Whistler's Angel (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  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 just 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.”

  In a blink, Harry heard Paul Bannerman come on. “Hello, Harry. Glad you called; I’ve been thinking about you.”

  Bannerman always spoke in a calm, quiet voice. It had often reminded him of Adam’s. Same gray eyes as well. Very soft, oddly gentle except when they weren’t. He could have been Adam’s older brother.

  They exchanged a few pleasantries. How was Susan? How’s the family? He learned that Bannerman’s daughter just had her sixth birthday and that Susan was pregnant again.

  Susan’s father, Raymond Lesko, a great bear of a man, was then living in Switzerland himself. He was a former New York cop who once nearly killed Bannerman after someone else had nearly killed Susan in reprisal for something that Bannerman had done. It wasn’t Bannerman’s fault, but we know how fathers are. In any case, it worked out; a friendship gradually developed, and Lesko – who had been long divorced from Susan’s mother – married into the powerful Brugg family of Zurich. In fact, Lesko and the former Elena Brugg then went on to have a child of their own. Late in life. Harry, who had often had dealings with the Bruggs, had been invited to attend the child’s christening. Since then, he and Lesko had become friends themselves.

  Bannerman asked about Adam and Claudia. “Still together? It’s been what…about a year?”

  “Just about.”

  “Well? Is it working out as you’d hoped?”

  “Yeah, it is,” Harry told him. “I think it’s made all the difference. I think he’s grown up a lot. ”

  “Grown up?”

  “Well…let’s say that it’s made him more balanced.”

  “Harry, Adam’s a long way from being a kid. You’re the only one who thinks of him that way.”

  “You never thought there was something…incomplete about Adam?”

  “Like in you before Andrea? Like in me before Susan?”

  “Me, especially, but good point,” Harry answered.

  “You can’t be Adam’s father forever, Harry.”

  “Yeah, I can. So will you be. Wait and see.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Bannerman, “his year’s almost over. Are you still planning to bring him in with you?”

  “It might take a little selling, but yes.”

  “And what about Claudia?” Bannerman asked. “Do you think she’ll stick with him?”

  “I hope so. I’m betting that she will.”

  “At least as long as she thinks she’s his guardian angel. Does she still?”

  “She more than thinks it; she’s sure of it.”

  Bannerman said, “Well, then maybe she is. I’ll tell you who believes it. It’s Carla. Carla says Viktor had a similar experience after she put those holes in his chest. Viktor saw the white light himself.”

  “You’re saying Viktor came back as her guardian angel?”

  “No, he was only told that he should forgive her and that Carla should stop sending people his way.”

  “Whose way? Viktor’s?”

  “No, the white light’s. So now she tries to only cut them. Case in point, Aubrey’s goon. The one she caught up with at the airport in Denver.”

  “That was Carla?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “The twins tend to brief me in pretty broad strokes. I’d heard that one of them, Briggs, lost most of his face. This is Carla’s idea of moderation?

  “Well, you’d have to say it’s progress,” said Bannerman with a sigh. “I mean, it’s not up there with the conversion of Saul, but she has developed a spiritual side. She’s been doing a good deal of reading about it. Carla’s sorry that she never got to meet Claudia, by the way. She said that she’d like to compare notes.”

  “That…sort of brings up the reason I’m calling. Adam and Claudia are back in this country. They’re down on Hilton Head Island.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Harry Whistler took the ‘Oh, really?’ to mean that Bannerman had been watching the news about the shooting. Bannerman added, “Small world.”

  “Well, it isn’t that small. And neither is that island. The place must get a million tourists a year and…”

  “Even so, you think Adam had a hand in it?”

  “I asked him; he said no, but I’m not sure I believe him. Now you’ll ask me why I doubt him and I simply don’t know, but Adam’s been making himself hard to reach. And my friend, Kate Geller…”

  “The girl’s mother?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is that ‘friend’ as in ‘lady friend?” Bannerman asked.

  “Okay, more than a friend. And she doesn’t like it either.”

  Kate Geller, he explained, was on an airplane at that moment. She’d arrive, assuming that her flights were on schedule, on the island in roughly two hours. He said she’d flown there against his advice. He could reach her on the plane, but it would do little good. Having come that far, she’d keep coming.

  Bannerman asked, “So you’re coming yourself?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “With the twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this is all on gut feel. You have no reason to think that this has touched you or Adam. Aside from Olivia, I mean.”

  “Aside from who?”

  “Olivia Ragland. She’s what I meant by ‘small world.’”

  “You’re…talking about Ragland’s wife? What about her?”

  “You do remember her, don’t you?”

  “Paul, I have never met Ragland or his wife. And Adam said he’d never even heard of them.”

