The Day After Tomorrow

23

AT FIVE minutes past six, Henri Kanarack came out of Le Bois and indifferently walked two blocks to enter the Metro station across from the Gare de l’Est.

Osborn watched him go, then clicked on the overhead light and checked the map on the seat next to him. Ten and a half miles and nearly thirty-five minutes later, he drove past Kanarack’s apartment building in Montrouge. Leaving the car on a side street, he walked a block and a half and took up a position in the shadows across the street from Kanarack’s building. Fifteen minutes later, Kanarack came walking up the sidewalk and went inside. From beginning to end, bakery to home, there had been no indication he thought he was being followed, or in danger. No sense at all of anything other than daily routine. Osborn smiled. Everything was on track and running as planned.

At seven forty, he pulled the Peugeot up in front of his hotel, gave the keys to an attendant and went inside. Crossing the lobby, he checked the front desk for messages.

“No, monsieur. I am sorry.” The petite brunette smiled at him from across the desk.

Osborn thanked her and turned away. In a way he’d been hoping Vera had called, but he was just as glad she hadn’t. He didn’t want the distraction. Simplicity now was everything, and he had to concentrate on what he was doing. He wondered what made him tell Detective Barras he would be leaving Paris in five days. He could have as easily said a week or ten days, two weeks even. Five days had compressed everything to the point of nearly losing control. Things were happening too fast. Timing was too critical. There was no room for error or for the unforeseen. What if Kanarack became ill overnight and decided not to go to work. Then what? Go to his apartment, force himself in and do it there? What about other people? Kanarack’s wife, family, neighbors? There was no room for something like that to happen because he hadn’t given himself room. There was no latitude. None. It was as if he held dynamite in his hand with the fuse already lit. What could he do but follow through and hope for the best?

Taking his mind from it, Osborn turned away from the elevators and went into the gift shop for an English-language newspaper. Taking a copy from the rack, he turned to wait his turn at the cashier. For a moment it hung in his mind what would have happened if Jean Packard had not located Kanarack as quickly as he had. What would he have done—left the country and come back? But when? How would he know that the police hadn’t made a notation on the electronic code on his passport to alert them if he did come back within a certain time? How long would he have to wait before he felt it was safe to return? Or what if the investigator had not been able to locate Kanarack at all? What would he have done then? But luckily that wasn’t the case. Jean Packard had done his job well and it was up to him to follow through with the rest. Relax, he told himself and moved up to the cashier, absently glancing at the newspaper, as he did.

What he saw was beyond reason. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Jean Packard’s face staring out at him from under a bold front-page headline: PRIVATE DETECTIVE SAVAGELY MURDERED!

Below it was a subheading: “Former soldier of fortune heinously tortured before death.”

Slowly the gift shop began to spin. Slowly at first. Then faster and faster. Finally Osborn had to put out a hand against a candy counter to stop it. His heart was pounding and he could hear the sound of his own deep breaths. Steadying himself, he looked at the paper again. The face was still there; so was the headline and the words underneath.

Somewhere off he heard the cashier ask if he was all right. Vaguely he nodded and reached in his pocket for change. Paying for the newspaper, he managed to navigate his way through the gift shop and then out and back across the lobby toward the elevators. He was certain Henri Kanarack had discovered Jean Packard following him, had turned the tables and killed him. Quickly he scanned the article for Kanarack’s name. It wasn’t there. All it said was that the private investigator had been murdered in his apartment late the night before and that the police had refused comment on either suspects or motive.

Reaching the elevators, Osborn found himself waiting in a group with several others he scarcely noticed. Three might have been Japanese tourists, the other was a plain-looking man in a rumpled gray suit. Looking away, he tried to think. Then the elevator doors opened and two businessmen got out. The others filed in, Osborn with them. One of the Japanese pressed the button for the fifth floor. The man in the gray suit pushed nine. Osborn pressed seven.

The doors closed and the elevator started up.

