“I don’t know. You can ask someone else. Maybe Melissa. I can ask her to come over.”
“Please do. Thanks.” Walter ordered a chef salad and some french fries. Maybe a gut as hard as a rock wasn’t completely out of the question. When his waitress had taken the order, she walked over to where another waitress stood, killing time, hoping for a larger crowd later in the evening. Walter saw the Korean woman point to him as she said something to the other woman, who then looked in his direction too. Then the other waitress, a chunky, middle-aged white woman, walked over to his table. The little plastic pin above her right breast read “Debra Melissa.”
“Thanks, Melissa. Thanks for coming over.”
“You looking for somebody?” she asked, keeping her distance.
“No. Not exactly. But I am looking for someone who might have seen this man.” Walter showed her the photograph of Carter Lawrence.
“You a cop?” she asked, then answered her own question. “You’re no cop.”
Her eyes gave her away, and Walter saw it. Of course he saw it. He’d seen that same expression many times before in many places. She recognized the picture. “Of course I’m not a cop,” he said. “You’ve seen this man, haven’t you? You served him, right?” She said nothing. It appeared she was mulling it over, trying to decide if she ought to reveal anything to this stranger. “Where the hell is he from?” he imagined her asking herself. He was exactly correct. She was thinking, “Nobody comes in here with a tan like that just before Christmas.” She remained silent.
“Look,” said Walter, taking a hundred dollar bill and laying it down on the table, putting its edge just under his Diet Coke. “I just want to know if you saw him last month sometime.” Melissa looked at the hundred; a sight she saw not often enough to please her. She looked again at the photo. It was the skinny one, the one with the long wrists and geeky neck, the young one who sat next to the cowboy.
“What if I have?”
“I take that as a ‘yes.’ The hundred is yours, if I’m right.”
As she reached to take the money off the table, Walter’s hand fell on top of it. “And did he have dinner with this man?” He showed her a photo of Leonard Martin, the one printed on the front page of the New York Times. The woman was startled. She hesitated momentarily, then said, “I’ve never seen him before.” She put her finger on the picture of Leonard Martin.
“You’re sure?” Walter said.
“Yeah, I’m sure. The younger one, the skinny one, was here. He was here.” Poor Melissa was worried she wouldn’t get the money.
“He had dinner with someone, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did, but not this one.” Again she pointed to Leonard. “He and three other men. They ate right over there. Stayed until after we closed. I remember them. They had a lot of papers and things. Talked a lot, ate a little. This one,” she tapped Carter’s photo with her index finger, “but not this one.”
“What about these two? Walter laid pictures of Nicholas Stevenson and Harvey Daniels on the table. All four photos were lined up in a row, facing Melissa. Walter removed his hand from the hundred and motioned for her to take it. She did. She recognized the silver-haired gentleman who’d left her the extra tip and the nervous one who sat next to him.
“Both of them. They were here with the first one.”
“The three of them? Did you get any names?”
“No,” she said. “There was another man who came later.”
“The younger one paid, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Just a guess.”
“You know,” she said, “I’ll never forget when they left. Hugged each other like there was no tomorrow. It was weird, like a movie.”
“I know,” Walter said. “I’m sure they did. Thank you, Melissa. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Why are you looking for these guys?”
“Just routine. Our company checks the expense accounts of people who travel for us on a regular basis. I’m just confirming they were here, that’s all.”
“Bullshit,” she thought. No one checks expense accounts like this, not with hundred dollar bills and photographs. And for damn sure not with any guy as tan as this one.
“One more thing,” he said. “Who was the fourth man? What can you tell me about him?”
Melissa said, “You mean the cowboy?”
“Cowboy? What did he look like?”
“Well, he wasn’t a real cowboy, you know. It’s just he didn’t wear a suit like the others, and he had on a hat, a floppy kind of cowboy hat, you know? Tall, thin, good-looking man. Short hair, sort of salt-and-pepper beard. Good-looking man. Forties, I’d say. That’s all, but he sure wasn’t this guy.” This time she tapped the photo from the New York Times again. “He wasn’t here.”
