The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  It was at one of these, with Allie, that Susan first took notice of Paul Bannerman. It was a perfect Saturday morning and the place was a brown-shingled, nineteenth century farmhouse that had a separate garage at the end of a long, steep driveway. The owners had set up one table full of knickknacks, and another, two-thirds of the way up, for taking money. The larger pieces of furniture were displayed just beyond. There was more in the garage itself. Allie lingered at the knickknack table, too long a time to suit Susan. Newly arriving buyers had already gone past them. And new arrivals had a way of snatching up exactly the things Susan might want to buy, just before she spotted them. She pushed on toward the garage. She was hoping to find an old-fashioned plant stand for her apartment. Or some books. You can find some marvelous books at garage sales.

  There was no plant stand, but the books were there. Three cartons of them, plus a great stack of those wonderful hardbound American Heritage magazines. And it happened again. A tall, youngish man, one of those who'd passed her in the driveway, had reached them first. He was standing over them, dressed in a blue shirt, jeans and deck shoes, a look of dreamy pleasure on his face as he leafed through the illustrated pages. As she waited her turn, his obvious delight made Susan smile. He looked up at her. A nice face. A gentle face. Maybe not quite so young after all. Eyes somewhere between blue and green. Intelligent eyes. He was the type who always seemed to marry his college sweetheart right after graduation. She'd be blond and she'd still have her figure after having two bright and gorgeous kids who'd be in junior high about now.

  He acknowledged Susan's presence with a small, shy smile of his own. She moved her lips in silent apology for having intruded, smiled once more, then moved off to join Allie Gregory who was writing a check for a pewter saltcellar. She did not return to the garage. This was their fourth stop arid it was almost time for lunch. Susan glanced back up as they walked to Allie's car. He wast looking back at her, watching her go.

  The next day, Sunday, Allie and Susan decided to look in on a start-of-season sale at a ski shop called Sundance on Westport's Post Road. Susan was in the market for a new pair of skis, her four-year-old Rossignols being too short for her now, but she ended up concluding that she'd do as well in New York without having to lug them in on the train. They wandered into the other room Where ski clothing was displayed. The same man was there. The same faded blue jeans and well-worn deck shoes. The day being cooler, he wore an Irish-knit sweater with a hole at one elbow. He was trying on ski parkas. Still no sign of a wife or girlfriend. No gold band on his finger. No rings at all.

  She nudged Allie Gregory. “That man was at one of the garage sales yesterday.”

  “What man?”

  “The good-looking one just putting on that orange jacket. Do you know him?”

  “I think I've seen him around.”

  “Orange isn't his color.”

  “Oops. He's looking.”

  “Rats,” Susan whispered. “This is the second time he's caught me staring at him.”

  “So? Just go say hello. This is Westport, not New York.”

  “I can't just . . . what'll I say to him?”

  “Tell him orange isn't his color.”

  Twenty minutes and five ski jackets later, Susan and} Allie decided that a red Austrian-made parka would be just about perfect for him. It had wide khaki trim across the shoulders and lots of zippered pockets. Very handsome. Made him look rugged. The khaki went with his thick, curly hair. A Navy outfit might have brought out those marvelous eyes a little better but she was already getting tired of him in blue.

  The man, though he'd never actually been given a vote in the matter, seemed equally pleased and grateful for the help. The fact is, he admitted, the only decent-looking things he owned were bought at the urging of one female friend or another. He was not much of a shopper.

  “I take it you're not married,” Allie said brightly.

  “No. I'm not.” That shy smile again.

  “Where do you ski?” Susan rushed to ask, horrified that Allie was about to swing into a series of embarrassingly unsubtle questions meant to determine whether he was divorced, widowed or gay.

  “Europe mostly. How about yourself?”

  “Just here in the East. But someday Europe. It's one of my dreams.”

  “Well, if you decide to go, I'll be glad to recommend a few places.”

  “That sounds as if you've been to them all.”

  A modest shrug. “I travel quite a bit. The fact is, I run a travel agency here in Westport.”

  “Susan loves to travel,” Allie Gregory beamed. “Why don't you take her address and put her on your mailing list?”

  Susan struggled not to roll back her eyes.

  He saw her discomfort. “To be honest, I've been trying to think of a way to learn more about you. I'm Paul Bannerman, by the way.”

  “Susan Lesko.” She held out her hand and, out of habit, watched his face for any sign of recognition.

