by Allan Folsom
“Who?”
“Come on, Doctor. Timothy Ashford. A housepainter from South London. Good-looking man. Age twenty-four.
You know who he is.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then I guess it wouldn’t make any difference if I told you I had his head in a freezer in London.”
A middle-aged woman in a lightly checked suit at the next table reacted sharply. McVey kept his eyes on Osborn. His statement had been offhand but loaded, designed to elicit the same kind of reaction from Osborn it had from .the woman. But Osborn hadn’t so much as blinked.
“Doctor, you lied to me before. You want me to help you. You’ve got to give me something I can use. A reason to trust you.”
The waiter came with Osborn’s coffee, set it on the table in front of him and then left. McVey watched him go. Several aisles away he stopped at the table of a dark-haired man wearing a leather jacket. The man had been sitting alone for ten minutes and so far had ordered nothing. He had a diamond stud in his left ear and a cigarette his left hand. The waiter had stopped once before but he’d been waved off. This time the man glanced in McVey’s direction, then said something to the waiter. The waiter nodded and walked away.
McVey looked back to Osborn. “What is it, Doctor, you feel uncomfortable talking here? Want to go somewhere else?”
Osborn didn’t know what to do or think. McVey was asking him the same kind of questions he had the first time they’d met. He was obviously looking for something he thought Osborn was involved in, but he had no idea what it was. And that made it all the harder because every answer he gave seemed to be calculated avoidance, when, in fact, he was only telling the truth.
“McVey, believe me when I tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I did maybe I could help, but don’t.”
McVey tugged at an ear and looked off. Then he looked back. “Maybe we should try a little different approach,” he said, pausing. “How come you pumped Albert Merriman full of succ—een—ill—choline? I pronounce it ‘ right?”
Osborn didn’t panic, his pulse didn’t even jump. McVey was too intelligent not to have found out, and he’d prepared himself for it. “Do the Paris police know?”
“Please answer the question.”
“Albert Merriman—murdered my father.”
“Your father?” That surprised McVey. It was something he should have considered, but hadn’t, that Merriman had been an object of pursuit for revenge.
“Yes.”
“You hire the tall man to kill him?”
“No. He just showed up.”
“How long ago did Merriman kill your father?”
“When I was ten.”
“Ten?”
“In Boston. On the street. I was there. I saw it happen. I never forgot his face. And I never saw him again, until a week ago, here in Paris.”
In an instant McVey fit the pieces together. “You didn’t tell the Paris police because you weren’t finished with him. You hired Packard to find him. And when he did, you looked for a spot to do it and found the riverbank. Give him a shot or two of the drug. Get him in the water, he can’t breathe or use his muscles, he floats off and drowns. Current is heavy there, the chemical dissipates quickly in the body and he’s so bloated nobody thinks to look for puncture wounds. That was the idea.”
“In a way.”
“What way?”
“First, I wanted to find out why he had done what he did.”
“Did you?” Suddenly McVey’s eyes tracked off. The man in the leather jacket was no longer at the table where he had been. He was closer. Two tables away in a clear line to Osborn’s immediate left. A cigarette was still in his left hand but his right was out of sight, under the table.
Osborn started to turn to see what McVey was looking at when suddenly McVey was on his feet, stepping between Osborn and the man at the table.
“Get up and walk ahead of me. Out that door. Don’t ask why. Just do it.”
Osborn got up. As he did, he realized who McVey had been looking at. “McVey, that’s him. The tall man!”
McVey whirled. Bernhard Oven was standing, the silenced Czechoslovakian Cz coming up in his hand. Somebody screamed.
Suddenly the air was shattered by two booming reports, one right on top of the other, followed almost immediately by a hailstorm breaking of glass.
Bernhard Oven didn’t quite understand why the older American had hit him so hard in the chest. Or why he felt he had to do it twice. Then he realized he was flat on his back on the cement sidewalk outside, while his legs were still inside the restaurant, dangling across the sill of the window he had crashed through. Glass was everywhere. Then he heard people screaming, but he had no idea why. Puzzled, he looked up and saw the same American standing over him. A blue-steel .38 Smith & Wesson revolver was in his fist, its barrel pointed at his heart. Vaguely he shook his head. Then everything faded.
Osborn moved in and felt Oven’s carotid artery. Around them was pandemonium. People were yelling. Screaming Crying out in shock and horror. Some stood back watching. Others were shoving their way out, trying to get away, while still others moved closer, trying to see. Finally Osborn looked up to McVey.
“He’s dead.”
“You’re sure it’s the tall man.”
“Yes.”
McVey had two instantaneous thoughts. The first was that a new Ford Sierra with Pirelli tires and a broken mirror was parked somewhere nearby. The second was “He’s no six foot four.”
Kneeling down, McVey hiked a pant leg up over the dead man’s sock line.
“Prosthetics,” Osborn said.
“That’s a brand-new one on me.”
“You don’t think he did it on purpose?”
“Had his legs amputated so he could alter his height?” McVey pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, then reached down and tucked it around the Cz automatic still in Oven’s hand. Pulling the gun free, he looked at it. Its handle was taped, its identifying marks filed off. Squirreled to its snout was a silencer. It was the workstation of a professional killer.
