The Knowland Retribution l-1

by Richard Greener

  New York

  When the second letter arrived, Isobel took it immediately to Gold, as prearranged. Ed Macmillan joined them, followed closely by two men and a woman-all stone-faced, pasty, suited; they might have been related. They greeted Gold, ignored Macmillan, and shook hands grimly with Isobel. These were New York Times lawyers. She turned to glare at Gold. “This is a real newspaper, not a supermarket checkout sheet. I am a real reporter, not an intern. I won’t work in the presence of lawyers or people I don’t know. Melvin? Is this your idea of a joke?”

  “I beg your pardon, Ms. Gitlin,” the oldest of the lawyers said. “You work for the New York Times, as do we. This case involves a potential for liability that is of great concern for the publisher and the parent entity. Mr. Gold was made aware of our need to be present. We’re all part of a publicly held corporation, as you know. Accordingly, we have obligations to-”

  “B-b-bullshit,” Isobel said, slipping the unopened letter back into the folder she held very firmly. “This letter is mine. It is not the property of the New York Times. The story I write, after I write it, may be, but not the letter. I have no intention of sh-sharing its c-c-contents with you or anyone other than my editors.”

  Maybe it was her alliance with Walter Sherman. It could have been the adrenaline. More likely, it was her certainty that whatever the letter said would be her sword and her shield. Isobel Gitlin knew for a fact that she had nothing to fear from anyone East or West of Fiji.

  The attorney’s stream of patience flowed shallow, not deep. It was bone dry now. “You don’t seem to understand, young lady-”

  “You don’t seem to understand, old man!” Turning toward the Moose, she demanded, “They go or I go. Mel?”

  When all three had departed, she turned to Ed, whose bleary expression pleased her immensely. “L-l-lawyers?” She applied her village-girl sing-song with its version of a Mexican accent. “We don’t need no stinking lawyers.”

  She cared not a bit that the joke fell flat. Macmillan had probably never seen the movie, and Mel wasn’t in the mood.

  “Read the fucking letter,” said the Moose. DEAR MS. GITLIN, Harlan Jennings didn’t kill Floyd Ochs. I can’t allow an innocent man to be charged and perhaps even convicted. I killed Floyd Ochs. I killed Christopher Hopman and Billy MacNeal too. I did it and I’m not sorry. As proof, I offer you these details: • Floyd Ochs was shot with a Beretta S06, 12 gauge, Diamond Pigeon made in Italy, using an English cartridge by Gamebore aptly named Pigeon Extreme. Ochs was less than twenty feet from me when I fired. • Billy MacNeal was shot with a 7.62mm shell fired from a Galil Sniper Rifle, sometimes called a Galatz, made by IMI in Israel. It’s possible to mistake or misidentify this weapon as a German G3-SG1 or a Russian SVD. You can make sure the FBI doesn’t make that mistake. The Galil comes with its own 6x telescopic sight, which was suitable since he was only 150 yards from me at the time. I also used a TPR-S suppressor to minimize the sound. At that distance I doubt he heard anything. • I shot Christopher Hopman with a J. D. Jones-designed, Ed Brown-made, 50-caliber gun called the Peacemaker. I made my peace with him. This gun is a big one, but it doesn’t have the full power of most 50-caliber weapons. For my purpose, it’s strong enough, plus I used a 650-grain cartridge for extra speed because I was concerned that the can-type suppresser might not completely muffle the sound. I was exactly 453 yards from Hopman as calibrated by a Nightforce 3.5-15x50 Extreme Tactical Scope. Aiming downhill, that put him 1,318.2 feet from the position of the shell in my barrel. So, there you have it-the details. • The authorities probably haven’t identified all of these weapons, if they have identified any. If they had I think you would have known and printed it already. Now you can tell them. Without you, they may never find out. • You can also tell them that for the next one I will use a Holland amp; Holland double rifle called Nitro Express. It has a beaded cheekpiece, double Purdey underbolts, and a Greener crossbolt with gold-line cocking indicators. You’ll know it when you see it. Later I’ll tell you where to find that one too. All the physical evidence mentioned in this confession, all the guns and associated equipment I’ve described, not including, of course, the Holland amp; Holland, will be found in a large suitcase I’ve left in your name with your excellent doorman, Mr. Falikas. Your reporting on this has touched me, Ms. Gitlin. I ask only that you keep in mind that I seek justice, and nothing more.

