Bannerman's Law (26 page)

“
Yuri…”

He grinned, first sheepishly, then warmly.
“
Her name
is Maria. I met her at the zoo. She had a little girl with
her. The child was too small to see the bears so I put her
on my shoulders. Maria thanked me. We w
a
lked together
all that afternoon. It was a wonderful day for me. I think
of it all the time
.”

Carla waited.
“
Well
?”
she prodded.

”I
.
.
.
investigated her. She is a cellist. My age. Quite
a good family. She is widowed. Her husband was a reserve
officer, Swiss Army. He died in a training accident. I went
to see her perform. I sent flowers afterward. She called to
thank me. We talked. She invited me to dinner at her
parents' house but I did not go
.”

“
Why not
?”

“
Because then I think, someday I will have to tell her I am KGB. I am afraid o
f
what I might see in her eyes when I tell her this. And I will lose forever the way she
has made me feel. But now, you talk of Susan Lesko. She did not run from Paul Bannerman when she learned who he is.
And it makes me think
.
.
.
perhaps Maria
will not run from me
.”

“
She might not. But Susan was already hooked on Paul
Bannerman before she began to catch on. Take your time,
Yuri. Don't tell her right away
.”

“
Lying is bad. It is never forgotten
.”

“
Paul didn't lie. He just left out a few things
.”
Like
fifteen years of his life.
“
Maria will leave out a few things,
too. Mistakes. Old hurts. Old boyfriends. We all do that
.”

The Russian fell silent.

Ca
rl
a turned to face him. She touched his cheek. She
saw that his eyes were elsewhere.
“
Yuri
...
go for it
,”
she said.
“
Stop moping
.”

”I was only
.
.
.”

“
Call her now. Tell Maria that you met Jane Fonda
but all it did was make you miss her. Tell her you would
like very much to meet her parents
.”

“
Perhaps
.”
The little boy smile returned. It became a
blush.
“
Perhaps from my hotel I will
.
.
.
”

“
Not later. Now. I'll give you some privacy
.”
Carla
rolled out of bed and picked up her bra from the floor.
She would wait in the bathroom. She thought she needed
to cry again anyway. She had a very large hunch that
unless Maria blows him out of the water, she'd had her
last good uncomplicated screw from Yuri Rykov.

The simple overseas call became a major production.
Yuri decided that he certainly could not speak to Maria
while naked and still damp with Carla, so he toweled himself
off and dressed. Then, rehearsal time was needed and more
coaching from Carla. What if she this? What if she that?
Answers shouted through the bathroom door. At last, exasperated, Carla came back into the bedroom. She demanded
Maria's number. She would dial it for him, ready or not,
and hand him the phone.

The telephone rang as she was reaching for it.

She picked it up.

“
Yes
,”
she said,
“
this is Ms. Benedict. Who is this
?”

Then she listened, her eyes widening, her mouth falling
open, as a young male voice told her that he would never
have hurt her sister. That she had always smiled at him
.

21

Molly was thinking in circles and she knew it. The more
she read of Lisa Benedict
's
files, the less motive she could
find for anyone to want them destroyed. And none at all for murdering her.

Molly clung to the assumption that Lisa was the ran
dom victim of a serial killer. There was no reason to
suppose otherwise. But there was still the phony detective
and the equally bogus FBI agent, one of whom had almost
certainly burglarized her apartment.

One thing that was clear, however, was that the situation involved potential danger. The phony detective had made a point of verifying
Carla's
name, and her own, and
of finding out where they were staying. Weapons might
possibly be needed. Just as possibly not But better safe
than sorry.

It was one in the afternoon when she placed her call
to Anton
Zivic's
shop in Westpo
r
t. Her intention was to
ask that John Waldo fly out immediately to secure clean
weapons, have them nearby, but stay out of sight as backup.

All this would be communicated through the sen
tence,
“
I'm not having a nice time
.”
The coded remark
would also alert Anton that the phone she was using was
not necessarily secure. He would answer,
“
Take the night
off
,”
or
“
Take tomorrow off
,”
depending on when John
Waldo could leave. He would ask no questions but he
would expect her to brief him fully as soon as she could
get to a phone she considered safe.

His response, however, was
“
Get off your feet. I will
call you after you've rested
.”
He broke the connection.

