“I had no choice,” she said. Was she crying or coughing? Did he hear the sound of a stuffy nose, a simple cold or something else? “It was Otto. Otto.” Definitely crying, thought Walter. He decided to let her cry it out. He waited.
“Walter, I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do. They took Otto and threatened to c-c-cut off the fingers! B-b-break his hands. His arms. His elbows. Oh, my god! I’m sorry, Walter. I’m sorry. Otto, he could never play again. They came to our house, into our house. Walter. I had to.”
“Had to what, Isobel?”
“Had to tell them. Tell them where. Where it is. They knew it was somewhere. They just didn’t know where.”
“Where what?”
“Where Leonard was, before. In New Mexico.” Walter closed his eyes. He was getting lightheaded. He felt cold sweat across the back of his neck. His arms and legs tingled. His stomach growled in disgust, tightening with newfound fear. He was a deer, alone on a dark lonely road near Rhinebeck, in upstate New York. He saw the truck come barreling around the turn. The headlights blinded him. He was unable to move, every inch of his body paralyzed. He shuddered as the truck ran over him, bone and blood and soft tissue pushed together like a pasty soup. He saw his brain shut down.
“Who?” he said, breathing deeply, slowly. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “The one who came to see me was in his forties, tall, lean, light complexion, light brown hair, well dressed, well spoken. I thought I detected an accent, but I’m not sure. Very confident. He was very confident.”
“Name?”
“He said his name was Christopher Hopman.”
“Oh shit!” said Walter.
“He knew you. He knew who you were. I think he’s afraid of you. I think so. He said he wanted something somebody named Harry Levine had. You too. He knew you were involved.”
“He thought Harry Levine was in New Mexico?”
“Yes. He didn’t know it was New Mexico. He said they thought you had taken him to wherever Leonard had been.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“He just referred to them as ‘his employers.’ I remembered what you said, where you said it was.”
“I know,” Walter said. “You’ve been paying the bills there since Leonard Martin disappeared.”
“How did you know? Oh, my God!”
“Yes, that’s right, Isobel. That’s where I took him. And that’s where I left him.”
“Oh, m-m-my God!” she mumbled again. “I’m so sorry. Otto…”
“Goodbye,” said Walter.
Today’s call from Harry wasn’t due for another ninety minutes. He knew there would be no call. It would never come. Never. He went to the ticket counter and changed his flight plans. No matter where he was going, he had to fly to Miami first. He dropped his Washington flight and found a late-night opening, Miami to Houston. It was an awful flight, turbulent over the Gulf, and local thunderstorms in the Houston area. He felt like crap and took two antacid tablets as soon as he landed. A six-hour layover in Houston and then on to Albuquerque. Four more hours after that to Albert. Twenty minutes to the cabin.
Harry Levine’s body lay crumpled, face down on the floor near the small refrigerator. A single shot in the heart had killed him. Walter noticed powder burns on Harry’s shirt. The hole was small. Someone must have held Harry very close, perhaps right up against him. Whoever it was had reached in with a small caliber pistol, pushed it hard against Harry’s chest and fired. There was no exit wound. The bullet had not been very powerful, just deadly. It would take a coldhearted bastard to kill this way. The body was otherwise unmarked. Whoever killed him didn’t have to beat him to find the document. Harry wouldn’t have hidden it. After all, Walter told him he would be safe here. “Damnit!” Walter said out loud. On the floor, not far from Harry’s feet, Walter found a cigarette butt. The ash was only halfway down and it had been stepped on, apparently casually ground into the kitchen floor. Something about it looked familiar. When he picked it up he saw it was not a regular cigarette, certainly not an American cigarette. The paper was unusual. He slid it around between his fingers. It felt like rice paper. And the cigarette itself came with its own cardboard holder. The brand name had been smudged. All he could make out were the letters MOPKAHA.
The cabin was freezing. The fire was dead, burned to cold ash. The space heaters were not turned on. The killer was long gone. Walter’s coat was all he had. He could see his own breath, still he felt a sweat come over him. A dull pain grew in his chest, his stomach gone sour again. He sat down at the table, in the same wooden chair he dragged out to the porch when Harry marveled at the stars and the purity of the night sky. The horizon was much closer now. Walter felt suddenly overcome by fatigue. His eyelids closed. They balked at his feeble attempts to raise them open. Sleep. He needed sleep. He couldn’t help himself. He fell asleep right there, in the chair, still in his coat. He awoke about five. It was already dark and colder than before. He thought back to everything he had touched, now and when he had been there earlier and wiped all of it clean until there was no trace he was ever there. This was not the first time Walter had covered his tracks this way. He made no mistakes. He looked for any sign to tell him who did this-who killed Harry Levine. He found nothing. He, who could find anything, found nothing. The anger rose within him. He shivered, the cold radiating into his chin, down his left arm. “Harry,” he said although no one could hear him. Walter wondered, was the Cowboy in him?
It was the beef and the greed that killed Leonard Martin’s family. Walter remembered, better than most. Bad beef, born of corruption and venality, deception and disregard. Hamburgers. And where was Leonard Martin when he was needed? Where was he? Walter remembered that too. While Leonard’s wife, daughter and grandsons were joyfully broiling the poisoned meat, he was with another woman. When his family needed him most, he was absent, cheating, fucking. The only reason Leonard Martin lived was because he skipped that poolside barbeque, skipped it to have sex with a woman who was not his wife, not the mother of his child or grandmother to his grandsons. For Leonard, getting laid that morning gave an evil twist to getting lucky. He always felt his affair was manageable, acceptable so long as Nina didn’t know, so long as no one got hurt. He never thought the hurt would come like this. Afterward, when he held Nina’s lifeless hand, and then tried to comfort his daughter, Ellie, as she died, frantically worrying about her boys, Leonard’s cowardly soul burned in Hell, charred from head to toe with dirty ash, the filthy soot of his guilty fire. His life became an inferno, the flames quenched only with the blood of vengeance. Walter accused Leonard of that, confronted him with the charge that his revenge was not so righteous after all. “Where were you?” Walter shouted at him. And now. “Where were you?” he screamed at himself. “Where were you?” He saw Michael DelGrazo, the Cowboy, Leonard Martin, each pointing an accusing finger. “Where were you?”
He made three phone calls before driving away, this time for good. He would never set foot upon this place again. He swore it. The first call was to Isobel. “It’s Walter Sherman,” he told the receptionist, and when Isobel picked up the phone, before she could speak, he said, “He’s dead.” He shut the cover on his cell phone before Isobel said a word. The second call was to the New Mexico State Police. There was a body, he told them, in a cabin… He told them where, then hung up. His final call was to Billy. “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?” he asked the bartender.
“Yeah,” said Billy.
“I need a few more days. I’ll be back Friday. Everything all right?”
“Yeah.”
“No problems?”
“None.”
“Turn her loose.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You tell her I know she had nothing to do with it. Tell her if I ever see her again, I’ll kill her. She’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Just tell her.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
