The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  ”Um—Irwin—” Lesko stepped forward.

  Kaplan waved him off, his eyes locked on Bannerman's. “Tell me what makes you so goddamned superior.” He jerked a thumb toward the house. “No. I'll tell you something. Barton Fuller is an ass-breaking public servant who does his damnedest for this country and what you are is an arrogant, self-indulgent son of a bitch.”

  Lesko raised his hands. Kaplan ignored him.

  “You want to be left alone?” he asked. “You got it. You want Westport? It's all yours. We don't need you. For my money, we never did.”

  A small nod toward Susan. Almost an apology. Kaplan turned his back and stamped toward the house.

  Lesko went after him. Susan followed.

  -36-

  No one had spoken.

  Lesko, at the wheel of their rented car, retraced the route to Washington's National Airport. On his right sat Bannerman, staring ahead. Susan sat behind, a pad on her lap. Occasionally she would jot another note. Mostly, she watched Bannerman's face in the rearview mirror.

  He felt her eyes and met them. He softened his expression. “Go ahead, Susan,” he said. “Ask.”

  “I’ll flush this when I'm done.” She held up the pad.

  “Whatever.”

  Her eye followed her pen to the top of the page. What she wanted to say was not there.

  “Those things Mr. Kaplan said”—she bit her lip—“you didn't deserve that.”

  Bannerman only shrugged, a bit sadly. He turned toward Lesko. “You were right about him. He's a decent man.”

  “Irwin? Yeah. He is.” Lesko looked at his hands. “Um, about that, what he said—”

  “It's okay. Forget it.”

  “Yeah, well—” Lesko grimaced. “Up to a point, he's right. You've had things pretty much your own way. He's got drug agents dying in the streets. And Fuller's got a whole world to worry about. All you got is Westport.”

  Bannerman chose not to argue.

  “By the way—” Susan held up her pad, signaling a change to another subject. Any subject. “What's with all this ‘Drive carefully’ lately? You also said that to Roger Clew.”

  “Just a figure of speech.” And a small game of his own. They still didn't know who'd placed that bomb in Hagler's car. Might as well make use of it.

  Susan twisted her mouth doubtfully. The phrase sounded suspiciously like Don't fuck with me. It even rhymed. But Mama's Boy doesn't say bad words.

  “Okay.” Her eye returned to the top of the sheet. “What was that stunt with the phone?” Then, to her father, “And how did you know what would happen?”

  Lesko didn't answer. He looked out the window. At the sky. Imagining himself aboard the next Swissair flight to Zurich.

  “Just a bit of theater,” Bannerman told her. “To let him know that he could be reached as easily as he could reach me.”

  “But why? What were the games?”

  “Too much manipulation to suit me. And he lied about when he placed that wire on Roger's phone. Leo Ðelkin tapped it well before January. Molly says the only way the KGB device could have gone undetected is if the sweepers never thought to look for a tap on a tap.”

  She said nothing for a moment. “Just before it rang, you asked him a question about the vacation we took. He turned white.”

  Now Lesko was watching him.

  “You think he set up Reid?” he asked. “To go after you, I mean?”

  ”I don't know.”

  “What was the point of asking if you weren't going to wait for an answer?”

  “I'm not sure. I guess I really don't want to know.”

  Lesko blinked. A human Bannerman, he thought. God save us. On the other hand, he wasn't so sure he wanted to know either. Enough was enough. One more hour, a short hop up to JFK and Elena, and he was out of here.

  He wasn't even sure why Bannerman wanted him to come. Except to put Kaplan at ease. For all the good it did. It sure as hell didn't put Fuller at ease. Still, it let him spend a little more time with Susan. Better than nothing.

  Kaplan had kept on defending Fuller. Out in the driveway, before they left. He said Fuller would never have hurt Bannerman. Some weird thing going back to Bannerman's mother. Maybe that works both ways. Maybe it's why Bannerman pushed but didn't shove.

  “For the record,” Bannerman said quietly, ”I think Barton Fuller is a decent man too. But so was Roger, once.”

  No one spoke. Susan was staring at him, thoughtfully.

  “Paul?” She took his hand. “Who was your father?”

  Bannerman understood. He had to smile. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that. My father died when I was fourteen. Fuller never laid eyes on my mother until I was twenty-four or so.”

  “About the time she was killed?”

  Bannerman nodded. “According to Billy, and I just found this out, he was infatuated with her. Not long after she was killed, someone passed Billy a list of those involved. Billy thinks it was Fuller who gave him the list. I just heard that for the first time as well.”

  “McHugh went after them?” Lesko asked.

  “We both did. John Waldo and a few others pitched in.”

  “How did Clew figure?”

  “Apparently”—Bannerman shrugged, as if this had been another recent revelation—“Fuller decided we'd done enough damage and offered to mediate a peace between us and the CIA. He sent Roger with a white flag. One thing led to another and Roger's been our case officer ever since. That's until he caught whatever bug infects people down here.”

