The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) (5 page)

Lesko didn't even feel that way himself. He did what
he did for his own peace of mind as much as he did it for
Katz. He couldn't be a cop if he had left those people
walking around, but as it turned out he couldn't be a cop
afterward, either. It wasn't that he had to retire. Not
even after he told them to take their polygraph and
stick it up their asses. He could have hung in for maybe
another five, no matter how hot the brass made it for
him. But for every cop who thought what he did was
t
errific, there was another cop who was afraid of h
_i
m for
it
. And cops, like everyone else, have a way of hating
pe
ople who make them afraid. It got lonely. Lesko
t
urned in his papers.

             
For the first couple of months there was hardly a day
when he didn't replay that barbershop scene in his
m
ind. What he did, what he should have done. What he
did to the phony barber, and to the black suit who
moved for
a gun, that was okay. Shooting the second
guy was a little less okay. What would have been better
was if the one with the
crucifix had been reaching, too.
But
what the hell. This wasn't a cowboy movie. What
would have been best of all was if Lesko had shot to
kill
right off. First the two spi
c
s and then one in the back of
t
he
woman's head before he could think it over. In
stead, he gets into a goddamned conversation with her.
Instead, he ends up executing the guy who's now on his
knees and then emptying that shotgun into maybe a
million bucks' worth of nose candy. And there's the
woman, Elena, just standing there with her fur coat
turning white like she's in a snowstorm. Every blast
makes her wince but she stays standing straight and her
chin is high. She's scared to death but there's also this
look of amazement that anyone would blow away all
that money. That alone tells her that she's finished. This
man who will not take her
accommodation
is saving his
last load to spray her head all over that table.
 
An object
lesson.

      
Lesko came within a hair of doing it. The thing about
shootings is that once they start you just keep shooting
until you're on empty, even after everybody's down and
dead. It works the same with street fights. You just keep
hitting.

             
But there was something about that lady. She had
tried to deal and if it didn't work she was ready to take
what came. She could have begged. She could have said she just stopped in for a haircut. She could have said the
two Bolivians acted on their own but she promised she
wouldn't lie and she didn't.

He left her standing there.

Two years.

Too many four-in-the-mornings.

             
Lesko tightened the belt of his terry bathrobe and
began feeling his way through the darkness to the bath
room. He paused, involuntarily, at the spot where Katz
had stood, then he
caught himself and moved on.
It seemed he was dreaming a lot lately. Including
about Katz, whom he hadn't dreamed about in months. In fact the only time he dreamed about Katz, night after
night, especially in the beginning, seemed to be when
something was wrong. When something bad was hap
pening
.

Lesko flicked on the bathroom light.

             
Hold it, he said to himself. Don't start that. Don't
start looking for dreams to mean anything. Nothing's
wrong. You got a terrific daughter, a few friends, a
pretty good pension, and a few extra bucks in the bank
from the Beckwith Hotels thing. If Elena's friends were
going to do anything, especially to Susan, they would
have done it a long time ago. Katz is an asshole but he's a
dead asshole. Don't let him make you crazy.

Lesko saw himself in the bathroom mirror.
Ugly.

World-class ugly.

             
That's what Katz had called him. Katz said he had
been lucky Donna stayed with him as long as she did,
waking up every morning to a face like that.

             
Lesko looked at his face. He
ha
d to bend his knees to
see it in the mirror. They must make bathroom mirrors
for women. Not for men who weigh two hundred forty
pounds and look like bouncers and would be better off
not looking in mirrors too much, anyway.

             
He ran one hand across his hair to smooth it down. It
was more gray than brown now. But at least he still had
it. Except he also had creases. He used both hands to
pull back the flesh in an effort to soften his features.
Maybe, now that he can lay his hands on -a couple of
grand when he needs it, he could go to one of those
plastic surgeons who advertise on television. But what
good would it do? They could take away ten years'
worth of
lines but not ten years' worth of ugly. It still
wouldn't be the kind of face you could take to a singles'
club
cocktail party. But it had been a good face for a
cop. For
a cop, sometimes it was a very good face.

             
David Katz used to say he was the only co
p
in New
York who looked scarier when he smiled. When you
smile, Katz said, people always think you're going to eat
them. It's better when you don't smile because then
they think you're only going to crush their faces. How
the hell did you get married, anyway? Did you do it all
by mail? I mean, Donna's not a bad-looking lady. And
how did you end up having a daughter like Susan, who is
not only
gorgeous
but is also even smart and nice?
You know what the answer is? The answer is your genes
skipped a generation. That's a trick God pulls to keep
the species going. Otherwise, who would ever take a
chance on having another you? Some da
y
some poor
stiff is going to marry Susan thinking that because she's
so nice-looking they have at least a chance of getting a
human baby. But then this poor bastard is going to go to
see his baby at the maternity ward and he's going to run
screaming out of the hospital because there's your face
again looking back at him. The nurse probably used
tongs to carry you to the window.

