Book of Nathan (7 page)

It was too much of a coincidence. Ida Kyzwoski and a man
somehow connected to the murder of Benjamin Kurios both wearing the same
necklace? I looked more closely at the inscription engraved on the rim of the
silver disk.
Quia Vita.

“What about you?” Twyla asked Conway in a bedroom voice. “You
came here all the way from Goose’s Crease?”

“It’s Goose Creek,” Conway laughed. He leaned forward so he
was no more than a foot from Twyla. “Took a few days off from work to be with
the family. I’m what they call a mechanical engineer.”

“Conway works at Boylin’s Garage,” Ida clarified. “Like
Ephesians says, ‘Man must do something useful with his own hands that he may
have something to share with those in need.’ ”

I had my doubts that Conway did his share of sharing.

“You’re so lucky
to
have a daddy who knows about cars, A-Frame,” cooed Twyla. Her words lit Conway
up like a torch. Ida showed her first hint of uneasiness, squinting first at
her husband and then at Manny Maglio’s niece.

Conway apparently realized his wife was deciphering the
signals. He hoisted his beer can and reluctantly turned his attention to me.
“So, what kind of business are you gonna be doin’ in Orlando?”

I sucked in a lungful of Florida humidity and gave Conway as
little information as possible. “We’re here for a meeting.”

That might have been the conversation stopper if Twyla
hadn’t jumped in. “Bullet knows the guy who killed Benjamin Kurios.”

Ida made a hand motion that looked to be a combination of
the sign of the cross and a swatting of the mosquitoes that were also enjoying
the Wayside pool. “I see,” she said, showing no surprise.

“We talked to the killer in jail,” Twyla boasted. The urge
to clamp my hand over her glossy lips was almost uncontrollable.
 

“Why would you want to do that?” Ida asked me.

I took a tad too long to answer. Twyla kept running with the
ball.

“The killer used to live with Bullet in New Jersey,” Twyla
explained. “And it could be he’s not the murderer at all! Wouldn’t
that
be something?”

I guessed somewhere between Newark and the Wayside, Maurice
and Doc Waters had boiled down my connection to Zeus in a way that Twyla could
understand.

“That’s not exactly what—”
 

Ida cut me off. “We
know
who
did the killing, Mr. Bullet.”
 

“Well, I’m just here to talk to the suspect.”

“Come all the way to Florida to just talk? Why would you do
that?”

“To find out for sure if the man’s guilty or innocent.”

Ida looked at me as if I were insane. Even A-Frame and his
brother appeared astonished that anyone would be crazy enough to fiddle with a
case that was in the prosecutor’s bag. “Holy Father, as You say to us in First
Kings, give this man wisdom to know what justice deserves to be administered,”
she said.

“What?” Twyla asked.

Conway used his beer can to point at his wife. “She’s
Pentecostal,” he explained.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Twyla turned to Ida. “You don’t look old
enough for the change.”

Had Conway announced his wife was dying from rickets, Twyla
could not have been more sympathetic.

Ida ignored Twyla and her husband. She had locked on to me
and wasn’t about to be sidetracked. “Don’t be tempted to side with the devil.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised. “But like I said, I
just want to make sure the man sitting in jail actually killed Benjamin
Kurios.”

Conway ran a dirty fingernail through his two-day-old beard.
“What more evidence do y’all want? A couple of kids saw the whole thing.”

“Not exactly. No one actually saw Kurios get killed. What
they saw was what happened afterward.”

“What they saw,” Conway interjected, “was your friend
carryin’ a cross that he’d just used to put a hole in Kurios’s head.”

Ida’s dull eyes turned electric. “Do you believe, Mr.
Bullet?”

Oh, oh. This was a classic
have-you-stopped-believing-in-Jesus question my missionary friends loved to
throw at agnostics like me. It was usually a starter for a philosophical
debate, but that’s not where I intended to go with Ida Kyzwoski.
 

“Are you asking if I’m a Christian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Really doesn’t matter what you or I believe,” I said.
“Every human being comes with a twenty percent margin of error.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That people aren’t smart enough to know a hundred percent
of anything. So there’s a twenty percent chance that whatever I believe is
probably wrong.”

Ida was predictably confused.
   

“You’d be well advised to get back to the Bible,” she said.

“I’ll consider that.”

“And you should stay away from the man who killed Dr.
Kurios. Remember Revelation 22:12. ‘My reward is with Me to render to every man
according to what he has done.’ Do something that God will look kindly on.
Helping a man who killed somebody who was the Lord’s spokesman isn’t a step
toward heaven.”

“I understand.” It could have been the Miller Lite or the
fact that Ida Kyzwoski was giving me the jitters—whatever, my bladder felt
bigger than the Wayside pool. I needed to find a toilet, not God. I took
Twyla’s arm, threw out some excuse about why we had to leave, and then made a
quick exit.

We stopped at the Mitsubishi, picked up our luggage, and
headed for our respective rooms. It would have been an opportune time to coach
Twyla on what not to say about the Zeus situation. But peeing was more
pressing, so I said nothing as she wiggled off with her pink and yellow
overnighter in tow. There was another reason I kept my mouth shut. A little
part of me didn’t want to deflate the woman’s excitement over being deputized
as part of my Zeusenoerdorf investigation team. After all, when Twyla
high-heeled her way into my life, she knew nothing about my truth-finding
mission. Now that she was up to her thong in detective work, I sensed she liked
being part of something that didn’t require a prophylactic. Or was I reading
her wrong? The niggling idea that there was more to Twyla than just a
voluptuous exterior worked its way back into my head. But it was a thought
quickly pushed aside when my brain got an SOS from my panicked sphincter
muscle.

