The Knowland Retribution

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.

The Moose shrugged, his mouth drawn tightly into a crooked line, one side pointing up, the other down. His chins seemed to take on a life of their own. He squinted in frustration, and finally, no longer able to control himself, grunted. He looked at his empty chair, knowing that if he sat down it would surely collapse and splinter into pieces from nothing more than the weight of his dismay. Isobel said nothing. She too chose to stand.

“It’s ‘advocacy. ’ We don’t do ‘advocacy.’ Is this where you’re going?” Isobel remained silent. “Are you a reporter-a New York Times reporter-or are you looking to go back on 60 Minutes? Because this,” he waved the same empty sheet of paper in the air again, “this is exactly what they like. ‘The personal pain and anguish that gave birth to his violent campaign…’ That kind of language doesn’t belong in the New York Times.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Being dead.” That’s all she needed to say, just two words, for him to understand. Everyone at the Times knew those were the first two words from a legendary sentence in the story about the State of New York’s posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce: “Being dead, Mr. Bruce is not expected to reap any immediate benefit from the pardon.”

“That got in the Times,” she said.

“Don’t give me bullshit! Lenny Bruce said ‘fuck you’ a couple of times. He didn’t kill five people! Now what the fuck is going on here?”

Isobel said nothing. Mel Gold tried to calm down, but he couldn’t. “Come on, damnit! Talk to me, Isobel!”

“They tried to kill me, Mel.” She spoke quietly, almost in a whisper.

“What!”

“Stein, Maloney, the gang of criminals at Stein, Gelb-”

“They-”

“They tried to kill me.” This time her voice was loud and clear. He heard every word and thought he glimpsed a look of relief in her eyes.

Now the Moose sat down, confident his bulky frame wouldn’t break anything. “Hey kiddo, what’s going on here? There’s something I don’t know and I think you need to tell me. Sit down. Talk to me. Tell me.”

She did. She told him all of it. Some of it he already knew, some he’d never heard before-from Walter Sherman’s first call, to the incident with the former NYPD detective Jack Allen and the warning Walter gave Tom Maloney. She told Gold everything. Almost everything. She left out the sex. And, for reasons she did not fully comprehend, she did not give Gold a description of the “new” Leonard Martin. Whatever she saw of him remained her secret. She said he was “unrecognizable”-although only Walter Sherman had actually seen him-but she didn’t describe his appearance even as Walter had related it to her.

“What the hell does that mean, ‘unrecognizable’?” Mel Gold knew his voice was the wrong one, his manner delivering the wrong message. He wanted so badly to be more compassionate. He yearned to be a real friend to Isobel in her time of need, but he was a newspaperman. Like a soldier in combat, he newspapered on. “What does he look like?”

“I’ve never seen him,” Isobel answered. “I was blindfolded, remember?”

“Sure, so what did Sherman say?” Isobel was silent. The Moose knew she was having a hard time giving him up. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Listen closely, and if you don’t understand, ask me, okay?” She nodded. “If you’ve never seen Leonard Martin you can’t describe him. If Walter Sherman says he’s seen him and if he can describe him, if he says Martin has changed or altered his appearance in any way, we have no way of corroborating Sherman’s story, do we? We have only your word that someone, a third party-in this case Walter Sherman-told you something, right?” Again, Isobel nodded. “But we do have Sherman’s description. Can we use it? Can the New York Times publish a story about a physical description of Leonard Martin that differs from the public record? Can we do that based solely on what you say somebody else said?” He paused for a long moment. Isobel said nothing and she did not nod her head. She waited. “No,” he said. “We can’t. If we don’t have a first-hand sighting or a cooperative source, which I gather Walter Sherman is not, plus a second witness, we will not print a description for which we have no backup. Am I clear? Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now go back and write it. Give me every little detail Sherman gave you about Leonard Martin’s appearance. Do it on paper or on your own computer-not here. I don’t want it showing up anywhere on anyone’s hard disk or mainframe or wherever in hell all this shit gets stored. Print it out and give it to me. I’ll keep it at home. You and I will be the only ones who know, but I must know. There has to be a record. Believe me, the time will come when there has to be a record. And you and I have to know what we’re looking at when we see it.”

“You won’t share it with anyone? And we won’t print it?”

“Absolutely correct. I know you speak French and some other languages, even some I’ve never heard of, but you speak English too. You heard me. You do understand me, right?”

Isobel smiled at the big man. “Eai, I, Han jee, Io,” she said-yes, in Kiribati, Rotuman, Hindi, and the standard Fijian she spoke as a child.

Mel Gold grinned from ear to ear, then told her to get out of town until after New Year’s. He’d get someone else to finish writing the Louise Hollingsworth story. She would get her byline with whoever wrote the final draft.

“Now get out of here. You’re on the beach for a week or so.”

“D-d-dog days of summer, eh, Mel?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “It’s December. It’s fucking Christmas, for Christ’s sake.”

Isobel gave him a kiss on the cheek, called Walter, and headed for the airport.

“Ike is close,” said Isobel. “Einstein published two theories of relativity. The first when he was only twenty-three years old. Can you believe that? He called it the ‘special theory of relativity,’ and ten years later he published a second one he called the ‘general theory of relativity.’ Relativity takes into account different points of view-literally, like Ike pointed out-and says that what you think is real could be seen in a different way. Einstein was all about questioning the interchangeability of absolute time. And this fits because his theory holds that the idea that every object has a form and a mass that are constant is false. He also deals with heavy mass objects, saying they actually curve with the universe, which explains gravity, although I don’t think that has much to do with the size of this boat.”

“Damn,” Ike said. Billy and Walter had nothing to add. They were indeed speechless. Each assumed the others, like himself, were still in the dark. “Damn. Where’d you learn that, child?”

Isobel said, “St John’s.”

“Not here you didn’t,” said Billy.

“That’s for damn sure,” said Ike, poking through his pockets, looking for another cigarette.

“I didn’t mean here, St. John. I said St. John’s, with an s.”

“What’s that?” Billy asked.

“It’s a college,” said Walter. “Unlike the three of us, this charming and lovely young lady is an educated woman.”

“That true?” Ike asked. “St. John’s a college?”

“It is,” Isobel said. “A fine institution of higher learning. In Annapolis, Maryland.”

“And you learned about Einstein?”

“I did Billy. I surely did. But don’t hold that against me.”

“You studied it, but I almost got it right, didn’t I?” Ike was bubbling with pride and soon smoking with it too. Isobel smiled and nodded at the old man.

Walter said, “I still say that sounds like an argument to me. Write it up, Billy.”

“Write what up?”

“Einstein, Stugots, and Isobel.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Ike, “but it sounds good.” He shook his head, giving the okay to Billy.

“What’s the ‘Isobel’ for?” Billy asked.

“Beauty,” said Walter. “Beauty and knowledge.”

“A mighty powerful combination,” Ike said.

Once more the bartender with an uncertain past and more than one name picked up the chunk of blue chalk lying near the register and wrote on the familiar blackboard: Einstein/Stugots/Isobel. He poured himself a glass of tomato juice, took a swig, and said to no one in particular, “It ain’t ‘Stugots.’ It’s ‘The Stugots.’”