The Knowland Retribution

by Richard Greener

  Billy also had a general sense that the worst was most likely to happen. Once in a while he got a more specific feeling—that something was coiling to strike like a snake. He had that accurate intuition to thank for his presence here, in relative safety and comfort, in a business of his own.

  He had that feeling the minute he saw the straps on Isobel Gitlin’s little white blouse.

  Clara brought Walter and Isobel ice in a bucket, and placed a pitcher of white sangria toward the edge of the black marble table. She made an interesting point of saying that she was feeling tired now and would go to bed if that was all right. In the cool repose of her room downstairs she opened the thriller she’d started the day before. Clara hoped Walter knew what he was doing. She understood quite well that the girl knew what she was doing.

  Isobel had spent five years discussing great books, and she’d written “Sex and the Serious Scholar.” She had few illusions, and none about this kind of thing. The horny goddess had taken her now for good and sufficient reason. She was overstimulated. The dread, and relief, and intimacy; the sudden rush of ambition, and the unexpected knowledge of her seductive power . . . do things to a girl. And here was Walter, bursting for her, walking around inside her head; a perfect gentleman, with really good eyes, an eminently decent sort, with what looked like a perfectly . . .

  Oh, who the fuck cared why?

  She’d had enough of gratification delayed. She sipped her sangria delicately and said, “I’ll be back in a little while. I have to use the bathroom.”

  He told her he had plenty to think about. He did not confide that it wasn’t easy because his thoughts were past controlling. He hoped she’d not seen that he was burning up inside.

  Where sex was concerned, he had one rule: “Not with anyone close.” That left women he met in the course of his travels—good natured, attractive women without expectations, who asked or implied no questions that required him to lie. Plus, of course, professionals. And over the course of twenty years, that had worked well enough, from time to time.

  But now . . . now he was nervous as a kitten up a helluva redwood tree. He could not honestly tell himself when it started—not at the Mayflower, surely. Probably during those days in her apartment, but not as he could clearly recall. On the phone last night? Yes, it was in his head then, as soon as he awoke. Maybe she was in the vanished dream. And when she walked into Billy’s, wearing that little white thing with the straps. . . . He wondered how he’d managed to think straight all day, and force his eyes off her, even for seconds, at dinner.

  Minutes after Isobel’s afternoon arrival, Clara had shown her to a cozy room under the deck beneath where Walter waited now. It had dark walls, a bronze tile floor with throw rugs, a wall of closets, a comfortable-looking king-size bed. She never even looked at the bathroom. Instead, she’d left the wheelie unopened, tossed her coat, and gotten her tour of the house.

  She remembered Walter’s room at the other end of the hall and stopped there en route to her own. Compared to Walter’s, hers seemed awfully small. She peeled off her clothes and opened the bathroom door. The sight astonished her. It was half the size of the bedroom. The toilet and vanity set in a corner hardly seemed to matter. A vast, black-tiled shower filled most of the bathroom. It had no curtain and no wall. It was more like a locker room shower. You walked right onto the sloping tile floor, and you looked out through a huge glass door to the sea, the very same view from the deck just above. She looked for a curtain. There was none. She saw that the door could slide, and she moved it back. The warm, humid air flowed in. She turned on the faucet and water rushed down with extraordinary force from a very large showerhead. She soaped and let the water work on her body and her mind. She watched the ocean outside, the lights on the water; the boats still at sea, testing the darkness, strings of lights across their decks. She remembered Leonard telling her she was being watched. And if they were looking back at her? Fine. And if they could make her out clearly? “I hope they like what they see,” she thought.

  She turned off the water and stepped outside. It wasn’t a night for a moon. The sky was black. She did not attempt to dry herself, but slid on the T-shirt she’d pilfered from Walter’s room. She looked in the mirror. It stuck to her. She tied her hair behind, touched scent to herself, and went upstairs.

