The Day After Tomorrow

68

AT 6:50 McVey’s taxi crawled through traffic. Still, it was better than being in the Opel and trying to fight his way across Paris on his own.

Pulling out a tattered date book, he looked at the notes for that day, Monday, October 10. Most notably the last, Osborn—La Coupole, boulv. Montparnasse, 7 P.M. Scribbled above it was a memo regarding a message from Barras. The Pirelli tire representative had examined the tire casting made at the park by the river. The pattern of that tire was found on tires specially manufactured for a large auto dealer who had an ongoing contract with Pirelli to put their tires on his new cars. That tire was now standard equipment on two hundred new Ford Sierras, eighty-seven of which had been sold in the last six weeks. A list of the purchasers was being compiled and would be ready by Tuesday morning. Further, the glass shard of the auto mirror McVey had picked up in the street after the shooting at Vera Monneray’s had been put through the police lab. It too had come from a Ford vehicle; though it was impossible to tell which make or model. Parking Control had been alerted and its officers directed to report any Ford or Ford Siena with a broken exterior mirror.

The last notation on McVey’s October 10 page was the lab report on the broken toothpick he had uncovered among the pine needles just before he’d found the tire track. The person who had held the toothpick in his/her mouth had been a “secretor”—a group-specific substance sixty percent of the population carry in the bloodstream that makes it possible to determine the blood group from other body fluids such as urine, semen and saliva. The blood group of the secretor in the woods was the same as the blood group found in the bloodstains on the floor in Vera Monneray’s kitchen. Type O.

The taxi stopped in front of La Coupole at precisely seven minutes past seven. McVey paid the driver, got out and walked into the restaurant.

The large back room was being set up for the dinner crowd that had yet to arrive, and only a few tables were occupied. But the glassed-in terrace room facing the sidewalk in front was packed and noisy.

McVey stood in the doorway and looked around. A moment later, he squeezed past a group of businessmen, found a vacant table near the back and sat down. He was exactly as he wished to appear, one man, alone.

The Organization had tentacles reaching far beyond those who were members of it. Like most professional groups it subcontracted labor, often employing people who had no idea for whom they actually worked.

Colette and Sami were high-school girls from wealthy families who were into drugs, and consequently did whatever was necessary to feed their habit and at the same time keep their addiction hidden from their families. That put them on call at almost any hour, for any reason.

Monday’s request was simple: Watch the lone exit at the apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune that the police were not watching, the entrance to the doorman’s living quarters. If a good-looking man about thirty-five came out, report it and follow him.

Both girls had followed Osborn to Dr. Cheysson’s office on rue de Bassano. Then Sami had trailed him to Aux Trois Quartiers on boulevard de la Madeleine, even flirted with him and asked him to help pick out a tie for her uncle while he was waiting for his suit to be tailored. After that, Colette had followed him into the Métro and stayed with him until he’d gone into the café across from La Coupole.

That was when Bernhard Oven took over, watching as Osborn left the café and crossed boulevard du Montparnasse to enter La Coupole at five minutes after seven.

At five foot ten and in dark hair, jeans, leather jacket and Reeboks, with a diamond stud in his left ear, Bernhard Oven was no longer a blond, tall man. He was, however, no less deadly. In his right jacket pocket, he carried the silenced Cz .22 automatic he’d used so successfully in Marseilles.

At 7:20, convinced that McVey had come by himself, Osborn got up from where he sat near the window, eased past several crowded tables and approached him, his bandaged hand held gingerly at his side.

McVey glanced at Osborn’s bandaged hand, then indicated a chair next to him, and Osborn sat down.

“I said I’d be alone. I am,” McVey said.

“You said you could help. What did you mean?” Osborn asked. His new suit and haircut meant nothing. McVey had known he’d been there all along.

McVey ignored him. “What’s your blood type, Doctor?”

Osborn hesitated. “I thought you were going to find out;”

“I want to hear it from you.”

Just then a waiter in a white shirt and black pants stopped at the table. McVey shook his head.

“Café,” Osborn said, and the waiter walked off.

“Type B.”

LAPD Detective Hernandez’s preliminary report on Osborn had finally reached McVey by fax just before he’d left Lebrun’s office. Among other stats it had included Osborn’s blood type—type B. Which meant that not only had Osborn told the truth but that the tall man’s blood was type O.

“Doctor Hugo Klass. Tell me about him,” McVey said.

“I don’t know a Doctor Hugo Klass,” Osborn said, deliberately, still nervously wondering if there weren’t plainclothes detectives somewhere in the room waiting for McVey to give the signal.

“He knows you,” McVey lied purposefully.

“Then I’ve forgotten. What kind of medicine does he practice?”

Either Osborn was very good, or very innocent. But then he’d lied about the mud on his shoes, so there was every possibility he was doing the same here. “He’s a Ph.D. A friend of Timothy Ashford.” McVey shifted gears in an effort to make Osborn stumble.

“Who?”

“Come on, Doctor. Timothy Ashford. A housepainter from South London. Good-looking man. Age twenty-four.

You know who he is.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then I guess it wouldn’t make any difference if I told you I had his head in a freezer in London.”

