“Now drink that.”
Okay, thought Gelman. Get me drunk. That's smart. It will buy you more time when you and your friend leave. Very smart. It means you don't have to hurt me, doesn't it? Just get me drunk.
He took the glass and drained it.
“Again,” the voice said. Gelman poured four more inches.
Better than any layman, Gelman could analyse and understand his fear. The psychology of torture. Take away a man's clothing, strip him naked, and you take away half the man. Immobilize him, make him powerless, and you take away half of what's left. Hide your face, ignore his pleas, tell him nothing of why this is being done to him, allow his terror to feed upon itself and the torture becomes all but unnecessary. Unless cooperation is not what you're after. Unless you want to break him. To make him hurt.
No, he told himself. That's not the case here. A burglary pure and simple. Cooperate. Do not resist. But wait. There should be other sounds in the house. Drawers opening and closing. Closets ransacked. But there was nothing.
A deadening thought struck him. He's a husband. The husband of one of those women. She had told him things.
Talk to him. Get him to talk. Make him understand that she's a sick woman. Very sick. Turning on those who are trying to help her. With sick lies.
“If you'll just . . . if you'll only tell me what this is about. . . .”
“Finish your drink.” The forearm tightened, hurting him.
Gary Russo and Carla Benedict huddled against the single side window of Gelman's garage. Using a penlight cupped in his hand, Russo scanned the outside edges of the window's frame. The small circle of light stopped on a half-inch hole, freshly drilled. He looked up at Carla, who nodded knowingly. It had been drilled to fish for the alarm wire. Once Billy had it—there was little doubt he was now inside—he would have spliced a bypass to it. The penlight moved to the window clasp. It was in place but the screws that held it had been torn loose and were probably in Billy's pocket. Carla Benedict tried the window. It opened easily. The clasp fell into Russo's waiting hand.
Russo opened his bag and extracted two pairs of surgical gloves. He waited as Carla removed her rings and put her pair on, then helped her through the garage window. Russo followed. The penlight's beam scanned the garage interior. Russo allowed the beam to pause meaningfully on the Mercedes—that would have been where the intruder waited, in it or behind it—then it traced a path to Gelman's kitchen door. He opened his bag once more and withdrew its leather tray of implements and drugs. Under the tray and clamped to the bottom was a Belgian automatic pistol, plus a silencer that was fully eight inches long and as wide around as a half-dollar. He screwed the silencer to the barrel as Carla refilled the bag.
“Go,” he whispered.
Gelman's heart jumped. A voice. A woman's voice. And he hadn't imagined it because the arm at his throat went tense and it twisted slightly as if the man had turned his head to look. Then he felt the arm relax and he heard what sounded like a sigh.
“What good is this?” asked the voice at his ear.
“At this point. . . .” Another voice. A man's voice. “I guess not much.” He heard footsteps on the tile. The man. He could see him now, coming around the Jacuzzi. A gun. A long black gun hanging at his side.
“Doctor?” Oh, God. Oh, thank God. “Doctor Russo?”
Gary Russo ignored him. He gestured toward the vodka bottle and looked into the face of the man holding Stanley Gelman. “How much?”
“About ten ounces in ten minutes.”
Russo glanced at his watch and nodded, He raised his gun sideways, looking at it as if it were so much useless metal, then stepped to a marble counter top and set it down.
“Wait,” Gelman gasped. “What are you doing? Get this guy off me, Goddamn it.” Gelman could hear that his speech was slurring. The one holding him was getting him drunk. He understood that. It was some kind of a set-up. But this part he didn't understand at all. That's Gary Russo. He's a fucking doctor, for Christ's sake.
“Billy, what did you have in mind, exactly?” Russo asked the question calmly, clinically. No hint of disapproval.
The man—who the hell is Billy?—seemed to be answering but not with words. Gelman could feel him gesturing. Then he saw Russo nod his understanding and shake his head as if he disagreed. Russo moved closer and knelt at the side of the tub.
“Dr. Gelman, just relax now,” he said. “What sedatives do you keep here in the house?”
”Wha . . . sedatives?” Gelman blinked disbelievingly. “What the hell are ... will you just get this guy the fuck off me?”
“He's not going to hurt you. What about Valium? You must have Valium.”
Gelman stared stupidly. This is crazy, he thought. It's like one of those nightmares where you're in terrible trouble but everyone around you is just calmly passing the time of day. You're strapped into the electric chair and the warden and the executioner are making small talk. How's the wife? Kids okay? They sure grow up fast, don't they? Got any pictures? But this wasn't any execution. They're just playing some goddamned game. Okay. You want to play, we'll play. But tomorrow I'm going to have your ass.
