Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

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.

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 crowded 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.