The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (54 page)

“Makes sense,” Ray Bass agreed. “They can disap
pear for hours at a time and folks'd figure they're off
gettin' acquainted. But how does Susan here get rid of the bride long enough to use her wiles on the groom?”

“My department. On top of being mysterious, I'm also a great lover.”

“Oh, brother,” Susan rolled her eyes. She'd asked for it.

In Lesko's Queens bedroom a six-hour time change
earlier, David Katz was yelling at him.

“Dumb, Lesko. You're a real putz, you know that?
You call me stupid. You want to know what's world-class
stupid?”

“It really wasn't very wise, Ray.''
Donovan
now.
Complete with his Gallagher's table, which was now in
Lesko's bedroom.
“How on earth could you trust a
woman who'd order poor David's head blown off?
Just
look at him. He doesn't even have a face anymore. ”

Katz started to rant some more but Donovan's words made him stop.
“No, look,
“
he said to Donovan.
“I
got
a
face. I got it back. ”

To Donovan, if not to Katz, this was an irrelevancy.
“Whether you have or haven't is not what's at issue
here. The issue is whether Ray should have told Elena
where Susan and Paul Bannerman are staying.”

“What's the big deal?”
Lesko heard himself asking.
“For two years now, Elena couldn't have looked Susan
up in the phone book if she wanted?”

“I'm not sure it's the same as having Susan more or less in her clutches.
”

Lesko didn't even want to think that way. He was getting annoyed.
“Elena's okay, all right? She found
Jesus or something. Leave her alone. ”

“That's
r
eal nice, Lesko,
“
Katz sulked.
“Me and Buzz are . . . passed on, but do you give a shit? Nah!
Forgive
and forget, right? Why don't you and Elena go fucking
dancing? You can go out for a couple of shots of tequila
schnapps or whatever the hell Swiss-Bolivians drink. ”

“Just a minute.”
Donovan was tugging at Katz's
cashmere.
“What was that about ‘passing on'?”

“Don 't pay any attention, ”
Lesko told him.
“He gets
all out of joint when you say he's dead.”

“Yes, but he included me as well. I'm certainly not
dead if I'm sitting here speaking to you. ”

“Oh, Christ,”
Lesko muttered disgustedly. He
started to roll over but Elena, who was in bed with him
,
and still wearing her mink coat for some reason, rubbed
his back
affectionately and said,
“Don't you pay any
attention either. It is something they must work out
between themselves.”

“While they're at it,”
said Loftus, sitting atop the
clothes dryer, which was also now in Lesko's bedroom,
“they c
a
n
figure out how Burdick got dead, too. And if
you didn 't do it, Lesko, who did?”

Oh, yeah. Burdick. Lesko remembered now. They'd
driven to this big house in Scarsdale. Loftus snuck up in
the dark to short out the alarm system. Then he comes
back, spooked and sweating, saying someone already
rigged a bypass on it. Loftus wants to bag it but Lesko
went in anyway. The only light on the first floor was
from a TV that no one was watching. But there were lights on upstairs and he could hear the sound of a
shower running. Quietly, Lesko followed his gun up the stairs to the bathroom where he finds a stiff on the floor of this big shower stall, legs twisted under him, his face in the stream of water. It was just like they found Dono
van except this guy was fully dressed and he had a .38 jammed between his teeth and a hole through his head.
There was a bigger hole higher up, blasted into the tile.
The guy's brains were still dripping down the wall in
pink streaks.

Lesko went back out for Loftus and made him come
look. Loftus said it was Burdick and now he's really
spooked, which seems funny considering that the whole
point of coming up here was to make Reid and Burdick
dead. Loftus seems to want to believe that Lesko had
done it even when Lesko pointed out that there had
been no gunshot and no time to do this either unless Loftus thought he just happened to surprise Burdick
while he was taking a shower with his clothes on. Next,
Loftus
wanted to know who Lesko had talked to when
he went up to Westport the day before. Lesko asked
what the hell that had to do with anything.

“Did you tell anyone there about Donovan being dead in his shower?”

“No, shithead. I didn't even know about Donovan
then. ”
Anyway, the only people he'd talked to at all
were a nosy librarian, an I've-seen-everything type bartender, plus maybe the guy at the Avis rental. But hear
ing that didn't make Loftus any happier.

“Okay,”
said Katz, leaning between them.
“Let's
look at the possibilities.
“They were not in Lesko's bed
room anymore. They were in Loftus's car, and Katz and
Donovan had joined them in the back seat. Elena was
gone. That depressed Lesko because he didn't know
when she'd ever climb into his bed again, and the least
he should have done was take the opportunity to talk
things out.
“Killing Burdick,”
Katz continued,
“was
definitely a revenge hit for Buzz here, right?”

“Or made to look like one,”
Donovan suggested.

“Let's keep things simple here, all right? Forget
you 're a fucking lawyer. ”

“So talk,”
Lesko said.

“Buzz was making calls to Washington about Reid
and Bannerman. Then suddenly he's zapped.”
Katz
threw an apologetic shrug at Donovan for his use of the
word.
“One possibility is Buzz's friends in Washington decided to even the score for him.”

“No,”
Donovan shook his head.
“They're simply not
that sort.”

“Good,
“said Katz.
“That makes it simpler. All that's
left is Bannerman. ”

“Loftus?”
Lesko asked.
“What do you think?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't give me I don't know. Katz is right. If this
whole thing is because Reid is afraid of Bannerman, who else could it be?”

“Listen, I have other things on my mind, okay? I've got another one of my men who's six hours late report
ing in. He's clean but he could be dead, too. I also have to get rid of all of you, then go back and go through the
motions of finding Burdick's body and calling Reid so
he doesn't know I'm part of this.”

“Ray,
“
Buzz Donovan touched his shoulder,
“Hasn't
Bannerman been in transit all this time?”

“He could have heard about you when he got to
London. He could have set this up by phone.”

“But with whom?”

Lesko hadn't thought of that.
“Maybe he has friends
of his own in the Fed.”

“But Loftus says he's retired. He wants to be left
alone. He's hardly likely to have a skilled assassin at his
disposal. He's even less likely to have known that
Bu
r
dick was the specific culprit”

Loftus had a funny look. Lesko saw it. The look sug
gested that a revelation had struck him. Loftus got the
same kind of look when Lesko told him he talked to a
bartender in Westport. And Loftus says Reid is afraid to
go to Westport, right? Afraid of one guy? Or does the
guy have muscle up there?

Funny looks.

Looks.