hurry since he had to know that we weren’t going anywhere. He fired five more shots. One pinged off the Crown Vic’s door and the others went wild.