Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“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.”

“A-a-are you-?”

“Next to me!” As soon as she got in, the window went up, the doors locked, the car took off. “Put this on,” said the driver, shoving what looked like a blindfold at her.

“Wh-wh-what?”

“Put it on or I’ll shoot you.” He sounded crazy and very young. She put it on as fast as she could.

After several moments, she said, “But you’re not…”

Her blindness reassured him. His voice came back from the edge. “No, I’m not. Just sit there and don’t talk. Take off your watch. Put it in your purse and don’t touch it again until this is over. We’ll be there when we get there.”

She slipped off the watch and put it in her black purse. She’d been checking it every three minutes or so. Even for October it was cold. A freezing rain mixed with sleet and snow had fallen most of the day. The driver did not have the heat on. The two rear windows were open enough to admit a nasty breeze. The blindfold was uncomfortable. Her sense of smell was useless; the car had the odor of evergreen. She tried to keep track of turns and stops and the seconds between. At the end she had no idea where they were. She was fairly sure they had driven for almost thirty minutes.

“Get out,” said the driver, nervous again. “Don’t touch the blindfold. Just get out.” She stumbled over the curb. A thin, strong hand suddenly squeezed her arm. The man led her up three steps, which felt smooth and slippery like marble. In a warm building, a lobby, she smelled leather furniture. A carpet took them into an elevator. The building smelled like the Upper West Side. (That could have been hope playing games with her nose.) She tried counting passing floors, but the elevator moved quietly and the music drowned out the clicks. “ Theme from a Summer Place” would stay in her head for weeks.

The elevator stopped. The man urged her gently, a hand on her back. He said, “Step out, turn right, walk straight.”

She hesitated.

“Do it. Go!”

Several steps later a hand grasped her shoulder, a silent command to halt. Someone-her driver?-frisked her, first the front, then behind. Treated like this by airport security, her very cells would have raged at the insult. It was just business now.

Leonard Martin, she assumed, must have known she was unarmed, without a recording device, following orders. What did the searching mean? Was he paranoid? Unbalanced? No conclusion to be drawn; searching cost nothing. The cost of a mistake could be high. She would have had herself searched, probably much more thoroughly than this. Isobel remembered what a friend had told her about going through airport security with a pacemaker. The woman couldn’t pass through the metal detectors for fear they might set off her pacemaker in the wrong direction. Everyone knows that, and they have a procedure for a hand search at every airport in the world. They usually do a pretty thorough pat down, but at no American airport, she told Isobel, does anyone actually touch her chest to see if she really has a pacemaker. “They’re afraid to touch my tits,” she said with a laugh only another woman could appreciate. That was until she arrived at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. There they felt. Isobel had been to Frankfurt. The women attendants there looked like prison guards in a soft-porn cable movie. “I’ll bet they had a good time doing it too,” she told her friend. Compared with that, her blindfolded search was really quite respectful. She was used to having her tape recorder. She wished she had it now.