by Allan Folsom
His attack on Henri Kanarack had been foolish, done wholly out of emotion; the shock of recognition compounded by years of pent-up rage. In doing so, he had exposed himself both to Kanarack and the police. But now that had calmed. What he had to be careful of was that emotions didn’t rise again, as they had such a short time ago when he had foolishly solicited Jean Packard. He had No idea why he’d done it, except maybe fear. Murder was no easy thing, but then this was not murder, he told himself, any more than it would have been if a court had sentenced Kanarack to the gas chamber. Which it most certainly would have done had things happened differently. But they hadn’t, and accepting that, which Osborn did now, calmly and assuredly, he realized how private a thing it had become between him and this Henri Kanarack and that the responsibility now could never be anything but his alone.
He knew how to find Kanarack. And even if Kanarack suspected he was still being pursued, he would have no way of knowing he’d been found. The idea would be to surprise him, force him into an alley or other secluded area, then inject him with the succinylcholine and get him into a car that Osborn would have waiting. Kanarack would resist, of course, and Osborn would have to take that into consideration. The injection was the key. Once that was done, he would have to be on guard for sixty more seconds and then Kanarack would relax. No more than three minutes after that he would become paralyzed and be physically helpless.
Done at night and planned correctly, Osborn could use those initial minutes to get Kanarack into the car and drive from where the abduction took place to an out-of-the-way spot, a lake or, better yet, a river with a swift current. Then, taking Kanarack, limp but alive, from the car, he would simply lower him into the waterway. If he had time, he would even pour some whiskey down his throat. That way, when the body was eventually pulled from the water, it would appear to both the police and medical examiner that the man had been drinking and had somehow stumbled into the water and drowned.
And by then Dr. Paul Osborn would either be at home in Los Angeles, or airborne and en route. And if the police should ever piece it together and come all that way to ask him about it, what could they suggest? That it had been more than coincidence that the man he’d attacked in the Parisian brasserie was the same man who’d somehow drowned a few days later?
Hardly
Osborn didn’t know how far he’d walked—from boulevard du Montparnasse to the Eiffel Tower and across the Seine on Pont de’Iena, past the Palais de Chaillot and on to his hotel on avenue Kléber—or even what time it was or how long he’d been sitting at the mahogany bar on the ground floor of his hotel, staring at the untouched cognac in front of him. A glance at his watch told him it was a little past eleven. Suddenly he felt exhausted. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so tired. Standing, he signed the bar tab and started to walk out, then remembered he’d forgotten to tip the bartender. Going back, he placed a twenty-franc note on the bar
“Merci beaucoup,” the bartender said.
“Bonsoir” Osborn nodded, then smiled faintly and left.
As he did, the raised finger of another customer caught the bartender’s eye and he walked the dozen or so feet down the bar to him. The man had been sitting quietly, half staring into his nearly empty drink, his third in the hour and a half he’d been there. He was a gray man with s graying hair, nondescript and lonely, the kind who sits in hotel bars around the world unnoticed, hoping for the little action that almost always never comes.
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Another,” McVey said.
16
* * *
“YOU TELL me why!” Henri Kanarack was drunk. But it was not the kind of drunk that messes up a man’s mind and tongue so that he can neither think or speak coherently. He was drunk because he had to be, there was no other place logo.
It was a half hour before midnight and he was alternately sitting and pacing in Agnes Demblon’s small flat in Porte d’Orleans, barely a ten-minute drive from his own apartment in Montrouge. Early that evening he’d called Michele and told her he had been asked by Monsieur Lebec, the bakery owner, to go with him to Rouen to look over a property where he was considering opening a second bakery. It would be a day, perhaps two, before he got back. Michele was elated. Did this mean Henri was getting a promotion? That if Monsieur Lebec did open a bakery in Rouen, Henri would be asked to manage it? Would they move there? It would be wonderful to raise their child away from the bustling lunacy of Paris.
“I don’t know,” he’d said harshly. He’d been asked to go and that’s all he knew. And with that he’d hung up. Now he stared at Agnes Demblon and waited for her to say something.
“What do you want me to tell you?” she said. “That yes, maybe the American did recognize you and hired a private detective to find you. And that now, since he was in the store, and since that foolish girl gave him the names of the employees, we can assume he has found you or soon will. Assume, too, that he has no doubt reported that back to the American. All right, suppose it’s so. Now what?”
Henri Kanarack’s eyes glistened and he shook his head as he crossed the room for more wine. “What I don’t understand is how the American could recognize me. He’s got to be a dozen years younger than I am, maybe more. I’ve been out of the States for twenty-five years. The fifteen in Canada, the ten here.”
“Henri. Maybe it is a mistake. Maybe he thinks you are someone else.”
“It’s no mistake.”
“How do you know?”
Kanarack took a drink and stared off.
“Henri, you are a French citizen. You’ve done nothing here. For once in your life the law is on your side.”
“The law means nothing if they’ve found me. If it’s them, I’m dead, you know that.”
“It’s not possible. Albert Merriman is dead. Not you. How could anyone make the connection after so many years? Especially a man who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve when you left America.”
