by Allan Folsom
“I get a fax from L.A.?”
“No, sir.”
What the hell was Hernandez doing with the Osborn information, hand-delivering it to Paris? Sitting down, McVey flipped open a notebook and picked up a pencil. He had two calls from Detective Barras, an hour apart. One from a plumber in Los Angeles confirming his automatic lawn sprinklers had been installed and were working. But wanted McVey to call back and let him know what days and length of watering time he wanted them set for.
“Jesus,” McVey said under his breath.
Lastly there was a call the concierge felt was a crank. In fact the caller had rung back three times, wanting to speak to McVey personally. Each time he’d left no message, but each time he’d sounded a little more desperate.
He’d given his name as Tommy Lasorda.
66
* * *
JOANNA FELT as if she had been drugged and lived through a nightmare.
After her marathon sexual regatta with Von Holden in the mirrored pool room, Von Holden had invited her to come with him into Zurich. Her first reaction had been to smile and beg off. She was exhausted. She’d spent seven hours earlier that day with Mr. Lybarger, working him hard, and often against his will, to make him confident enough to walk without his cane. Trying to make Salettl’s crazy Friday deadline. By 3:30 she’d seen he had done as much as he could do and had taken him to his quarters to rest. She’d expected he’d nap, have a light dinner in his room and probably go to bed very early. But, there he’d been, formally dressed at dinner, bright and alert and with enough reserve to listen to Uta Baur’s never-ending chatter and then, afterward, walk to the second floor to attend the piano recital by Eric and Edward.
If Mr. Lybarger could do it, Von Holden teased, Joanna could certainly drive into Zurich for some infamous Swiss chocolat? Besides it was barely ten o’clock.
Their first stop had been at one of James Joyce’s favorite restaurants on Ramistrasse, where they had chocolat and coffee. Then Von Holden had taken her to a crazy café on Munzplatz, just off the Bahnhofstrasse, to see the nightlife. After that they’d gone to the Champagne Bar at the Hotel Central Plaza and then to a pub on Pelikanstrasse. Finally they walked down to watch the moon over the Zurichsee.
“Want to see my apartment?” Von Holden smiled mischievously as he leaned on the railing and tossed a coin into the water for good luck.
“You’re kidding!” Joanna thought she could never walk again.
“Not kidding at all.” Von Holden reached out and touched her hair.
Joanna was amazed at her arousal. Even giggled out loud at it.
“What’s funny?” Von Holden said.
“Nothing—”
“Come, then.”
Joanna stared at him. “You are a bastard.”
“Can’t help it.” He smiled.
They had cognac on his terrace overlooking the Old Town and he told her stories of his boyhood and growing up on a huge cattle ranch in Argentina. After that he’d taken her to his bed and they’d made love.
How many times has it been tonight? Joanna remembered thinking. Then remembered him standing over her, his penis still enormous, even in repose, and, smiling and embarrassed, asking her if she would very much mind if he tied her wrists and ankles to the bedposts. And then he’d stumbled around in a closet until he’d come out with the soft velvet straps he wanted to use. He didn’t know why he wanted to, but always had. The thought of it excited him immensely. And when she’d looked and seen how immensely, she’d giggled and told him to go ahead if it would please him.
It was then, before he did it, that he’d told her he’d never had a woman do to him what Joanna did. And he’d dribbled cognac over her breasts and, like a Cheshire cat in heat, slowly licked them clean. In physical ecstasy, Joanna lay back as he bound her to the bedposts. By the time he lay down on the bed next to her, bright pinpoints of light were sparkling in the back of her eyes and she was beginning to feel a lightheadedness she’d never before experienced. Then she felt his weight on her, and the size of him as he slid so massively into her. And with each thrust, the pinpoints of light grew larger and brighter and behind them she saw incredible colored clouds floating in wild and grotesque formations. And somewhere, if there was a where, in the surreal kaleidoscope engulfing her—in the center of it, the center of her—she had the sensation that Von Holden had gone and that another man had taken his place. Struggling against her own dream, she tried to open her eyes to see if it was true. But that kind of consciousness wasn’t possible and instead, she fell only deeper into the erotic whirl of light and color and the sensation of her own experience.
When she woke, it was already afternoon and she realized she was in her own bed at Anlegeplatz. Getting up, she saw her clothes from the night before, neatly folded on her dresser. Had she had a dream of dreams, or had it been something else?
It was a short time later, when she was showering, that she saw the scratch marks on her thighs. Looking in the mirror, she saw there were scratches on her buttocks as well, as if she had run naked through a field of thorn-bushes. Then she had the vaguest memory of running naked and horrified from Von Holden’s apartment. Down the stairs and out the back door. And Von Holden had come after her and finally caught her in the rose garden behind his building.
Suddenly she didn’t feel well at all. A wave of nausea swept over her. She was freezing cold and unbearably hot at the same time. Gagging, she flung open the toilet and threw up what was left of the chocolat and last night’s dinner.
67
* * *
IT WAS 2:40 in the afternoon. Osborn had called McVey three times at his hotel, only to be told that Monsieur McVey was out, had left no time when he would be expected back, but would be checking in for messages. By the third call, Osborn was going through the roof, the built-up anxiety of what he had decided to do made all the worse by the fact that McVey was nowhere to be found. Rationally and emotionally he’d already put himself in the policeman’s hands and, in doing so, had prepared himself for whatever that meant: a fellow American who would understand and help, or a quick ride to a French jail. He felt like a balloon stuck to a ceiling, trapped but free at the same time. All he wanted to do was be hauled down but there was no one to pull the string.
