Bannerman's Law Page 39

  Bowling. Unions. Strikes. Streicher.

  Bannerman couldn't help but smile.

  48

  Susan's heart jumped when the telephone rang.

  Now that it had, she was afraid to touch it. She gathered herself, then picked it up and said hello, grimacing at the catch in her throat.

  The line was silent. Hollow.

  “Is someone there?” she said, more strongly.

  No answer. Then a click.

  She held the phone to her ear, to no purpose, and felt her legs go weak. She sat down on the bed, feeling the hardness of the Beretta under her.

  Damn.

  It could have been almost anyone, she told herself. A simple wrong number. But she knew better. She could feel him in the hollowness, the emptiness, of the line.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  ”I have had . . . many thoughts of you, Molly. It's been ... six years?”

  “More like eight.”

  “‘Yes. Eight. I know that I should have . . .”

  “Axel . . . you didn't owe me anything.” Except, she said in her mind, you might have told me about you and Bonnie, face-to-face. “Except,” she said aloud, “you might have let me know you were okay.”

  “It seemed easier this way, for all concerned.”

  “That phone was wired, Axel. Someone else knows you're not dead.”

  “Marek, you think?”

  “FBI, I think. But it looks like they told Marek.”

  A long silence. Then, “It doesn't matter. We have a new life.”

  ”I don't suppose you'd tell me where.”

  “Molly

  ”I understand, Axel.”

  “I've told Bonnie about you. About us. Her response was that I have very good taste.”

  “Axel . . .” A different response sprung to mind. She thought better of it. “Why did you call DiDi again?”

  “To make sure that my message was passed on. There is nothing for you at Sur La Mer. Nothing for Carla.”

  “There's Marek, apparently. He's got people out looking for us. He's tried twice to hit us.”

  “And Bannerman feels he must hit back. Bannerman's law.”

  “Axel . . . what's your stake in this?”

  “Would you believe . . . protection of the innocent?’'

  “I'd believe covering your trail.”

  “I've left no trail. Trust me on that.”

  “You remember Roger Clew? He doesn't want us going there either. Why, Axel?”

  A surprised silence. ”I . . . don't know. I can only guess that he knows what it is. I won't explain, Molly, because it is truly none of your business. But Roger, believe it or not, might be protecting the innocent as well.”

  “Well . . . I'll talk to Paul.”

  “Where can I reach him?”

  “Where can he reach you, Axel?” she asked dryly.

  “Very well. Please ask him that he take no action before noon today. He has my word that no advantage will be lost.”

  “I'll tell him.”

  “Molly . . . make him believe me.”

  ”I said I'll tell him.”

  Sumner Dommerich was so tired.

  He knew that he wasn't thinking properly. The voice should not have taken him by surprise. It was probably the tall one with the brown hair. Named Molly. Maybe Carla was right there.

  Except that if Carla read the note, she knew he'd be calling about now. She would have answered the phone herself. Unless, maybe, she was on the toilet or something.

  He was tempted to call again and ask. Like, are you Molly? But that wouldn't do any good because he didn't know Molly's voice. She could be anyone, pretending to be Molly. It could be a trap. Maybe Carla was there but she was tied to a chair and gagged. Maybe men were waiting outside in the bushes again.

  No. Wait.

  Don't get all upset.

  Just go look, maybe.

  Think of ways to get her to open the door so you can see if it's Molly.

  “You know what I think?”

  Katz.

  Lesko tried to shake him away. His own thoughts were dancing between what might happen when this cab pulled up to that Chevrolet and Elena, and Susan, and the strange behavior of Molly Farrell.

  No question she had something on her mind. Usually, she's the most laid-back of the whole bunch, very together, but now she looked like someone just slapped her.

  For a minute there he thought she might have heard how he squeezed that greaseball's neck a little too long. But that wouldn't have bothered her any more than it bothered Waldo. It only bothered him.

  ' 7 think some guy dumped her.''

  What?

  ”I seen it a hundred times. ”

  You've seen what?

