Bannerman's Law (28 page)

“
There's nothing in the tea
,”
she told him.
''Mr. Dun
vi
ll
e said you have his word on it
.”

Weinberg waited, saying nothing. He was aware of the
uses of his bandaged face, only one eye showing. But the
nurse did not look away or lower her eyes.

“
It's true
,”
she said.
“
I'd know it. And if anyone
wanted to put you to sleep, we could have done it through
your air-conditioner
.”

Weinberg understood that. He'd sealed it and the win
dows two days before. But he nodded, slowly.

“
You're a real nurse
?”
he asked.

“
An RN. Yes
.”

“
What else are you
?”

She hesitated. She did not answer.
“
Mr. Dunville
.
.
.
senior
.
.
.
would like to talk to you in private. He wants
to end this
.”

“
Where is he now
?”

“
Across the hall. In the office
.”

He glanced at Barbara's cup. She drained it, nodding.
“
Five minutes
,”
he said.
“
Miss
Dameon's
suite
.”

They returned, with Nellie, to her rooms. She moved
slowly, her eyes blank. Barbara asked her if she was there,
pretending, or had she gone away again. She did not an
swer. Barbara steered her to her high-backed chair, then
stepped into the corridor where she covered her husband's
back as he trained his weapon on the double doors through
which Ca
r
leton Dunville would come.

Dunville the elder opened them, wide, as if to show
that no guards were lurking behind him. He stood there,
holding his jacket open as well to show that he was un
armed. In one hand he held a cassette tape and what appeared to be a Polaroid snapshot. Weinberg waved him forward. Dunville closed the doors. He walked the thirty
yards to Nellie's suite and entered it. He paused before Nellie's chair and looked into her eyes. She gave no sign
that she knew he was there.

Dunville offered the snapshot to Weinberg. He exam
ined it, then handed it to his wife who backed into the
room and closed the door behind her. There seemed little
point in covering the hall while Carleton Dunville was
with them. Barbara looked at the snapshot. It was of a
human head, eyes bandaged, blood soaked, badly mis
shapen. The rear right quadrant of the skull had been shot
away. Still, she recognized Henry Dunville.

“
Who did it
?”
she asked.

”
I did
.”

“
Why
?”

“
Because he deserved it
,”
the elder Dunville answered.
“
And because I need you to know that he is no longer
an issue between us
.”

“
What is? Aside from the files
.”

Dunville shook his head, ruefully.
“
You needn't have
taken them, you know. Young Carleton told the truth. You
would not have been punished for what you di
d
to
Henry
.”

“
You'll understand
,”
Weinberg said,
“
why I chose not
to bet our lives on that
.”

“
Of course. Will you assure me that no eyes but yours
have seen them
?”

“
No
.”

“
Ah, yes. Your mystery assassin holds them in
safekeeping
.”

Weinberg saw the doubt. It did not matter.
“
Mr. Dun
vi
ll
e, let us save time. You have people out looking for
the machine. If they found it, they are now as dead as
poor Henry
.”

Dunville tried to study him, uselessly.
“
Will you re
turn them
?”

“
No
.”

“
Then how can I let you leave here
?”

Weinberg glanced down at his MP-5, wondering i
f
it
had suddenly turned into a banana. He chose not to make
an issue of it.
“
As I told your son
,”
he said
,
“
if there's
no harm to me, there is none to you. If you kill us, those
papers will be used because I will not be there to prevent
it. Your son and Ruiz will die in the bargain
.”

“
And if I let you go
?”

“I
wil
l
be Alan Weinberg. I will abide by our contract.
The files will be safe while I live
.”

Dunville nodded slowly. He looked away lest Weinberg
read his thoughts. Kill them both, he was thinking, and he
would know, certainly within a week or two, whether that
fax machine business was an elaborate bluff. Let them live and he might never know. And someday, weeks or years hence, the Weinbergs might die of other means. What then
of the files? He did not relish living another thirty years with that over his head. Two weeks of doubt against a
lifetime of it. His peace of mind seemed worth the risk.

Dunville, aware of that one eye trying to probe his
brain, noticed the copy of the
Los Angeles Times.
He won
dered how it came here. He picked it up. It was folded o
pen to the page showing photographs of six young
women.

“
This was not as tidy as it might have been
,”
he said.
“
There is a more immediate issue. One of containment
.”

One hand still held the videocassette he had brought.
He leaned toward the actress, showing it.
“
Nellie? May I use your screen
?”
he asked. Her dead eyes stared ahead,
unblinking.

Satisfied, he set the newspaper down and crossed to
Nellie's player. He took out a movie and inserted the cas
sette. He turned once more to Weinberg.

