Solid Oak
Page 1
SOLID OAK
William H. Lovejoy
© William H. Lovejoy 2013
William H. Lovejoy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2013 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
DEDICATION
This one is for Jane
Table of Contents
Chapter One – Tuesday, June 11
Chapter Two – Tuesday, June 11
Chapter Three – Wednesday, June 12
Chapter Four – Thursday, June 13
Chapter Five – Friday, June 14
Chapter Six – Saturday, June 15
Chapter Seven – Sunday, June 16
Chapter Eight – Monday, June 17
Chapter Nine – Tuesday, June 18
Chapter Ten – Wednesday, June 19
Chapter Eleven – Thursday, June 20
Chapter Twelve – Friday, June 21
Chapter Thirteen – Saturday, June 22
Chapter Fourteen – Sunday, June 23
Chapter Fifteen – Monday, June 24
Chapter Sixteen – Tuesday, June 25
Chapter Seventeen – Wednesday, June 26
Chapter Eighteen – Thursday, June 27
Chapter Nineteen – Friday, June 28
Chapter Twenty – Saturday, June 29
Chapter Twenty-One – Thursday, July 4
Chapter One – Tuesday, June 11
Oak Malone tossed a twenty into the currency exchange gate and crawled out of the cab when it bogged down on Broadway above John Street. For a couple hundred thousand dollars, he could walk a few blocks.
The temperature in the middle of the jammed street was slightly less than that in the back of the airless hack. Watery mirages of heat haze floated above the hot roofs of the gridlocked cars. It was something above eighty degrees with close to matching humidity at 8:10 in the morning. It was the perfect time for the flatbed semitrailer three blocks ahead to take up two-and-a-half lanes of traffic in order to deliver a rusty orange crane to yet another construction site.
The aroma of exhaust filled the air so no one would forget they were at the bottom of a concrete canyon.
There were maybe seventy taxi cabs on the streets around him, delivering hot young stockbrokers and financial geniuses to their computer terminals, and sixty-eight of the taxis were blowing their horns. Why do New Yorkers take out their frustrations in noise? Primal screams?
Malone weaved his way around two grilles and the ratty exhaust of a Honda motorcycle to mount the west sidewalk. Many of the veteran walkers were toting dress shoes and wearing running shoes and the throng was mostly moving south. Malone fell in with it, overcoming the urge to strip off his suit jacket. The back of his shirt, and probably the coat too, was plastered to his back. By 10:00 a.m., the day would turn into a literal killer.
There was no particular hurry at the moment, and Malone did not want to attract attention. While melting into a crowd was difficult for someone as tall as he was, Malone had experience with being unobtrusive. He cruised along, sightseeing, eyeing window displays, and craning his head backward to examine the tops of the high rises. Most of them looked about the same. The role of tourist was as good as any other.
His particular horde of pedestrians chose to ignore the traffic signals since vehicular traffic was not moving anyway, and the mob flowed across the intersections with impunity and a few casually tossed swear words. He flowed with it, ticking off the cross streets on his mental map—Maiden Lane, Liberty, Cedar.
Trinity Church serenely looked down on the trickle of cars getting past the log jam. A cabbie leaned out of his window to yell at the semi truck driver in a Lebanese accent, “Hey, asshead!”
The truck driver, with a face pink as fresh ham, looked serenely down from his Mack tractor and raised a middle finger in salute to the cabbie. One of his helpers signaled from the rear of the trailer, and he backed up six inches. More yells, more honks. A siren wailed over on Nassau.
Most of the crowd peeled off at Wall Street, preferring to clog that narrow and crooked thoroughfare before evaporating into the exchanges and international banks and brokerages, some of which were still reputable. Oak Malone picked up his stride in the next long blocks and reached Battery Park at 8:25.
He was thirty-five minutes ahead of schedule.
Walking along the esplanade toward the circular red stone walls of Castle Clinton, Malone took his time and surveyed the early morning crowd. There was heavy tourist action in the bright, cloudless morning, with Nikons and Ricohs and digital Pentaxes aimed up at the skyscrapers of the financial district behind him. “Look, Ma. This is where our economic health is measured. Where the hedge managers jam the thermometers up corporate anal channels and see how much feverish green will rise to the top.”
Malone had learned cynicism in financial matters, and he invested his spare cash more conservatively and elsewhere. Of course, his cash flow was erratic and when he was flush, he often engaged in liberal spending bouts before making deposits to his conservative bank. His hobbies were few, but he liked to see new places and eat well, and he enjoyed buying presents for friends.
Angling off the sidewalk, he crossed a section of grass burning toward yellow-brown. Sprinklers needed maintenance. Under the trees, even the shade was hot. Malone slipped the knot on his silk tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. If he had carried the Walther PPS in an ankle holster instead of the clip-on in the middle of his back, he could have pulled his coat off. He was either getting too old for this or too much time had elapsed since his last operation. He was not thinking ahead very well. More to the point, this couldn’t even be classified as an operation just yet.
