The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  “All right, but don't linger with him,” Lurene said sternly. “Never mind asking any questions. You just kill him and be done with it.”

  ”I wasn't of a mind to socialize, darlin’.”

  A BMW, Billy McHugh driving, swung into the street a full two blocks below Gary Russo. Bannerman, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his mouth with one hand, pointed with the other. Russo was approaching a blind corner from its near side.

  Billy shook his head ruefully. “Hugging that wall's a good way to get his throat cut.”

  Bannerman could see that. “Maybe you'd better tap your horn.”

  “They'll hear it too,” the bigger man frowned. “Wherever Carla is, she's got something going here by now. We could blow it.”

  Bannerman hesitated. But Billy was probably right. “Let's just get up there,” he said.

  Russo, approaching the bend, had hesitated as well. But now he could see the next corner. There was the woman. Just disappearing from view. Looking ahead, not back. Gesturing with her hands. The man must be in front of her. Russo cursed. Lose them and he could look forward to about a month's worth of crap from Carla.

  Rounding the dogleg, he lengthened his stride. As he passed a recessed doorway, his eyes locked on the corner beyond and his inner brain tried to shout a warning that something was wrong. There was a shape in that doorway. He sensed movement. His head turned to glance over his shoulder but, before his eyes could focus on the shape, a gloved hand clamped over his face. It jerked him backward. An arm coiled round his waist and, with it, the white hot rip of a knife point as it probed for a space between his ribs. Russo was sure he was dead.

  ”Car-mo-dyyy . . ,”

  A distant call. Carla's voice. Then, to his right, the squeal of a car's brakes. The man behind him stiffened. Abruptly, the gloved hand came down from his eyes and grasped him across his buming chest. He could see, through tears of pain, but he could barely breathe. He looked down past the arm and he saw, to his horror, that the long thin knife, blood running down its blade, remained in his chest. He could not tell how far it had penetrated except that he saw no tapering of the blade at all. Only parallel edges of steel.

  “You get one chance.” A voice to his right. Billy's voice. “Ease it back out or you're dead.”

  He saw Billy, his face dipped low over the barrel of a silenced pistol that was aimed at a point just behind him. And Paul, in the passenger seat, climbing out now. And Carla. Here comes Carla. She's walking with the woman, half-dragging her. The woman's face is smeared with blood.

  “Well, I'll be . . .” Russo heard the voice at his ear. There was no fear in it. More a sense of wonder. “Hello there, Carla, honey. Little rough on an old friend, aren't you?” Russo felt himself being dragged deeper into the doorway. The knife twisted. He began to scream but could only gag.

  “Paul?” Billy's voice. ”I got no shot.”

  Carla was close now. With the woman. He saw a knife in Carla's hand as well, its blade held high against her cheek.

  “Lurene?” The voice again. “Lurene, darlin', are you okay?”

  “I'll mend,” she said thickly. “Just don't you let go of that hole card.”

  “Paul, my friend,” Carmody pressed his back against the padlocked door, “I'd say we got ourselves a stand-off here.”

  Bannerman rounded the car, his eyes, with no expression, locked on those of Harold Carmody. He stepped to the driver's side and held out his hand toward Billy McHugh's pistol. “Billy,” he said quietly, “give me that, please, and open the trunk.”

  “Darn it,” Carmody clucked his tongue. ”I just knew there was somethin' about you. If you're who I think you are, me and Lurene had a real careless briefin'.” Ruefully, he glanced toward Carla Benedict. Hadn't seen her in fifteen years but he'd sure heard about her. Even worse, the feller Paul called Billy, that'd be Billy McHugh himself. Ah me, he thought sighing. And if they're with Paul Bannerman, answerin' to him, the Paul must be . . . damn. Careless ain't the word for it. “Anyhow, Paul, put that thing up. Shoot me and you as good as kill your friend here.”

  “Harold,” Carla Benedict said through her teeth. “You stick him any more and you'll watch me core old Lurene's eye like a fucking apple.”

  “Paul?” Carmody's voice went higher as Bannerman shifted the silenced Ruger into his left hand and stepped toward him. “Paul, it weren't personal. Fact is, me and Lurene were gettin' real fond of you and Susan.”

  ”Uh-oh,” Carla gestured urgently with her chin. “Paul, on your left.”

  Bannerman glanced down toward the hospital. There was Lesko, his face white with rage, charging the hill in their direction. Bannerman did not break stride. He reached for Russo's right hand, which had been hovering, quivering, over the knife as if afraid to touch it. Calmly, almost gently, Bannerman took the hand and raised it to shoulder level. He fired three times.

  -8-

  Lesko was the first to retum to the hospital. He came alone. The look in his eyes, thought Elena, was strangely distant.

  “Did you find them?” she asked.

  Lesko nodded vacantly. ”I want to see Susan/’ He brushed past her and opened the curtain surrounding his daughter's bed.

  “The news from the doctor is good,” she said to his shoulder. “She is responding. Her lips have been moving. Coma is becoming sleep.”

  “Yeah, look,” he said without turning. “Leave us alone, will you?”