  “You may not have met Ragland, but you have met his wife. Her maiden name was Torrey. Olivia Torrey. She worked as a BBC stringer, remember? Harry, she’s been to your house.”

  “Wait a minute.”


  “And she and Molly Farrell have been friends for fifteen years. Molly’s been trying to call her all morning. They met at about the same time.”

  He did not remember. No, wait. Yes, he did. And Adam could have met her as well.

  He said, “Paul, this is bothering me more by the minute. Too many dots are starting to connect.”

  “I know, I’m getting that feeling myself. But how do the Recons fit in?”

  “The what?”

  “The shooters. Those two Reconstructionist characters.”

  Recons, thought Harry.

  Recon-JC.

  Aubrey’s ledger. Those entries. Joshua Crow. Recon-JC was that dim little light that kept floating just out of reach.

  “Harry?” Bannerman had heard the silence. “Did you just connect another dot?”

  “Yeah, I might have. That ledger that started all this. Either Adam knows damned well how this all ties together or he’s out on a limb and he has no idea. Kate Geller sure as hell doesn’t.”

  “So you’re…thinking Felix Aubrey is behind the try on Ragland. Just to shut Ragland up? Why would he bother?”

  “I don’t know. You’re right. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “We both might be reaching. Just as I did last summer. You remember. That business with Carla.”

  Harry felt his stomach tighten. “What business was that?”

  “Those two knifings in Zurich. I guess you were away; I spoke to one of the twins. Knowing Carla was there, it seemed worth checking out.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Oh, for Christ’s sake. “Yeah, they told me she was clean.”

  “So I owe you. Tell me what you need.”

  TWENTY THREE

  The plane that Lockwood had taken to get to the island was one of two aircraft in the Center’s employ. Both were kept in a hangar out at Ronald Reagan Airport. Both always had a pilot on standby. This was the little one, the Lear, their smallest model. He didn’t like to use it, not because of its size, but because its pilot was a pain in the ass who didn’t always do as he was told.

  He preferred the bigger one, the Hawker 700. He liked that one’s crew a lot better. The Hawker had been seized from an air charter service out in Oklahoma somewhere. A residue of cocaine had been found in its baggage hold and its owner had been unable to account for it. Its pilot and co-pilot, the same two as now, were the ones who had planted the cocaine residue and then blew the whistle on their boss.

  What they got in return was a soft job with Aubrey and a portion of the Hawker’s market value. And that wasn’t even the best part. Once the Hawker was signed over to the Center, it became immune to further searches and sniffs. That meant that the crew could moonlight running drugs with zero risk of ever getting nailed. Lockwood had to like people with that kind of initiative as long as they know where their bread is buttered.

  It was those two who flew him out to Denver last year. It was also them who got him out of there fast when the shit hit the fan in Cherry Creek. They didn’t argue when he said, “Let’s get out of here. Now.” They didn’t ask him, “We don’t wait for Briggs?” They just went. They were not like the jerk who flew the Lear.

  But the Lear was heading down to Florida anyway, so Aubrey told him to use that one. Lockwood asked, “He drops me off? Then how do I get back?” Aubrey answered, “Let me think. Buy a ticket?”

  Little shit. That’s what he said.

  The flight to Hilton Head took an hour and a half. The Hawker could have made it in an hour. Before landing, he told the pilot to make a low pass over Palmetto Bay. He wanted to try to spot Whistler’s boat. The pilot said he had to circle in from that direction anyway, but not below eight hundred feet. The pilot said, “You want lower? Use binoculars.”

  Some day soon, thought Lockwood, he would knock this guy’s teeth out.

  But for now he would let him have his way.

  Whistler’s boat was not where Kaplan said it would be. It wasn’t out at anchor, but Lockwood did spot it. The boat was on its way in. He could make out Whistler and the girl at the wheel. Or rather Whistler was steering. She was standing behind him. She had her arms around his waist and her face up by his neck as if she was cooing in his ear. From a thousand feet up, Lockwood couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think Whistler looked happy.

  You want to see unhappy? I’ll show you unhappy. Lockwood wished that this thing carried napalm.

  The Lear was down within another five minutes. As it taxied toward the terminal, Lockwood spotted Arnold Kaplan. Couldn’t miss him. He was waiting on the tarmac.

  Lockwood, on the whole, was satisfied with Kaplan. You could give him a job to do and it’s done. Three things, however. He argued too much. That time they were waiting for Whistler on his roof, Lockwood nearly threw him off for all his bitching. The second thing was that he wore stupid clothes. He liked to wear hats like Greg Norman, the golfer. Flat hats, wide brim, curled up at the tips. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, big frames, red lenses. And he always wore these ugly sport jackets that had patterns that looked like they came from a beach chair. You could spot him in a crowd a mile away.

