was heavily wooded, but except for the pines, in December there were no leaves on the trees. His sight lines were clean, undisturbed. He sensed a gentle swirling breeze coming from the northeast. No problem. In only minutes he found a place suitable for the folding chair and the Y-shaped, pointed metal stick he brought with him. The chair was something Leonard had come up with on his own. He took an ordinary metal folding chair, one with a cushioned seat, and carefully filed down each of the legs to a sharp, spiked point. By planting it and pushing down on the crossbars holding the front and back legs to the body of the chair, he could set it firmly into the ground and steady it, stable enough for sitting and shooting. He much preferred that to lying prone. The Y-shaped spear looked like a naked umbrella handle or one of those things rainmakers pretend to use in their act, and he drove it into the ground in front of him and rested the barrel of his rifle on the Y. How many times had he done just that in New Mexico? He’d lost track many months ago. He’d sat in that chair hour upon hour, in the mud, the rain, the snow, the scorching heat of the desert afternoon, and fired what seemed like a million rounds. Now, on a snowy hill in Vermont, he set up his position and watched Louise’s house through the powerful scope sitting atop the gleaming barrel of one of the world’s most spectacular weapons. His calculations told him the elevation was 247 feet 8 inches above the top stone step leading to her front door, and the distance was 1,380.2 yards from the door itself. Although he could have been much closer, he had no need to be. Leonard was dressed perfectly to withstand the weather. He had a thermos of Earl Grey tea and some hard candy. He settled in for the day. The stock nestled in his shoulder. The scope covered his right eye. The smell of gun oil was in the air. Sooner or later she would walk out that door and he would pull the trigger on his Walther WA2000 and watch her die.
Louise Hollingsworth was new to the area. The house was invisible from the main road. She was not missed. After two days of not calling New York-she had been phoning the Waldorf three or four times a day-Tom Maloney reluctantly called the police. They found her body lying in front of the doorway, still ajar behind her. Her contorted face, a Halloween mask frozen in pain, caused the medical examiner to conclude she took a long time to die.
Maloney and Stein were convinced he was headed for New York. They increased security at the Waldorf. When Tom called him, Wesley Pitts was actually relieved, although he made sure not to let on. Vermont was a long way from Mississippi. He’d made the right choice going to Mississippi. He felt safe. Had he known Leonard Martin was already in New Orleans, Pitts would have shit in his pants.
New York
Walter’s meeting with Maloney had gone badly. After the morning’s hijinks with Isobel, he fell asleep. The phone woke him. Isobel was gone, but she left a wake-up call for eleven o’clock. He was cranky when he arrived at the Waldorf. He spotted two men in the lobby, near the elevators, trying very hard to be less obvious than they were. When you’re working a hotel lobby you have to be in motion. Walter knew that. How could these guys be so dumb? Move around. Check out the restaurant menu, the gift shop, read a paper, change seats every ten minutes, but always keep your eyes on the elevators. It wasn’t brain surgery. These guys looked like they had been planted in cement. Walter wondered how much they were being paid. Too much. The elevator at the penthouse level opened to reveal a grand foyer, elegantly appointed, subtly lit. Six security agents, weapons at the ready, waited for him. Two stood directly in front of the elevator door as it opened. They frisked him immediately. He expected something like this and came unarmed. Two more were stationed a few feet back on either side. The last two guarded the door to the suite. “Not bad,” thought Walter. He couldn’t see the service elevator, but assumed at least two more men watched it round the clock. No one was going to get through this small army. Certainly not Leonard Martin. Of course, Walter knew Leonard had no intention of coming within a hundred miles of the Waldorf Astoria. One or two men, three if it made you feel better, would have been plenty.
Maloney was fully dressed, the same way he had been on St. John. It was all Walter could do not to smile. Did these guys ever get comfortable? They greeted each other coldly. Walter could not get it out of his head that Tom Maloney had hired someone who meant to kill Isobel Gitlin, and Tom would never forget being called “you stupid shit!” Nathan was here too. Walter knew that much. But the obstreperous little prick never showed himself.
