The Knowland Retribution

New Orleans

Leonard rented a one -bedroom second-floor apartment on St. Ann near Burgundy, a block away from N. Rampart Street, the northern end of the French Quarter. He paid a premium holiday rate, taking the place for both Christmas and New Year’s. He’d seen an ad for the apartment on the Internet and made all his arrangements by e-mail. The owner told him there had been a cancellation and he was lucky to find a place, any place, still available inside the French Quarter. Leonard e-mailed back that he wanted to rent the apartment through the month of January. He told the owner he and his wife loved New Orleans and this was a special surprise for her. He mentioned he was already in transit, and, as such, it would be more convenient if he paid in cash when he arrived. Leonard called when he was less than an hour’s drive from New Orleans, arriving purposely after dark. The owner, a middle-aged gay man named Erubio, was waiting at the entrance to the building with the key. The transaction took only a moment. Leonard did his best to look away from the man’s face as he handed him the money, and he wore a floppy, brown cowboy hat pulled down across his eyes. He handed the money over in an envelope, took the key, and disappeared inside. He never said where his wife was and was not asked. Although he paid for six weeks, he intended to be gone by the middle of January.

Leonard had been there ten days, far away from Vermont. Newspaper and TV reports speculated he was headed for, or already holed up in, New York City gunning for the rest of the crew at Stein, Gelb. The New York Post twice reported Leonard Martin sightings complete with fuzzy, grainy, out-of-focus photos in which, of course, his face was never shown. They were all photos of fat guys with long, light-colored hair. One such picture, supposedly showing Leonard leaving a movie theater on Third Avenue, made most of the major papers in the country. He saw it on page one of the New Orleans Times-Picayune over coffee and funnel cake loaded with powered sugar, in a tiny restaurant near Jackson Square. He laid the paper, photo up, next to his coffee cup on the small, round table and looked at himself in the mirrored wall. He looked as much like the man in the picture as he did like Santa Claus. His waitress came over and refilled his empty cup. Gazing at the paper, she said, “I hope they catch that guy, but I hope he gets all the others first.” Then she smiled at the real Leonard Martin and asked if he wanted anything else.

New Year’s Eve was already a thing of the past, and the Super Bowl still weeks from kickoff. The French Quarter was crowded anyway. Even the unusually cold weather didn’t keep the crowds away or the best players from coming out to blow their horns. In the mornings, Leonard took the twenty-minute stroll to Jackson Square or Decatur Street down by the Mississippi River. He’d have breakfast in one of the many small coffee shops in the area, read the morning paper, and take in some fresh air. After two winters in the mountains of New Mexico, a chilly morning in New Orleans was like a spring day. The rest of the time he spent in the apartment, on the Internet, making calculations, checking the spreadsheets Carter Lawrence had sent him. Most nights he walked up the block to the corner of St. Ann and N. Rampart to Donna’s Bar amp; Grill. He liked Donna’s because the place had the casual atmosphere of a neighborhood bar or a slightly rundown Cajun hangout. Of course there were always a few out-of-towners and tourists, but Donna’s was off the beaten path for the conventioneers at the Hilton or the Marriott, and certainly not the kind of place visited by the folks from Iowa in the Big Easy on a two- night, three-day package holiday.

The old man, Charlie, was always there, with Donna, and they were happy to see you no matter who you were. Leonard also liked the anonymity numbers afforded since Donna’s was always packed even in the wee hours of the morning. The best brass band music in the world is heard there nightly. New Orleans has no second team. For musicians, no minor leaguers need apply. There are no off-nights, no such thing as a slow season. Donna’s Bar amp; Grill was the place in the Quarter where the hornmen showed up after playing their regular gigs on Bourbon Street or the small joints over on Iberville or on Canal near the businessmen’s hotels, where the Quarter ends and New Orleans becomes just another city. One after another they’d wander in, instrument in hand. A few were instantly recognized by some in the crowd and applause greeted their entrance. Even if they were unknown, anyone carrying a horn case, especially a black man, caused an immediate stir among Donna’s patrons. No doubt, he came to play. As the hours passed the band got bigger or smaller as players arrived or called it a night. Sometimes there were as many as a dozen playing at the same time. Trombone and coronet players traded solos on “Tiger Rag” or “Bogalusa Strut” like boxers whipping their left jab into an opponent’s helpless face-snap, snap, snap. Then-it was always the same, a kind of ritual-they stopped and smiled, the crowd cheered, and another boxer, dancer, painter, or poet stepped forward to pick up the gauntlet, accept the challenge. A couple of hours, a few beers, and Leonard could walk back to the apartment, hoping for a dreamless sleep. He was in Donna’s every night for more than a week, until one night when Charlie greeted him with a friendly smile and a small nod of his head, acknowledging familiarity. Leonard could have none of that. He left immediately and never returned.

Wesley Pitts longed for the gym. His size and speed set him apart, even as a child. By the time he was ten or eleven his days of running free on the street or in the woods were over. Would-be and future coaches ushered him into the inner sanctum of high-tech body care. His birth certificate was altered to make him a year younger. That change delayed his entrance to high school by a year, allowing his high school football coach the luxury of playing him until Wes was almost twenty years old. During those years and the time to come in a bigtime college program and finally at the highest echelon of professional football, he had at his disposal the finest workout equipment and facilities in the world. Once he tasted steak it was unthinkable he would go back to macaroni and cheese. Now he found himself in the backwoods of Mississippi. The only exercise option around was running, so he ran twice each day. In the morning, before breakfast, he’d jog a mile and a half from his grandmother’s house to the intersection with one of the two red lights before you get to town. On one corner was a small grocery store, and diagonally across the street a feed-supply warehouse. At seven o’clock in the morning neither was open for business. He’d turn around at the light and this time run-sometimes sprinting-all the way back. He repeated this at about four-thirty each afternoon. The round trip took at most twenty to twenty-five minutes.

On the morning of January 15th, Wesley Pitts jogged to the red light. He bent over, his hands on his knees, catching his breath, and turned around, ready to begin his run back. He had excellent vision, a seldom mentioned yet key aspect to his success as a receiver. Some people could judge distance by car lengths, others by city blocks. Pitts had a keen sense of distance measured in yards, in football fields. As he looked up he saw something he figured to be about two hundred and fifty yards away. It looked like a man standing in the middle of the road. The man appeared to be wearing a cowboy hat. He held something up to his shoulder or chin with both hands. The instant it took for Wesley Pitts to realize the man was holding a rifle was his last. The bullet struck him in the center of his chest. Almost at the same time, two more hit him. None of the three mortal wounds were more than two inches apart.