  “Like when a guy's wife or girlfriend tells him to take a walk. I remember when you looked like that.”

  Lesko curled his lip. Right. With everything else going on here, shit-for-brains thinks Molly's worried about her love life.

  Ahead, he saw a service station. He asked the driver to pull in while he made a quick call. He wished there was a way he could reach Elena, make sure they all got back okay, but at least he could check in with Susan, get that much off his mind.

  She answered on the second ring. “Claude?”

  “No, it's me. You okay?”

  Heavy breathing. ”I guess. Sure. Daddy, I have to keep this line open.”

  “You got the door bolted? The windows?”

  “Yes, I've—wait . . . someone's here.”

  Lesko's stomach knotted.

  “Daddy, it's Elena and John Waldo. I have to give them a package.”

  “Wait. You're sure it's them?”

  ”I see them. They're . . . um, checking things out.”

  “You don't open that door for anyone else, you understand?”

  “Daddy . . .”

  “Nor for the chamber maids, the bellboys, room service . . .”

  ”I really have to go.”

  “Susan!” he snapped.

  Exhaled breath. “Yes?”

  “No . . . pizzas, either. Don't send out for a pizza.”

  “Good-bye, Daddy.”

  Lesko listened to the dead line. He knew how dumb that must have sounded. A part of his mind dared Katz to open his mouth about it. The other part saw Elena through Susan's window. He was glad he called.

  Carla, her scraped knees bleeding through her jeans, sat sullenly in the back of Waldo's car as it headed south toward Culver City on the San Diego Freeway. Bannerman sat in front of her. Billy and Elena followed in the second car. Carla saw the road signs leading to the airport.

  “Are you putting me on a plane?” she asked. ”I won't go.”

  He shook his head. ”I wish I could.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “To an address Leo gave us. Be still, Carla.”

  That was the most he'd said to her.

  He had left her in Billy's trunk until they were well away from the Holiday Inn. Then he stopped to call Molly again. Only after that had he freed her, taking her arm, leading her to Waldo's car as she struggled against him trying to get at Billy. She quit struggling when he appeared to be eyeing the other trunk.

  She sat alone with him then, Billy covering on foot, while Waldo and Elena drove off to pick up a package from Susan. He wouldn't even tell her what it was.

  She had tried to apologize, in her fashion. Or, rather, to explain: Fear is a weapon, she said. Bannerman himself had taught her that. Now Marek would be terrified. He'd care more about saving his own ass than moving against them. But Bannerman had turned the radio on, as if to drown her out. He listened to news broadcasts until Waldo and Elena returned.

  He was being a prick, she thought. And he was hurting her.

  Worse than not talking, worse than the anger for which she had prepared herself, was the look in his eyes. She saw mistrust, even dismissal.

  She felt her throat begin to thicken and grow hot. Oh, no. She was damned if she would let him see her cry
again. She tried focusing on the radio news. It was all about Claude. Did he or didn't he? That didn't help because it brought thoughts of Lisa. She tried thinking of Yuri, yesterday, in her bed, later telling her about his Maria. That was a mistake. The tears came hard.

  They seemed to soften him a bit. She hated herself for it nonetheless.

  “Carla

  “Fuck you.”

  Bannerman ignored the response. He patted his pockets as if looking for a handkerchief, finding none.

  “There were three Dunvilles,” he told her. “One did kill Lisa. He's now dead. Another Dunville would have silenced DiDi Fenerty. He's also dead. The third Dunville appears to have been innocent. He's left town. We're not likely to see him again.”

  She found a tissue in her purse. “How do you know all this?”

  “I'll tell you. But not for a while.”

  “Does everybody else know?”

  “Only some.”

  “The reliable ones.”

  Bannerman made a face. “As it happens,” he told her, “there's been no chance to brief any of you.” He made a gesture that embraced both cars.

  “We're here now.”

  “It can wait, Carla.”

  “Does Susan know? Does she know more about my sister than I do?”

