Whistler's Angel (39 page)

“It’s Adam again, right?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.”

He explained, very briefly, the who, what and where. He told Donald about his exchanges with Kate. He’d confirmed, he said, that she was enroute. She would get there and find that there was nothing amiss. All this flying around would be pointless.

“Yeah, might be,” said Donald. “But you got a bad feeling?”

“With nothing whatsoever to support it.”

“Nah, that ain’t you. There’s something. What is it?”

“Well, whatever it is, I can’t pin it down. There’s a dim little light that keeps blinking in my brain. I move toward it, but it just floats away.”

“Some connection between Adam and this guy that got shot?”

“I think so. I just can’t seem to place it.”

Donald said, “Harry, you know what I think? I think you worry too much about Adam.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“That one time a year ago, when Claudia got shot, he wasn’t thinking straight and I don’t blame him. But you didn’t raise any pussycat, Harry. Adam’s good. He can handle himself.”

“He…always could when he’s been on his own. But, Donald, you just said it. He’s got Claudia to take care of.”

“Meaning what? She gets hurt and he’ll lose it again? Harry, it was you who put them together. It’s a little late to have second thoughts.”

Harry said, “Oh, I’m not. At least not about that. She’s the best thing that’s happened to him.”

“Maybe all it is…you miss him. It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah, it has been. And I do.” Harry paused for a moment. “I don’t suppose you know anything about churches.”

“Now you want to talk churches? Like what? What they teach?”

“Ever heard of the Reconstructionist Church?”

“I don’t think so. What’s that? Like a cult?”

Harry shrugged. “All religions started off being cults. No, you wouldn’t know anything about churches.”

“I wouldn’t? Who says? Me and Dennis grew up Catholic.”

Harry blinked. “You’re kidding. Did you, really?”

“Yeah, we did. With the nuns. And then the Jesuits after that. Me and Dennis even served Mass a few years.”

“You’re…telling me that you were an altar boy, Donald?”

“What, you don’t believe me? I could give you some Latin. Back then, all the priests always asked for me and Dennis. They liked that we came as a set.”

Harry chuckled at the vision that had formed in his mind.

“See that? You laugh. But you seen us in church. We went with you at least three times, I can think of.”

Silly me, thought Harry. In fact, they had. They’d been to his wedding when he married Andrea. And then to her funeral. And to Alicia’s a year later.
He damned sure didn’t want to add Adam’s.

“Hey, Harry?”

“Hmm?”

“Where’d this church question come from?”

“I don’t know. It’s that dim little light I can’t reach. Forget it. It’s probably nothing.”

“You keep saying nothing, but it’s something. Let’s go. Worst case will be that we wasted a plane ride, not to mention forty grand worth of fuel.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Except…you feel up to it? How’s your back?”

“It’s holding up.”

“Maybe just me and Dennis should go. How ‘bout that?”

“And leave me sitting here? I’d go nuts.”

“Okay, but figure ten hours is the soonest we could be there. That gets us in when?”

“Early evening their time.”

“Are you worried what can happen in the meanwhile? Ten hours?”

“Yeah, I am. I suppose that I am.”

“So call Bannerman. He could have someone there in, like, two. You thought about that, am I right?”

“Yes, I have.”

“So make the call.”

“About something as insubstantial as this?”

“Harry…the guy is a family man himself. Him and Susan have a kid of their own. He’ll understand.”

“More likely, he’ll think I must be losing my grip.”

“No, no. What he’ll think is Harry Whistler is his friend and Bannerman takes care of his friends. He came through for you in Denver, am I right?”

“That was real.”

A patient sigh. “Let me ask it this way. Let’s say Carla Benedict came over to, say, Munich. The next day it’s on the news that some guys got cut up. A female assailant; the cops don’t know who. Bannerman hears about this and he starts to wonder if maybe, just maybe, these guys pissed her off.”

“Because she’s in the same city?”

“Same country. Wouldn’t matter. His head tells him, no, this is crazy, no way. But his head then reminds him that she’s not tightly wrapped and that when we hear ‘knife,’ we think ‘Carla.’ Now…don’t misunderstand me. Me and Dennis like Carla. So, when I say that the lady is not tightly wrapped, you know I’m not trying to be negative.”

“I hear you.”

