Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

Isobel could hold five martinis long before she left London.

“You know about me. Everyone does. It’s ugly.” She was stammering only moderately, and felt unexpectedly at ease. Now she saw a curious light in Walter’s bright blue eyes. She tried a telepathic turn of her own:

“I spoke English and very good French at home. As a child I spoke Hindustani every day, and Bauan as well. I still can. My parents tried to keep my speech white, European. I rebelled against that, which could have produced my stammer. They say I pronounce my English like a little black village girl. That may help to explain the inflection you hear. I cultivate it because I like it. Do you?”

The surprise in his smile seemed to confirm that she had, in fact, read his mind. Then came the martini. She felt its first effect before the alcohol hit her blood. Coffee worked the same way. She got her first rush from the smell. She became aware that this was becoming a “jolly bash,” as her suave, determined father might have said. And a jolly bash was not what she had in mind.

“Now let’s hear about you,” she said matter-of-factly. “What do you do besides advertise your antiquity?”

“I find missing people,” he said.

No question: he’d said the same thing hundreds of times before. He could certainly have lied; anything else would have sounded more likely. She got the sense that he liked going straight to the point. Did he really find that practical? When did circumstances permit that kind of candor? How would it work for a catcher of people? Or was it a nifty affectation?

“Why do you do it?” Isobel asked, all pretty eyes and ears.

“People pay me to do it.”

“Why don’t they call the police?”

“Most do, but some are embarrassed, and some are afraid of ridicule, the risk of humiliation. Sometimes they need a private way to find whoever’s lost.”

“First you said ‘missing.’ Then you said ‘lost.’ Which is it?”

“Sometimes there’s no difference. Some people want to be missing. They are not lost. Once in a while they don’t know where they are. Then they are lost.”

“What do you call yourself, professionally? What’s the name for it?”

“I usually don’t, and I don’t know,” Walter smiled again. She noticed the skin crinkling around his eyes and mouth. She thought him mid- to late-forties, but she thought he looked sixty because of the tan-what it had done to his face. Her father and mother avoided the sun, out of European vanity. She was afraid of sunburn. This one, like many Americans, seemed to pursue melanoma.

She said, “I never imagined anyone actually did what you say you do. I imagined it was all in the movies.”

“Well,” said Walter, “just goes to show.”

“Your… what do you call them, clients? I assume they’re celebrities, public figures? People who don’t want the world to know that their daughter-I’ll bet it’s always the daughter-ran away with a Hell’s Angel gang, or a circus, or wherever they go. And, that’s where you come in.”

He seemed a little less charmed. Her flippancy was doing its job. She expected to get a look at him now. “That’s where I come in,” he said, just a little shortly.

“I feel like calling you Robert Mitchum. Except he’d be somewhat older, if he were alive.”

He didn’t like impertinence. Probably took it for disrespect. He was sipping his Diet Coke silently. Sullenly? No. Not quite that.

“What makes you good at doing it?”

He said, “I really don’t know. I just am. I know where to look. I know what to ask. The right things come to mind. Experience helps. I know when a hunch is worth chasing. What makes you good at what you do? What makes anyone good?”

Isobel sipped the last of her drink. She put down the glass with emphasis.

“What do you have to do with Hopman, MacNeal, and Ochs?”

“There are other people on the list.” Walter was looking into her pupils, expecting a reaction. She gave him none. He went on. “Some of the ones who are probably on the list hired me to find the killer.”

“Who are the others?” Stupid, stupid, stupid. It was a stupid thing to say and she knew it, but too late.

“First I have to identify the guy, assuming it’s a him.”

“What will you do after you know who it is?”

“I will find him.”

“After you find him, what will you do?”

“I won’t ‘do’ anything.” The tone of his answer rejected her plain implication-that he intended to rub someone out. He was past his impatience now. He seemed pleased to be talking simple business. “Most of the time I’m bringing somebody home. All I’m doing now is finding a guy.”

“And what do you think your friends will do when you find him?”

“They’re not my friends. Just my clients. And what they do is their business. They’re not killers themselves. From what I’ve seen they will buy him off.”

“So you think he survived the E. coli disaster and lost someone he loved? Wife, child? Something like that?” She paused long enough for him to let her go on. “Then how do you buy off a person like that?”

Walter stopped, took in a long, deep breath through his nose, then turned his gaze to the park across the street for only a moment. “What’s the largest amount of money you’ve ever thought of having?” he asked, turning to look at her.

“I already have it. My people are not poor. I struggle only because I prefer it. Actually, I don’t struggle.”

“How much? Give me a figure.”

“I am not a materialist. I think in modest terms.”

“How much?”

Isobel took a moment to ponder. Before she could speak he reached out and touched her hand, his fingers surprisingly warm.

“In dollars. Do you have a figure in mind?”

She did, and she nodded.

Walter sat back. “Now double it, triple it, quadruple it.”

“Oh, m-m-my,” said Isobel.

“Think about Hopman and MacNeal. Think about their money. How much was their life worth? Think of the people we’re talking about.”

Another flick of the finger, another waiter. They ordered, and Walter went on without losing a beat. She had the somewhat creepy feeling that Walter believed he knew all about her. In retrospect now, his impatience seemed measured, as though he were tolerating expected girlish antics. She suddenly felt-absurdly, really-taken for granted. She also felt a little like being understood. His apparently genuine inclination to talk straight had an effect. She found herself tending to accept his words at face value.

He said he wanted Isobel’s help in identifying his man; he was sure that she’d done more research on it, and gathered more good information, than anyone else in the wide, wide world. He also said, quite matter-of-factly, that while Isobel’s research would speed his work, she could not realistically expect to identify this guy without him.

And he left it precisely there.

She thought long and hard, and he did not attempt to hurry her.

They ate in silence for what must have been quite a while, as New York passed on the street outside, and waiters danced through the room, and diners, all nicely dressed, a surprising number of them older, hummed at each other over their food.

She suddenly saw that he’d ordered a bottle of white wine. As the waiter poured, Isobel understood that her mind was made up. She explained that she’d turned her West Side apartment into a photo gallery. She said she had pictures of hundreds of adult survivors-parents and spouses and brothers and sisters and grown-up children of those killed by Knowland meat. She also had spreadsheets designed to connect the dots, to correlate factors likely to narrow the field, to grind the data down to a workable list.