The Knowland Retribution Read online

  THE

  KNOWLAND

  RETRIBUTION

  RICHARD

  GREENER

  The Knowland Retribution © 2006 by Richard Greener.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First e-book edition © 2010

  E-book ISBN: 9780738720494

  Book design by Donna Burch

  Cover design by Lisa Novak

  Cover photo © iStockphoto.com/Benjamin Goode

  Edited by Karin Simoneau

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  To Phil,

  who asked, while choking on a pastrami sandwich,

  “You’re writing a novel?”

  “. . . while the future’s there for anyone to change,

  still you know it seems,

  it could be easier sometimes to change the past.”

  —Jackson Browne

  New York

  The Hudson River began with a single drop of water in the wilderness. It fell from a leaf or blade of grass into Lake Tear of the Clouds, no more than a pond on the shoulders of Mt. Marcy, the highest peak in the Adirondacks. It flowed downhill, gathered speed, increased its number. Each drop joined others of its kind, first one, then another, and another, until there were many billions—trillions—a number so immense it could not be imagined.

  That’s how this began, unseen and unnoticed, with something microscopic, so small no one could see it, marshalling the wicked force of nature as its ally, eager to pour down devastation upon all who touched it. Many things start long after they’ve actually begun. This was such a thing.

  It started on June 25 with Pat Grath’s phone call to Wesley Pitts. Pitts was, as always, the first one awake. Grath called at five thirty in the morning New York time knowing full well Wesley Pitts had been in his office at least fifteen minutes and was already settled in for the day. From his office window, looking out into the morning darkness, Pitts could see the Hudson River three hundred miles from its obscure beginning, expanding through New York Harbor, pushing out to open sea. What he couldn’t see were the cows.

  Caller ID told Pitts it was Pat Grath in Houston on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, Pat,” he said cheerfully. “How you doing? Four-thirty. You’re up a little early this morning.”

  “Yeah,” Grath said, exhibiting none of his trademark jovial nature. “Ain’t that the truth.” The concern and worry in his voice plus the early hour in Texas gave Pitts an uneasy feeling. An urge deep inside him cried out, “Run!”

  Grath said, “Look Wes, I’ve got Billy Mac with me here. We’ve got a little problem.”

  “Oh, Christ,” thought Wesley Pitts. Nobody, certainly not Pat Grath, calls him with a “little” problem at this time of day. For the tiniest fraction of a second Pitts thought the unthinkable. He wondered if the problem, whatever it was, would disappear if he simply told his biggest clients to fuck off and hung up the phone. Instead, in his most charming and confident voice, he said, “Tell me about it.”

  St. John

  Cruz Bay is a dumpy little town. It sits alongside the largest harbor of St. John Island under a broiling sun, cooled only slightly by intermittent breezes. St. John is part of the United States, but only because they say so.

  The people are Caribbean. The island is neglected. The roads are narrow, bent, and curved, in terrible condition—nearly undrivable here and there. They paint orange circles around potholes but never fill them in. All buildings except the posh hillside and hilltop homes appear to be in some state of disrepair. The island is littered with old and broken cars. When a car stops running they push it off to the side and carry on.

  Except in Cruz Bay, the capital, there’s no way garbage can be collected at the source because large trucks cannot manage these single-lane, hilly roads winding their way through and around the narrow, nine-mile island. Instead, St. John makes do with frequent drop-off points where the locals, and the visitors too, pile up large bins of loose garbage, brightly colored plastic bags—large and small, stuffed to bursting—empty beer cases, anything else they no longer need. Most will concede, with varying degrees of interest in the subject, that this detracts from the beauty of the place, from its natural charm.

  The island does have remarkable good points. Nearly two-thirds form a national park, splendid and untouched. St. John has some of the most beautiful beaches anywhere in the world. And, best of all, there’s no way to reach St. John except by boat. The much larger St. Thomas looms nearby, twenty minutes by ferry. Still, St. John is not a busy spot. When you rent a car they tell you there’s a thousand dollar charge, a fine really, for taking your car on the ferry to St. Thomas. How will they know? You ask yourself this only until, and it does not take long, you realize that they know everything. It’s a small place. The permanent population comes to less than four thousand, including the exiles: the twenty-two-year-old girls from Seattle and Boston and Sioux City who’ve run away for however long it takes them to go island nuts waiting tables in Cruz Bay. St. John’s four hundred or so vacation homes and villas accommodate a couple of thousand owners, renters, and guests at high season. A few campers come for the park. Most people shop at the island’s two supermarkets and there’s nothing super about either. It’s a great place for scuba diving and looking at fish, if that’s the kind of thing you like, but there’s no golf course on St. John and that keeps the riffraff out. It lacks the Old World allure of Curacao, the mystery of Grand Cayman, or the sexy extravagance of St. Barts, but St. John is the perfect place to be if you’re looking to be alone.

