by Allan Folsom
Gingerly dodging some sidewalk construction, he walked another fifty yards in the direction of the lighted area to where he could clearly see the tower reaching into the night sky. Suddenly his feet slid out from under him, and he nearly fell. Recovering, he walked on a little farther to where a street light shone on a park bench. The light from the tower spilled onto the grassy area where he’d just been. Most of it had been dug up, and was in the process of being replanted. Leaning against the bench with one hand, he lifted a foot and looked at his shoe. It was wet and covered with mud. The other was the same. Satisfied, he turned and started back for the car. It was why he had come. A simple follow-up to a simple answer to a simple question.
Osborn had told the truth about the mud.
25
* * *
MICHELE KANARACK had never seen her husband as distant and cold.
He was sitting in his underwear, a worn T-shirt and American jockey shorts, looking out the kitchen window. It was ten minutes after nine in the evening. At seven o’clock he’d come home from work, taken off his clothes and immediately put them in the washer. The first thing he’d reached for after that was wine, but he stopped abruptly after drinking only half a glass. After that he’d asked for his dinner, had eaten in silence, and said nothing since.
Michele looked at him without knowing what to say. He’d been fired, she was sure of it. How or why, she had no idea. The last thing he’d told her was that he was going to Rouen with Monsieur Lebec to look over a possible site for a new bakery. Now, little more than twenty-four hours later, here he was, sitting in his underwear and staring out at the night.
The night, that was a thing Michele had inherited from her father. Forty-one when his daughter had been born, he’d been a Parisian auto mechanic when the German army overran the city. A member of the underground, he spent three hours every evening after work on the roof of their apartment building clandestinely watching and recording Nazi military traffic on the street below.
The war had been over for seventeen years when he’d brought four-year-old Michele back to the apartment house and up onto the roof to show her what he’d been doing during the occupation. The traffic on the street below magically became German tanks, half-tracks and motorcycles. The pedestrians, Nazi soldiers with rifles and machine guns. That Michele hadn’t understood the purpose behind his actions didn’t matter. What did matter was that in taking her to that building and leading her up to the roof in the darkness to show her how and what he had done, he had shared a secret and dangerous past with her. He had included her in something very personal and very special and, in remembering him, that was what counted.
Looking to her husband now, she wished he could be like her father. If the news was bad, it was bad. They loved each other, they were married, they were expecting a child. The darkness outside only made his distance more painful to understand.
Across the room the clothes washer stopped, its cycle finished. Immediately Henri got up, opened the washer door and pulled out his work clothes. Looking at them, he cursed out loud, then crossed the room to pull open a closet door angrily. A moment later he was stuffing the still-wet laundry inside a plastic garbage bag and sealing it with a plastic tie.
“What are you doing?” Michele asked.
Abruptly, he looked up. “I want you to go away,’ he said. “To your sister’s house in Marseilles. Take back your family name and tell everyone I’ve left you, that I’m a louse, and you have no idea where I’ve gone.”
“What are you saying?” Michele was flabbergasted.
“Do what I tell you. I want you to leave now. Tonight.”
“Henri, tell me what’s wrong, please.”
In answer, Kanarack threw down the garbage bag and went into the bedroom.
“Henri, please . . . Let me help . . . .” Suddenly she realized he meant it. She came into the room behind him scared half to death and stood in the doorway as he dug two battered suitcases from under the bed. He pushed them toward her.
“Take these,” he said. “You can fit enough into them.”
“No! I am your wife. What the hell is the matter? How can you say these things without explanation?”
Kanarack looked at her for a long moment. He wanted to say something but he didn’t know how. Then, from outside, an automobile horn sounded once, then twice. Michele’s eyes narrowed. Pushing past him, she went to the window. In the street below she could see Agnes Demblon’s white Citroën, its motor running, its exhaust drifting upward in the night air.
Henri looked at her. “I love you,” he said. “Now go to Marseilles. I will send money to you there.”
Michele pushed back from him. “You never went to Rouen. You were with her!”
Kanarack said nothing.
“Get the hell out of here, you bastard. Go to your goddamn Agnes Demblon.”
“It’s you who has to go,” he said.
“Why? She’s moving in?”
“If that’s what you want to hear. All right, yes, she’s moving in.”
“Then go to hell, for all time. Go to hell, you son of a bitch, and God damn you!”
26
* * *
“I SEE,” François Christian said quietly and without emotion. A glass of cognac was in his hand; swirling it lightly, he looked off into the fire.
Vera said nothing. Leaving him was difficult enough, she owed him a great deal and would not insult him, or them, by simply getting up and walking out as if she were a whore, because she wasn’t,
It was a little before ten. They had just finished supper and were sitting in the large living room of a grand apartment on the rue Paul Valery between avenue Foch and avenue Victor Hugo. She knew Francois also kept a house in the country where his wife and three children lived. She also suspected he might have more than one apartment in the city, but she never asked. Any more than she’d asked if she were his only lover, which she suspected she wasn’t.