  These were not the best outfits to wear on surveillance, but he couldn’t make Kaplan understand that. Kaplan did, however, know a little about bugging. He didn’t know a lot, not as much as he claimed. Aubrey was actually right about that. Most of what Kaplan knew, he had learned on his own. He got books about it from Delta Press; it’s a catalog that sells manuals on shit like that, including how to make bombs. Also, he’d hang around Radio Shack trying every new eavesdropping toy they got in.

  “You know the tap on the mother? It’s better now. It’s good.” Kaplan said this as Lockwood climbed out of the plane and waited for the overnight bag he’d brought with him.

  “Never mind out there. Let’s just worry about here.”

  “No, listen; this is good. I just got off the phone.”

  “Tell me in the car. Let’s get down by that dock.”

  Kaplan’s car was the third thing. He always drove a big Cadillac, a red one, no less. Try to tell the guy he looks like a pimp and he says, “That’s the point. It helps me stand out. That’s until I don’t want to stand out anymore. After that, I go “poof.” I disappear.

  What he meant, not that Lockwood thought it made any sense, was that all that people see is the wrapping. Take away the wrapping; he’s invisible. He had once said to Lockwood, “Look at you, for example. All the time these black suits. Your idea of changing outfits is to buy a new belt. It’s like wearing a sign that says, ‘I’m a Fed’ because that’s how Feds dress in the movies.”

  He was right about one thing. Blacks suits look official. For a long time he wore dark glasses as well because dark glasses make people nervous. But then one day Briggs told him he had scary eyes. Briggs said, “You got eyes that look at people like they’re already dead. They even scare me. You should use that. Lose the shades.” This was back before Briggs became a wuss.

  They had reached Kaplan’s car. Kaplan said, “Can I finish?”

  Lockwood lit a cigar. “Go ahead. Someone called you?”

  “I was saying,” Kaplan told him, “that I just got off the phone with the guy who’s been monitoring her calls.”

  “You mean the mother.”

  Kaplan nodded. “Correct.” He said he thinks the mother might be on her way here. Maybe even Whistler’s father from the sound of it. “On top of that, something else is going on here. There was a very strange meeting on that boat this morning. This Deputy Sheriff; he’s that sergeant, the black guy. He goes out to see Whistler along with the barmaid and one of the owners from the bar where this happened.”

  “Wait a minute. They had a meeting? You saw this?”

  Kaplan nodded. “Through binocs. But I saw it.”

  “Fucking Aubrey. I told him. He thought it was bullshit.”

  “I saw what I saw. But wait, let’s back up. Let me finish with the mother and the father.”

  “Fucking Aubrey.”

&
nbsp; “The mother calls the father like at midnight last night. She gets him in Geneva where it’s dawn. She says she’s calling him because she can’t get through to Whistler. She asks the father, did he hear about the shooting? She says she just saw it on TV out there. The father says, yeah, he just heard.”

  “That’s all he says?”

  “Well, mostly he’s trying to calm the mother down. She says she’s trying not to worry, but she’s getting a bad feeling. She knows who Ragland is and she knows what he’s against. He’s on this crusade against the drug laws and seizures and against guys like you who don’t want them changed because then you’d have to steal someplace else, no offense. She knows that him and Whistler seem to have a lot in common because Whistler’s no pal of yours either. She says she also remembers saying to Whistler, ‘Try not to get my daughter shot again, okay?’ The father tells her that no way would his kid put her in danger, but he says, don’t worry, he’ll check.”

  “So he calls Whistler?”

  “He tried. He couldn’t get through either. He calls her back an hour or so later and he says he’ll keep trying, but he’s sure it’s okay. He says she shouldn’t jump to conclusions. He says his kid wouldn’t go to someone like Ragland without talking it over with him. He says he’d certainly never get the girl mixed up in it.”

  “Then his father’s lying or he doesn’t know dick about what his son turned her into.”

  “I saw her in action, remember? Let me finish.”

  Lockwood twirled a finger. “Short version, okay?”

  “What am I, Readers Digest? Details are important.”

  “Get to where the two parents are on their way here.”

  “Well, the mother’s bad feeling isn’t going away. She tells the father she’s tempted to jump on a plane and go down there and see for herself. Whistler’s father says don’t, but maybe she did. The father tried to get her this morning, her time, and all he gets is her answering machine. He says, ‘Kate, pick up, or call me right back so I’ll know you didn’t do something foolish.’ He says, ‘Kate, I spoke to him. His phone had been off. Don’t worry, they had nothing to do with that shooting. Everything seems to be fine.”