The Knowland Retribution

by Richard Greener

  Maloney had either forgotten Wilkes or had no interest in him. He was single-minded. “Where is my money!” he demanded.

  “I thought by now most of it would already be earning interest for The Center for Consumer Concerns. Yours and Nathan’s. You sent it, didn’t you?”

  “Look, you sonofabitch! Where’s my fucking money? Not the money I had to turn over to that thieving murderer. Do you know what’s happened to me?” A nervous, perhaps even dangerous, laugh overcame Tom Maloney. He was shaking. “I owe money. Me! I owe money!” He struggled to gain control. He stopped laughing. “Where’s my money! Thirty million dollars. Thirty million no one could touch. Not yours! Mine!”

  Walter was not a man to be called a sonofabitch, especially on his home turf. A warning was written all over his face. Maloney could not have missed it.

  “Remember what I told you about Leonard Martin, Tom? Remember I said I was certain I would never see or hear from him again?” Maloney gave him an angry nod. “You won’t see him either, Tom. Everything has a price, right? Even life—your life. Pay up and live. Stiff him and you’re dead. You talk about your thirty million. A little extra stashed away. You don’t have thirty million. You had thirty million.”

  “You took that money. I want my money’s worth. You find him again and you kill him. Get my money back from those sonsofbitches in Atlanta. Then it’s your thirty million. Until he’s dead you have my money. Do you understand me?”

  Walter laughed. “Doesn’t sound like my kind of work,” he said. Maloney was beside himself. He raised his right hand, trembling, fist tightly clenched. Walter didn’t budge.

  “You threatening me, Tom? You just found a way to stay alive—complements of Leonard Martin. Don’t push your luck. You don’t need me to kill anyone. Not anymore. No one wants to kill you. The rules have changed. I want you to listen to me, Tom, carefully.” Now Walter spoke to him softly, just as he had done once before. This time the message was different. “Fuck with me, I’ll kill you. What I told you about Isobel Gitlin, that goes double for me. I even smell one of your goons, you’ll wish you were dead already. Remember Na Trang? I’m no Leonard Martin. You’ll never get off my hook. I’ll cut your throat and watch you die slowly. The last thing you’ll see is me cleaning my knife.” Walter calmly picked up his sandwich and took another bite, followed by a long drink of his Diet Coke.

  If Maloney was searching for any sign of nerves, he had the wrong guy. Walter Sherman was the last person Tom Maloney could intimidate. Maloney was crazed, but not crazy. He feared Walter Sherman more than any other man—Leonard Martin included. He knew he was right to do so. Walter could see him cooling down. He looked like a boiling kettle turned to a lower heat, its whistle reduced to a whimper. He was still hot, but no longer running out of control. And he had the look of a man definitely thirty million dollars poorer.

  Walter said, “Now get the fuck off my island.” Tom Maloney got up and walked out. In the mirror behind the bar, Walter watched him walk all the way out. Billy, a look of fierce determination and readiness on his face, pointed to Walter, his index finger definitely meant to be a gun—a sign of absolute support. Walter smiled at the bartender, thinking, “I wouldn’t want to have William Mantkowski as my enemy.”

  The thirty million dollars Tom Maloney had sent to Walter’s account in the Caymans was now sitting in another bank in Cyprus, in transit, on its way to its final destination.

  St. John

  The news about Isobel Gitlin and The Center for Consumer Concerns began to spread after the joint press conference for Alliance Industries and Stein, Gelb, Hector & Wills. Alliance announced their plan to absorb SHI Inc. using a stock switch plan effectuated by Stein, Gelb. Then they shocked the attending press, almost all of whom covered the business or financial beat, when they admitted to culpability in the E. coli disaster more than three years earlier and announced their intention to contribute close to six billion dollars to a new foundation, The Center for Consumer Concerns. They were confident the money would be approved by their directors and shareholders. No specific schedule had been worked out with The Center, but Alliance and Stein, Gelb promised to fully fund their pledge within four years. No one in the room, except for a hulking mass of a man standing in the back, known to a few people there as the Moose, had ever heard of The Center for Consumer Concerns. Questions came furiously. A silence, a pause punctuated by an audible gasp, greeted the news that The Center’s executive director was Isobel Gitlin. A murmur that could not be stifled followed the announcement that Nicholas Stevenson and Harvey Daniels served as the foundation’s trustees. Before the press conference restored order, Mel Gold left to return to the Times. In a heated editorial meeting later that afternoon, he succeeded in having the morning edition of the Times refer to Isobel only as “a former obituary writer for the New York Times.” He knew she’d be happy with that.