Taking a sip of coffee she looked up at him. He still hadn’t moved. His hair was dark, neatly trimmed, with a touch of gray at the temples. In his dark pin-stripe suit, crisp white cuffs protruding in tailored precision from the sleeves of his double-breasted jacket, he looked like the aristocrat he was. The wedding band on his left hand glinted in the firelight as he absently sipped at his drink while still staring into the flames. How many times had his hands caressed her? Touched her in a way only he had been able to touch her?
Her father, Alexandre Baptiste Monneray, had been a ranking career naval officer. In her early life, she, her mother and her younger brother had traveled the world following his variety of commands and naval postings. When she was sixteen her father retired to become an independent defense consultant and they settled permanently into a large home in the south of France.
It was here that François Christian, then an undersecretary in the Ministry of Defense, became, among others, a frequent guest. And it was here that their relationship began. It was Francois who talked to her at length about the arts, about life and about love. And, one very special afternoon, about the direction of her studies. When she told him medicine, he was astounded.
It was true, she’d argued. Not only did she wish to become a physician, she was determined to become one, if for nothing more than a defiant promise she’d made to her father at age six around a Sunday dinner table, when her parents had been discussing suitable careers for women. Out of the blue she’d announced she was going to be a doctor. Her father had asked her if she was serious and she’d said she was. She even remembered the slight smile he’d given to her mother when he accepted Vera’s choice. The smile she’d taken as a challenge. Neither of her parents believed she could do it or would do it. Right then she determined to prove them wrong. And at that moment of resolve something had happened and a white light rose up around her and held there glowing. And though she knew no one else could see it, she felt warm and comforted and sensed a strength greater than anything she’d ever experienced. And she took it as an affirmation
that her promise to her father was real and that her destiny was resolute.
And, that same afternoon, as she told her story to Francois Christian, the same glow appeared, and she told him it was there. Smiling as if he understood completely, he’d taken her hand in his and fully encouraged her to follow her dreams.
At age twenty she graduated from the University of Paris and was accepted immediately into the medical school at Montpellier, at which time her father relented and gave her his full blessing. A year later, after spending the Christmas holidays with her grandmother in Calais, Vera stopped in Paris to visit friends. For no reason, she suddenly had the idea to visit François Christian, whom she had not seen in nearly three years.
It was a lark, of course, with no purpose other than to say hello. But Francois was now leader of the French Democratic Party and a major political figure, and how to reach him through a battery of underlings she had no idea, except to go to his office and ask to be seen. To her surprise, she was shown in almost immediately.
The moment she entered the room and he rose from his desk to greet her, she’d sensed something extraordinary happening. He called for tea and they sat on a window seat overlooking the garden outside his office. He’d met her when she was sixteen; she was how almost twenty-two. In less than six years, a pert teenage girl had become a strikingly beautiful, extremely intelligent and wholly alluring young woman. If she did not believe it herself, his manner confirmed it and no matter what she did she could not take her eyes from him, nor he from her. That same evening he had brought her here to this apartment. They’d had dinner and then he’d undressed her on the couch by the fire where he now sat. Making love to him had been the most natural thing in the world. And continued to be, even as he became prime minister, for the next four years. Then Paul Osborn had come into her life, and in what seemed like only a matter of moments, everything changed.
“All right,” he said softly, turning in his chair, his eyes, as they met hers, still holding the greatest love and respect for her. “I understand.” With that he set the glass down and stood up. As he did, he looked back to her, as if to fix her image in his mind forever. For a long moment he just stood there. Then, finally, he turned and walked out.
27
* * *
OSBORN SAT on the edge of the bed and listened to Jake Berger complain about his watery eyes and runny nose and the ninety-degree heat, that was pressure cooking Los Angeles into a first-degree smog alert. Berger was rattling on from his car phone somewhere between Beverly Hills and his opulent Century City offices; it didn’t seem to matter that Osborn was six thousand miles away in Paris and might have problems of his own. He sounded more like a spoiled child than one of Los Angeles’s top trial lawyers, the one who had turned Osborn onto Kolb International and Jean Packard in the first place.
“Jake, listen to me, please—” Osborn finally interrupted, then told him what had just taken place: the murder of Jean Packard, McVey’s sudden visit, the personal questions. He left out the lie, the hiring of Jean Packard to uncover Vera’s boyfriend, just as he’d dodged around the reason he needed a private investigator the first time he’d called Berger.
“You’re sure it was McVey?” Berger asked.
“You know him?”
“Do I know McVey? What lawyer who ever defended a murder suspect in the city of Los Angeles doesn’t know him? He’s tough and thorough, with the tenacity of a pit bull. Once he gets into something, he doesn’t let go until it’s finished. That he’s in Paris is no surprise—McVey’s expertise has been sought by baffled homicide departments all over the globe for years. The question is: Why is he interested in Paul Osborn?”
“I don’t know. He just showed up and started asking questions.”
“Paul,” Berger said directly. “McVey. He’s not questioning you for the hell of it. I need a straight answer. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Osborn said. There was no hesitation in his voice. For a moment Berger was silent, then he warned Osborn not to talk to anyone else, and if McVey came back to have him call Berger in Los Angeles. In the meantime he’d try to get someone in Paris to find a way to get his passport back so that he could get the hell out of there.
