The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

by Maxim, John R.

  She looked away again. He tried again, “Carla, honey, I'm trying to sort this out. I can talk to you or I can talk to Paul.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Talk to Paul?”

  “No.” She touched his arm. It was almost a slap. “I'm listening.”

  “How much do you know about Billy's background?”

  “I don't know.” She'd known him, or known of him, for ten or twelve years. “We've never talked much about his personal life.”

  “He's never had one. None. Do you think I'm exaggerating?”

  She didn't answer.

  “As far as. anyone knows, Billy never had a home, never had a family, and never had more than a few years of grade school education. One day he wandered into a Marine recruiting office carrying a birth certificate. Even Billy isn't sure whether it was his or someone else's. Vietnam was on, so they took him, trained him and shipped him over. From that time on, all the respect, all the approval, and almost all the money he ever got in his whole life came because he was good at killing. First for the Marines, then for Naval Intelligence, then the CIA, and then he also went free-lance working for the Israelis and for British and German counterterrorist units. Killing was not only what they paid him for but practically the only thing anyone ever talked to him about. He had no friends, no idea how to make friends, and no outside interests at all. I wouldn't be surprised if he's never even petted a dog.”

  “Paul was his friend. And Paul's mother, I heard, was his friend before that.”

  “Rare exceptions.” Russo dismissed those examples with a flick of his hand. “Anyway, even Paul probably never heard Billy string more than five words together, or laugh, or even smile before he came to Westport. And even Paul was wary enough of Billy to keep him stashed at Greenfield Hill the whole first year he was here.”

  “He wasn't stashed” Carla looked up at him. “Paul gave him a job there. It was just until he could get used to the idea of settling in here.”

  Russo didn't bother arguing the point. If Billy had worked for almost anyone but Paul, and especially if he had stayed a CIA contract agent, the most he'd have had to look forward to in his autumn years was a padded room with a lifetime supply of Thorazine, or a nice ride in the country and a bullet in the back of his head. Preferably the bullet because the last thing they'd want is Billy's head clearing up long enough to decide maybe he should be mad at somebody.

  “Which brings us,” said Russo, “to the metamorphosis of Billy McHugh. He's here a year, keeping out of trouble, not bothering anybody, and Molly Farrell has a brainstorm. She needs a relief bartender at Mario's. How about, she asks Paul, we give Billy a try. She thinks it might be perfect for him because that way he's forced to be out and around people, they'll almost all be friendly, and none of them will pay too close attention to him. Paul agrees. We all agree. We say, who knows, maybe there really is a human being in there and anyway Molly would always be close by and she can keep an eye on him.”

  “It was a good idea, Gary. And it worked.”-

  “Did it ever,” Russo fairly shouted. “Beyond anyone's wildest hopes. Here's a man who's never had a close friend in his life,” he held up a hand, “who can count maybe two people in all that time who weren't afraid of him and who ever had more than a five-minute conversation with him, and here he's being greeted by fifty smiling people his first day on the job. Never mind that he's a little quiet. He's new. He'll loosen up. Never mind that he doesn't know from daiquiris and mimosas. Hardly anyone at Mario's drinks that shit anyway. Never mind that he talks to himself sometimes. In a crowded bar they'll think he's talking to another customer.

  “By the third night he's starting to smile back a little. I saw it myself. I would have thought it was a nervous tic except Billy doesn't have any nerves. By the third night he's actually answering people who talk to him. Then comes the end of his first week and it's his day off but he won't take it. He likes it there. By the end of the second week he's recognizing a lot of-the regulars and he gets it into his head that he's part of the reason they come in. They like him. He knows that because they keep saying things like ‘Hey, my friend,’ and ‘How's it going, buddy?’ Now Molly has to explain to him that having friends is nice but it's not necessary to buy them every other round and a two-ounce drink is generous enough if he doesn't want his new friends knocking down telephone poles on their way home.”

  “Look I know all this.” Carla knew what was coming. Gary's Frankenstein speech. She'd heard it before.

  “Don't stop me now,” he took both hands off the wheel. “I'm just getting to the good part.” A sheet of rain washed over the Subaru's hood. Russo turned the wipers on full. “You want to know how little it takes to create a monster? All it takes is one customer who's been calling bartenders Uncle- this or Uncle- that all his drinking life to walk in during week three and say, ‘Evening, Uncle Billy. How are you tonight?’ A couple of minutes later, a woman two stools down calls him the same thing.

