The
Bannerman Solution
BY
John R. Maxim
CHAPTER 1
Lesko hated four o'clock in the morning.
Lying in bed. Thinking too much. Having those crazy dreams. He didn't mind the regular kind of dreams. He never remembered them anyway. And nightmares never bothered him because with a nightmare, he always figured, you're more or less along for the ride. You're also fully asleep. What he hated were the dreams where you lie there, not quite awake and not quite asleep. You're getting all upset about something, usually something dumb, and you know it probably isn't real but you can't quite wake up enough to shake it off.
He heard a police psychiatrist say something once. About four in the morning. About the thoughts and dreams that come then. He said that four o'clock in the morning is when most people find out what it's like to be insane.
Lesko could believe it.
Up until the time David Katz got killed, most of Lesko's four-in-the-morning dreams were just plain stupid. There was one time he stewed for what must have been an hour over a tree that fell on his car during a hurricane. It would take forever to cut it up because all lie had was this little hacksaw out in his kitchen drawer. The thing was, there wasn't any tree and there wasn't any hurricane. He didn't even own a car.
Go Figure.
Another time he laid there convinced that his ex-wife had shown up asking to move back in with him. But she didn't want to be a bother so, she said, she'd just sleep on the floor of his hall closet. All he could think of was how she'd crush his shoes if she did that, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying so..
Lying fully awake at four in the morning wasn't any bargain, either. Not that Lesko was what you'd call a worrier. And nothing much scared him anymore. Not after twenty-six years as a street cop. He always figured: Something bothers you, you fix it fast and forget it. But that doesn't work at four in the morning. You lie there, feeling lonely, feeling sad, remembering old hurts. Sometimes you feel afraid. You don't know why or of what.
If anything was going to scare him at that hour, you'd think it would be the ghosts. There were two or three of them over the years. People he knew. At four in the morning you can find yourself talking to dead people and forgetting they're dead. He'd had dreams like that about his father a few times. They'd have conversations. Nothing weird. Ordinary stuff. His father would be sitting in that chair talking about the Knicks or the Yankees. One time, his father was up by the ceiling looking for a short in the light fixture and he asked Lesko to pass him the pliers. Lesko thrashed alll over his bed looking for them until he woke himself up. He felt like crying. Like a kid. But he didn't.
The funny thing was, come to think of it, his father died getting shot in the head, just like Katz. But that's where the resemblance ended. He didn't mind the dreams where his father came. Katz was another matter.
Katz started coming the day after he died. Or Lesko started dreaming he did. Katz, who didn't have hardly any face left the last time Lesko saw him in daylight, comes strolling in the next morning, like nothing happened, to pick him up for roll call. He's carrying, like always, a deli bag with either two bagels or two Danish, slamming kitchen cupboards, bitching that he can't ever find a clean cup in this place, you're such a slob, and come on, get your ass out of bed. That happened five mornings stray. lit in the beginning. At first, Lesko would wake himself up yelling that he was going to take Katz's face off all over again, but by the fifth time Lesko wouldn't even lift his head when Katz walked in. Not that Lesko believed in ghosts, but Katz did stop coming, or Lesko did stop dreaming about him, as soon as Lesko squared things for him. But now lately Katz was starting. in again.
Lesko had pretty much learned to ignore him. But it seemed that the longer Katz was dead, the better he learned to be aggravating. This time, this morning, he walks in, already chewing on a buttered bagel, and says the same stuff about let's get down to roll call and this place stinks. Except this time he also walks over to the chair where Lesko tossed his clothes the night before. He picks up the jacket or the pants and holds them out with two fingers and he says it's not bad enough your clothes are ugly but they smell like a zookeeper's shoe. He says if Lesko is going to keep buying his clothes at Goodwill Industries he should at least pick out something from after the Second World War.
