Book of Nathan (21 page)

“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 into 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.

“Doc,” I whispered, “we’ve got to distract the bastard.” I
picked up two fistfuls of balls and jammed them into Doc’s hands “Follow my
lead.”

I faked a move that made it look like I was going to sprint
to the hotel entrance. Two more rounds shattered the Ford’s driver’s-side
window. That’s when I roared, “Maurice, hold your fire. Don’t waste a shot
until you see him.”

The footsteps stopped. I heard a shuffling sound, probably
the Hispanic dodging behind one of the cars lined up on the deck.

Doc looked at me like I was insane. “Maurice isn’t here—he’s
back at the Gateway,” he said softly.

“The asshole out there doesn’t know that.” I reached into
the Ben Wa box and picked up the only ammunition we had at our disposal. “When
I give you the word, throw as many of these as you can, then run like hell.”

Doc turned to his rear. Four Putt was writhing on the
ground, both hands clamped on his left leg. “What about him?” Doc asked.

“Whoever’s out there isn’t after Four Putt. He’s after me.”

Doc put his mouth close to my ear. “Hold on. I think I can
buy us a few seconds.” The professor glanced at the hotel entrance, which was
two hundred unprotected feet away.

The heavy footsteps had come to an abrupt stop. The Hispanic
was now probably no more than ten parked cars from us. “You better talk fast.”

“Our boy’s using a Beretta M9 pistol. I caught a glimpse.”

This would usually be the time to pause and marvel at Doc’s
encyclopedic mind. Right now, I needed an explanation about why I should care
what kind of firearm was aimed at me. “And how’s that supposed to help us?”

“The pistol has a fifteen-shot clip. He’s used thirteen and
he’s fast on the trigger. Unless he’s changed the magazine—and I don’t think he
has—there are two rounds left in the gun. Two more shots and he’ll have to
reload. That’ll take a few seconds.”

Doc was brilliant but he was also a lousy gambler, and now
he was placing a bet that could get both of us killed. Like it or not, though,
my chips were lined up next to his. Time to role the dice.

I tossed a half dozen Ben Was at a Toyota Camry parked
diagonally across from Four Putt’s Ford. “Maurice, pin him down! Pin him down,”
I yelled.

The Hispanic took the bait. He stepped from behind a Chevy
Suburban and fired twice at the Camry. And then a click
.

Before the gunman’s empty magazine hit the parking deck
floor, Doc and I stepped to the side of the Crown Victoria’s front door and
pelted the Hispanic with metal buckshot. Instinctively, the man raised his
right forearm to protect himself from the broadside attack. The loaded clip
fell out of his hand.

Doc sprinted to the door that led to the hotel’s main
reception area. I was heading in the same direction when I glanced back at the
Hispanic. He was kneeling on the floor, one hand on his ammo clip and the other
pressed against his right eye. One of our Ben Was had done some unexpected
damage.

I could have easily made it to the Hyatt entrance. But I
didn’t. The man who had tried to kill me twice was on the ground, and I had an
opening. It was time to end this thing. Grabbing Twyla’s stripper pole, I
charged the Hispanic as he pushed a fresh load into his Beretta. He hoisted the
pistol, but his right eye was swollen shut, and he didn’t see the rod before it
landed with a thwack
on
the bridge of his nose. The man fell back, a gusher of blood turning the lower
half of his face red. The Beretta flew across the deck and came to a stop under
a Cadillac Escalade.

I pulled the pole over my head and took aim. The next swing
would be an ax-like blow across the man’s knees. I wanted him alive,
incapacitated, and able to answer a lot of questions. The Hispanic was dazed
but not disoriented enough to stay still as the pole began its downward arc.
Instinctively, he rolled to one side and the rod hit nothing but concrete.

“Hijo de puta!”
the
man gurgled, blood pouring into his mouth. Defying the damage to his face, he
scrambled to his feet and dodged behind a row of cars. I chased him as he raced
through the gated parking deck entrance and headed toward a black sedan. Even
with his injuries, the Hispanic was agile. He was twenty feet ahead of me when
he reached the car and pulled open the front passenger-side door. I sent the
pole flying, a gold javelin that speared the man’s ribcage just before the
driver yanked him into the sedan. I recognized the man behind the wheel. It was
the other Hispanic I had described to the FBI after the Orlando Airport
catastrophe.

The car sped off and I circled back to the wounded Four Putt
Gonzales who was still on his back, clasping his bloodied leg. I unlatched my
belt and turned it into a makeshift tourniquet just as Doc reappeared.

“Called 911,” the professor said.

Four Putt suddenly found his voice. “Oh, shit! Pick up them
balls. Pick up them balls.”

