The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  ”I heard it.”

  “And when your detective has suffered enough pain, I will make you a present of him as well. I will save you for last, Elena. I will . . .”

  “Do I hear the laughter of children, Ortirez?” she asked calmly.

  The line went silent. He had covered his mouthpiece.

  “Ortirez, do you know what a perpetual trust is?”

  He said nothing. Even his silence, she thought, sounded stupid.

  “It is a fund of money that carries out one's wishes even after death. This fund will contain two million Swiss francs. Do you know how much that is in pesos, Ortirez?”

  “Tell me about your fund,” he said, attempting scorn, “and I will laugh at you.”

  “Oh, the bounty will not be on your life, Ortirez. That would be merciful.”

  He waited.

  “First it will be for the eyes of your children and the noses of your women. I will keep them here in a box where I can count them. Next it will be for your disease-ridden cock, Ortirez. I will dry it and frame it so that those who come to my house may make jokes about the great General Ortirez.”

  At six in the morning, Helge shook Bannerman awake. He bolted to his feet. She calmed him. The cowboy, she said, had called again. Again he asked if Susan Lesko had yet regained consciousness. She told him she had not. Bannerman composed himself. He thanked her.

  He stepped inside the curtain that surrounded Susan's bed. No change. He tried not to look at her face, at the bruises and swelling. It would anger him, make him hate. He needed his head clear. At any moment now, their friends from the train would come walking through the front entrance. He took a towel from her nightstand and dipped it into a small pitcher of ice water. This he dabbed against his face. It was better.

  But he was still not ready for them. No word from Carla or Russo. Those coming from Westport would not arrive for three hours at best. Until they were in place, he could not leave Susan's side. He hurried to the washroom where he freshened himself, then to a vending machine where he bought two cups of coffee in plastic containers. He settled in to wait.

  It was not yet sunrise when the killers came.

  Ray and Caroline—he in his cashmere topcoat, hat of Irish tweed, his expression pained, compassionate, she in a silver fox, eyes wide, questioning, caring. In Ray's hands, a thermos of coffee and a box lunch with the logo of Zurich's Dolder Grand Hotel on it. A nice touch, he thought bitterly. He put it aside. Then he hugged them.

  He declined their offer, several times repeated, of croissant sandwiches and good Swiss coffee to replace the metallic brew he'd taken from the machine. It was vile but it was coffee. And it contained no chemicals that might, at the very least, have caused him to sleep.

  For three hours they sat or paced, making small talk, sharing words of encouragement. Caroline Bass busied herself gently brushing the tangles out of Susan's hair, running a piece of ice over her parched and swollen lips. Bannerman stood by the bed, watching her every move, doing his best not to seem unduly suspicious. They were cool. He had to give them that. And patient. They also seemed thoroughly genuine. In their eyes, their actions, he could see nothing but kindness. No unspoken signals flashed between them. None of those searching looks that often follow a lie. There were moments in which he almost began to doubt that they were anything other than what they seemed. Perhaps it was his own fatigue, his own guilt, that led him to embrace suspicions that might not outlast a good night's sleep. Adding to the doubt was the fact that he had never heard of them. A folksy husband and wife hit team of late middle-age seemed likely to have been the subject of an anecdote or two over the years. On the other hand, the only Americans he knew much about were those who had worked Europe and the Middle East. And, in addition, Ray and Caroline gave no sign of having heard of him either. Perhaps that, more than anything, was at the root of his doubts. He could not imagine a team being sent after someone who touched his life without at least being cautioned that he wasn't quite what he seemed to be. It was a conceit, he realized, but a reasonable one.

  But then Helge came into the room and his doubts faded. She nodded politely and handed him two slips of message paper. The first was from Molly Farrell. Their flight had landed. She was awaiting instructions. Bannerman scribbled a reply. The second was from Helge. It said, / have listened. These are the voices from the telephone.