This annoyed Lesko because although it was true he got sloppy and careless for a while, he was dressing much better now because his daughter started making him go shopping with her. And not at Bond's, either. At Barney's. It also annoyed him that Katz thought he knew so much about fashion because what Katz dressed like was a Hollywood pimp. Hollywood, as it happened, was where Katz got his ideas about clothes in the first place when they flew out there a few years back to pick up a fugitive. All of a sudden Katz starts wearing these flashy sport jackets, turtleneck shirts, gold chains, loafers with tassels, a tan from a tanning machine, and that damned gold watch of his. Lesko thought he looked stupid. Even if Lesko wasn't what you'd call real up-to-date on men's fashions, there were a couple of things he knew. One was you don't look good in turtlenecks if you have a big double chin because from the front you look like you have two sets of lips and from the side you look like a fucking pelican. Another was you don't wear gold chains outside a turtleneck, he didn't think. The third was if you're a cop you don't show off gold chains at all and you sure as hell don't wear a two thousand dollar Rolex watch unless you can goddamned well prove you hit the lottery. "Where'd you get the money?" Lesko heard himself asking. His face was buried in his pillow but he could see David Katz as clearly as if he was sitting up looking at him. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or remembering.
`I hit this trifecta, " Katz said cheerfully as if for the first time. "I put down five bucks and I walk away with almost three large."
"Yeah? What track? Tell me the horses.
"It wasn't a track. I went to Jai-alai, up in Connecticut."
"Don't bullshit me, David," Lesko warned.
"Come on, Ray. Lighten up. I got witnesses.
Lesko believed him about the witnesses. Smart cops always had witnesses. They'd take some friends to jai-alai or the track, place some bets, then after the race they look up at the pari-mutuel board, get this shit-eating grin and say they'll be back in five minutes. Then they go back where the cashiers are, reach into their pockets, count out an amount that's the same as the pari-mutuel payoff on the board, then go back and flash the money. Where'd he get the money? The track. Honest. We all saw him hit.
Lesko must have had that conversation with Katz at least twice while he was alive and a half dozen more times after he was dead. Lesko wanted to know not only about the watch but about Katz's two new jackets, one ultra suede, and the other cashmere, which must have cost eight hundred bucks between them.
"If you're dirty, David, I'm going to kick the shit out of you. You know that, don't you?"
But Katz maintains his look of wounded innocence. Come on, Lesko, he says. The watch came from the jai-alai hit and the jackets came from overtime. Yeah, overtime. What's wrong with that? Harriet gets the regular paycheck to pay the bills. Overtime is found money, right? It's to enjoy. I buy some nice clothes, Harriet gets a new dress, maybe we go down to Florida once a year, maybe we take a little cruise down to Bermuda. Hey, Lesko. You and Donna never did that? With what you save on clothes you could have gone to Europe. Would I have started giving you shit about being dirty? Give me a break.
"Then how come you're dead, you son of a bitch?" This was where the dream always changed.
Katz would just stand there. His face would go stupid.
`7 asked you a
question, you asshole. You're so clean, tell me how come you got your face shot off?"
Lesko could see his confusion without even looking at him. Katz would stare for a long moment at his hands, and he'd touch his arms, and then he'd bring both hands to his face as if to satisfy himself that his face was still there.
`I'm ... I'm not dead. " His voice became small. Childlike.
"Get outta here, David."
"No, wait. Wait. "
"Get outta here. Get lost.
"Wait. Just let me think."
"You want to think about something?" P" Lesko was more awake than asleep now. He could feel his legs moving closer to the edge of the bed and his hand gripping the blanket. "How about that you're a fucking thief? How about that you're a dead fucking thief? How about that I'm not a cop anymore because of you?"
`Listen . . . " Katz seemed to remember. "We can fix this, " he said miserably. 'It’s not so bad we can't fix it.
Lesko's feet were on the floor, the bedcovers thrown back. He spun to the place where David Katz had been standing and lunged toward that spot before he could blink away the sleep.
He stopped. The room was dark and empty. The only light was a faint glow from a distant street lamp and cold blue wink of his digital alarm clock. The clock read 4:06. He stood in the darkness for a minute or two until he could no longer hear the sound of his own breathing.
Lesko stepped back toward the clock. On the floor he found the bathrobe he'd dropped there when he went to bed. He put it on. Then for another long moment he stared into the darkness of his room.
