Paul blinked.
“She's twenty-four. She's pretty. And she's clean. On the other hand, out here you've got a couple of used-up broads who don't want to lose you, and we get a little possessive sometimes.”
“Oh.”
“What does 'Oh' mean?”
“It means I don't know what else to say.” Suddenly, Paul didn't know what to do with his hands either.
“You've been taking care of us for a long time. We're not saying that's a life sentence but. . . .”
“We've been taking care of each other. That won't change. Ever. I can't believe that you two of all people have been letting this worry you.”
Zivic winced. Another snaking of the head.
“These are feelings, Paul,” Molly told him. “Who says they have to be rational. We love you, damn it.”
Paul's mouth moved but no words came. Carla reddened but was also silent. Zivic said, in a stage whisper, “The phrase you're trying to think of is 'I love you, too.’ ”
“Well, that goes without saying.”
“Almost never,” Zivic corrected him. “Also if you know what's good for you, you will not let this ‘used-up broad’ designation pass unchallenged.”
“Well, that's the dumbest thing I've heard tonight.” He looked at Carla, whose eyes were down, and at Molly, who pretended to be studying the light fixture. “You're by far two of the most interesting and attractive women in Westport and you're. . . .”
“Already too many words, 'Zivic interrupted. “Try again, please.”
“I love you both. Very much.”
“Carla,” Zivic ordered, “go hug but say nothing. Then we go eat before I am sick.”
Amazing, Zivic thought to himself as he put on his coat. The smartest men are always the dumbest about women. Perhaps he would make Paul a gift of a pint or two of his Russian blood. It couldn't hurt.
CHAPTER 8
Anton Zivic did not take it amiss that Paul chose to dine alone with Molly Farrell. It was their habit never to congregate publicly in groups larger than three. He suggested a restaurant called Chez Pierre for himself, the doctor and Carla Benedict, also suggesting that they walk there, a passing warm front having turned the weather almost spring-like. Paul and Molly fell in behind them. There was a Szechwan restaurant en route that Molly had been wanting to try.
Across the Post Road, in the parking lot just down from Herman’s, John Waldo watched from his car as the five dispersed. On the front seat close to his right hand sat a bag of Grand Union groceries. In it, just under a two-pack of toilet paper, was a silenced Ingram machine pistol. He reached for a small transmitter and with his fingernail made a series of scratching sounds that meant all clear and break off. Within seconds, another car appeared from the alley behind Paul’s office and Glenn Cook, owner of the Sundance Ski Shop, headed home for his evening meal. John Waldo started his engine. He would watch what direction they were taking and then stay with them a while longer until they were safely indoors. But he did not expect trouble now. The best time to move against them had just passed. Nor did he give much thought to the fact that this was the first time in months that he’d been asked to do sentry duty during a council meeting. Or that it was Anton Zivic, not Paul Bannerman, who had asked him.
Paul took Molly's arm as they crossed the Post Road. ‘Thank you,” he said, “for defusing that in there.”
“Carla will be okay. And I meant what I said.”
“I know. So did I.”
Molly said nothing more until they reached the far corner and paused to wait for the light at Compo Road. Zivic and the others had already crossed.
“Susan seems very nice,” she said then. “She's certainly crazy about you.”
Paul nodded, frowning. He found that he was mildly annoyed, though he knew it was entirely his own doing, that Molly knew so much about Susan. On the second day, after he'd followed Susan and her friend through Westport to the Sundance Ski Shop where he'd contrived to have Glenn Cook introduce them had not Susan startled him by approaching him first, he'd asked Molly to install a dropout relay device on Susan's Manhattan phone. For three months now, Molly had recorded every call that went in or out. During the first weeks he'd listened to the tapes himself but the act became so distasteful to him that he soon asked Molly to provide only verbal summaries. One such summary forewarned him, in time to prepare an excuse, that Susan intended to bring him and her father together on Christmas Eve. He'd also known, before Susan told him, that on this very night Susan and her father would be going to a basketball game. And as of her father's Monday morning call to Susan, that they'd be dining afterward at Gallagher's Steak House. The “she's crazy about you” reference came from a Tuesday call to Allie Gregory during which Susan gushed over her visit to Windermere, and over Paul himself. She made no reference to his encounter with Palmer Reid. It seemed to have left no lasting impression.
“She might be good for you, Paul.”
“What?” His mind had wandered.
“Susan. She might be good for you.”
A pained expression. “Am I missing something? Weren't you just telling me that seeing Susan was a bad idea?”
“That was Molly, the council member. This is Molly, your friend.”
