by Curt Weeden
“The Arab?”
“He needs to be released.”
“It’ll happen,” Maglio promised. “Give it a day or so. The cops are gonna try coverin’ their asses before the kid files a wrongful detention lawsuit.”
It sounded like Maglio knew a lot about wrongful detention.
“What about Juan Perez?”
“Who?”
“Perez. The Venezuelan who was lit on fire in Orlando.”
Maglio gave me a blank stare. “Don’t know nothin’ about a Venezuelan. The contract was with a couple of Dominicans.”
Now it was my turn to look puzzled. I thought for sure there was a connection between the man Zeus had seen behind the wheel of the mysterious blue sedan and the two murder-for-hire thugs. Maybe not.
Maglio’s assistant made another uninvited appearance. “Crystal’s on the line.”
“Mildred, for godsakes.”
The woman yawned. “Needs a doctor in Atlanta. She’s got the clap.”
Maglio brushed a few beads of sweat from his upper lip. “Give me a couple a minutes, will ya?”
“You’re gonna have to pay for the office visit,” Mildred warned. “And the penicillin.”
“See, this is what I go through,” Maglio said once we were alone again. “The thing of it is, it’s always like this. Never stops. Never.”
I leaned forward trying to capture Maglio’s full attention. “You know I’m watching out for your niece until she starts work at Universal in Orlando, right?”
“Yeah, and I really appreciate it. Doin’ a hell of a job.”
“Twyla’s with me a lot,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Which is good. It’s a good thing.”
“Neither one of us wants her hurt.”
Maglio spread his arms. “I told ya it’s all over. The contract’s been pulled, and there ain’t gonna be nobody screwin’ with nobody no more.”
“Glad to hear that,” I said. “But what I don’t understand is why a couple of Dominicans would want me dead.”
Maglio looked at me like I was from Uranus. “Who said they wanted you dead?”
“What?”
“Are you dense or somethin’? The target was always that snitch bastard, One Nut Waters. If he didn’t clamp himself on you like a jockstrap, there wouldn’t be no problem. He’d be dead and you’d be helpin’ my niece get a new start in Florida.”
I felt a rush of relief—or was it stupidity? The Hispanic assassins had nothing to do with the Kurios case or the Book of Nathan. It was sheer happenstance that Twyla, Maurice, Four Putt Gonzales, and I had been hanging around with a man who years ago had kicked the mob in the groin. When Doc made an unexpected appearance in Orlando, he apparently jogged the memory of a few Philly gangsters who had taken up retirement in the area. The bloodbath that followed was all about payback and it was a miracle I was still alive.
“Why didn’t you ask Doc Waters to come here?” I asked. “You could have told all this to his face.”
“The guy’s been runnin’ scared for years. Think he’d come here knowin’ I was connected?”
Mildred reappeared carrying two sheets of paper that she slapped on Maglio’s desk. They were legal-looking documents with a few words marked by a yellow highlighter: lewd acts, exposure of genitalia, cease and desist.
“Besides,” Maglio said and pushed the papers aside, “I wouldn’t want that piece of garbage stinkin’ up my place. So, you go back and tell that fart I saved his ass and the one nut he’s got left. You be sure an’ tell him that.”
Chapter 19
A thin layer of smog caught the early rays of Thursday’s sun and turned the Jersey horizon into a painter’s palette. It was six thirty a.m. and I was too exhausted to catch the irony of how the coupling of Mother Nature and air pollution could produce something so beautiful. Thanks to Doug Kool and Manny Maglio, the only contemplation I could handle was where to find a strong cup of coffee and a newspaper. I was about to take another unexpected trip to Florida, and that impending reality along with yesterday’s meeting with Maglio had put me in a stupor.