  The letter was not signed.

  “Holy shit,” said Macmillan.

  Mel Gold’s face had whitened by several shades. He’d become an albino moose or a man on the edge of shock. He spoke from behind the chewed pencil that quivered in his teeth. “Call your doorman. Tell him you’ll be there within the hour. We will send two security people with you. Get a description of whoever left the suitcase. Security will bring it here. We will open it. Until then, technically, we do not know what’s in it. We certainly cannot consider it evidence based on an unsigned letter. We are simply checking out what may very well be a hoax. That’s our official position. I will get two very big security people.”

  “Could be another hoax,” Macmillan croaked, nodding, out of nowhere.

  Mel Gold gave him a quick, dismissive look, then hurriedly told Isobel: “Make the call from my desk. I’ll have security pick us up here.”

  She could have floated out of her chair and bumped her head on the ceiling. She had his letter in her hand. And she had Walter’s e-mail. Number 8. Number 8 was Leonard Martin. But damned if she would tell anyone else.

  Las Vegas

  Pat Grath was not in Amarillo hiding behind a tumbleweed.

  But he wasn’t much better off than that. He was laying low on the shore of Lake Mead just outside Las Vegas. He’d been there since the day he learned about Floyd Ochs. His estate house was back from the road a quarter mile and surrounded by thirteen acres, including four hundred feet of shoreline, which fronted a rolling lawn stretching from the back of the main house down to the lake. His family stayed in Texas. He brought nine bodyguards with him. He flew in a top security man to elaborate his house electronics, electrify the fences practically overnight, and add any other foolproof systems available ASAP. Still, Pat Grath was edgy.

  He was a short, pear-shaped man just past forty with sandy hair and goatee, a snub nose, and a toothy smile. He’d always liked to have fun. He loved great food and beautiful women. But now he had no appetite. There were no girls in the party. He worried because the place was so secure. He thought his army of nine might grow complacent, and often instructed them not to. It was hard to make the point to his satisfaction. They all knew a twenty-four-hour camera covered the only road in, and one guy was always awake watching the screen. Two more, loaded down with weapons, manned the gate. Another two were always on patrol-the pool, the playhouse, the newly installed high-voltage fences, the lakefront lawn where Pat spent most of his time. The off-duty ones, if they weren’t asleep, played cards with him or watched TV.

  Pat thought constantly about what could go wrong. He couldn’t come up with anything, and that made it worse. He was playing a round of croquet on the lawn, searching his mind for overlooked details. A bullet hit the end of his nose. The back of his skull and some of its contents were found as far as thirty feet back. The rest of him toppled like a log. The man on patrol who saw it happen called to the others and crouched his way to the body, handgun drawn, shaking every step of the way. He and the others threw frightened eyes rapidly from side to side. Had they known exactly where to look, they might have seen the tiny boat far out on the water turning quickly, heading toward the distant shoreline.

  Birmingham

  Carter Lawrence was sitting in the food court at the Riverchase Galleria Mall in Birmingham, Alabama. From where he lived in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, the drive had taken him two hours. Interstate 20 runs dead straight from Atlanta to Birmingham. Once outside the Atlanta metropolitan area, it’s a dull drive, open spaces punctuated every so often by small towns. Gas stations, McDonalds, and Waffle House restaurants cr
owded themselves around the exits. This wasn’t the first time Carter had made the drive. He remembered the strange billboard outside Oxford. It said “Jesus Is Lord Over Oxford, Alabama.” As far as Carter was concerned, He could have it. Carter picked up an hour passing into the Central Time Zone and scheduled his arrival for ten o’clock local time. After what he’d been reading in the newspaper, watching on TV, and the trips to Raleigh, he looked forward to this day like no other in… years.