Doc, Maurice, Twyla, and I had identical Wayside
accommodations—twenty-by-twenty rooms complete with twin beds and bad lighting.
We were lined up in a row with Tyson and the professor in the middle and Twyla
and me as the bookends. When the team finished unpacking, we reboarded the
Mitsubishi and headed for the first inexpensive restaurant I could find. It was
after six o’clock and no one had eaten anything since downing a quick snack
before our liftoff from Newark. I settled on a pizza joint called My Way or the
Pie Way.

After a large pepperoni and a pitcher of beer, I drove back
to the Wayside and discovered the occupants in the room to my left, separated
by the thinnest of walls, were none other than the Kyzwoskis. For a while, the
only noise I heard was A-Frame pounding the hell out of Noah. But in time, the
boys’ ruckus was out amplified by Conway and Ida.

“Ain’t gonna listen to your bullshit about hell and
damnation!” Conway screamed. I heard the squeal of the motel room door as
Kyzwoski ripped it open.

“You got eyes for her!” Ida yelled back. “You think I’m that
stupid! Go ahead and hurt me like you done before! Hurt your family! It’s not
me or your sons you need worry about. Y’all got God to reckon with!”

I clenched my jaw waiting for Conway to slam the door. He
wasn’t about to leave without firing a few more shots.
 

“Woman, you keep on pushin’ me and I’ll splatter you like
duck turd on a rock!”

“Y’all ain’t gotta beat me to make me hurt! Your adultery
takes care of that!”

“I don’t wanna hear it!”

“Matthew 5. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart!”

Finally
,
I
thought. A passage from the Bible I knew, thanks to an old
Playboy
interview
with Jimmy Carter.

“Best thing y’all can do with that Bible of yours is to
stick it where even God can’t get the sun to shine!”

The Wayside door slammed shut. Through the cheesecloth
curtains in my room, I watched Conway clamber into his Dodge Ram flatbed loaded
with a white aluminum camper shell. Best I could figure was that this was where
A-Frame and his brother were stowed whenever the Kyzwoski family hit the road.

I listened to Ida’s whimpering for about a half hour. Then
things went quiet. I drifted off into a restless sleep.

At one a.m., I woke in a sweat. At first, I blamed the
barely functioning air conditioner for making the room so warm. Then I realized
it was something else that sounded an alarm. After yanking on my jeans,
loafers, and a tee shirt, I walked outside into a clammy Florida night that was
actually cooler than my Wayside quarters. It didn’t matter—I was still all
perspiration and a few seconds later, I knew why.

Every room was dark except mine and Twyla’s. A gusher of My
Way or the Pie Way mozzarella bubbled up my esophagus. If Twyla were maimed or
worse, I’d be spending the rest of my life running from Manny Maglio and
whichever of his associates didn’t happen to be doing time. I tapped on Twyla’s
door. I was hoping for the improbable—that she had fallen asleep before
clicking off the twenty-five-watt lightbulb.

Twyla opened the door no more than a foot. “Oh, hi, Bullet.”
She had cocooned herself in a blanket and her hair was blonde spaghetti gone
wild.

“I thought—” I started. “Your light was on and I just wanted
to be sure you were okay.”

“Ohhh. You’re such a sweetheart.”

There was enough of an opening for me to catch a glimpse of
everything I needed to see. A fifty-dollar bill lay flat on the dilapidated
table by the window and a man’s foot stuck out from under the top sheet of the
bed. Doc Waters? No, this wasn’t the kind of refined foot that I assumed Doc
might have. It was more simian. Then there was the odor—a mix of Twyla’s cheap
perfume, cigar smoke, and Valvoline motor oil.
 

“All right, then,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether I was
feeling relief, confusion or disgust. “Remember, I’m responsible for you while
you’re in Florida, Twyla. Call me if you get yourself in a fix.”

“I will,” she promised. “Know what?”

“What?”

“A gotta feeling that you’re a real special man.”

“Not really.”

“Doc told me you were married once,” she said. “Your wife
died, he said.”

“Yes,” I replied quietly. “It was a long time ago.”

“But I can tell you still love her. After all these years,
you haven’t forgotten. What it means to really love somebody, I mean.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right.”

“Yeah, I am,” Twyla said knowingly. “There’s something else.
You care about me. I mean, in a good way and all. From what I can tell, you
care about lots of people who don’t usually get the time of day from just about
nobody. See? These are the things that make you special.”

It could have been the hot night or the blush making a
return visit. My face was warm.

“Well, just be careful,” I cautioned.

“I sure will. G’night, Bullet.” Twyla blew me a kiss and
gently shut the door.

I spotted Conway Kyzwoski’s truck parked several spots down
from Twyla’s room. One of the few lights in the Wayside parking lot illuminated
the vehicle and made it easy to read the bumper sticker slapped on the tail
end:
God’s Messenger:
Benjamin Kurios.
 

I retreated to my room and tried thinking about tomorrow
rather than what was happening in Twyla’s room. All that got me was a bad
dream.