I walked three blocks to a convenience store and bought a large Brazilian Brew plus a New York Times. Maglio’s people had wasted no time. The front-page headline read:
FOUND SHOT IN CAMDEN, NJ
Dominican Drug Dealers
Linked to Orlando Bombing
The paper reported that each man had been killed execution-style, a single bullet through the back of the skull. An anonymous phone call had led police to the murder scene—the caller also claiming the two men were responsible for the Orlando airport disaster. Traces of C-4 were found in the trunk of the car. An unnamed FBI spokesman said the explosive had characteristics that matched samples taken from the Continental terminal blast. Asked if the Jordanian graduate student being held in connection with the airport bombing would be released, the FBI said authorities were checking to determine if there were any connection between the student and the Dominicans.
At seven o’clock, I was back at the Gateway and Yigal Rosenblatt drove to the front entrance exactly as planned. If it weren’t for an interest in talking to Conway Kyzwoski’s wife, I would never have balled myself up in the backseat of the lawyer’s Ford Taurus. A nonstop flight out of Newark would have been the logical way to transport Twyla to Florida. But since Zeus’s lawyer was reluctantly returning to Orlando, and since widow Kyzwoski lived in a town close to the Route 95 interstate, I hitched a ride with Yigal and Twyla, who was half asleep in the front passenger seat. Twelve hours later, we were cruising into South Carolina.
“Take the next exit,” I told Yigal after we’d traveled about a hundred miles through the Palmetto State. “Follow the signs to Goose Creek.”
“Why are we stopping here?” Twyla asked. I knew she was fixated on Universal Studios, and anything that sidetracked us from getting to Orlando would make her unhappy.
“Goose Creek’s where Conway Kyzwoski lives—or used to live,” I said.
“Oh, God, poor Conway,” moaned Twyla with a kind of sadness that comes from losing one’s pet dog, an intimate friend—or a client.
“This won’t take long. I have a few questions for Kyzwoski’s wife.”
“So sorry for her.” It looked like Twyla had pushed the rewind on her mental TiVo and was playing back that memorable moment when she met Conway’s wife at the Wayside Motel. “Lost her husband and all. Glad she’s got the Bible thing going. She’s got plenty of faith, which is what you need if your spouse gets run over by a sausage.”
“Very religious woman,” Yigal reminded Twyla and me. “Faith will help her heal even if she’s not Jewish.”
My memory flashed a picture of the bland-looking Ida spouting scripture in her muumuu just as Yigal hooked left off of a main east-west highway and onto a backwoods road.
“Pull in here,” I said, pointing to a dirt parking lot in front of a run-down shack that housed the Pringletown Video and Bait Shop. Yigal braked to a stop, and I ventured into the shabby store hoping to find someone who could tell me where we were and where Goose Creek happened to be.
The shop was empty except for a puny woman wearing an apron who sat behind an antique cash register.
“Happen to know where I can find the Paradise Mobile Estates?” I asked. “It’s a trailer park in Goose Creek.”
The lady’s agate eyes scanned me from top to bottom. “Get back on I-26, head east, and you’ll see signs for Goose Creek. The trailer park’s on the main road not far off from Sonic.”
“Thanks.” I bought a pack of Twizzlers as a way of showing my gratitude.
The woman wagged her finger at me. “You’re the one who was on TV. Talkin’ about your wiener, wasn’t you?”
There are certain inalienable rights that come with being anonymous and that suits me just fine. So, when an ABC news team had asked me for a couple of comments about the Kielbasavan incident, it never occurred to me that my remarks would be beamed coast to coast. But
they were and I unwittingly became an icon of stupidity even in the backwaters of America.
“It wasn’t my wiener,” I said softly. “It was actually a kielbasa.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
“So if it wasn’t your wiener, why was you talkin’ about it?”
“I made a mistake,” I admitted. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“If it weren’t your wiener, that’s what you should-a done.”
I buried the urge to throw the old lady into the Pringletown night crawler bin, barged out of the shop, and climbed into Yigal’s Taurus.
Fifteen minutes later, we spotted the sign: Paradise Mobile Estates: A Friendly Place for Friendly People. Yigal turned left and we surveyed rows of doublewides, all of which were alike except for the piles of junk in front of each.
