The Day After Tomorrow

41

OSBORN STARED at the telephone and wondered if he had the strength to try it again. He’d already made three attempts without success. He doubted he could make three more.

Coming out of the woods at dawn he’d found himself in what he thought, in the early light, to be farmland. Nearby was a small shack that was locked but had a water connection outside. Turning the spigot, he drank deeply. Then, tearing back his trousers, he washed as much of the wound as he could. Most of the external bleeding had stopped and he’d been able to release the tourniquet without its starting again.

After that he must have passed out, because the next he knew two young men carrying golf clubs were looking down at him, asking him in French if he was all right. What he’d thought was farmland turned out to be a golf course.

Now he sat in the clubhouse, staring at the telephone of the wall. Vera was all he could think about. Where was she? In the shower? No, not for so long. At work? Maybe He wasn’t sure. He’d lost track of her schedule, the days she was on and off.

The manager of the clubhouse, a small, pencil-thin man named Levigne, had wanted to call the police, but Osborn had convinced him he’d only had an accident and that someone would come to pick him up. He was afraid of the tall man. But he was also afraid of the police. Most likely they’d already found Kanarack’s car. It would have been impounded, listed as stolen or abandoned. But when his body floated up someplace downriver, they’d have gone over it with a toothbrush and magnifying glass. Osborn’s fingerprints were all over it and they had his fingerprints. Barras himself had taken them that first night when they’d picked him up for attacking Kanarack in the café and then jumping the Métro turnstile in pursuit of him.

When had that been?

Osborn glanced at his watch. Today was Saturday. It had been Monday when he’d first seen Kanarack. Six days. That was all? After almost thirty years? And now Kanarack was dead. And after everything, his intricate plans, the police, Jean Packard . . . After everything, still he had no answer. His father’s death was as much of a mystery now as it had been before.

There was a sound and he looked up. A heavy-set man was using the phone. Outside, golfers were moving toward the first tee. The early haze had become bright sun. The first day without overcast since he’d come to France. The golf course was near Vernon, twenty or more highway miles from Paris. The Seine, as it snaked back and forth through the countryside, had to have taken him at least twice that far. How long he’d been in the water, or how far he’d walked in the darkness, he didn’t know.

On the table in front of him Osborn saw the dregs of the strong coffee the manager, Levigne, had brought him without charge. Fingering the cup, he picked it up and drained what was left, then set it back down. Just that, the effort of lifting a small cup and drinking, had tired him.

Across the room, the man hung up the phone and went outside. What if the tall man suddenly came in? He still had Kanarack’s pistol in his jacket pocket. Did he have the strength to take it out, aim and fire? He’d practiced with a handgun for years and was good at it. Target ranges in Santa Monica and in the San Fernando and Conejo valieys. Why he’d done it, he didn’t know. As an act of working out aggression? As a sport? As a defense against ever-increasing city crime? Or had it been something else? Something leading him toward a day when he would need it.

He looked back at the phone. Try. Once more. You have to!

By now his leg had stiffened and he was afraid movement would start the bleeding again. Further, the shock of his ordeal was wearing off and with it the protection of its natural anesthesia, causing the leg to throb with such ferocity he didn’t know how much longer he could bear the pain without medication.

Putting his hands flat on the table, Osborn pushed himself up. The sudden movement made him lightheaded and for a moment he could do nothing but stand there and hold on, praying he wouldn’t fall.

Several golfers just coming in saw him and stepped away. He could see one of them speak to Levigne, and gesture toward him. What did he expect, looking like he did? Glassy-eyed, barely able to stand, wearing torn, soggy clothes that stunk of the river, he looked like a derelict from hell.

But he couldn’t worry about them. Couldn’t think about them.

He looked back to the telephone. It was less than ten paces from where he stood but it might as well have been in California. Picking up the tree-branch cane that had brought him this far, he set it in front of him, putting his weight on it and moved forward. Right hand places the cane, right foot follows. Bring the left foot up. Right hand, right foot. Bring the left foot alongside. Stop. Deep breath.