  Walter Sherman often found himself contemplating one or another of these points. The old habit never ceased to give him satisfaction. He felt good now, comfortable in his regular seat in Billy’s, second from last at the end of the bar, away from the street and near the standing fan next to the kitchen door. Cruz Bay is a bar town. Walter liked Billy’s best. It nestled securely on the west edge of the square, directly across from the slip where the St. Thomas ferry docked. Like most island bars
, Billy’s is an open-air establishment, dependent on rare cool winds off the water and a few large fans for comfort. It admits more than enough natural light to require sunglasses for some, and to welcome the affectation of hip shades by others. Billy’s wide open front is guarded by a low, white picket fence separating it from the sidewalk. The white tables, some nearest the front with colored umbrellas, lead to a rosewood bar that runs the whole length of the building at the far end. Behind the bar, with a full view of his kitchen, Billy holds court. When he was on the island, Walter breakfasted at Billy’s most mornings, took an occasional lunch there, and every so often, dinner too. But no one could remember Walter being in Billy’s later than that. This morning he sipped his routine Diet Coke and quietly ate scrambled eggs with toast. He was trying hard to forget about a newly painted pothole, forty feet down the road from his hillside home, and was reading the obit page of the New York Times when heavy steps broke the silence around him. He glanced quickly toward the wide doorway.

  Walter Sherman was in his mid-fifties, of average height, and, like most men his age, at least twenty pounds heavier than he wanted to be. He wore his hair long in the back, but carefully combed and not so long as to attract attention. He hadn’t lost much of it, but over time the color had changed from dark brown. It looked washed out, and it was streaked with gray, especially around the ears. Women commented favorably on his leathery tan and pale-blue eyes. He thought he looked good, even in Billy’s scratchy bar mirror, but he also looked a good fifty plus. He was clean-shaven and dressed in his usual faded jeans and oversized pastel T-shirt. It gave him a casual appearance that some mistook for messiness. He was no tourist, and it didn’t take much to spot that.

  It was late September and this time Walter had been gone almost a week—Boston, Pittsburgh, and, finally, of all places to find someone, Beckley, West Virginia. All three were disappointingly wet and cold for this time of year. The whole east coast had been an unpleasant mess. The island’s morning heat felt glorious. The back of his neck at the top of his shirt under his hair was damp with sweat. He loved working up a sweat, especially when all it took was eating breakfast. Walter spotted the three newcomers right off the bat. How could he miss them? One large black man, two white men. They wore suits, shirts, and ties, and dark socks and shoes with laces—the kind you never see around here. They were not renters, or owners, or guests. They might have been FBI, or some other law enforcement wasting their time worrying about cigarette boats smuggling crack from Tortola, but the suits were custom-made and the haircuts too expensive. They looked well rested. Walter gently crunched another piece of toast. These guys, he decided, flew into St. Thomas late yesterday, took the afternoon ferry, and ended up at Caneel Bay or the Westin, probably the latter because it’s closer to town. They awoke this morning and, hard as it might be for some to believe, got dressed like they were going to work in New York City. They were traveling light—one very slightly wrinkled suit each.

  He swigged his Diet Coke and turned to the Times business section because nothing else there interested him. His focus on the three was now complete. He was not at all surprised when, after two minutes of guarded grunts and glances, one of them approached.

  Before the man had a chance to say anything at all, Walter said, in his loosely strung, neighborly voice, “Sit down.” He motioned to the seat beside him, the last one before the fan and the kitchen door. “Who are you?” he asked amiably, as the big man’s broad bottom hit the high wooden seat.

  “My name is Tom Maloney,” the visitor spoke pleasantly, through a slight, formal grin. Pretty calm too, thought Walter, who tended to make quick and lasting judgments about people. Every woman he’d ever loved, he’d loved at first sight. He’d been told many times, mostly by ex-lovers, that this was a serious character flaw. Walter saw it as a mixed blessing but a definite net plus, a self-protective reflex he was sure had saved him more than once in the rush of the past thirty years. Maloney was Walter’s age, give or take a few either way—round-featured, smooth-skinned, and pink. He had thin, once-blond, once-wavy hair, heavy shoulders, and a big, Irish beer belly just about hidden by a skillfully cut chocolate silk suit. Rich, no doubt, and smart too. But still a messenger for one of the other two. “Which?” flitted across Walter’s mind.

  He liked this one.

  “What can I do for you, Tom?”

  “You are Walter Sherman, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Walter lifted his sparse eyebrows and took a longer sip. “You want one of these?”

  “No. No thanks,” Maloney grinned a little more easily. “Too early for me.”

  “You know who I am. You wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t.”

