The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  Molly Farrell had seen the limo arrive. She opened the door for him. She held it open for John Waldo and Janet Herzog who entered seconds later. They had returned from Lisbon that morning and had waited at LaGuardia to cover his return to Westport. Paul, she realized, had not even noticed.

  The stools at the bar and the tables to the right were full. The television, mounted above the far end, visible from either side of the partition, was on. A New York cable station was providing continuing coverage. The Police commissioner was addressing reporters: ”. . . cooperating with the federal authorities. Whoever is responsible, wherever they are, in whatever hole in whatever country, we're going to find them . . .”

  Or I will, Bannerman said in his mind.

  Anton Zivic approached. He greeted Susan. “There is at least some good news,” he said. “Billy is flying back today, although against the advice of his doctors. Colonel Belkin is escorting him. Kurt Weiss has taken Mrs. DiBiasi to meet his flight. We've told her, incidentally, that he had a tumor removed from his neck.”

  Bannerman grunted. It would be good to have Billy home. Leo might be useful as well should Manley decide to hide out in Cuba.

  “Irwin Kaplan has been trying to reach you. I spoke to him. His message is, ‘Forget what I said this morning. Anything you need, any time, it is yours. That goes for Bart Fuller as well.’ ”

  Bannerman said nothing. But he was grateful.

  “Also”—Zivic gestured toward the screen—“Mr. Covington's body, I'm afraid, has been positively identified. But several members of his family have survived.”

  “He had a niece,” Bannerman said hopefully. “Her name is Lucy.”

  Zivic nodded. “Injured, but not so badly. She was standing directly behind him when the bombs exploded.”

  Bannerman closed his eyes. “Whatever they need, Anton. The family—”

  ”I will see to it.”

  “Money, a place to live—see if they'll come out here.” He turned around, surveying the bar once more. “Where's Carla?”

  Zivic frowned. He asked Susan if he might have a minute with Bannerman. She excused herself, moving to the middle of the bar where Molly stood watching the screen. It was showing older footage now. Something about the force of the blasts. ”. . . casualties, severe damage, even two and three blocks away from the source of the . . .”

  Zivic eased him toward the front window. “You are allowing this to consume you,” he said quietly.

  “No. I'm okay.”

  Zivic shook his head. “Whenever you ask for Carla Benedict, those in need of organ donors rejoice but the rest of us wince. Carla, in any case, is keeping an eye on Belkin. She is on the same flight.”

  “Anton.” Bannerman stared out onto the street. ”I want him.”

  “Have you considered that he might be innocent of this?”

  ”I have. He isn't.”

  “The man has competitors, enemies, perhaps even in his own organization. How very convenient for them that a drug dealer known to be Mr. Covington's enemy will soon be one of the world's most wanted men.”

  “Anton—he knows what I must be thinking. He would have called by now. He would have denied it.”

  “You say that”—Zivic tried to put it gently—“because you know the man?”

  Bannerman understood. And the question stung him.

  “But as it happens,” Zivic added, ”I tend to agree with you. If Manley did this, he is a psychopath who hates you far more than he hated Mr. Covington. What, therefore, might he do next?”

  Bannerman chewed his lip. He might have said hide. But Zivic, he knew, was driving at something else. “Wait for me?” he asked. “Knowing that we'll come?”

  “We, ” Zivic said firmly, “will not come. We will follow you in most things, Paul, but we will not indulge you.”

  Bannerman darkened. That word again.

  “Nor, indeed, will Manley wait for you. There are now thousands of policemen combing all of Manhattan above Central Park, river to river. He would hardly sit waiting for them, to say nothing of you.”

  Bannerman's eyes had narrowed. But now they were blinking, growing wider. They fell on the row of cars parked outside at the curb. One of them, a red Honda just off to his right, had New York plates. A part of him wanted to back away from the glass.

  “Precisely,” Zivic said at his ear.

  “Why now?” he asked slowly. “Why now and not before?”

  “Before, it was foolish. Now it is vengeance. And now, only two or three cars would be required. Not forty.”

  Zivic was right. Bannerman realized that. Certainly about his lack of detachment. He glanced once more at the television screen ”. . . adding to the horror . . . freakish effects of the blast . . .” and at the men and women crowding the bar. Some were looking at him. Waiting. He could not afford to have them wonder. Or to see in him what Zivic had seen.

  “Okay.” He took a breath. “Priorities.” He squeezed Zivic's arm, thanking him with his eyes. “Let's get most of these people into cars patrolling the streets of Westport. I'll tell them what to look for. Send Molly to get whatever she needs in the way of detection equipment. I want Glenn Cook and two other marksmen covering the turnpike overpass on the chance that any bomb would be detonated, or at least witnessed, from there. Then get—”

  “Paul?” Molly's voice.

  Her head was turned toward the TV screen. One hand was raised, beckoning him. He tried to finish his thought.

  “Paul.” Now Susan's voice, more urgently. “Look at this.”

  His eyes followed her pointing finger. On the television screen, a man, injured by the explosion, sat on the sidewalk, the camera some distance away. A uniformed policeman, hat missing, face blackened, was crouched in front of him, doing something with the man's legs. Other men stood watching, all wearing sunglasses, the wraparound kind. They watched helplessly, their expressions stunned, confused. Bannerman moved closer. Something about the one on the ground.

  The man holding the video camera moved in as well. ”. . . freakish—a full block away . . .” It focused now, not on the man but on a spot on the sidewalk. Two stains. Blood. Bits of bone and tissue. The stains were fan shaped, radiating outward. At the base of each the concrete was blackened, cracked. Now the camera moved to the man's legs. **. . . flying shards of steel and glass—one man— watching from a distance—had both feet . . .” The policeman had tied one leg off below the knee. He was looking at the men standing near. He seemed to be pleading. A black man, sunglasses, threw him a belt and backed away.