"I already fixed it, David." he said finally. "I fixed it good."
Susan, his daughter, had said something to him once. It was from a book she read. He was talking to her, he wasn't sure how it came up, about the crazy things that go on in your head in the middle of the night. She probably brought it up. She saw he looked tired.
Susan knew right away what he was talking about. She said it's the pre-dawn gremlins. Everybody gets them. It's normal.
He'd used the tree blowing down on his car as an example. Susan thought about that for a while. She said maybe it meant something. Maybe the hurricane was his whole life. All the violence of it. And maybe the tree on his car was the way it left him trapped. Pinned down. And maybe the hacksaw meant frustration because it was so hard for him to dig out and start over and yet it was possible to try. Even a hacksaw was a start.
Lesko knew that Susan knew that the tree dream might mean nothing of the sort. Maybe nothing at all. Anyway, she wasn't the type to sit around psyching out other people's dreams. Lesko knew that she was just using the dream as an excuse to say what she wanted to say anyway. That his life wasn't over. That he didn't have to be lonely. That he could get his butt out of that dumb little apartment in Queens and start living again. She said he just wasn't the type to sit around between pension checks. That wasn't quite fair, of course. For the past year, he'd been a special security consultant to the Beckwith Hotels chain. He'd set up a system, trained a lot of people, but now he was losing interest. It wasn't enough.
He didn't mention the dream about her mother moving back. Not that it was a sore subject but enough was enough. It would only get Susan asking whether he wanted her back and the truth was he didn't. He'd be underfoot. Or Donna would. Susan would probably tell him that's what the shoes and the hall closet symbolized.
But having had his pump primed, he did tell Susan about Katz. Not alll of it. Just bits and pieces. She didn't press him because she understood there were parts of that whole story they could never talk about. Not even the parts that were in all the newspapers. But he did tell her that her Uncle David, which was what she grew up calling him, had been showing up again lately at four in the morning.
That's when she told him about the thing she remembered from a book. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote it. He said, "In the real dark night of the soul, it's always four o'clock in the morning."
Something like that
How long was it now?
Almost two years.
Two years ago next month when the call came from Harriet Katz. She was screeching. Hysterical. It took Lesko a full minute, trying not to yell at her, to make sense of what she was saying. That it had happened, just now, right outside in her driveway.
"Harriet ... Harriet listen to me. Did you call an ambulance?"
"My daughter saw it. Oh, God, my daughter saw it."
"Did anyone call the cops? Harriet? ... Harriet!
But all she could do was scream over and over that her daughter had seen it. That he, David, had pulled into the driveway and his daughter ran over to give him his kiss and they did it right in front of her. Right in front of her. Harriet said that over and over. Lesko had to hang up on her. He broke the connection and punched 911 for the police and for the EMS unit. Then he ran two doors down to borrow the keys to Mr. Makowski's car. Ten minutes later he pulled up to David Katz's two-family house in Forest Hills.
Katz's car was in the driveway. Even as he pulled up to the curb, one tire on the sidewalk, Lesko could see it was bad. There was shattered glass all over. And in front of the car, on a white garage door, he saw a crescent-shaped spray that had to be blood. Two squad cars were already there, their blue lights strobing. So was the emergency services ambulance. A neighbor must have called them before he did. One uniformed officer stood near the car to keep the curious away. He kept his own eyes away from it. He looked like6d already been sick. Another cop stationed himself at the other side of the small front lawn shaking his-head at the questions coming from the growing knot of residents and passersby. A third uniform was at his radio. The EMS crew was nowhere in sight. They must have gone inside the house after looking in the car and deciding it was a waste of time. No one had even wanted to shut off the engine. Lesko flashed his badge and walked up the driveway.
