The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (2 page)

`7 asked you a question, you asshole. You're so clean,
tell me how come you got your
face shot off?"

Lesko could see his confusion without even looking
at him. Katz would stare for
a long moment at his hands,
and he'd touch his arms, and then he'd bring both hands
to his face as if to satisfy himself that his face was still
there.

`I'm ... I'm not dead. "
His voice became
small.
Childlike.

"Get outta here, David."

"No, wait. Wait. "

"Get outta here. Get lost.

"Wait. Just let me think."

"You want to think about something?"
^P
"
Lesko was
more awake than asleep now. He could feel his legs
moving closer to the edge of the bed and his hand grip
ping the blanket.
"How about that you're a fucking
thief? How about that you're a dead fucking thief? How
about that I'm not a cop anymore because of
you?"

`
L
isten . . . "
Katz seemed to remember.
"We can
fix this, "
he said miserably.
'
It’s
not so bad we can't fix it.

Lesko's feet were on the floor, the bedcovers thrown back. He spun to the place where David Katz had been
standing and lunged toward that spot before he could
blink away the sleep.

He stopped. The room was dark and empty. The
only light was a faint glow from a distant street lamp
and cold blue wink of his digital alarm clock. The
clock read 4:06. He stood in the darkness for
a minute or
two until he could no longer hear the sound of his own
breathing.

Lesko stepped back toward the clock. On the floor
he found the bathrobe he'd dropped
there when he
went to bed. He put it on. Then for another long mo
ment he stared into the darkness of his room.

"I already fixed it, David." he said finally. "I fixed it
good."

Susan, his daughter, had said something to him once.
It was from a book she read. He was talking to her, he
wasn't sure how it came up, about the crazy things that
go
o
n
i
n your head in the middle of the night. She
p
robably brought it up. She saw he looked tired.

    
Susan knew right away what he was talking about.
She said it's the pre-dawn gremlins. Everybody gets
them. It's normal.

He'd used the tree blowing down on his car as an
example. Susan thought about that for
a while. She said
maybe it meant something. Maybe the hurricane was
his whole life. All the violence of it. And maybe the tree
on his car was the way it left him trapped. Pinned down.
And maybe the hacksaw meant frustration because it
was so hard for him to dig out and start over and yet it
was possible to try. Even a hacksaw was a start.

Lesko knew that Susan knew that the tree dream
might mean nothing of the sort. Maybe nothing at all.
Anyway, she wasn't the type to sit around psyching out
other people's dreams. Lesko knew that she was just
using the dream as an excuse to say what she wanted to
say anyway.
T
hat his life wasn't over. That he didn't
have to be lonely. That he could get his butt out of that
dumb little apartment in Queens and start living again.
She said he just wasn't the type to sit around between
pension checks. That wasn't quite fair, of course. For the
past year, he'd been a special security consultant to the Beckwith Hotels chain. He'd set up a system, trained a
lot of people, but now he was losing interest. It wasn't
enough.

He didn't mention the dream about her mother
moving back. Not that it was a sore subject but enough was enough. It would only get Susan asking whether he
wanted her back and the truth was he didn't. He'd be
underfoot. Or Donna would. Susan would probably tell
him that's what the shoes and the hall closet symbol
ized.

    
But having had
his pump primed, he did tell Susan
about Katz. Not
all
_l
of it. Just bits and pieces. She didn't
press him because she understood there were parts of
that whole story they could never talk about. Not even the parts that were in all the newspapers. But he did tell her that her Uncle David, which was what she grew up calling him, had been showing up again lately at four in
the morning.

T
hat's when she told him about the thing she re
membered from a book. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote it. He
said, "In the real dark night of the soul, it's always four
o'clock in the mor
n
ing."

    
Something like that

    
How long was it now?

    
Almost two years.

Two years ago next month when the call came from
Harriet Katz. She was screeching. Hysterical. It took Lesko a full minute, trying not to yell at her, to make sense of what she was saying. That it had happened, just
now, right outside in her driveway.

"Ha
r
r
i
et ... Harriet listen to me. Did you call an ambulance?"

  
"My daughter saw it. Oh, God, my daughter saw it."
"Did anyone call the cops? Harriet? ... Harriet!

    
But all she could do was
scream over and over that
her daughter had seen it. That he
,
David, had pulled
into the driveway and his daughter ran over to give him
his kiss and they did
it right in front of her. Right in
front of her. Harriet said that over and over. Lesko had
to hang up on her. He broke the connection and
punched 911 for the police and for the EMS unit. Then
he ran two doors down to borrow the keys to Mr.
Makowski's car. Ten minutes later he pulled up to
David Katz's two-family house in Forest Hills.

     Katz's car was in the driveway. Even as he pulled up
to the curb, one tire on the sidewalk,
Lesko could see it
was bad. There was shattered glass all over. And in front
of the car, on a white garage door, he saw a crescent-
shaped spray that had to be blood. Two squad cars were
alrea
dy there, their blue lights stro
bi
ng.
So was the
emergency services ambulance. A
neighbor
must have
called them before he did. One uniformed officer stood
near the car to keep the curious away.
He kept
his own
eyes away
from
it. He looked like6d already been
sick. Another cop stationed himself at the other side of
the small front lawn shaking his
_-
head at the questions
coming from the growing knot of residents and pass
ersby. A third uniform was at his radio.
The EMS crew
was nowhere in sight. They must have gone inside the
house after looking in the car and deciding it was a
waste of time. No one had even wanted to shut off the
engine. Lesko flashed his badge and walked up the
driveway.

David Katz, his partner of ten years, was sitting up
right at the wheel. Lesko could see at once why the
medics hadn't bothered with him. Half his
head was
gone from the left ear forward, and nearly
all
his face. A
shotgun had done most of the damage.
There was a
ragged four-inch hole through the safety glass on the
driver's side, then two smaller holes to the right of it.
Two gunmen. The second had used a small-caliber pis
tol. It wasn't needed. He'd just wanted to be in on the
hit. The far window and most of the windshield had
been blown outward by the blasts. Bits of bone and flesh
clung to what was left. Lesko could see a single tooth
imbedded in the dashboard.

There was movement at the front door. Lesko
looked up. Harriet Katz. Another woman, probably the
neighbor, was steadying her and carefully blocking Har
riet's view of her husband's car as they crossed the front
lawn to the waiting ambulance. Behind them, a uni
formed paramedic emerged carrying Harriet's nine
year-old daughter. Her name was Joni. Her eyes were
closed and her mouth was slack. Possibly sedated. More
likely in deep shock. Lesko took a few steps toward
them. He could think of nothing to say. At least Harriet
would see that he'd come. He watched the ambulance
leave. Then he turned once more to his partner's body.

Katz was wearing one of the two new jackets he'd
bought the week before. Cashmere, glen plaid, mostly a
light gray. Five hundred dollars. On his wrist, gleaming brightly, even through the congealing blood, was Katz's
gold Rolex chronograph. Two thousand dollars.

"You son of a bitch," Lesko said quietly. "You poor,
stupid son of a bitch."