  “Molly sees that it kind of startles him but it also pleases him and she figures, what can it hurt? She starts introducing him that way and it works immediate magic. By week four it's as if the rest of his life never happened. The metamorphosis from killer slug to social butterfly and everybody's favorite uncle is complete. Suddenly we have Billy McHugh telling jokes. We have Billy McHugh laughing out loud. We have him reading the sports pages every morning in case a customer wants to bullshit about last night's game. But then, God help us, we also have Uncle Billy McHugh starting to listen to the troubles of all his little nieces and nephews. He learns that other people, people who are not his friends, are cheating them, divorcing them, firing them, two-timing them, harassing them and even burglarizing them. All of a sudden we have our Uncle Billy remembering what he's good at, and people start to die.”

  The Subaru's tires hummed across the grating of the Saugatuck River Bridge. Mario's and the Westport station were two blocks away. “Why do you talk like it's all Billy?” she asked sullenly.

  “Who else is it?”

  “You've done your share of housekeeping. So have I.”

  “Yes, but not right in Westport if we could help it. We don't foul our own nest. And we sure don't want any more people noticing that the obituary columns were getting longer than the garage-sale listings.”

  Carla stared ahead. “You're talking about Paul's new friend?”

  ”Yup.”

  “He says that's under control. Is it?”

  “Apparently.”

  “She's with him now, isn't she? Down at Windermere. Why is he still seeing her?”

  “Because he likes her, I guess. And yes, she is.” Russo turned onto Railroad Place. He saw a parking slot a few storefronts past the entrance to Mario's.

  “Come on, Gary. If she's not a problem, why hasn't he dumped her?”

  Russo said nothing. He backed the Subaru into the space and shut off the engine. Carla made no move to leave the car.

  “Your cheeseburger will get cold,” he said.

  She looked at her hands. “I don't like Paul getting involved with an outsider.”

  ”A lot of us have, Carla. Paul's entitled. And he's a careful man.”

  “If he needs to get his ashes hauled, he doesn't need some young kid. Molly Farrell would be happy to oblige him. So would I, for that matter.”

  “And let's not forget masturbation.” Russo threw up his hands. “What the hell's eating you? You're jealous of the Lesko girl?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not.” He poked her.

  A tiny shrug. She looked away.

  “Carla, honey,” he took her hand, “It will end soon enough. Paul knows it can't go anywhere.”

  “I hope he does.”

  “Give him a break, will you? She makes him feel good. What's the harm?”

  “Are you kidding?” She turned to him. “Look . . . granted he's got a right to a private life and I probably wouldn't mind very much if he took up with one of the locals. He could have his pic
k of all those divorced real estate ladies. But this one's a reporter for a New York newspaper. And her father is even bigger trouble. What if she gets her father snooping around up here?”

  “Snooping by either one of them is exactly what Paul is trying to head off. As for her father, he knows nothing about Westport and nothing about Paul.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Molly's had a wire on her for three months now. The Lesko girl, I promise you, is absolutely not a danger to us.” Russo reached for her shoulder and gave it an affectionate shake. “Hey, look. I think you're getting a case of the post-holiday blahs. What do you say, after Paul calms down about the Gelman thing, we hit him for a couple of first-class tickets to a quiet beach of our own. We'll lie in the sun all day and screw our brains out all night.”

  “So you're definitely going to tell him?”

  “Tell you what. We'll wait until he asks.”

  “He will. And it might be the end of Billy.”

  “All the more reason to have those tickets handy. What do you say?”

  “You might have a deal.” Carla opened her door

  CHAPTER ó

  The PAN AM flight from Nassau swung wide over Long Island to take its place in the landing sequence for John F. Kennedy Airport. Paul was dozing. He'd slept through the movie. Susan Lesko dreamily studied the green route map in the rear of PAN AM's in-flight magazine. Her finger traced a line from the Bahamas to New York, then from New York to London, then from London to the southeast corner of Switzerland. Five more days. They'd be off again.

  She found herself wondering whether life with Paul would be like this all the time. Jetting to the islands. Then, tan intact, popping off to Europe for a spot of skiing. Where would they go when it was summer? A cruise of the Greek Islands? A villa in the south of France?

  Some life. Not bad for a Polish Catholic cop's daughter from Queens. She'd have to quit her job, of course, but she'd still want to work somewhere. Maybe as a stringer for the International Herald Tribune. Or as a travel writer. Another possibility, she supposed, was to work with Paul at his travel agency, but that might be carrying togetherness a little too far. She'd much rather do something that was her own. Separate careers are probably better for a…relationship.

  She’d almost said marriage. A number of times now she'd fantasized about what it would be like being married to Paul. The daydreams embarrassed her. They seemed uncool, unliberated these days, even though she suspected that almost every woman still had them.

