Bannerman's Law

by John R. Maxim

  He felt Carleton Dunville edging toward the door. It didn't matter. Barbara would stop him.

  “Nellie?” He took her hand. ”I swear to you. We would have stopped it.”

  “All she wanted was . . . ”

  ”I know. To see you.”

  ”I thought at first . . . ” She removed one hand from his and reached to the newspaper. She touched Lisa Benedict's cheek as Weinberg had done. ”I thought she might have been my daughter.”

  Carleton Dunville had reached the door. But now he was backing up. “Give me that one,” said Barbara Weinberg. She took the sound-suppressed MP-5 from her husband's free hand and replaced it with her Ingram. Arms outstretched, she aimed the MP-5 at Dunville’s face. “One move, one sound, you're dead.” She mouthed the words.

  “Nellie,” Weinberg said, rising, “we have to leave Sur La Mer. We would very much like you to come with us.”

  She looked at Carleton Dunville. “Make him . . . ” She bit her lip.

  “He'll come too. He'll get us out.”

  “Make him tell me where my children are.”

  “We'll need some things,” said Barbara, backing Dunville to a wall. “Money. Medical supplies. Our files.”

  “Nellie? We're all going to walk down and visit young Carleton. We'll ask him. We'll see what else he has in his safe.”

  Joseph Hickey was on the toilet when his doorbell rang.

  “Yeah?” he shouted. “Who's there?”

  “Pizza,” came the muffled answer.

  “What?”

  “Your pizza order. Mushroom and anchovy, large.”

  ”I didn't order no pizza.”

  A short pause. “Apartment two-A?”

  “Yeah but ... it wasn't me.”

  A longer pause. The bell rang again.

  “Did you hear me? It's not mine.”

  “You get three dollars off,” called the voice through the door. “And you get a coupon.”

  “Look.” Hickey began wiping himself. ”I don't want your coupon and I didn't order your fucking pizza.”

  Another silence. The bell sounded.

  “Jesus Chr—!” Hickey ground his teeth. ”I come out there,” he bellowed, “I'm gonna shove it up your ass.”

  “What?”

  ”I said . . . ” Christ!

  Hickey stood up. He flushed the bowl. The bell rang again. Hickey buckled his belt and stepped into his living room. He glanced out his window. There was the delivery car, parked at the curb. A dim signal tried to push through his anger. It was enough, just barely, to make him want to look through his peephole. He put his eye to it. Some kid in a windbreaker. Homely. Stupid face. Dumb little pizza hat. And he was reaching toward the bell again. Hickey flipped the chain. He jerked the door open.

  “Two-A, right?” The kid looked up at him. ”Pepperoni and sausage.”

  The blandness, the passivity of the young man's expression made him hesitate. Maybe the Special Olympics was going door to door.

  “Less three dollars is six ninety-five,” said Sumner Todd Dommerich. “And you get a coupon.” He held a square insulated sleeve for keeping pizzas hot, one hand at its edge, the other beneath it.

  “Kid ... do you understand fucking English?” Hickey reached for the box, intending to throw it down the stairs and the young man after it. Hickey seized it. He felt its weight. It seemed light. The signal came again, stronger this time. Something about this kid.

  He belched.

  For an instant, it felt like heartburn.

  He blinked.

  The pain stabbed at him again. He felt his legs go weak. His fingers became rubbery. He began losing his grip of the thermal sleeve. The pizza kid took command of it.

  Hickey had no sense of what was happening. The kid's expression had not changed. Now he was offering the pizza again, pushing it to his chest, forcing him back from the door. Hickey staggered, turning. He grabbed the top of a chair to keep from falling.

  Dommerich stepped in behind him. He now held the sleeve in one hand. A long thin knife was in the other. He thought of stabbing Hickey again. Perhaps in the kidneys where it would paralyze but it would not kill too quickly. It did not seem necessary. There were Velcro fasteners on opposing ends of the insulated sleeve. Quickly, Dommerich opened them. He gripped the cardboard inner box and slid it out. He tossed it to one side.