  The normal news cycle—especially for the television networks and cable channels—is twenty-four hours. In a day, Isobel Gitlin was old news. Two days after the press conference no one was talking about her or The Center. Alliance Industries, and to a lesser extent Stein, Gelb, had become the darlings of the left. “Corporate Conscience—At Last!” cried The Nation. Even the libertarian Cato Institute praised the move proclaiming self-awareness and self-examination the best path toward curbing corporate abuse. Then, of course, they questioned whether such abuse existed or not. The stir in Atlanta lasted a little longer. It was a good local story. Still, by the weekend few were talking about it anymore. Isobel went about her daily life in pleasurable obscurity. In stores, supermarkets, and in the malls, the only stares she got were those always waiting for attractive young women.

  Back home, Walter’s mood improved slowly, if at all. The walls had fallen, the doors were cracked open. His vulnerability had been an open sore. He called upon more than a half century of resources to repair the damage. He went back to eating breakfast in Billy’s. The company of his friends was a gift not to be taken lightly, but he’d been hurt and they knew it.

  “Walter, you know that song—you know, that one—it goes,” and Ike loosed his tortured falsetto on Billy’s sparse morning crowd. “I found

  lo-ove on a two-way-y street and lost it on a lon-le-y high-i-way.”

  “Very nice,” Billy said from behind the bar. “You want them all to leave?”

  “Yeah, I know it,” Walter said. “I can even recognize it when you sing it.”

  “Well, that’s what I mean,” Ike said, the smoke from whatever it was hanging from his lower lip blanketing his face.

  “So what?” Walter said.

  “The thing is, you found love on a lonely highway and lost it on a two-way street. That’s ass-backward, ain’t it?”

  Walter said nothing. He drank his usual drink and frowned at Ike.

  “Forget about it,” said Billy, turning away from Ike, mumbling something else.

  “No, no,” Ike said. “Don’t you never forgetaboutit.” His attempt to imitate Billy was laughable. Billy and Walter smiled at each other. Ike continued, “Keep going, Walter. You’ll find it. Damn if you don’t find everything else.”

  Walter offered no reply. He had nothing to say. The song in his mind was “Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places.” God, I hate country music, he thought.

  Isobel flipped off the cell phone. She dropped the instrument on her kitchen table, right into the pile of real estate brochures. She covered her smiling face with both hands, almost laughing out loud. She should have known. Of course, she should have known. The bank had just called. They said a bank representing an anonymous donor called requesting wire instructions for a contribution to the Center. A few minutes later a bank in Cyprus made The Center for Consumer Concerns richer by thirty million dollars. “Oh, m-my,” she said. “Walter, Walter, Walter.”

  St. John

  “You got three,” said Ike, blowing t
he usual amount of smoke away from Billy out toward where the Poet slept in the square. “Brando, Newman, and Dean. What’s more to say? Ain’t three better. Ain’t three as good.” He looked to Billy, standing where he always did, behind the bar, halfway between himself and Walter. Billy mumbled something as he wiped the already spotless counter. “What?” said Ike.

  “Tinkers, Evers, and Chance,” Billy said, this time loud enough to be heard. “There’s three for you.”

  “Who the hell they?”

  “Come on, old man. You’re losing it. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.”

  “Un huh,” said Ike, the same way his doctor often did after putting down his stethoscope.

  “Chicago Cubs infield,” Billy went on. “Best double play combination there ever was.”

  Ike said, “Oh, yeah. Now I hear you. Couldn’t make out what you said. I heard of them. That was when only white boys played, so we’ll never know how good they were, will we? Easy to turn a double play on a white boy. Can’t run fast enough.”

  “Ahh,” said Billy, waving his bar rag at the old man.

  “Brando, Newman, and Dean,” said Ike again. “And they all white. I am no prejudiced man. I recognize talent.”

  Billy said, “Walter, you got three for us?”

  “Three what?”

  “Three anything. Three better than Bran—”

  “I heard him,” Walter said. “You too. I’ll go with the three ghosts.”

  Billy dropped his bar rag on the floor. “The Father, Son, and the Holy—”

  “No, Billy. That’s only one ghost, if I remember correctly.”

  “I think you’re right, Walter,” Ike said. “Only one.”

  Walter said, “The three ghosts. The ghost of Christmas past. The ghost of Christmas present. And the ghost of Christmas future.”

  “The past, the present, and the future,” said Ike. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’ll take the past, if you don’t mind. I surely will.”

  “I’ll take the present,” said Billy, who feared the future and dreaded the past. “That leaves you with the future, Walter.”

  “It most surely does,” said Ike. “You up to it?”

  “The future,” said Walter, raising his drink in the air. “Gentlemen, here’s to the future.”

  Billy went to write it up.

  THE END