The Bannerman Solution (The Bannerman Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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