The Day After Tomorrow

73

A DAMP fog swirled around and it had started to mist. The yellow headlamps of the few cars still out cut an eerie swath as they moved up the boulevard St.-Jacques past the telephone kiosk.

“Oy, McVey!” Benny Grossman’s voice cut through three thousand miles of underwater fiber-optic cable like bright sunshine. Twelve fifteen, Tuesday morning in Paris, was seven fifteen, Monday evening in New York, and Benny had just come back into the office to check messages after a very long day in court.

Down the hill, through the drizzle and the trees that separated the two-lane street, McVey could just see the hotel. He hadn’t dared call from the room and didn’t want to chance the lobby if the police came back.

“Benny, I know, I’m driving you crazy—”

“No way, McVey!” Benny laughed. Benny always laughed. “Just send my Christmas bonus in hundreds. So go ahead, drive me crazy.”

Glancing out at the street, McVey felt the reassuring heft of the .38 under his jacket, then looked back to his notes.

“Benny. Nineteen sixty-six, Westhampton Beach. An Erwin Scholl—who is he? Is he still alive? If so, where is he? Also 1966—early, the spring, or even late fall of sixty-five, three unsolved murders, professional jobs. In the states of—”

McVey checked his notes again. “Wyoming, California, New Jersey.”

“A snap, boobalah. And while I’m at it why don’t I find out who the hell really killed Kennedy.”

“Benny, if I didn’t need it—” McVey looked out toward the hotel. Osborn was tucked in the room with the tall man’s Cz, the same as the first time, and with the same orders not to answer the phone or open the door for anyone but .him. This was the kind of business McVey heartily disliked, being in danger with no idea where it might come from or what it might look like. Most of his last years had been spent picking up the pieces and putting together evidence after drug dealers had concluded business transactions. Most of the time it was safe, because men who were dead usually didn’t try to kill you.

“Benny”—McVey turned back to the phone—"the victims would have been working in some kind of high-tech field. Inventors, precision tool designers, scientists maybe, even a college professor. Somebody experimenting with extreme cold—three, four, five hundred degrees below zero cold. Or maybe, the reverse—somebody exploring heat. Who were they? What were they working on when killed? Now, last: Microtab Corporation. Waltham, Massachusetts, 1966. Are they still in business? If so, who runs the shop, who owns them? If not, what happened to them and who owned them in 1966?”

“McVey—what am I, Wall Street? The IRS? The Department of Missing Persons? Just punch this into a computer and out comes your answers?—When the hell you want it, New Year’s 1995?”

“I’m going to call you in the morning.”

“What?”

“Benny, it’s very, very important. If you draw a blank, if yon need help, call Fred Hanley at the FBI in L.A. Tell him it’s for me, that I asked for the assistance.” McVey paused. “One other thing. If you haven’t heard from me by noon tomorrow, your time, call Ian Noble at Scotland Yard and give him everything you have.”

“McVey—” Benny Grossman’s voice lost its testy ebullience. “You in trouble?”

“Lots.”

“Lots? What the hell’s that mean?”

“Hey, Benny, I owe you—”

Osborn stood in the darkened window looking down at the street below. The fog was thick and the traffic almost nonexistent. No one passed on the sidewalks. People were home asleep, waiting for Tuesday. Then he saw a figure walk under a streetlamp and cross the boulevard toward the hotel. He thought it was McVey, but he couldn’t be sure. Pulling the curtain back across the window, he sat down and clicked on a small bedside lamp, illuminating Bernhard Oven’s .22 Cz. He felt like he’d been hiding for half a century, yet it had only been eight days since he’d first looked up and had seen Albert Merriman sitting across from him in the Brasserie Stella.

How many had died in eight days? Ten, twelve? More. If he’d never met Vera and come to Paris, each one of those people would still be alive. Was the guilt his? There was no answer because it was not a reasonable question. He had met Vera and he had come to Paris, and nothing could change what had happened since.

In the last hours, while McVey had been gone, he’d tried not to think of Vera. But in the moments when he did, when he couldn’t help not think of her, he had to tell himself she was all right, that the inspectors who had taken her to her grandmother’s in Calais were good, trustworthy cops, and not a corrupt tentacle of whatever the hell was going on.

Violence had struck him at an early age and its after-math had been with him ever since. The nightmares after Merriman had been shot, the crippling emotional breakdown that had ended on the floor in the attic hideaway in Vera’s arms had been little more than a desperate wrenching against an ungodly truth: that the death of Albert Merriman had settled nothing. The horrid, scar-faced killer he’d pursued from childhood had been simply replaced by a name and precious little else. In leaving Vera’s building—in coming out of hiding, risking the tall man, the Paris police and the chance that McVey, once face to face, would arrest him on the spot—he was admitting that he could no longer go it alone. It wasn’t mercy he’d come to McVey for, it was help.

