Book of Nathan (34 page)

I released my grip on the lawyer who began gyrating again.
“Oh, I do. I understand.”

“Park your car over there,” I ordered and waved at a mostly
empty visitor lot. “Until I say otherwise, stay out of sight.”

I ordered Doc and Maurice back into my Buick and headed for
the VIP parking area. It was already crowded with limos and expensive cars.
Dozens of workers were loading flowers and other provisions onto two large
boats. The first was a bulky Circle Line ferry ironically named
Miss Gateway
that the United Way had booked to carry a small army of workers and a few
supplies that hadn’t already been trucked in from Liberty Park over a narrow
bridge to the 27-acre island. The second was a spectacular, 110-foot yacht
christened
Resolution
that
would be transporting guests to and from the island
.
Doug had told me earlier the
Resolution
was big enough to accommodate 150 passengers for a stand-up reception. The
yacht would make two or three trips from Jersey to Ellis Island during the
early evening. An even larger luxury vessel was shuttling guests from Battery
Park in Manhattan.
 

I greeted Doug who was making nice to a couple of early birds
about to board the
Resolution.
“Can I have a word?” I took Doug by the arm, guided him to the passenger side
of the Buick and suggested he peek through the window. When he saw what Hinkle
had done to Doc and Maurice, he groaned.

“They can’t show up on the island looking like that!”

“They’re busboys. They don’t need to look like they stepped
out of
GQ
.”

“What they look like is a couple of clowns,” Doug wailed.
“Send ’em home.”

I shook my head. “Not going to happen. I lived up to my end
of the bargain and now it’s your turn. If you want to butt heads, go a couple
of rounds with your pal, Hinkle.”

“Look, people are paying up to fifty thousand dollars a
table for this goddamned dinner.”

“And the two men in the car are going to clear the dishes.”

The hard edge to my words convinced Doug it was useless to
continuing pressing.

“Dammit.” he swore. “You’re one royal pain in the ass.”

Doug waved at a middle-aged man who was all muscle and
sweat. “This is Albert Martone. He’s the catering supervisor. Handles the
boats, Ellis Island, the whole nine yards.”

Martone gave me a damp handshake. Doug explained the
unanticipated problem and told the catering manager the two men sitting in my
Buick were busboys who had to be added to the work crew for the evening.

Martone looked through the rear window. “Them?”

“I know, I know. But we need to get them in the lineup,
Albert. It’s very important.”

“They have to wear decent looking tuxedos,” Martone said.
“Don’t matter if they’re scooping shit. Gotta be dressed right. I gotta
reputation, for chrissakes!”

“You have extra tuxedos on hand, right?” asked Doug. “For
emergencies?”

“I’m adding this to the damn bill,” Martone threatened.

“That’s fine, Albert. That’s okay. I understand. Really, I
do.”

“Get ’em on board the ferry. When they land, I want ’em to
go straight to the wardrobe trailer. One of my people will try to turn them
into something passable.”

I asked Martone if I could have a few words with Doc and
Maurice first.

“Make it fast,” the catering chief snapped back.

I climbed back into the Buick.
 

“What’s your job?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Your job. What are you supposed to do tonight?”

When dealing with anyone from the Gateway, testing for
retention was crucial.
 

“Corner Abraham Arcontius,” Doc responded. “Long enough for
you to connect with Arthur Silverstein.”

“Right. And you’ll do this how?”

“Arcontius knows us. He saw Maurice and me at Silverstein’s
place. Running into us on the island will shock the hell out of him. While he’s
off balance, we’re going to engage the worm in a conversation about civility.”

“He’s smart enough to figure out your being on the island
isn’t a coincidence,” I reminded Doc. “If he gets too suspicious, he’s going to
skitter.”

“No he won’t,” Maurice promised, sounding like a man who
wasn’t a neophyte when it came to culling a target out of a crowd and keeping
him bottled up.

“I need at least ten minutes with Silverstein with no
interruptions,” I said.

“Consider it done,” Doc assured me.

Martone rapped on the window. The catering manager was
getting jittery.
 

“Quite a freakin’ pair,” Martone muttered as Doc and Maurice
waddled their way toward
Miss
Gateway.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Whether it was a stroke of genius or a flash of idiocy is
debatable. But there was no weighing the upsides or downsides of the idea
before it came flying out of my mouth.

“Fortunately the other two aren’t quite as wacky,” I said to
the catering director.

I could feel Martone’s stare burning into me. “What other
two?”

“The other couple who’ll be working on the island. Doug
Kool—⁠” I paused and gave Martone a confused look. “Doug did tell you,
right?”

“No,
he
didn’t tell me!”

“Well, we have to get them to the island.”

“What are they? They with the models?”

“Models?”

“The models!
You
know, the goddamned people Kool hired to walk around dressed up like goddamned
immigrants.”

I remembered Doug telling me he’d recruited a New York
talent placement agency to put together a group of models who would show off
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century garb at the Ellis Island dinner. When
it came to special events, Doug was king.
 

