“I do,” said Walter. “Sister, how do I make out the check?” It pounded in his head.
“Precisely.”
“But I don’t do that any-”
“Walter, Walter, Walter.” Maloney was on his feet, his voice louder than before, his tone harsher. His puffy Irish face reddened. He threw his hands and arms wide apart and said, “Who among us would not change the past if we could? You? Me? Nathan? Wesley, wherever the fuck he is? For damn sure, Hopman, MacNeal, Grath, that fellow Ochs, and now Louise. Leonard Martin? What about him? You think he wouldn’t give everything just to change one single day for his wife and family? But he can’t. They can’t. We can’t. You can’t. Change the past? The past is the future, for all of us. And that means you too.”
The iron gates had swung open against his will. The stone walls were breached. The enemy was pouring in. Nathan Stein-Na Trang-had changed the rules, changed everything, and Walter felt the heavy metal and broken stone weigh him down. “The future,” he thought, “what future?” Maloney was right. The past is the future.
“You’ll find Leonard Martin before he finds us, and you’ll kill him. You won’t do it for us. I know that. But you’ll do it for Gloria, for your daughter, for your grandchildren, for yourself. Will you think of the mother and her two children crying in the hut? The one-legged boy whose food you stole and whose throat you sliced open? The American whose life you saved by ending it? I hope so. I hope so because the past will lead you to your future. Change the past? No. Embrace the past and recognize that you cannot change the future.”
“Wilkes?”
“He’s gone. I didn’t get a chance to fire him. He bailed out as soon as you made his man. Chickenshit sonsofbitches; they only want the easy work.”
Walter breathed deeply. He smelled that hotel smell, a combination of food, smoke, and alcohol mixed with the expensive scent of cleanliness. There was no escaping it, even in the penthouse of the Waldorf Astoria. That might have been sign enough for Maloney, but Walter further obliged with a nod of the head.
“Walter, you have my word that when this is done you’ll never hear from us again, ever. We’re not blackmailers. Quite the opposite. We’re just clients. And, as clients, we want you to go home now. We know you’re most comfortable there. Make your plan, then make your move. But move fast.” Maloney stepped back, an acknowledgment of Walter’s freedom to leave. Walter rose up from the couch as if his whole body ached with despair and regret. Maloney thought he seemed a smaller man than before. “By the way,” he added, “we’ve taken the liberty of depositing some more money into your bank account.” Walter just nodded again and started for the door. “Don’t you want to know how much?”
The extra hundred grand still fresh in his mind, Walter asked, “How much?”
“Thirty million dollars.”
“Thirty million dollars?”
“You never know when you might need some extra cash,” Maloney said, glancing at Stein, whose attention seemed elsewhere.
“Thirty million dollars?”
Maloney just laughed as Walter walked out.
St. John
Watching the old man strike a wooden match he’d taken from his shirt pocket, Billy said to Ike, “Remember, it was you who once said ‘some things don’t have no argument.’ Well, this is one of them things.” As Ike lit up, the flame nearly exploded when it made contact with the tobacco. They were talking about the size of a certain boat. It was a boat belonging to a bigtime bushwhacker, an Englishman named Spence. By all accounts it was a large vessel, although how large was the question at hand. The boat was named “Lady Kate” after the Englishman’s wife Catharine, a magnificently beautiful woman, no youngster herself, yet many years his junior. No matter how big the boat really was, instead of “Lady Kate” Billy called it “The Stugots” because he was sure Louis Spence-if that was his name-was mobbed up.
“I’ve seen it bigger,” Ike said. “Sometimes.”
“What the hell does that mean-you’ve seen it bigger, sometimes?” Billy was leaning over the bar, getting as near to Ike as he could get considering the old man was sitting practically outside. “Sometimes?” he repeated.
“Well, you know, there’s times I see it sort of coming straight at me and it has a certain size to it. You understand? Then there’s other times I see it going away-from behind-and it looks different.”
Billy pulled two bottles of wine from a box on the floor behind the bar and shoved them in the ice cooler, the new one he bought when he finally replaced the small icemaker last week. Then he did the same with two more. “Looks different to you depending on which side you’re looking from?” he asked. “That’s no big deal. An old man like you can’t see good no more.” Billy looked toward Walter for confirmation.
Walter said, “That sounds like an argument to me.”
“I think Billy’s right,” said Ike. “It’s no argument. Not that I can’t see. I see just fine, thank you. That boat though, it’s all relative.”
“Einstein,” said Walter. “Albert Einstein.”
“That’s him,” said Ike, releasing a huge cloud of smoke that caught the breeze coming in from off the water, blowing across the square and into Billy’s Bar. The smoke was soon a long, thin, hazy blue line headed directly for the spot where Billy stood. He must have seen it, because, quick as a cat, he moved all the way to where Walter and Isobel sat at the far end near the kitchen. He mumbled something about Ike’s cigarette and then looked up into Walter’s eyes, searching for understanding.
“Einstein,” Walter said. “You know, it’s all relative. He invented it, or discovered it, or whatever.”
“You know what it means?” Billy asked.
Walter smiled at the bartender. “No,” he said. “I sure don’t.”
Ike said, “Well, it’s like this. What you see coming at you is not what you thought it was when it passed you by.” He sucked in an almost inhuman amount of smoke-Walter thought for sure the blazing butt would burn his fingers to a crisp-and while the smoke slithered out of both sides of his mouth and his nose at the same time, he added, “Just like life, boys. Just like life.” Then he flashed his trademark smile for all to see.
“Pretty close,” said Isobel, “pretty close.” Being around Ike had already made an impression on her. She found herself too often repeating something in the way he did. Once she realized what she was doing she made a successful effort to stop it, but the old man had his effect. She was here, back on St. John, in Billy’s Bar, sitting in the seat next to Walter, drinking a beer and munching on some french fries because the Moose had kicked her out of the paper until after New Year’s. It was her own fault. She’d been summoned to his office right after Louise Hollingsworth was killed.
“Isobel, we can’t print this,” said Mel Gold, waving a sheet of paper in his hand as though her writing was on it, when in fact it wasn’t. He couldn’t remember the last time he read anything anyone wrote on paper. All he had done for years was read things on the monitor screen of his computer. The days of typing on paper were long gone, and, for many middle-aged newspapermen, sorely missed. “You know we can’t do that.” The Moose was more than a little pissed. Isobel had flown to Vermont and back by helicopter. She had her details, her interviews with law enforcement, even an exclusive-a preliminary report from the Medical Examiner. Her story began: Leonard Martin, who has already killed four men, continues his relentless pursuit of those responsible for the deaths of his wife, daughter, and two grandsons. Yesterday it took him to rural Vermont, where he shot to death Louise Hollingsworth. Martin’s family died in the great E. coli poisoning disaster three years ago. The disaster, which paralyzed America’s food supply for months thereafter, was perpetrated by a combination of business interests. Their identities became known to Mr. Martin later. The personal pain and anguish that gave birth to his violent campaign for a justice he feels has been denied, appears undiminished. Ms. Hollingsworth, a Vice President and Senior Analyst at Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities Inc., worked with a small, high-level group within her company. Sources say it was Ms. Hollingsworth and others at Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills, including Nathan Stein, Thomas Maloney, and Wesley Pitts, who were responsible for allowing more than a million pounds of deadly beef to be sold to the public. Mr. Martin has sworn to kill them all. “I can only imagine how he feels,” said Warren Kimbrough, Chief of the Vermont State Police.