The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (17 page)

“It's also a whole new year. We're only three days into it and already he's started thinning out Westport's population again.”

“Stop that,” she muttered.

“Stop what?”

“Being negative. Billy's come a long way since he's
been here. He probably has more friends than any of
us.”

“Friends,” Russo repeated. “I'm getting very tired of
that word.”

“Anyway, Gelman's a piece of shit. He got what he
deserved and he's where he belongs.”

What
Gelman
deserved,”
the
doctor
answered
pa
tiently,
“was
public
disgrace
and
the
loss
of
his
license.
W
here
h
e
belongs
is
in
a
prison
getting
corn-holed
in
the
shower
room.”

“Fat chance. A patient's word against a doctor's?”

Russo ignored that. “And where Billy belongs, íf
Paul
is honest about it, is in Greenfield Hill.” He gestured
with his thumb in the direction of the psychiatric hospi
tal on Westport's northern border. “The man is just too dangerous.”

“Only to people like Gelman,” she shook her head.
“Ask anyone else, Billy is as warm and kind and gener
ous as anyone they've ever. . . .”

“Oh, for Pete's sake, Carla. Are you listening to your
self?”

She folded her arms and turned away from him.

“What Billy is,” Gary Russo softened his voice, “is a
warm, kind and generous man who happens to kill peo
ple in very large numbers.”

“Most of us have killed, Gary. In very large num
bers.”

“We've killed to protect our own arid when we didn't see that we had a choice. It's not the same.”

“We did it reluctantly, you mean.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Gary, if you don't know that's bullshit, you're cra
zier than Billy. You want us to be honest? You want me
to tell you how much remorse you showed when you
were shooting up old Stanley back there?”

“Do you want to discuss this or not?”

She looked away again. He tried again, “Carla,
honey, I'm trying to sort this out. I can talk to you or I
can talk to Paul.”

“Go ahead.”

“Talk to Paul?”

“No.” She touched his arm. It was almost a slap. “I'm
listening.”

“How much do you know about Billy's back
ground?”

“I don't know.” She'd known him, or known of him,
for ten or twelve years. “We've never talked much
about his personal life.”

“He's never had one. None. Do you think I'm exag
gerating?”

She didn't answer.

“As far as. anyone knows, Billy never had a home,
never had a family, and never had more than a few
years of grade school education. One day he wandered
into a Marine recruiting office carrying a birth certifi
cate. Even Billy isn't sure whether it was his or someone
else's.
Vietnam
was on, so they took him, trained
him and shipped him over. From that time on, all the respect, all the approval, and almost all the money he
ever got in his whole life came because he was good at
killing. First for the Marines, then for Naval Intelli
gence, then the CIA, and then he also went free-lance
working for the Israelis and for British and German counterterrorist units. Killing was not only what they
paid him for but practically the only thing anyone ever talked to
him about. He had no friends, no idea how to make friends, and no outside interests at all. I wouldn't
be surprised if he's never even petted a dog.”

“Paul was his friend. And Paul's mother, I heard, was
his friend before that.”

“Rare exceptions.” Russo dismissed those examples
with a flick of his hand. “Anyway, even Paul probably never heard Billy string more than five words together,
or laugh, or even smile before he came to Westport. And even Paul was wary enough of Billy to keep him stashed
at Greenfield Hill the whole first year he was here.”

“He wasn't stashed” Carla looked up at him. “Paul
gave him a job there. It was just until he could get used
to the idea of settling in here.”

Russo didn't bother arguing the point. If Billy had
worked for almost anyone but Paul, and especially if he
had stayed a CIA contract agent, the most he'd have
had to look forward to in his autumn years was a padded
room with a lifetime supply of Thorazine, or a nice ride
in the country and a bullet in the back of his head.
Preferably the bullet because the last thing they'd want
is Billy's head clearing up long enough to decide maybe
he should be mad at somebody.

“Which brings us,” said Russo, “to the metamorpho
sis of Billy McHugh. He's here a year, keeping out of
trouble, not bothering anybody, and Molly Farrell has a
brainstorm. She needs a relief bartender at Mario's.
How about, she asks Paul, we give Billy a try. She thinks
it might be perfect for him because that way he's forced
to be out and around people, they'll almost all be
friendly, and none of them will pay too close attention
to him. Paul agrees. We all agree. We say, who knows,
maybe
there really is a human being in there and any
way Molly would always be close by and she can keep an
eye on him.”

“It was a good idea, Gary. And it worked.”-

“Did it ever,” Russo fairly shouted. “Beyond any
one's wildest hopes. Here's a man who's never had a close friend in his life,” he held up a hand, “who can count maybe two people in all that time who weren't
afraid of him and who ever had more than a five-minute
conversation with him, and here he's being greeted by
fifty smiling people his first day on the job. Never mind
that he's a little quiet. He's new. He'll loosen up. Never
mind that he doesn't know from daiquiris and mimosas.
Hardly anyone at Mario's drinks that shit anyway.
Never mind that he talks to himself sometimes. In a
c
rowded bar they'll think he's talking to another cus
tomer.

“By the third night he's starting to smile back a little.
I saw it myself. I would have thought it was a nervous tic
except Billy doesn't have
any nerves. By the third night
he's actually answering people who talk to him. Then
comes the end of his first week and it's his day off but he
won't take it. He likes it there. By the end of the second
week he's recognizing a lot of-the regulars and he gets it
into his head that he's part of the reason they come in.
They
like
him. He knows that because they keep saying
things like ‘Hey, my friend,’ and ‘How's it going,
buddy?’ Now Molly has to explain to him that having
friends is nice but it's not necessary
t
o buy them every other round and a two-ounce drink is generous enough if he doesn't want his new friends knocking down tele
phone poles on their way home.”

“Look
I kn
ow
al
l
this.”
Carla
knew
what
was
coming.
Gary's
Frankenstein
speech.
She'd
heard
it
be
fore.
             

“Don't stop me now,” he took both hands off the wheel. “I'm just getting to the good part.” A sheet of
rain washed over the Subaru's hood. Russo turned the
wipers on full. “You want to know how little it takes to
create a monster? All it takes is one customer who's
been calling bartenders
Uncle-
this or
Uncle-
that all his
drinking life to walk in during week three and say,
‘Evening, Uncle Billy. How are you tonight?’ A couple
of minutes later, a woman two stools down calls him the
same thing.

“Molly sees that it kind of startles him but it also
pleases him and she figures, what can it hurt? She starts
introducing him that way and it works immediate
magic. By week four it's as if the rest of his life never
happened. The metamorphosis from killer slug to
social
butterfly and everybody's favorite uncle is complete.
Suddenly we have Billy McHugh telling jokes. We have
Billy McHugh laughing out loud. We have him reading
the sports pages every morning in case a
customer
wants to bullshit about last night's game. But then, God
help us, we also
  have
Uncle Billy McHugh starting to
listen to the troubles of all his little nieces and nephews.
He learns that other people, people who are not his
friends, are cheating them, divorcing them, firing them, two-timing them, harassing them and even burglarizing them. All of a sudden we have our Uncle Billy remem
bering what he's good at, and people start to die.”