The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [12]
“Why did he pick you?”
“Don’t know.” Kanarack looked back to the road again. Night was fading to day. Automatic timers were turning the streetlights off. “He followed me afterward. Across the Seine, down into the Métro. I managed to beat him out, get on a train before he could catch up. I—”
Agnes downshifted, slowing for a man walking his dog. Passing, she accelerated again. “You what?”
“I went to the train window. I saw the Métro police grab him.”
“So, he was a crazy. And the police are good for something.”
“Maybe not.”
Agnes looked over. There was something he was not telling her. “What is it?”
“He was an American.”
Paul Osborn got back to his hotel on avenue Kléber at ten minutes to one in the morning. Fifteen minutes later he was in his room and on the phone to L.A. His attorney put him in touch with another attorney, who said he’d make a call and get back to him. At one twenty the phone rang. The caller was in Paris. His name was Jean Packard.
A little more than five and a half hours later, Jean Packard sat down opposite Paul Osborn in the hotel dining room. At forty-two, he was exceedingly fit. His hair was cut short and his suit hung loosely over a wiry frame. He wore no tie, and his shirt was open at the collar, perhaps to purposely reveal a ragged, three-inch scar that ran diagonally across his throat. Packard had been a Foreign Legionnaire, then a soldier of fortune in Angola, Thailand, and El Salvador. He was now an employee of Kolb International, billed as the world’s largest private investigation firm.
“We guarantee nothing, but we do our best, and for most clients that is usually sufficient,” Packard said with a smile that was surprising. A waiter brought steaming coffee and a small tray of croissants, then left. Jean Packard touched neither. Instead he looked at Osborn directly.
“Let me explain,” he continued. His English was heavily accented but understandable. “All investigators for Kolb International are thoroughly screened and have impeccable credentials. We operate, however, not as employees but as independent contractors. We take our assignments from the regional offices and share the billing with them. Other than that, they ask nothing. In effect, we are on our own unless we request otherwise. Client confidentiality is very nearly religion with us. Keeping matters one on one, investigator to client, assures that. Something I’m certain you can appreciate at a time in history when even the most privileged information is readily available to almost anyone willing to pay for it.”
Jean Packard put out a hand and stopped a passing waiter, asking in French for a glass of water. Then he turned back to Osborn and explained the rest of Kolb’s procedure.
When an investigation was completed, he said, all files containing written, copied or photographed work, negatives included, were returned to the client. The investigator then turned in a time and expense report to the Kolb regional office, which, in turn, billed the customer.
The water came. “Merci,” Packard said. Then, taking a drink, he set the glass on the table and looked to Osborn.
“So you understand how clean, private, and simple our operation is.”
Osborn smiled. He not only liked the procedure, he liked the private detective’s style and manner. He needed someone he could trust, and Jean Packard seemed to be that person. Still, the wrong person with the wrong approach could send his man running and, as a result, spoil everything. And then there was the other problem, and even to this moment Osborn hadn’t quite known how to broach it. And then Jean Packard said the next and Osborn’s difficulty was erased.
“I would ask you why you want this person located, but I sense you would prefer not to tell me.”
“It’s personal,” Osborn said quietly. Jean Packard nodded, accepting it.
For the next forty minutes Osborn went over the details of what little he knew of the man he was after. The brasserie on the rue St.-Antoine. The time of day he had seen him there. Which table he had been sitting at. What