A chill gripped Walter’s gut and moved like electric current outward. It made him lightheaded, nauseated. Respect the obvious. He hadn’t looked, hadn’t seen, and now it was too late. The missing piece crashed into place and a second wave of nausea rose. He should have known all along. Instead he’d been blind as a bat. The Indian woman’s pendant had shown him the mysteries of altered shapes and he missed it. Was he was losing it? Had he lost it already? His eyesight wasn’t what it had been, nor was the hair on his head. And whatever Isobel told him, neither were his hydraulics. Henry Broomfield’s punchline roared, an angry, reproachful, soundless voice, an unforgiving scold. They all got sisters.
New Mexico
Leonard was gone within an hour. He’d practiced playing the slow-witted Michael, planned on using it in case anyone made a wrong turn and stumbled onto his property. No one had until now. The business about Mr. Marteenez had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It worked pretty well, he thought. Walter Sherman had been an unnerving surprise. Sure, Leonard heard the car approaching long before it reached the cabin, but he never thought someone would actually find him there; someone whose intention it was to seek him out. That frightened him. How could he have come to this place? And who are these people from New York? What was he talking about? Had this man been sent by Nathan Stein? And if so, how in the world did he know where to find him? Leonard knew he didn’t have the luxury of contemplating these questions. He had to hurry.
He knew this man calling himself Walter Sherman was trouble when he asked to use the bathroom. It was obvious he wanted to look inside the cabin. Leonard didn’t like it, but considering the circumstances he had little choice in the matter. How could he refuse? He didn’t fear exposure. Clearly he was convincingly unrecognizable. The weapons and ammunition were all locked away securely. That was an arrangement Leonard had come up with at the very beginning. He was going to be away for long stretches of time: Boston, Houston, Tennessee, Nevada, and who knows where else. He couldn’t risk someone finding his equipment, so he devised a storage compartment in his bedroom. To the naked eye it appeared as a closet, but behind the plain closet door was another locked door, this one made of steel protecting a safelike box four feet square and eight feet high. Inside were racks of rifles, shelves of special accessories, sights, stocks, cleaning materials, and boxes of ammunition. Walter Sherman could look around all he liked and never find a sign they were there. And Leonard was sure that was exactly why Sherman asked to use the facilities.
As soon as the intruder left, as soon as the sound of his car faded to silence, Leonard began packing. There wasn’t much to it. He threw a few clothes into a bag, tossed in his toothbrush and other toiletries, grabbed three jackets hanging from hooks in the back room, and loaded it all in the SUV. It took about forty-five minutes to move the rifles and other stuff from the secure closet to a lock box in the SUV. When it didn’t all fit, he decided to leave some of the ammunition behind. It was a risk traveling with weapons, but what choice did he have now? “Just make sure,” he told himself, “do not get stopped by a cop on th
e highway.”
Finally, he tucked a metal toolbox behind the driver’s seat on the floor. It was filled with hundred dollar bills neatly wrapped in packs of ten thousand dollars each. Then he was gone. He would never return. He did not look back. There was no nostalgia. Leaving was not sad. Nothing pulled at his heartstrings. In the last two and a half years Leonard Martin had learned not to become attached to anything. He’d shut himself off from feelings like that. He wouldn’t miss the sunsets or the crisp, chilly mornings, the smell of a fire crackling in the fireplace, the sounds of silence in the high desert. He wouldn’t miss them because he wouldn’t let himself. He came to New Mexico with a single goal—learn to kill. Having done that—and now being discovered—it was time to move on. He drove south on route 39, past Ute Lake and Logan, and picked up I-40 at San Jon. He was in Texas by the time Walter Sherman was considering his options.