  Bannerman reached Susan's side. “Wait,” she said. “They'll show him again.” But he knew.

  The camera panned upward. It framed the victim's head. It was lolling, side to side, jaw slack. “Isn't that . . . ?” Susan whispered.

  It was.

  Hector Manley.

  The head came up slowly. The eyes, glazed, in shock, seemed to notice the camera for the first time. They stared into it. They widened. A wildness appeared in them. Hector Manley, pushing with his hands, tried to back away. The policeman held him, urging him to be still. But Manley fought him, striking him, shoving him to one side, his eyes all this while locked on the camera lens. But in his mind, Bannerman knew, it was not the camera that he was seeing. He was seeing a man from who he could no longer run, no longer hide. He was shaking his head, perhaps in denial, certainly in fear. His lips parted, probably to moan or cry out. But it struck Bannerman that he was asking how. How was this done to him?

  Bannerman caught Molly Farrell's glance, his own eyes asking her that question. In reply, she made a pressing motion with her thumb, then turned the thumb toward Manley. She shrugged.

  Bannerman understood. She was not sure, exactly, how the Semtex in Manley's boots had been detonated. All that was clear was that Manley had gone there, to a vantage point he presumed to be safe, to watch Wesley Covington die. He had brought his friends, perhaps even his competitors, so that they could see and tell what the Dandy Man does to those who
put hands on him. And they had seen it. But they had also, in that instant, seen Hector Manley lose eight inches of his height. Perhaps, for a moment, he had even remained upright, bone against concrete, before toppling backward.

  It might have been, Bannerman realized, that the frequency Molly had chosen and the one used for the car bombs were the same. Or, possibly, that the sound waves from the explosion had set off the microreceivers in his heels. Or, as he preferred to hope, that Wesley Covington had seen him, and the thugs with him, and that Covington's thumb, as the bombs took his life, had been poised on the transmitter that Bannerman had given him.

  -40-

  He needed some air. Some time to think. Saying nothing, he slipped through the front door onto Railroad Avenue and crossed to the railroad station. A train was just leaving. He would have the platform to himself.

  Susan found him there ten minutes later.

  He stood leaning against the railing on the platform's north end, his cast and sling resting on it. She rested against it as well, folding her arms. She did not speak. Ahead of them, a block or so away, was the 1-95 overpass. Traffic hummed in both directions. Off to her right there was a willow tree, its long pendent branches just on the edge of turning green. Life goes on, she thought.

  “There was this kid,” she said quietly, “in our building in Queens. Twenty years old. Rotten kid. A sneak-thief and a bully.”

  Bannerman waited.

  “Once, while he was on probation, his mother caught him taking money from her purse. She tried to get it back. He punched her in the face. Kicked her. She told my father.”

  Bannerman sighed. He knew what was coming.

  “My father wanted to put him away. But the mother was too afraid of what he might do when he got out. So my father found him, dragged him up on the roof and—um— had a talk with him.”

  Bannerman nodded. “Until they reached an understanding.”

  ”Yup.**

  “But this kid ended up killing his mother anyway.**

  She shook her head. “Some other old woman. Followed her home from the bank and cracked her skull with a Coke bottle. By that time, as it turned out, he had robbed and beaten at least five others. My father—”

  “Blamed himself. I know.”

  Another shake. ”I was afraid that he might. But he said he didn't. He said he knows he isn't God.”

  “He lied to you.”

  ”I know.” She reached a hand to his neck, rubbing where the sling cut into it. “But he still knows he isn't God.”

  An Amtrak express train roared by behind them.

  She didn't know what more to say. She was reluctant to bring up that drug dealer's name. The one he'd said he liked, sort of. Or to ask if it was true that he, Paul Banner-man, had done that to him. She knew that it was true, somehow. Everyone in Mario's seemed to know it. She saw the awe, the appreciation, on their faces. The legend grows.

  And she'd heard many of them talking, openly, satisfied, she assumed, that she was one of them. The way they spoke, this was only the beginning. The Jamaican's legs would not be enough. And they were glad. Excited.

  She heard Irwin Kaplan's name in reference to his promise of anything Paul might need. Something about a hit list. Open season. No interference. Several references to the drugs and money that would be found. Torch the drugs, the laboratories, their homes. Split the money. She began to doubt that retirement was uppermost in their minds.

  Someone mentioned Leo Belkin's name, wondering why he was coming. Another answered with a rumor that it meant more work but no one seemed to know the nature of it. She heard no hint that they'd been told about that computer. The Ripper Effect. Nor, she felt certain, would Paul or Colonel Belkin ever tell but a few. Molly, probably. Surely Anton.

  It seemed to her that all this should have troubled her. One way or another, it would mean more killing. Much more. But the face of Wesley Covington, the touch of his hand, were still fresh in her mind.

  “You know what I wish?” she asked.

  He turned his head.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  A sad smile. “So do I,” he told her. ”I really do.”

  She hesitated. “Down at Washington National, just before all this came on television, I was about to tell you something.”

  He waited.

  “That I know you'll never quit. Maybe because you don't want to. Maybe because they won't let you. And maybe—”

  He opened his mouth to argue. She shushed him.

  “And maybe,” she continued, “as long as there are people who do things like that—maybe you shouldn't.”

  He was silent for a moment. “You don't mean that,” he said.

  ”I don't love it, but I think I mean it.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Ask me then.”

  He turned to face her. “It wouldn't be for long, Susan. Not much more. Just a few—”

  “Loose ends. I know.”

  She took his arm.

  “Let's go home, Bannerman.”

  End