  He chewed his lip. “Stop that. Right now.”

  Waldo turned onto the ramp for Culver City.

  ”I need new stockings,” she said.

  Bannerman blinked at the nonsequitur, then remembered. Her knees. “We'll get you cleaned up. Elena probably has some to spare.”

  ”I want my own.”

  Bannerman, fed up, turned in his seat as Waldo coasted to a stop. He saw Carla's knife. She held it, more defensively than threatening, close to her body. With her free hand she opened the door.

  “Don't make me cut you,” she said.

  49

  “The things I do for love.”

  Alan Weinberg muttered this aloud as Barbara rummaged through the supply closet at Dr. Michael's office, searching for a set of whites that would fit him. She found one jacket that would do if worn unbuttoned.

  Weinberg sat in a chair, Kleenex tucked into his shirt collar, as Nellie went to work with her makeup kit. She would, she had promised, give each of them a nice California tan. Age them a few years. Hide the scars. She had also gathered an assortment of props such as eyeglasses, stethoscopes, and a well-chewed pipe for Alan.

  Barbara had already dressed in a nurse's uniform of sorts. A white dress and stockings. She would use her own sneakers. And she had fashioned a sort of wimple out of a pillow case.

  “You're supposed to be a nun, I take it.”

  “It hides my hair.” She paused at a mirror to check. “And it might put them at ease.”

  “But isn't there supposed to be a black thing that hangs down the back and sides?”

  “I'll make one. Another pillow case. It will have to be white.”

  Weinberg grunted doubtfully. It boggled the mind. A Jewish nun. Sisters of the Holy Uzi. But, he realized, it would probably serve its purpose. He did not imagine that the personnel at Sur La Mer were familiar with the dress code of the various religious orders.

  This was all Barbara's idea initially.

  Not that she'd actually proposed it. But he'd seen that half-smile grow on her face as Dr. Michael explained how he planned to pick up the members. He would drive his own station wagon, he said. He would lead a minibus to be provided by the Motion Picture Country House and driven by one of its orderlies. The minibus carried basic medical equipment, oxygen, and it had an electric lift for wheelchair patients.

  ”I wonder if they'd recognize us,” was all she said.

  Weinberg’ s best response, he realized too late, would have been to feign a heart attack. Anything to interrupt her train of thought.

  But ”I wonder,” was what he answered.

  And Nellie added, “Oh. I would feel so much better if you two went with Michael.”

  Absolutely not. Weinberg was adamant. They hadn't gone through all that surgery just to go back and show off their new faces.

  “That's just the point,” Barbara had argued. “No one at Sur La Mer would expect us to come back. If we dress in whites, they probably won't even look past the uniforms.”

  “They won't look at all because we won't be there.”

  “But we'll see them,” she pressed. “We'll know what Marek and his shooters look like in case we ever run into them again. That could save our lives someday.”

  “So could minding our own business. No.”

  “And we'll see how they're deployed. You'll be able to tell Molly.”

  Weinberg hesitated. That argument, having Bannerman in their debt, had a suggestion of merit. Still, it seemed foolhardy. What if they get in and find that Marek won't let them out again? In fact, why should he let them go at all?

  But Barbara had that look of hers. That half-smile. He knew that he could argue all morning and in the end she would say something like, “You're right. It's foolish for both of us to go. You wait here with Nellie.”

  And she would mean it. There would be no question of laying down the law. One doesn't marry Bonnie Predd and expect her to become a geisha overnight.

  In the end, all he could do was what he did. Call Molly. Try to dissuade her, at least. Failing that, ask for three hours' grace.

  That and try to believe his wife when she swore that she had no other motive spinning around under that wimple. No yielding to sudden impulses such as she had when taking her leave of Carleton the elder. No plan to leave Theodore Marek—that abuser of children—stitched to the wall under the “benefactors” plaque bearing his name.

  She said she wouldn't dream of it.

  Susan could not remember feeling so alone.