New York
Just after seven, Isobel met Walter in the lobby of the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. Dressed for winter, she wore a wide-brimmed woolen hat pulled down to cover her ears and forehead, and a heavy scarf on top of the coat with the fake fur trimmings. She passed unrecognized. “Celebrity,” she thought, although her encounter with it was somewhat marginal and thus far short-lived, “was a crock of shit.”
“Why here?” she asked, after greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. It was a friendly kiss and he felt disappointed. He hoped for more and hoped it didn’t show.
“Dentists,” Walter answered. “There’s a convention of dentists here. The biggest one they have anywhere all year. Dentists love Christmas, and they love New York.” Isobel laughed and dropped her coat next to her on the couch. “Go ahead,” Walter said, “look around you. Every one of these guys pulls teeth.”
“What about the women? What do they do?”
“Hookers,” said Walter after only a slight pause.
“All of them? It appears, perhaps, that some of your American dentists prefer hookers who are, shall we say, older and a twinge on the heavy side.”
“Wives,” Walter said. “There’s a few of them too.”
“So, we’re here to see the dentist?”
“No, we’re here because the dentists do not want to see us—you, in particular. I don’t need to be ducking photographers, but you do. By the way, how did a photographer get that picture of you and whathisname in Tibet?” Isobel laughed, and so did Walter.
“It’s a hoot alright, Walter,” she said, “but honestly, I think it’s a tub of crap. Hard to imagine any person, no matter how well known, who can’t leave the makeup home, dress as casually as everyone does these days, and just walk about. I do it quite well, thank you.”
Walter said, “So, no cloak and dagger stuff for you? I’m overdoing it, you think?”
“Absolutely,” she smiled.
“We don’t need the dentists? Or anyone to cover our movements?”
“We don’t need no stinkin’ dentists,” she said.
Now he too was smiling. Isobel leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. This was more than a friendly kiss, and it thrilled him.
“No one knows who I am,” she said, using her father’s accent again. “I go anywhere and everywhere, just like the common folk.”
“Well, in that case,” Walter said, “let’s go get a good steak. I’m starving and don’t mind spending forty-five bucks for a piece of meat.” They left the Hilton and cabbed the short distance to Ben Benson’s, Walter’s favorite New York steakhouse.
When their salads arrived, Walter said, “I saw him, talked to him, used his bathroom.” Isobel was speechless. She knew he meant Leonard. A forkful of salad never made it to her mouth. Walter waited for something, but Isobel said nothing. Her eyes registered amazement.
“I found him in New Mexico. Way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“How?” she asked. And he told her everything: the guns, North Dakota, and Raleigh; the trip to New Mexico, the Pac-Mail store in Las Vegas, and the lonely cabin north of Albert. He told her how a tall, rock-hard, bearded man with some marked limitations named Michael DelGrazo said he worked for a Leonard Marteenez, not a Leonard Martin. He described the inside of the cabin. He told her how he decided
to follow up the lead in Tennessee, how credit-card receipts told him Carter Lawrence had gone there to meet Nicholas Stevenson, Harvey Daniels, and a third man. He told her about Debra Melissa Wallis and the man she called the cowboy.
“My God,” said Isobel. “Michael DelGrazo is the cowboy.”
“No. Not quite. Michael DelGrazo was a man who lost his wife and children in an apartment fire in Detroit in 1962.” Isobel looked at him bewildered and confused.
“The apartment house was owned by a man named Robert Bass. It seemed Bass had paid off the fire department inspector, a man named Willard Cox, who, in turn, gave the building a clean bill of health. The place was, of course, a fire hazard, and it soon burned to the ground, taking DelGrazo’s family with it. When DelGrazo learned all this from a newspaper investigative exposé, he hunted down both Bass and Cox and shot them dead. Michael DelGrazo died in prison in 1984, prostate cancer.”
“Wow,” Isobel said. “Then this Michael DelGrazo is . . . ?” Her question hung in the air. She knew the answer already, but Walter obliged.
“Leonard Martin.”
