A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [121]
We are now less than two weeks away from the presidential election of 2008. I’m not doing so well. Or am I?
Why, out of the clear blue sky, did O’Connell call for national TV coverage of an announcement?
Darnell came in with a handful of pages. He glimpsed at the dark suit Eric had laid out. “Put away that mourning outfit,” Darnell ordered Eric. “I want the President to wear a green sports jacket and open collar.”
“Darnell…”
“A lot of folks downstairs need their morale lifted.”
No use arguing over so trifling a matter.
“What’s the latest?”
“We have some data from the NYPD. This Ben Horowitz visit seems to have set off some kind of chain reaction in the O’Connell camp. Ben Horowitz is a detective lieutenant, thirty years’ service, semiretired or detached to teach at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Horowitz’s father was a professor of Russian studies at NYU. Horowitz’s own expertise is missing persons.”
“Got any photos?”
I lifted my magnifying glass, studying the pictures. “There may be a resemblance, there may not be. I can’t tell from these. What else?” Tomtree asked.
“I’ve spoken personally to our main man inside the Church hierarchy. There are no official records in Church adoption files about O’Connell’s birth. Two people were intimately involved in the adoption, namely, Cardinal Watts of Brooklyn and a Monsignor Gallico, both deceased. They did this on behalf of a priest who was Siobhan O’Connell’s brother but gave him no details. He is also deceased. The convent that raised and delivered O’Connell to Colorado could not give us any information as to the child’s biological parents.”
I liked what I was hearing. Some kind of moral blister was ready to pop, the kind the media could seize on to devour whomever. Sure, Horowitz and O’Connell were connected. Yes, I have turned a corner, and the polls in a few days would see me back in the lead. The miracle of my reelection would happen. It would be an upset even greater than Truman’s defeat of Dewey. I was chomping at the bit. Was there a way to find out what O’Connell was going to say before he went on? If so, we could be planning our counterstrike right now.
“You’re drooling, Thornton,” Darnell said.
“You bet I am. If Horowitz senior was an academic teaching Russian, there has to be an FBI file on him.”
Darnell gave me a “shit for brains” look. “Wait, for Christ’s sake. Do not fart with FBI files. Do not jump the gun and step into a pile of shit. We will know in a matter of a few hours. I believe O’Connell has painted himself into a corner. It has to be good news for us.”
Chapter 32
COLON, PANAMA, 2007
The free-trade zone at Colon was a long hour’s drive from Panama City. The zone sat plunk in the middle of the north-south axis of the Western Hemisphere and was the transit point of anything and everything going up to North America and down to South America. Anything, everything.
The town itself epitomized a thieving, seedy, peeled, steamy, muddy-floody, baking, dangerous Central American place where eyes and ears seemed behind every corner and wall in a greedy hunt for deals.
Red Peterson, an old West Texas wildcatter, was scarcely moved to perspire even though the overhead fan grunted its last days.
Across from Red sat Moshe Rosenthal in earlocks, beard, yarmulke, and prayer shawl. He took an envelope from his safe and handed it over the desk to Red.
The envelope contained a blue-white seventeen-carat diamond, in a diamond cut. The stone was a blinder.
“Now, which South American dictator’s wife did this little gem come off of?” Red asked.
Moshe held up his hands in innocence.
“Did you set your price on this?”
“You have an idea, Red, what this is worth?”
“Mas o’ minus.”
“For you and only you, a hundred and fifty thousand.”
Red replaced the diamond in its envelope, folded it securely, placed it in his top shirt pocket, and buttoned it. He signed an IOU marker to Rosenthal which the jeweler could cash later at Villa Hans Pedro Oberg,