Molly stared at the phone, frowning. She understood
the response and she didn't. Literally, it meant that she
should get to her safe house because trouble is imminent.
Because there was no safe house in this instance, she took
it to mean the Beverly Hills Hotel. As for the trouble, she
assumed that the FBI had identifie
d
her and Anton knew
it. But that wasn't trouble. Only an annoyance.

Could there be trouble at the hotel? With Ca
rl
a? Molly
punched out the direct number to her bungalow. She heard
a busy signal.

No, she decided. Anton would not have ordered her
back to that hotel if he wasn't sure it was safe to go there.
Carla was on the phone, probably talking to her father.

“
Here's the scoop on Sur La Mer
.”

DiDi Fene
r
ty, waving a yellow pad, entered the room
where Molly still sat at the IBM console. DiDi pulled up
a chair.

“
Professor Mecklenberg, b
y
the way, says he's going
to graduate Lisa posthumously. I don't know whether it
helps or hurts. But he says she's earned it and he wants
to announce it at the graduation ceremony
.”

”I guess that
's
nice
,”
Molly said,
“
but it should be
the family's decision
.”

“
He's going to ask
.”
She riffled the pages of her pad.
“
There's a lot of stuff here. Also on Nellie Da
m
eon
and
.
.
.
there
was
a D'A
r
conte. First name, Victor. You
probably can't read my writing
.”

Molly sneaked a look at her watch. When Anton says
get off your feet, he means
now.
She was beginning to h
ave bad feelings about Ca
rl
a and what other trouble she
might have got into. With D
i
Di waiting, she tried Carla
one more time. Still busy. Then she called the hotel opera
tor to confirm that the phone had
n't
been left off the hook. It wasn't. A woman was using it. Molly decided that time
was not critical.

Molly sat back.
“
What did you find out
?”
she asked.

She listened as DiDi read an ora
l
history of the property, as a private estate an
d
then as an instit
u
tion. The
institutio
n
was private although it technically fell under
the supervision of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, formerly the Motion Picture Relief Fund, founded i
n
19
21.
Its patients, she said, were mostly loonies who were too
far gone for the Motion Picture Country House. Originally,
back in Nellie
Dameon's
day, many of them were actors
and actresses who'd gone out of their head from drugs.
DiDi gave the names of key medical and administrative
officers, including three generations of Du
nv
illes.

Molly nodded frequently. She made few notes. The
information DiDi had was pretty much what was shown
in Lisa's files and in considerably less detail. No fault to
DiDi. Lisa had been at this for months. Lisa had the names
of fifty or more inmate
s—c
alled member
s—d
ating back to
1926. It was not a very long list, given that length of time.
Lisa, Molly assumed, had only listed actors. No production
people or screen writers.

“
Let's go on to Nellie Da
m
eon
,”
she said.

“
One more thing
.”
DiDi raised a finger.
“
If you care,
I can get you a set of plans for Sur La Mer. I called my
father. He's a developer. He said his Santa Barbara office
can get them from the county clerk
.”

Molly's interest was slight. Her larger impression was
that sh
e
now knew the source of D
i
Di
's
money. But be
cause D
i
Di had taken the trouble
.
.
.
“
Sure. Nice work.
Can he messenger them, my attention, at the Beverly
Hills
?”

“
No problem
.”

DiDi began on Nellie Dameon. Again, there was noth
ing new. Bad voice for sound. Career in ruins. Went over t
he edge. No record of children. The only jarring note was
Lisa's observation that Nellie
Dameon's
voice was perfectly normal. But it meant nothing, necessarily. Maybe, as they'd discussed, she was sabotaged. Or maybe, over
sixty years, she'd learned to enunciate. Molly listened with
forced patience.

“
Victor D'A
r
conte is an interesting character
,”
DiDi
said, flipping to another page.
“
Als
o
a sleaze
.”

She began reading.

“
According to Mecklenberg, Victor D'Arconte was an
actor on the Se
nn
ett lot. Pretty wel
l
known but never a
star. They called him
“
The Count
”
because he claimed
he was the third son of some Italian prince or other. He
made a few pictures over there. Also claimed to have been
an aviator during World War One, said he shot down
several Turkish planes before being shot in the hip by ground fire. Left him with a limp. Probably limited the
roles he could take
.”