When he reached the East Coast Memorial, he skirted it on the north and gained the Promenade. Around the curve of the island, into the East River, the Whitehall Terminal Ferry Building loomed. A gaggle of variously sized water craft chased back and forth on the river. A light breeze carried the tang of water. Lots of people out for a stroll.
At the ferry building, he stopped and reviewed the Statue of Liberty schedule while checking his trail. There was no one behind him that did not look like they should not be there. The next ferry did not leave until 10:00 a.m., but he had been relatively certain of that fact before he looked. He’d been relatively certain that no one was following him, also.
He continued on down the Promenade until he found a small park around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and located a park bench shaded by an elm that may have been as old as the fortification named for DeWitt Clinton. Sitting on one end of the bench, Malone draped his arms over the back of the bench and waited. He raised his right foot and rested his ankle on his left knee. The size 14 Florsheim loafer was well worn but resoled and highly polished. It appeared as big as some of the boats on the river. Growing up, he had taken a lot of guff about his feet. His mother, who was at fault for naming him Nathan Oakley in some kind of family tradition, had often told him that, like a kitten with big paws, he would grow to match his feet. It had not quite happened in the sequence she foresaw. He locked in at five-seven until his last semester of high school, when he abruptly gained altitude to six-foot, four-inches. He never filled out, though, and still at 160 pounds, Malone was near the ultra side of skinny with lots of angles—jaw, elbows, knees, lean hips.
It was all right, however, as it turned out. His gangly, clumsy appearance disguised quick reflexes and a deadly grace that had gotten him through the University of Arizona on a basketball scholarship. And too many adversaries had been relaxed in his presence, and perhaps even amused at the figure he presented, in the moments before they died.
As Malone had been cued, the man was wearing an off-white linen suit, now rumpled in the moist heat. Circular stains radiated from his armpits. His brown shoes were scuffed. His medium length brown hair was wind ruffled, and Malone decided it had been a boat ride. Though he was probably close to fifty, the skin of his face was smooth, tanned to the hue of a walnut, and the physique suggested a barely maintained muscle tone. He walked with studied ease. Horn-rimmed glasses showed little magnification, and his dark eyes were not distorted through the lenses. Half-assed disguise?
He sat down on the other end of the park bench. “Major?”
“Only if you insist.”
“It was Major, wasn’t it?”
“Not for a long, long time.”
The contact was irritated. “We’re not here for the banter, Malone. You talked to Galway?”
“I talked to Galway,” Malone admitted.
“And?”
“You come alone?” Malone changed the trend of the dialogue and looked out at the river. The fence railing needed paint.
The contact fidgeted, and then said. “For the last couple of blocks. My associate is back at the Terminal.”
Malone figured it was a phantom associate, created to give the illusion of numbers and therefore safety. “No other friends along for the ride? Or non-friends?”
“We’re very careful in that respect.”
But he did not deny the possibility. Also, his use of “we” made Oak think he was on his own. Malone shifted his head slightly and let his eyes roam. Still the same old Nikons and Ricohs and digital whatevers. Nothing appeared to be out of line or out of the norm. Three family groups passed along the Promenade in front of them. Behind them in the trees, he saw a couple, probably Puerto Rican, sitting on the grass holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.
“Galway offers a reserved recommendation,” he said.
“Reserved?” There was some surprise in the response. “Why reserved?”
“Take it up with Galway.”
“But you’re interested?”
“I told you I’d look at it, and I will. You can call the cell number in a couple of days and I’ll let you know. Do you have the package I asked for?”
Oak Malone put his right foot back on the ground and turned to watch the man more intently for reactions.
It was not quite the reaction he had expected.
Or maybe it was.
A bloody glob of the man’s chest, about the size of a quarter, erupted through the off-white linen of his suit jacket. A spurt of arterial blood splattered over Malone’s new sport coat.
Malone did not even hear the bark of the weapon.
Chapter Two – Tuesday, June 11
Malone heard the second bullet.
It thwacked through the top rail of the bench where he had been sitting, popping a sizable chunk of wood out of the slat, and then whined off somewhere.
Malone was already on the ground, rolling under the bench and into the shrubbery behind it by the time the contact’s body tilted forward and fell off the bench. Air trapped in his lungs went “Whoosh.”
Passers-by in the vicinity, unaware of the silenced shots, but highly agitated by the sight of a falling body and the sudden appearance of the blue Walther semiautomatic in the hand of the man crawling under a hyacinth began to scatter. One mother screamed and jerked her five-year-old off his feet in her rush to be elsewhere.
Malone peered around the multiple stems of the shrub but saw no one on the grass. The Puerto Rican couple had disappeared. He scanned right, back toward the Memorial, looking for suspicious movements, and saw the couple running in a direction opposite from where the shots had come. He checked the heavy foliage to his left. The sniper had excellent coverage in the trees and shrubs of the park.
He was certain the weapon was small caliber, probably hollow point, to wreak the damage it had caused. Silenced, among all of these trees, and having punched clear through the contact’s chest, it was bound to be within fifty yards. If it wasn’t a long gun, the man behind it was a damned good marksman.