The phone is a little closer now.

Ready? Again. Right hand, right foot. Left foot up. Though his focus was entirely on his movement and the goal toward which he was going, Osborn was acutely aware of people in the room watching him. Their faces blurred.

Then he heard a voice. His voice! It was talking to him. Clearly and succinctly.

“The bullet is lodged somewhere in the hamstring muscle. Not sure just where. But it has to come out.”

Right hand, right foot. Left foot up. Right hand, right foot.

“Make a vertical incision along the middle of the back of the thigh from the lower fold of the nates.” Suddenly he was back in medical school quoting from Gray’s Anatomy. How could he remember it verbatim?

Right hand, right foot. Left foot. Stop and rest. Across the room, faces still watching. Right hand, right foot. Left foot up.

The telephone is right in front of you.

Exhausted, Osborn slowly reached for the receiver and took it off the hook.

“Paul, there is a bullet lodged in your hamstring muscle. It has to come out, now.”

“I know dammit. I know. Take it out!”

* * *

“It is out. Just lie still.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course.”

“What day is it?”

“I—” Osborn hesitated. “Saturday.”

“You missed your plane.” Vera pulled off her surgical gloves, then turned and walked out of the room.

Osborn relaxed and looked around. He was in her apartment and naked, lying facedown on the bed in her guest room. A moment later she came back. A hypodermic syringe was in her hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I might tell you it’s succinylcholine,” she said, sarcastically. “But that wouldn’t be true.” Walking behind him, she wiped a spot on his upper buttock with a piece of alcohol-soaked cotton, then slid the needle in and gave him the shot.

“It’s an antibiotic. You probably ought to have a tetanus shot, too. God knows what was in that river besides Henri Kanarack.”

“How do you know about that?” Suddenly everything that had happened flashed across his mind.

Vera reached down and gently pulled a blanket Up over him. All the way up over his shoulders so that he was warm. Then she went over and sat down on the ottoman of a leather reading chair across from him.

“You passed out in the clubhouse of a golf course about forty kilometers from here. You came back long enough to give them my number. I borrowed a friend’s car. The people at the golf course were very nice. They helped me get you in the car. All I had were a few tranquilizers. I gave you all of them.”

“All?”

Vera smiled. “You talk a lot when you’re fucked up. Mostly about men. Henri Kanarack. Jean Packard. Your father.”

In the distance they heard the singsong siren of an emergency vehicle and her smile faded.

“I’ve been to the police,” she said,

“The police?”

“Last night. I was worried. They searched your hotel room and found the succinylcholine. They don’t know what it is or what it was for.”

“But you do—”

“Now I do, yes.”

“I couldn’t very well tell you, could I?”

Osborn’s eyes were heavy, and he was beginning to drift off. “The police?” he said, weakly.

Getting up, Vera crossed the room and turned on a small lamp in the corner, then shut off the overhead light. “They don’t know you’re here. At least I don’t think they do. When they find Kanarack’s body and his car with your fingerprints in it they’ll come here asking if I’ve seen you or heard from you.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

Vera could see him trying to put everything together, trying to tell if he’d made a mistake calling her, if he could really trust her. But he was too weary. The lids came down over his eyes and he sank slowly back into the pillow.

Bending down, she brushed her lips over his forehead. “Nobody will know. I promise,” she whispered.

Osborn didn’t hear her. He was falling, tumbling. He was not whole. The truth had never been as stark or as fearfully ugly. He had made himself a doctor because he had wanted to take away hurt and pain, all the while knowing he could never take away his own. What people saw was the image of a doctor. To them, helpful and caring. They never saw the rest of his personality because it didn’t exist. There was nothing there and never would be until the demons inside him were dead. What Henri Kanarack knew could have killed them, but it was not to be. Finding him had been a tease that made it worse than before. Suddenly his falling stopped and he opened his eyes. It was autumn in New Hampshire and he was in the woods with his father. They were laughing and skipping stones across a pond. The sky was blue, the leaves were bright and the air was crisp.

He was eight years old.