  When he reached the mall he drove around a while looking for a parking spot. Traffic was brutal, more so inside the mall parking lot than on the roads. After finally parking he went inside. The place was jammed. He’d been sitting in the food court for nearly an hour, at a table between a cinnamon bun/coffee shop and a Japanese steakhouse/fast-food operation that was offering samples to passersby. The mad rush to find tables in the mall’s food court was a sight to behold. Carter saw grown women pulling their own kids while pushing someone else’s children aside to grab an empty place. Others hovered like anxious vultures-overeaters who appeared to be down to the last bites of their quick meals. It took Carter forty minutes to get his food and find a table. He rebuffed every effort to unseat him. “No,” he said, “you can’t take that chair.” Still they came at him. “There’s someone sitting there,” he told not one, not two, but a half dozen or more eager shoppers wishing to lay claim to the empty seat at Carter’s table. He waited patiently. The note he received in the mail a few days ago said only: “Meet me Friday in the food court at Riverchase Galleria, Birmingham-11 a.m.” The letter bore a New Mexico postmark, but Carter Lawrence was sure it came from his father-in-law.

  A few minutes after eleven Carter felt a light tap on his right shoulder. When he turned to see who was there, there was no one. From the corner of his eye he saw a figure moving to his left, and he turned quickly. There he saw a tall, lean, bearded man sitting down in the other chair. He did not immediately recognize Leonard Martin-not at first glance. But he was expecting him, and with that thought fresh in his mind he soon saw the man he remembered underneath the new veneer. For an instant Carter thought the new look might be a disguise. But, of course, it wasn’t. No disguise can make you thin, can it? He was stunned, then greatly comforted, to see Lenny Martin, to know it was him. Carter smiled. Leonard saw the young man was near to losing it, quite close to tears it seemed. And then they came. Still smiling, Carter’s deep-set eyes overflowed, tears dripping down his bony cheeks, falling from his chin to the table. Carter stifled a heaving sob when Leonard reached out and put his hands on the sides of his head.

  “It’s okay,” Leonard said. “I’m here.”

  “I missed you,” said Carter with a dry-cough mumble, trying as hard as he could not to cry anymore. He knew Leonard was alive, somewhere, because of the notes and the trips to Raleigh-Durham. But, now, seeing him, Carter’s emotions got the better of him.

  “I missed you too,” said Leonard.

  “Lenny, where-”

  “No, no, stop,” Leonard interrupted him, sternly waving both hands between himself and Carter. “No questions, Carter, please. Very important: It’s essential that you never ask me anything. Not where I’ve been, what I’ve done, where I’m going. Nothing’s more important. Do you understand?”

  Carter looked at him, bewildered and confused.

  Leonard said, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you, or me. If you get a card in the mail from somebody asking you to pick up a package and send it to another place, you don’t know who asked you and you don’t know what’s inside. Right?” They looked at each other for many seconds in silence.

  “Can I have some of those?” Leonard asked. He pointed to a plate of french fries. They were cold by now, but Leonard took a couple, dipped them in catsup, and put them in his mouth. Carter regained enough of his composure to drink some of his iced tea and take a handful of french fries himself. “You still hungry?” Leonard asked.

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Good. Let’s walk.” When they got up from their seats a flock of women, each with children in tow, descended upon the spot like ducks on pieces of white bread tossed into a lake. Carter couldn’t take his eyes off Leonard, and Leonard said, “Don’t look at me, Carter. Let’s just walk. Not too fast. Not too slow. Do a little window shopping as we go.” Walking just that way, the two approached the mall’s main atrium and rode the escalator to the upper level. Halfway down one of the long arms of the Riverchase Galleria was a Discovery Channel store. Just outside the entrance to the store there was a young man, about nineteen or twenty, with long dreadlocks, a T-shirt with the logo of one of the popular bands of the day, and pants that were neither long nor short. He wore running shoes with colored laces and no socks, and he effortlessly flipped three multicolored balls about the size of grapefruits in the air. As he juggled, a small crowd of mostly teenage girls surrounded him. He laughed and joked with the onlookers, trying, in the time-tested tradition of carnival barkers, to get the people into the store. As the group dissipated, every few minutes or so new members took the place of those departed. The crowd changed size and complexion, but never went away. Leonard directed Carter to the women’s clothing store directly across from this action. They stood outside. The store was crammed with young women shoppers all too busy to ever notice them.

  “Let’s stand here,” he said. He could sense the nervousness in Carter’s steps. “Nobody will pay any attention to us.” He was right. The patrons walking past the Discover Channel store in both directions either stopped to join the group being entertained by the good-looking boy with the strange, long hair, or they turned to watch him as they went by. Carter noticed that Leonard carried a shopping bag from Nordstrom. “You want to be a shopper, you got to look like one, huh?” he said.