  By the end of the second hour, Bannerman's bladder began to ache. In his mind he saw the car that should now be en route from the airport at Zurich after first securing weapons from a local source. He willed it to hurry. A nurse entered the room carrying towels and a tray of bathing materials. Caroline stood up. She'd been a hospital volunteer back home, she said. If the men would like to stretch theirlegs, she would bathe Susan herself. It would help her to feel useful. Bannerman thanked her but said it could wait. The third hour passed.

  They were well into the fourth hour of their vigil when Bannerman heard, from the corridor outside, the sound of a woman's footsteps followed by a quiet cough. The footsteps went back the way they came. It was all he could do to show no reaction. He let a full two minutes pass before he rose stiffly to his feet. “Too much coffee,” he said, moving toward the door. “While I'm gone I'll see if I can find some newspapers.”

  “You take your time,” Ray smiled and nodded. “We'll be right here with Susan.”

  The men's toilet was just off the main lobby. On his way to it he saw the woman who coughed. She was seated just inside the main entrance, reading a magazine. Bannerman stopped to relieve himself. He took his time washing his hands. Emerging, he saw that Ray was now in the corridor outside the intensive care unit. Bannerman knew what was being done to Susan. He tried to block it from his mind. He stretched and yawned, then turned his back on Caroline's sentry and strolled toward the entrance where he stopped, pretending to watch the passing traffic, within a few feet of Molly Farrell.

  “You got my message?” he asked.

  ”Uh-huh.” She did not look up. “Who's Helge?”

  ”A new friend. Who's outside?”

  “Billy's watching the front. Carla and Russo are covering the back and side.”

  “How long have they been there?”

  “Maybe two hours.”

  “It's nice someone told me.”

  “Count your blessings,” she said through stilled lips. “Lesko and three others are down by the railroad station.”

  “Three others? What others?”

  “More new friends,” Molly Farrell said simply. “They're keeping Lesko away. You have ten minutes tops. Don't push it.”

  He had less than five. Lesko had agreed to ten minutes while Molly scouted the hospital area. It seemed only prudent but the time passed too slowly and he had come too far. His daughter was in there. Shaking off Elena's hand, he opened the door of her Mercedes and began pounding up the hill in the direction indicated by hospital signs. It was a one-way street. The car could not follow. She ran after him on foot. Her two cousins in a second car sped off to intercept him by a different route.

  At the hospital's front desk, Bannerman purchased a copy of the Herald Tribune and returned at a measured pace to the intensive care unit. By the time he arrived, Ray and Caroline were slipping into their coats.

  ”I cleaned up her face a bit,” Caroline told Paul. “Gave her a little of my Shalimar behind the ear.”

  “She'd appreciate that,” he said. “Are you leaving?”

  “Wouldn't think of it,” Ray shook his head. “Me and Caroline just thought we'd get a breath of air before we settle in for the duration.”

  “Good idea,” he forced a smile. “Listen ... I don't know how to thank you for..”

  “Oh, hush.” Caroline kissed his cheek. He kissed her in retum.

  Bannerman listened as their footsteps receded down the corridor. He walked to a supply cabinet where he found a box of plastic gloves. Slipping one over his right hand, he stepped quickly to Susan's bed and drew the curtains fully. Bracing himself, he reach
ed under the sheet that covered her and he parted her legs. He began probing.

  A soft moan came from deep within her chest. One knee quivered, then rose. Bannerman felt a thrill of hope. She was reacting. Still, he probed. His gloved fingers found something hard. Carefully, he eased it backward in the direction of his palm. He had it. He looked down. There was the suppository. Sculpted out of paraffin. He pressed his thumbnail into it. The coating cracked, showing a core of white powder.

  What he should have done, what he'd intended to do, was withdraw his hand and leave the room at once. To follow the killers, to cut off their retreat. But Susan had moaned. She'd reacted. He wanted to touch her again. To watch her eyes this time, to see her chest rise and fall. His fingers probed once more.