Maloney had some lunch already in the suite. Walter wasn’t hungry. He accepted a Diet Coke, but that’s as friendly as it got. Maloney lied… again. What did Walter expect? He had no heart to argue with the puffy and pink Irish sonofabitch. They just wanted Leonard Martin to know how sorry they were and to demonstrate their contrition with an enormous amount of money. That’s what Maloney kept saying. He practically begged Walter to find him again. The meeting was short. Walter felt all Maloney wanted to know was if Walter too might want to kill him. Nathan Stein was probably cowering behind one of the four closed doors leading God knows where. Walter had no idea how big the penthouse suite was, and no inclination to guess. Suitably convinced of his immediate safety, Maloney rose from his seat, signaling Walter that it was time to conclude their little talk.
“Walter,” he said. “We know you’ve encountered some rather unusual expenses. This has taken more of your time than you probably thought it would. We want you to have this.” Holding a bulky brown envelope in his fingers, he reached out to Walter. “It’s another hundred thousand,” said Maloney, as if he were talking about twenty bucks.
Walter considered turning and walking away, leaving Tom Maloney with his hand outstretched. His eyes caught Maloney’s, and neither man blinked. Who could walk away from a hundred thousand dollars? An extra hundred thousand dollars! “Not me,” Walter realized. He took the envelope, stuck it under one arm, and said, “I’ll be in touch.” The last thing he saw before turning to go was relief in Tom Maloney’s face.
The next morning, instead of heading home to St. John, Walter was unexpectedly back at the Waldorf. Maloney had called him at the Mayflower. He was clearly panicked. Walter was already awake, eating his breakfast, contemplating his next move, hoping to take an afternoon flight home.
“Get over here right away,” Maloney said. There was no sweetness in his voice, no pretense of fellowship or comradery. Definitely master-to-servant.
“What’s going on?”
“Just be here.” Maloney paused and Walter thought he heard a sigh. “He got Louise.”
Thirty minutes later Walter was in the penthouse again. This time Nathan Stein was there too. Maloney filled him in on the details. The ME’s report was not yet available, but the fact that the bullet struck her below the breastbone told Walter she had died a miserable death. Leonard gutted her. He was a better shot than Walter had given him credit for. The Hopman shooting involved such a powerful gun it ripped him in half, but a hit anywhere on his torso would have done that. MacNeal and Ochs were sitting ducks, and he may have passed over Grath’s death without enough consideration of the difficulty of that shot. A long-distance shot from a floating boat. Maybe it wasn’t a lucky shot. And now, a gut shot from somewhere on a mountainside. Walter worried. Had he misjudged this one too? He remembered what Aat van de Steen told him about the German rifle.
“Where’s Pitts?” Walter asked.
“Some place in Mississippi,” Tom said. “He won’t even tell us exactly where.”
The image of Christopher Walken trying to get Dennis Hopper to give up his kid came to mind. Walter scoffed at the idea that Leonard would try, or need to try, to get information from any of his targets. He’s researched all of them thoroughly. And of course he caught Louise. Christ, the guy’s a real estate lawyer. Her stupidity cost her her life. Or maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was a mistake she wouldn’t ordinarily have made. Now Walter understood what Tom meant, back on the island, when he asked for some understanding of the stress they were under.
“He’ll show there,” said Walter, referring to Mississippi, “before he comes here.”
“Show where? How the fuck will he know where Pitts is? Christ, we don’t even know.” Nathan’s questions, taking the form of only a minor outburst, came without so much as a “good morning.”
“How’d you know about my wife-ex-wife-my daughter, my bank account?” Walter waited, but there was no response. “You found out, didn’t you? So will Leonard.” That hurt. Nathan and Tom prided themselves-a foolish pride to be sure, assumed Walter-on being able to find out things about people, things they felt sure others could not discover. “A problem you guys have, among many, I’m sure,” continued Walter, “is you live in a world where you think you know everything. As a result, you mistakenly underestimate your adversary. You think your resources are somehow exclusive. I haven’t looked into it at all, but my guess is that Wesley Pitts has family of some sort in Mississippi, and my assumption is Leonard Martin knows exactly who they are and where they live.” Silence filled the room. Neither Maloney nor Stein reached for a cell phone to call Wes and warn him. In the same tone of voice