“
If you've healed properly
,”
he said,
“
you can be out
of here in a few days. But we have four Taiwanese arriv
ing next week by way of Canada. Two Iranians are sched
uled the week after that. All are illegals. They will pay
fees, Mr. Weinberg, that will make yours seem a bargain.
I cannot afford to have the police poking about while
they're here
.”

“
Why should they be
?”

Dunville, cocking his head toward the newspaper, ex
plained about Hickey. Hickey, he said, had done well on
the whole but he had left a trail that might conceivably
lead back to Sur La Mer. In addition, he had as much as
threatened blackmail. He would have to go. Measures were
already being taken.

Weinberg caught a glint of satisfaction in his wife's
eye. She would gladly have seen to Hickey herself. Gratis.
Still, he wondered why Dunville was telling him all this.

“
He began leaving
the
trail this morning
,”
Dunville
told him.
“
Two women showed up at the girl's apartment, followed, in quick succession, by the FBI and the police.
Hickey was there as
well.
Apparently, he was seen
.”

Dunville pressed
the
“
play
”
button.

“
There was a conf
r
ontation between the two women
and the FBI agents. Why, I don't know. They had every
right to be there. The smaller one is the girl's sister. Here
you see the two women being led away
.
.
.
one of them
struggling. Hickey will follow them to the residence of
another student who
.
.
.
”

“
Barbara
,”
Weinberg interrupted.
“
Please watch the
door
.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“
Please
,”
he repeated.

She obeyed. She opened it and scanned the corridor.
There was no one.

“
Sorry. Go on
.”

Weinberg, once again, was glad of his bandages. His face would surely have shown that he knew those two
women.

Dunville continued his narrative. He described the stop
at a convenience store, clearly in search of an address.
“
There. She's holding a page from a phone book. Obvi
ously she found something in the apartment, which Hickey
was supposed to have cleaned, leading her to a source of
possible information
.”

Weinberg dared not look at his wife. He could only
hope that she would not consider her job done and return
to view this tape. Her bandages did not hide her face. As
it was, he could see a light beginning to flicker in the eyes
of Nellie Da
m
eon.

“
The taller one stayed at this house for some time
,”
Dunville told him.
“
We must assume that they learned something. It also appears that these women are profes
sionals of some sort
.”
Dunville told him of Hicke
y's
call to one of the policemen who had been at that apartment
and of Hickey
’
s lie, ultimately transparent, about repre
senting the family of another victim. He told him of the
father's comment that suggested that the sister was well
known by, but not a friend of, the federal authorities. ”I
wondered
,”
he said,
“
if she just might be an agent. And
if so, might Axel St
r
eicher have crossed her path over
the years
.”

Weinberg shrugged. He shook his head. But his one
eye was burning. H
e
knew now why the girls' photograph
in the newspaper had looked so familiar. That face. The
red hair. The name, Benedict. All of that should have been
enough. No, he had never seen Lisa Benedict before. But
he had certainly seen the woman she resembled so closely.
He had seen Car
l
a Benedict. And the ta
l
l one with the
gentle face was Molly Fa
rr
ell.

“
What could the friend know
?”
Weinberg asked.
“
The
one they visited
.”
He was grasping for a change of sub
ject. He hoped that it did not show.

“
She knows, or believes, that the girl was here. She
knows, or believes, that she came to see Nellie
.”
Dunville stared, sea
r
chingly, at the old woman.
“
She telephoned a
short time ago, asking. My son took the call. He denied
any knowledge of a visit. But the girl asked
.
.
.
other
questions. She knows too much
.”

“
Do you intend to kill her
?”

Dunville did not answer.

“
If so, who will do it
?”

“
We have friends. Not here. Outside
.”

Weinberg stepped to the machine. He turned it off.
“
How will it be done
?”
he asked.

“
Efficiently
.”

Weinberg, in no mood for this, felt an urge to slap the smugness from the face of the older man. He restrained
himself, although he took a step closer.

“
Do what you wish about Hickey
,”
he said through his teeth.
“
But if you harm the girl who called, where
will it end? With the two women who came to see her? With her close friends? Her roommates
?”

Dunville blinked.
“
There is a good deal at stake here.
More than you know
.”

Weinberg reached for Dunville
’
s lapel. Again, he
stopped himself.
“
None of this was necessary
,”
he said.
“
No part of it. Is it possible that you're as stupid as
H
e
nry
?”

An odd blandness appeared in Dunville
’
s eyes. Wein
berg thought that he had glimpsed it before. But now he
was sure. He knew that look. He had seen it on the day when he knew that he must get out of Europe. Dunville
was looking at him as if he were already dead.

But now there was something new. A look of surprise. The eyes had drifted. Weinberg followed them. They were
looking at Nellie.