“Oh, my God. B-but you said he looked like—”
“A man can change a lot of things in two years. Leonard did. I missed it, completely missed it.”
“The blindfold,” she said, remembering Kermit and her interview, in the dark, with Leonard. “That’s why the blindfold.” She felt bad saying it, but she said it nonetheless.
Walter described his misadventure in New Mexico again, this time in fine detail. Isobel strained to hear every word in the noisy restaurant. She asked, and he said he didn’t think there was much chance Leonard would call. Their steaks arrived, although they hadn’t touched the salads yet. The waiter insisted he would bring them new steaks, freshly cooked, whenever they were ready for them. Walter insisted the waiter leave the entrees. They would eat everything at the same time. The man was reluctant, but, as any good waiter would, he protested but consented. They ate everything he put in front of them.
“Don’t be disappointed,” Isobel said. “Don’t be hard on yourself.”
“I’m not,” Walter replied in his trademark easy manner. “I know where he’s been, where he’s gone, what he’s done. And I believe there’s no rush. He’s not killing anybody, is he?”
“I wasn’t aware he had a schedule.”
“There was a pattern to the intervals. Hopman, MacNeal, Ochs, and Grath. Then he stopped and what did he do?” Walter took a sip of his wine. He looked for a response. Finally, Isobel said, “I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Exactly. Nothing. Not yet anyway.”
“That means something?”
“Yes. I think it does.”
“What?”
“Now I’m the one who doesn’t know.” He smiled at her and she smiled back for lack of something better and smarter to do.
“You’ll find him again?” she asked.
“I think he’ll find you again before I find him. I have a feeling he’s got something in mind. Whatever it is, he’ll need you to tell it.” Isobel did not reply. After a moment of silence, Walter said, “I saw you with Ed Bradley.” She nodded. “You like him, don’t you? Sympathize with him, right?”
“Bradley?”
“Leonard. You’re inclined to think he’s righteous. Am I wrong?”
“How would you feel?” she asked. “What would you do?”
“No, no,” Walter said shaking his head, holding up his hands. “Don’t ask me how I feel. Tell me how you feel.”
“I do,” she said. “It’s not academic to Leonard Martin, not just numbers. They took everything from
him. Can you imagine losing everything? It frightens me just to think about it—not only his family—everything. There’s a curse in being a survivor. Yes, I sympathize with him. I can’t help it.”
“And the people he’s killed? And those he means to kill? All of them?”
“I can’t say,” she said. “I can’t say. I said I sympathize with him. That’s not the same as saying I approve of what he’s doing.”
“It isn’t?” That question remained unanswered.
Over coffee and a glass of Spanish port, Isobel asked, “Walter, why are we still working together? You were correct. I could never have identified Leonard Martin on my own. You did, and you did it before he contacted me. However, now we’ve both met him, talked to him. I know who he is and my story is no longer questioned by anyone. You know who he is. You say finding him again is no trouble. Why are we still in this together, Walter? What’s left for us to do?”
“I represent the people who remain on his list—”
“Exactly my point. What’s in it for you or your clients? Why do you need me? And what’s in it for me?”
“And,” Walter continued, “that puts me in a position to arrange a negotiated settlement, an end to the killing. When he reaches out to you, I can put him in touch with Stein and Stein’s money.”
Isobel looked at Walter out of the corner of her eye, her mouth a frown, skepticism written all over her face. She had been impressed with Walter’s self-assurance and intelligence from the first time they met. She found his demeanor enchanting and not a little bit erotic. Now she began to question his approach and her own judgment.
“Stein’s money,” she said. “What in the world makes you think Leonard Martin wants any of it? And why are you still working for them after learning what they’re all about?”
“I got paid,” Walter said. Isobel shrugged her shoulders, recalling a film where Humphrey Bogart had a speech about some silly obligation he felt to his partner.
“That’s p-p-plain ridiculous.”
The Knowland Retribution Page 28