Bannerman's Law

by John R. Maxim

  “Let it fall, please,” Weinberg said. “Come talk to them if you wish.”

  Darby hesitated. Defiantly, he kept his weapon. But he walked to the Mercedes.

  ”I asked you to drop that and you didn't,” Weinberg said quietly. “You're still alive because I'd prefer not to upset Miss Dameon. It is not an overwhelming preference.”

  Darby smiled. Contemptuously. He raised the rifle, slowly, and pressed the safety. Taking it by the barrel he held it out, at arm's length, pointing the stock toward the shadows of the chateau. He called a name. Another man, unarmed, came forward. He took the rifle from Darby and then retreated.

  Weinberg grunted. A harmless show of bravado, he decided. For the good of the troops. He would forgive it.

  “Down to cases,” he said. “Do you see any way of killing us without killing them?”

  “You won't get off the grounds,” Darby answered. “The gate is blocked.”

  “Which means we drive down to it and just sit?’'

  “That's up to you.”

  Weinberg backed into the driver's seat. “You drive,” he said to Darby. “I'll sit in the middle.”

  Darby folded his arms. That smile again.

  Weinberg lowered his voice. “Three seconds, Mr. Darby, and you'll have no knees.”

  “Darby,” Carleton the younger shouted. “Get in the damned car.”

  The security chief spat. But he obeyed.

  At the foot of the long winding driveway, the Mercedes headlights washed over a maintenance truck, parked sideways, that blocked the exit. Weinberg told Darby to stop. He could see most of the gate. Through it, he could see two expensive homes, well lit, on the other side of Tower Road. One seemed to be entertaining guests. Weinberg saw no guards near the gate but he knew there would be at least four, two on each side, hidden in the sugar pines.

  “Do they have silenced weapons, Mr. Darby?” he asked.

  No answer.

  Weinberg turned to address Carleton the younger. “Tell him why I ask. Those houses should give you a clue.”

  “Darby,” Dunville said through his teeth. “We cannot have shooting here.”

  Weinberg nodded. “Tell him what I'll do if they have silencers.”

  “He will fire at that house, Darby. The one giving a party. The people inside will notice. They will call the police.”

  Darby chewed his lip. Weinberg brought the Ingram to his ear. “Do you need more time to think?” he asked.

  Darby closed his eyes. “Mr. Dunville?”

  A sigh, behind him. “Move the truck, you ass.”

  ”I let you pass,” Darby protested, “you got no protection.”

  “Compared to what? This? Move the goddamned truck.”

  Darby sagged. He leaned out the window and called instructions. Two men appeared, moving cautiously. They carried assault rifles. No suppressors. One climbed into the truck and released the hand brake. The truck coasted backward. The rear wheels leapt a drainage culvert and became mired. The other guard, keeping one hand raised, touched a panel on one of the stone gateposts. A motor whined. The gates swung open.

  On Weinberg's signal, Darby drove forward. On another, he turned left, past several houses, then stopped. Weinberg adjusted the rearview mirror. There was no sign of pursuit. He prodded Darby, forcing him from the car. He exited behind him.

  “Go home now,” he said. “Enjoy your life.”

  Darby glared, backing away. “Next time, wiseass, you won't have that . . . ”

  Weinberg ignored him. He leaned toward the rear window. “Gentlemen, remove your neckties, be comfortable. Barbara, if you would drive, please, I'll sit with our friends.”

  “If you hurt them . . . ” Darby backed away farther.

  Weinberg could only shake his head. The man was an embarrassment.

  Ten minutes later, Barbara driving, the Mercedes picked up Route 101 at Montecito. They went one exit, doubled back, then doubled back again. Satisfied that they had not been followed, and that no one had waited to intercept them, Barbara left the highway at Carpinteria and began following signs pointing inland to the Casitas Reservoir. It was an area of rolling hills, few houses, frequent brush fires. Carleton the younger noticed the signs.

  “Are we to be trussed and drowned?” he asked.

  “You'll have a good walk, that's all. Try to relax.”

  The elder Dunville let out a breath. His hands were shaking.

