The Day After Tomorrow

51

“SCHOLL!”

Osborn had just finished urinating and was flushing the toilet when the name jumped out at him. Turning awkwardly, and wincing in pain as he put weight on his injured leg, he reached out and picked up the cane Vera had left from where it hung on the edge of the sink. Shifting his weight, he started back into the room. Each step was an effort and he had to move slowly, but he realized the hurt was more from stiffness and muscle trauma than from the wound itself, and that meant it was healing.

The room, as he hobbled out of the cubicle that served as a toilet and started across it, seemed smaller than it had when he was lying down. With a blackout curtain drawn across the only window, it was not only dark but felt stuffy and confining and smelled of antiseptic. Stopping at the window, he set the cane aside and pulled back the curtain. Immediately the room flooded with the bright light of an early autumn day. Straining, he gritted his teeth against the tug of his leg, pulled open the small window and looked out. All he could see was the roofline of the building as it fell steeply away and, beyond it, the top of Notre Dame’s towers glistening in the morning sun. What got him more than anything was the crispness of the morning air as it wafted across the Seine. It was sweet and refreshing and he breathed it in deeply.

Vera had come up sometime during the night and changed his bandages. She’d tried to tell him something but he’d been too groggy to understand, and had gone back to sleep. Later, when he awoke and his senses began to come back, he’d focused on the tall man and the police and what to do about them. But now it was Erwin Scholl who was in the front of his mind. The man Henri Kanarack swore, under the terror of the succinylcholine, was the person who’d hired him to murder his father. That had happened, he recalled, at almost the same moment the tall man had appeared out of the darkness and shot them both.

Erwin Scholl. From where? Kanarack had told him that, too.

Turning from the window, Osborn limped back to his bed, smoothed out the blanket a little, then turned around and eased himself down. The walk from his bed to the bathroom and back again had wearied him more than he liked. Now he sat there, on the edge of the bed, able to do little more than breathe in and out.

Who was Erwin Scholl? And why had he wanted his father dead?

Suddenly he shut his eyes. It was the same question he’d been asking for almost thirty years. The pain in his leg was nothing compared to what he felt in his soul. He remembered the feeling that had seared through his gut the moment Kanarack had told him he’d been paid to do it. In an instant the whole thing had gone from a lifetime of loneliness and pain and anger to something beyond comprehension. In stumbling upon Henri Kanarack, in finding where he lived and where he worked, he thought God had at last acknowledged him and that, at last, the suffering inside him would be ended. But it hadn’t. It had only been handed off. Cruelly. Neatly. Like a football to another player in a game of keepaway. And he was the one they were keeping if from, as they had for so many years.

The river, at least, had carried him somewhere conclusive. Had that place been death it would have been preferable to the one to which he’d been returned; the one that allowed him no rest, that kept him forever enraged, that made it impossible for him to love or be loved without the awful fear he would destroy it. The monkey had not gone away at all. Only changed form. Henri Kanarack had become Erwin Scholl. This time with no face, just a name. What would it take to find him—another thirty years? And if he did have the courage and strength to do it and finally, after everything, found him, what then?

—another door leading somewhere else?

A sound on the far side of the wall snatched Osborn from his reverie. Someone was coming. Quickly he glanced around for a place to hide. There was none. Where was Kanarack’s gun? What had Vera done with it? He looked back at the door. The knob was turning. The only weapon he had was the cane next to him. His hand closed around it and the door swung open.

Vera was dressed in white for work.

“Good morning,” she said, entering. Once again she carried the tray, this time with hot coffee and croissants, and a plastic refrigerator box with fruit, cheese and a small loaf of bread. “How are you feeling?”

Osborn let out a sigh and set the cane on the bed. “Fine,” he said. “Especially now that I know who was coming to visit.”

Vera set the tray on the small table under the window and turned to look at him. “The police came back last night. An American policeman was with them, he seemed to know you quite well.”

Osborn started. “McVey!” My God, he was still in Paris.

“You seem to know him too . . . .” Vera’s smile was thin, almost dangerous, as if in some crazy way she liked all this.

“What did they want?” he said quickly.

“They found out I picked you up at the golf course. I admitted I’d taken a bullet out of you. They wanted to know where you were. I said I left you off at the railway station, that I didn’t know where you were going and you didn’t want me to know. I’m not sure they believed me.

“McVey will have you watched like a hawk, waiting for you to get in touch with me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m going back to work. I’m on for thirty-six hours. Hopefully, by the time I’m through, they’ll be bored and assume I was telling the truth.”

“What if they don’t? What if they decided to search your apartment and then the building?” Osborn was suddenly frightened. He was in a corner with no way out. Never mind the condition of his leg; if he tried to get out and they were watching, they’d nab him before he’d gone a half block. If they decided to search the building, eventually they’d find their way up to where he was and he was done for anyway.

“There’s nothing else we can do.” Vera was strong, unruffled. Not only on his side and protecting him, but very much in control. “You have water in the bathroom and enough to eat until I get back. I want you to start exercising. Stretching and leg lifts if you can, otherwise make sure you walk back and forth across the room for as long as you can, every four hours. When we do leave, you’re going to have to walk.

“And make certain you keep the window curtain pulled when it gets dark. The dormer is hidden in the roofline, but if someone’s watching, the light would give you away in a moment. Here—”

Vera pressed a key into his hand.

“It’s to my apartment—in case you have to get in touch with me. The telephone number is on a pad next to the phone. The stairs open into a closet on the floor below. Take the service stairway to the second floor.” Vera hesitated and looked at him. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”

“And I don’t have to tell you you can still walk away from this. Go to your grandmother’s and deny you had any idea of what went on here.”

“No,” she said, and turned for the door.

“Vera.”

She stopped and looked back. “What?”

“There was a gun. Where is it?”

Vera reacted, and Osborn could see she didn’t like the sound of what he’d said.

“Vera—” He paused. “If the tall man finds me, what am I supposed to do?”

“How could he find you? He has no way to know about me. Who I am, or where I live.”

“He didn’t know about Merriman, either. But he’s dead just the same.”

She hesitated.

“Vera, please.” Osborn was looking directly at her. The gun was to defend his life, not shoot policemen.

Finally, she nodded toward the table under the window. “It’s in the drawer.”