“Worry about your leg, not your balls,” Doc suggested.

Four Putt’s eyes widened with panic. “Listen, this thing
could ruin us. Ruin us. Don’t let the cops find no Ben Was. And get that other
sex shit out of my car! The shooting’s gonna be some kid doin’ target practice
with a stolen pistol.”

I could practically read Four Putt’s mind. The Hyatt was
booked a year in advance for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and Quinceañera fiestas.
Bullets plus blood could equal cancellations. Enough of those and Four Putt
would be doing the night shift at one of the rooms-by-the-hour, no-tell motels
on Route 1.

“Go along with this, Bullet.” Four Putt insisted. “You and
Manny Maglio stuck me with Twyla Tharp, for chrissakes. You owe me one.”

I told Doc to start collecting balls while I moved boxes of
sex paraphernalia from Four Putt’s car to a nearby hotel van. As we worked, the
wail of police sirens grew louder, gradually drowning out the Hyatt manager’s
cries of pain. Or was it despair?
 

Chapter 14

High
noon on a gloomy Sunday in New Brunswick. I was power walking my way along
George Street trying to shake off the events of the past fourteen hours. Four
Putt Gonzales was in Robert Wood Johnson Hospital nursing a nasty leg wound.
The cops were running a trace on the Beretta they recovered from under the
Escalade. Good luck. The pistol’s serial number had been filed off, and I
remembered the Hispanic was wearing surgical gloves. Fingerprints were out of
the question.

Four Putt was sticking with his story that last night’s
incident was a byproduct of some juvenile delinquent whose vandalism got out of
control. The police lightly grilled Doc and me about what happened. We crossed
our fingers and played Four Putt’s song. What got a couple of detectives
scratching their heads was the trail of blood that streaked the parking deck
and front driveway of the hotel. The kid doing the shooting must have cut
himself, Doc surmised. The detectives bought the improbable story mainly
because—like Four Putt—they wanted to downplay the event. Anything other than
an out-of-control adolescent fiddling with a handgun he just happened to have
found might poison New Brunswick’s renaissance.

I was walking back to the Gateway when my cell rang.

“Mr. Bullock?”

I pulled up short.

“We need to talk,” Judith Russet said. “I’ll be in Princeton
this afternoon. You’re only a short drive away so I suggest we meet. It’s
important. Shall we say three o’clock?”

Being told where I should be and what time I should get
there was getting aggravating. “Why?”

“It concerns the
Book
of Nathan.”

Russet knew the magic words. “All right,” I said. “Where
will I find you?”

“Do you know the Nassau Club?”

I forced out a “no.” People from the Gateway—whether
residents or staff—don’t do Princeton. Russet rattled off directions and added
a postscript.

“Do not bring Professor Waters. It’s imperative you come
alone.”

I headed back to the shelter, checking my watch. I had
missed Abraham Arcontius’s twenty-four-hour deadline for scraping up
information about the missing disk and/or about making plans to revisit
Orlando. Arthur Silverstein’s aide-de-camp was surely working up a list of ways
to make my life miserable.

Yigal Rosenblatt was at the front door when I arrived at the
Gateway. “I set it up,” was his greeting.

Once again, Yigal surprised me. Earlier in the day, I had
asked him if any of his “connections” could arrange a jailhouse phone call with
Miklos Zeusenoerdorf. The odds for coupling Zeus with a telephone were slim,
yet Yigal had come through. There was a lot more to this perpetual motion
machine than I first thought.

“When?”

“A half hour from now.” Yigal sounded pleased with himself,
as well he should. Thirty minutes later, with Yigal and Maurice at my side, I
placed the call to the Orange County Jail.

“Remember, Maurice,” I said, “don’t spice up what Zeus is
saying. Give it to us word for word. Understood?”

“Yes.”
 

I pushed the speakerphone button on the donated phone in my
office. Zeus’s voice came through as a string of grunts and mumbles.

Maurice translated. “He’s been havin’ a lot of bad dreams.
About God.”
 

“Listen, Zeus—” I shouted at the phone. It was wasted
breath. Zeusenoerdorf kept on blathering.
 

“
Says
God thinks Zeus did
take
out the preacher,” said Maurice. The quasi admission of guilt stopped the
translator in his tracks. He went from interpreting to castigating. “Ah, shit,
Zeus. Why’d you do that for, man?”

Intervention time.

“Zeus, you didn’t kill Benjamin Kurios.” I screamed. “This
whole God-in-your-dreams business is a figment of your imagination. You didn’t
kill anyone. And remember this, if you’re convicted for what happened to
Kurios, that means the real murderer goes free.”