  Elena backed out. She closed the curtain. Behind her, a tapping on the glass partition. Molly Farrell was there, her expression anxious.

  Elena listened to the events of the last twenty minutes. One man was wounded. He insists that his wounds are not immediately life-threatening but he needs attention where no questions will be asked. Does Elena know of such a place? She did. She and her cousins would take him there at once. She returned to Lesko's shoulder.

  ”I must go,” she said. “One of their men needs help.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.” He still did not turn.

  She brushed against him, reaching to touch Susan, to remove a strand of hair from her face.

  “Look,” he snapped. ”I asked you. Leave us alone.”

  Elena stepped back. She paused, hugging herself, stung by the unexpected brutality of his dismissal. There seemed nothing to say to it.

  “Good-bye, Lesko.”

  She turned and walked away.

  Lurene Carmody, gagged and tightly bound, one eye swollen shut, watched the preparations being made for her interrogation.

  A plastic automobile cover, proof against blood stains, had been borrowed from the basement garage and spread over the carpet of Bannerman's Klosters apartment. She was lifted onto it. Now Billy McHugh was drawing the room's upholstered fumiture close around her. Next, she assumed, would come the bedroom mattress to serve as the roof of a small soundproof chamber. Carla Benedict had Russo's medical bag. She was sorting through its instruments, laying out the set of probes with which Russo normally began. Lurene caught her attention with a muffled grunt, then shook her head slowly. Carla understood. She approached Bannerman, who was in conference with Molly Farrell, listening intently, and spoke to him quietly. Bannerman glanced at Lurene, hesitated, then nodded. Carla stepped to the older woman and loosened her gag, leaving the scarf in place beneath her chin.

  Lurene tried to moisten her lips. Her tongue was dry and thickened. She gestured toward several bottles of wine that sat on a side table. Carla found one that had been opened and poured a glass. She held it to Lurene's mouth. She drank all of it, then nodded gratefully. She looked up at Bannerman.

  “Paul?” she asked quietly. “You're Mama's Boy, aren't you.”

  He said nothing. There was no need.

  She shook her head ruefully. Poor Harold. Stuffed into that trunk downstairs. She'd tried to tell him they were getting too old for this.

  “Paul?” She made a face, “is there a way in the world to convince you that me and Harold never knew who you were until we saw Carla and Billy here?�
�

  “Would it have made a difference?” he asked coldly.

  “Sure as heck would.” She raised her eyebrows. “For one thing, we would never have let you see us. For another, even if we took this job, which I'm not real sure we would have, we never would have fooled with drugs. Harold and me don't like 'em anyhow.”

  “Who hired you?”

  ”I truly want to answer that, Paul. Like Harold said, we got an awful careless briefin' and I'm not feeling real loyal to the son of a bitch who left out all those details. I got a suggestion.”

  Paul waited.

  “Let me go and I'll let his air out myself. My word on it.”

  “Carla?” Paul asked.

  “She'd keep her word, but no.”

  “Billy?”

  “That's games,” he shook his head. “Don't play games.”

  Bannerman nodded agreement. Saying nothing, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic glove containing the suppository. He held it up for Lurene to see, then placed it on the counter next to Carla.

  Lurene understood. She'd just been given a choice. Hard or easy. Ah, me, she thought, there were sure worse ways to die. She'd take easy. Still, it was going to be damnably unhygienic, considering where that thing had been.

  “The man I'd have got for you,” she said, “is Oscar Or-tirez. He's a general down in La Paz. I swear those people got more generals than bathtubs.”

  Bannerman frowned. The name meant nothing to him. “How is Palmer Reid involved?”

  Her eyebrows went up again. “If he is, Paul, we don't know it. Me and Harold got our standards.”

  “What's the connection between this Ortirez and Susan?”

  “My guess?” she shrugged. “None at all except Lesko. And Lesko's friend, Elena. She used to work with Ortirez. Maybe Lesko did too.”

  Bannerman had long known about the barbershop killings. The cocaine. But he'd known nothing of Elena Brugg, or her involvement, until Molly, just now, had explained it to him.

  “Then why?” he asked. “Why do this to Susan?”

  She shrugged. “These people have done whole families. They do them first. It's for the hurt of it.”

  “To punish Lesko.” Bannerman closed his eyes. Deep within himself, he felt a stirring of something akin to relief. He wanted to believe it. That Lesko was the reason. That he himself was not. But when he looked again at Lurene

  Carmody, she was shaking her head.

  “He was next, all right,” she said. “Then Elena Brugg. Thing is, no one said we had to give either one time to stew.”

  Bannerman's jaw tightened. “You think it's me.” She smiled. “Not till today, I didn't. But seein' who you are, Paul, it just don't seem too likely that you're an innocent bystander.”

  There were more questions. They led nowhere. Lurene Carmody knew nothing more. Bannerman could make no sense of it. Three murder contracts, all with the common thread of cocaine and of events that happened two years before in which he was not involved. If ever these three were to be killed, it should have been then. Or soon after. Why wait so long? Why in Switzerland? Simply because Susan was then on Elena Brugg's doorstep? Bannerman could not believe that. Too much trouble, too little point. And could it be mere chance that an attempted punitive murder of Lesko's daughter came at a time when she was involved with a man who could, if he so chose, field a hundred killers of his own? He didn't think so.