  “In fairness to Darby,” said Weinberg, “there was not a great deal he could have done. But you might talk to him about all that silly posturing.”

  Darby was the least of young Carleton's concerns. “You're really going to let us go?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Dunville drummed his fingers on his knee. ”I would have let you go too, I think. But if you keep those files there are people I must . . . alert. They will want you hunted down.”

  “If they find me,” said Weinberg, “I'll have something to trade. I will soon, however, be the least of your problems.”

  Dunville looked at him, thoughtfully. “You know who did that to Hickey, don't you.”

  A nod. “If I'm right, you'll never know what hit you.”

  “The girl's sister?” He seemed doubtful. “That little redhead on the videotape?”

  That little redhead. Weinberg chewed on the phrase. He chose not to enlarge on Carla Benedict's credentials.

  “Then who was the man?” Dunville asked. “The man found with Hickey.”

  If your man didn't kill him? Your worst nightmare. “No idea.” he said. Nor was there any point in mentioning Bannerman. To do so might take away his edge. Weinberg had said just enough, he hoped, to have the Dunvilles looking over their shoulders.

  Young Carleton became thoughtful again. “On another matter,” he drummed his fingers, “Luisa Ruiz. Is she dead?”

  “If she found my machine, very likely. Yes.”

  Dunville shook his head. He seemed saddened.

  “She was born there, wasn't she?” Weinberg asked. “In your baby farm.”

  “Yes. By one of the guards.”

  “And none of your special guests wanted her?”

  “One man took her. Treated her very poorly. Then returned her. He asked for one with better skin. What he really wanted was a fresh one.”

  Weinberg heard anger not yet cooled. It was clearly genuine. “How long had he kept her?” he asked.

  “Four years. Until she was eight.” Dunville stared ahead. “He . . . damaged her,” he said at last. “But she had good qualities. She was a better person than you know.”

  Weinberg glanced toward the rearview mirror. He saw Barbara's eyes looking back at him. He regretted raising the subject.

  “Who is he?” his wife asked, her voice oddly flat.

  “Barbara…”

  ”I want to know. Who damaged her?”

  Dunville spread his hands. “It was twenty years ago. It was not the first time or the last. But, whatever you may think, nothing like it ever happened again. Not on my watch. Not until this thing with Henry. I would have destroyed anyone who harmed one of our children.”

  Weinberg found that he believed him. He nudged the father. “What about on your watch?” he asked.

  Carleton the elder turned his head. His lips moved but he seemed unable to speak. Barbara looked into the mirror, first at him and then at his son. She felt, rather than saw, disgust on young Carleton’ s face. It answered her husband's question.

  Weinberg leaned forward. “Take any of these dirt roads,” he said. She took the next. Weinberg freed one hand of its weapon and, gently, massaged the shoulder of his wife. He looked down, and saw that her own hand was entwined with Nellie's. Weinberg squeezed Nellie as well. She turned her head and whispered something.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. ”I couldn't hear.”

  She turned. She stared, clear-eyed, at Carleton the elder. “He'll hurt my friends,” she said, her voice stronger. “Harland and the others. He'll hurt, the ones who cheered.�
�

  “He won't,” young Carleton promised. ”I won't let him.”

  With a flashlight found in the glove box, Barbara led the Dunvilles from the car. She had taken the MP-5. Her husband stayed with Nellie. He had taken the first aid kit from the trunk.

  She walked behind them, her flashlight searching for a route that showed no sign of human traffic. They climbed a low hill to its crest. Barbara stopped. Below, she could see the Casitas Dam, marked by a necklace of lights and, well beyond, the glow from the city of Ventura. To her left, the leeward side of the hill sloped down into darkness. A sweep of her beam showed a dense thicket of chaparral. Low dwarf oaks and thorny brush. A body might lie there for years. She considered it. But her husband had told them they would not be harmed.

  Carleton the younger read her mind. Or part of it. He trembled, hugging himself although the night was warm. He looked up at the stars. “May I have a minute?” he asked. He lowered himself. He sat.

