The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [11]
Picking up his glass, he looked out the window. Across the street was another hotel, small, like his own. Most of the windows were dark, but a dim light showed on the fourth floor. Someone was reading, or maybe had fallen asleep reading, or maybe left the light on when they went out and hadn’t come back yet. Or maybe there was a body in the room, waiting to be discovered in the morning. That was the thing about being a detective, the possibilities for almost anything were endless. It was only over time that you began to get a second sense about things, a feeling of what was in the room before you entered, what you might find when you did, what kind of person was there or had been there, and what they had been up to.
But with the severed head there had been no room with a dim light showing. If they got lucky, maybe that would come later. The room that would point to another room and finally to the space that held the killer. But before any of that, they had to identify the victim.
McVey finished the scotch, wiped his eyes and glanced at the note he’d made earlier and had already set into motion. HEAD/ARTIST/SKETCH/NEWSPAPER/I.D.
6
* * *
AT FIVE in the morning Paris streets were deserted. Métro service began at five thirty, so Henri Kanarack relied on Agnes Demblon, head bookkeeper at the bakery where he worked, for a ride to the shop. And dutifully, every day at four forty-five, she would arrive outside his apartment house in her white, five-year-old Citroën. And every day Michele Kanarack would watch out the bedroom window for her husband to come out onto the street, get into the Citroën and drive away with Agnes. Then she would pull her robe tight about her and go back to bed and lie awake thinking about Henri and Agnes. Agnes was a forty-nine-year-old spinster, an eyeglass-wearing bookkeeper, and by no one’s imagination attractive. What could Henri see in her that he didn’t in Michele? Michele was much younger, a dozen times better-looking, with a figure to match, and she made sure Henri got all the sex he needed, which of course was why she was finally pregnant.
What Michele had no way of knowing, and would never be told, was that it was Agnes who had gotten Henri the job at the bakery. Persuaded the owner to hire him even when he had no experience as a baker. The owner, a small, impatient man named Lebec, had had no interest in taking on a new man, especially when he would have to undergo the expense of training him, but changed his mind immediately when Agnes threatened to quit if he didn’t. Bookkeepers like Agnes were hard to find, especially ones who knew their way around the tax laws as she did. So, Henri Kanarack had been hired, had quickly learned his trade, was dependable and did not constantly press for raises like some of the others. In other words, he was an ideal employee and, as such, Lebec could have no quarrel with Agnes for bringing him on board. The only question Lebec had posed was why Agnes had been so willing to quit her job over so nondeseript and everyday a man as Henri Kanarack, and Agnes had answered that with a curt “Yes or no, Monsieur Lebec?” The rest was history.
Agnes slowed for a blinking light and glanced at Kanarack. She’d seen the bruises on his face when he’d climbed in, now in the dash lights they glowed even uglier.
“Drinking again,” Agnes’ voice was cold, bordering on cruel.
“Michele is pregnant,” he said, staring straight ahead, watching the yellow headlights cut the darkness.
“Did you get drunk out of joy or misery?”
“I didn’t get drunk. A man attacked me.”
“What man?” She looked at him.
“I never saw him before.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I ran away.” Kanarack’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
“Finally getting smart in your old age.”
“This was different—” Kanarack turned to look at her. “I was in the Brasserie Stella. The one on rue St.-Antoine. Reading the paper and having an espresso on the way home. For no reason at all a man flew at me, knocked me to the floor and started beating