by Allan Folsom
So, unless Merriman had done something so outrageous as to provoke Osborn’s anger earlier that same day, it seemed reasonable to look for something else. Which was what his gut told him. That whatever was between them had happened in the past.
But why would a doctor in L.A. have a tie to a professional killer who’d faked his own death and been out of sight for almost three decades, the last ten years of it hiding in France as Henri Kanarack? As far as Lebrun had been able to find out, Merriman, as Henri Kanarack, had been clean the entire time. That meant that whatever relationship existed between Osborn and Merriman had to have begun when Merriman was still in the States.
Getting up, McVey went to the writing table and pulled open his briefcase. Finding the notes he’d made from his conversations with Benny Grossman on Merriman, he ran his finger down the page until he found the date Merriman was supposed to have been killed in New York.
“Nineteen sixty-seven?” he said out loud. McVey took a swallow of the Sancerre, and poured .a little more in his glass. Osborn was no more than forty, probably younger. If he knew Merriman in 1967 or before, he’d have to have been a kid.
Screwing up his face, McVey pondered the possibility Merriman could have been Osborn’s father. A father who’d deserted the family and disappeared. As quickly, he discarded it; Merriman would have had to have been in his early teens to father someone as old as Osborn. No, it had to have been something else.
He was thinking about the drug Lebrun’s men had found, the succinylcholine, and wondering what, if anything, that had to do with the Osborn/Merriman thing.
Thinking about it made him realize he hadn’t heard back from Commander Noble. True, it had been hardly twenty-four hours since he’d left London, but twenty-four hours should have been ample time for the Special Branch’s finest to uncover hospitals or medical schools in southern England experimenting with advanced techniques in radical surgery. The other obstacle, tracing back missing persons over years to find the one who matched the severed head with the metal plate in it, could take forever, and maybe they’d still come up with nothing.
And what about his request that Doctors Richman and Michaels go over the headless bodies for puncture wounds that might have been overlooked because of the various stages of decomposition of the bodies. Puncture wounds that might have been made by an injection of succinylcholine.
This was the kind of thing McVey disliked. He preferred working on his own, taking the time he needed to digest what was there and then acting accordingly. Still, he couldn’t complain about the team around him. Noble and his staff along with the medical experts in London were doing precisely as he asked. Lebrun, in Paris, was too. Benny Grossman had been exceedingly helpful in New York, and now hopefully Rita Hernandez in L.A. would come up with a solid background sheet on Osborn that might give McVey some inkling of what might have gone before, something that might explain his tie to Merriman
But that was the problem. Osborn and Merriman, the dead private investigator, Jean Packard, the tall man and his murderous exploits and the secretive goings-on involving Interpol, Lyon. That should have been one case, The headless bodies found scattered over northern Europe, and the bodyless head found in London, all ultra-deep-frozen in some kind of bizarre medical experiment, should have been another.
Something told him they weren’t, that somehow, in some way, the two wholly disparate situations were intertwined. And the coupling—though he had absolutely no evidence to back it up—had to be Osborn.
McVey didn’t like it. The whole thing felt as if it was getting ahead of him.
“Open up the Osborn/Merriman thing, and you’ll open up the other,” he said out loud. As he did, he noticed the big toe on his left foot was beginning to push through his sock. Suddenly, and for the first time in years, he felt very much alone.
It was then the knock came at the door. Puzzled, McVey got up and went to the door. “Who is it?” he said, opening it to the chain lock. A uniformed policeman stood in the hallway.
“First Paris Préfecture of Police, Officer Sicot. There’s been a shooting at Ms. Monneray’s apartment.”
60
* * *
MCVEY Looked at the .45 automatic Barras had so neatly laid on a linen napkin on Vera Monneray’s dining room table. Taking a ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket, he stuck it in its snout and picked it up. It was a U.S.-made Colt, at least ten or fifteen years old.
Laying it back on the table and retrieving his pen, McVey glanced around at the activity. Sunday night or not, the Paris police had managed to fill the place with tech experts.
Across the hall, in the living room, he could see Inspectors Barras and Maitrot talking with Vera Monneray. Standing to one side was a uniformed policewoman. Sitting on the Alice in Wonderland chair was the doorman whom everybody was suddenly calling Philippe.
Going into the hallway, McVey saw a wiry, bespectacled member of the tech crew scraping dried blood off the wall. Farther down, a balding photographer finished taking pictures, then a man who looked as if he could have been a professional wrestler moved in to delicately pry a spent bullet out of the splintered top of a cherry table.
Eventually, most of what was going on would provide a reasonably accurate picture of what had happened here. But for now, to McVey at least, the .45 on the dining room table was the thing.
A little palm-sized gun he could understand. A .25 or a .32 caliber. A Walther maybe, or an Italian Beretta. Or, more likely, a French-made Mab would be the arm of choice a ranking member of the French ministry might tuck away for his girlfriend to use in an emergency. But a U.S. Colt .45 automatic was a man’s gun. Big and heavy, with, a nasty recoil when it was fired. Right off, it didn’t fit.