  Walter heard her coming, smelled her coming, knew she was coming before she came. That drove his heart faster than fear ever had. The sight of her and the meaning in her eyes had him shaking. She knelt in front, undid his belt, and took him into her mouth. The act sent vibrations through her and she looked up into his eyes to let him see that. The sounds he made stroked her insides; she wanted them louder, and making them louder was all that mattered. When the throbbing started she forced herself back, sat on her heels, let him see her breasts rise with her rapid breathing, then stood. She pulled the T-shirt over her head and said, “Let’s go to bed.”

  He took her first smoothly, expertly, with more than enough crazed urgency to set her off within seconds. He was strong and he quickly understood what she needed most. He showed remarkable stamina and excellent self-control. He shuddered when she wanted him to and he could get sounds out of her at will. It was like they’d been at it forever; like they knew each other before they’d begun. And then they began experimenting, and to Isobel’s overflowing amazement, everything worked as well as it ever had. And when she could think, she thought she was getting what someone had been missing out on for years. She fell asleep after coming again—wondering whether it was the fourth or the fifth . . . and awoke still joined with him, awkwardly, at right angles. He was sleeping too. It was just after three in the morning. She watched the rise and fall of his gut. She shivered seeing the white of her leg against his dark brown belly. Walter was her first old man, the first one close to her father’s age. He was a revelation, all right. But was he a one-time wonder? Could he ever do it—quite that way—again? Was it Viagra?

  Walter woke up alone. Seven-fifteen. Clara would sleep till nine. He sniffed. Nothing was brewing or toasting now. He creaked out of bed, stepped into his shorts, made his way upstairs. He realized that he was smiling; he imagined his smile painted on, like a clown’s. It occurred to him that he had not thought of his wife—not from the moment Isobel told him to wait. Not when she came to him on the deck, or in the blazing mindlessness that followed, or in the dreams that followed that. That was a first in twenty-five years. Walter felt better than fine. He did not dwell on the fact that he was thinking of Gloria now.

  Nobody on the deck. He took the stairway down to the guest room. He found her asleep, on her belly, facing the shower and the ocean. A sheet had drifted over the small of her back, but her shoulders were bare, and most of her backside, and both of her legs, one of them bent at the knee. He noticed a twitch at the top of one shoulder; waited to see it again. Her mouth was open, just slightly. She didn’t look nearly as pretty as she had. Her eyes seemed smaller, her nose somewhat thinner at the bridge, her skin looked like normal skin. He liked her a good deal better this way. She must have heard his boxers hit the floor. She smiled before she opened her eyes. When she saw him, she said, “Oh, m-m-y,” and maneuvered onto her back with her arms outstretched.

  Nashville

  They arrived at the Nashville airport in late afternoon. The flight from Atlanta was short and uneventful. They looked like any two

  businessmen in town to make a sale, attend a seminar, or talk about a merger—each with a bulging attaché case in hand and a lightweight garment bag over his shoulder. Nicholas Stevenson, the older, bigger man, silver mane expertly layered and routinely trimmed, took long, easy strides. Harvey Daniels, the shorter man, dark-haired, rumpled, nervous, momentarily fell behind, quickened his step, fell behind again.

  Through airport windows they saw Nashville blazing with Christmas lights refracted by pouring rain. They didn’t join the line for cabs to the Renaissance or The Hermi
tage Hotel. Instead, they made their way to the rental cars and took the white Camero reserved for them. “They don’t make Cameros the way they used to,” Harvey griped.

  The tallest of Tennessee’s skyscrapers showed off bright decorations. “Sure as hell rather spend the night here,” said Nick. He was thinking of dozens of times he’d been on Music Row, in the bars and clubs that line Nashville’s streets, open night after night, proving, to his way of thinking, that Nashville will always be the musical heart of the South. And he said as much as they drove.

  “You go to New Orleans to eat and fool around,” agreed Harvey unconvincingly, not out of any great experience. “You’re right Nick. Nashville is the only place for music.”

  The older man spoke slowly, more to himself or to the rain than to the one beside him. He said that young singers and songwriters flood this city. Some have honest-to-goodness talent. Others have little or none. “Kids come along and wash dishes in kitchens in all those bars all the time, dreaming of the stars, and once in a while, one of them makes it. That’s the genuine optimism. That’s the spirit that brings them here. That’s the spirit that gives the city its deep-down sound and its moving force.”

