Read The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) Online
Authors: John R. Maxim
She said something, intended to comfort him. He barely heard. Instead he heard Irwin Kaplan.
What makes you so
goddamned superior, Bannerman? You arrogant, self-indulgent son of a bitch.
Lesko, later, agreeing with him. Up to a point.
And they were right.
His arrogance had killed all those people. He had
tamed H
ector Manley. They
understood
each other. Manley
liked
him. He would be no threat because Paul Bannerman, that superior judge of men, had said so.
If it
was
Hector Maniey.
The sign said Mario's was closed. A private party.
Or I will,
Bannerman said in his mind.
Anton Zivic approached. He greeted Susan. “There is at least some good news,” he said. “Billy is flying back today, although against the advice of his doctors. Colonel Belkin is escorting him. Kurt Weiss has taken Mrs. DiBiasi to meet his flight. We've told her, incidentally, that he had a tumor removed from his neck.”
Bannerman said nothing. But he was grateful.
“He had a niece,” Bannerman said hopefully. “Her name is Lucy.”
Zivic nodded. “Injured, but not so badly. She was standing directly behind him when the bombs exploded.”
Bannerman closed his eyes. “Whatever they need, Anton. The family—”
”I will see to it.”
“Money, a place to live—see if they'll come out here.” He turned around, surveying the bar once more. “Where's Carla?”
Zivic frowned. He asked Susan if he might have a minute with Bannerman. She excused herself, moving to the middle of the bar where Molly stood watching the screen. It was showing older footage now. Something about the force of the blasts. ”. . . casualties, severe damage, even two and three blocks away from the source of the . . .”
Zivic eased him toward the front window. “You are allowing this to consume you,” he said quietly.
“No. I'm okay.”
Zivic shook his head. “Whenever you ask for Carla Benedict, those in need of organ donors rejoice but the rest of us wince. Carla, in any case, is keeping an eye on Belkin. She is on the same flight.”
“Anton.” Bannerman stared out onto the street. ”I want him.”
“Have you considered that he might be innocent of this?”
”I have. He isn't.”
“Anton—he knows what I must be thinking. He would have called by now. He would have denied it.”
“You say that”—Zivic tried to put it gently—“because you know the man?”
Bannerman understood. And the question stung him.
“But as it happens,” Zivic added, ”I tend to agree with you. If Manley did this, he is a psychopath who hates you far more than he hated Mr. Covington. What, therefore, might he do next?”
Bannerman chewed his lip. He might have said
hide.
But Zivic, he knew, was driving at something else. “Wait for me?” he asked. “Knowing that we'll come?”
Bannerman darkened. That word again.
Bannerman's eyes had narrowed. But now they were blinking, growing wider. They fell on the row of cars parked outside at the curb. One of them, a red Honda just off to his right, had New York plates. A part of him wanted to back away from the glass.
“Precisely,” Zivic said at his ear.
“Why now?” he asked slowly. “Why now and not before?”
“Before, it was foolish. Now it is vengeance. And now, only two or three cars would be required. Not forty.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “Priorities.” He squeezed Zivic's arm, thanking him with his eyes. “Let's get most of these people into cars patrolling the streets of Westport. I'll tell them what to look for. Send Molly to get whatever she needs in the way of detection equipment. I want Glenn Cook and two other marksmen covering the turnpike overpass on the chance that any bomb would be detonated, or at least witnessed, from there. Then get—”
“Paul?” Molly's voice.
Her head was turned toward the TV screen. One hand was raised, beckoning him. He tried to finish his thought.
The man holding the video camera moved in as well. ”. . . freakish—a full block away . . .” It focused now, not on the man but on a spot on the sidewalk. Two stains. Blood. Bits of bone and tissue. The stains were fan shaped, radiating outward. At the base of each the concrete was blackened, cracked. Now the camera moved to the man's legs. **. . . flying shards of steel and glass—one man— watching from a distance—had both feet . . .” The policeman had tied one leg off below the knee. He was looking at the men standing near. He seemed to be pleading. A black man, sunglasses, threw him a belt and backed away.
Bannerman reached Susan's side. “Wait,” she said. “They'll show him again.” But he knew.
The camera panned upward. It framed the victim's head. It was lolling, side to side, jaw slack. “Isn't that . . . ?” Susan whispered.
It was.
Hector Manley.
The head came up slowly. The eyes, glazed, in shock, seemed to notice the camera for the first time. They stared into it. They widened. A wildness appeared in them. Hector Manley, pushing with his hands, tried to back away. The policeman held him, urging him to be still. But Manley fought him, striking him, shoving him to one side, his eyes all this while locked on the camera lens. But in his mind, Bannerman knew, it was not the camera that he was seeing. He was seeing a man from who he could no longer run, no longer hide. He was shaking his head, perhaps in denial, certainly in fear. His lips parted, probably to moan or cry out. But it struck Bannerman that he was asking
how.
How was this done to him?
It might have been, Bannerman realized, that the frequency Molly had chosen and the one used for the car bombs were the same. Or, possibly, that the sound waves from the explosion had set off the microreceivers in his heels. Or, as he preferred to hope, that Wesley Covington had seen him, and the thugs with him, and that Covington's thumb, as the bombs took his life, had been poised on the transmitter that Bannerman had given him.
-
40-
Susan found him there ten minutes later.
“There was this kid,” she said quietly, “in our building in Queens. Twenty years old. Rotten kid. A sneak-thief and a bully.”
Bannerman waited.
“Once, while he was on probation, his mother caught him taking money from her purse. She tried to get it back. He punched her in the face. Kicked her. She told my father.”
Bannerman sighed. He knew what was coming.
“My father wanted to put him away. But the mother was too afraid of what he might do when he got out. So my father found him, dragged him up on the roof and—um— had a talk with him.
”
Bannerman nodded. “Until they reached an understanding.
”
”Yup.**
“But this kid ended up killing his mother anyway.**
“Blamed himself. I know.
”
“He lied to you.
”
”I know.
”
She reached a hand to his neck, rubbing where the sling cut into it. “But he still knows he isn't God.
”
An Amtrak express train roared by behind them.
And she'd heard many of them talking, openly, satisfied, she assumed, that she was one of them. The way they spoke, this was only the beginning. The Jamaican's legs would not be enough. And they were glad. Excited.
Someone mentioned Leo Belkin's name, wondering why he was coming. Another answered with a rumor that it meant more work but no one seemed to know the nature of it. She heard no hint that they'd been told about that computer. The Ripper Effect. Nor, she felt certain, would Paul or Colonel Belkin ever tell but a few. Molly, probably. Surely Anton.
It seemed to her that all this should have troubled her. One way or another, it would mean more killing. Much more. But the face of Wesley Covington, the touch of his hand, were still fresh in her mind.