McVey looked up at Osborn. “Yeah,” he said. “I think he did. I think he had his legs cut off on purpose.”
69
* * *
MCVEY STEPPED back from Oven’s body and looked at Osborn. “Cover his face, huh?” Then he flashed his badge at a crowd of waiters gawking in horror and fascination a few feet away and told someone to call the police if somebody already hadn’t and to get the spectators out of there.
Pulling a white tablecloth from a nearby table, Osborn covered Bernhard Oven’s face while McVey went over the body for identification. Finding none, he reached into his jacket, ripped the stiff cardboard cover from his pocket notebook. Taking Oven’s hand, he pressed the thumb into his bloodsoaked shirt, then pressed the bloody thumb against the cardboard, giving him a legible thumbprint.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Osborn.
Pushing quickly through the lingering onlookers, they crossed the dining room, went into the kitchen, and then out a back door and into an alley. As they came but, they heard the first singsong of sirens.
“This way,” McVey said, not really certain where they were going. From the moment he’d first reacted, McVey’s supposition had been that Oven had been about to shoot Osborn. But now as they stepped onto boulevard du Montparnasse walking toward boulevard Raspail, he realized the intended target could as easily have been himself. The tall man had killed Albert Merriman within hours after it was discovered he was still alive and living in Paris. Then, in quick order, Merriman’s girlfriend, his wife and her family had been found and slaughtered. The last, in Marseilles, some four hundred and fifty miles to the south. But in a wink, the killer was back in Paris and in Vera Monneray’s apartment looking for Osborn.
How had he found everyone in such rapid order? Merriman’s wife, for instance, when every local police force in the country had b
een put on alert and still had been unable to find her? And Osborn—how had he so quickly discovered Vera Monneray was the “mystery woman” who’d picked Osborn up at the golf course after he’d come out of the Seine when the media was still in the speculation stage and the police were the only ones who knew for sure? And then, in almost the same breath, Lebrun and his brother had been attacked in Lyon. Though probably not by the tall man. Even he couldn’t be in two places at once.
Clearly, what was happening was happening at an increasingly frantic pace. And, in turn, the deadly circle kept narrowing. That the tall man was suddenly out of the picture would probably make little difference. He couldn’t have done what he had without the help of a complex, sophisticated and very well-connected organization. If they had infiltrated Interpol, why not the Paris Prefecture of Police?
A squad car flew by, then another. The city rocked with sirens.
“How did he know we were going to be there?” Osborn said, as they fought through the evening crowd made electric by what had happened.
“Keep going,” McVey urged, and Osborn saw him glance back at the police cars sealing off boulevard du Montparnasse at either end of the block.
“You’re worried about the police, aren’t you?” Osborn said.
McVey said nothing.
Reaching the boulevard Raspail, they turned right and started up the street. In front of them was a Métro station. McVey thought briefly about taking it, then decided against it, and they kept on;
“Why would a policeman be afraid of the police?” Osborn demanded.
Suddenly a blue-black truck turned from a side street and jerked to a stop in the intersection just behind them. Its back door slammed open and a dozen Compagnie de Securité Republicaine antiterrorist police jumped out wearing flak jackets over paratroop jumpsuits and brandishing automatic weapons.
Swearing under his breath, McVey looked around. Two doors down was a small café. “In there,” he said, taking Osborn by the arm and prodding him toward the door.
People were standing at the windows watching the action on the street and barely took notice as they entered. Finding a corner at the end of the bar, McVey turned Osborn into it and held up two fingers to the bartender.
“Vin blanc,” he said.
Osborn leaned back. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
The bartender set two glasses in front of them and filled them with white wine.
“Merci,” McVey said, picking up a glass and handing it to Osborn. Taking a deep swallow, McVey turned his back to the room and looked at Osborn.
“I’ll ask you your own question. How did he know we were going to be there? Answer. You were followed or I was. Or somebody was tapped into the message board at, the Hotel Vieux and figured I might not be meeting the real Tommy Lasorda for drinks.
“A friend of mine, a Parisian detective, was badly shot up this morning and his brother, also a cop, was murdered because he was trying to find out who, besides you, so suddenly got the line on Albeit Merriman about a quarter of a century after the fact. The police may be involved, they may not, I don’t know. What I do know is that something’s going on that’s making it dangerous as hell for anyone even remotely connected to Merriman. And right now, that’s you and me, and the smartest thing we can do is get off the street.”
“McVey—” Osborn was suddenly alarmed. “There’s someone else who knows about Merriman.”
“Vera Monneray.” In the rush of everything, McVey had forgotten about her.
Dread swept over Osborn. “The French detectives who were guarding her here—I arranged to have them take her to her grandmother’s in Calais.”
70
* * *
“YOU ARRANGED?” McVey was incredulous.
Osborn didn’t reply. Instead he set his glass on the bar and started down a dingy corridor past the toilets toward a pay phone in the rear of the café. He was almost there when McVey caught up with him.
