The Knowland Retribution

by Richard Greener

  “We got to somebody like this so quickly? Just like that?” Stein eyed him with admiration and suspicion.

  “We have many friends, Nathan. We help a lot of people. There’s nothing mysterious here. We always get the help we need, do we not?”

  Stein stood and began pacing. He started to huff—almost a full-blown wheeze—and switched on a determined look. He was pumped up like his Andover wrestling coach.

  “They know to kill him, right?” he said. “Right?”

  “Right,” Tom answered, angered that Nathan had actually said the words out loud, in his office. “They know, but, Nathan, you’re getting all excited about nothing. There’s nothing to indicate these incidents are related. There’s even less reason to assume that any of this has anything to do with us.”

  “You’re sure these guys are the best we could find?”

  Maloney believed they were. A couple of hours earlier he called Special Agent Robert Wilkes. He introduced himself only as Tom and mentioned the intermediary. Wilkes suggested meeting at David’s Deli on Queens Boulevard, near the Woodhaven Boulevard exit, anonymous territory for both. Tom began describing what he would be wearing and Wilkes interrupted, saying, “I’ll know who you are. Don’t worry about it.” They both laughed and the phone went dead in Maloney’s hands.

  Wilkes was right. He had no difficulty recognizing Tom Maloney. The late lunch crowd was sparse. Tom Maloney had to be the only customer who ordered a corned beef sandwich on white bread or wore a suit that was well pressed. Wilkes watched him from a booth near the back, thinking, “These rich ones, they couldn’t hide in an empty cave.”

  “Hello, Tom,” he said, walking up to the counter where Maloney’s sandwich was being handed to him. “Bob Wilkes.” He held out his hand and Maloney shook it warmly. Wilkes was six feet, lean, and trim, even with his overcoat still on. His narrow, square shoulders supported a thick neck dressed in a white shirt at least a half-inch too large.

  “I’m glad you could make it, Bob,” Maloney said. Tom turned on the combination of charm and unspoken power that was his trademark. It was like a faucet, and he opened it wide. Tom said that one man may have killed both Christopher Hopman and Billy MacNeal. He did not say why. Each of these men was a friend as well as a customer—an extremely important customer. Tom wanted the assassin found and “taken care of.” Maloney had given a lot of thought as to how to say that. He’d never done this before. Not quite this way anyway. He’d considered “Eliminate.” “Terminate.” “Neutralize.” The phrase “rub out” crossed his mind in the midtown tunnel. As he entered David’s, inhaling the scent of mustard and garlic, he settled on “taken care of.” Wilkes seemed to understand and accept the term, and with that, Tom felt mild relief.

  Wilkes had a surprisingly deep and gentle voice. “Done,” he said. He then explained in specific detail the composition of his team and how it would work. No names of course, referring only to “our guys,” “subjects,” and “clients.” From the looks of him, Wilkes figured, Maloney needed no assurance. Nevertheless, he added, “We know what we’re doing. This sort of thing is not unusual. But there are lines we can’t cross, people we won’t touch. We can handle things everywhere, across the country, anywhere. We’ve got ‘friends’ too—people in every major city—and they have their own circles of influence, which I have described. Philly, LA, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle. You name it. And the ones I interact with personally have been my friends for twenty years.”

  “How will we know you’ve got the right man?” Maloney asked.

  “If you’re not happy, we’re not happy. More than that I can’t say.”

  And then Wilkes asked, “Who is he?”

  That was the tough part, Tom told him. If the two shootings are unrelated, no further action is required. If they are, you resolve it. “Either way, you get paid in full. That won’t be a problem for you, will it?”

  Wilkes had just been told the job was more complicated than he thought. Maloney could see he was not pleased with that prospect. Wilkes frowned, but did not reply. He stared absently past Tom, at the heavy waitress tapping her fingernails at the far end of the counter, near the steamed-up deli window.