“That certainly explains that.” The light changed.
He took her arm. As they crossed, he noticed the car that was coasting to the curb a hundred yards ahead of them on the far side of the Post Road. John Waldo's car. They kept on.
“Don't you think so?” Molly persisted.
“Don't I think what?”
“That it could work out.”
Paul took a breath. “She's pretty young, Molly.”
“Twenty-four's not so young. And you're not so old.”
“She's also not stupid. She's starting to wonder what's real and what isn't about me.” Paul told her of the Reid conversation, that Susan had overheard bits of it, and that she'd clearly doubted his version of what was being said. A bigger concern was that Reid had seen her as well and would certainly have identified her by now.
“So what?” Molly asked. “He won't bother her. He wouldn't dare try to recruit her.”
“Nothing that overt,” Paul agreed. “But he'll look for some way to use her. He'll also waste a lot of time and manpower trying to find out why I'm seeing so much of a reporter. Which is okay, I guess. But when he checks Susan out he'll find out she's headed for Europe and it won't take him long to realize we're going together. I had hoped to spend those three weeks without looking over my shoulder.”
“Do you want a couple of us to come? We'll stay in the background.”
“I don't think so.” Paul's tone suggested that he had considered it. But a pleasure trip wasn't a pleasure trip anymore, once bodyguards were involved. What he wanted was to be with Susan and to enjoy her for whatever time was left to their relationship. As it was, he'd probably have to end it shortly after their return, or whenever he could no longer plausibly avoid meeting her father. Molly and Carla were right about that part. He had to assume that her father would inevitably start sniffing the air.
Molly the council member knew that. But Molly the friend had, in spite of the life she'd lived, somehow managed to remain a romantic, and was now arguing that he and Susan might have a future after all. She'd done it before. Once, when he'd brooded aloud about having lied to Susan since the first day they met, mostly lies of omission, she pointed out that there was no such thing as a totally honest relationship except among dopes. Every man, every woman, had a few things that were better left unmentioned. Susan, being a cop's daughter, would know that better than most. Her father didn't sit down at the dinner table and say “Guess who I shot this morning?” And Susan, being her father's daughter, was probably less fragile than most, as well.
Not that Molly had a particular interest in matchmaking, or even in this particular match. Her point was, being a romantic but a fairly realistic one, that since most romances tend to be short-term anyway, there's no great da
nger and possibly a lot of pleasure in letting them run their course. She'd had a few affairs herself, mostly with men she'd met at Mario's and those she'd inevitably meet on her own vacations. She wasn't about to set a time limit on them.
Nor was marriage out of the question, at least in principle. Glenn Cook got married last year to a nice girl from Darien who still thinks he's just a former ski bum who was finally ready to settle down and open a ski shop. And Harry Bauer is practically engaged to a widow he met while teaching an investment course. Janet Herzog has had a portrait artist living with her for two years now and he doesn't suspect a thing. Carla has a rich building contractor who's nuts about her although her major interest in him is probably to get him to buy her that red Porsche she wants. Even Billy Mc-Hugh, God help us, has a girlfriend.
Paul knew all that. They could afford the distractions. He could not. Especially with Palmer Reid showing signs of getting restless again. It was one of the reasons he had wanted Susan safe with him in Westport this week. Or maybe just with him, period.
They walked along.
“If you'd like,” Molly said, “I'm sure we can think of ways to keep Palmer Reid busy over here for three weeks. Then maybe you and Susan could relax.”
Paul shrugged and shook his head. He knew they could probably throw Reid into a panic just by letting either Carla or Billy be seen in the vicinity of his Maryland home. But better not to risk overreaction. Nor did he want another lecture on his personal life or his lack of one.
“Listen,” he said, “if I ever did get hit by a truck, who do you think should take my place? That's assuming you don't want the job.”
“I don't. And the answer's Anton.”
“You'd bet your life on him?”
“I already have. In Iran. So have you.”
“I'm going to ask him to take over while I'm away, with full authority to make all decisions. That's if he'll accept.”
“He will.”
“When I get back, I'm thinking of asking him to keep the job for the next year or so. After that, maybe we'll rotate. Or have elections.”
“You're not going anywhere, are you?”
“Just easing off. You keep telling me I should.”
“You're overdue.”
“How will Gary and Carla react? To answering to Anton, I mean.”
“It'll be fine with Carla. Gary's nose might be out of joint for a while. He thinks of himself as senior to everybody here but you.”
“That probably comes with being a doctor. In terms of competence as an operative, he's not senior to anyone. He was never trained for the field. He's also never learned not to let his eyes give him away.”
