The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (84 page)

“Sir, is Molly Farrell. . . ?”

“She is en route by way of Munich. The girl and the
father are well guarded.”

“Thank you. And for your help at the airport.”

“I am confident that you will return the favor.”

“I'm going to ask just one more. Can you arrange for
the return of Doctor Russo's body? He ought to be bur
ied where his friends are.”

“Give me an address.”

His next call was to Lesko. It was two in the morning
there. He tried the Klosters apartment. Lesko answered
on the fifth ring. Paul waited for Lesko's head to clear
before he repeated the news of Elena's condition. Lesko was silent for a long moment. He asked where she was. Bannerman had neglected to ask the name of the hospi
tal but he provided the number of her uncle.

“You're back in New York?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you ever sleep?”

“I slept during the flight. How is
...
how is your
daughter?”

“She's sleeping, too.”

“Come on, Lesko. You know what I'm asking.”

A long pause. “Yeah, Bannerman. I told her about
you. But I laundered it a little.”

“Why?”

A longer pause. “I don't know. I could still change
my mind. Listen, you had two calls. One was from that
Palmer Reid a few hours ago. I picked up, he thought he
was talking to you. He starts off saying he just heard
about the try on Elena, who he says
he warned you
about, and how it's a case of the chickens coming home
to roost. He also warned you about me because I'm a
crook, too, and he says by tomorrow he's going to have
his hands on the guy who's behind all this so you should
know who your friends are. You people say that a lot,
don't you. Anyway, I couldn't get a word in edgewise.”

Paul winced. “What did you say to him?”

“Go fuck yourself is what crossed my mind. But I said
thank you and hung up. Guy's nice enough to call, what's not to be polite?”

“He had no idea?”

“I don't think so.” Lesko's voice dropped. “It's him,
isn't it? The bartender was right.”

“We'll see. Who else called?”

“Guy named Roger Clew. From the airport.”

“He's there? In Switzerland?”

“Yeah. I didn't tell him you weren't so he's on his way
down. What's with him?”

“He's a good man. State Department. In fact, it's
good he's coming. He'll be able to save you both any inconvenience with the Swiss authorities. Tell him I
asked him to do that.”

“What inconvenience? I didn't do any damage here.
You didn't give me the chance.”

“Is your name Dumbrowski?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“When will the hospital release Susan?”

“They want her for a week. She wants out tomor
row.”

Bannerman bit his lip. “Lesko, I'm about to do some
damage over here as well. It's against people who have
long arms. If Susan can travel, I'd like to have her where
I can guarantee her safety. She can convalesce at the
clinic. I promise I won't see her.”

“This damage. I get a piece of it?”

“You might even get to push the button.”

Lesko replaced the phone and returned to the couch
where he'd been sleeping. He wouldn't use the bed. They'd used it.

Yeah, he'd told Susan about Bannerman. Some of it.
Parts of it hurt her. Not so much because of what he was,
but because he didn't tell her himself. And because his
only interest in her, at least in the beginning, was to
keep her from snooping around Westport.

He had to tell her they were killers. Probably all of
them. Even this Molly, although Susan
w
ouldn't buy it.
Maybe they weren't criminals in the normal sense.
Maybe you
could even agree with some of what they've
done and figure maybe the country needs people like
them now and then. But, he told her, whatever face you
wanted to put on them, it still came down to this. Paul
and the rest of them can't live in a world with regular
people and regular people can't live in their world,
either.

So what does she say? She asks, “How is he different
from you, daddy?” He says, “There's a difference, be
lieve me. I told him to stay away from you and I'm telling you to stay away from him.”

    
“Daddy?” She gives that look of hers. “You know I
love you, right?”

    
“Yeah, so?”

    
“You and Paul Bannerman. You can both fuck off.”

Lesko stretched out on the couch. He wanted to
sleep because he wanted to dream. Which was a first.
But the dreams weren't coming. Jet lag, maybe. Throws
everything else out of whack. Why not dreams?

He didn't want to think about Bannerman anymore. Bannerman was still a prick, even if he was starting to show signs of being Lesko's kind of prick. What he wanted to do was talk to Katz. No matter how stupid it
felt, he wanted to ask Katz flat out, was Katz a dumb
dream or was he a ghost, after all. If he was just a dream,
how come Susan saw him, too?

Probably a waste of time, though. Katz says “I don't
know” to any question harder than where's the nearest
toilet. So if he's a ghost he's the world's dumbest ghost,
on top of being the worst dressed.

But he isn't. All it was, Susan for half her life was used
to seeing him and Katz together. And he'd told her
about his own dreams. Katz coming with the bagels.
That's all it was.

The other dream Lesko wanted to have, although
he'd hardly admit it even to himself, was that one with
Elena. The one with her in his bed. He wanted that
dream back, except without Loftus, Donovan and Katz
hanging around. She didn't have to do anything or say
anything. All she had to do was be there. Maybe they'd
talk a little.

Thursday. Noon in Westport. A corner table at
Mario's.

Paul and Anton had just returned from a two-hour
visit with Robert Loftus. Filling in the pieces.

Loftus, his wife and children were being moved that day to Gary Russo's house. For the present, Doug Poole
would move in with John Waldo who said, “He asks for
an autograph, he's out on his ass.”

“Loftus's face is a mess,” said Paul, sitting. “Can it be
restored?”

“Except for a few scars, he'll be more or less normal
w
ithin three months. Gary Russo would barely have left
a mark. Too bad.”

“We need our own doctor. We'll find someone else. How's his family doing?”

“The wife is terrified. L
o
ftus told her more about us
than is probably good for her. But she's even more
afraid of Palmer Reid.”

“We'll see if we can ease her mind.” Paul opened his
menu, then put it down. He raised a hand and began
counting off with his fingers. “Seven . . . eight people
dead so far. Plus two near-misses. All in one week. All
for a mistake.”

Anton nodded agreement. “One man's paranoia.”

Paul looked at him. “I didn't mean Reid. The mis
take was mine.”

“If you're about to say that because you underesti
mated Palmer Reid
….
”

“I didn't underestimate him, Anton. The man's ca
pable of anything. I know you've wondered why I didn't
finish him three years ago.”

“I didn't wonder. I knew the reasons.”

Paul sat back. “I don't think so.”

“I knew because I know you,” Anton told him. “The
first is that you ki
ll
when you must, not when you like.
That's what sets you apart from a Carla Benedict, for
example.”

“That's not it.” He glanced at Billy who was back at the bar greeting customers. “I played games with him.”

“Yes, you did,” Anton leaned forward. “But it was a
very good game.”

Paul stared at him. “How long have you known?”

“That you allowed Reid to live, to keep probing us,
in order to give us a common enemy? That you saw the
need to focus the homicidal tendencies of a dozen vio
lent people upon a distant bogeyman? So that they
would behave as an interdependent unit and be less apt
to randomly depopulate Westport? Is that your ques
tion?”