“Who would Bannerman call to get this checked out? No-brainer. It’s you. Same with him.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“No question.”

“Um…Donald?”

“What?”

“This example you used…Carla Benedict in Munich…that was strictly hypothetical, correct?”

“It was just a for instance. It could have been Zurich.”

“Donald…what I meant…” Harry sighed. “Never mind.”

“You gonna call him?”

“I’ll try him right now.”

“We using the Gulfstream? I’ll see it’s gassed up. Talk to Bannerman, then be ready in about twenty minutes. Me and Dennis are outside in twenty minutes.”

Harry Whistler had tried to reach the boat one more time before placing
his call to Paul Bannerman. As with Kate, he got Adam’s machine. He again tried Adam’s cell phone. The result was the same. Adam, he thought, could have no excuse for not at least having his cell phone at hand. And why, he wondered, had they brought the boat in? Why, for that matter, had he moved in the first place?

He knew that he was getting himself worked up and that it was probably

over nothing. But he said he’d call Bannerman and he would.

At this hour, Bannerman should be at his office on the Post Road in Westport, Connecticut. Bannerman had bought a travel agency there. He’d chosen that business, well…because he’d been everywhere, but largely because of the computers. No one ever wonders why a travel firm would need so many computers. Bannerman, like himself, believed in keeping in touch. He liked to know what was going on in the world and especially what was happening around him.

A number of his people owned other small businesses. There was

a restaurant, a few shops, one worked as an electrician and one had joined the police force. The electrician, by now, had probably wired every building whose occupants were of interest to him, including, of course, police headquarters. But primarily, Bannerman had acquired these businesses for them in the hope of keeping them busy, out of trouble. And to make friends. And to spread themselves around. And to avoid congregating together too much, the better to melt into the community.

It worked up to a point. Most behaved, by and large. And nearly all of them started to make friends. Bannerman had assumed that this was a good thing until one of his people, one Billy McHugh, was revealed to have been thinning the town’s population for the benefit of his new friends. Bannerman blamed himself. He thought he should have known. Billy was a huge man, about fifty years old, whom many thought of as a monster. He’d probably never had a normal friend in his life, but he was loyal to Bannerman to the death. Bannerman
had put him to work tending bar in a restaurant that was run by Molly Farrell. He
thought that regular interaction with customers might elicit a few social skills.

Mario’s? Yes, Mario’s. That was the restaurant. It was down by the Westport railroad station, very popular with the locals and commuters. Over time these regulars had come to know Billy, and some, inevitably, started telling him their troubles. Some would tell him the troubles of others. A woman, for example, might have just left the bar and a customer might say to him, “There goes Sally, poor gal. She’s afraid to
go
home. Her husband beats the shit out of her for no reason. It’s a shame. Somebody ought to do something.”

Any other bartender might listen and sympathize, but Billy, his concept of friendship still evolving, undertook to solve some of their problems. He solved ten or eleven before Molly caught on. She confronted him, then had to tell Bannerman.

Bannerman was unhappy with him, to say the least. But Bannerman soon had more to worry about than the recent rash of “suicides” and “accidental deaths,” all of which Billy admitted. He soon had to fight a short but bloody war against those who wondered why he’d come back to this country and just couldn’t believe that he had no grand scheme except to try to live a quiet life.
More or less.

If they couldn’t believe that Bannerman was
jus
t a travel agent, and
if they couldn’t believe that Molly Farrell was
just
a restauranteur, imagine the trouble that they had believing that Carla was just a librarian. Well, not now, but she had been. She had always liked books. However, she always kept her books locked away because she thought that if others knew what she read, they would know far too much about her. The fact is that her tastes were in no way bizarre. It was not as if her shelves were lined with books that explored her own abnormal psychology. She read good literature, mostly, and some history, biography, and she loved the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She couldn’t read those without crying.

Carla solved her need to keep her reading habits private by opening a
small bookstore in town. Just as no one would wonder about Bannerman’s computers, no one, she reasoned, ever thinks twice about what a bookseller reads. Her partner in the bookstore, and apparently in her life, was the KGB major whom she’d nearly shot to death when…

The phone was ringing. His call had gone through. The travel agency’s receptionist had answered. He said his name; she asked him to hold; she’d said “You’ll want a private line. Just one moment.”