"Yeah, well, fuck you," Lesko muttered.

             
He turned on the tap and rubbed cold water across
his face. Look at this, he thought.
I'm
wide awake and
I'm still talking to him. I'm listening to smartass words
of wisdom from the world's only ghost who stops to pick
up bagels first.

             
Lesko leaned closer to the mirror and grimaced. His teeth seemed to fill it. Ugly or not, mean face or not, he
had good teeth. Perfect teeth. Not a single filling if you
don't count the one from root canal. Susan inherited
perfect teeth. Shows how much Katz knows about
genes.

What's today?

Monday.

             
Susan got back last night from the Bahamas. Today he's supposed to call her to decide where they'll meet to
go to the Knicks game Wednesday night. Then to din
ner afterward at Gallagher's, which was Susan's idea,
which probably means she wants to sit him down and
nag him about not being such a hermit and how he
should go find a nice mature lady for his autumn years.

Right.
  
But it might be his last chance to spend any time
Susan before she takes off
next Friday. This
time to go skiing
. In Switzerland, no less.

             
The thought of it pleased Lesko. One thing Katz was
right about was he did okay with Susan. Smart and
pretty. Also a good person. How many cops' kids were
practically straight-A students at a tough Jesuit school
like
Fordham
?
. How many had the hustle to get them
selves jobs as reporters with a big-league newspaper
like the
New York Post.
Being his daughter didn't hurt,
because he was sort of famous, but mostly she did it herself. Twenty-four years old, and they're giving her
bylines already. And how many cops' daughters go
spend New Year's in the Bahamas, let alone go skiing in,
Switzerland.

That's class.

             
The kid's got class.

CHAPTER 2

Susan watched with pleasure as her father made his way
back from the washroom at Gallagher's Steak House. A
man at one table stopped him and pumped his hand.
Another looked up as he passed and then whispered
something about him to the woman he was with. What
ever he said caused the woman's mouth to drop open as she turned and stared. Susan smiled. It seemed as if half
the people in New York had a favorite Raymond Lesko
story. Now two more men were calling him over. And
one of the owners had sent over a round of drinks as
soon as they were seated.

She was glad, for her father's sake, that some things
hadn't changed since he turned in his badge. For most
cops the glad-hands and the free drinks ended with
retirement. But Gallagher's, at least, was different. He
was considered family here. So was his father before
him. Lieutenant Joe Lesko. When he was killed, it was
the year before Susan was born, they clipped his picture
from the paper and gave it a permanent place on the
wall next to the bar. It was still there. Right next to
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Susan had always heard that her grandfather had
died a hero. The people who said that were almost al
ways men. The women, she felt sure, thought that his
death was tragic and stupid although they knew better
than to say so. The men needed their heroes. The way it
happened, a minor hoodlum had been bullying a cab
driver just outside the old Toots Shor's on 52nd Street.
Slapping his face. The cabbie had refused to take the hoodlum and his girlfriend, both of them drunk, to
Brooklyn that late at night. Joe Lesko came out,
grabbed the hoodlum, slapped him twice as hard, and
was stuffing him into a trash can when the girlfriend
pulled a revolver from her purse and shot him three
times in the back of the head. Her father was twenty-
four at the time. Her age. He was already on the force
himself and beginning to make a reputation of his own. She once heard one of the old-timers say that her father
would have decked the woman first in order to give his
undivided attention to the man. Susan found that hard
to believe. Her father was really very gallant with
women, in his way. She'd often thought he was afraid of
them. But he wouldn't have turned his back on her. And
he wouldn't have let himself get loaded at Toots Shor's.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." Raymond Lesko slid heavily
into his chair and took his first sip of Seagram's and
water. He motioned toward another table with his
thumb. "Couple of guys back there I haven't seen since
you were a kid."

"No problem." She raised her wine glass. "It's good
to see you getting out and mixing."

"And Buzz Donovan back there, you remember? He
used to be a big United States Attorney. Anyway, he didn't recognize you and was giving me a lot of crap
about robbing the cradle."

"Bet he thought I was a hooker."

Her father's face darkened fleetingly. "As a matter
of fact," the expression softened, "he says you look a lot
like your grandmother. She was a beautiful woman in
her day. Men would pass her on the street and they'd
walk into lampposts if they weren't careful." Lesko
paused, pushing the ice around the rim of his glass. "You
shouldn't say things like that, Susan."

"Oh come on, daddy. It was just a harmless dumb
crack."

"Yeah, but you got too much class. You're a lady. And
you're beautiful."

"I am not beautiful. What I am is okay."