What to do now? Osborn’s first thought was Jean Packard’s files. They would lead the police directly to him and then to Henri Kanarack. Then he remembered Jean Packard’s explanation of how Kolb International worked. Of how Kolb prided itself on protecting its patrons. How its investigators worked in complete confidentiality with clients. How all files were given to the client at the end of an investigation with no copies made. That Kolb was little more than a guarantor of professionalism and a billing agent. But Packard had not given Osborn his files. Where were they?

Suddenly Osborn remembered being amazed that the detective never wrote anything down. Maybe there weren’t any files. Maybe these days that had to be the private investigator’s game. Keep information out of everyone’s hands but your own. Kanarack’s name and address had been given to him only at the last moment, handwritten and on a cocktail napkin. A napkin that was still in the pocket of the jacket Osborn was wearing. Maybe that was it, the file in its entirety.

The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the Japanese got out. The doors closed again and the elevator started up. Osborn glanced at the man in the gray suit. He looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place him. A moment later they reached the seventh floor. The door opened and Osborn got out. So did the man in the gray suit. Osborn went one way, the man the other.

Walking down the hallway toward his room, Osborn breathed a little easier now. The initial shock of Jean Packard’s death had worn off. What he needed was time to think about what to do next. Suppose Packard had told Kanarack about him. Given him his name and where he was staying? He’d murdered the detective, why wouldn’t he try to murder him?

Suddenly Osborn-was aware of someone walking behind him down the hallway. Glancing back, he saw it was the man in the gray suit. At the same time he remembered the man had pushed the button for the ninth floor, not the seventh. In front of him a man opened a door and set out a room service tray of dirty dishes. Looking up, he saw Osborn, then closed the door again and Osborn heard the chain lock slide closed.

Now he and the man were the only ones in the hallway. A danger alarm went off. Abruptly he stopped and turned.

“What do you want?” he said.

“A few minutes of your time.” McVey’s reply was quiet and unthreatening. “My name is McVey. I’m from Los Angeles, the same as you.”

Osborn looked at him carefully. He was somewhere in his mid-sixties, about five feet ten and maybe a hundred and ninety pounds. His green eyes were surprisingly gentle and his brown hair was graying and beginning to thin on top. His suit was everyday, probably from The Broadway or Silverwoods. His pale blue shirt was a shiny polyester and the tie didn’t match any of it. He looked more like someone’s grandfather or what his own father might have looked like, had he lived. Osborn relaxed a little. “Do I know you?” he said.

“I’m a policeman,” McVey said and showed him his LAPD shield.

Osborn’s heart shot up in his throat. For the second time in a very few minutes he thought he might faint. Finally he heard himself say, “I don’t understand. Is anything wrong?”

A middle-aged couple dressed for the evening came down the hallway. McVey stepped aside. The man smiled and nodded. McVey waited until they passed, then looked back at Osborn.

“Why don’t we talk inside.” McVey nodded toward the door to Osborn’s room. “Or, if you’d rather, downstairs in the bar.” McVey kept his manner low-key and easy. The bar was as good as the room if it made Osborn more comfortable. The doctor wouldn’t bolt, not now anyway. Furthermore, McVey had already seen all there was to see in Osborn’s room.

Osborn was anxious and he had to work not to show it. After all, he’d done nothing, not yet anyway. Even using Vera to get him the succinylcholine hadn’t really been illegal. Bending the law a little, but not criminal. Besides, this McVey was from the LAPD—what jurisdiction could he have here? Just be cool, he thought. Be polite, see what he wants. Maybe it’s about nothing.

“This is fine,” Osborn said. Unlocking his door, Osborn ushered McVey in.

“Please sit down.” Osborn closed the door behind them, putting his keys and the newspaper on a side table. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wash the city off my hands.”

“I don’t mind.” McVey sat down on the edge of the bed and glanced around, while Osborn went into the bathroom. The room was the same as he’d left it earlier that afternoon when he’d shown his gold shield to a housekeeper and given her two hundred francs to let him in.