  “Come on, Susan,” he whispered. “Come on.”

  She gasped. A sucking in of air. The knee came up higher. “Good girl. That's it. Come on. Come on back . . .” “What the . . .” A voice behind him. “You creep. You fucking creep.” Bannerman went rigid as Lesko's fist slammed into his kidney.

  -7-

  His face was burning as he staggered from the room, the glove and suppository still gripped tightly in his fist. His hurts ran deeper than Lesko's blows. He was furious with himself.

  Stupid. Unprofessional. Humiliating.

  He knew how it must have looked to her father. Banner-man didn't blame him. The man wanted to kill him. He might have, had not that woman rushed into the room just behind him. One of the mystery friends. It was she who'd kept her head. She'd tried to stop Lesko. To pull him off. And failing that, she'd calmly stripped off her stout leather boot and swung it against the side of Lesko's head.

  In the corridor, Bannerman gathered himself as two nurses and a security guard rushed to the source of the shouted curses and crashing fumiture. The pain was easing as he walked toward the hospital exit. But a crushing sadness had come in its place.

  The humiliation, he knew, would pass. Soon enough, Lesko would learn about the suppository. He would be forced to accept that what he saw was not a sick act of manual rape but an attempt to save his daughter's life. But, so could he see the other side of that coin. That Bannerman had used her as bait. And he would want to kill him for that, just as Bannerman would in his place.

  The two killers, husband and wife, had intended to leave by the front entrance. Taking their time. Strolling away up toward the Davos shopping promenade where they had left their car rather than risk having it trapped in the hospital lot.

  But the woman Bannerman knew as Caroline had just reached the automatic doors when she saw Lesko, head down, coat flying, storming up the hill in their direction. Behind him, calling to him, came a fur-wrapped Elena Brugg. She recognized them both. Caroline had seen their photographs, memorized their faces. She tugged at her husband's arm, drawing him back into the lobby. There was another door. A stairwell. She knew that it led to the emergency room. Her husband nodded. He led her through it.

  “You get a gold star for your timing, darlin’,” he said, reaching the first landing. “Right now, I'd say we got one too many fellers named Ray around here.”

  “That was him all right.” She glanced toward the ceiling as if she could see him going by. “You do know that was Elena with him, don't you, love?”

  He nodded. “Shame we have to leave. Won't likely be another time when we got all three of them practically within the swing of a cat.”

  “Everything in its time and place, darlin’.” They hurried along the ground floor corridor. “For now, let's get at least an hour away, down toward Italy. Then we can call like we're still here in town and get the bad news about poor— Goodness, what was that?” A loud crash echoed from above. A woman's voice shouted. Sounds of running footsteps.

  Her husband looked up. “That's about where Susan is,” he said. “With all that bangin' and smashin', maybe that suppository wasn't as slow releasin' as advertised.”

  Caroline frowned. “The suppository was just fine. More likely that big ox, Lesko, tripped over a chair on his way in. Still, we hadn't ought to dawdle.”

  “Let's not get careless, either. When things start to go funny, they tend to go in bunches.”

  “After you, darlin’,” she said.

  Carla Benedict's job, as assigned by Molly Farrell, was to cover the emergency entrance and to cut off any escape uphill toward the town while Molly and Billy McHugh covered the route down toward the railroad station. But Carla, eager to be in on the action wherever it happened, had chosen a position half the distance between the emergency entrance and the main entrance. She and Gary Russo were fifty yards from where they should have been.

  Still, when a middle-aged couple stepped arm in arm from behind a row of parked EMS vehicles, Carla spotted them at once. Slowly, her eyes widened. A smile tugged at her mouth. “Well, I'll be damned,” she whispered.

  “You know them?” Russo asked.

  She shushed him. “I'll tell you later,” she said. She watched them go.

