Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

Maloney was fully dressed, the same way he had been on St. John. It was all Walter could do not to smile. Did these guys ever get comfortable? They greeted each other coldly. Walter could not get it out of his head that Tom Maloney had hired someone who meant to kill Isobel Gitlin, and Tom would never forget being called “you stupid shit!” Nathan was here too. Walter knew that much. But the obstreperous little prick never showed himself.

Maloney had some lunch already in the suite. Walter wasn’t hungry. He accepted a Diet Coke, but that’s as friendly as it got. Maloney lied… again. What did Walter expect? He had no heart to argue with the puffy and pink Irish sonofabitch. They just wanted Leonard Martin to know how sorry they were and to demonstrate their contrition with an enormous amount of money. That’s what Maloney kept saying. He practically begged Walter to find him again. The meeting was short. Walter felt all Maloney wanted to know was if Walter too might want to kill him. Nathan Stein was probably cowering behind one of the four closed doors leading God knows where. Walter had no idea how big the penthouse suite was, and no inclination to guess. Suitably convinced of his immediate safety, Maloney rose from his seat, signaling Walter that it was time to conclude their little talk.

“Walter,” he said. “We know you’ve encountered some rather unusual expenses. This has taken more of your time than you probably thought it would. We want you to have this.” Holding a bulky brown envelope in his fingers, he reached out to Walter. “It’s another hundred thousand,” said Maloney, as if he were talking about twenty bucks.

Walter considered turning and walking away, leaving Tom Maloney with his hand outstretched. His eyes caught Maloney’s, and neither man blinked. Who could walk away from a hundred thousand dollars? An extra hundred thousand dollars! “Not me,” Walter realized. He took the envelope, stuck it under one arm, and said, “I’ll be in touch.” The last thing he saw before turning to go was relief in Tom Maloney’s face.

The next morning, instead of heading home to St. John, Walter was unexpectedly back at the Waldorf. Maloney had called him at the Mayflower. He was clearly panicked. Walter was already awake, eating his breakfast, contemplating his next move, hoping to take an afternoon flight home.

“Get over here right away,” Maloney said. There was no sweetness in his voice, no pretense of fellowship or comradery. Definitely master-to-servant.

“What’s going on?”

“Just be here.” Maloney paused and Walter thought he heard a sigh. “He got Louise.”

Thirty minutes later Walter was in the penthouse again. This time Nathan Stein was there too. Maloney filled him in on the details. The ME’s report was not yet available, but the fact that the bullet struck her below the breastbone told Walter she had died a miserable death. Leonard gutted her. He was a better shot than Walter had given him credit for. The Hopman shooting involved such a powerful gun it ripped him in half, but a hit anywhere on his torso would have done that. MacNeal and Ochs were sitting ducks, and he may have passed over Grath’s death without enough consideration of the difficulty of that shot. A long-distance shot from a floating boat. Maybe it wasn’t a lucky shot. And now, a gut shot from somewhere on a mountainside. Walter worried. Had he misjudged this one too? He remembered what Aat van de Steen told him about the German rifle.

“Where’s Pitts?” Walter asked.

“Some place in Mississippi,” Tom said. “He won’t even tell us exactly where.”

The image of Christopher Walken trying to get Dennis Hopper to give up his kid came to mind. Walter scoffed at the idea that Leonard would try, or need to try, to get information from any of his targets. He’s researched all of them thoroughly. And of course he caught Louise. Christ, the guy’s a real estate lawyer. Her stupidity cost her her life. Or maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was a mistake she wouldn’t ordinarily have made. Now Walter understood what Tom meant, back on the island, when he asked for some understanding of the stress they were under.

“He’ll show there,” said Walter, referring to Mississippi, “before he comes here.”

“Show where? How the fuck will he know where Pitts is? Christ, we don’t even know.” Nathan’s questions, taking the form of only a minor outburst, came without so much as a “good morning.”

“How’d you know about my wife-ex-wife-my daughter, my bank account?” Walter waited, but there was no response. “You found out, didn’t you? So will Leonard.” That hurt. Nathan and Tom prided themselves-a foolish pride to be sure, assumed Walter-on being able to find out things about people, things they felt sure others could not discover. “A problem you guys have, among many, I’m sure,” continued Walter, “is you live in a world where you think you know everything. As a result, you mistakenly underestimate your adversary. You think your resources are somehow exclusive. I haven’t looked into it at all, but my guess is that Wesley Pitts has family of some sort in Mississippi, and my assumption is Leonard Martin knows exactly who they are and where they live.” Silence filled the room. Neither Maloney nor Stein reached for a cell phone to call Wes and warn him. In the same tone of voice he might use to ask a waiter what the specials were, Walter said, “Did you guys kill Dr. Roy?” Nathan Stein leaped from his perch on the couch.

“You arrogant fuck! Who the fuck do you think you are!”

“Nathan, calm down!” Maloney cried. “Easy now.” Stein was more given to outburst than real confrontation. Frustrated, he backed away. Walter hadn’t moved a muscle.

“No,” said Tom. “We did not kill Dr. Roy. She did that to herself.” Nathan turned and was about to say something. Tom glared at him, and the frightened little man backed farther away, walking over to the French doors opening onto the patio. It was too cold to go outside, but he stood there looking through the glass, his back to Walter and Tom. He mumbled something, and then he was quiet again.

Walter said, “Why did she do it?”

Maloney turned to Walter with his very best “honest to goodness” look, and said, “We arranged for Dr. Roy’s apartment to be burglarized. That’s true. Made it look like some kind of hate crime. We were concerned she had made a record of her work for us. We needed to find out. We found nothing. But we were right, weren’t we? She had it all on a disc, a CD she kept someplace else. And before she died, she obviously sent it to Leonard Martin. We didn’t find anything, so we thought our concerns were unfounded. You know the rest of the story. But we didn’t kill her.”

“You guys are a piece of work,” said Walter. “Good cop; bad cop. Out of control nutcase; Mr. Calm, Cool, Analytical. Lying bastard; fucking saint. This kind of routine, it really works in your business, doesn’t it? Crock of shit! You knew what your interests were and you acted accordingly. People died and you knew they would. Dr. Roy told you, but it didn’t matter. Leonard Martin’s family died and now he’s taking out everyone who knew and let it happen. You’re all there on Dr. Roy’s CD. You’re all lies and bullshit. I’m going to send your money back to you. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“No you’re not,” Maloney said. “You are going to find Leonard Martin and you are going to kill him for us. That’s your job and you will do it.”

Walter rose to leave. The anger he felt turned his face beet red. He didn’t care.

“Do it yourself,” he said.

Nathan Stein said, “Sit down Sherman.” Walter did not stop or look behind. He continued walking toward the door. “Sit down!” As Walter’s hand grasped the doorknob, Stein yelled, “Na Trang!” Walter froze.