  All through her teens and into her twenties, the name, her father's name, had often been in the news. Years of crime stories on page three of the Post and the Daily News. But it was a feature article in a Sunday magazine section, entitled “New York's Toughest Cops,” that made him something of a celebrity and even led to an occasional mention in the nightlife columns. After that, it seemed as if every other person she'd meet would ask “Are you by any chance related to ... ?” Not that she minded. Susan enjoyed her father's fame and she especially enjoyed telling strangers that Raymond the Terrible Lesko was a big teddy bear, down deep. But then, at the beginning of last year, the newspaper stories turned ugly. TOUGHEST COP’S PARTNER MURDERED. . . . LESKO PARTNER A CROOK? . . . LESKO QUESTIONED IN DRUG SLAYINGS. And finally, ‘TOUGHEST COP’ QUITS.

  If the name meant anything to Paul Bannerman, however, he didn't let it show. “I'll be needing a couple of new sweaters soon,” he raised his elbow to show the ragged hole. “I'd hate to come in here alone and pick out the wrong color.”

  They browsed around Sundance for a while. The owner, a man named Glenn, offered cups of hot spiced wine to Susan and Allie, and then chatted privately with Paul. Then Glenn came over and invited Susan and Allie to take their pick of ski hats as their reward for helping Paul make up his mind before the styles changed again.

  Paul was invited for steaks that evening at the Gregorys'. The following morning, Monday, he met Susan for an early breakfast and drove her to her train. He called her at the Post that same afternoon. He'd be in the city the day after, and wondered if she'd care to join him for dinner. She said she'd like that. Had she ever been to The Four Seasons? She said she'd love that. On Tuesday evening, as Susan happily picked her way through a menu large enough to roof a small house, a listening device was being installed on the telephone in her 79th Street apartment.

  They saw each other often during the weeks that followed. Susan would come to Westport on weekends or whenever her days off fell. Or Paul would drive into the city, sometimes twice a week. He knew the city well. In fact, he seemed to know the Upper West Side better than she did. He took her to West Side restaurants ranging from the extravagantly romantic, such as the Cafe des Artistes on West 67th Street, to the messy-but-fun, such as Sidewalker's on 72nd Street, where an order of spicy Maryland crab is dumped right onto the paper tablecloth. Susan learned along the way that Paul could order quite comfortably in French and Italian and could make himself understood in German. She was impressed and said so. It seemed like a lot of fluency, even for a travel agent, but Paul brushed it aside, saying that his linguistic abilities were limited to menus and airport signs. Their evening at The Four Seasons notwithstanding, it became clear that Paul preferred to avoid the more famous midtown restaurants. She half-wondered whether The Four Seasons had simply been first-date bait, but she wasn't complaining. The West Side restaurants were fine and, as Paul pointed out, she might as well get to know her own neighborhood.

  In conversation, he could discuss the music of Brahms, Count Basie and Bru
ce Springsteen with equal ease. His range of interests included the French Impressionists, but not so much the Romantics such as Delacroix, whose work Susan adored. He was a student of European and American history, but seemed to have no interest at all in American politics or current world affairs. Revelation piled upon revelation. She might have found so much sophistication intimidating had he not been so offhand about his own acquired knowledge, and had he not shown so much genuine interest in the things that interested her. His passions included antique automobiles—it was his dream to own and restore one—and the New York Giants football team, and, of course, Alpine skiing. They did not as yet seem to include Susan Lesko's body.

  Not that she had any intention of leaping into bed with him. She hadn't even intended to see quite so much of him or any other man. But each time he called, even when she had determined to spend some quiet time alone, she found herself wanting to see him.

  Her own intentions aside, she had presumed without undue conceit that Paul would try to take her to bed as soon as possible. By their second date, she'd allowed herself to imagine what he might be like. By the end of their fifth date, alone in her bed, she found herself fantasizing about him. He was great. Terrific. In her fantasies he was warm, funny, affectionate, patient, considerate and excruciatingly sexy. In real life he was all these things as well, except that at the end of each evening he would glance at his watch and suggest, as her father did, that she'd better get some sleep.

  “Paul, can I ask you something?” They'd been seeing each other for five weeks. It was now her second weekend with him in Westport. Except she didn't stay with him in Westport. He had this perfectly lovely condominium at Beachside Common—they were there now, with a fire going, the threat of snow outside, what could be more romantic?—but he'd always take her back to Allie's for the night.

  “Beg pardon?” He was in the kitchen, mixing a pitcher of hot spiced wine and setting out cheeses.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “Sure.” He came in, setting the refreshments on the rug by the fire.

  “Are we friends?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Pals?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Just two really good buddies, right?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  ''Uh-oh, what?”