David Katz, his partner of ten years, was sitting upright at the wheel. Lesko could see at once why the medics hadn't bothered with him. Half his head was gone from the left ear forward, and nearly all his face. A shotgun had done most of the damage. There was a ragged four-inch hole through the safety glass on the driver's side, then two smaller holes to the right of it. Two gunmen. The second had used a small-caliber pistol. It wasn't needed. He'd just wanted to be in on the hit. The far window and most of the windshield had been blown outward by the blasts. Bits of bone and flesh clung to what was left. Lesko could see a single tooth imbedded in the dashboard.
There was movement at the front door. Lesko looked up. Harriet Katz. Another woman, probably the neighbor, was steadying her and carefully blocking Harriet's view of her husband's car as they crossed the front lawn to the waiting ambulance. Behind them, a uniformed paramedic emerged carrying Harriet's nine year-old daughter. Her name was Joni. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was slack. Possibly sedated. More likely in deep shock. Lesko took a few steps toward them. He could think of nothing to say. At least Harriet would see that he'd come. He watched the ambulance leave. Then he turned once more to his partner's body.
Katz was wearing one of the two new jackets he'd bought the week before. Cashmere, glen plaid, mostly a light gray. Five hundred dollars. On his wrist, gleaming brightly, even through the congealing blood, was Katz's gold Rolex chronograph. Two thousand dollars.
"You son of a bitch," Lesko said quietly. "You poor, stupid son of a bitch."
Almost two years now. Lesko could still see him. The only good thing about dreaming of Katz was at least he had his face back. Same jacket, though. Same watch. But Lesko was just as mad at him. For being stupid. For going dirty. For being greedy. For thinking that the Bolivians and the Colombians who will slaughter whole families just to teach one guy a lesson wouldn't blow away one Jewish cop who keeps ripping off their couriers.
He was also mad because the first thing Internal Affairs wanted to know was how could Detective Raymond Lesko, who for ten years was closer to Detective David Katz than Katz's wife, know nothing about the house in Sullivan County and the condo
in Florida that his partner bought for cash on a gold shield's salary.
The second thing they wanted to know was where was Lesko when two grease balls with Bolivian passports plus one other unidentified Hispanic male got splattered all over a Brooklyn barbershop five days later.
The barbershop was in Brooklyn's East New York section, not far from Kennedy Airport. It was a street of-boarded-up tenements that still housed an occasional squatter. Most of their padlocks had been pried off. Several of the windows showed scars from fires set by junkies and vagrants trying to keep warm. There was one small bodega and a candy store but they were long since shuttered. A half-dozen rusting cars had been abandoned and stripped along both sides of a street that was never swept anymore. The city hadn't even bothered to put up alternate-side parking signs. Police never patrolled the street, certainly not on foot.
Lesko had left Mr. Makowski's car three blocks away. In Mr. Makowski's trunk was a Brooklyn wise guy named Jimmy Splat, which was really a nickname from when he used to fight welterweight and got his nose permanently flattened. Lesko would let him out if his information turned out to be right.
He'd watched the barbershop for an hour from a rooftop down the block. There was no barber pole outside. The only way you'd know it was a barbershop was from the faded Kreml Hair Tonic sign in the window and a small, dusty display of Barbisol products. There was also a man in a green barber smock who stood in the open front door with his arms folded and who didn't look like he could trim his own nostrils. Jimmy Splat was right so far. No one ever went there for a haircut. The man in the smock was a lookout. The smock was for effect. It also covered a cut-down automatic shotgun that he wore slung under his left armpit. Lesko decided it was time to get closer.
He doubled back two blocks and then made his way over another rooftop, working his way down to the basement entrance of a building ten yards from the filthy glass storefront of the barbershop. If Jimmy Splat was telling the truth, the barber would have company soon. Lesko peeked out, then ducked quickly. A late model car that hadn't been there before was parked at the curb. Another was coming down the street. Lesko stayed low and listened. The second car stopped. One door opened and closed. Then he heard a light clicking sound moving across the sidewalk. Heels. A woman's heels. He hadn't expected a woman. Now he heard the dimmer sound of two sets of feet walking on linoleum. The barber had left the door. He was walking the woman back to the rear of the shop. Lesko moved quickly, a throwaway automatic pistol in one hand and an oversized leather truncheon in the other.
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 1