Weinberg tu
rn
ed his head. There was Nellie. She was
looking up at him. Tears had begun to well. In her hands
she held the newspaper that Dunville had left at her side. She had turned it to the grainy yearbook photo of Lisa
Benedict. Next to it, on the page, was the photograph of
a body, covered with plastic.

“
Did they do
this?'' shewhispered.

Dunville could only stare.

Weinberg lowered himself to one knee. He took the
newspaper. He put it aside.
“
We didn't kno
w
either
,”
he
said gently.
“
Not until it was too late
.”

He felt Ca
r
leton Dunville edging toward the door. It
didn't matter. Barbara would stop him.

“
Nellie
?”
He took her hand.
”
I swear to you. We
would have stopped it
.”

“
All she wanted was
.
.
.
”

”I know. To see you
.”

”I thought at first
.
.
.
” She removed one hand from
his and reached to the newspaper. She touched Lisa Bene
dict's cheek as Weinberg had done. ”I thought she might
have been my daughter
.”

Carleton Dunville had reached the door. But now he
was backing up.
“
Give me that one
,”
said Barbara Wein
berg. She took the sound-suppressed MP-5 from her hus
band's fre
e
hand and replaced it with her Ingram. Arms
outstretched, she aimed the MP-5 at Dunville
’s
face.
“
One
move, one sound, you're dead
.”
She mouthed the words.

“
Nellie
,”
Weinberg said, rising,
“
we have to leave Sur
La Mer. We would very much like you to come with us
.”

She looked at Carleton Dunville.
“
Make him
.
.
.
”
She bit her lip.

“
He'll come too. He'll get us out
.”

“
Make him tell me where my children are
.”

“
We'll need some things
,”
said Barbara, backing Dun
ville to a wall.
“
Money. Medical supplies. Our files
.”

“
Nellie? We're all going to walk down and visit young
Carleton. We'll ask him. We'll see what else he has in
his safe
.”

Joseph H
i
ckey was on the toilet when his doorbell rang.

“
Yeah
?”
he shouted.
“
Who's there
?”

“
Pizza
,”
came the muffled answer.

“
What
?”

“
Your pizza order. Mushroom and anchovy, large
.”

”I didn
'
t order no pizza
.”

A short pause.
“
Apartment two-A
?”

“
Yeah but
...
it wasn't me
.”

A longer pause. The bell rang again.

“
Did you hear me? It's not mine
.”

“
You get three dollars off
,”
called the voice through
the door
.
“
And you get a coupon
.”

“
Look
.”
Hickey began wiping himself. ”I don't want
your coupon and I didn't order your fucking pizza
.”

Another silence. The bell sounded.

“
Jesus Ch
r—!
” Hickey ground his teeth. ”I come ou
t
there
,”
he bellowed,
“
I'm gonna shove it up your ass
.”

“
What
?”

”I said
.
.
.
” Christ!

Hickey stood up. He flushed the bowl. The bell rang
again. Hickey buckled his belt and stepped into his living room. He glanced out his window. There was the delivery car, parked at the curb. A dim signal tried to push through
his anger. It was enough, just barely, to make him want
to look through his peephole. He put his eye to it. Some
kid in a windbreaker. Homely. Stupid face. Dumb little
pizza hat. And he was reaching toward the bell again. Hickey flipped the chain. He jerked the door open.

“
Two
-A
, right
?”
The kid looked up at him. ”Pep
pero
ni
and sausage
.”

The bla
n
dness, the passivity of the young man's expression made him hesitate. Maybe the Special Olympics was
going door to door.

“
Less three dollars is six ninety-five
,”
said Sum
n
er
Todd Dommerich.
“
And you get a coupon
.”
He held a square insulated sleeve for keeping pizzas hot, one hand at its edge, the other beneath it.

“
Kid
...
do you understand fucking English
?”
Hickey
reached for the box, intending to throw it down the stairs and the young man after it. H
i
ckey seized it. He felt its
weight. It seemed light. The signal came again, stronger
this time. Something about this kid.

He belched.

For an instant, it felt like heartburn.

He blinked.

The pain stabbed at him again. He felt his legs go
weak. His fingers became rubbery. He began losing his grip of the thermal sleeve. The pizza kid took command
o
f it.

Hickey had no sense of what was happening. The kid's
expression had not changed. Now he was offering the
pizza again, pushing it to his chest, forcing him back from
the door. Hickey staggered, turning. He grabbed the top
of a chair to keep from falling.

Dommerich stepped in behind him. He now held the
sleeve in one hand. A long thin knife was in the other.
He thought of stabbing
Hickey
again. Perhaps in the kid
neys where it would paralyze but it would not kill too quickly. It did not seem necessary.
There were Velcro fasteners on opposing ends of the insulated sleeve. Quickly, Dommerich opened them. He
gripped the cardboard inner box and slid it out. He tossed
it to one side.