  “But ever since, it's really been Fuller, hasn't it. Fuller's been your godfather.”

  “Fuller created me,” Bannerman said wistfully. “It's a heck of a time to realize it, but he created Mama's Boy.”

  “So? He didn't create Paul Bannerman. What stops you from hanging 'em up?”

  “You know better, Lesko. There isn't any more Paul Bannerman. Just like there isn't any Raymond Lesko who can stop being a cop.”

  They walked with Lesko to the gate of his connecting flight. Lesko stopped to use the washroom. Bannerman joined him. As Lesko prepared to leave, Bannerman offered his hand. “I'll leave you alone with Susan,” he said, “until you have to board.”

  ”I appreciate it.”

  “Do you think you'll stay? In Zurich, I mean?”

  “Nothing is forever. But it looks that way, yeah.”

  “Good luck, Lesko. In everything.”

  Lesko nodded. ”I might call you,” he said. “Any suggestions you might have about Zurich, who I should hire, maybe something out of that computer, I wouldn't say no to some help.”

  “Kaplan will help you. But sure. I owe you one.”

  Lesko looked at the arm he'd broken. “You don't owe me shit, except you take care of Susan.”

  “Then I owe Urs Brugg. And one more to Leo Belkin. But as for Susan, I think I'm going to ask her what she wants me to do. Whatever that is, I'm going to try to do it.”

  “If she says quit? Become a hairdresser?”

  “Within reason.” Bannerman smiled.

  Lesko relaxed his grip. Bannerman held on.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You won't get mad?”

  ”I was born mad. What?”

  “What if we should think about—”

  “Getting married? Forget it.”

  “Just thought I'd ask. Good-bye, Lesko.”

  Bannerman watched him go.

  ”A hairdresser?” Susan took his arm. “Or a mud wrestler. I haven't decided.” She smiled. A long silence, alone with her thoughts. They followed the signs to the Trump Shuttle.

  “Or anything else I want?” she asked, at last.

  “Within reason. And after I clear up a few things.”

  “Would you quit if I asked? No more guns?”

  “I'd try. Yes.”

  “You'd do that for me?’’

  “And for me. I think.”

  “What would happen to Billy? And the others.”

  “Anton is pretty much r
unning things already.”

  “All those people from Europe. Molly says some of them want to stay.”

  “We'll have to deal with that. Get them settled in.”

  “Then there's giving my father a hand in Zurich? And your debt to Leo Belkin?”

  “As I said, a few loose ends.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What's that?”

  “You're never going to quit.”

  “Oh yes, I will. I'm—” He fell silent.

  They continued on, Susan waiting for the rest of his rebuttal. He said nothing more.

  They arrived at the shuttle gate. Donald Trump's name and picture all over the place. Even a couple of posters promoting his book and some dumb board game about making deals. But that's okay, she thought. He's what he is and he's good at what he does. And so is Bannerman.

  The departures board showed the next flight at half past twelve. They had almost forty minutes. Bannerman nodded in the direction of the Admiral's Club lounge.

  Loose ends, she thought. Where do they stop? And all those new people in Westport. What does he think they're going to do there? Take up golf and tennis? No way. They like their own game too much.

  They reached the lounge. Bannerman signed in. There was a TV set, its volume low, tuned to CNN. She took a seat near it while Bannerman filled two coffee cups at the small buffet table, his black, hers with Sweet'n Low. She watched as he dropped the empty packet into a covered wastebasket. He seemed to be looking at it, the basket, thoughtfully. Now he reached into his pocket and withdrew something that was square and silver. For a long moment he held it in his hand, gripping it as if to crush it. But he didn't. He returned it to his pocket.

  Another loose end, she thought.

  But the biggest one was probably Barton Fuller. With Roger Clew, he'd ended it. Clearly. Unequivocally. It's over, Roger. But not so with Fuller. What he'd done, although he might not admit it, was leave that door open. Just a crack. Maybe the memory of his mother had something to do with it. Maybe not. But all he'd really done was let Fuller know he was on to him and warn him to behave. He'd gone to Fuller's house with three other people, none of whom really needed to be there, to say ‘These people are my friends. Don't f . . . Don't mess with them either.”

  He returned with their cups, one at a time, and sat. She leaned toward him.

  “You said that Mr. Fuller is a decent man. What if he—I don't know—tries to put this right?”

  A shrug. Not a no.

  See?

  “You know what else I think?”

  ”Mmm?”

  ”I think you're—” She didn't finish. She heard a soft gasp coming from behind her. The Admiral's Club hostess had risen to her feet, peering over Bannerman's head, looking at the TV screen. Susan followed her gaze. She saw a street in what must have been Medellín or Beirut. Bodies everywhere. Wreckage. Ambulances. A car, barely recognizable, shattered and burning. Too awful. She began to look away. But it struck her, suddenly, that the people she saw were not Arabs or Latins. They were black. And the street—it seemed to be in Manhattan.

