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The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

Page 44

by Maxim, John R.


  Too late, Lesko saw the fingers of Paul's free hand go rigid. Like the strike of a coiled snake they darted first at Lesko's throat and then his eyes. Choking, blinded, he turned his head away and, attacking by feel, cocked his right fist to hammer Bannerman's face.

  “Stop it.” Elena was at his ear. “It is not what you think.”

  Her shoe was off and in her hand. She hooked his drawn-back arm with one hand and with the other brought the shoe down hard against his temple. Lesko saw a burst of colored light and he heard himself roar. She hit him again, this time with all her strength. Through the flashing lights, Lesko saw Bannerman's hated face rising up toward his own, then nothing.

  “It is the girl's father.” Elena spoke in rapid German to the nurse and two orderlies who rushed to the sound of the violence. “He was overcome. He went mad for a moment.” In his emotional state, she explained, he lashed out at a man who did nothing more than bring his daughter on a holiday to Switzerland. Certainly not a matter for the police. Is there a room perhaps, where she might take him and calm him?

  The nurse looked doubtfully at Lesko, who was trying drunkenly to sit upright, and then at Paul, who assured her in German that there was no damage that would not quickly pass.

  Molly appeared at the glass partition. Behind her, Billy McHugh. Bannerman waved them in.

  “Did they get past you?” he asked quietly.

  “They didn't come out the front,” she whispered, “but the only other exit's the Emergency Room. Carla and Gary are covering it.

  Paul grimaced. Carla tends to leave bodies all over the street. And he wasn't sure how much help Russo would be. “Give me your keys. Billy, you come with me. Molly, you stay with Lesko.” He flicked his eyes toward the woman talking to the nurse. “I take it that's Elena.”

  Molly nodded, surveying the wreckage. “And I take it there wasn't love at first sight between you and Lesko.”

  “She'll explain.” He peeled the plastic glove over its contents and slipped it into his pocket.

  The girl at the message desk flagged Bannerman as he passed. A call from Mr. Zivic in America. Very urgent. Paul hesitated, then took it, first handing the keys to Billy and waving him on.

  “Anton?”

  “How is she?”

  “Better, but I can't talk.”

  “Paul. Listen. Are those Americans from the train still with you?”

  “Yes.” There was no time to elaborate.

  “I have definite confirmation that the Basses of Lumberton, Mississippi, are at this moment in Brussels. Your instincts were correct. There are several possibilities concerning the identity of your two Americans. The most likely is that they are the team of Harold and Lurene Carmody.”

  “They've already tried and missed, Anton. I'll get back to you.”

  “And call Roger Clew. He's most anxious. Molly has arrived?”

  “They're all here. Anton. . . .”

  “She told you I sent her to Chevy Chase yesterday?”

  “There hasn't been time. Anton, I must hang up now.”

  “Call when you can.” Anton broke the connection.

  The girl at the desk gestured toward the largest of several floral arrangements that were awaiting distribution to patients.

  “That is for your lady,” she said.

  “Who from?” He paused at the door.

  “The card says, ‘Prayerfully, Palmer Reid.’ ”

  “I'd say we got company, darlin’.” Harold Carmody had his wife's arm as they climbed the steep, narrow street that led from Davos Hospital to the Promenade, where they'd left their car.

  Lurene nodded that she'd seen him. “It's real sloppy company if you ask me.” He was probably the only man in Davos wearing a chesterfield and he walked with both hands in his pockets like Peter Lorre. “You don't suppose Elena sent him after us?”

  “Weren't time. Anyhow, he sure ain't Swiss.” He could have come over with the father, Harold guessed. He could be almost anyone. The question wasn't worth trying to sort out. The point was he was watching them and Harold Carmody did not want anyone getting a look at their car, even though he'd stripped off that dumb pod, which they turned out not to need.

  “Well,” Lurene shrugged, “we said we were going out for a breath of air. Let's do just that until we get a chance to lose him or gut him.”

  “Darlin’,” Harold shook his head. “I don't know how casual we can afford to be right now. All that bangin' and smashin' back there by Susan might mean that suppository wasn't as slow releasin' as you think.”

  “The suppository was just fine, Harold.” She made a face at the implied doubt of her expertise. “More likely, that big ugly Lesko just tripped over a chair on his way in.”

  “Well,” Harold let out a sigh, “unless you're willin' to bet your life on that, I say we leave this other feller in a doorway or an unlocked car and get on away from here.”

  “Fine by me. How do you want to do it?”

