The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series)

J
ohn R. Maxim

CHAPTER 1

Lesko hated four o'clock in the morning.

Lying in bed. Thinking too much. Having those
crazy dreams. He didn't mind the regular kind of
dreams. He never remembered them anyway. And
nightmares never bothered him because with a night
mare, he always figured, you're more or less along for the ride. You're also fully asleep. What he hated were
the dreams where you lie there, not quite awake and not quite asleep. You're getting all upset about some
thing, usually something dumb, and you know it proba
bly isn't real but you can't quite wake up enough to
shake it off.

He heard a police psychiatrist say something once.
About four in the morning. About the thoughts and
dreams that come then. He said that four o'clock in the
morning is when most
people find out what it's like to
be insane.

Lesko could believe it.

Up until the time David Katz got killed, most of
L
esko's four-in-the-morning dreams were just plain stu
p
id. There was one time he stewed
for what must have
be
en an hour over a tree that fell on his car during a
hurricane. It would take forever to cut it up because all
lie had was this little hacksaw out in his kitchen drawer.
The thing was, there wasn't any tree and there wasn't
any hurricane. He didn't even own a car.

     Go Figure.

    
Another time he laid there convinced that his ex-wife had shown up asking to move back in with him. But
she didn't want to be a bother so, she said, she'd just
sleep on the floor of his hall closet.
All
he could think of
was how she'd crush his shoes if she did that, but he
didn't want to hurt her feelings by saying so..

Lying fully awake at four in the morning wasn't any
bargain, either. Not that Lesko was what you'd call a
worrier. And nothing much scared him anymore. Not
after twenty-six years as a street cop. He always figured:
Something bothers you, you fix it fast and forget it. But
that doesn't work at four in the morning. You lie there,
feeling lonely, feeling sad, remembering old hurts.
Sometimes you feel afraid. You don't know why or of
what.

If anything was going to scare h
_i
m at that hour, you'd
think it would be the ghosts. There were two or three of
them over the years. People he knew. At four in the
morning you can find yourself talking to dead people
and forgetting they're dead. He'd had dreams like that
about his father a few times. They'd have conversations.
Nothing weird. Ordinary stuff. His father would be sit
ting in that chair talking about the Knicks or the Yan
kees. One time, his father was up by the ceiling looking
for
a short in the light fixture and he
asked Lesko to pass
him the pliers. Lesko thrashed
all
_l
over his bed looking
for them until he woke himself up. He felt like crying.
Like a kid. But he didn't.

The funny thing was, come to think of it, his father died getting shot in the head, just like Katz. But that's
where the resemblance ended. He didn't mind the
dreams where his father came. Katz was another mat
ter.

    
Katz started coming the day after he died. Or Lesko
started dreaming he did. Katz, who didn't have hardly
any face left the last time Lesko saw him in daylight,
comes strolling in the next morning, like nothing hap
pened, to pick him up for roll call. He's carrying, like
always, a deli bag with either two bagels or two Danish,
slamming kitchen cupboards, bitching that he can't
ever find a clean cup in this place, you're such a slob,
and come on, get your ass out of bed. That happened
five mornings stra
^y.
lit in the beginning. At first, Lesko
would wake himself up yelling that he was going to take Katz's face off all over again, but by the fifth time Lesko
wouldn't even lift his head when Katz walked in. Not
that Lesko believed in ghosts, but Katz did stop coming,
or Lesko did stop dreaming about him, as soon as Lesko squared things for him. But now lately Katz was starting.
in again.

Lesko had pretty much learned to ignore him. But it
seemed that the longer Katz was dead, the better he
learned to be aggravating. This time, this morning, he
walks in, already chewing on a buttered bagel,
and says
the same stuff about let's get down to roll call and this
place stinks. Except this time he also walks over to the
chair where Lesko tossed his clothes the night before.
He picks up the jacket or the pants and holds them out
with two fingers and he says it's not bad enough your
clothes are ugly but they smell like a zookeeper's shoe.
He says if Lesko is going to keep buying his clothes at
Goodwill Industries he should at least pick out some
thing from after the Second World War.

     This annoyed Lesko because although it was true he
got sloppy and careless for a while, he was dressing
much better now because his daughter started making him go shopping with her. And not at Bond's, either. At
Barney's. It also annoyed him that Katz thought he
knew so much about fashion because what Katz dressed
like was a Hollywood pimp. Hollywood, as it happened,
was where Katz got his ideas about clothes in the first
place when they flew out there a few years back
_t
o pick
up a fugitive. All of a sudden Katz starts wearing these
flashy sport jackets, turtleneck shirts, gold chains, loaf
ers with tassels, a tan from a tanning machine, and that
damned gold watch of his. Lesko thought he looked
stupid. Even if Lesko wasn't what you'd call real up-to-
date on men's fashions, there were a couple of things he knew. One was you don't look good in turtlenecks if you
have a big double chin because from the front you look
like you have two sets of lips and from the side you look
like a fucking pelican. Another was you don't wear gold
chains outside a turtleneck, he didn't think. The third
was if you're a cop you don't show off gold chains at all
and you sure as hell don't wear a two thousand dollar
Rolex watch unless you can goddamned well prove you
hit the lottery.
"Where'd you get the money?"
Lesko
heard himself asking. His
face was buried in his pillow
but he could see David Katz as clearly as if he was sitting
up looking at him. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or
remembering.

`
I
hit this t
r
ifecta, "
Katz said cheerfully as if for the
first time.
"I put down five bucks and I walk away with
almost three large."

"Yeah? What track? Tell me the horses.

"It wasn't a track. I went to
J
ai-alai, up in Connecti
cut."

"Don't bullshit me, David,"
Lesko warned.

"Come on, Ray. Lighten up. I got witnesses.

Lesko believed him about the witnesses. Smart cops
always had witnesses. They'd take some friends to jai-
alai or the track, place some bets, then after the race
they look up at the
pari-mutuel
board, get this shit-eat
ing grin and say they'll be back in five minutes. Then
they go back where the cashiers are, reach into their
pockets, count out an amount that's the same as the
pari-mutuel
payoff on the board, then go back and flash
the money. Where'd he get the money? The track. Hon
est. We all saw him hit.

Lesko must have had that conversation with Katz at
least twice while he was alive and a half dozen more
times after he was dead. Lesko wanted to know not only
about the watch but about Katz's two new jackets, one ultra
suede, and the other cashmere, which must have
cost eight hundred bucks between them.

"
^I
f you're dirty, David, I'm going to kick the shit out
of you. You know that, don't you?"

But Katz maintains his look of wounded innocence.
Come on, Lesko, he says. The watch came from the jai-
alai hit and the jackets came from overtime. Yeah, over
time. What's wrong with that? Harriet gets the regular
paycheck to pay the bills. Overtime is found money,
right? It's to enjoy. I buy some nice clothes, Harriet gets a new dress, maybe we go down to Florida once a year,
maybe we take a little cruise down to Bermuda. Hey,
Lesko. You and Donna never did that? With what you
save on clothes you could have gone to Europe. Would I
have started giving you shit about being dirty? Give me
a break.

"Then how come you're dead, you son of a bitch?"
This was where the dream always changed.

Katz would just stand there. His face would go stu
pid.