“Excuse me,” I said to a kid who looked no more than thirteen, but sauntered around like a punk twice his age. “Do you know where the Kyzwoskis live?”
The South Carolina sun had long gone and the kid’s dark skin blended into the night.
“Waccha want Ephraim for?”
“You know A-Frame?” Twyla squealed and turned on the car’s dome light. “Where’s his house, honey?”
With Twyla’s torso fully illuminated, the kid’s temperament turned. It’s hard to look surly when you’re wearing a smile that travels from one pierced ear to the other. Without lifting his eyes from Twyla’s chest, the kid gave us directions to the Kyzwoski residence.
Yigal rolled through Paradise Mobile Estates searching for a white trailer with a partially dismantled Buick in the front yard. Recalling that Conway was an auto repairman, I guessed the remains of the car had to be a legacy to the late Mr. Kyzwoski. When we found the place, I told Yigal and Twyla to stay in the Taurus while I conferred with Kyzwoski’s widow. The last thing I needed was a confrontation between Twyla and Mrs. K. who, I remembered, was a woman scorned.
I maneuvered my way around piles of litter and knocked on the Kyzwoski door. A-Frame’s brother, Noah, answered, skittered away, and returned with Ida who looked as happy to see me as a repo man.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Kyzwoski,” I opened. “My name is Rick Bullock. We met in Orlando—”
“I know who you are.”
“Well, I wanted to stop by—and, uh, well, I’m very sorry about your loss.”
“You din’t come all the way here to tell me that.”
“I was driving to Florida and happened to notice Goose Creek wasn’t that far out of the way—”
“What is it you want?”
While I was struggling to fabricate a reason that wouldn’t get the Kyzwoski door slammed in my face, Ephraim scooted up to the front door on a battered bicycle.
“Ain’t you the one that got my pappy kilt?” he asked. He wore a stained tee-shirt that bulged at the beltline—Conway’s kid, all right.
“No,” I said. “There was an accident and I just happened to be there when your father died.”
“Yeah, well, mama says pappy got kilt ’cause of you.”
What I wanted to scream back was: If your redneck pappy hadn’t been shadowing me, he’d still be spitting tobacco and making home brew. But instead I turned my attention back to Ida.
“If I could have just a moment, Mrs. Kyzwoski,” I said. “Without the children, I mean.”
Ida whacked the two boys away, then pushed open a ripped screen door and nodded me into her home. What was supposed to be the living room was a trash heap except for two adornments. First, a frosted acrylic crucifix was standing tall on a shabby end table. It was lit from the inside and its multicolor glow gave the cross a kind of disco look. The second was a large color print of Jesus and a host of angels caught up in a swirl of white clouds. A tiny spotlight tacked to the ceiling made the picture sparkle.
I couldn’t help but feel a tad sorry for the late Conway Kyzwoski. His living quarters had been a shrine and his wife was having a love affair with another man. Maybe Kyzwoski shelled out a few dollars for some extramarital attention now and then because he couldn’t find what he needed at home. What chance would a mortal have when competing with the Son of God?
Ida motioned to an upholstered chair that had long ago lost most of its stuffing.
“You know I was with Conway when he died,” I began.
“I do.”
“He said some things before he passed away.” Passed away were not words that went with Conway Kyzwoski. Croaked would have been more fitting.
Ida’s hard shell started to crack. “Like what?”
“Well, at the end, he said he didn’t want the boys to know what really happened in New Brunswick.”
“Go on.”
“He wanted me to tell you something, too.”
Ida bit her lip, sensing that whatever was coming next was the real reason I was sitting in her living room.
“He said I should tell you he wasn’t as religious as you are, but he still did his work for Jesus.”
I saw tears well up in Ida’s eyes. My words hit home.
“How much do you know about what my husband was doing in New Jersey?”
“Not much. All Conway told me was that he was working for a pro-life group.” That wasn’t exactly Kyzwoski’s message, but when coupled with information from Judith Russet, it rang true.
