“What if I have?”
“I take that as a ‘yes.’ The hundred is yours, if I’m right.”
As she reached to take the money off the table, Walter’s hand fell on top of it. “And did he have dinner with this man?” He showed her a photo of Leonard Martin, the one printed on the front page of the New York Times. The woman was startled. She hesitated momentarily, then said, “I’ve never seen him before.” She put her finger on the picture of Leonard Martin.
“You’re sure?” Walter said.
“Yeah, I’m sure. The younger one, the skinny one, was here. He was here.” Poor Melissa was worried she wouldn’t get the money.
“He had dinner with someone, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did, but not this one.” Again she pointed to Leonard. “He and three other men. They ate right over there. Stayed until after we closed. I remember them. They had a lot of papers and things. Talked a lot, ate a little. This one,” she tapped Carter’s photo with her index finger, “but not this one.”
“What about these two? Walter laid pictures of Nicholas Stevenson and Harvey Daniels on the table. All four photos were lined up in a row, facing Melissa. Walter removed his hand from the hundred and motioned for her to take it. She did. She recognized the silver-haired gentleman who’d left her the extra tip and the nervous one who sat next to him.
“Both of them. They were here with the first one.”
“The three of them? Did you get any names?”
“No,” she said. “There was another man who came later.”
“The younger one paid, right?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Just a guess.”
“You know,” she said, “I’ll never forget when they left. Hugged each other like there was no tomorrow. It was weird, like a movie.”
“I know,” Walter said. “I’m sure they did. Thank you, Melissa. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Why are you looking for these guys?”
“Just routine. Our company checks the expense accounts of people who travel for us on a regular basis. I’m just confirming they were here, that’s all.”
“Bullshit,” she thought. No one checks expense accounts like this, not with hundred dollar bills and photographs. And for damn sure not with any guy as tan as this one.
“One more thing,” he said. “Who was the fourth man? What can you tell me about him?”
Melissa said, “You mean the cowboy?”
“Cowboy? What did he look like?”
“Well, he wasn’t a real cowboy, you know. It’s just he didn’t wear a suit like the others, and he had on a hat, a floppy kind of cowboy hat, you know? Tall, thin, good-looking man. Short hair, sort of salt-and-pepper beard. Good-looking man. Forties, I’d say. That’s all, but he sure wasn’t this guy.” This time she tapped the photo from the New York Times again. “He wasn’t here.”
A chill gripped Walter’s gut and moved like electric current outward. It made him lightheaded, nauseated. Respect the obvious. He hadn’t looked, hadn’t seen, and now it was too late. The missing piece crashed into place and a second wave of nausea rose. He should have known all along. Instead he’d been blind as a bat. The Indian woman’s pendant had shown him the mysteries of altered shapes and he missed it. Was he was losing it? Had he lost it already? His eyesight wasn’t what it had been, nor was the hair on his head. And whatever Isobel told him, neither were his hydraulics. Henry Broomfield’s punchline roared, an angry, reproachful, soundless voice, an unforgiving scold. They all got sisters.
New Mexico
Leonard was gone within an hour. He’d practiced playing the slow-witted Michael, planned on using it in case anyone made a wrong turn and stumbled onto his property. No one had until now. The business about Mr. Marteenez had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It worked pretty well, he thought. Walter Sherman had been an unnerving surprise. Sure, Leonard heard the car approaching long before it reached the cabin, but he never thought someone would actually find him there; someone whose intention it was to seek him out. That frightened him. How could he have come to this place? And who are these people from New York? What was he talking about? Had this man been sent by Nathan Stein? And if so, how in the world did he know where to find him? Leonard knew he didn’t have the luxury of contemplating these questions. He had to hurry.
He knew this man calling himself Walter Sherman was trouble when he asked to use the bathroom. It was obvious he wanted to look inside the cabin. Leonard didn’t like it, but considering the circumstances he had little choice in the matter. How could he refuse? He didn’t fear exposure. Clearly he was convincingly unrecognizable. The weapons and ammunition were all locked away securely. That was an arrangement Leonard had come up with at the very beginning. He was going to be away for long stretches of time: Boston, Houston, Tennessee, Nevada, and who knows where else. He couldn’t risk someone finding his equipment, so he devised a storage compartment in his bedroom. To the naked eye it appeared as a closet, but behind the plain closet door was another locked door, this one made of steel protecting a safelike box four feet square and eight feet high. Inside were racks of rifles, shelves of special accessories, sights, stocks, cleaning materials, and boxes of ammunition. Walter Sherman could look around all he liked and never find a sign they were there. And Leonard was sure that was exactly why Sherman asked to use the facilities.
As soon as the intruder left, as soon as the sound of his car faded to silence, Leonard began packing. There wasn’t much to it. He threw a few clothes into a bag, tossed in his toothbrush and other toiletries, grabbed three jackets hanging from hooks in the back room, and loaded it all in the SUV. It took about forty-five minutes to move the rifles and other stuff from the secure closet to a lock box in the SUV. When it didn’t all fit, he decided to leave some of the ammunition behind. It was a risk traveling with weapons, but what choice did he have now? “Just make sure,” he told himself, “do not get stopped by a cop on the highway.”
Finally, he tucked a metal toolbox behind the driver’s seat on the floor. It was filled with hundred dollar bills neatly wrapped in packs of ten thousand dollars each. Then he was gone. He would never return. He did not look back. There was no nostalgia. Leaving was not sad. Nothing pulled at his heartstrings. In the last two and a half years Leonard Martin had learned not to become attached to anything. He’d shut himself off from feelings like that. He wouldn’t miss the sunsets or the crisp, chilly mornings, the smell of a fire crackling in the fireplace, the sounds of silence in the high desert. He wouldn’t miss them because he wouldn’t let himself. He came to New Mexico with a single goal-learn to kill. Having done that-and now being discovered-it was time to move on. He drove south on route 39, past Ute Lake and Logan, and picked up I-40 at San Jon. He was in Texas by the time Walter Sherman was considering his options.
New York
Just after seven, Isobel met Walter in the lobby of the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. Dressed for winter, she wore a wide-brimmed woolen hat pulled down to cover her ears and forehead, and a heavy scarf on top of the coat with the fake fur trimmings. She passed unrecognized. “Celebrity,” she thought, although her encounter with it was somewhat marginal and thus far short-lived, “was a crock of shit.”
“Why here?” she asked, after greeting him with a kiss on the cheek. It was a friendly kiss and he felt disappointed. He hoped for more and hoped it didn’t show.
“Dentists,” Walter answered. “There’s a convention of dentists here. The biggest one they have anywhere all year. Dentists love Christmas, and they love New York.” Isobel laughed and dropped her coat next to her on the couch. “Go ahead,” Walter said, “look around you. Every one of these guys pulls teeth.”
“What about the women? What do they do?”
“Hookers,” said Walter after only a slight pause.
“All of them? It appears, perhaps, that some of your American dentists prefer hookers who are, shall we say, older and a twinge on the heavy side.”