“Would you like a drink?” Osborn said, drying his hands.

“If you are.”

“All I have is scotch.”

“Fine.”

Osborn came back in with a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. Picking up two sanitary wrapped glasses from an enameled tray on top of a replica French writing table, he pulled the plastic off and poured them each a drink.

“No ice, either, I’m afraid,” Osborn said.

“I’m not picky.” McVey’s eyes went to Osborn’s running shoes. They were caked with the dried mud.

“Been out for a jog?”

“What do you mean?” Osborn said, handing McVey a glass.

McVey nodded at his feet. “Shoes are muddy.”

“I—” Osborn hesitated, then quickly covered with a grin. “—was out for a walk. They’re replanting the gardens in front of the Eiffel Tower. With the rain, you can’t walk anywhere around there without stepping in mud.”

McVey took a pull at his drink. It gave Osborn a moment to wonder if he’d picked up on the lie. It wasn’t a lie really. The Eiffel Tower gardens were torn up, he’d remembered that from being out the day before. Best to get him off it quickly.

“So?” he said.

“So.” McVey hesitated. “I was in the lobby when you went into the gift shop. I saw your reaction to the paper.” He nodded at the newspaper Osborn had put on the side table.

Osborn took a drink of the scotch. He rarely drank. It was only after that first night when he had seen and pursued Kanarack, and then was picked up by the Paris police, that he’d called room service and ordered the scotch. Now, as he felt it go down, he was glad he had.

“That’s why you’re here . . .” Osborn locked eyes with McVey. Okay, they know. Be straight, unemotional. Find out what else they know.

“As you know, Mr. Packard worked for an international company. I was in Paris doing some unrelated work with the Paris police when this came in. Since you were one of Mr. Packard’s last clients . . .” McVey smiled and took another sip of the scotch. “Anyway the Paris police asked me to come by and talk to you about it. American to American. See if you had any idea who might have done it. You realize I have no authority here. I’m just helping out.”

“I understand that. But I don’t think I can help you.”

“Did Mr. Packard seem worried about anything?”

“If he was, he didn’t mention it.”

“Mind my asking why you hired him?”

“I didn’t hire him. I hired Kolb International. He was the one they sent.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“If you don’t mind, it’s personal.”

“Doctor Osborn, we’re talking about a murdered man.” McVey sounded as if he were addressing a jury.

Osborn set his glass down. He’d done nothing and felt he was being accused. He didn’t like it. “Look, Detective McVey. Jean Packard was working for me. He’s dead and I’m sorry but I haven’t the slightest idea who might have done it or why. And if that’s the reason you’re here, you’ve got the wrong guy!” Angrily, Osborn jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. When he did he felt the bag containing the succinylcholine and the packet of syringes Vera had given him. He’d meant to take it out earlier when he’d come back to change to go out to the river, but he’d forgotten. With the discovery, his demeanor changed.

“Look—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap like that. I guess the shock of finding out about him being killed like that . . . I’m a little on edge.”

“Let me just ask if Mister Packard finished his job for you?”

Osborn wavered. What the hell was he going for? Do they know about Kanarack or not? If you say yes, then what? If you say no, you leave it open.

“Did he, Doctor Osborn?”

“Yes,” Osborn said finally.

McVey looked at him a moment, then tilted his glass and finished the scotch. For a moment he held the empty glass in his hand as if he didn’t know quite what to do with it. Then his eyes came back to Osborn.

“Know anyone named Peter Hossbach?”

“No.”

“John Cordell?”

“No.” Osborn was completely puzzled. He had no idea what McVey was talking about.

“Friedrich Rustow?” McVey crossed his legs. White, hairless calves showed between the top of his socks and the bottom of his pants legs.

“No,” Osborn said again. “Are they suspects?”

“They’re missing persons, Doctor Osborn.”

“I never heard of any of them,” Osborn said.

“Not one?”

“No.”

