Read The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) Online

Authors: John R. Maxim

The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) (21 page)

“Just take her home, Lesko.”

”I got your word?”

“That I won't contact her? Yes.”

“What if she calls you?”

Bannerman hesitated.

“She will. I know her. What I want is for you to just hang up on her.”

Bannerman shook his head. ”I won't do that.”

“Why not?”

He didn't answer.

“You're a pisser, you know that?” Lesko waved his arms. “I've seen you blow away four different people, you never even blinked, but you wouldn't hang up on my daughter because that would be impolite.”

“Give me a break, Lesko.” Bannerman checked his watch.

“Anyway, that's not why I came.”

Bannerman waited.

“What you did for Elena. Maybe I owe you one.”

”I didn't do that for you.”

“Don't brush it off, Bannerman. Like you said, you might be in a back alley someday.”

”I might,” he acknowledged. ”I appreciate it.”

“There's one other thing. This guy. Clew. You trust him?”

Bannerman raised an eyebrow. “What's on your mind?”

”I don't know. A feeling. Forget it. It's none of my business.”

“This feeling. Can you put it into words?”

Lesko shrugged. ”I shouldn't judge. I never saw the guy before last week. You've known him, what, fifteen years?”

“Just about.” Bannerman nodded. “Tell me.”

“I've seen him look at you. He's afraid of you. Even on the plane coming over here. I could see it then, too.”

“You don't mean worried? Nervous?”

”I could be wrong.”

“But you don't think so.”

Another shrug. “After three thousand arrests, I can tell worried from scared. Me, you make nervous. Him, you scare. The man knows something you don't.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway”—Lesko buttoned his coat—“take care of yourself.” He almost extended his hand, but brushed his hair back instead.

“You too, Lesko.” Bannerman saw him to the door.

_-15-

Sunday morning. Alexandria, Virginia.

Irwin Kaplan could have done without the platform tennis. And he could have done without hearing how the game was invented for days like this. What was invented for days like this was the Sunday paper and an electric blanket. The weather was ridiculous to be out in, let alone play games in. There was no sky. Only a low frozen mist that soaked his clothes from one side as he sweated through them from the other. The surface was slick. Hagler had fallen twice. Clew, once.

If God was good, one of them would break a leg. Himself included. It would spare him, for a while at least, the discussion he'd been dreading for the ten days since the four of them sprinkled dirt on Palmer Reid's coffin.

Too late now, he thought. The match, in its third and final set, was almost over. Fuller and Hagler against himself and Clew. It could not be called the deciding set because Fuller, with or without a partner, could have blown them out anytime he chose. But he didn't care about winning. Not
at
paddle, anyway. What he wanted was for everyone to work up a good tired sweat because he had this theory. Maybe more of a superstition. He felt that life and death decisions should never be made by people who are too comfortable. You don't sit around a Palm Springs swimming pool, for example, and decide whether Jack the Ripper should be put back to work.

Another part of his theory, Kaplan knew, was that a hard game of paddle tended to clear the mind. Fast, aggressive, fought at close quarters, almost like hand-to-hand combat. Great for purging hostilities. Plenty of chances to smash a wet ball into the net man's face. Especially when the net man is Hagler, who you really don't like very much. But also Bart Fuller for not, as Kaplan had secretly hoped, slamming the door on Roger's brainstorm when he'd first brought it up.

Kaplan had come today hoping there was still that chance; Hagler hoped the opposite. They'd arrived at Fuller's house together. Hagler had collared him in the driveway, eager to show him his latest printout detailing the Ripper Effect that followed the sudden death of Palmer Reid. Reid's body had barely cooled before Hagler was at his computer asking it what would happen next. The computer thought about it for maybe ten seconds before producing a list of more than fifty people who would now either resign, retire, or otherwise run for cover. By the Friday following the funeral, half of them already had. A week later, most of the rest were gone as well. Hagler, he suspected, had helped things along by letting it leak that Reid might not have died of natural causes and that his private files, in any case, could not be found.

Roger Clew, thought Kaplan, should have been equally enthusiastic, if not over the death of a man he despised, then at least over the first real test, however unplanned, of the Ripper Effect. But he was not. He'd seemed distant. Distracted. Almost frightened. That was not like Roger, but it was, to some degree, understandable. Roger had built a career on the perception that he was the one man who enjoyed Paul Bannerman's trust and could control him. Take away that control and all bets are off concerning any further testing of the Ripper Effect.

Another possibility, of course, was that Roger had run a test of his own. That he had set something in motion that ended up getting Mama's Boy angry and Palmer Reid dead. That would not have surprised Kaplan. And it might explain the haunted look he thought he saw in Roger Clew's eyes that morning, and a mind that was not on his game, which they were now one point from losing. Whatever demons he was carrying, three hard sets of paddle tennis were doing little to exorcize them.

The ball, a too-short lob by Hagler, arced lazily toward Irwin Kaplan. It was a gift. An easy winner. They'd go back to deuce. The hell with that, thought Kaplan. He stepped under it and slapped it out of bounds.

Barton Fuller frowned. His eyes accused Kaplan of a deliberate miss-hit. Kaplan ignored him. His own eyes, glancing toward Fuller's glassed-in porch and the coffee and rolls that awaited them there, said enough of this nonsense.

Fuller nodded. “Let's talk,” he said.

”I will make three remarks,” Barton Fuller said, pouring coffee, “and then I'm going to leave you while I shower.”