  Hickey saw it fall. It opened, partially, on impact. It was empty. His mind was fixed on that, and what it could mean, when he felt something soft and padded being pulled down over his head and shoulders. It was like a straightjacket. He raised one hand, feebly, to try to stop it. He was too late but the palm of that hand now touched his chest. It felt warm and wet. It was bubbling. Something hit his knees from behind. One, then the other. Bending them. He felt himself being jerked backward, falling. The chair came with him. Someone was catching him. Easing him to the floor.

  Sumner Dommerich walked to the door. He listened there, and closed it. He examined his knife. It was a good one. A subhilt fighter with a dagger blade and a skull-crusher butt. He had ordered it from a catalog. There was very little blood on it. None on his hand. The thermal sleeve was another matter but that would clean easily. From his pocket he took a fresh packet of Kleenex. He broke the seal and pulled one sheet. He used it to clean the knife. He pulled all the rest and gathered them into a ball. With these, he walked to the fallen man and eased himself down across his chest. Hickey was gasping. Sumner Dommerich forced the ball of Kleenex between his teeth.

  Dommerich felt the pulse at Hickey's throat. It seemed uneven but he was sure that the man was not yet dying. Dommerich had been careful to miss his heart but he must have hit a lung. The man's chest made little farting sounds inside the sleeve.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked.

  Hickey's eyes bulged under the weight. They showed more confusion than fear. Dommerich understood that. He still did not know what had happened to him. Or maybe, thought Dommerich, he just could not believe it. That happened a lot.

  ”I know. Wait.” Dommerich pushed to his feet. He opened his pants and took out his penis. He couldn't go at first. He waited, straining. At last a stream of urine came, aimed at Hickey's forehead. Hickey bucked and kicked. Dommerich was careful not to wet his pizza sleeve.

  “Do you remember now? This morning. When you followed Lisa's sister to”—he patted his pocket, then found a page torn from a telephone book, the same as the one he had seen in the blue Chevrolet—“to a girl named Fenerty's house. You pissed on my car there. You slapped me.”

  Hickey’ s eyes showed that he remembered. He squirmed hard, arching his back. Dommerich saw that one eye looked crazy but the other was beginning to lose focus. It was time to finish.

  Dommerich sat down again on the bigger man's stomach. A dull bang, more of a whoomph. startled him. The man gasped and went rigid. Dommerich smelled cordite and he realized what had happened. The man, Hickey, had a gun in his belt. He'd managed to get his fingers on it. Tried to free it. Shot himself in the ass. Served him right, thought Dommerich. But that was too close.

  Dommerich reached into the pocket of his windbreaker. He pulled out a black leather case and from it he took another knife, a skinning knife, smaller. He opened it. Dommerich pressed the butt of his left hand against Hickey’s forehead and put his weight behind it. With his right, he inserted the blade between Hickey's lips. Hickey bucked again. Dommerich slid the curving blade to the corner of his mouth, waited for Hickey to exhale, then ripped. Hickey's left cheek opened to the midpoint of his ear.

  Hickey took more air. He tried to scream. Dommerich held the Kleenex in place with the flat of his skinning knife. Again, he waited for Hickey to exhale. Hickey did. Then Dommerich did the other cheek.

  Hickey arched his back. He hammered the floor with his heels. Dommerich thought of the people below. He made a shushing sound. He brought a finger to his lips and the skinning knife to Hickey’ s eye. Hickey gurgled. He tried to be still.

  “Have you guessed who I
am?” Dommerich asked him.

  Hickey’s eyes said yes. He made a mewing sound through his nose and his brain screamed that this could not be happening. There was no way this kid, this maniac, could know that it was him who . . .

  “It's never been just women,” Dommerich told him. That flat voice. No emotion. “And I wouldn't have hurt Lisa. Did you know she was my friend?”

  Hickey blinked and gurgled. His eyes were wide. He tried to focus them but he could not.

  “You cut her, didn't you. You cut her, just like this, and then you stole from her.”

  Hickey tried to shake his head. His cheeks flapped sickeningly when he moved them.

  “Why?” Dommerich asked. “What did she ever do to you?”