  He had to accept, however grudgingly, that Lurene Carmody's intuition was correct. He was not an innocent bystander. Someone, perhaps Reid, perhaps not, was trying to punish him, more likely to manipulate him. But into doing what? Starting a war against some obscure Bolivian? Against the drug traffickers? Against Reid himself? He had no idea.

  But if someone was indeed trying to use him, he would soon know it. All he had to do was the unexpected. Which was to do nothing at all. Then wait and see who suggested what.

  The telephone rang. He took the call. It was the receptionist, Helge, at Davos hospital. Susan Lesko, she told him, was regaining consciousness. She seemed to recognize her father. She comes and goes. Too early, the doctors say, to know if there will be lasting damage. But she would live. Bannerman let out the breath he had been holding.

  “There have been more calls,” the young Swiss told him. “And there are flowers.”

  “Who called?”

  ”A Mr. Zivic from Westport. He said he is your friend.”

  “He is. Who else?”

  ”A Mr. Clew from Washington. Also a friend. He said he is flying here today.”

  “This Mr. Clew. Could he be one of the Americans who called earlier? The young one?”

  “It was the same man, I think. The older man called as well. A Mr. Reid. It was he who sent the flowers.”

  Bannerman grunted. Christian charity from Palmer Reid. “Is there a message?”

  “The card said ... I wrote it down, You are in my prayers. A speedy recovery.”

  “No, I mean for me.”

  “To you he says, Whatever might be going through your mind, I know nothing. Whatever our differences, any help you need, it is yours.”

  Bannerman sighed. Reid was nervous. He was right to be. But Bannerman could not imagine what Reid had to gain by trying to hurt him through Susan.

  “Thank you, Helge,” he told the young Swiss. “You've been most helpful. I want to do something for you. I'll send you something.”

  “We have discussed that sufficiently. You are not coming to the hospital?” There was rebuke in her tone.

  ”I don't think so. As long as her father is with her, I . . .”

  “You will come,” she said firmly. “It is the correct thing.”

  A long pause. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He surrendered. “I'll be there shortly.”

  The correct thing, he thought. But to what purpose? At best, another angry scene with the father who despised him. More lies to Susan. But they would be the last.

  He left Carla Benedict and Molly Farrell to finish with Lurene. His word would be kept. Lurene would die peacefully of a cocaine overdose although, if he knew Carla, Carla would make her chew it. Later, after dark, she and Harold would be slid through a hole chopped in the ice of a frozen lake. Possibly, knowing Carla, each minus a thumb that would be neatly boxed and couriered to a Bolivian general named Ortirez.

  Billy McHugh came with him. Billy insisted. “We get to the hospital,” he told Bannerman, “you let me handle her father. He comes at you again, I'll take him. It wasn't dignified, you rolling around the floor like that.”

  -9-

  On a Zurich-bound TWA flight less than two hours out of Washington, Roger Clew, his expression drawn, stared at the screen of the laptop he'd opened up on his tray table.

  He'd reserved two seats, the window for himself, the aisle to be kept vacant, and had asked for the last row in business class so that a bulkhead would be at his back. On the tray table next to him his lunch sat untouched. He was too sickened to eat. And not a little afraid.

  Only a few hours before, the Ripper Effect had been theory. Not any longer. Now it was real. It had predicted the murder of Susan Lesko.

  Granted there were other predictions, ranked in order of probability. And granted that the attack on the girl was far down the list of the possible courses of action that might be taken by Palmer Reid. Still, it was there. He had seen it. He had known it could happen. He had done nothing to prevent it.

  But it was not his fault, he shouted within himself. Who in his right mind would have predicted that Reid would react to the appearance—not the fact, the appearance—of a linkage between Bannerman and Elena by moving to destroy the chain? Even the computer predicted that surveillance, not action, was far and away the most likely course he would follow. Even allowing for the fact that Reid was not in his right mind. That he hated Bannerman. That Reid, given two or more possible courses of action, would almost always choose the most devious.

  True, after surveillance, the computer did assign a better than 90 percent pr
obability to some sort of interdiction. Specifically against Elena, and, although less likely, against Lesko. As for the girl, the probability of action against her was so small it hardly made the chart.

  Still, with all of that, he should have known because he knew Reid. The man, crazy or not, was a genius at misdirection. His mind worked with a kind of loony logic that no computer could fathom. Except this one. Because Reid, without realizing it, was employing the premise of the Ripper Effect. The disruptive effect of random terror. Clew asked the computer to forecast the consequences of that act. He typed:

  EFFECT/INTERDICTION:

  ASSASSINATION/SUSAN LESKO:

  FUNCTION/PREDICT

  He tapped the “return” key, his eyes on the screen. The reply appeared in milliseconds, again in ranking order.

  ENMITY: BANNERMAN/PP UNKNOWN 100.0

  ENMITY: LESKO/BANNERMAN 94.0