“What’re you gonna do, try and call her?”
“Yes.” Osborn kept going. He hadn’t thought it through, but he had to know she was all right.
“Osborn.” McVey took him hard by the arm and pulled him around. “If she is there, she’s probably okay, but the detectives with her will be monitoring the line. They’ll let you talk while they trace the call. If the French police are involved, you and I won’t get five feet out that door.” McVey nodded toward the front. “And if she’s not there, there’s nothing you can do.”
Osborn flared. “You don’t understand, do you? I have to know.”
“How?”
By now Osborn had an answer. “Philippe.” Osborn would call him, have Philippe call Vera, then call Osborn back. They couldn’t trace the second call.
“The doorman at her apartment?”
Osborn nodded.
“He helped you get out of the building, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And maybe arranged the tail on you when you left?”
“No, he wouldn’t. He’s—”
“He’s what? Somebody let the tall man know Vera was, the mystery girl, and somebody told him where she lived. Why not him? Osborn, for now, your peace of mind is going to have to wait.” McVey glared at him long enough to make his point, then looked past him for a way out the back.
A half hour later, paying cash and using an alias—saying their luggage had been lost at the train station— McVey checked them into connecting rooms on the fifth floor of the Hôtel St.-Jacques on the avenue St.-Jacques, a tourist hotel less than a mile from La Coupole and the boulevard du Montparnasse.
Obviously American and without luggage, McVey played upon the French disposition for amour. Entering the rooms, McVey gave the bellman an extra-large tip, telling him shyly but very sincerely to make certain they weren’t disturbed.
“Oui, monsieur.” The bellman gave Osborn a knowing smile, then closed the door behind him and left.
Immediately McVey checked out both rooms, the closets and bathrooms. Satisfied, he drew the window curtains, then turned to Osborn.
“I’m going down to the lobby and make a phone call. I don’t want to make it from here because I want nothing traced to this room. When I get back, I want to go over .everything you remember about Albert Merriman, from the moment he killed your father until the last second in the river.”
Reaching into his jacket pocket, McVey took out Bernhard Oven’s Cz automatic and put it in Osborn’s hand. “I’d ask you if you knew how to use it, but I already know the answer.” McVey’s glare was enough, the edge in his voice only added to it. He turned for the door. “Nobody comes in but me. Not for any reason.”
Easing open the door, McVey looked out, then stepped into a deserted hallway. The elevator was the same. At the lobby the doors opened and he got out. Except for a group of Japanese tourists coming in off a bus tour and following a leader carrying a little green and white flag, the area was all but deserted.
Crossing the lobby, McVey looked for a public phone and saw one near the gift shop. Using an AT&T credit card number billed to a post office box in Los Angeles, he dialed Noble’s voice mail at Scotland Yard. A recording took his message.
Hanging up, he went into the gift shop, briefly looked at the selection of greeting cards, then bought a birthday number with a large yellow bunny on it. Back in the lobby, he took out the cardboard notebook cover with Bernhard Oven’s dried bloody thumbprint and slipped it in with the card, addressing it to a “Billy Noble” care of a post address in London. Then he went to the front desk and asked the concierge to send it by overnight mail.
He’d just paid the concierge and was turning back for the lobby when two uniformed gendarmes came in from the street and stood looking around. To McVey’s left were a number of tour brochures. Casually, he walked over to them. As he did, one of the policemen looked his way. McVey ignored him and thumbed through the brochures. Finally, he chose three and walked back across the lobby in full view of the police. Sitting down near
the telephone, he started to look through them. Barge tours. Tours of Versailles. Tours of wine country. He counted to sixty, then looked up. The police were gone.
Four minutes later, Ian Noble called from a private residence where he and his wife were attending a formal dinner for a retiring British army general.
“Where are you?”
“Paris. The Hôtel St.-Jacques. Jack Briggs. San Diego. Wholesale jewelry,” McVey said in monotone, giving him the location and the name he was registered under. A movement to his left caught his eye. Shifting his stance, he saw three men in business suits coming across the lobby toward him. One seemed to be looking directly at him, the other two were talking.
“You remember Mike, doncha?” he said with verve, opening his jacket, playing the extroverted American salesman, his hand inches from the .38 at his waist. “Yeah, I brought him along with me.”
“You have Osborn.”
“Sure do.”
“Is he trouble?”
“Hell, no. Not yet anyway.”
The men passed, going into the alcove toward the elevators. McVey waited until they entered and the door closed, then turned back to the phone and quickly ran down what had happened, adding that he had just put the jail man’s thumbprint in the overnight mail.
“We’ll run it straightaway,” Noble said, then added he’d had words with the French chargé d’affaires, who had demanded to know what the hell the Brits thought they were doing shanghaiing a seriously wounded Parisian inspector from his hospital room in Lyon. Further, they wanted him back, posthaste. Noble had said he was appalled, that he’d never heard of such an incident and would look into it immediately. Then, changing subjects, he said they’d come up blank trying to find anyone in Britain experimenting in advanced cryosurgery. If such practice was going on, it was wholly out of sight.