and the boss wanted to know. “We retained a team, Nathan. There are always people who do things like this. Our ‘friend’ referred me to such a person.” Tom hoped he could leave it there, but Nathan’s narrowed eyes told him otherwise. He explained that he had met with an FBI agent who had described ex-cops, former FBI agents, and even some retired military who hire out. They work in teams. The teams are led by individuals still active in law enforcement. The best teams-and that’s exactly what Maloney had been led to-often have an FBI agent as team leader. The FBI agent runs the whole operation. He provides direction as well as damage control. If they fuck up, Tom was told, the leader pulls down a mask to make the whole thing look official, or have it evaporate in thin air. But things don’t fuck up. They invariably go well. And then the leader’s official connections shield the client absolutely.
“We got to somebody like this so quickly? Just like that?” Stein eyed him with admiration and suspicion.
“We have many friends, Nathan. We help a lot of people. There’s nothing mysterious here. We always get the help we need, do we not?”
Stein stood and began pacing. He started to huff-almost a full-blown wheeze-and switched on a determined look. He was pumped up like his Andover wrestling coach.
“They know to kill him, right?” he said. “Right?”
“Right,” Tom answered, angered that Nathan had actually said the words out loud, in his office. “They know, but, Nathan, you’re getting all excited about nothing. There’s nothing to indicate these incidents are related. There’s even less reason to assume that any of this has anything to do with us.”
“You’re sure these guys are the best we could find?”
Maloney believed they were. A couple of hours earlier he called Special Agent Robert Wilkes. He introduced himself only as Tom and mentioned the intermediary. Wilkes suggested meeting at David’s Deli on Queens Boulevard, near the Woodhaven Boulevard exit, anonymous territory for both. Tom began describing what he would be wearing and Wilkes interrupted, saying, “I’ll know who you are. Don’t worry about it.” They both laughed and the phone went dead in Maloney’s hands.
Wilkes was right. He had no difficulty recognizing Tom Maloney. The late lunch crowd was sparse. Tom Maloney had to be the only customer who ordered a corned beef sandwich on white bread or wore a suit that was well pressed. Wilkes watched him from a booth near the back, thinking, “These rich ones, they couldn’t hide in an empty cave.”
“Hello, Tom,” he said, walking up to the counter where Maloney’s sandwich was being handed to him. “Bob Wilkes.” He held out his hand and Maloney shook it warmly. Wilkes was six feet, lean, and trim, even with his overcoat still on. His narrow, square shoulders supported a thick neck dressed in a white shirt at least a half-inch too large.
“I’m glad you could make it, Bob,” Maloney said. Tom turned on the combination of charm and unspoken power that was his trademark. It was like a faucet, and he opened it wide. Tom said that one man may have killed both Christopher Hopman and Billy MacNeal. He did not say why. Each of these men was a friend as well as a customer-an extremely important customer. Tom wanted the assassin found and “taken care of.” Maloney had given a lot of thought as to how to say that. He’d never done this before. Not quite this way anyway. He’d considered “Eliminate.” “Terminate.” “Neutralize.” The phrase “rub out” crossed his mind in the midtown tunnel. As he entered David’s, inhaling the scent of mustard and garlic, he settled on “taken care of.” Wilkes seemed to understand and accept the term, and with that, Tom felt mild relief.
Wilkes had a surprisingly deep and gentle voice. “Done,” he said. He then explained in specific detail the composition of his team and how it would work. No names of course, referring only to “our guys,” “subjects,” and “clients.” From the looks of him, Wilkes figured, Maloney needed no assurance. Nevertheless, he added, “We know what we’re doing. This sort of thing is not unusual. But there are lines we can’t cross, people we won’t touch. We can handle things everywhere, across the country, anywhere. We’ve got ‘friends’ too-people in every major city-and they have their own circles of influence, which I have described. Philly, LA, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle. You name it. And the ones I interact with personally have been my friends for twenty years.”
“How will we know you’ve got the right man?” Maloney asked.
“If you’re not happy, we’re not happy. More than that I can’t say.”
And then Wilkes asked, “Who is he?”
That was the tough part, Tom told him. If the two shootings are unrelated, no further action is required. If they are, you resolve it. “Either way, you get paid in full. That won’t be a problem for you, will it?”
Wilkes had just been told the job was more complicated than he thought. Maloney could see he was not pleased with that prospect. Wilkes frowned, but did not reply. He stared absently past Tom, at the heavy waitress tapping her fingernails at the far end of the counter, near the steamed-up deli window.
“Double.” Wilkes’s voice was mellow as ever, but Tom glimpsed tension in the fingers gripping his coffee cup. “The price is double.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred and fifty.”
“Half now. Half when it’s done,” Maloney said. “I’ll have two hundred and fifty thousand ready for you in an hour.”
“Two hundred and fifty is double,” Wilkes said. Maloney couldn’t be sure if it was the shock or a pang of moral conscience.
“I know,” Tom smiled, “but there are some things it’s always best to overpay for. I think this is one of them, don’t you?”
Gatlinburg
Floyd Ochs was one of those small, wiry, middle-aged Southern white men who look twenty years older than they are. A woman who worked in his processing plant described him, within his wife’s hearing, as “… the kind you really don’t want to see naked.” Floyd was a man of few words and fewer smiles. Given the choice he’d rather be fishing. Ochs was born and raised in Lucas, Tennessee. After high school he fixed cars, pumped gas, worked some construction, and spent a couple of months carrying parts around a Memphis motorcycle engine warehouse. Then he joined the Marines. Germany and Korea failed to broaden Floyd’s ambitions. After the service he bee-lined for home and the processing floor of Knowland amp; Sons.
That same year he married Hazel Cummins, a heavy-set, plain-looking girl he’d met in church three weeks before. They enriched the community with three boys in less than five years. Floyd’s good points stood out in his end of Lucas, Tennessee. Unlike most of his friends, he didn’t drink much. He never hit his wife or made trouble with anyone else’s. He enjoyed life at home. He loved his boys and did whatever he supposed a good father should. And Floyd Ochs showed up for work every day.
In the late 1970s the industry was transformed by a series of management consulting reports. One of these changed the way meat packing plants were run. Historically, plant managers had been company executives, ambitious, college-educated men eager to gain combat experience in the field. The company saw them as men on the move. Whether punching their tickets in Iowa, Michigan, Tennessee, or Nebraska, they were not local people. Locals correctly perceived them as outsiders arriving from someplace en route to someplace else, making their way up the pole. That began to change after 1980. The consultants suggested a less expensive way to run plants. And as suggested, meat packers began promoting local employees to responsible positions, to more than foreman and supervisor. To qualify, such men had to show up every day, sober and respectful. Floyd headed the line. Gradually, some of the chosen moved off the floor and into the front office.
By 1985 Floyd was an Assistant Plant Manager, one of six-many more than needed; corporate headquarters hadn’t a clue as to how many would last. In 1992 he was Plant Manager, with only the two assistants he required. In less than twelve years Knowland amp; Sons had replaced its entire on-site management echelon at less than a third of its previous payroll cost. The new men managed efficiently and cheaply, did exactly what they were told, and were by-and-large accepted by the work force as exalted elder brothers. Headquarters called them “townies.” Best of all, neither Floyd nor his counterparts ever thought of leaving home, of becoming real corporate executives. They craved upward mobility even less than their bosses hoped they would.
Floyd and Hazel took the same vacation every year. In August they visited Gatlinburg for a week. When the