  Bannerman, noticing her expression, had turned. She saw him stiffen. He leaned toward the television console and punched up the volume.

  ' . . at least two explosions . . . possibly three . . . tore through masses of local residents gathered for this . . .” The camera showed what had been a speakers' platform, made of plywood, flattened, its sections strewn like playing cards. On top of them, and beyond them, were more bodies. Several were nearly nude, their clothing torn away by the force of the blast. ”. . . confirmed dead . . . Manhattan Borough President Alvin Hicks . . . Councilman Andrew Lehman . . . thirteen others . . . many more injured . . .”

  The camera panned over the fronts of tenement buildings. It showed one, all its windows blown out, even some of the rames. Tattered remnants of curtains. Bannerman knew that building. A week before, he'd taken Wesley Covington home to it. The pan continued down to the street in the other direction. A second car, blown to pieces, another burning. More police cars arriving, fire engines, having trouble getting through. More bodies, several of them moving, some as yet untended, some at least a block away.

  The picture cut to a studio. A black man, a blond woman, their jaws tight. The man was speaking. “ . . at eleven-fifteen this morning, at what was to have been a salute to the efforts of one community action group in cleansing its streets of drug traffic, two powerful bombs, believed to have been detonated by narco-terrorists . . .”

  Bannerman sat, frozen, barely hearing, barely seeing, except in his mind. He saw Wesley Covington, shaking his hand, thanking him, being thanked in return. He saw Covington's niece, Lucy, the brave one, who had wanted to stand up to Hector Manley on the night he came to the dry cleaning shop and who had pretended to be terrified by the SWAT teams surrounding his Westport office. They had both come to help him, to protect him. And now, almost certainly, they were dead.

  “ . . the death toll, now confirmed at seventeen, is expected to rise. The Columbia University Medical Center has issued an urgent call for blood donors ... the New York City police department warns of the risk of secondary explosions and asks all . . “

  He felt Susan's body against his back, her hands on his shoulders, squeezing them. “Oh, Paul,” she whispered.

  She could not see his face. It was well that she could not. Bannerman's eyes had turned dead.

  -37-

  There was a small color TV in the limousine that met their flight. Bannerman turned it on, searching the network channels for a news program. There were none. Mostly movies. He selected a local station and sat back, waiting for bulletins.

  Susan took his hand. “You couldn't have known,” she said gently.

  He nodded. He didn't speak.

  But he should have known. He'd even been warned. But he'd dismissed Roger's call as an attempt to ingratiate himself, a grasping at straws.

  Could he have anticipated that Manley might do something like this? Something, yes. That was the point of the Semtex in his boots. But this? A slaughter? Dead city officials, probably dead cops, dead reporters?

  No.

  Yes.

  He remembered Hector's screams, strapped to that table, naked, terrorized, humiliated. He remembered him later, chained to the basement floor of the clinic, very calm now, resigned, docile, reasoning, showing no sign of the hatred he must have felt. Or which Bannerman had failed to see. No man ever forgives you for making him beg.

  ‘We are not so different, you and me. ” Manley had said that. And he was right.

  Both were outlaws, fine distinctions aside. Both would fight, kill if necessary, to protect what is theirs. When threatened, hit first. When attacked, hit back. Fast and hard. Massive retaliation.

  They were not so different.

  Manley's act—if it was indeed Manley—was not so unlike his own against Palmer Reid. Except for the numbers involved. And the innocents who were killed.

  Manley—if he did it—would probably deny it. But his eyes would smile. And his enemies would know. The Dandy Man did this. And yet a part of Bannerman still could not believe it. An act so terrible, on such a scale, was not likely to go unpunished. The police, the FBI, would never rest. They were not like the Arab terrorists, whom Bannerman now despised all the more, who had all of Syria and Iran in which to hide, protected by governments.

  Someone had to have bought the explosives, made the bombs, driven the cars. Materials would be traced. Someone would talk. Only a madman would think that he could—

  A news bulletin: Videotape, now, of the actual blast. Cameras had been recording the ceremony. There was Covington on the platform, his family, his neighbors, up there with him. Politicians. A band. Then a thunderclap and they were gone. Camera turnbling. Buildings, smoke, sky. The cameraman among the dead.

  The movie flicked back on. The limousine was approaching Westport.

  “We'll stop at Mario's,” he said to Susan. He had called from Washington. The o
thers would be gathered there, watching this.

  She said something, intended to comfort him. He barely heard. Instead he heard Irwin Kaplan. What makes you so goddamned superior, Bannerman? You arrogant, self-indulgent son of a bitch. Lesko, later, agreeing with him. Up to a point.

  And they were right.

  His arrogance had killed all those people. He had tamed Hector Manley. They understood each other. Manley liked him. He would be no threat because Paul Bannerman, that superior judge of men, had said so.

  If it was Hector Maniey.

  A part of him, a part that he did not much like, still tried to believe that it was not.

  The sign said Mario's was closed. A private party.