“Valium. I have some Valium.”
“How much?”
“I don't know. Maybe fifty milligrams, I.V.”
“How much was in the vial originally?”
”A hundred milligrams. Hey, so what?”
“Thank you, Doctor. That's fine.” Russo looked up at Carla, who was already poking through Russo's medical bag. He held up three fingers and then formed a zero. Thirty milligrams.
Gelman heard the sounds she was making. He'd forgotten about her. That was a woman's voice he'd heard first. She'd said “Uncle Billy” to the guy holding his head. Who is she? A patient? That is what this is all about, isn't it? One of those bitches had gone whining to Russo.
“Who's back there?” he demanded. “If that's one of my patients . . . ?”
“Oh, no,” Russo smiled. “That's Carla Benedict. She works at the Westport Library. Reference section.”
“Hi, Doctor Gelman,” she called pleasantly. She was at the washstand drawing a solution into a disposable 5cc syringe. She raised the needle to the light and squeezed off a short stream. Next she brought it around to Stanley Gelman's left side.
“Hi,” she repeated. She turned his left arm so the palm was up and she sat on it, pinning it to the Jacuzzi's edge. Gary Russo took the syringe from her and found a vein in the crook of Gelman's arm.
”Wha . . . what are you doing?” Gelman asked.
Russo withdrew the syringe and patted Gelman's cheek. “I just killed you, you little prick.”
The doctor used his penlight for a final check of Stanley Gelman's pupils. He'd already checked twice for pulse. Gelman's eyes were staring sightlessly at the churning hot water of the Jacuzzi. His expression resembled an embarrassed grin. No look of fear, no suggestion of panic. It was just about right.
Russo lifted Gelman's chin and peered closely for any sign of discoloration. No contusions. Only a slight rosiness under the health-club tan where Billy had gripped him. Billy had already washed the neck with damp tissues to remove any fibers his black sweater might have left. Everything looked fine. The syringe, with Gelman's prints tamped onto it, still dangled from his arm. Cardiac arrest had come within a minute. Much better, much cleaner than the bathtub fall and fractured skull Billy probably had in mind. Tubs are dangerous. Billy wasn't a young man anymore. In the struggle, he might have slipped as easily as Gelman.
Russo made a final check of the bathroom. Carla had broken down his pistol and returned it to its place. He'd felt sure it would not be needed, but there was always the slim possibility that Gelman could have bested Billy, or that Russo might have needed it to get Billy's attention so that this could all be done properly. The Valium vial, also with Gelman's prints on it, was left on the washbasin along with the paper wrapping from a PlastiPak disposable syringe. It had been a small detail, establishing that Gelman had Val
ium on hand and that the amount was sufficient for him to commit suicide. But it's the small details that could land you in prison.
Carla Benedict was resting on the toilet seat. She'd been on her hands and knees, obscuring any heel marks between the garage window and Gelman's tub. Billy McHugh was waiting for them by the garage window. He'd gone there to resplice the alarm wire, cover the splice with putty, replace the screws in the window clasp with the aid of plastic wood, sweep up the shavings from his electric drill and patch the drill hole with the redwood plug he'd saved.
“Are you ready?” the doctor asked Carla.
She took a deep breath and let her shoulders sag. “Billy wants to know if we're sore at him.”
“Let's talk in the car.”
“He says he's sorry. He wants us to come back to Mario's for a bacon cheeseburger.”
”A cheeseburger.” Russo shook his head. “He's sorry I just had to kill a man for him so he's going to treat us to a cheeseburger?”
They hadn't seen Billy McHugh leave. One moment he was a silent shadow moving a stack of firewood to cover any footprints outside the garage window—the rain would do the rest—and the next he was gone. Russo took Carla's arm and led her across Bayberry Road and down the facing street to the parked Subaru. Just another suburban couple leaving a late dinner party. As they approached the station wagon, Carla took a handkerchief from her pocket and began dabbing the rain from her eyes. Russo escorted her to the passenger door and moved to open it.
“Carla?” the low, gravelly voice came from a shadow on a stone wall bordering somebody's yard. “Carla, are you okay?”
Russo paused at the door, not wanting to turn on the inside light by opening it. He saw Carla's handkerchief. Billy must have thought she was wiping tears. He should live so long.
“Go on, Billy,” he said softly. “Get away from here.”