Standing alone, showered and freshly shaved, in Philippe’s basement flat, he struggled with what to do next. Vera was on her way to her grandmother’s in Calais, transported there by the police who had been guarding her. And even though Philippe had made the call, Osborn wanted to think she had realized it was he who was telling her, that Philippe was only his beard. He hoped she understood that he was asking her to go there not only for her own safety but because he loved her.
Earlier, Philippe had looked at him and told him to use his apartment to clean up. Laying out fresh towels, he’d unwrapped a new bar of soap and given him a razor to shave. Then, saying to help himself to whatever he found in the icebox, the doorman had done up his tie and gone back to work. From his position in the front lobby he would know what the police were up to. If something happened, he would telephone Osborn immediately.
Without doubt, Philippe had been an angel. But he was tired and Osborn had the sense he was one surprise away from coming unglued. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours to test not only his loyalty but his mental balance. Generous as Philippe was, he was, after all, and by his own choice, simply a doorman. And nobody, least of all himself, expected him to be daring forever. If Osborn went back up to his hiding place under the eaves there was no knowing how long he’d be safe. Especially if the tall man found a way to elude the police and came back looking for him.
Finally, he had realized there was only one choice. Picking up the phone, he rang Philippe at the front desk and asked if the police were still outside.
“Oui, monsieur. Two in front, two at the rear.”
“Philippe—is there another way out of the building besides the front door or the service entrance?”
“
Oui, monsieur. Right where you are. The kitchen door opens into a small hallway; at the end of it is a stairway up to the sidewalk. But why? Here you are safe and—”
“Merci, Philippe. Merci beaucoup,” Osborn said, thanking him for everything. Hanging up, he made one more call. The Hotel Vieux. If McVey was picking up his messages, this would be one he. would want. Osborn would give him a time and a place to meet.
7:00 P.M. The front terrace room of La Coupole, on the boulevard du Montparnasse. It was where he had last seen the private detective, Jean Packard, alive, and the one place in Paris he was familiar enough with to know it would be crowded at that hour. Thereby making it difficult for the tall man to risk taking a shot at him.
Five minutes later, he opened an outside door and climbed the short flights of stairs to the sidewalk. The afternoon was crisp and clear and barge traffic was passing on the Seine. Down the block he could see the police standing guard in front of the building. Turning, he walked off in the opposite direction.
At 5:20, Paul Osborn came out of Aux Trois Quartiers, a stylish department store on the boulevard de la Madeleine, and walked toward the Métro station a half block away. His hair was cut short and he was wearing a new, dark blue pin-stripe suit, with a white shirt and tie. Hardly the picture of a fugitive.
On the way there, he had stopped in the private office of Dr. Alain Cheysson on the rue de Bassano, near the Arc de Triomphe. Cheysson was a urologist two or three years younger than he with whom he’d shared a luncheon table in Geneva. They’d exchanged cards and promised to call one another when Osborn was in Paris or Cheysson in L.A. Osborn had forgotten about it entirely until he decided he’d better have someone look at his hand and tried to think how best to approach it.
“What happened?” Cheysson asked, once the assistant had taken X rays and Cheysson had come into the examining room to see Osborn.
“I’d rather not say,” he said, trying to effect a smile.
“All right,” Cheysson had replied with understanding, wrapping the hand with a fresh dressing. “It was a knife. Painful, perhaps, but as a surgeon you were very lucky.”
“Yes, I know . . . .”
It was ten minutes to six when Osborn came up out of the Metro and started down boulevard du Montparnasse. La Coupole was less than three blocks away. That gave him more than an hour to play with. Time to observe, or try to observe, if the police were setting a trap. Stopping at a phone booth, he called McVey’s hotel and was told that yes, Monsieur McVey had been given his message.
“Merci.”
Hanging up, he pushed open the door and went back outside. It was nearing dark and the sidewalks were filled with the restless flow of people after work. Across the street and down a little way was La Coupole. Directly to his left was a small café with a window large enough for him to observe the comings and goings across the street.
Going inside, he picked a small table near the window that gave him a clear view, ordered a glass of white wine and sat back.
He had been lucky. The X rays on his hand had, as he’d thought, shown no serious damage and Cheysson, though a urologist and hardly an expert on hands, had assured him that he felt no permanent damage had been done. Grateful for Cheysson’s help and understanding, he’d tried to pay for the visit, but Cheysson wouldn’t hear of it.
“Mon ami,” he’d said, tongue in cheek, “when I am wanted by the police in L.A. I know I will have a friend to treat me who will say nothing to anyone. Who will not even make a record of my visit. Eh?”
Cheysson had seen him immediately and treated him without question, all the while knowing Osborn was wanted by the police and jeopardizing himself by helping. Yet he had said nothing. In the end they’d hugged and the Frenchman had kissed him in the French way and wished him well. It was little enough he could do, he said, for a fellow doctor who had shared his lunch table in Geneva.
Suddenly Osborn put down his glass and sat forward. A police car had pulled up across the street. Immediately two uniformed gendarmes got out and went into La Coupole. A moment later they came back out, a well-dressed man in handcuffs between them. He was animated, belligerent and apparently drunk. Passersby watched as he was hustled into the backseat of the police car. One gendarme got in beside him, the other got behind the wheel. Then the car drove off in a singsong of sirens and flashing blue emergency lights.
That was how fast it could happen.
Lifting his glass, Osborn looked at his watch. It was 6:15.
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.