A knock at the door startled him like a pistol shot. His chin came up and his head snapped around as if he’d been caught somewhere with his pants down. He stared at the door, uncertain if his mind was playing tricks.

The knock came again.

If it was McVey he’d say something or use his key. Osborn’s fingers closed around the Cz just as the knob began to turn. The door pressed inward just enough to insure it was locked. As quickly the pressure ceased.

Crossing the room, he leaned back against the wall, just to the side of the door. He could feel the sweat build up in the grip of the gun. Whatever happened next was up to Whoever was in the hallway.

“Sorry, honey. Ya got the wrong damn room,” he heard McVey drawl loudly from outside the door. It was followed by a woman’s voice flailing in French.

“Wrong room, honey. Believe me. Try upstairs—maybe you got the wrong floor!”

French spat back, angry and indignant.

Then there was the sound of the key in the lock. The door opened and McVey came in. He had a dark-haired girl by the arm and a rolled-up newspaper sticking out of his jacket pocket.

“You want to come in, come in,” he said to the girl, then looked at Osborn.

“Lock it.”

Osborn closed the door, locked it, then slid the chain lock across.

“Okay, honey, you’re in. What now?” McVey said to the girl, who stood in the middle of the room with a hand on her hip. Her eyes went to Osborn. She was probably twenty, five foot two or three, and not the least bit frightened. She wore a tight silk blouse and a very short black skirt with net stockings and high heels.

“Fucky, fucky,” she said in English, then smiled seductively, looking from Osborn to McVey.

“You want to screw the two of us. Is that it?”

“Sure, why not?” She smiled and her English got a lot better.

“Who sent you?”

“I am a bet.”

“What kind of bet?”

“The night clerk said you were gay. The bellman said no.”

McVey laughed. “And they sent you to find out.”

“Oui.” And pulled several hundred francs from the top of her bra to prove it.

“What the hell’s going on?” Osborn said.

McVey smiled. “Aw hell, we was just funnin’ with them, honey. The bellman’s right.” He looked at Osborn. “Want to fuck her first?”

Osborn jumped. “What?”

“Why not, she’s already been paid.” McVey smiled at her. “Take your clothes off. . . .”

“Sure.” She was serious, and she was good at it. She looked them in the eyes the whole time. One and then the other and then back again, as if each piece as it came off was a special show for him alone. And slowly she took it all off.

Osborn watched open-mouthed. McVey wasn’t actually going to do it? Just like that and with him standing there? He’d heard stories about what cops have done in certain situations, everybody had. But who believed it, let alone thought they’d be firsthand party to it?

McVey glanced at him. “I’ll go first, huh?” He grinned. “Don’t mind if we go into the bathroom, do you, Doctor?”

Osborn stared. “Be my guest.”

McVey opened the bathroom door and the girl went in. McVey went in behind her and closed the door. A second later Osborn heard her give a sharp yelp and there was a hard bump against the door. Then the door opened and McVey came out fully clothed.

Osborn was dumbfounded.

“She came up here to get a look at us. She saw me in the hall, it was all she needed.”

McVey tugged the newspaper from his jacket pocket and handed it to him, then went over to gather up the girl’s clothes. Osborn unrolled it. He didn’t even see which paper it was. Only the bold headline in French— HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE SOUGHT IN LA COUPOLE SHOOTING! Beneath it, in smaller type, “Linked to American Doctor in Merriman Murder!” Once more Osborn saw the same Paris police mug shot of. himself that had been printed earlier in Le Figaro and beside it a two or three-year-old picture of a smiling McVey.

“They got that from the LA. Times Magazine. An interview on the everyday life of a homicide investigator. They wanted gristle, they got boredom. But they ran it anyway.” McVey put the clothes into a hotel dry cleaning bag and unlocked the door. Carefully he checked the hallway, then hung the bag outside.

“How did they know this? How could they even find out?” Osborn was incredulous.

McVey closed the door and relocked it. “They knew who their man was and that he was tailing one of us. They knew I was working with Lebrun. All they had to do was send somebody down to the restaurant with a couple of photographs and ask, ‘Are these the guys?’ Not so hard. That’s why the girl. They wanted to make sure they had the right Mutt and Jeff before they sent in the firepower. She probably hoped she could get a look, make up a story and walk away. But obviously she was prepared to do whatever she had to if it didn’t work.”

Osborn looked past McVey at the closed bathroom door. “What did you do to her?”

McVey shrugged. “I didn’t think it was too good an idea to let her go back downstairs right away.”

Handing McVey the paper, Osborn opened the bathroom door. The girl sat stark naked on the toilet, handcuffed to a water pipe on the wall beside it. A washcloth was stuck in her mouth and her eyes looked as if they were ready to pop from her head in fury. Without a word Osborn closed the door.

“She’s a feisty one,” McVey said, with the sliver of a grin. “Whoever finds her, she’s going to make a big stink about her clothes before she lets anyone pick up a telephone. Hopefully that delay will add a few more seconds to our increasingly limited life span.”