  And she'd thought about his age. He was thirty-nine, he said. Fifteen years older, although you wouldn't know it from the shape he kept himself in. If they had kids he'd be pushing sixty by the time they were college age. Not a big deal. Better to wonder whether she could keep him interested that long. It was a reasonable question that had nothing to do with self-esteem. She didn't even know why he was so interested in her in the first place. Okay, she was good-looking and fairly bright, a pretty good athlete, enthusiastic, with a decent sense of humor and maybe not a bad lover, but so were a lot of women. And okay, he'd more or less answered the question back at Windermere when he told her she was as fresh and clean as anyone he'd met in his whole life. Eye of the beholder. But he seemed to mean it.

  Those eyes. They looked so sad just then. What she wouldn't give to see the things they'd seen and to know what was going on behind them.

  Strike that. There were a couple of things her own eyes had seen that she wouldn't be crazy about him seeing. She hadn't sprung into existence on the day they met either. Better to keep some mystery in there.

  Speaking of mysteries. That conversation this morning with that old man at the Windermere. That man was afraid of Paul. She saw his face after he'd grabbed Paul's arm and Paul turned on him. What it might have been was some personal argument between them that wasn't any of her business anyway and Paul didn't want it ruining their Windermere holiday. That would be just like him. Susan reached toward Paul's lap and placed her hand lightly over his.

  “Hi.” He opened his eyes. A lazy smile.

  “We're almost at Kennedy,” she said. The flight attendant had begun moving through the first-class cabin checking seatbelts and getting seats returned to their full upright position.

  “Susan,” he checked his watch. It was after eleven. “How about coming back to Westport with me tonight?”

  “I just can't.” She squeezed his hand. “I have to be at work at seven.” And the next five days were going to be madness. The paper would wring every last moment out of her in return for that extra week's vacation. Then

  she had to get her skis sharpened and waxed and decide what she was going to bring and start packing.

  Paul was frowning. Prom his expression it was not a romantic invitation after all. He looked the way her father looked whenever she was going home late and alone.

  “Do you worry about me?” she asked. “Living alone in New York, I mean?”.

  “Of course I do.”

  “That's nice.”

  “What I'd really like is for you to stay in Westport until we leave. And after we get back too, for that matter.”

  Susan's eyebrow went up. If she heard it correctly, that was an invitation to come live with him. But that invitation was even less romantic than the other. That frown. He really did seem worried about her.

  “I just have too much to do,” she raised his hand and kissed it. “As for after we get back, let's wait and see how things go.”

  He nodded, saying nothing. More mysteries.

  “You know,” she told him, “I'm probably one of the best-protected single women in all of Manhattan. My father's a retired policeman. I'm not supposed to know it but he gets the cops in my neighborhood to look out for me.”

  “That's good to hear. I hope they're just as tough as he is.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “You know about my father?” Paul had never mentioned him before. Or asked about her family.

  “New York's Toughest Cop? Sure. We read newspapers in Westport, too, you know.”

  “How come you never asked about him?”

  “Because you never brought him up. I thought it might be a sensitive subject. Anyway, I was much more interested in his daughter.”

  “You'd like him, Paul.”

  “I'm sure I would.”

  “I have a date with him Wednesday night. A basketball game and then dinner. That's another reason why I have to stay in the city.”

  “I guess I won't worry about you on Wednesday.”

  She heard the grinding sound of the landing gear coming down and locking into place. “I haven't told him about you, either. He worries about me, too. Except he gets snoopy and you don't.”

  Paul said nothing.

  “I'm going to tell him about you on Wednesday. But it will be time enough for you to meet him after we get back from Europe. If you'd like to, that is.”

  “You're not afraid he'll scare me off?”

  “I'd like to see what could scare you,” she smiled.

  At the Marriott Airport Hotel in Miami, Robert Loftus knocked on the door of a third-floor suite. A voice said “Yes?” and he gave his name. The door opened. A man named Burdick, in shirtsleeves, with a shoulder holster, wavy blond hair and dead eyes let Loftus pass and then checked the corridor behind him.

  In the sitting room of the suite, two more men sat at a large coffee table that held several thick manila files. One of the files lay open. A photograph of Paul Bannerman was clipped to the inside cover.

  The older of the two men at the table, silver-haired, neatly groomed, in a dark suit, in his late sixties, held out his hand for the envelope Loftus carried. Loftus made no move to surrender it. He waited.

  “Well?” the older man asked. “Do you have it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Still, Loftus made no move.

  The older man understood. Using facial expressions and gestures, he asked the other two men to wait in the corridor until called. One of these, a prim, wooden-faced little man na
med Whitlow, pursed his lips in protest but obeyed. Loftus waited until the door clicked shut.