“Yeah,” I said. “One’s supposed to wear a Jewish outfit and
the other is—” I stopped short of plugging in turn-of-the-century
hooker. “Uh, she’s good to go in just
about anything on the rack.”

Martone looked leery. “The Jew—what is he? A Hasidic? We
could probably use a Hasidic. Is he a Hasidic?”

“No,” I assured Martone. “He’s a run-of-the-mill Jew.”

“Can he pass for a Hasidic?”

“Absolutely.”
 

Martone produced two clip-on red tags, which he stuffed in
my tux jacket pocket. “Tell ’em to put these on. You got ten minutes to get the
both of them on the ferry. And that’s it for favors. Damn Kool needs a kick in
the ass.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” I said and jumped into my Buick,
picked up Twyla and Yigal, then made the return trip to the pier. There was
still time to back off my impromptu strategy of shipping them to Ellis Island.
Plan B would be to leave them sitting landside at the ferry terminal for
several hours until the United Way dinner ended. Not a good choice given
Yigal’s unpredictable and so far unexplainable actions. Better to have both of
them closer to me and confined to a small spit of land surrounded on all sides
by water.

“These red tags will get you on the boat and on the island,”
I informed the pair. “When you get off the ferry, look for a wardrobe trailer.
Twyla, pick out something ethnic and put it on.”

Twyla looked perplexed. “Who makes ethnic, Bullet?” Then a
flash of anticipation. “Wait a minute—is it Louis Vuitton? Oh my God, is it?”

I rubbed my head. “Ask Yigal,” I suggested. “He knows
ethnic.”

Did he ever.

Chapter 24

Arthur
Silverstein was last to board the
Resolution.
The pint-sized king
of the investment world gave a wave of his cigar to a small crowd of admirers
and was quickly whisked to a stateroom on the main deck. According to Doug,
this was the modus operandi
for
Silverstein at any event he attended. The billionaire was not one to mingle
with the masses. If things went according to plan, the United Way’s guest of
honor would remain incognito until called to Ellis Island’s Great Hall to make
a few pithy remarks put together by his PR staff. Then he would slip back into
obscurity.
 

As the
Resolution
left
its Liberty State Park mooring, a seven-piece band played “Anchors Aweigh,” the
first of a long run of up-tempo selections.
Most
of the rich and famous had already found the three open bars strategically
scattered about the main deck. One man, however, seemed completely uninterested
in the premium brand liquors and assorted hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. It was
Abraham Arcontius, who stood guard only a few feet in front of the door to
Arthur Silverstein’s cabin.

A few minutes into the short cruise across New York Harbor,
the Asian leviathan named Thaddeus Dong sidled up to Arcontius. Since he was
only a couple of inches shorter than the Empire State Building, Dong had an
eagle’s eye view of the crowd and it wasn’t long before I was on his radar
screen. He whispered something to Arcontius, which sent Silverstein’s
right-hand man slithering toward me.

“You have a problem returning phone calls,” Arcontius said.
He didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, which probably meant Doug had let
him know I was on the guest list.

“I lost your number.”

Arcontius’s pointy ears turned red. “But not my Internet
address, which brings us to the reason you’re here. I assume you got
confirmation that we made the installment payments. We moved two point five
million to your account.”

I pretended to study the New York skyline trying to decipher
what I was hearing. My last conversation with Judith Russet left me thinking
Arcontius was no longer in
Quia
Vita
’s
inner circle. If that were true, why had he been informed about the
organization’s multimillion dollar payment for Le Campion’s notes? I needed to
bring all this into sharper focus, and the only way to make that happen was to
pump Arcontius.

“Two point five million is a lot of money,” I said.

“We can put this deal to bed before we get to Ellis Island,”
said Arcontius. “Give me the disk and I’ll BlackBerry instructions to have the
additional two million wired to your account.”

“Two million?” I asked. My confusion must have come off
sounding sarcastic because Arcontinus’s face knotted into a scowl.

“Don’t
go
there. You agreed to cut the price for the second payment by five hundred
thousand. No more bargaining. Stick with the deal you agreed to.”

It was like pulling away gauze. Arcontius wasn’t fronting
for
Quia Vita
.
He was representing another buyer. Arthur Silverstein? The Almiras Society? I
couldn’t be sure. What I did
know
was whoever stole the disk had discovered a way to rake in millions.
Quia Vita
and another shopper had each put two point five million on the table to get a
peek at Le Campion’s nonencrypted notes.
Quia
Vita
was willing to double down in exchange for the full translation of the
Book of Nathan,
but
Arcontius was coming in $500,000 short. That meant
Quia Vita
was probably about to become the rightful owner of Le Campion’s CD with
Arcontius and company left holding an empty bag.

I hoped I could shake more information out of the weasel.
“What we had was an agreement in principle.” Whatever that meant.

“I’m finished doing this dance,” said Arcontius. “The total
package is four point five million. Period. We owe you another two million.
You’re going to take the second payment and you’re going to hand over the
goddamned disk.”