  The couple turned uphill but she waited, expecting Bannerman to appear and signal her to close on them. He was nowhere in sight. When she could wait no longer, she had to choose. Either follow them up a street that offered no real cover or try to get ahead of them and contain them until backup could arrive. She and Russo had scouted every street within three blocks of the hospital. The one to her right ran roughly parallel. If she hurried, sprinting all the way, she could intercept them before they reached a street where there was pedestrian traffic. But Russo, she knew, could never keep up with her.

  “You follow from here,” she told him. “Stay in the middle of the street where Paul can see you if he comes out. Otherwise, keep them in sight. Do not engage. Don't worry about them spotting you.”

  Before he could object, she took off at a lope toward the nearest corner and disappeared from view.

  It was Russo's pride that would kill him. If not in five minutes, then within the hour. True enough, Russo would admit, he was not the equal of the others when it came to a field action. Nor had he had any special training in the art of surveillance, although he tended to regard it as less an art than a matter of common sense. And, true enough, he had no great experience in the techniques of silent killing, an aptitude that, in his view, reflected more a personality disorder than a talent. Still, so be it. They had their specialties and he had his. But for Carla to use him in this manner was an insult. She'd as much as said, just stay out of the way, distract them if you can, but let me handle them. Well, he decided, he might not be a Billy McHugh or a Carla Benedict but he'd show them he was easily the match of that middle-aged couple now puffing up the hill ahead of him. And he was damned if he would stroll like a dummy up the middle of this street waiting for one of them to decide to turn and put a bullet in him.

  Carla Benedict's eyes were shining. The couple that she'd been told to watch for, middle-aged, well dressed, passports identifying them as a Ray and Caroline Bass from Mississippi, were no more from Mississippi than she was. It had been years, fifteen at least. But she'd have known them anywhere.

  The man was Harold Carmody. The woman was Lurene, his wife. She also knew the way they liked to work. Get close in. Get friendly. Pick your time. Then vanish. They always had good paper. Somewhere, she knew, there would be a real Mr. and Mrs. Bass. Probably off on a world cruise or touring India by yak. Some damned thing. Harold and Lurene would leave a trail a mile wide but all it would lead to in the end would be a pair of bewildered vacationers someplace wondering what the hell the arresting officers were talking about.

  Last she'd heard, they'd retired. Bought a house in Lubbock to be near the grandchildren. They must have gotten bored. Maybe, she wondered as she ran, they got into a drug habit and it got expensive. Maybe, somewhere in there, was an explanation of why they'd use cocaine as a weapon. It didn't sound like them. They never touched drugs that she could recall. Hardly even drank. Anyway, Harold liked to work with a knife. Cocaine was dumb. Iffy. Too slow. Carla made a mental note, if they got
a chance to chat, to ask them about that.

  Harold and Lurene, as Carla intended, had spotted Russo.

  *Td say we got company, darlin’.” Harold Carmody nudged his wife as they trudged up a crooked street lined with old converted warehouses and an occasional shuttered shop selling plumbing or electrical supplies.

  She nodded that she'd seen him. “Real sloppy company if you ask me.”

  Russo may have been the only man in Davos wearing a chesterfield coat and a homburg hat. He walked with both hands in his pockets, elbows out, in the manner of Peter Lorre. Worse, he stayed close to the building line, trying to seem casual, pausing now and then to examine the odd window display of toilet mechanisms and drain snakes.

  Carla Benedict's intention was to distract them, to make them wonder. Russo made them certain.

  “Two or three more blocks,” Lurene said, “and he'll see the car we're driving. We don't have time to idle around so he don't. I suggest we either lose him real fast or you gut him.”

  Just ahead of them, the street they were on doglegged about twenty degrees to the left. Half a block farther it veered back to the right.

  “Darlin’,” he said, “we round this little corner here and you just zip on ahead. Wait for me ‘round the next one but let that feller see a little piece of you turnin' out of sight.”