  Carla's belongings, and Molly's, scattered throughout the bungalow, seemed like ghosts. She busied herself with straightening the rooms. Carla's things, in particular, affected her in that they seemed so ordinary. She could not have said why. Or what else she expected.

  She heard people passing outside, chatting idly, just another day. She wanted to be with them. She had drifted to the window, watching them turn toward the lobby entrance, when she saw the bellboy step aside for them and then continue on in her direction.

  He was carrying what looked to be a small bouquet of flowers and he was heading toward the door of Bungalow 6.

  She was surprised more than alarmed. He was a young man but, beyond that, he bore no resemblance to Paul's description of Claude. And she had seen him in the lobby earlier.

  Susan, with the Beretta in hand, answered his knock through the bolted door.

  “Flowers for Miss Benedict,” he said.

  She asked that he leave them outside.

  When he left, but while still in her sight, she quickly opened the door and snatched the flowers, then bolted the lock again. She put the Beretta back on safety and tucked it into the small of her back.

  The bouquet was a small FTD assortment in a miniature brass watering can. She opened the card. It read:

  I hope you're okay. Your friend, Claude.

  The card envelope bore the address of the hotel's gift shop but the handwriting was not in the cramped, painful script of the note he'd left under the door. She realized that he must have ordered them through a florist some distance away. This handwriting, practiced and feminine, was probably that of the gift shop clerk.

  It was such a tiny bouquet. Mostly carnations. A harmless little thing, and yet it made her shiver.

  But what, she wondered, did it mean? That he would not be calling again? All she could do was wait.

  A half-hour passed. In that time she understood anew why her father had clung to the man she'd grown up calling Uncle David. She even tried talking to him, asking him about the flowers. He didn't answer. Then a different bellboy came. With cookies this time.

  Once again, she asked that he leave them outside. She waited until more people passed before unbolting the
door and retrieving them. The cookies were by Famous Amos. The bag, well sealed, showed no sign of tampering. The note, again from the gift shop, read,

  These are my favorite. Your friend, Claude.

  Something about the cookies disturbed her. More so than the flowers. She couldn't say what.

  Uncle David?

  Still no answer.

  More time went by. Perhaps twenty minutes. It passed slowly. She had just stepped into the bathroom when she heard another knock at the door.

  “Yes?” she called.

  “This time it's a pizza,” came the voice.

  “Oh.” The bellboy, she thought, must be wondering what comes next. A chocolate cake? “Just leave it, please.”

  “Not too long, okay? It's no good cold.”

  “Sure. Thank you.” She heard him walk away.

  Funny, she thought, that her father would tell her not to send out for pizza. She tried asking him, not David Katz, why he would say that.

  “Just don't,” she imagined him saying. “Do what I tell you.''

  Susan opened the door, keeping it on its chain. She looked down at the pizza box, no note this time, and it suddenly struck her what had bothered her about the cookies. They were a gift shop item. The flowers, prepaid, could have been ordered anywhere but there's no FTD for Famous Amos cookies. They must have been ordered in the gift shop itself. Claude must . . . might ... be here.

  She closed her right hand over the Beretta at her back and reached for the chain on the door.

  “He's been watching you,” came a voice. Her own. “Twice you picked up the things he sent. He knows you're not Carla or Molly.''

  What would Molly do? Susan wasn't sure. What she would not do was scare him off. Or blow this chance.

  Swallowing hard, she threw off the chain and opened the door wide. She crouched, one arm extended as if to reach for the box. She heard a sound, then withdrew, bracing herself. A white blur appeared in the doorway at the level of her chest. Another pizza box. A figure behind it, charging at her. Pivoting, she blocked the box with her free hand and kicked under it, aiming the edge of her shoe at the leading knee. The figure squealed and stumbled. Susan gripped the rigid box, keeping it between them. She kicked again as Billy had taught her, this time at the side of the knee. A scream. She saw a flash of steel. It swiped at her under the box but the man holding the knife was already falling. He struck the table that held the cookies and the flowers and the telephone. They crashed to the floor with him.