Hossbach was German, Cordell, English, and Rustow, Belgian. They were three of the beheaded corpses. McVey tucked it away in his mental computer somewhere that Osborn hadn’t flinched or even paused at the mention of any of them. A recognition factor of zero. Of course he could be an accomplished actor and lying. Doctors did all the time if they felt it was in the patient’s best interest not to know something.

“Well, it’s a big world and a lot of things cross in it,” McVey said. “It’s my job to find that thread where everything meets and try to sort it out.”

Leaning over to the side table, McVey set his glass down beside Osborn’s keys and stood up. There were two sets of keys. One was to Osborn’s hotel room. The other Set were automobile keys with the figurine of a medieval lion on the key chain. They were keys to a Peugeot.

“Thank you for your time, Doctor. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“That’s all right,” Osborn said, trying hard not to show relief. This had been nothing but routine questioning on the part of the police. McVey was only helping the French cops, nothing more.

McVey was at the door and had a hand on the knob when he turned back. “You were in London on October third, isn’t that right?” he said.

“What?” Osborn reacted with surprise.

“That was—” McVey took a small plastic card from his wallet and looked at it. “Last Monday.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You were in London?”

“Yes—”

“Why?”

“I—I was on my way home from a medical convention in Geneva.” Osborn suddenly found himself stammering. How did McVey know that? And what did it have to do with Jean Packard or missing persons?

“How long were you there?”

Osborn hesitated. Where the hell’s this going? What’s he after? “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything he said, trying not to sound defensive.

“It was just a question, Doctor. That’s my business. Questions.” McVey wasn’t going to let go until he had an answer.

Finally Osborn relented. “A day and a half, about—”

“You stayed at the Connaught Hotel.”

“Yes.”

Osborn felt a trickle of sweat run down under his right armpit. Suddenly McVey wasn’t looking like anybody’s grandfather anymore.

“What did you do while you were there?”

Osborn felt his face redden with anger. He was being put into a corner he didn’t understand and didn’t like. Maybe they do know about Kanarack, he thought. Maybe this was some way to trap him into talking about it. But he wasn’t going to. If McVey knew about Kanarack, it would be he who brought it up, not Osborn.

“Detective, what I did in London is my personal business. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Look, Paul,” McVey said, quietly. “I’m not trying to pry into your private affairs. I’ve got some missing people. You’re not the only person I’m talking to. All I’d like you to do is account for your time while you were in London.”

“Maybe I should call a lawyer.”

“If you think you need one, by all means. There’s the telephone.”

Osborn looked off. “I got in Saturday afternoon and went to a play Saturday night,” he said, flatly. “I started feeling ill. I went back to my hotel room and stayed there until Monday morning.”

“All Saturday night and all day Sunday.”

“That’s right.”

“You never left your room.”

“NO.”

“Room service?”

“Ever have a twenty-four-hour bug? I was full of chills and fever, diarrhea, alternating with antiperistalsis. That’s vomiting, in English. Who would want to eat?”

“You were alone?”

“Yes.” Osborn’s reply was quick, definitive.

“And nobody else saw you?”

“Not that I know of.”

McVey waited a moment, then asked softly, “Doctor Osborn, why are you lying to me?”

Tonight was Thursday evening. Before he’d left London for Paris, Wednesday afternoon, McVey had asked Commander Noble to check on Osborn’s visit to the Connaught Hotel. At a little after seven Thursday morning, Noble had called. Osborn had signed in to the Connaught Saturday afternoon and checked out Monday morning. He’d registered as Doctor Paul Osborn of Los Angeles and gone to his room alone. A short while later a woman had joined him.

“I beg your pardon!” Osborn said, trying to cover dismay with anger.

“You weren’t alone.” McVey didn’t give him the chance for a second denial. “Young woman. Dark hair. About twenty-five, twenty-six. Her name is Vera Monneray. You had sex with her during a cab ride from Leicester Square to the Connaught Hotel last Saturday night.”