“No,” Osborn said abruptly. “Don’t do anything. I just wanted to know about McVey, that’s all. Thanks for your time.”
Succinylcholine—Osborn studied the bottle under the bathroom light, then, abruptly putting it into his shaving kit alongside the sealed packet of syringes, closed the kit and tucked it away under several dress shirts in the suitcase he’d never unpacked.
Brushing his teeth, he swallowed two sleeping pills, doublelocked the door, then went to the bed and pulled back the covers. Sitting down, he realized how weary he was. Every muscle in his body ached from the tension.
There was no doubt McVey had unnerved him, and his call to Berger had been a cry for help. But then, as he spilled everything out in a rush, he’d suddenly realized his call had been made to the wrong person, the wrong professional, to someone eminently qualified to counsel law but not the soul. The truth of it was he’d been pleading for Berger to get him out of Paris and off the hook, just as earlier he’d tried to solicit Jean Packard to kill Kanarack. Instead of Berger, he should have called his psychologist in Santa Monica and asked for guidance in handling his own emotional crisis. But he couldn’t do that without confessing homicidal intent, and if he did that, by law, the psychologist would have to inform the police. After that, the only person left he could talk to was Vera, but he couldn’t without incriminating her.
In reality it made no difference whom he confided in because the ultimate decision was and only would be his. Either walk away from Kanarack or kill him.
McVey’s showing up had tightened the screw. Crafty and experienced, he’d never once mentioned Kanarack, but how could Osborn be certain he didn’t know? How could he be sure that if he followed his plan, the police wouldn’t be watching?
Reaching over, Osborn clicked off the bedside lamp and lay back in the darkness. Outside, the rain drummed lightly on his window. The lights from avenue Kléber below illuminated the droplets running down the glass and magnified them on the ceiling overhead. Closing his eyes, he let his thoughts drift to Vera and their lovemaking that afternoon. He could see her naked above him, her head thrown back and her back arched so that her long hair touched his ankles. The only movement at all was the slow, sensuous, back-and-forth thrust of her pelvis as she rode the length of him. She seemed like a sculpture. The marrow of everything female. Girl, woman, mother. At once solid and liquid, infinitely strong, and yet fragile to the point of vanishing.
The truth was he loved her and cared for her in a way he’d never experienced. It made sense only if you came at it from far inside, filled with the want and hunger and sense of wonder that the ultimate love between two people can really be. And he knew beyond doubt that were they both to die that moment, that in the same instant they would be reunited in the vastness of space, and taking on whatever form or shape required, they would continue on intertwined, forever.
If that vision was romantic or childlike or even spiritual, it made no difference, because it was what Paul Osborn believed was true. And he knew that in her own way Vera felt the same. She had proved it earlier that day when she had taken him to her apartment. And that in itself had clarified the next. And that was that if he and Vera were to go on, he could not allow the demon inside him to do what it had done to every other caring relationship he’d had since he was a boy. Destroy it. This time it i was the demon that must be destroyed. Inexorably and forever. No matter how difficult, how dangerous or at what risk.
Finally, as the pills at last played their game and sleep began to overtake him, Paul Osborn’s demon materialized before him. It was hunched over and menacing and wore a dusty coat. Though it was dark, he saw it raise its head. Its eyes were deep-set and staring, and its ears stuck out at sharp angles. The head was turned and he could not see the face clearly, yet h
e knew instinctively that the jaw was square and that a scar ran across the cheekbone and down toward the upper lip.
And there was no doubt. None at all.
The thing he saw was Henri Kanarack.
28
* * *
Click.
McVey knew it was 3:17 A.M. without looking because the last time he’d looked at the clock it was 3:11. Digital clocks were not supposed to make noise, but they did if you were listening. And McVey had been listening, and counting the clicks, while he thought.
He’d come back to his hotel, following his visit with Osborn and his frolic in the rain in front of the Eiffel Tower, at ten minutes to eleven. The hotel’s tiny restaurant was closed and room service wasn’t available because there wasn’t any. It was the kind of all-expense trip Interpol funded. A barely livable hotel, with faded carpets, a lumpy bed and food, if you could make it between six and nine in the morning and six and nine at night.
What was left was either to go back out in the rain to find a restaurant that was open, or to use the “honor bar,” the tiny little refrigerated cabinet tucked between what served as a closet and the bathroom that flooded every time you used the shower.
McVey wasn’t going back out in the rain, so it was the honor bar or nothing. Opening it with a tiny key attached to the ring on his room key, he found some cheese and crackers and a triangle of Swiss chocolate. Poking around, he also found a half bottle of a white wine that turned out to be a very nice Sancerre. Afterward, when he casually opened the desk drawer to check the honor bar price list, he found out why the Sancerre had been so agreeable. The half bottle cost 150 French francs, somewhere around thirty dollars U.S. A pittance to a connoisseur, a fortune to a cop.