  The street they were on angled upward toward the Promenade in a series of dog-legs, past old stone and stucco buildings that had once been private homes but had long since been converted to warehouses. No pedestrian traffic down this way. No commercial vehicles in motion this early. No people lived here and no tourist was likely to come up or down this way. It was a good place. Some fifty feet ahead of them the street veered sharply left. Harold knew that it veered right again another hundred feet beyond.

  “I'll wait ‘round that corner up ahead. You go on to the next corner and let him see a little piece of you turnin' out of sight.”

  “All right, but don't dawdle 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’.”

  Carla Benedict, who said “I'll be damned” when she saw them slip out the Emergency Room, was tempted to take them then and there. She felt sure that she could handle the man and that Gary Russo could at least keep the woman occupied. But an ambulance or police car might appear at any moment. Better to let them move on a bit.

  The big question: Where was their car? It might be out front, where Billy and Molly were waiting, and they might be abandoning it. They were climbing the hill up toward the Promenade. Maybe the car's up top. Maybe they're going for a taxi. She could see no likely vehicle parked on the street they were taking.

  “I'm going to try to get above them,” she told Russo. It would take a sprint up another way but she could do it. “You follow. For God's sake, don't lose them.”

  Russo looked up the narrow street and frowned. “They'll spot me in the first block.”

  “You worry about keeping them in sight. But keep your distance. And walk in the roadway, Gary, not on the sidewalk.” She patted the shoulder of his chesterfield and took off down a side street at a measured run.

  Lesko was a mess. He held a towel dipped in ice water against the side of his head, where Elena's shoe had reopened the cut made by Loftus's gun four days earlier. His eyes were red where Bannerman's fingers had jabbed them, and his throat felt as if a hole had been poked through it.

  Elena was explaining, trying to explain, what he'd seen when he parted the curtains around Susan's bed. Lesko heard the words but their meaning came slowly to him. His mind held the picture of Bannerman's fingers, those same fingers, digging deep into his daughter as her wired up body writhed in response. It was a scene from a sick porn movie.

  “He was saving her life, Lesko.” These words came from Molly Farrell.

  Lesko was beginning to accept that. It was the way Bannerman had behaved that convinced him more than anything being said. There was no fear in his expression, no embarrassment, no sense of being caught in the act. He just went on with what he was doing even after Lesko threw a punch that must have half-paralyzed him. And those thumb jabs at Lesko's eyes and throat. The guy was hurting bad but he was cool, precise. He'd also pulled those jabs. Lesko knew that. Bannerman could have split his eyeballs like grapes if he'
d wanted to.

  “Where is he now?” Lesko looked at Molly.

  “He and Billy went after the man and woman.”

  “He's going to kill them?”

  “Not if he can help it. Not right away.”

  “I want them.”

  “I know you do. We'll see.”

  “I want them,” Lesko showed his teeth. “And then I want a nice, private talk with Bannerman because before I crush his face I want him to explain why he gave those two another crack at my daughter just so he could nail them.”

  Elena explained again about the suppository. An insurance device. That it would melt, depending on its coating, in anywhere from twenty minutes to four hours and would have brought on irreversible cardiac arrest before any trauma team could find its cause.

  “He still took a goddamned big chance. What if they gave her an injection instead? Or stuck an ice pick in her ear?”

  “They couldn't, Lesko,” Molly explained patiently. “It's an Intensive Care Unit. The way Susan's wired, any direct assault would have set off an alarm the instant her system reacted to it. It was you, charging in here, that put Susan at risk. Paul knew what he was doing.”

  “Is that so?”

  “As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Well, I'm getting very fucking tired of Paul Bannerman knowing exactly what he's doing. I'm getting fucking tired of all of you.” He threw his ice towel on the floor and stomped off in the direction of Susan's bed.

  The curtains had been drawn again. The nurse parted them to let two doctors enter. She saw him approaching and held up a hand that said he should wait. Now she showed ten fingers. Ten minutes. And now an upraised thumb and a nod of encouragement. Lesko felt his eyes go moist.

  He looked toward the room where Elena and Molly waited. Then toward the front entrance. Then at his watch.

  Ten minutes is ten minutes.

  He walked quickly down the corridor.

  Billy, in the rented BMW, was exiting the hospital parking lot when Paul emerged. Paul took an extra thirty seconds to find another unlocked car, push it into the narrow curb cut of the lot, lock it and leave it blocking the exit on the chance that the Basses—or whoever they were—had indeed left their car there and would double back for it. Failing that, Paul could see only two other directions they might have taken. One was toward the station. Too easily trapped down there. Up toward the town was more likely. Billy agreed. He dropped the BMW into its lowest gear and started up the hill.