  “Right,” Maloney’s cherubic face broke into the full, friendly smile Walter knew it would. “That’s why we’re here,” he said. “Is there some place we can talk?”

  Walter took another forkful of eggs, folded his paper, and put it down on the bar. He looked back at Maloney’s companions—giant and micro-man—whispering by the door, and his voice rose half an octave, acquiring an edge. “The way you guys are dressed it better be someplace air conditioned.” Then he spoke softly again, demonstrating his regard for Tom. “Meet me here.” He handed Maloney a bar napkin with an address he’d scribbled. “Five o’clock. You can introduce us then, not now.”

  “Excellent,” Maloney said. “Excellent.”

  “Take a cab,” Walter called after them as Tom urged his party into the sunlight, “You’ll never find it on your own. And dress comfortably, for God’s sake.”

  He had no idea who these guys were, but he knew what they wanted, why they needed to see him. The coming scene had played out many times before, not necessarily here on St. John, but always along predictable lines.

  An unhappy high school counselor once told Walter that few people know much in advance what their life’s work will be. Some doctors perhaps, because their parents make the decision for them when they are born. Some sons of business owners who must prepare to become & Sons, often to their lifelong chagrin. Conceivably, a handful of precociously pious pastors get the call in the cradle. But how many children tell their friends, “I want to sell office equipment”? How many college students look in the mirror and practice asking, “You want fries with that?” And few, if any, Walter learned, ever intended to wind up teaching high school physics to the underequipped, let alone advising profoundly limited youngsters on their career options.

  Walter Sherman was called neither to God nor to medicine. He had no father, not even an uncle who owned a business. He sold his share of french fries, but never considered teaching physics or anything else. He joined the Army at eighteen, on his birthday, in 1970. He had nothing better to do. As he still sometimes said when thinking it was appropriate—it seemed like a good idea at the time. At the time he was a high school graduate working as a car washer and gofer-boy at a local Ford dealership. He was living in his mother’s house just outside of Rhinebeck, New York. Before he could say “I made a mistake!” he was in Vietnam. He could not remember why he re-upped, but

  he did. When he left the Army at twenty-five he had no better idea

  of how to make a living than he’d had seven years before. The army had trained him with guns and knives and handheld explosives. If Dutchess County New York had that kind of work available, he didn’t know where it was. Nor did he know anyone who needed to be found.

  Colonel DeScortovachino called Mrs. Sherman’s house on a rainy Sunday in the spring of 1977. The call gave Walter’s life direction.

  “Walter!” the Colonel began in a false-hearty tone.

  “Who is this?”

  He introduced himself as “Colonel D” and explained that Walter’s Vietnam CO was now attached to the Colonel’s unit, hence Colonel D’s “fortuitous awareness” of Walter.

  “Son,” he intoned, “I need your help.” The Colonel was assigned to The School
of the Americas and lived near Fort Benning just outside Columbus, Georgia. His sixteen-year-old daughter, Jessie, was nowhere to be found.

  “She’s not really missing,” the Colonel said, “She just ran away. Her mother says we . . . shit, that’s not important. My point is that Jessie’s gone.” His voice changed just then. Its theatrical flourish fell away and a strange, melancholy pleading rose to soften the Colonel’s military twang. Walter didn’t recognize it then, but over the years he came to know that sound well. It signaled a desperation only someone who’s lost someone feels. It was all about lost and missing. Dead may or may not kill you, but, Walter learned, lost and missing rip the insides with hot knives. Lost and missing produce a perpetual frenzy of mind that makes many people think they are close to insane every minute of every day. Such people always had, when their energy flagged, that sorrowful sound in their voice.

  Walter didn’t need to ask why a colonel a thousand miles away, a man who didn’t know him from Adam’s uncle, would make such a call.

  In the absurd jungle that was Saigon in the early 1970s, Walter was often called by the descriptive nickname Locator. It wasn’t a funny nickname like Bonehead or Lardass, or chummy, like Chip or Chief. It wasn’t the kind of nickname you used to bum smokes. Nobody said, “Locator, got a butt?” This was a nickname of the highest order. It was earned. The earning of it started with a member of Walter’s platoon who’d gone AWOL.

  There were, as Walter recalled, two reasons most soldiers ran away, which was all that AWOL really was—running away, escaping jail, dashing to imagined safety somewhere. Either they went temporarily nuts—from the combat, from the drugs, from the simple unrelenting madness of what was going on—or they went over; defected. American MPs in Saigon took little joy in finding the nutcases. They followed the drugs; followed the girls. They usually found their AWOL soon enough. But after a week, if the missing soldier wasn’t found, he became a “motherfucker,” a political deserter. MPs got off on them because the reward for becoming political could be death. The order of the day was no longer “find and return,” but “dispatch.” More AWOLs turned up as combat deaths than anyone talked about.