  Harvey looked through the drizzle, “Everyone’s getting ready for Christmas.” Then he grasped another, more interesting thought: “You ever been to Branson?”

  Nick Stevenson made a slow right turn and said, enjoying himself as he did, “If Nashville’s the cradle of country music, Harvey, Branson’s the nursing home. We went there once. Didn’t like it a bit. It’s like the elephant’s graveyard—except they won’t stop singing.”

  He drove the Camero on the darkened, rain-slick interstate to Clarksville, a Tennessee border town close to Illinois and Kentucky—home to the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne division: Air Assault! The signs shouted the mission at the headlights. The Camero pulled off I-24 and they registered at the Holiday Inn, just before you get to the mall and cinema complex. They took separate one-night rooms and paid cash. They signed in as Smith and Jones. An hour later they sat at a corner table in the motel’s modest restaurant.

  Debra Melissa Wallis showed them their seats. She figured them

  to order dinners off the menu; these were not buffet guys. They had things to talk about. They didn’t want to be rushed. The manager, K. J. Singh, often asked her, “How in the world do you know such things?” She told him, “You just know.” She figured these two for a good 20 percent; they were not local yokels. They were from someplace, here for a reason, money in their pockets.

  The two were joined within minutes by a younger man, also wearing a business suit, but so bony-fingered and pencil-necked and seemingly fragile inside his clothes that his jacket flapped around him with every move—a scarecrow is pretty much what he looked like.

  He smiled at the two at the table, and sat across from them. No names were exchanged that Debra Melissa could hear, no handshakes, although they clearly knew each other. She took their drink order. Scotch for the older gentleman. Margarita for his nervous companion. Amstel Light for the skinny one. Beyond that, not a peep, no small talk at all, just a long, unbroken silence; eyes in the distance, drinks, for the most part, ignored.

  The fourth man showed up at seven thirty. He wore jeans, a blue down jacket, and a well-worn, brown, felt cowboy hat. The three stood; the cowboy held out both hands as if to say “no touching,” and they sat.

  He threw his coat and hat to a nearby chair, and sat next to the third one, the younger, skinny guy who arrived before he did. The older gentleman and his nervous friend made statements, like quick little speeches. Debra could not hear much, but they seemed to be using a lot of words she’d never heard before. By the time she’d worked her way close enough, all she got was the older one saying “turn yourself in” and the cowboy replying, “Thank you. I’ll think about it.”

  They ordered steak and chicken, except for the cowboy, who wanted a caesar salad with hard-boiled eggs. When the entrees were placed before them, they started talking. They spoke until almost ten, the hour when the kitchen closed and the last remaining diners were chased away, when the minimum-wage employees made their way home, a chance to rest, to prepare to do it all over again tomorrow. Debra Melissa stayed to the bitter end, watching discreetly, betting her time on her intuition. These guys are big tippers—she was certain of that.

  At the start, the young man sitting next to the cowboy opened an attaché case. He removed a stack of papers and publications: charts, spreadsheets, official-looking documents printed in tiny letters on flimsy tissue-thin paper; copies of memos, letters, and e-mails. From time to time the nervous one picked up a sheet of paper from the table, looked at it closely, and seemed to ask a question. Each time, the skinny one or the cowboy supplied an answer, and everyone seemed pleased with that. She heard some numbers tossed around, and for just a moment she was sure she heard “billions.” “I must be hearing things,” she told herself.

  Eventually that work was done. There seemed to be no more questions. Now the cowboy ordered a sweetened ice tea. After that he talked for nearly an hour. From a distance he looked strong and sexy to Debra Melissa, determination all over his salt-and-pepper bearded face. After the tea he drank water, which she refilled several times. The two businessmen sometimes interrupted. The cowboy answered each question very slowly, taking his time, selecting his words carefully. When the cowboy was done they all looked at each other—not like businessmen do, but into each other’s eyes for an awful long time. Debra Melissa didn’t quite know what to make of that. Then they stood and started hugging, patting each other’s backs. Each man went from one to the other until everyone hugged everyone else. The nervous guy held on to the cowboy the longest. He didn’t want to let go. This was really something special, something she had only seen in the movies; movies about the mafia.