The screaming continued and he could hear the pounding of shoe leather. His time for action was running short.
Thwut! A geyser of dirt erupted in front of his face.
Malone spun to the other side of the shrub, flicking the safety off, scanning the trees.
Nothing.
Another scream as someone else saw the collapsed man. Someone should have called 911 by now.
Malone rolled back under the bench to the body, which was incongruously balanced on its knees and face in an upright fetal position. He pushed it over onto its side and quickly patted the pockets. There was a Smith and Wesson .38 Police Chiefs Special on the belt under the coat flap. The inside coat pockets, both sides, produced a wallet and a letter-sized manila envelope that was nicely padded. The envelope was smeared with gore. He wiped it on the corpse’s slacks.
There was a thick string of blood on Malone’s left sleeve and bare wrist. He wiped it off against the corpse’s leg, also.
Shoving the wallet and envelope into his coat pocket, Oak Malone crawled back under the bench, under the hyacinth, and five yards to a lilac bush before standing up. The sniper was certain to be hightailing it by now.
He walked away, nonchalantly flipping up the back of his jacket to reinsert the 9 millimeter semiautomatic in the belt holster. As he walked, he stooped over and brushed the dirt and twigs from the light gray gabardine of his slacks. From a flower bed full of roses, he scooped a handful of dirt and smeared it over his sleeve and wrist, then brushed it away with his hand. The stain was less obvious.
Within a hundred yards, he was able to join a small crowd that was unaware of the commotion back on the Promenade. He reached the sidewalk of Water Street in time to intercept a cab depositing a couple with a baby. While the man fished around in a thin fold of bills for the right combination of fare and tip, he waited. When the man finally had it figured out and moved out of the way, Malone flopped into the back seat.
“Senor?”
“Let’s find the Marriott.”
“La hotel?”
“Shit. Uptown. Norte, mi amigo. Norte.”
Malone provided the directions, and the driver provided the élan to get them back to 45th Street and Broadway at 9:45 in the morning. The cab’s air conditioning honestly tried and honestly failed to do much for the environment, mainly because the driver insisted on having his window down. It made yelling at pedestrians and bicyclists and truck drivers easier. Communication protocols dominated comfort.
The lobby of the Marriott Marquis was an Icelandic oasis in a New York Sahara. Malone went straight to the deserted lounge and ordered a bottle of Heineken. He paid for it, downed it in five long gulps, and then made a tour of the shops off the lobby. He was fairly certain of what he would find in the envelope, so he put that off for a while and entered a boutique where he was immediately approached by a very chic and cheerful sales clerk.
“Is there something I can help you with, sir?”
“I need a party dress.”
“I see. Could I have another hint?” She smiled at him.
He smiled back and held the flat of his hand about four feet off the floor. “She’s about this tall, and she’s eleven years old. She likes to dress up for dinner.”
Together, they made the selection in ten minutes, and while they were doing it, Malone spotted a sheer white blouse with a high collar and a $150 price tag.
“I’d better have one of these, too.”
“Same size?”
“No. It’s for Abby’s mother.” Abigail Clanton and her single parent mother, Andrea, were Malone’s neighbors. Andrea struggled pretty hard as a bank teller to keep their home going.
The sale
s clerk waited patiently for a size.
“Well, hell. I don’t know.” Malone took a step back and studied the clerk, whose throat began to flush rose. “I’d guess she’s close to your size in the shoulders, but you’ve got an inch or two of bustline on her.”
The rosy flush crawled into her cheeks, but she managed to select a blouse. Malone paid with his VISA card and ordered the packages shipped to the Clanton address.
Then he went up to his room on the nineteenth floor.
The maid had already passed through, and checking the telltale hair he had left on the latch of his unlocked suitcase, he figured she had also passed through his luggage. Nothing was missing, however. The laptop hadn’t been touched. His very expensive Montblanc pen and pencil set was still complete and in its fitted box.
Shrugging out of his coat, he retrieved the wallet and envelope, threw the coat on the bed, and sat in the chair at the table by the window. He could look down on Broadway and the theater district. At night, he could look down on the pimps and whores and street hustlers.
Within the bifold was a small credential case. Malone opened it to see his contact, with less of a tan, and without glasses, staring up at him. The horn rims had been a mild disguise. Tracy Evan Dinmore. Late of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
The association was unexpected. Malone did not think that the Department often went looking for outside expertise. Or maybe Tracy Evan Dinmore was operating—had been operating—on his own?
The wallet disgorged seven credit cards, a correct driver’s license, a permit to carry the .38, an Elks Club membership card, a picture of the little woman, and 322 dollars. He handled all of it by the edges. No sense in him leaving his prints on anything. He put everything back, including the cash. The little woman would probably need it.
On a sheet of hotel stationary, he wrote down the particulars—age, description, and the Silver Spring, Maryland address of Tracy Dinmore. He addressed an envelope, wiped the billfold with a tissue, and sealed the wallet and credentials within it.