“To do what?”
“I'll tell you what I know. You'll tell me what you know. You will agree, at minimum, not to tip my hand to Lesko or anyone else. These people are quite desperate, you see, and your phone calls were bringing you closer to making certain connections. It's why I had you taken out of harm's way.”
“You have my word that I'll do what is proper,” Donovan told him. “The third party, I take it, is Paul Bannerman.”
“It is.”
“Tell me about him.”
“The man is a cancer. An open sore.”
“Aside from that.”
“Paul Bannerman is the ringleader of a group of renegade former agents. All are dangerous. Most homicidal. All have been dismissed from service for incompetence, disloyalty, and an array of criminal offenses that would strain your credulity.”
“Such as?”
“Theft, extortion, atrocious assault. Three of them once kidnapped a little girl and sexually abused her for many hours. The poor child had to be institutionalized.”
“I see.”
“They all live in Westport, with Bannerman, masquerading as decent citizens. They are also part of a drug conspiracy that is destroying the very fabric of our nation.” Reid reached into his pocket and took out a packet of photographs. He held them aloft, his hand trembling. “I want you to see what they're capable of,” he said. “I want you to know how hard it's been for me to stay my hand against them until I'm sure I can get them all.” Reid spread the photographs across the coffee table.
The first few showed an open car trunk. Two men, bound and beaten, were crammed inside. Other photographs showed that they had survived the ordeal. Still others showed close-ups of their facial injuries. “That was the first surveillance team we sent in,” Reid told him, “Now see the second.”
The next series made Donovan recoil. Two charred corpses, their arms reaching out. “These men had wives and children,” Reid said.
Two more photographs. Each showed the burnt hull of a boat. Donovan looked more closely. They were two different boats. “What happened here?” he asked.
“The second team went in by boat. A bomb was planted aboard. The explosion was made to look like a fuel-leak accident.”
“Then what boat is this?” Donovan pointed to the other.
“It's my own.” Reid's color rose. “They burned it the same day. A personal insult to me.” He picked up the photo.
Donovan's eyes drifted back over the others.
“She was beautiful,” Reid said sullenly.
“What was?”
”A Grand Banks trawler. Custom-designed. All-teak decks. Named for my dead mother. I never even got a chance to have her photographed under power.”
“The man must be a monster,” Donovan said dryly.
“Well?”
“I'm thinking.”
The photographs had shocked him. The story of the gang rape and sexual torture of a child had its effect. But Donovan didn't necessarily believe a word of it. Over the years he'd heard too many such embellishments from Palmer Reid. He had a sense that this little girl could just as easily have been a nun or a cripple or somebody else's sainted mother if Reid had thought of either first. The beaten men could have been anyone. The burned men in their boat as well. They may or may not have had wives and children. And he had trouble believing they'd enter Westport by boat, as opposed to a highway ramp or country road, for the relatively innocent purpose of surveillance.
Be that as it may. What ruined the desired effect of all this was Palmer Reid, who had the sensitivity of a mackerel, focusing his only creditable emotion upon his own stupid boat.
“The part about Ray Lesko,” Donovan said, “and his daughter, and their being involved in a drug conspiracy with Elena and this Bannerman. . . .”
“I know. It's hard to believe.”
“I think it's the most ridiculous story I've ever heard in my life.”
Reid flushed but recovered quickly. He gestured to the photographs as if they proved everything. Donovan dismissed them with a wave.
“I may not know Bannerman,” he said, “but I do know the Lesko family and none would ever be involved in such a thing. What I know about Bannerman is that he withdrew from government service three years ago but that his reputation for integrity prior to that time seems to have been the highest.”
“He was never in government service,” Reid said darkly. “He was a contract agent, bound by no code of loyalty or decency, and he. . . .”
“I know what a contract agent is,” Donovan glared back at him. “And I know what you are.”
“Meaning?”
“That whatever Bannerman is now and whatever he's done, I would sooner trust him—to say nothing of Susan Lesko's judgment of him—than a man who has hardly uttered a truthful sentence in his entire adult life.”
Palmer Reid's eyes went dead. After a long moment he slowly shook his head, then placed his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet. Bending over the coffee table, he gathered the photographs, taking care to place them in order, and returned them to his pocket.
“Mr. Gorby.” he called to the door.
The big man opened it. “Yes, sir?”
“You have an errand not far from Mr. Donovan's residence, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.” Buzz Donovan heard a car starting up in the driveway. He could see the other man, Burdick, apparently off on an errand of his own.
“Take him home, please.”
Donovan stood. “Just run me down to the Scarsdale station. I’d prefer the train.” While I decide what charges to bring, you son of a bitch.