Moving past the photographer, who was now working the open door into the outer hall, McVey glanced into the living room. Barras had evidently just asked Vera Monneray something because she shook her head. Then she looked up and saw McVey watching her, and immediately turned back to Barras.
The first thing Barras told McVey when he’d arrived was that François Christian had been notified and had spoke with Vera on the telephone but that he would not be coming over. That was Barras’ way of posturing. Letting McVey know there were bigger things at work here and that McVey best take a backseat to the proceedings, especially as far as Mademoiselle Monneray was concerned.
If Lebrun were here it might be different, but he wasn’t. He’d left town late in the day on personal business—no one, not even his wife, seemed to know what it was or where he had gone—and was unreachable, even by electronic page. That’s why McVey had been called. Obviously reluctantly, because Barras and Maitrot had been on the scene immediately after the shooting as part of the stakeout team, and it hadn’t been until two hours later that Officer Sicot had been dispatched to McVey’s hotel room.
McVey wasn’t surprised. It was the same with police agencies everywhere. Cop or not, if you weren’t one of theirs, you weren’t one of theirs. You wanted to be on the inside, you had to be invited, and that took time. So, for the most part, you were treated cordially but you were on your own and sometimes the last guy on the wake-up call.
McVey walked back off down the hall and into the kitchen. A city wide alarm had been put out for a tall, blond man about six foot four, wearing gray slacks and a dark jacket, who spoke French with a Dutch or German accent. It wasn’t much, but it was something. At least, unless Vera were making it up, which he doubted, it was proof the tall man existed.
Passing through the kitchen, he walked through an open door and into the service stairwell. Tech crews were working the stairs and the landing two floors down where a service door opened to the street. Taking stock as he went, McVey walked down the stairs to the landing and glanced out through the open door to where uniformed police were standing guard outside.
Vera had told Barras and Maitrot that she’d come home from the hospital after experiencing severe menstrual cramps. She’d come in, taken some special painkiller she kept at ho
me, and had lain down. A short time later she began to feel better and decided to go back to work. She’d called Philippe for a taxi and when he told her it had arrived, she’d gone out into the hallway for her purse, wondering why it was darker than it should be, and realized the light in the living room had been turned out. That was when the man grabbed her.
Pulling free, she’d run into the dining room for the gun François Christian had put there for emergencies. Whirling, she pointed the gun and fired several shots—she didn’t remember how many—at the tall man, who fled out the service door and down the back stairs to the street. She went down after him, thinking maybe she’d shot him, and that’s where Barras and Maitrot had found her, by the door with the gun in her hand. She reported hearing a car drive away but did not see it.
McVey stepped outside into the glare of blue-white police worklights and saw the tech crew measuring rubber tire marks in the street, parallel to and almost directly across from the door he’d just exited.
Easing off the curb, he walked into the street and looked off in the direction the car had gone, then followed the line of the car’s escape route until he was out of the spill of the worklights and in darkness. Another fifteen yards and he turned back. Squatting down, he studied the street. It was blacktop over cobblestone. Lifting his head, he brought his eyes level with the worklights farther down. Something glinted in the street five yards away. Standing, he walked over and picked it up. It was a sliver of shattered mirror, the kind of exterior mirrors that are on automobiles.
Slipping it carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket, he walked back toward the lights until he was exactly opposite the service door, then looked over his shoulder. Across the street, the windows of other apartments were ablaze with light, and the silhouettes of residents watching what was going on in the street.
Keeping in line with the service door, he crossed to the building on the far side of the street. The only illumination here was from a streetlight, a dozen paces away. Avoiding a freshly painted iron spike fence, McVey walked up to the building and studied its brick and stone surface as carefully as he could in the available light. He was looking for a fresh chip in the stone or brick, a spot where a bullet fired from across the street at a passing car might have hit. But he saw nothing and thought maybe he was wrong, that maybe the piece of mirror hadn’t been shattered by a gunshot after all; maybe it had been lying in the street for some time.
The tech crew in the street had finished their measurements and were going back inside, and McVey was turning to join them when he noticed the top of one of the decorative iron spikes on the freshly painted fence was missing. Walking behind the fence, he hunched over and looked at the ground behind the missing spike. Then he saw it, lying in the shadow of a rainspout at the edge of the building. Moving over, he picked it up. The front half of the spike had been crushed and bent by some heavy impact. And where the object had struck it, the fresh black paint was shiny steel.
61
* * *
BERNHARD OVEN’s decision to retreat had been correct. The American’s first shot, thrown off because of the knife in his hand, had seared a bloody path along the base of his saw. He was lucky. Had it not been for the knife, Osborn probably would have shot him between the eyes. Had Oven had the Walther in his hand instead of a knife, he would have done the same to Osborn, and then killed the girl.
But he hadn’t, nor had he chosen to stay and fight it out with the American because the police waiting outside would have, and no doubt did, come in very quickly at the sound of the gunshots. The last thing Oven Wanted was to be pitted against an enraged man with a gun with the police coming in the front door behind him.
Even if he’d killed Osborn, there was every chance he would have been caught or wounded by the police. If that had happened, he might survive, at best, a day in jail before the Organization found a way to eliminate their problem. Which was another reason why his withdrawal had been timely and correct.