“What the hell is he after me for, then, huh?” Kanarack’s stare cut through her. It was hard to tell if he was frightened or angry or both.
“They have pictures of what I looked like then. The police have them and they have them. And I haven’t changed all that much. Either bunch could have sent that guy to look for me.”
“Henri—” Agnes said quietly. He needed to think, to reason, and he wasn’t. “Why would they look for a man who is dead? Or, even if they did, why would they look here? Do you think they are sending this man to every city in the world on the off-chance he might bump into you on the street?” Agnes smiled.
“You’re making something of nothing. Come, sit here by me,” she said, smiling gently and patting the worn couch beside her.
The way she looked at him, the sound of her voice reminded him of the old days when she’d been not as unattractive as she was now. Of the days before she’d purposely let herself go for that very reason, so that he would no longer be attracted to her. Of the days before she refused him her bed, so that after a while he would not want her. It was important that he vanish wholly, to absorb the French culture and become French. To do that he must have a French wife. To make that possible it was necessary that Agnes Demblon no longer be part of his life. She had reentered it only when he had been unable to find work and she’d convinced Lebec he needed another hand at the bakery. After that, their relationship had been totally platonic as it was now, at least as he saw it.
But for Agnes there wasn’t a day her heart didn’t break at the sight of him. Not an hour or a moment when she did not want to take him into her arms and into her bed. From the beginning she had done it all. Helped him fake his own death, posed as his wife crossing the border into Canada, arranged for his false passport and finally convinced him to leave Montreal for France, where she had relatives, and where he could disappear forever. She’d done it all, even to the point of giving him up to another woman. For no other reason than she loved him so much.
“Agnes. Listen to me.” He did not come to si
t beside her; instead he stood in the center of the room staring at her, the glass no longer in his hand. The room was absolutely still. There was no sound of traffic outside, no sound of people arguing in the apartment downstairs. For a moment she thought maybe the couple who lived there might have taken the night off from their loud and constant bickering and gone to the movies. Or maybe they were already in bed.
It was then she caught sight of her fingernails, which were long and ridged and should have been cut days ago.
“Agnes,” he said again. This time his voice was little more than a whisper.
“What we don’t know, we have to find out. You understand?” he said.
For a long time she kept looking at her nails, then, finally, she lifted her head. The fear, anger and rage were gone from him, as she knew they would be. What was there instead was ice.
“We have to find out.”
“Je comprends,” she murmured and looked back at her nails. “Je comprends.” I understand.
17
* * *
8 A.M.
TODAY WAS THURSDAY, October 6. The morning sky, as predicted, was overcast and a light, cold rain was falling. Osborn ordered a cup of coffee at the counter and took it over to a small table and sat down. The café was filled with people on their way to work stealing a few moments before getting on with the routine of the day. They sipped coffee, toyed with a croissant, smoked a cigarette, looked over the morning paper. A table away, two businesswomen jabbered in high-speed French. Next to them a man in a dark suit, with a shock of even darker hair, leaned on an elbow studying the newspaper Le Monde.
Osborn had reservations on Air France Flight 003 leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday, October 8, at 5:00 P.M., arriving nonstop in Los Angeles at 7:30, Pacific Daylight time, the same evening. The appropriate thing, as fit into the overall scheme, would be for him to contact Detective Barras at police headquarters, inform him of his reservation and time of departure and politely ask when he could pick up his passport. Once that was done, he could get on with the rest.
It was important he kill Kanarack sometime Friday night. He needed the cover of darkness not just for the act but to prevent Kanarack’s body from being discovered too soon and too near Paris. After some simple research, the Seine, his first idea, had become his chosen waterway. It flowed through Paris and then wound northwest through the French countryside for some 120-odd miles before dumping into the Bay of the Seine and the English Channel at Le Havre. Barring some unforeseen complication, if he could get Kanarack into the river at some point west of the city after dark on Friday night, it would be daylight Saturday at the earliest before his body was discovered. By then, in a good current, it should have traveled thirty or forty miles downstream. With luck, maybe more. Bloated and with no identification, it would be days before the authorities determined who he was.
To cover himself, Osborn would need an alibi, something that would place him somewhere else at the time of the killing. A movie, he thought, would be easiest. He could buy a ticket, then make some valid disturbance with the ticket-taker going in, just enough so that later, should the question arise, that person would remember his being at; the theater. His proof would be the ticket stub with the time and date of the show. Once having taken a seat in the darkened auditorium, he would wait for the film to begin and then slip out a side exit.
The timing of everything would depend on Kanarack’s daily routine. A call to the bakery had established it was open from seven in the morning until seven in the evening and that the last freshly baked goods would be available at approximately four P.M. He’d seen Kanarack it the brasserie on rue St.-Antoine at about six. The brasserie was at least a twenty-minute walk from the bakery, and since Kanarack had left the brasserie on foot after Osborn’s attack on him it was safe to assume, as Jean Packard had earlier, that he either had no car or didn’t use one in commuting to work. If the last baked goods were available at 4:00 and Kanarack had been at the brasserie at 6:00, it was also reasonable to assume that left work sometime between 4:30 and 5:30. Though it was still early October, the days were growing short. A glance at the paper predicted that the rain falling now would continue for the next several days. That meant it would be getting dark even earlier. By 5:30, easily.