“Jesus Christ.” Osborn was stunned. How the police worked, what they knew and how they knew it was unfathomable. Finally, he nodded.

“She why you came to Paris?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose she was sick the entire time you were.”

“Yes, she was . . .”

“Know her long?”

“I met her in Geneva at the end of last week. She came with me to London. Then went to Paris. She’s a resident here.”

“Resident?”

“A doctor. She’s going to be a doctor.”

Doctor? McVey stared at Osborn. Amazing what you find out when you just poke around. So much for Lebrun and his “off limits.”

“Why didn’t you mention her?”

“I told you it was personal—”

“Doctor, she’s your alibi. She can verify how you spent your time in London—”

“I don’t want her dragged into this.”

“Why?”

Osborn felt the blood start to rise again. McVey was beginning to get personal with his accusations and, frankly, Osborn didn’t like the intrusion into his private life. “Look. You said you have no authority here. I don’t have to talk to you at all!”

“No, you don’t. But I think you might want to,” McVey said gently. “The Paris police have your passport. They can also charge you with aggravated assault if they want to. I’m doing them a favor. If they got the idea you were giving me a hard time about something, they might look a little differently at the idea of letting you go. Especially now, when your name has come up in conjunction with a murder.”

“I told you I had nothing to do with that!”

“Maybe not,” McVey said. “But you could sit around a French jail for a long time until they decided to agree.”

Osborn suddenly felt as if he’d just been pulled out of a washing machine and was about to be shoved into the dryer. All he could do was back down. “Maybe, if you told me what you were really getting at, I could help,” he said.

“A man was murdered in London the weekend you were there. I need you to verify what you were doing and when. And Ms. Monneray seems to be the only person who can do that. But obviously you’re very reluctant to involve her—and just by doing that you are involving her. If you’d rather, I can have the Paris police pick her up and we can all have a chat down at headquarters.”

Up until that moment Osborn had been doing everything he could to keep Vera out of this. But if McVey carried through on his threat, the media would find out. If they did, the whole thing—his link to Jean Packard, his and Vera’s clandestine stay in London, Vera’s own story and whom she was seeing—would become front-page entertainment. Politicians could do what they wanted with starlets and bimbos and the worst that could happen would be that they’d lose an election or an appointment, while their consorts would be featured on the covers of exploitation papers in every supermarket in the world, most probably in a bikini. But a woman on the verge of becoming a physician was something entirely different The public didn’t like the idea of its doctors being that human, so, if McVey pushed it, there was every chance Vera would not only lose her residency but her career as well. Blackmail or not, so far McVey had kept what he knew between himself and Osborn and he was offering to let it stay that way.

“It’s—” Osborn started, then cleared his throat. “It’s—” Suddenly he realized McVey had inadvertently opened a door. Not only for the Jean Packard matter, but for Osborn to find out how much the police knew.

“It’s what?”

“The reason I hired a private investigator,” Osborn said. It was a deliberate lie but he had to take the chance. The police would have been through every piece of paper Jean Packard had in his home or office, but he knew Packard wrote almost nothing down. So they had to be looking for any lead they could find and they didn’t care how they did it, even to sending an American cop to shake him down.

“She has a lover. She didn’t want me to know. And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t followed her to Paris. When she told me I got mad. I asked her who he was but she wouldn’t tell me. So I decided to find out.” As clever and tough as he was, if McVey bought his story, it meant the police didn’t know a thing about Kanarack. And if they didn’t know, there was no reason Osborn still couldn’t go on with his plan.

“And Packard found out for you.”

“Yes.”

“You want to tell me?”

Osborn waited just long enough for McVey to get the idea it was painful for him to talk about it. Then he said, softly, “She’s screwing the French prime minister.”

McVey looked at Osborn for a moment. It was the right answer, the one he’d been looking for. If Osborn was holding something back, McVey didn’t know what it was.

“I’ll get over it. One day I’m sure I’ll even laugh about it. But not now.” Osborn’s reply was reasonable, even sentimental. “That personal enough for you?”