“I wouldn't hear of it,” said Palmer Reid.
Lesko's last appointment of the morning extended into lunch. He excused himself, went to a phone, and gave Buzz Donovan's number another try. Still no answer.
He was getting worried. Donovan was no kid. Could have had a heart attack, a stroke, maybe he fell down and broke a hip. Lesko found the number of Donovan's building superintendant, identified himself, and asked the super to go open Donovan's apartment and take a look. He'd wait at this number.
The dream he had that morning came back to him. He'd told Katz to go look for Donovan. That's all he needed. Donovan dead somewhere and Katz turning up tomorrow morning with his ghost. Katz with the bagels and Donovan with the coffee. Which would be okay, he could at least get some answers, as long as Donovan didn't make a habit of it. He could ask Donovan. . . .
Hold it.
Steady, Lesko.
Cut that crap right now. Last time you even began to believe in ghosts was when the nuns at Our Lady of Sorrows said all the kids had these guardian angels who hung around all the time watching out for them. You believed that until enough bad things happened to you and your friends to conclude that either an awful lot of guardian angels were asleep at the switch or the nuns were jerking your chain. Even so, it was six months before you could even take a shit in peace.
The phone rang. The super. No sign of Mr. Donovan. No sign he was sick or anything. Lesko thanked him and asked if he'd go back up and leave a note to get in touch as soon as he got in.
Next Lesko dialed a Queens number and asked Mr. Makowski, his neighbor, whether he could use his car for a few hours if he came home now. Mr. Makowski said sorry, not until Saturday. Car's in the shop getting a new radiator. Lesko said thanks anyway.
He'd just about given up on the idea of going to Westport, which didn't really have much point anyway, but on the other hand the prospect of going home to Queens seemed especially lonely. What with Susan going away. Lesko checked out of the Regency and walked with his suitcase to Grand Central. Next train, the board said, was in four minutes. Lesko let out a sigh. If he'd walked slower he would have missed it. So? Make up your mind. Subway to Queens or train to Westport? What the hell, he decided.
The train was more full than he expected. People quitting early for the weekend. Lots of blue suits and briefcases; quite a few women, some of them half in the bag, having started the
ir weekend with a long, wet lunch. He found a seat and settled back. Straight ahead of him on a bulkhead was a poster for Hennessey's cognac. He'd seen the ad before in magazines. A young guy and a girl in a ski lodge sipping Hennessey's. A fire going, snow outside, both of them covered with nothing but quilts to show they'd just been screwing.
Lesko got up and moved.
The train ride to Westport took just over an hour. He followed the flow of detraining passengers toward a tunnel going under the tracks to the southbound side. Lesko had no plan. He still didn't know why he'd come. But he was here.
Half the people from the train seemed to be headed for either of two bars that stood facing the station. One called Dameon's, the other called Mario's. On the near corner there was a little variety store and newsstand. Lesko went there. He bought a street map and asked where he might rent a car. The counterman said he'd passed a little Avis office on the other side. Lesko thanked him, then went to a phone where he looked up the addresses of Paul Bannerman's home, Bannerman's travel agency, and the Westport Public Library.
As Bannerman himself had done three years earlier, Lesko spent the better part of an hour driving around Westport and gathering impressions. It was more spread out than he'd imagined. He saw no one in pink pants, but they were for summer. Most people seemed to wear ski jackets. Still plenty of ducks on mailboxes, though. And everyone seemed to be driving a BMW or a Volvo. Most of those either had college decals on the rear window or those dumb yellow signs that used to say Baby On Board but which now said Lawyer On Board or Ex-Wife In Trunk so everyone would know they had a sense of humor. Not a bad town otherwise. Not for him, but not bad.
Bannerman's office looked legitimate enough. Lesko crept by it in his car. Three women sitting at computer consoles and another one handing a stack of brochures to a BMW lady. So, four employees at least. Must be making money.
Bannerman's residence turned out to be a condo complex down by the water. There was a manned security booth at the entrance. Lesko got past the guard with no trouble, saying he lived in town and was thinking about going condo now that the kids were gone, and he just wanted to look over the grounds. The guard handed him a card with the realtor's name. Lesko also saw the guard write down his plate number as he pulled away. That impressed him. Most such guards were useless and were primarily for show. He found Bannerman's unit. Number eight. On a corner.
“You see anything . . . ?” He caught himself. He'd almost asked David Katz, on the empty seat to his right, whether Katz noticed anything funny about Bannerman's unit. Habit. Ten years of driving around together, spotting things on the street, thinking out loud.