  It ended too quickly. One moment Dommerich saw pain and terror. In the next, Hickey's other eye drifted and his mind went with it.

  Dommerich could see that. He asked the question again, his knife probing deep into Hickey's nose but there was no reaction. There would be no more answers. Dommerich almost wished he hadn't pissed on him. It was satisfying. But it just used up time.

  It was funny, thought Dommerich. The man really did look like his father. At least he did now.

  Dommerich would like to have known why the man killed Lisa. But maybe it was just as well he didn't. Sometimes you find out things and you're sorry you did. What if Lisa was his ...

  Uh-uh.

  No way. Lisa and a slob like this? No way. He didn't even want any of his hair. It was too greasy. And pissed on.

  But he'd like to have known what this man stole from her. Dommerich glanced around the room. There was a television set but he could see from where he was that it had many days accumulation of dust on it. Same with the VCR. No cable box. His dream in the phone booth was wrong. He could see nothing there that Lisa would even want.

  A few more bubbles. One long fart. Then Hickey was quiet.

  Dommerich got up. He stepped around to Hickey's head and began pulling at the insulated sleeve. He dragged the corpse half way across the room before the sleeve came loose. The gun tumbled out first. Dommerich left it there.

  He took the sleeve into Hickey's bathroom—filthy tub—and held it under the shower. He dried it inside and out. He turned to the sink where he washed his two knives and, with cold water, sponged off the blood that had splattered his knees and his windbreaker. That done, he peeked inside Hickey's medicine cabinet. He had no reason for doing so. He always did it when he used people's bathrooms. He suspected that most other people did that, too.

  There was a tape recorder on the top of Hickey's bedroom dresser. It looked like a good one. Also a Nikon camera. He pressed the “play” button of the tape machine but it was blank. He took a fresh Kleenex and wiped the button. Then he began wiping everything else he could remember touching.

  Time to go. Just one more thing.

  He crossed to Hickey's telephone and dialed the number of me Beverly Hills Hotel.

  23

  The Members Wing nurse was still in the common room, cleaning up after tea. Weinberg beckoned to her with the Ingram. Several members looked up. They saw Carleton Dunville, his face flushed, being held by his collar. Nellie stepped into the doorway. She held a finger to her lips. Several grinned excitedly. The man in the yachting costume turned his wheelchair toward them, following the nurse. Nellie held up a hand.

  “Not now, Harland,” she said. “I'll be back to say good-bye.”

  The nurse was too astonished to speak.

  Dunville and the nurse preceded them into the main hall. Weinberg, his wife covering, disarmed the two guards. He herded all four into Carleton the younger’s office.

  “Now what?” said the younger Dunville, spreading his hands. The question was asked with more weariness than alarm.

  “One minute,” said Weinberg. He pointed the two guards toward Dunville’s washroom and suggested they make themselves comfortable. He shut the door behind them, promising to shoot through it if he saw the knob turn.

  Dunville looked questioningly at his father, who only glowered. Weinberg stepped to the desk. Using the back of an envelope, he began making a list. He finished, then showed it to his wife who added several items while he covered the Dunvilles and the nurse. Barbara handed the list to the nurse.

  “We'll want all our personal effects and our medical files. All of Nellie's clothing, her scrapbooks, and cassettes of all her films.” She turned to Nellie. “Is there anything else?”

  She shook her head. “That's nice. Thank you.”

  Now Carleton the younger blinked.

  “Also a full medical kit,” Barbara told the nurse. “Anything we might need to remove sutures and some fresh dressings. Pack them in suitcases and have them here in one hour. If you're ten minutes late you'll find a dead guard in the hall. Twenty minutes and you'll find one of the Dunvilles. Do you in any way doubt that?”

  The nurse glanced at Carleton the elder.

  “Do it,” said the son.

  She hurried from the room. Barbara Weinberg locked the door behind her.

  “Why, for God's sake?” asked Carleton the younger.

  “Because,” Weinberg bit off the words, “your father is either a fool or he's crazy. He wants to kill at least five more people including the three of us.”

  Dunville stared. His surprise seemed genuine. “Who are the other two?” he asked.