But his leaving had created another problem. For the first time, he had been clearly seen. By Osborn and by Vera Monneray, who would describe him to the police as quite tall, six foot four at least, with blond hair and blond eyebrows.
It was now almost 9:30, little more than two hours after the shooting. Getting up from the straight-backed chair where he’d been musing, Oven went into the bedroom of the two-room flat on the rue de I’Eglise, opened the closet door and took out a pair of freshly pressed blue jeans with a thirty-two-inch inseam. Laying them on the bed, he slipped out of his gray flannel slacks, hung them carefully on a hanger and put them in the closet.
Pulling on the blue jeans, he sat down on the edge of the bed and unhooked the Velcro straps that connected ten-inch-long leg and foot prosthetics to the stubs of his legs at the point where they had been amputated, halfway between the ankle and the knee.
Opening a hard plastic traveling case, he took out a second pair of prosthetics, identical to the others but six inches shorter. Fitting them to the nub of each leg, he reattached the Velcro straps, pulled on white athletic socks and then a pair of white, high-top Reeboks.
Standing, he placed the prosthetics box in a drawer and went into the bathroom. There, he put on a short, dark wig and darkened his eyebrows with mascara of the same color.
At 9:42, a light gauze dressing covering the bullet crease on his jaw, five-foot-ten-inch Bernhard Oven, with dark hair with dark eyebrows, left his flat on the rue de I’ Eglise and walked a half block to the Jo Goldenberg restaurant at 7 rue Rosiers, where he took a table by the window, ordered a bottle of Israeli wine and the evening special, rolled grape leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice.
Paul Osborn lay huddled in the dark on top of the aging furnace in the basement of 18 Quai de Bethune, in a two-foot-square area that couldn’t be seen from the floor, his head only inches from the dusty, spider-infested ceiling of ancient beams and mortar. He’d found the spot only moments before the first detectives had invaded the area and now, nearly three hours later, he was still there, having some while ago stopped counting the number of times scurrying rats had come up to sniff and stare with their hideous red, rodent eyes. If he could be thankful for anything it was that the night was warm and no one in the building had yet called up the heat, thereby turning on the furnace.
For the first two hours it seemed as if the police were in every corner of the basement. Uniformed police, police in plain clothes with I.D.s pinned to their jackets. Some left and came back. Talking vigorously in French, every once in a while laughing at some joke he didn’t understand. He was lucky they hadn’t brought dogs.
The bleeding in his hand seemed to have stopped, but it ached brutally, and he was cramped and thirsty and exceedingly tired. More than once he’d dozed off, only to be wakened again by police as they searched everywhere but Where he was.
Now, for a long time it had been quiet, and he wondered if they were still there. They had to be, otherwise Vera would have come down looking for him. Then it occurred to him that she might not be able to. That the police might have posted guards to protect her in case the tall man came back. What then? How long should he stay there before he at least made some effort to get out?
Suddenly, he heard a door open above. Vera! He felt his heart jump and he raised himself up. Footsteps were coming down. He wanted to say something but he dared not. Then he heard whoever it was stop at the landing. It had to be Vera. Why would a policeman come down alone when the area had already been thoroughly covered? Maybe it was someone checking the service door to see if it has been secured. If so, they would go back up.
Abruptly there was a sharp creak as weight was put on a stair coming down to where he was. It was not a woman’s step.
The tall man!
What if he had eluded the police just as Osborn had, and was still there? Or had found a way to come back? In a panic, Osborn looked around for a weapon. There was none.
The stairs creaked again and the footsteps descended further. Holding his breath
and craning his neck, Osborn could just make out the bottommost stairs. Another step and a man’s foot appeared, then a second, and he stepped into the basement.
McVey.
Lying back, Osborn pressed flush against the top of the furnace. He heard McVey’s footfalls approach, then stop. Then move off again, going away from the furnace and deeper into the block-long, coffin-shaped cellar.
For several seconds, he heard nothing. Then there was a click and a light went on. A moment later there was a second click and more of the basement was illuminated. What little he could see he had seen before when the French police had come through. The basement looked like a small warehouse. Old wooden coat bins, now jammed with tenants’ furniture and private belongings, lined either wall and vanished into the darkness beyond the lights. Osborn thought that had he got ten that far, to the area where the lights ended, he could have hidden anywhere. Perhaps even found an exit the far end.
Immediately there was a scattering sound overhead and something dropped onto his chest. It was a rat. Fat and warm. He could feel its claws press into the skin beneath his shirt as it moved across his chest and sniffed at Vera’s scarf, sticky wet with drying blood, which bound his injured hand.
“Doctor Osborn!”
McVey’s voice reverberated the length of the cellar. 0sborn gave a start, and the rat dropped off and hit the floor McVey heard it thud, then saw it disappear into the darkness under the stairs.
“I’m not crazy about rats. How do you feel about them? They bite when they get cornered, don’t they?”
Inching up, Osborn could see McVey standing halfway between the furnace and the dark at the far end of the room. Piled to the ceiling on either side of him were dusty crates and ghostlike furniture, draped with protective cloths. The height of them made McVey seem almost miniature.