“He hurt one of my friends, Doc.” It was not quite an explanation. More a statement of the obvious.
“Billy, this isn't the place to talk.”
“I'll make it up to both of you.”
I know, Russo thought. A bacon cheeseburger. But he said nothing.
“Is Carla crying?”
“She's just tired, Billy.” At least he thought that's all it was. On the other hand, why the hell should he be reassuring Billy? “And she's sad. She wonders, like I do, whether we'll ever have any peace around here. And whether you care more about some woman in a bar than you do about her.”
“Hey, that's crazy. You tell her, will you? That's just not so.”
“Forget it, Billy. Go home.”
“We have peace here. Especially, we have friends here. I bet in our whole lives we never had friends like since we came to Westport.”
“She knows that, Billy. And she understands that we want to take care of our friends. I think she's worried that sometimes we don't take such good care of each other.”
“Well, that's not right.” His tone was gently scolding. “That's not right at all. There's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for my friends.”
“We know that, Billy.” How well we know that.
A long pause. “Are you going to tell Paul?”
“I don't know. We haven't thought about that.”
“Because it wasn't like you think. I wasn't going to. . . .”
“Billy,” he hissed sharply. “Can we get away from here please?”
“Hey,” the voice brightened. “What about that cheeseburger. You like it charred on the outside and bloody in the middle, right? Ill fix it myself.”
“Okay, Billy. Sure.”
“Carla?”
What the hell, she thought. So it's not a total loss. “Sure. But hold the bun.”
“That settles it.” the shadow rolled soundlessly over the wall. “I'll see you back there, okay? Hungry is one thing I know how to fix.”
Carla sat silently through the first few stoplights during the ten-minute ride back to Mario's. A police cruiser approached from the opposite direction, shushing by on the black wet road. She glanced at it without interest. It would be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest before anyone became sufficiently concerned about Gelman's absence to consider forcing his front door. She had deeper concerns about tomorrow.
“Are we going to tell Paul?” she asked finally.
“I'd hate to have him find out from someone else.”
“Molly won't say anything if we don't.”
“That's if he doesn't ask her. Molly won't lie to Paul and I don't think I want to, either.”
She shook her head. “All we promised was we'd keep Billy out of trouble. We did that, sort of.”
Gary Russo drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “What about next time, Carla?”
“We'll need him someday, Gary. Meanwhile, we just keep working with him.”
“Wonderful.”
“This time was different. Seeing that woman come on to him and then get hysterical was more than he could handle.”
“They were all different,” he answered, yawning. “How long do you think it will be before some other woman walks into Mario's who's just been slapped round by her husband? Or some guy who's being fucked over by his wife's lawyer, or some old lady who's had her life savings churned down to nothing by a stock broker? These people are all Billy's friends and he's their Uncle Billy. Sooner or later someone else is going to hurt one of Uncle Billy's new friends and that someone is going to die.”
“He's getting better,” she repeated stubbornly. “This is the first time since last August.”
“It's also a whole new year. We're only three days into it and already he's started thinning out Westport's population again.”
“Stop that,” she muttered.
“Stop what?”
“Being negative. Billy's come a long way since he's been here. He probably has more friends than any of us.”
“Friends,” Russo repeated. “I'm getting very tired of that word.”
“Anyway, Gelman's a piece of shit. He got what he deserved and he's where he belongs.”
What Gelman deserved,” the doctor answered patiently, “was public disgrace and the loss of his license. Where he belongs is in a prison getting corn-holed in the shower room.”
“Fat chance. A patient's word against a doctor's?”
Russo ignored that. “And where Billy belongs, íf Paul is honest about it, is in Greenfield Hill.” He gestured with his thumb in the direction of the psychiatric hospital on Westport's northern border. “The man is just too dangerous.”
“Only to people like Gelman,” she shook her head. “Ask anyone else, Billy is as warm and kind and generous as anyone they've ever. . . .”
“Oh, for Pete's sake, Carla. Are you listening to yourself?”
She folded her arms and turned away from him.
“What Billy is,” Gary Russo softened his voice, “is a warm, kind and generous man who happens to kill people in very large numbers.”
“Most of us have killed, Gary. In very large numbers.”
“We've killed to protect our own arid when we didn't see that we had a choice. It's not the same.”
“We did it reluctantly, you mean.”
“I think so, yes.”
“Gary, if you don't know that's bullshit, you're crazier than Billy. You want us to be honest? You want me to tell you how much remorse you showed when you were shooting up old Stanley back there?”
“Do you want to discuss this or not?”
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 9