Molly knew what was coming and said nothing. She held onto his arm.
“Anything you want to tell me, Molly?” he asked quietly.
She remained silent for several more steps. “Paul, I'm going to ask you to let it lie.”
“I can't function wearing blinders and I can't set a precedent of turning my back. How can I go away without settling this?”
“Please, Paul. Trust me just this once.”
“You're not going to tell me?”
“I'll tell you that Uncle Billy didn't kill anyone. That's the truth. And I'll tell you that none of us even knew that woman existed.”
“Were you involved?”
“No.”
“Was Anton?”
“Not at all.”
“What would keep it from happening again while I'm gone?”
“It can't. Not in a million years.”
Molly had tried hard to satisfy herself of that. For anything like it to happen again you'd have to find another shrink who amuses himself by sending patients out to solicit men in bars. Then one of those women would have to choose a bar whose bartender happens to be a benevolent assassin. Then of all the men in that bar she'd have to pick the bartender to come on to. Next you'd need Gary and Carla going out to head him off, finding him in time, and then deciding what the hell, the guy's a shit anyway, and finishing him off themselves.
They'd told Molly, as they'd no doubt told themselves, why the killing was unavoidable. And how reluctantly it was done. But their story didn't wash. Paul would have seen through it in a minute. Gelman, by their own account, had never seen Billy's face. Gary could just as easily have injected Gelman from behind and then pulled Billy out of there. When Gelman woke up, the most he could have done was call the police with an incomprehensible story about unseen intruders who took nothing and left no sign of forced entry.
No, Molly felt certain Gary and Carla had killed Gelman because they wanted to. They might say it was to contain the damage. If pressed by Paul, Gary might say his judgment had been colored by outraged professional ethics and Carla might even claim feminist outrage. And, of course, Gary would have found a way to convince himself that Gelman was as good as dead anyway once he hurt a friend of Billy's, so it really wasn't murder. But the truth, Molly knew, was simpler. For the past fifteen years of their lives, most of Gary's and Carla's problems had been solved by killing. Whatever they tried to tell themselves, they had killed Stanley Gelman because killing is what they do.
“I'll think about it,” she heard Paul say.
“Are you still going to talk to Billy?”
“Yes.”
“Even after I promised he didn't do it?”
“It's necessary. But I believe you.”
“Thank you.”
They walked silently for a minute or so. Ahead of them, the others were walking three abreast. Gary Russo, Molly noticed, took the curb side, as a gentleman should. Anton took the inside, as a careful man should. Paul was right about Gary Russo.
Not that Gary ever made an issue of it, Molly reflected, but it was clear that he did see himself as intellectually superior, and probably morally superior, to everyone but Paul. All those degrees and certificates. He was liked well enough, and respected generally, but Gary had never had to act alone in a dangerous situation and he'd never even planned an operation. He could never be a leader. The others would trust him in his specialty but that's as far as it would go.
Molly's eyes drifted toward John Waldo's car. He was getting ready to move again after watching their backs. There was another thing about Gary. She'd spotted Waldo, she knew without asking that Paul had, and was sure Carla had as well, but she'd have bet anything that Gary had never noticed him. And if by chance he had, Russo would have asked what he was doing there. The rest of them knew. He was there because Anton put him there. Anton put him there, on his own initiative, because there was a chance, however slight, that Palmer Reid might do something foolish. That was the difference between them. Paul was right about Anton as well.
Anton Zivic. An intelligent man. An elegant man. Nice sense of humor, no more ruthless than he has to be; very decisive, deadly when he ought to be. He was a man to be feared and yet he was not a frightening man. Molly liked him.
Anton, as much as Paul, had helped set up the system that had brought a measure of control to the random violence that marked their first year in Westport. And he had tamed John Waldo. In fact, in that first year, Waldo, Carla, Gary and one or two others were almost as big a problem as poor Uncle Billy was the next. First there was Carla, who walked out of a cheese shop to find a young black busily prying the radio and tape deck out of her dashboard. She paralyzed him with a thumb driven under the joint of his jawbone, used the car door to crush both his hands, and, when she saw the damage his screwdriver had done, rammed it a full six inches into his colon.
In another automotive incident, John Waldo shattered the right knee of a man who insisted upon making a high-speed shortcut of John's quiet street. A neighbor knew the man's name. She'd asked him to stop it on one occasion, and called the police on another, both without effect. John Waldo, who could move through a darkened house as silently as a night breeze, visited the speeder as he slept off his evening martinis. It was eighteen months before the man could press a gas pedal again.
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 13