Katz would have noticed. Of all the units here, there were only two where you had to climb a short flight of stairs to get to the front door or see into the first-floor windows. Of the two, only one had heavy curtains fully drawn. Number eight.
It didn't have to mean anything. Just a thing a cop would notice. That, and the fact that this complex could only be reached by a single road or by water, and the Bannerman's unit had a clear view of both.
The second floor had a deck. Probably off his bedroom. Chances are Susan stayed up there a few times. In his mind he could see her on the deck. Wearing a bathrobe. He blinked the image away.
“Get off her back, Ray. Susan's a good kid. ” Katz's voice. How many times had Lesko heard him say that? Ever since she started dating boys. Yeah, well, when your Joni gets a little older, we'll see how you act. Any kid licks her ice-cream cone, you'll ask him for a fucking AIDS test. Lesko wheeled the car around and headed back into the town.
His next stop, after a pass of the main shopping street —they actually called it Main Street—was the Westport Public Library. Several heads looked up as he entered. Several heads usually did. He started toward the information desk but was intercepted by a small woman, attractive, slender, hair in one of those pixie cuts, who asked if she could help him. Lesko asked if he could see some back issues of the Westport paper. How far back, she asked? Just recent. Looking for anything in particular? A story about a friend of mine. She led him to a shelf where there were two weeks' worth in a pile, then to a table where three other people, one older woman and two students, were also researching periodicals.
Lesko wasn't looking for anything special. Just browsing. Susan's suicide and accidental-death numbers were in the back of his head but he was damned if he was going to start poring through microfilmed records as Susan had no doubt done in this very library. Waste of time. But newspapers can help give you the feel of a town. He'd just look through a few, then maybe grab a sandwich and a beer and head back to New York.
The Westport News was a biweekly. Published Wednesday and Fridays. Mostly ads and local news. No national news at all. He found an ad for Paul Bannerman's company. Luxury Travel Limited. Seemed to specialize in big-ticket vacations. Which meant he met a lot of rich people. Which, Lesko guessed, would make him a pretty good asset. Maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe Susan could do worse.
The next issue down was from Wednesday, the day Susan told him about Bannerman. Front-page news was an argument about whether to tear down some old iron bridge or have it declared a landmark. Also a debate over a new truck-weighing station on Westport's stretch of the Interstate. The New York Times it wasn't. He leafed through it anyway.
Suicide.
The word caught his eye. Two suicides. A psychiatrist named Gelman and a woman named Sweetzer. She was his patient. Despondent over his death. The Post would have had fun with this one, he thought. Lots of possibilities. The most likely of which was that he was porking her.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” The library lady.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Anything you need, just ask.”
“Do you have a pay phone here?”
She pointed. “Right over past the desk.”
While Lesko made his fifth attempt of the day to reach Buzz Donovan, Carla Benedict made her second call of the last fifteen minutes to Anton Zivic.
“Describe his manner. His demeanor,” Zivic said.
“I don't get you.”
“How did he react to the Gelman story? Did he rush to the phone as if he'd made a discovery?”
Carla thought about that. “Actually, no. He's not even taking notes. On the whole I'd describe his manner as bored.”
“Then perhaps seeing the newspaper item and making the phone call are not related?”
“Perhaps.”
“For the moment,” Zivic said after a pause, “we will assume that his visit is nothing more than a policeman's curiosity, to say nothing of a father's curiosity.” Zivic knew that Lesko's daughter had just told him about Paul. Lesko's interest in the Gelman items suggested that she'd also told him why Westport had initially caught her notice. Zivic would have been surprised if an experienced investigator took her speculations seriously. From Lesko's manner, he did not. In any case, if the phone call was to his daughter they would soon know what was said. “However,” he added, “I will send John Waldo to keep an eye on him.”
“I've already called Gary. He's probably outside by now.”
“Surveillance is hardly the doctor's specialty.” Zivic was annoyed. “Please go to the parking lot and tell him to follow only if John Waldo does not arrive in time. Tell him that if Lesko makes more than two turns in any direction other than toward the turnpike entrance, he is to break off immediately.”
Lesko returned to the table only long enough to pack up the newspaper portfolio and return it to its shelf. He slipped into his coat. On his way to the door he passed the library lady coming the opposite way, noticing idly that she'd gone outside without one.
His dashboard clock said 4:30. Too late for a sandwich. He'd wait and have dinner in the city, with Buzz Donovan, if he ever showed up. Checking his map, Lesko chose the most direct route to the station.
A white Subaru wagon left behind him, Lesko noticed. And it was staying with him down Imperial Avenue and right on Bridge Street.
It should not have bothered him because he could see from the road signs that his route toward the station was also the most direct route to the Interstate.
The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Page 23