“So did y’all tell that to the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I guess because it could have stirred up a lot of questions. As far as the police are concerned, Conway’s death was an accident. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
“For a change, he was trying to do the right thing.” Two lines of tears traveled south.
“By following me? Taking pictures of everything I did? Everywhere I went?”
“He did it because Arita Almiras asked me to help. I was the one who talked Conway into spying on you. It was me who got him involved with Almiras.”
Bewilderment didn’t even come close to describing my reaction. Who the hell was Arita Almiras? “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kyzwoski, I’m lost.”
Ida shifted in her seat. She wore the same style muumuu that she had on when I first saw her at the Wayside. “Proverbs says that he who so committeth adultery destroyeth his soul. Did y’all ever hear that?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t think so.”
“Conway committed adultery. Any number of times far as I can tell.”
At least once, I thought, recalling Conway’s hairy foot protruding from Twyla’s bed at the Wayside Motel.
“What I did was to push him into a corner,” Ida went on. “Like he said, he din’t believe the same way I did. Even so, I told him if he was to stay with me and the boys, he had to do penance. That’s when I made him do the extra work with Almiras.”
“The extra work—was it for Quia Vita?”
“No. Quia Vita wasn’t why Conway went to New Jersey.”
“Visio Dei?”
“The rich part of Quia Vita? Never had nothin’ to do with them, and I know they wouldn’t be bothered with people like me or Conway.”
“So it was this Arita Almiras who asked your husband to follow me?”
“Had to take time off from work to do it,” said Ida. “But Conway went along with what Almiras wanted ’cause I forced him to. My husband wasn’t all bad, in spite of what most people think.”
I have no idea what turned the Kyzwoski living room into a confessional. Ida’s insides were suddenly spilling out, and I was sitting in a bug-infested chair taking it all in like a priest. “How is it that you’re connected to Almiras?”
“Shouldn’t be sayin’ much about this. But it seems Almiras isn’t what he’s made out to be. The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty. Psalm 74.”
“Could we go back a step or two? Why is this Almiras interested in me in the first place?”
“Got something he wants,” Ida
explained. “Some kind of computer disk. Conway’s job was to take pictures of you wherever you went and send ’em to one of Almiras’s assistants. Then the others searched places where you might-a hid the disk.”
Manny Maglio had taken care of two men who had tried twice to walk over me as a way of getting to Doc Waters. Conway Kyzwoski had been tracking me since my memorable stay at the Wayside Motel. Now Ida gave me the unnerving news that there were others picking through my personals. “Others?”
“You need to understand Almiras wants that disk bad. That’s why it wasn’t just Conway who was workin’ on you.”
I was having trouble getting my head around her words. “Help me understand what’s going on.”
Ida drew a deep breath. “There’s another group that’s different than Quia Vita. A lot different.”
“You belong to this other group?”
Ida nodded.
“And Arita Almiras?”
“He heads it up.”
“When you say the groups are different. How so?”
Ida took time to phrase an answer. “Almiras is more about action and less about talk.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing anything. Action could cover a lot of territory, including hospitals and autopsy rooms. How much danger was I in?
“The Almiras Society is what it’s called.”
“Go on.”
“The society does things Quia Vita doesn’t.”
I was starting to understand. The society sounded like an extremist faction that broke away from Judith Russet’s crowd. A clique made up of those who weren’t big on discussion but high on disruption. “Things like what?”
“Puttin’ abortionist names on the Internet. Makin’ sure neighbors know if they got a baby killer livin’ on their street. Things like that.”
“The woman who runs Quia Vita—”
“Russet.”
“What does she know about the Almiras Society?”
“From what I hear, she tries not to know much,” said Ida. “Probably don’t ask a lot of questions because Arita Almiras isn’t someone you want to offend.”
I couldn’t picture Russet worried about offending anyone. “You think she’s afraid of this Almiras?”
