Bannerman's Law (9 page)

“
And when, Carla
,”
he asked, still not looking at her,
“
did you last find time to call your sister
?”

”A
week ago Thursday
,”
she said evenly.

He raised an eyebrow. His lips curled. Both doubt
and scorn.

“
And the week before that
.”
Her eyes began to shine.
“
And almost every week, not counting visits, for the past
ten years
.”

“
That's a lie
,”
he said through his teeth.

“
An
d
I sent her money
,”
she hissed,
“
and paid her
tuition, and I gave her that white car for her twenty-first
birthday. Fuck you, George Benedict
.”

His color rose. He shook his head, slowly, still disbe
lieving.
“
She had a scholarship
,”
he said firmly.

“
That's right. I set it up
.”

His head shook again. His lips moved wordlessly. He
seemed to be repeating what she said to him.
“
She would
have told me
,”
he said at last.

Carla leaned forward.
“
You told her you never wanted
to hear my name again, George. You got your wish
.”

He closed his eyes. Molly saw moisture forming on the
corner of the one farthest from Carla. He had
turned h
i
s
head so that Carla could not see it.

“
Mr. Benedict
,”
she said gently,
“
if there
's
anything
we can do
.
.
.”

“
No
.
.
.
thank you
.”

“
We can help with the arrangements. Make calls to friends and relatives
.”

“
They all know. The newspapers,
the...''He
gestured
toward his television set.

“
Have you seeN her
?”
Ca
rl
a asked. Her manner had
softened.

He nodded, shutting his eyes again.

“
When will she be
.
.
.”
Carla rephrased.
“
When can
we have her
?”

“
Tomorrow, I think. They were doing an autopsy
today
.”

Carla became quiet. She had, she realized, hoped to see
Lisa before the cutting began, having blocked from her
mind the knowledge that the most terrible cutting had al
ready been done. Abruptly, she reached for her purse
and stood.

“
We're staying at the Beverly Hills
,”
she said to her
father. Then, after a pause,
“
Will you be okay
?”

“
Some neighbors are coming over. They'll stay the
night. Otherwise
,”
he said, looking at his hands,
“
I'd ask
you to
.
.
.”

“
I'll call you tomorrow
,”
she said.

“
Go ahead. Say it
.”
They were back on the San Diego
Freeway. Carla stared out the side window.

“
It's none of my business
,”
Molly said quietly.

“
You think I was a shit, don't you
?”

Molly shrugged. She said nothing.

“
When I was twenty, I met this guy in Paris
.”

”I know. Paul told me
.”

“
He told you what happened
?”

“
That one thing led to another, yes
.”

She was silent for a long moment.
“
They let me call
my father. I told him I was in trouble. I asked him to
come
.”

And he didn't, Molly gathered.

“
He said I've made my bed. I should take my medi
cine. It's the chickens coming home to roost. He probably
would have said that a stitch in time would have saved
nine but I hung up on him
.”

Molly offered no comment.

“
Christ
.”
Car
l
a let out a breath.
“
Have you ever met a man named George who wasn't a turkey
?”

Molly said nothing.

“
It wasn't the first time, either
,”
Carla said.

“
What wasn't
?”

“
That I got in trouble, and he changed the locks
.”

“
What kind of trouble
?”

“
Nothing big. I beat up some girl who was giving me
too much crap. And I got arrested a couple of times during
demonstrations. Vietnam stuff. And I got pregnant twice by one of my professors. Had a bad abortion the second
time. That was when I got shipped off to Paris
.”

”Um
...
in fairness, Carla
.
.
.”

”I know. I was not every father's dream
.”

Molly steered for the exit ramp at Sunset Boulevard.

“
Go straight
.”
Carla touched her arm. ”I want to see
Lisa's apartment
.”

“
Where is it
?”

“Huntington
Park, down past the USC campus. Twenty
minutes, tops
.”

“
You have a key
?”

Carla patted her purse.
“
I've been out here a few times.
I've stayed with her
.”

Molly swung onto the ramp.
“
I'm going to bed, Carla.
We'll go in the morning
.”

Carla started to argue but a yawn stopped her.

“
What does your father do
?”
Molly asked, to draw
Carla off that subject.

Another yawn.
“
He's retired. He used to be with the
water company
.”
Where they're probably all named
George,
she thought.

Molly nodded. It sounded as if he'd made a living but
not much more. A modest house. A widower on a pension
and social security. Not likely that he could have put Lisa t
hrough USC and then graduate school. Lisa, probably at
Carla'
s urging, had spared his pride by lying to him about
a scholarship. He might never have learned otherwise if
he hadn't started sticking pins into Ca
rl
a.

“
Molly
?”

”Uh-huh
?”
Ahead, all pink and lit up, she saw the
facade of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“
You're as tough as I am. How come nobody ever thinks you're a shit
?”

“
I'm not so tough. But there's tough and there's mean,
Carla
,”
she said, not unkindly.
“
There's a difference
.”

Carla dropped her eyes. She didn't speak for several
moments
.
Then, ”I wish you'd known Lisa. She didn't think I was mean
.”

