and the ID card. “You want me to start counting? Because when I get to one your ass is on fire.”
“Allen. Jack Allen. I already told you.” There was panic in the man’s voice. Isobel could feel how desperate he was to save himself.
“You’re not on the job, goddamn it! Your ID is old, shitface. You’re retired. Name who you work for, fuckhead!” said Walter.
“I’m an NYPD detective,” said the man claiming to be Jack Allen.
“Fuck you, detective!” Walter growled in his ear. “I don’t hear another name I shoot.”
“No!” the man cried out. “Don’t shoot me! I work for a man named Robert Wilkes. I really do. Wilkes hired me.”
“To do what? Follow me?”
“No, no. I don’t have any idea who you are, man. I’m following her.”
A chill ran through Isobel’s body, not unlike what she felt talking to Leonard Martin. She remembered. Leonard said she was being watched.
“Her?” Walter screamed. “Why? Hurry up now, Jack.”
“Wilkes thought she would lead me to Leonard Martin.”
“You fucking sonofabitch!” Isobel kicked him just below his knee. Allen stumbled, but Walter held him up, pushing the pistol as deep into his asshole as he could. He felt the man’s pants tear.
“Then what?” Walter asked in voice more at ease than anything he’d said before. “Then what, Jack?”
“Nothing. Just go back and tell Wilkes where he’s at.”
“You won’t hear the sound of this gun, you know that? When I pull the trigger you’ll feel it like a hot poker ramming up your ass into your gut.” The man, Jack Allen or whatever his name was, groaned and slumped to the ground. Urine was flowing on the sidewalk, steaming in the cold winter air as it inched its way to the curb. Walter had not shot him.
“You’re out of business, Jack. Tell that to Wilkes and whoever he works for. I ever see you again, you’re a dead man, got it?” Jack Allen didn’t say anything. He was pissing and sobbing at the same time. Walter threw the wallet down on the street but kept the badge, the ID, and the guns.
“Come on,” he said to Isobel. “Let’s go.”
“Sure,” she said, but Isobel Gitlin wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
New York
The smell of fresh coffee woke Isobel. The bedroom drapes were open and a brilliant morning flooded in through the glass. The city that never sleeps at least naps, and now its nap was over. It was wide awake once more. Horns blared. Traffic inched forward on the streets below. Darting through the bare limbs of trees in snowy Central Park, an occasional jogger could be seen. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, although the air looked cold to her. Steam heat whistled from the pipes in Walter’s suite. He always asked for accommodations on the side of the hotel that had not been renovated. He told her that the first time, when she met him in the restaurant. He liked his hotels old. He preferred steam heat over hot air. She heard him on the phone in the living room where the coffee awaited, but she was unable to make out what he was saying. Isobel stretched and yawned. The sex had been fantastic, and the pendant he’d put around her neck when they were both naked was beautiful. Intrigue and danger, mixed with the sweat of their bodies, had driven them to furious heights. “Wartime sex must really be something,” Isobel thought. Violence, she already knew, went with sex like brandy with coffee. It made the moment more intense and the aftermath sweeter. She bent down and picked up the pillow on Walter’s side of the bed. Holding it close against her face, she inhaled, smiled, and tossed it back on the sheets. Then she headed for the shower.
“Yes,” said Tom Maloney, answering his cell phone on the first ring. His voice was cold with a touch of anger poorly hidden. Walter had no sympathy for the difficulties of Tom Maloney’s existence. The New York Times was on Maloney’s ass. They continued to talk about him on cable TV, and the liberal press wrote piece after piece, coming this close to saying that he and his gang of co-conspirators deserved to be shot. Leonard Martin, already regarded as America’s most effective and efficient multiple killer since The Terminator, wanted him dead. Maloney’s charmed life had turned to pure shit, but Walter couldn’t care less. He was pissed about a retired NYPD cop and Robert Wilkes, whoever he was. There was no “hello” in his manner or his voice.
“Wilkes,” said Walter. “Robert Wilkes.”
“Sherman? Is that you?”
“Tell me about Wilkes, Tom.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking-”
“If I hang up, Tom, you’ll never hear from me again.” There was only silence on the other end of the line. “Tell me about Wilkes.”
“I don’t understand,” Maloney said. “How do you know about Wilkes? Does Wilkes know about you?” He thought, “What have I gotten myself into.” Could it be that people like Walter Sherman and the FBI Special Agent Wilkes knew each other, traveled in the same circles like business associates or something? Could there be a world out there he knew nothing of? One that posed a new danger to him? Maloney hadn’t said a word to Wilkes about Walter Sherman, and he certainly didn’t tell Walter about hiring Wilkes first. Tom Maloney was, however, quick on his feet. “Nathan made a mistake in judgment, Walter. I didn’t think you needed to know, and that was a mistake I made. I see that now and I’m sorry. But I still don’t understand-”
“Isobel Gitlin,” said Walter. “Just what the hell is that all about?”
“Mother of God!” Maloney thought, “that bitch,” and he almost said as much out loud. “She’s a reporter with-”
“I know who she is. Why did you sic Wilkes on her?”
“I didn’t know-”
“You didn’t know? Is that it? You didn’t know?”
“I still don’t know. What are you talking about?”
Walter shook his head in disgust, in frustration. He heard the shower go on. “Tom?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Detective Jack Allen. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Never heard of him?”
“Never.” Maloney had regained his composure and sensed that Walter had too. “Who is he?”
Walter told him about the encounter with Jack Allen. He left out the part about shoving his 22 magnum up the detective’s ass-and, of course, said nothing about Isobel-but he made it clear he had taken control of the situation with Wilkes’s man. Maloney was still in the dark.
“ What an asshole,” thought Walter. “An amateur, a total fuck-up!”
“You hired Wilkes to kill Leonard, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Nathan-”
“Come on, Tom. Don’t fuck with me. I have no patience for it. We both know Nathan couldn’t hire anybody and get it right. You hired Wilkes.”
Maloney’s first instinct was to soothe his own hurt feelings. After all, he’d been hired by Nathan Stein, but he was scared. Leonard Martin wanted to kill him, and now Walter Sherman was heading in the same direction. “Yes, I did. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I am. I am.”
“What did you think Wilkes was going to do? How did you expect him to go about his business? Did you give any thought to that at all?”
Maloney said, “No. I hire the best professionals. I pay top dollar. Why should I inquire about details? I don’t ask how, just how soon. I hired you, didn’t I? As I remember it I gave you a million dollars. Did I ask you how?”
“You stupid shit,” Walter said. “Wilkes was going to kill the girl!”
“Bullshit! He was going to kill Leonard Martin! You stupid shit!” Tom Maloney yelled at the top of his voice. He was not used to being talked to that way. His reaction showed Walter everything. Walter realized Maloney, for all his money and power, really didn’t know how people like Wilkes operate. “It must be so easy to kill people when you don’t know how they’re going to die,” he thought.
“Calm down, Tom,” he said. “Let me tell you the facts of life here, fill you in on Wilkes’s plan.” Walter took Tom Maloney through it step by step. The more he disclosed, the more convinced he was that Maloney had no idea what he had started. When he was finished, Walter said, “I want you to know that if anything bad happens to Isobel