  The older Dunville turned ashen. “What? Wait.. ” He stared at Barbara, then at his son. He backed away from both. “You don't have to hurt me,” he sputtered. “You can be free. I can stop this.”

  “Can he?” she asked his son.

  He looked at his father. With contempt. ”I don't know,” he answered.

  “Can you?”

  ”I don't think so. Not now.”

  “He's wrong.” The elder Dunville stepped toward her. “No one has to know you have those files. Give me your word that you won't use them and I'll see to it.”

  The son looked away.

  “Can I believe him?” Barbara asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Tell me what you would do.”

  Carleton the younger spread his hands. “I'd like to let this go away, end here. But it can't. We don't know how much Hickey said before he died. Or to whom, really. Too many people are involved now. Outsiders. I think it's out of control.”

  “Then why don't you run? Choose a new life of your own.”

  A rueful smile. “I've made agreements. I'll try to protect them. But failing that . . . yes, I might run.”

  He sounded so tired, thought Barbara. It would almost be a mercy to shoot him. But it would serve no purpose otherwise. If these two men, and they alone, knew that Axel and Bonnie Streicher had been to Sur La Mer, that they'd taken those files, that they'd taken Nellie Dameon who had seen and heard so much, the two surviving Dunvilles would have been dead already. But the entire staff knew. The guards knew. They would tell that man who called ... the one who had gone to kill Hickey . . . and who might even be an alumnus himself. He would have to warn the others. Even if the Dunvilles could not.

  ”I won't run,” said Carleton the elder. ”I can fix it. This was all Henry's fault. You know that. And you know I fixed him.”

  He had stepped nearer. Barbara swung the MP-5. He backed away.

  “The files don't matter. They were only copies. No one saw you reading them. Only Ruiz and you say she's dead. No one saw you take them. Only that old woman. If you'll leave her, let me produce her, I can make them believe that you have nothing.”

  Carleton the younger sighed deeply.

  “Can he?” she asked.

  “Just take her. Take her and go.”

  “What would he do with her?”

  “He could not allow her to be questioned. Not Nellie. Not the other members. And, I expect, not me.”

  “But you're his son.”

  “So was Henry.” Dunville picked up a stone and tossed it. He cocked his head toward his father. “Do I need to tell you who his mother is?”

  Barbara stared.

  From behind her, out of sight, came the impatient tap of a horn. Her husband, she knew, would have his bandages off by now. She was anxious to see. Her own would go next.

  Carleton the elder was talking again. Arguing. She heard only bits of it. No denials about Nellie. A dismissal. That she, poor sick Nellie, had been used to breed him was a detail of no consequence. Barbara thought about mothers and their babies. She saw, in her mind, the child she might have had once, but now could not.

  Barbara turned downhill. She took a few steps, then slowed. She felt tears on her face. Her shoulders straightened. Barbara looked at the sky.

  She turned and fired.

  She emptied half her clip.

  “It looks . . . good,” Nellie told him.

  There was not much swelling. No angry lines of sutures. The skin was pasty, damp to the touch, and the thick stubble of beard made him look like a vagrant. But these were nothing that a bit of sun and a razor could not cure. She brushed at his flattened hair, arranging it with her fingers.

  The left eye was the last to be uncovered. The lid and lashes were smeared with a yellow ointment but, once wiped clean, its appearance was almost normal.

  “Can you see with it?” she asked.

  Weinberg dabbed at the eye with cotton. “It's blurred. But I think it's clearing.”

  Nellie pulled back. “You don't look very Jewish,” she said. “You look like George Bancroft.”

  He peered into the rearview mirror. “Who is George Bancroft?”

  “He plays gangsters, mostly. Or he did. That's what you look like. A gangster.”

  “Wonderful,” Weinberg grunted.

  She ran a finger down the clip of the Ingram. “George used tommy guns. Not these stubby little things.”

  Weinberg glanced down at the seat. The left eye, he noticed, seemed to lag behind. He also noticed that his wife had taken the silenced MP-5. Just in case, he supposed. All she was to do was start them walking in a direction where they were not likely to find a telephone.