“
I'm sure that's true. And I do wish I'd known her
.”

Carla fumbled for a tissue. She turned her face as her father had. Molly reached for the back of her neck and squeezed it.

“
I
'
m not always mean
,”
she said, shuddering.

”I know
.”

“
Do you like me? Even a little
?”

“
We've kept each other alive, Carla
.”

“
So has penicillin. That's not what I asked
.”

Molly had to smile, although a bit sadly. Paul had told
her about their talk on Co
m
po Beach. That she felt she'd
lost the only person who cared about her. And that she
might be dangerously brittle for a while, and would need some hand-holding.

Paul had been tempted to come himself. But, he real
ized, ever
y
time he leaves Westpo
r
t, someone, not least
the U.S. intelligence community, begins to wonder what
he's up to.

Anyway, she could handle it. She, and Paul, had dealt
with this sort of thing, or something like it, a dozen times
over the years. Contract agents are all a little crazy. And
most of them had spent the better part of their lives doing
unto others first. Retirin
g
them, making new lives for
them, trying to integrate them into a nice, laid-back com
munity like Westport had taken some doing. Teaching

them that you don't break some teenager
's
legs for throw
ing beer cans on your lawn or for trashing your mailbox,
although maybe you torch his car if he makes a habit of
it. But also teaching burglars, swindlers, and drug dealers
that they'd be better off working some other town if they
didn't want to be found in a trunk just over the Westpo
r
t
town line.

Some of them had needed more teaching than others.
Old Billy Mc
H
ugh, for example, had always been a loner.
They'd assigned him a job as a bartender at Mario's so
he could get used to being around people. It had seemed
like a good idea; he made a lot of friends. But the
n
he
had to be taught that just because you make friends, and
you find out that your new friends have enemies, like divorce lawyers and such, who are treating them badly,
you don't go out and solve their problems for them. Billy
had solved eleven problems before Molly began to notice
that the local suicide and accidental death rates were climbing well out of proportion to the population.

Car
l
a hadn't done anything like that. But, once, she
caught a young thief trying to steal her car radio and
she did things to him that Dracula wouldn't do. Left his
screwdriver sticking out his colon. Paul had to explain to
her that, while he did not object in principle to the defense
of her property, he was concerned that such total devastation of a burly male by a very small woman might attract
undue attention.

And then, last year, there was that mission to Spain.
To Marbella. Carla had done her job. Neutralizing a team
of shooters who had ambushed Elena
Brugg'
s car and
killed Doc Russo. No arguing that. But the
way
she'd done it, carving up that Englishman, taking her time, had even made Billy McHugh wince. Not that anyone should have been surprised. She and Doc Russo had been close. But afterward, she had withdrawn from the rest of them more
than ever. And they, in turn, avoided her as if she were a
live grenade. It was months, after Marbella, before any of
them asked her to dinner, or to play bridge, or take in a
movie. Even Paul thought it best to give her time, leave
her alone. And that was wrong. It wasn't what she needed
at all.

”I trust you
,”
Molly said, pulling into the driveway of
the hotel's main building. She took
Carla's
hand.
“
And I
care about you. I know that's not everything you want to
hear but
.
.
.”

“
Never mind
,”
Ca
rl
a shook her had.
“
It's okay
.”

Molly tried again.
“
Maybe we're overdue for a talk
.”

“
About what
?”

”I don't know. Things. Nothing serious. Isn't that how
people get to know each other
?”

”
I guess
.”

“
We'll order up some wine. We'll talk until we fall asleep
.”

No answer.

Molly tugged at her.
“
Want to try something? Let's
pretend we're fourteen again. At a paja
m
a party
.”

Carla rolled her eyes.
“
Give me a break
.”

“
We'll call out for a pizza. Or some Roy Rogers
chicken
.”

Carla chewed her lip.
“
Could we
.
.
.”

“
Whatever you'd like. What
?”

“
Could we
...
stay in the same room
?”
Carla's
voice
became small.
“
Just for tonight. I
'l
l take the floor if you
want
.”

Molly squeezed her hand. Then, the doorman ap
proaching, Carla withdrew it. A little schmoozing was one
thing, she thought. Looking like a couple of dikes to this putz was another.

That same evening, Monday, marked the passage of twelve
long weeks since Barbara Weinberg came to Sur La Mer
as Bonnie St
r
eicher. And one week since the night when
Nellie Dameon spoke to her.

The three months had been a time of study, of surgical
procedures on her face and body, and of boredom. For
several hours each day, she and Axel
.
.
.
Alan
.
.
.
attended classes, listened to tapes, watched films, learned
to be Jewish.

Soon, during the fourth month if all went well, they
would emerge as Barbara and Alan Weinberg. Their features, their patterns of speech, would be vaguely Jewish.
There had also been a two
-w
eek attempt to alter Alan's accent, make it a bit less German, more continental, like
he
r
own. But he had lapsed almost immediately. The ac
cent was not terribly pronounced in any case.

They would not be religious Jews.