  “Your man Hickey. And a girl named Fenerty. Where is Ruiz, by the way?”

  “She is ... out of town.”

  “If out of town is Santa Fe, you can make that six.”

  Dunville looked at his father. “The Fenerty girl? Is that true?”

  “It was ... a consideration. She can embarrass us.”

  The son closed his eyes. He rubbed them. He turned to Weinberg. “Hickey, yes. It's necessary and you know it. I've made the arrangements. But nothing, I repeat, nothing, was to have been done about that girl who called here.”

  The elder Dunville bristled. ”I will decide . . . ”

  “Father. Shut up.”

  Carleton the elder strode to his son's desk. He slapped him. Dunville seized his father. They grappled.

  Barbara Weinberg caught her husband's eye. She motioned him toward her. He seated Nellie, then approached.

  “Um . . . when do you tell me what's going on here?” she asked quietly.

  “What? The family squabble?”

  She shook her head. “Back in Nellie's room. Are we throwing four hundred thousand dollars away just because Dunville heard Nellie talk?”

  “He made up his mind to kill us. I could see it.”

  “But we knew he might.” She raised the MP-5. “That's why we have these.”

  “I'm afraid there's more. You remember that tape he showed?”

  ”I wondered. You didn't want me to see it.”

  “Guess who Lisa Benedict's big sister is. I'll give you a hint. Think of Westport, Connecticut.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Benedict . . . Carla Benedict?”

  “The woman she's with is your height, long dark hair, athletic, plays a strong game of tennis.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Molly Farrell was with the Fenerty girl. Then Fenerty called here. Which means . . . ”

  ”. . . that they both know Lisa Benedict came to Sur La Mer the day she died. But that Sur La Mer denied it. What would you do if you were Carla?'.'

  “I'd come myself. Pick out a Dunville, stick a gun up his nose and ask him again.”

  “Say she gets shot for it. What then?”

  Barbara nodded slowly. “Bannerman comes in force.”

  “Do you want to be here?”

  “No. But where will we go?”

  Weinberg checked his watch. “We'll leave after dark. That gives us a few hours to think about it. Meanwhile, I want another look in that safe.”

  Barbara nudged him. “Fight's over.” She lifted her chin toward the Dunvilles. Young Carleton had his father in a headlock. The
father was slowly sinking to one knee.

  “It's not the closest family I've ever seen.” He remembered the Polaroid of Henry.

  “They don't think we're such hot guests, either. Don't count on being asked back.”

  ”I won't. We're going to hit them for a refund.”

  Barbara turned thoughtful. “Alan . . . Are you still Alan, by the way?”

  “For the time being. What is it?”

  “Before we leave, we should warn that girl.”

  “The one who called?”

  “Either that,” she said, “or leave these two dead.”

  Thirty thousand feet over Colorado, Bannerman returned to his seat after taking an in-flight call from Anton Zivic. He was still shaking his head as he settled in next to Susan Lesko.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  He took a breath. “Would you believe Carla talked to the serial killer?”

  “You're kidding.”

  “It seems that he called her to say he didn't kill Lisa. His name is Claude, incidentally.” Bannerman stirred the ice in his scotch. He wished he'd asked for a double.

  “Well?” She turned in her seat. “Let's hear it.”

  “That's it.” He tossed his hands. “Anton finally got through to her. He told her she'd been identified and that she should stay in her bungalow until we can arrange to stash her someplace else. Carla told him to stay off her phone because Claude might call her back and because she thinks she might have a line on the real killer. Anton insisted that she stay put. She hung up on him.”

  “She's been out there one day. How could she ... ” Susan stopped herself. Nothing about Carla should surprise her any more. “Isn't Molly with her?”

  “Apparently not. She checked in with Anton an hour ago. He told her the same thing but she wasn't at the hotel. However, Yuri Rykov is. Belkin sent him right over when I called.”

  “I'd feel better if it was Colonel Belkin.”

  Bannerman shrugged. “Yuri's young but he's good. I don't think he'll let Carla do anything crazy. Certainly not without checking in with Leo,”

  He sipped his scotch. He hoped he sounded more sure than he was.