  “Carter, I need your help-”

  “I’ll help you kill those bastards!” Carter blurted. “I knew it was you! I knew it!” Again, Carter Lawrence was crying; this time all hundred and forty pounds of him shuddered.

  “Get hold of yourself,” Leonard demanded. “You don’t know anything.” There was no sympathy in his voice, and that alone shocked Carter. It had the intended effect. He wiped his nose with a tissue Leonard handed him, and then asked, “What can I do?”

  They stood there for ten minutes while Leonard explained what he needed: financial reports, SEC filings, income projections based on certain types of investments, personal asset data-a whole range of financial information, some of which would be easy to assemble, some of which would not. Exactly why Leonard wanted this data he didn’t say. Carter had quickly learned to ask no questions if they involved Leonard’s activities. He thought, “Just tell me what you want. It’s yours.”

  “It’s all here,” Leonard said, handing Carter a list. “It’s a couple of pages, I know. It won’t be simple and it won’t be cheap.”

  “Money?” Carter scoffed. “That’s all I’ve got.” Only Leonard could comprehend the sort of sadness and misery that could possibly be felt by a young man with six million dollars. “You know,” said Carter, “I left it all in the bank. My parents don’t need any, and my family.. . well, I just left it there where Nick put it. Now they’re paying me almost twenty-five thousand a month just to keep it there. Twenty-five thousand. Fucking blood money,” he said angrily. “And I’m still in the apartment. You know that already… the notes you sent me. There’s a man-he came to see me-he’s looking for you. Walter Sherman’s his name.” Carter fumbled through his pockets looking for something. Finally he handed Leonard a piece of paper. It was the note Walter had left with him.

  “I know,” Leonard said. He glanced briefly at the small note and put it in his own pocket. “I know about him. It’s going to be okay, Carter. It is.” Leonard held him close for just a moment, as a father might a son, and then they started walking once more. They talked as they strolled the mall, looking every bit the Thanksgiving Sale shoppers they wanted to appear to be. Leonard went over the data he needed again, this time pointing out certain
details they might be interested in following up. “Don’t forget this,” he said, or “remember to get…” that. He wanted to be clear. He wanted to be sure Carter knew exactly what to do, what to put together. “And then what?” Carter’s eyes asked. Leonard told him that when his task was accomplished-and he had only a few weeks to do it-he was to meet Leonard in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn in Clarksville, Tennessee. “I’ll send you a note,” he told him. “It’ll only have a number. That’s the date. Be there at seven o’clock. We’ll have dinner and guests.”

  “Lenny,” Carter said, his cheeks reddening and his eyes once more watery, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I want to kill them! Can I kill them? Can we do it?”

  Leonard hugged his son-in-law, all that was left of his family, of his life, and said, “We’re going to do something even better.”

  New York

  The box of guns and ammo made a splash.

  Authorities in Tennessee announced that while they had not the slightest doubt as to Harlan Jennings’s guilt in the murder of Floyd Ochs, there was now the possibility that questions might be raised by some.

  Harlan relaxed in his county cell, and Isobel was pretty much resurrected. The passing of Pat Grath began her beatification. She had written there would be others, and everyone remembered.

  The New York Post ran her full-face picture again, somewhat misleadingly under the headline: “Meat Murderer Kills Fourth.” The story began on page two, and there, she thought, the headline was even worse. “She Said There Were Others.” Everyone knew who “she” was.

  When the third letter came, she followed its instructions.

  First, she told no one, not Mel Gold, not even Walter. She took the bus at 34th to Columbus Circle. She walked uptown on Broadway to 64th Street, where she turned east toward Central Park and continued walking. At the corner of Central Park West she turned again, south to 63rd Street. There, she stood across from the YMCA, her back to the park. After waiting exactly twenty minutes she started walking slowly westward. Halfway down the block, in front of what was once The McBurney School, a gray car pulled to the curb. The dark tinted window rolled down. The driver wore a black windbreaker, a large, turned-up collar, and a baseball cap, bill down, hiding his face. His voice was anxious, hoarse. “Get in.”