To be religious, to be active in their faith, might have required additional months of training. It would be enough
that they could pass as people who had lived their lives
on the edge of Jewish culture and tradition.

It was Ca
r
leton Dunville, the younger, who had recommended this option from among the several identity pack
ages available to them. It was highly unusual, he pointed
out, for a Christian to use a Jewish alias. And, therefore,
an advantage. Most people, he said, tend to stereotype
those they meet, at first meeting, as long as they are pro
vided with a category. When you meet a divorce lawyer,
a politician, or an Englishman, for example, you promptly
apply certain preconceptions to him. If you think twice
about him, wonder about him, you tend to do so within
that context. Accordingly, he said, the category in which
you place yourselves provides instant protective coloration.
A Jew was a good thing to be.

If they insisted on remaining Protestants, he said, they could do so provided they chose some denomination other
than their own and provided that it, again, carried certain stereotypes. The bo
rn
-aga
i
n variety, for example. Or the
southern Baptist. But these, he felt, would tend to limit
their circle of friends because many wh
o
did not share
those faiths would judge them to be potentially tiresome
and they, Axel and Bonnie, would find their new soul
mates even more so.

Better to be no
nr
eligious Jews, he said. Yes, your
friends would tend to be other Jews
...
all the better for
camouflage
.
.
.
but, presuming no latent anti-S
e
mitism on
your part, that will also have its own rewards. You will
find them warmer, wittier, more well-read, and better con
versationalists than most.

Your faces, he said, will be significantly altered but,
never fear, you will not become caricatures. Axel's hair
will be darkened and restyled, his lips somewhat thick
ened, and something will be done around the eyes. His
nose will be made thicker across the bridge and slightly
crooked, as if once broken. Facial moles will be removed
and an interesting scar will be added. His jaw, now square
and jutting, will be broken and reset and the chin reduced. The result will be a face that is oval in shape and a profile
that is not at all reminiscent of Axel St
r
eicher.

Mrs. Streicher, he said, will become a blond. Her nose
would be fixed as well. It will be made not Jewish but
almost too perfect, as if a Semitic feature had been surgi
cally corrected. Her two most arresting features are her
breasts and her eyes. The breasts are easily reduced. The
eyes, violet in color, can be muted by tinted contact lenses
and the lids can be made to conceal a bit more of them.
All teeth, his and hers, will be newly crowned in order to render previous dental records useless for purposes of
identification.

For both, new wardrobes will be selected with an eye
toward their new coloring and toward the avoidance of an
y
known preferences in dress. Virtually all habitual brand preference
s—c
lothing, cosmetics, cigarette
s—w
ill change
.
Bonnie will learn new makeup techniques. Surgical alter
ation of vocal cords is a possibility but first, said Dunv
i
lle,
we will see if a therapist can effect a satisfactory change
in the pitch and cadence of your voices.

The Streichers were impressed. No detail was too small for the Dunvilles and their staff. First names were chosen that began with the same letter as the names they replaced
in order to minimize slips of the
tongue.¯They
were to use
these names exclusively. There was no more Axel, no more Bonnie. They were Alan and Barbara We
in
berg.
Their training would begin at once. Moreover, their con
tract provided for refresher courses after their release. Two
in the first year and one annually four years after that. Attendance was mandatory. Dunville would even provide
relatives. Alan Weinberg would have an aunt and uncle
living in Fort Meyers, Florida. Barbara Weinberg would have parents who had moved to Israel and a cousin living
in New York. A three-day briefing by their stateside
“
rela
tives
”
was scheduled for the second month of their stay
at Sur La Mer. Upon graduation, they would fly to
Tel
Aviv for a two
-w
eek visit with Barbara's parents. These
relatives, Bonnie presumed, were Sur La Mer alumni as
well.

The St
r
eichers, from the outset, felt no reluctance to
become Jews. Axel rather liked the idea. It took him a
full week to exhaust his recall of Jewish Princess jokes,
all at Bonnie's expense. Their only shared misgiving had
to do with the surgery. They like
d
each other's faces as
they were and Bonnie's breasts held tender memories for
Axel although she, secretly, had long planned to have them
reduced well before she reached forty. This was, she
thought, as good a time as any. They had come to Sur La
Mer fully realizing that they would leave as different
people.

So be it. She was now Barbara. He was now Alan.

The surgery, begun at once, went well except for a
stubborn infection that threatened Alan
Weinberg's
right
eye and the breaking of his nose, which caused him to
snore. It was this snoring that, during the ninth week of
their stay, caused Barbara Weinberg to take a midnight
stroll through the lawn and gardens of Sur La Mer.

It was a pleasant night. The dew and the light of a
crescent moon had turned the dichondra lawn to silver
.
Barbara, dressed in her long white robe, left footprints on it as she walked toward the smell of the ocean. A thick
hedge halted her progress. A security guard saw her,
turned a flashlight on her, but did not dare approach. Alan
had crippled one of them during their second month. The
man had poked at him when he did not respond quickly
to a summons from Henry Dunville. And sh
e
had broken
the fingers of another who had seized her by the arm when
she wandered through a doo
r
that was forbidden to them.