by Curt Weeden
“Overreacted? He beat the shit out of Kurios.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen. When we found out about Benjamin’s head injuries, we made arrangements to have him treated at a private health clinic a few miles from where the van crashed.”
“But Perez forced a change of plans and then Zeusenoerdorf showed up. I’m curious—what happened to the maniac driving the van?”
The way Silverstein’s jaw tightened, I knew the question irked him. “He was an experienced professional. But his actions that night were—disappointing.”
“So, he was sacrificed too?”
Silverstein nodded at the Book of Nathan disk. “We’ve paid a high price for this,” he said. “Far beyond dollars, I mean. When something is so important to so many people, sacrifice—no matter how difficult—is justifiable.”
“And just how difficult was it to sacrifice Benjamin Kurios?”
“Very difficult.”
“Did you feel like Abraham?” I asked.
“What?” Clearly, he didn’t get the reference.
“Did you know that I met with Roger Meseck?”
Judging by Silverstein’s agitation, I guessed he knew nothing about my meeting with the doctor and his wife.
“Dr. Meseck?” Silverstein’s tremors were coming in violent waves.
“Yes. Strange that your people didn’t track me there. Or maybe they didn’t bother to tell you.” I paused to look at Dong. “Before I met with Meseck, I couldn’t figure out what Kurios meant when he mumbled two words just before he died. ‘Father’ and ‘Nathan’ is what he said to Zeusenoerdorf. I spent a lot of time wondering how a priest named Father Nathan could be mixed up in all this. But once I talked to Meseck, I realized I’d been running in circles.”
Silverstein’s eyes widened.
“The ‘father’ Kurios was talking about was you. The ‘Nathan’ was the disk you stole from your own son.”
“Quiet!” Silverstein shrieked.
“Benjamin Kurios was your best kept secret,” I continued. “But when your daughter died, the truth came out. That was a terrible night, wasn’t it? Ruth had a rare blood type, and the hospital couldn’t find a match. She was bleeding to death. That’s when you told the medical staff about your illegitimate infant son.”
Anger contorted Silverstein’s face. Anger and sadness.
“You sacrificed your own flesh and blood.” I was back to shouting now. “You sacrificed your only son because you let a promise to your dead daughter turn into an obsession.”
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 fu
mbled 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.”
“Which means?”
“Has to do with a promise Arthur made to his daughter. A promise that was more important than his or anyone else’s life.”
“Yeah?” Paula gave me an inquisitive look. “Must have been some promise.”
“It had to do with coat hangers and back alleys. Silverstein was looking for something that would keep women from dying the way his daughter was butchered.”
Paula turned her attention back to the charred body. “Did he find it? Whatever he was looking for?”
I stared at the puddle of plastic leaking out of Silverstein’s tuxedo jacket. The liquefied remains of the Book of Nathan disk.
“We’ll never know.”
Chapter 29
Doug ordered the Colonel’s extra crispy drumstick, one hot and spicy breast, two original-recipe wings, sides of coleslaw, fried potato wedges, and a hot biscuit.
“Which unlucky artery gets clogged today?” I asked. We were parked opposite each other at one of the few unoccupied tables inside a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on the outskirts of New Brunswick.
“Don’t hassle me, Bullet.” Doug gave me a flip of his right hand as he talked. Mistake. His thumb caught the edge of his tray and sent it skidding over a thin layer of grease that coated the tabletop. Doug lunged and made a miraculous save.
“After everything I’ve done for you? I have a right to hassle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Manny Maglio put a lot of zeroes on his check to the United Way, didn’t he? When you get your bonus this year from Harris & Gilbarton, buy me dinner. And forget about fast food.”
“Give me a break.” Doug dropped his chicken wing. “You roasted a billionaire who could have put the United Way on easy street for the next century.”
“If Silverstein hadn’t died, he’d have been slammed with all kinds of charges, including murder and attempted murder. After the justice system got t
hrough with him, the United Way would be looking at leftovers at best.”
“Where are you from—Mars?” Doug asked. “Silverstein wouldn’t have been found guilty of anything. Remember the O.J. equation? Put money in the mitt and you have to acquit. Silverstein could have bought his way out of any courtroom in America.”
“You’re forgetting about Thaddeus Dong. He would have taken his boss down with him.”
“Nice theory,” countered Doug, “but Dong isn’t doing much talking, is he? And I doubt he ever will since nobody’s been able to find the bastard.”
How a man the size of a water tower could have gotten off Ellis Island the night Arcontius was murdered and Silverstein incinerated was a question that continued to be an embarrassment to police departments on either side of the Hudson River. A DNA check of the blood splattered on the floor of the main building’s Research Library confirmed Dong had been injured. With or without outside assistance, the Asian had disentangled himself from the heavy steel shelving I had used to disable him and then did a disappearing act.
“You know, it’s amazing how no one buys my story,” I grumbled.
“They bought half of it,” noted Doug.
He was right. Fifty percent of what I had to say was about Thaddeus Dong, and that information was considered credible mainly because it was backed by two Venezuelans who once worked for Silverstein. After their arrest on unrelated charges, they plea bargained for a reduced sentence by telling police when and how Dong wandered over to the dark side. That news prompted a second autopsy of Abraham Arcontius’s remains and a conclusion that his neck injuries were not consistent with a fall down a flight of stairs. More importantly, the two men disclosed that it was Arcontius who hired a Caracas hit man to do damage to Benjamin Kurios for reasons unknown. A warrant was issued for Dong, but he was still among the missing. I wondered if he were playing basketball in Myanmar or pushing up daisies in Jersey. Either way, it wasn’t likely he would be going to trial.
The other half of my story—the part about Arthur Silverstein—was tucked away in a “don’t tarnish a great man’s image” drawer. Seems nobody wanted to believe the billionaire was crazy enough to order Abraham Arcontius’s execution. And the possibility that Arthur had something to do with Benjamin Kurios’s murder was absurd. When I claimed that Kurios was actually Silverstein’s son, there was a lot of laughter followed by a warning that libeling a deceased, wealthy man, not to mention the country’s greatest evangelist, bordered on heresy.