  “Double.” Wilkes’s voice was mellow as ever, but Tom glimpsed tension in the fingers gripping his coffee cup. “The price is double.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred and fifty.”

  “Half now. Half when it’s done,” Maloney said. “I’ll have two hundred and fifty thousand ready for you in an hour.”

  “Two hundred and fifty is double,” Wilkes said. Maloney couldn’t be sure if it was the shock or a pang of moral conscience.

  “I know,” Tom smiled, “but there are some things it’s always best to overpay for. I think this is one of them, don’t you?”

  Gatlinburg

  Floyd Ochs was one of those small, wiry, middle-aged Southern white men who look twenty years older than they are. A woman who worked in his processing plant described him, within his wife’s hearing, as “. . . the kind you really don’t want to see naked.” Floyd was a man of few words and fewer smiles. Given the choice he’d rather be fishing. Ochs was born and raised in Lucas, Tennessee. After high school he fixed cars, pumped gas, worked some construction, and spent a couple of months carrying parts around a Memphis motorcycle engine warehouse. Then he joined the Marines. Germany and Korea failed to broaden Floyd’s ambitions. After the service he bee-lined for home and the processing floor of Knowland & Sons.

  That same year he married Hazel Cummins, a heavy-set, plain-looking girl he’d met in church three weeks before. They enriched the community with three boys in less than five years. Floyd’s good points stood out in his end of Lucas, Tennessee. Unlike most of his friends, he didn’t drink much. He never hit his wife or made trouble with anyone else’s. He enjoyed life at home. He loved his boys and did whatever he supposed a good father should. And Floyd Ochs showed up for work every day.

  In the late 1970s the industry was transformed by a series of management consulting reports. One of these changed the way meat packing plants were run. Historically, plant managers had been company executives, ambitious, college-educated men eager to gain combat experience in the field. The company saw them as men on the move. Whether punching their tickets in Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee, or Nebraska, they were not local people. Locals correctly perceived them as outsiders arriving from someplace en route to someplace else, making their way up the pole. That began to change after 1980. The consultants suggested a less expensive way to run plants. And as suggested, meat packers began promoting local employees to responsible positions, to more than foreman and supervisor. To qualify, such men had to show up every day, sober and respectful. Floyd headed the line. Gradually, some of the chosen moved off the floor and into the front office.

  By 1985 Floyd was an Assistant Plant Manager, one of six—many more than needed; corporate headquarters hadn’t a clue as to how many would last. In 1992 he was Plant Manager, with only the two assistants he required. In less than twelve years Knowland & Sons had replaced its entire on-site management echelon at less than a third of its previous payroll cost. The new men managed efficiently and cheaply, did exactly what they were told, and were by-and-large accepted by the work force as exalted elder brothers. Headquarters called them “townies.” Best of all, neither Floyd nor his counterparts ever thought of leaving home, of becoming real corporate executives. They craved upward mobility even less than their bosses hoped they would.

  Floyd and Hazel took the same vacation every year. In August they visited Gatlinburg for a week. When the boys were young, Floyd and his sons fished together. Nowadays, he fished alone. For one full day Floyd left Hazel to her shopping and drove to the Hiawassee River. This year was no different from last year.

  As he always did, he parked almost a mile away, tramped through humid fields, and made his way carefull
y down a steep, heavily wooded, rock-studded incline to the river. From its edge, jutting twelve feet into the tumbling water, a whale-gray rock measured thirty-seven feet across, just about flat as a board. Floyd and his sons had taped it out, and knew every inch of its surface. This stretch of the Hiawassee was wild, which made for fine fishing because it was not navigable; no boats nosed about to disturb the underwater life. Standing at the edge, Floyd could see a quarter mile in all directions but behind. He reflected once again on his deeply held, immensely satisfying belief that he and his boys were the only ones ever to fish from this beloved rock—most certainly the only ones since far-off Cherokee times.