A middle-aged woman in a lightly checked suit at the next table reacted sharply. McVey kept his eyes on Osborn. His statement had been offhand but loaded, designed to elicit the same kind of reaction from Osborn it had from .the woman. But Osborn hadn’t so much as blinked.

“Doctor, you lied to me before. You want me to help you. You’ve got to give me something I can use. A reason to trust you.”

The waiter came with Osborn’s coffee, set it on the table in front of him and then left. McVey watched him go. Several aisles away he stopped at the table of a dark-haired man wearing a leather jacket. The man had been sitting alone for ten minutes and so far had ordered nothing. He had a diamond stud in his left ear and a cigarette his left hand. The waiter had stopped once before but he’d been waved off. This time the man glanced in McVey’s direction, then said something to the waiter. The waiter nodded and walked away.

McVey looked back to Osborn. “What is it, Doctor, you feel uncomfortable talking here? Want to go somewhere else?”

Osborn didn’t know what to do or think. McVey was asking him the same kind of questions he had the first time they’d met. He was obviously looking for something he thought Osborn was involved in, but he had no idea what it was. And that made it all the harder because every answer he gave seemed to be calculated avoidance, when, in fact, he was only telling the truth.

“McVey, believe me when I tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I did maybe I could help, but don’t.”

McVey tugged at an ear and looked off. Then he looked back. “Maybe we should try a little different approach,” he said, pausing. “How come you pumped Albert Merriman full of succ—een—ill—choline? I pronounce it ‘ right?”

Osborn didn’t panic, his pulse didn’t even jump. McVey was too intelligent not to have found out, and he’d prepared himself for it. “Do the Paris police know?”

“Please answer the question.”

“Albert Merriman—murdered my father.”

“Your father?” That surprised McVey. It was something he should have considered, but hadn’t, that Merriman had been an object of pursuit for revenge.

“Yes.”

“You hire the tall man to kill him?”

“No. He just showed up.”

“How long ago did Merriman kill your father?”

“When I was ten.”

“Ten?”

“In Boston. On the street. I was there. I saw it happen. I never forgot his face. And I never saw him again, until a week ago, here in Paris.”

In an instant McVey fit the pieces together. “You didn’t tell the Paris police because you weren’t finished with him. You hired Packard to find him. And when he did, you looked for a spot to do it and found the riverbank. Give him a shot or two of the drug. Get him in the water, he can’t breathe or use his muscles, he floats off and drowns. Current is heavy there, the chemical dissipates quickly in the body and he’s so bloated nobody thinks to look for puncture wounds. That was the idea.”

“In a way.”

“What way?”

“First, I wanted to find out why he had done what he did.”

“Did you?” Suddenly McVey’s eyes tracked off. The man in the leather jacket was no longer at the table where he had been. He was closer. Two tables away in a clear line to Osborn’s immediate left. A cigarette was still in his left hand but his right was out of sight, under the table.

Osborn started to turn to see what McVey was looking at when suddenly McVey was on his feet, stepping between Osborn and the man at the table.

“Get up and walk ahead of me. Out that door. Don’t ask why. Just do it.”

Osborn got up. As he did, he realized who McVey had been looking at. “McVey, that’s him. The tall man!”

McVey whirled. Bernhard Oven was standing, the silenced Czechoslovakian Cz coming up in his hand. Somebody screamed.

Suddenly the air was shattered by two booming reports, one right on top of the other, followed almost immediately by a hailstorm breaking of glass.

Bernhard Oven didn’t quite understand why the older American had hit him so hard in the chest. Or why he felt he had to do it twice. Then he realized he was flat on his back on the cement sidewalk outside, while his legs were still inside the restaurant, dangling across the sill of the window he had crashed through. Glass was everywhere. Then he heard people screaming, but he had no idea why. Puzzled, he looked up and saw the same American standing over him. A blue-steel .38 Smith & Wesson revolver was in his fist, its barrel pointed at his heart. Vaguely he shook his head. Then everything faded.

Osborn moved in and felt Oven’s carotid artery. Around them was pandemonium. People were yelling. Screaming Crying out in shock and horror. Some stood back watching. Others were shoving their way out, trying to get away, while still others moved closer, trying to see. Finally Osborn looked up to McVey.

“He’s dead.”

“You’re sure it’s the tall man.”

“Yes.”

McVey had two instantaneous thoughts. The first was that a new Ford Sierra with Pirelli tires and a broken mirror was parked somewhere nearby. The second was “He’s no six foot four.”

Kneeling down, McVey hiked a pant leg up over the dead man’s sock line.

“Prosthetics,” Osborn said.

“That’s a brand-new one on me.”

“You don’t think he did it on purpose?”

“Had his legs amputated so he could alter his height?” McVey pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, then reached down and tucked it around the Cz automatic still in Oven’s hand. Pulling the gun free, he looked at it. Its handle was taped, its identifying marks filed off. Squirreled to its snout was a silencer. It was the workstation of a professional killer.

McVey looked up at Osborn. “Yeah,” he said. “I think he did. I think he had his legs cut off on purpose.”