  “I think I'm about to get hammered for not trying to make love with you.”

  “Never crossed my mind. But now that you bring it up. . . .”

  “Susan,” he squeezed one eye shut and looked at the ceiling with the other as if he hoped to find the appropriate response written there. “How about . . . I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you at the garage sale, which is the truth, and that I've dreamt about it every day since, which is also the truth.”

  “How was I? Any good?”

  “Susan. . . .”

  “Sorry.”

  “I suppose I've been waiting for the right moment. I guess I didn't want to blow it by moving too quickly.”

  “Oh.” The old right moment. Most men, she thought, would probably feel that taking a woman out to dinner, then a show or gallery, then some late-night dancing and getting her mildly blitzed would tend to set up the right moment. They'd danced long enough, slow enough and close enough for her to conclude there was plenty of interest down there and for him to conclude that she was probably not a transvestite.

  “Want to know what the perfect moment would be?” he asked. “Not that I'd want to wait that long.”

  “Halftime during the Super Bowl?”

  “Are you going to be a smart aleck or do you want me to tell you?”

  “Tell me. Not that I'm eager, of course. I know it can be a mistake to rush into these things. If, for instance, you'd dropped your pants when I first saw you at that garage sale. . . .”

  “Susan, love. . . .”

  ”. . . I guess I would have thought you were the pushy type and I. . . .”

  “Okay,” he folded his arms, “I won't tell you. I'll just go ahead and do it with Pia Zadora like I planned all along.”

  “I'll shut up now.” She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  He poured the wine and handed her a glass. “The perfect moment is about six weeks from today.”

  Paul smiled at a barely audible “Oh, shit” coming through Susan's fingers.

  “The time,” he continued, “is about midnight next January ninth. The place is in a private compartment aboard the Orient Express somewhere between Paris and Zurich.’’

  Susan's eyes went blank. Her hand fell away.

  “I'm in black tie,” he went on, pausing overlong to sip his wine, “and you're wearing an evening dress; black, low cut, it barely covers you from the waist up. You're probably wearing some kind of flapper headband with feathers in it because we'll have just left a dining car that looks exactly the way it did in 1928. . . . No, that's not right.”

  “No?” Perhaps she said “Oh?” Her mouth hung slack and open.

  “No, because right after the dining car we'd make another stop in the bar car. Couldn't very well walk right through. One after-dinner drink, champagne seems right, as we listen to a few Cole Porter tunes played on the black baby grand piano of the bar car. Then we take the rest of the bottle with us, we lurch as elegantly as possible back to our compartment. . . . Pay attention, now.” He waved his hand over her eyes. “We're almost at our big moment.”

  Susan only blinked.

  “I'm asking you to go with me.” He put his glass down and took her hands. “Perhaps a couple of days in London, then we board the Orient Express and take it almost all the way to Klosters in Switzerland where I have access to a small chalet. Then for the next three weeks we ski our butts off.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Do you need time to think about it?”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Not Oh, wow. Tickets to a Grateful Dead concert is Oh, wow. Making it to the ladies' room on time is Oh, wow. Going to Switzerland by way of the Venice-Simplon Orient Express from London is ‘Oh, Paul, I'd love to and I'm really sorry for giving you so much grief.’ ”

  “Oh, wow.”

  Paul let out a sigh and glanced at his watch.

  “Paul?”

  “Good girl. But you're still stuck on one-syllable words.”

  “Paul, old buddy?”

  “Yes, pal?”

  “If you look at that watch one more time and tell me I'd better get some sleep I'm going to sock you right in the mouth.”

  He was almost everything she'd hoped he'd be. He undressed her slowly. So slowly. For a full hour he explored her body, probing for the nerves that made her shudder and the nerves that made her gasp. And when at last he entered her body, he had absolute control of it and she felt as though she had none at all. She heaved and lashed wildly as he thrust ever more deeply, his lips and tongue finding still more nerve endings on her neck and shoulders. She heard growling sounds coming from deep within her and she heard shouts as her taut body went into mounting spasms and at last exploded into flashes of colored light.

  Afterward, after holding her a very long while, talking to her, stroking her back and her hair, he offered her a sip from the glass of wine she'd carried into his bedroom.

  “You were yelling before,” he said to her. “Want to know what you yelled?”

  ”Hmm. I'm not sure I do.”

  “It wasn't anything terrible, exactly.”

  “Oh, God. What?”

  “You're getting warm.”

  “Oh, wow? I gave you another Oh, wow?”

  “More like ten of them.”

  “Oh wow . . . shit!”