She was, she supposed, maybe a notch better than
okay. She did inherit her grandmother's figure, and her
auburn hair and hazel eyes. But most of the compli
ments she'd received in her life were more like
exp
res
sions of amazement that she was her father's daughter.

Susan glanced around the restaurant in search of
way
to change the
subject. She caught a man at the bar
staring in her direction. He lowered his face toward his
drink, revealing a balding scalp. Something familiar
about him. Then her eyes drifted on, over walls
crammed with fading photos of old sports heroes.

"How long have you been coming here?" she asked
Lesko.

"First time was my fourteenth birthday. My father
brought me. Same as I brought you."

"Oh, right." She remembered him talking about it.
Except on his birthday he was taken to a Jake LaMotta
fight at the Garden, and she had to settle for the Ice
Capades. "That's when Jake LaMotta came back here
after the fight and your father got him to give you a
boxing lesson."

"Yeah." Lesko smiled at the memory. "What made it
great was Rocky Graziano was here that night, too. He
comes over and says if I listen to LaMotta I'll spend the
whole next year getting knocked on my ass, excuse me,
because what LaMotta knows about defense he could fit
in his jock. LaMotta gets very insulted at this and these two look like they're going to go at it, but it's all an act
for my benefit. Then LaMotta shows me how to counter
a right lead. I decide not to mention that my father
already taught me to either kick the guy in the crotch or come in under it, spin the guy, and put a choke hold on
him until his lights go out.

"Anyway, LaMotta and Graziano are still arguing so
LaMotta asks the crowd for
a vote on
which one of them spent the most time on his ass and another one on which
one of them is less ugly. LaMotta wins both times."
Lesko turned toward the table he'd sat at that night, his
eyes darting around as he spoke as if he could see it all
happening again. "I still got the menu they both signed
for me that night. Also Johnny
Mize
of the Giants who
was in here too. It's probably up in your mother's attic."

"Want me to look next time
I see
her?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "It's no big deal."
         
"I got to meet a skating clown for my fourteenth
bi
irthday." She pretended to pout, as if cheated. "It's
one of my treasured memories. Right u
p
there with
museum trips and rides on the Staten Island ferry."

"
Y
eah, well, they were your mother's idea mostly.
Anyway,
it's not like I didn't take you to fights and
ball
games after you got older."

"After you were divorced,
^y
ou mean."

"Same thing." He waved off the subject with his
hand. "Listen, can you handle a steak or do you want a veal chop?"

"I'd like us to have a talk first."

"We haven't been talking?"

"Not
about you, we haven’t.
Things like how you are
,
what you've been doing, do you have a lady friend ..
I
mean, this is only about the third time we've talked in
almost two years."

"What do you mean? I call you at least a couple of
times a month and we've been to, like, ten ballgames."

"Yes, and about half
of
those calls were to break dates.
It was like pulling teeth even to
ge
t you over on Christ
mas. And I think you deliberately take me to ballgames
because it's
hard to sit a
n
d talk at them."

Lesko dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I
guess I haven't been much of a father."

"Oh, now there's a good move," Susan arched. "Play
to Susan's sympathy and maybe she'll drop the subject
o
f her father
ducking
her."

"I have not been ducking you."

“Liar.”

Lesko looked around the room as if for help. "What
is it about women?" he asked. "You
all
ask questions
whose answers you already know in order to get the guy
to answer out loud just so you can stomp all over him."

"It's because of the trouble you were in. All the
newspaper stories. You didn't want it rubbing off, on
me."

Basically, yeah."

"Well, that's ridiculous."

"I rest my case."

She ignored the sarcasm. "Daddy, I work for
a news
paper, remember? When you work for
a newspaper,
none of the other media try to hound you for inter
views. And the
Post
has been very good about not press
ing
me for information about you. I get all the protec
ti
on I need."

Lesko said nothing.

"Secondly, you don't say to your daughter, 'I might
be in trouble. Pretend you don't know me until I tell
you differently,' and expect me to go merrily on with
my life as if you don't exist. Or worse, as if I'm ashamed
of you."

"Look, I give up." He raised his hands in surrender. "Anyway, it's old news. Nobody cares anymore."

At least not the newspapers, he thought. Not the TV
reporters, not even the cops. And maybe not Elena or
her crazy Bolivians, either. If they were going to have
him whacked they've had almost two years to do it.
They would have done it in the first few months. Proba
bly Susan first, then him. Another object lesson. Not that
he really thought Elena would try. In a funny way they
understood each other.

But it might not be her choice if she wants to keep
doing business with the greaseballs. And Lesko had
never known them to let something like this pass. The other greaseballs would call them women. They'd send
them ladies' underwear in the mail. Which brings u
p
something else. Little Elena must be one hell of a tough
broad for those guys to do business with a woman. Ei
ther that or she has a hell of a lot of clout behind her. Big
money. New York or Swiss money, which is almost the
same thing these days.