The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (6 page)

The old days were simpler. Twenty-five years ago if
you were talking about drugs you were talkin
g
about
musicians, about the niggers up in Harlem, and about
the dago mob everywhere else. Then one day some
dago wiseguy says what are we doing laying out our own
money? What we do instead is we go see some of these Harvard and Yale guys down on Wall Street who think
they're really screwing somebody if they make a lousy
40 percent on their money. We say, how would you like
to make 100, maybe 200 percent with no risk? There's
no risk because only one shipment out of fifty ever gets
busted so all you do is spread your money over several
runs and that way the only question is whether you
double it or triple it.

The Harvards look at this and they say, Hey, here's a
commodity trade that beats the shit
out of pork
bellies 
and th
ey
jump in with both feet. Million-dollar invest
ments double five times over in a month. All of a sudden
you see these corporate raiders. Guys with companies
that hardly ever did more than break even are out gob
bling up other com
^p
anies twice their size. Whole air
lines and oil companies are being taken over with co
caine money. Half the new high rises going up in this
country, even half the movies being made, are financed
on either coke or smack.

Drugs are better than gold. Better than oil. The
Arabs, who don't know from drugs and who'll cut your
hand off for smoking a joint, still think it's petrodollars
that make the the world go 'round. They don't know
what hit them. In another fifteen years they'll be back
playing
in sandpiles and fucking their goats.

The other ones who don't know from drugs are econ
omists. Economists look at the budget deficit and the
balance of payments and the national debt and they say
this is crazy, we should be in a depression. All their
figures say so. But their figures don't show drug money
and it's drug money that keeps this country afloat.

Besides the Arabs, the other ones who don't know
what hit them are the dagos. Show me a mob guy who
knows as much about skimming and laundering as a
Wall Street investment banker. Show me a mob cooker
who can mix a batch of quality shit faster and better
than any first-year chemical engineer at Dow or du
Pont could do practically on his lunch break.

It isn't simple anymore, Lesko thought. And I don't
care anymore. I'm out of it.

"I care," Susan said softly.

"What?" Lesko blinked. "About what?"

"You said nobody cares anymore. I care about you.
Very much."

"Yeah," he nodded. "Me, too."

           
He looked at her. Those first few months, after Katz
and after the barbershop, he'd spent every spare hour
watching her apartment, following her to work on the
subway and home again at night. He'd get other cops
who owed him favors to spell him while he was being
grilled by Internal Affairs, the District Attorney and the
federal Narcs. All this in case he was wrong about Elena,
o
r he
was right about her not being able to control the
Bolivians. A couple of times he even listened at Susan's
door when a guy took her home and didn't leave right
away. He shouldn't have done that. It was when he
learned the hard way that Susan was grown-up and had
a private life.

"If we care about each other so much," Susan said
gently, "you'd think we'd be able to talk."

"You keep saying that," Lesko made a show of holdi
ng his fingertips to his temples, "and I keep trying to
remember when we've shut up for two minutes all
night."

"
Right." She twisted her lips,
a
mannerism she in
herited from him. "And it's all been really good father-
and-daughter stuff, too. Like, the Knicks haven't had
anyone under the boards since Willis Reed
re
tired; like
Jerry Cooney could have taken Larry H
olmes
if he
crowded him early and went to the body; and like the
beer at Shea Stadium these days tastes like someone
pissed in it. Oh, and you also asked your usual twenty
questions about who I'm seeing and how serious it is."

"That last
part is father and daughter
stuff. And as
usual you ducked it."

"That's different."

"What's different? Two minutes a
go you asked if
I
had
a lady friend."

"Okay, but if you said yes and told me her name I
wouldn't get someone to run a check
on her back-

ground."

I only did that once."

"Is that so?"

"Maybe twice."

"But never again. Promise?"

Lesko made an ambiguous gesture that he hoped
would pass for agreement. Susan reached for his hand
and dug her nails into it.

"Repeat after me. Never again."

Lesko winced. "Never again."

"Show me your other hand. I bet your fingers are
crossed."

L
esko pulled free and slid his chair out of reach.
"This is a wonderful conversation. If I don't get stomped
on, I get stabbed."

“Y
ou know why we're like this, don't you." Susan
kept her eyes on her plate as she trimmed the fat off her
veal chop.

"Like what?"

"So secretive."

"Are you sure we're so different from any other fa
ther and daughter?"

"Fathers who are cops are different. You almost
never talked about your job unless something funny
happened or you met
a celebrity. Never any of the bad
things."

"If I worked in a slaughterhouse, you wouldn't ex
pect me to describe my day at the dinner table."

"If
it
^t
bothered you, yes. If you needed to talk about
it"

"Cops who bring their jobs home get divorced a lot
quicker than I did."

"I don't believe that. I think sharing more of yourself
would have helped."

Lesko laid down his fork. "Susan, listen to me.
All
_l
a
cop sees is people, even decent people, when they're at
their worst. We see and sometimes do some very sicken
ing things. Police departments know this. That's why
they
all
_l
have programs setup to help cops deal with the
bad side of being cops. But mostly cops talk to each
other because there just isn't anyone outside the job who would understand. This is not just true of cops,
either. Guys
who were in combat,
hospital nurses, they have
the same problem."

"I suppose."

"What worked for me was to keep my home and my
job as separate as I could. That's why we didn't socialize
with other cop families. Not even my own partner."

Susan saw a peculiar pause at the reference to David
Katz. She let it pass.

"Daddy?"

"Um?"

"When a policeman shoots somebody
,
kills
somebody ... is
it
something you ever get over?"

"Sweetheart, what do you say we talk about some
thing
nicer."

"Because I want us to learn to be more open. Maybe
that's a bad place to start but I've had a whole lifetime of
you never opening up to me. I've also had a whole
lifetime of mom telling me never to bother you with my
problems and never to say anything that might worry
you."

Lesko frowned at her.

"I'm sorry. Forget it."

"Susan, that last part. Is it true?"

"Of course
it
is."

"I never knew that. I really didn't."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay. What did she say exactly?"

"She would just talk to me about how dangerous
your job is and how you had to have your head clear at
all times. And how she didn't want you getting hurt
because your mind was on a broken washing machine or
any of my little schoolgirl problems."

"Little schoolgirl problems. Are those your words or
hers?"

"Mom's."

"With due respect, she could be a real jerk at times."

"It's okay, daddy."

"As for your question about shootings it's not so
much that I don't want to answer ... it's just that gen
eral questions can lead to specific questions and there
are certain things you and I should never ask each
other."

"That isn't true. It shouldn't be true."

"Fine. Then let's talk about your sex life. I realize
you're a big girl
and the recent stuff is none of my
business so well just talk about whatever happened
while you were under my roof. Don't start until I get my
pad out."