A knot formed in Kaplan's stomach. Fuller was setting the agenda. But he was saying that he could not stay to discuss it. Which meant that Irwin Kaplan, unless he walked out with him, was about to be a party to a conspiracy.

“The first,” said Fuller, who had just transformed himself from a paddle tennis buddy into the secretary of state, “is that I am entirely familiar with the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the death of Palmer Reid. Roger has briefed me. If either of you have anything to add, anything you think I should know, by all means tell me but do so individually and in private.”

Kaplan glanced at Clew. He thought he reddened slightly.

“My second remark,” the secretary continued, “is, for the record, unrelated to the first. Roger has been to Westport. You might ask him to tell you about his trip if he hasn't already.”

He had. To hear Roger tell it, the trip was a bust. Apparently, however, he and Fuller had some new thoughts about it. Or Fuller had.

“The third remark is also unrelated.” Fuller's face took on a pained expression meant to show how deeply he disliked the need to be coy. He looked at Kaplan and then, in turn, at Hagler. ”I am keenly aware of the fact that you have two of the most thankless and most frustrating jobs in this entire administration. You are in a war that must, at times, seem unwinnable. But it must be fought, and it cannot be lost. Anything you need, any help I can give, is yours for the asking. No promising strategy should be overlooked, no weapon untested.”

In the silence that followed this last, Fuller looked into the eyes of each man in turn, holding their gaze until he was satisfied that the message was understood. Kaplan and Hagler answered with nods. Clew looked at his watch.

“Mr. Fuller,” Clew said, “if you're going to take your shower . . .”

Fuller hesitated.

“Sir,” Clew told him, “we understand.”

“Irwin?” Fuller turned to the balding DEA man. “Do you?”

Kaplan sipped from his mug. “You said we could talk? Privately?” He saw Roger Clew frown. Kaplan paid no attention.

“Any time. On any subject.”

“Thank you for the game, sir.”

Barton Fuller left the room.

Roger Clew waited until he heard footsteps on the floor above him. “Any questions about that?” he asked.

The two men shook their heads. It was clear enough. Fuller had, no mistaking it, given his blessing.

“If we're through tap-dancing”—Hagler buttered a roll— “let's talk about Westport. Do I gather that Bannerman's had a change of heart since you saw him?”

Clew shook his head. “No change. He just wants to be left alone.”

“But he still owes you a favor. He acknowledged that.” Hagler remained standing. It was his habit. A short man, although stocky, he tended to compensate for his height by standing while others sat or sitting while others stood.

Clew held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, as Bannerman had. “Not a big one. Not as big as we'd like. Not yet.”

“What does
not yet
mean?”

“Except for a quid pro quo on those drug warrants Irwin lifted, he doesn't feel that he owes us. Or needs us. I think he will soon. We just have to wait.”

Hagler gestured toward the briefcase that held his printout. ”I have five priority targets in there. All of them hot. You said you'd deliver Bannerman. I need him now.”

“It's not that simple, Harry. The fact is, Bannerman's right. We need him more than he needs us. If we're patient, that will change.”

Irwin Kaplan leaned forward. “May I ask why you think so?”

“Because regardless of Bannerman's wishes,” Clew told him, “he's not going to be left alone. That honeymoon's over. Since Switzerland, we've had inquiries from the Swiss themselves, from Interpol, and four or five other intelligence services, some of whom had assumed Mama's Boy was dead. We've even picked up some coded traffic from a KGB agent in Bern. We haven't broken it but it's clearly about Bannerman because it uses the same designator for him that it's used in the past plus a geographical designator that seems to be Westport. If that's not enough, other people who now know about Westport include”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“your old friend Lesko”—he nodded to Kaplan —“at least four other New York cops, Susan Lesko— who is, incidentally, still on the payroll of the
New York Post
—plus almost everybody in Europe whose last name is Brugg.”

“These inquiries you mentioned?” Kaplan asked. “What sort of inquiries?”

Clew spread his hands. “Has he gone back to work? Is he available? I tell them, ‘No, he's retired,’ but nobody believes it. Next they ask if it's true that he's taken over a whole Connecticut town and threatened to kill or maim any government operative who enters Westport uninvited. I told them that it is.”

Kaplan frowned. “Was that smart, Roger?”

“Time will tell.”

Kaplan didn't like this at all. Clew, he gathered, had as much as said that Bannerman was an outlaw under no government protection. “You might as well have told them to take their best shot.”

“Listen,” Roger shook his head sharply. “No matter what I tell them, they will assume that it's a half-truth at best. If I say, hands off, he's ours, they will assume that this administration has turned Westport, Connecticut, into a giant safe house for assassins. Wouldn't you?”

Kaplan shrugged. Hagler stared.

“Would you believe the truth?” he pressed. “That the United States government has tolerated the expropriation of property to which it has legal claim? That Bannerman, the famous Mama's Boy, has decided to create and police his own little world and that we cannot, except at the risk of serious bloodshed and national scandal, do a thing about it? Would you believe that any government could have a team like this, maybe the best in the world, living on its soil, armed and intact, and not be using it?”

“Roger”—Hagler was pacing—“why the hell are we here?”

“To be briefed. To understand the situation. To be ready to react if it changes.”

“Bullshit.” Hagler bit into his roll, “You've got a scheme going here, Roger. We want to hear about it.”

“There's no scheme.” He showed his palms. ”I would simply suggest to you that if Bannerman's old friends know where he is, so do his enemies. Sooner or later, someone will try to hit him. When and if that happens, Bannerman will need our help.”

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