  He listened to the steady sounds of river and forest, rushing water slapping rocks, summer air in moving branches; smiled at the arguing jays and austere hawks wheeling high then disappearing into and behind the sweet-smelling pines. Floyd Ochs set down his fishing rod and opened the basket of sausage and beer beside him. He took out a Bud and pushed down on the tab. He loved the snap of the can and the fizzy noise he’d been hearing since his Daddy showed him how. As he lifted the can to his lips and felt the cold, wet metal on the tip of his nose, he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He started to turn as the force of a spinning bullet took his head from his shoulders. The sound echoed through the river valley, scattering the birds. His car was discovered that evening, a few hours after Hazel reported him missing. His head floated downstream to a state camping area, and was found the next day. But it took three more days to find the rock and the rest of Floyd.

  St. John

  The old woman, Clara, brought Walter a cup of beef bouillon. Walter liked the clear, hot broth after dinner. It complemented the sweet cool in the evening air. He’d tossed a creased and crumpled bit of paper onto the marble table. The names on the paper were smudged beyond recognition because he’d handled the thing like worry beads: Nathan Stein, Tom Maloney, Wesley Pitts, Louise Hollingsworth, Christopher Hopman, Billy MacNeal, Pat Grath, Wayne Korman, Floyd Ochs.

  As Tom told it the day he and his gang were here, he and Stein developed a plan for Christopher Hopman’s Boston-based company, Alliance Inc., to buy a sizable block of stock in another Stein, Gelb client company, Second Houston, which was owned by Billy MacNeal.

  Second Houston would go public as an IPO. “So,” as Maloney put it, “when the dust settled, Second Houston would be publicly traded and Alliance would be the controlling shareholder.”

  This was a billion dollar deal. “That’s ‘billion’ with a b.” Maloney had arched an eyebrow then. Almost a fourth of that was to go into Billy MacNeal’s pocket.

  Hopman’s stock options in both companies would net him more than a hundred million dollars. Shareholders would come out ahead because Second Houston and Alliance would certainly soar on the news generated by favorable analysts’ reports, and moves by some of the larger mutual funds.

  “Wesley Pitts did a helluva job on the project,” Maloney said, nodding toward Pitts, whose round face suddenly hardened into a genuine smile. “And Louise Hollingsworth is the Senior Analyst. Her reports and the publicity they received were essential to the success of this effort.”

  Maloney added that Stein, Gelb, Hector & Wills received sizable fees for facilitating this complicated transaction. “In all candor,” he said, looking Walter pointedly in the eye, “this deal meant a lot to us.”

  “How much is ‘sizable’?” Walter had asked.

  “Our fees and other compensation—warrants, options, and so forth—were absolutely in keeping with industry standards for a deal of this magnitude.”

  Walter pressed: “How much?”

  “All told, fees plus projected gains, in the midrange nine figures.” Maloney hung his head just a little. His voice went sorrowful. “It was a honey of a deal until the shit hit the fan.” That’s how he’d put it hours ago, sitting right over there, across from Walter.

  Walter picked up the list of names again, spun them around in his head, put them in order. Wayne Korman, first. He went to Floyd Ochs when he learned the processing line was dirty. He thought the meat might be dangerous and did the right thing. If he wanted to make a living he had to go back to work. Wife and kids. Car note. Mortgage. Visa bill each month. Ochs sent him back to work. He went.

  Floyd Ochs next. He reported the problem to Pat Grath in Houston. Could he have done more? Halted production on his own? He didn’t. Cost him his life?

  Pat Grath told Billy MacNeal. The two weren’t partners, Maloney said, but Grath was close to Billy. Everything he had, reportedly a lot, he got through MacNeal. He was not in charge so he went to Billy. What more could he do? Maybe that’s why he’s still alive.

  That’s when Maloney and Stein got into the act. Pat Grath and Billy MacNeal took it to Wesley Pitts. Fair enough. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Second Houston IPO money came through Wesley Pitts. That’s why the guys in Houston went to him and not his bosses. Follow the money. It’s always the money. Deep Throat was a deep thinker.