  “Where we gonna hide out?” Nellie asked, affecting a gun moll accent.

  Weinberg grinned. “For tonight we'll find a motel. Get some rest. After that, we'll see.”

  ”I know a place. We could go to Tom's ranch. We could camp out by the lake.”

  “Um . . . maybe something a bit more comfortable,” he suggested.

  Nellie heard the hesitation. And she saw his eyes. ”I know,” she said, a bit sadly. “It's been a while.”

  But she had just been there. She was there, with Tom, because she didn't want to be in Carleton Dunville's office. And she could go there again, any time she wished.

  “How about a boat?” she asked. “We lived on one for six weeks once. I was doing a movie about rumrunners.”

  Weinberg pursed his lips. “That's actually not a bad idea.”

  He was prone to seasickness. It was in his file. They would remember it, and probably not expect him to go anywhere near water. A cabin cruiser, well appointed, could probably be rented for cash with no questions asked. It was one of the benefits of the drug culture. Pay cash and you're presumed to be a dealer. And, therefore, left alone. Nor is a boat, in a place like Marina Del Rey, all that easy to approach unobserved.

  “Yes, Nellie,” he said. “That might be an excellent idea.”

  27

  It took only minutes to find Yuri's car.

  The Hertz tag with his keys gave its description and the plate number. The two women waited for a break in the traffic. More police cars were arriving. Molly recognized the detective, Huff, whom they'd seen at Lisa's apartment. The two FBI agents might not be far behind. Molly eased into the street and turned in the direction of Beverly Hills and the telephone in their bungalow.

  Twenty minutes later, nearing the parking lot of the Beverly Hills Hotel, she spotted a short, white-haired man in shirtsleeves, with powerful arms and the face of an unsuccessful boxer. He stood near a car with its hood up, as if waiting for road service. Molly pulled to the curb behind him. She blinked her lights.

  John Waldo glanced up once, then again, noting the make of car she and Carla appeared in. Without a word, he closed his hood and started the engine. He made a U-turn. Molly followed. She knew that she was being led to where Bannerman was staying.

  “Could he know?” she asked Carla.

  Carla looked at the dashboard clock.
Not quite an hour had passed since the first policemen appeared. ”I don't think so,” she answered. Not in time to have sent John Waldo for them. She flipped on the radio and found a news station.

  Molly drove for another fifteen minutes, no bulletins from Burbank, until Waldo's car signaled a turn into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn in Brentwood, not far from the UCLA campus. She followed it to the rear of the inn where his headlights picked up the form of a much larger man in a red windbreaker who seemed to be strolling aimlessly.

  Waldo swung around him and stopped. His trunk popped open. Molly watched as Billy McHugh reached into the trunk and lifted two suitcases from it. She could see that they were heavy. The bags, which she was sure contained clean weapons, strained at their handles. Billy closed the trunk. The car drove off. Neither Molly nor Carla bothered to memorize the plate number. Waldo never, while in the field, drove the same car two days in a row. Although he often slept in them.

  Quickly parking Yuri's car, she and Carla followed Billy, who was now walking toward the back entrance of the Holiday Inn. He climbed one flight of inner stairs and proceeded down a corridor, rapping on a door as he passed it. He continued on. The door opened as Molly and Carla passed it.

  They saw Bannerman's smile. Nice suit and tie. Just another traveling businessman. They saw those eyes, curiously gentle, but he also saw theirs and the smile faded.

  “Come in,” he said quietly. “What's new with Claude?”

  By the time the Lexus passed Ventura, Sumner Dommerich was sure. It could not be coincidence. He knew where the two men were going.

  They would get off at Santa Barbara, make two rights, follow the signs toward Montecito but then go left at the top of the hill. Dommerich had been there once today already.

  For the most part, he could only see the driver. He was keeping to the middle lane, being careful not to go more than five miles over the limit even though the man in the back must have been bleeding all over the seat. Dommerich didn't blame him. It would be really dumb to go shoot someone, which he was pretty sure he did, and then get stopped for speeding.