  The cowboy put on his jacket and hat. The skinny one who came alone, the one who had all the papers on the table, left first. The gray-haired, distinguished-looking one, the oldest of the group, put his hand on the cowboy’s cheek, touching it gently like they were kin, caressing the face like the waitress had seen wives do when the 101st deployed and they worried they’d never see their men again. The skinny-necked younger man paid the bill with his credit card and, sure enough, put down a 25 percent tip. Then the older guy, who knew the bill was already paid, put cash on the table, two twenties. He never looked back, but if he had, Debra Melissa Wallis would have offered her very special smile. She’d had it in mind all along that he was a gentleman you could be proud to know.

  In the morning the two Atlanta lawyers checked out, drove back to Nashville, and flew home. The skinny one who stayed at a different motel one exit farther east on I-24 hit the road before six and planned to drive straight through the whole way home. The cowboy awoke from his hard, wooden sleep at seven. He showered and then enjoyed the complementary continental breakfast offered at his motel. He thought about why they called it that: a continental breakfast. He was sure Europe was the continent, and he’d never heard it called that there. He read USA Today with his coffee. The New York Times isn’t sold at the Motel-6 near Clarksville. With coffee, cantaloupe, a small, round waffle, and three hard-boiled eggs inside him, he tossed his tall hat onto the seat of his SUV, turned west onto I-24, and headed for New Mexico.

  West Texas

  Leonard Martin was smiling.

  Meeting with Isobel Gitlin had been a risk. He’d gone into it aware of the danger, unable to fully discount it. There were other ways he could have made his point, protected Harlan Jennings, prevented future cops under pressure from putting up other patsies. He could have done all that without compromising himself. If she had seen him . . . but she hadn’t, had she? Had he, even by accident, revealed his strikingly different physical package, he might well have risked his anonymity. Leonard had taken a gamble, all right. And now, drinking coffee in a west Texas roadside diner, a day west of Cl
arksville and less than another’s drive from Santa Fe, he knew he’d won.

  Isobel Gitlin was no enemy. She might even be a friend. He’d just learned as much from the front page of today’s New York Times. Isobel’s two-column story ran in the upper right, the spot reserved for the day’s number one event.

  E. Coli Disaster Survivor Admits 4 Corporate Shootings

  And below, in a smaller face:

  Leonard Martin of Georgia Vows Others Will Die

  What pleased him most was the picture above the fold, middle of the page. It was taken at a closing, one of the last he’d attended. It was cropped to show only him and the shoulder and arm of the buyer or seller—whoever was standing beside him. Leonard didn’t remember the man or the closing. The picture showed him in a tan suit. The buttons were open, the double-breasted jacket parted over his bulky stomach and torso. His dark tie had flown away from his shirt. It stuck out crookedly over the front of his suit. The knot of his tie was askew and the top shirt button open. The suit was clearly wrinkled. He looked awful, and thought the paper’s reproduction process made him appear even worse: pathetic. So much the better.

  In the picture, Leonard looked distant and dazed. He was not smiling the way he always did in closing shots before. His face held only a vacant gaze. Nothing meant anything to him after, and it showed. His long hair was straggly, messy, uncombed. He was very fat. Even now he took a small shock on seeing how fat he had been. The caption read: “Leonard Martin in a Photograph Taken Three Years Ago.”

  The story told how Isobel had been blindfolded throughout the interview. She was unable to describe his appearance or confirm his identity as Leonard Martin—visually. Despite that limitation, she wrote that there existed no question the man she met was Leonard Martin. She was betting her reputation and future on it; so too, if to a lesser extent, was the New York Times. No need now to shave his beard, grow his hair, or keep the bottle of Grecian Formula bought on a fearful impulse somewhere in New Jersey. Meeting Isobel Gitlin had not given him away.