  So, Pitts goes to Maloney, Senior VP, Director of Mergers & Acquisitions. He brings Christopher Hopman into the picture. That’s what Hopman does: merges and acquires.

  As far as Christopher Hopman’s concerned, Stein laid out the plan for Alliance and Second Houston to follow—before the bottom fell out and people started dying. Stein and Maloney tell Hollingsworth to crank up the hype machine, manage the lie, put everyone off the smell of the thing.

  Hopman goes first, then MacNeal, and now Ochs. And Grath no doubt pissing his pants, hiding behind a tumbleweed in Amarillo or somewhere. Three down. Six to go? Among them Stein, Pitts, Hollings-worth, Maloney? And then there’s Ganga Roy. Dead two years by suicide. Really? She was the one he couldn’t get out of his mind. According to Maloney she’d told them E. coli would make people sick, but nobody would die.

  According to Maloney.

  And if she really killed herself, why?

  And why all this shooting now, two years after it was over?

  Where’s this guy been? Six out of ten still walking the earth. Why them? Who’s next? And who the hell was he looking for? Walter knew where he had to start. He went inside and booked the morning flight, first class, from St. Thomas to New York.

  New York

  After reading the Times for an hour each morning, Isobel Gitlin accessed the online editions of nearly fifty newspapers nationwide. She looked for flares of human interest, compelling hometown eulogies (the late mayor once jailed for smuggling parrots, the plumber who croaked fitting brass at ninety-six); little, sparkling, readable bits headed nowhere but for Isobel’s keen, unquenchable eye. Amid the endless obits crossing her screen, Isobel noticed other things. Now, on the page beside the obits in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, she glimpsed five lines on the death of Floyd Ochs. When “Knowland & Sons” bounced up from the screen, she called Laticia Glover, the reporter at the Memphis paper.

  Twenty minutes later she was storming the office of Ed Macmillan’s boss, a man known mostly by his nickname, the Moose. She said, “I’ve got a triple connection on three murders, two of them very high profile. My information indicates a single killer for all three deaths. And I’ve got them all connected to the big E. coli meat disaster.” He nodded his head to confirm the seemingly impossible. Then she injected a bold, ironic note: “It practically wiped out the South?”

  “Yeah, I heard about it,” he said.

  “Nobody has this story yet.” The last part seemed to get his attention.

  Waiting for a reply, Isobel noted with pleasure that she’d not strangled a single sound.

  Mel Gold was twice her age, and, as everybody agreed, closely resembled a moose. His thick gray hair fell forward exactly as a moose’s might. His pendulous chins obscured a brown necktie resting at half-mast on his mountainous paunch. A disconcerting forward thrust lent vigor to his tan, wrinkled, endlessly bumpy face. Gold was rumored t
o be ill-tempered and grim. She’d avoided him until now. “Close the door and sit down,” he said, in the street-tough rumbling voice that, in fact, sounded like that of a moose. “Exactly what the fuck do you think you have?”

  Having done its heroic best when she needed it most, her stutter returned with moderate force. Gold, unlike others, did not seem to notice. She supposed he’d interviewed too many toothless people, and some, no doubt, without very much of their faces left in place.

  Pacing herself, Isobel outlined the history: MacNeal’s sale of Knowland to Hopman’s gang, and the link created between those two and the great E. coli disaster. Then, hard on those killings, the Ochs affair and all that she’d learned from the Memphis reporter of Ochs’s connection to Knowland & Sons, and the subsequent talk about who was asleep at the packing plant switch at the time, and all of them—Ochs, Billy Mac, and Hopman—blasted to bits out of nowhere, all gunned down and hooked up by corporate ties, all circling around a single, deadly drain. “If this is a supermarket story I’ll be the first to s-s-say so,” Isobel ended, eloquently she thought. “There are no news people on this, are there?” His silence told her all she needed to know.