  “Carla and the Doc aren't armed,” Billy said as he passed Paul a Belgian automatic and laid his own silenced Ruger across his lap. “Molly wouldn't give them any ‘cause they’d been made. Swiss cops would have put 'em away.”

  “She was smart.” He peered ahead. “Billy, if Carla spotted them going up this way, what would she do?”

  “She'd split off from the Doc and try to get ahead of them. The Doc isn't real good at this, so, I was her, I'd tell him to stay back and be a decoy. Slow 'em down, get them looking over their shoulders.”

  “Good call, Billy.” Paul pointed up ahead and to the left. “There he is.”

  “Not what I had in mind,” Billy shook his head ruefully. “Hugging along that wall's a good way to get his throat cut.”

  Had Billy looked in his rearview mirror, he would have seen Susan's father, on foot, chugging up the hill behind them.

  Gary Russo was damned if he was going to walk like a dummy up the middle of the street where they could see every move he made. He might not be all that expert in surveillance techniques, which he was tired of hearing, but he knew common sense. Out in the street like that, he might as well be shouting and waving his arms.

  As he approached the corner at which the man and woman had turned, he could see that it angled off about forty-five degrees to the left. If it was the same as the last stretch, it would soon zigzag the other way, which means they would be out of sight if he didn't hurry. He stopped at the corner and peeked around it. They were gone already. Damn. Lose them and he could look forward to about a month's worth of crap from Carla.

  Rounding the corner, he lengthened his stride. As he passed a recessed doorway, his eyes locked upon the corner ahead: his inner brain told him that something was wrong. There was a shape there and now he sensed movement. His head turned to glance over his left shoulder, but a hand seized it before he could focus. A gloved hand. Clamped across his face, jerking him backward. Another arm, he felt it, coiled around his waist. At its end a sharp, stinging point had punctured his chest. He felt it gouging at his ribs as it probed for a path to his heart. Russo choked on his own scream.

  ”Car-mo-dyyy.” A distant call. Heard through a red veil of pain. Carla's voice. Then the squeal of a car's brakes. “This way, Carmody. Up here.”

  Who was Carmody? a part of Russo's brain wondered dimly.

  The gloved hand came down from his eyes but seized him across his burning chest. He could see, through welling tears, but he could barely breathe. He looked down past the arm and saw, to his horror, the long, thin knife, blood running down its blade, that had entered his body. He could not tell how far except that he saw no tapering at all, only parallel edges of steel.

  “Just ease it back out.” A voice to his right. Billy's voice. Oh ... Billy. Oh, good . . . good. His head shuddered in the direction of the voice. There was Billy, his face dipped low over the barrel of a silenced pistol aimed at a point just behind him. And Paul, in the seat next to Billy, 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 backward. He wanted to shriek from the pain, but he 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 pressed against the woman's temple.

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

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

  “Paul, my friend,” the man who'd been Ray Bass pressed his back against the padlocked door, “I'd say we got ourselves a standoff here.”

  Paul rounded the BMW. Carla caught his eye and motioned down the hill. There was Lesko, slowing, breathing heavily, trying to assess the scene he'd come upon.

  Paul's expression didn't change. His eyes locked back upon those of Harold Carmody.

  “Billy,” Paul held out a hand toward the Ruger, “give me that and get the trunk open.”

  “Darn it,” Carmody clucked his tongue. “I just knew there was somethin' about you.” He shrugged and sighed. “Anyhow, Paul, put that thing up. Shoot me and you as good as kill your friend here.”

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

  “Paul?” Carmody's voice went higher as Bannerman shifted the Ruger into his left hand and approached. “Paul, it weren't personal. Fact is, me and Lurene liked you two real…”

  Paul grasped Russo's right hand, which was hovering feebly over the hilt of the knife. He lifted it, then fired three times through Russo's armpit.

  Lesko was the first to return to the hospital. He came alone. The look in his eyes, thought Elena, who was waiting for him, was strangely distant.

  “Did you find them?” she asked.

  Lesko nodded. “I want to see Susan.” He walked past her into Intensive Care, and through the curtain surrounding Susan's bed. Elena followed.

  “The news from the doctor is good,” she said to his shoulder. “She's responding. He says the coma has become sleep. Her lips have been moving.”

 

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