Osborn’s immediate order of business was to rent a car and look for an isolated area on the Seine, west of Paris, where he could get Kanarack into the water without being observed. Afterward he would drive to the bakery and then back again to make certain he knew the way.
Finally, he would go back to the bakery and park across the street, being certain to arrive no later than 4:30. Then he would wait for Kanarack to come out and see which way he went. Up the street or down.
The first time he’d seen him, Kanarack had been alone, so hopefully he did not make it a habit to leave work in the company of co-workers. If, for some reason, he did on Friday night, Osborn’s contingency plan would be to follow him in the car until he separated from whomever he was with, and then take him at the most convenient place thereafter. If Kanarack walked with someone all the way to the Métro, then Osborn would simply drive to his apartment building and wait for him there. That was something he did not want to do unless it was absolutely necessary, because there was too much chance Kanarack would run into people he was in the habit of greeting as he came home. Still, if that was the only option, Osborn would take it. What he wished more than anything was that had more than one night for the run-through, but he didn’t so whatever happened, he’d have to make the best of.
“Hi.”
Osborn looked up, startled. He’d been in such deep contemplation he’d not seen Vera come in. Quickly he stood and pulled out a chair for her and she sat down across from him. As he went back to his own chair he saw a clock behind the counter. It read 8:25. Looking around he realized the café had all but emptied out since he’d gotten there.
“Can I get you something?”
“Espresso, oui.” She smiled.
Getting up, he crossed to the counter, ordered an espresso and stood there while the counterman turned to make it. Glancing back at Vera, he looked past her and then away, concentrating on why he was there, why he’d asked her to meet him when she got off her shift at the hospital.
The succinylcholine.
Twice already that morning he’d tried to have his own prescription for it filled at local pharmacies, but both times he’d been told the drug was available only at hospital pharmacies, and both times he’d been warned he would need authorization from a local physician to get it. A call to the closest hospital pharmacy confirmed it. Yes, they had the succinylcholine. And yes, he would need authorization from a Parisian doctor.
Osborn’s first thought was to call the hotel doctor, but asking for succinylcholine was not like asking for an everyday prescription. Questions would be asked; it could become awkward. A nervous doctor might even call the police to report it. There might be other ways, but finding them would take time and time was now his enemy. Reluctantly, his thoughts turned to Vera.
Right away he dialed the pharmacy at the Centre Hospitalier Ste. -Anne where she was a resident. Yes, the succinylcholine was available, but again, not without local authorization. Maybe, he thought, if he played it right, Vera’s verbal okay at the pharmacy would be enough. He didn’t want to involve any doctor she knew because that person would want to know why. He had a story for Vera, but making anyone else buy it would be complicated and risky.
Hesitating, thinking it through once more, he’d called her at the hospital at 6:30 and asked if she would meet him in a café nearby for coffee when she got off work. He’d heard her pause, and for a moment he was afraid that she was going to make up an excuse and tell him she couldn’t see him, but then she’d agreed. Her shift finished at 7:00 but she had a meeting that wouldn’t be over until just after 8:00. She would meet him after that.
Osborn watched her as he carried the espresso back to the table. After a thirty-six-hour shift without sleep
and an hourlong meeting following that she was still pert and radiant, even beautiful. He couldn’t help staring at her as he sat down, and when she caught him she smiled back, lovingly. There was something about her that put him some of where else, no matter what he was thinking or what else he was involved in. He wanted to be with her and consume her and have her consume him, always and forever. Nothing either one of them could ever do should be more important than that. The trouble was he first had to take care of Henri Kanarack.
Leaning forward, he reached across to take her hand. Almost immediately she pulled it away and slid it into her lap.
“Don’t,” she said, her eyes darting around the room.
“What are you afraid of? Somebody might see us?”
“Yes.”
Vera looked away, then picked up her cup and took a sip of the espresso.
“You came to me, remember? To say goodbye . . . ,” Osborn said. “Does he know about that?”
Abruptly Vera put down her cup and stood up to leave.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t the right thing to say. Let’s get out of here and go for a walk.”
She hesitated.
“Vera, you’re talking to a friend, a doctor you met in Geneva who asked you to meet him for a cup Of coffee. Then you walked up the street together. He went back to the U.S. and that was that. Shoptalk between doctors. Good story. Good ending. Right?”
Osborn’s head was cocked to the side and the veins stood out on his neck. She’d never seen him angry before. In a way she couldn’t explain, it pleased her and she smiled. “Right,” she said, almost girlishly.
Outside, Osborn raised an umbrella against a light drizzle. Dodging around a red Peugeot, they crossed the street and walked up rue de la Santé in the direction of the hospital.
In doing so they passed a white Ford parked at the curb. Inspector Lebrun was behind the wheel; McVey sat in the passenger seat beside him.