The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [120]
McVey waited and listened. Then he started back the way he had come, walking slowly, patiently, waiting for Osborn, if he was there, to make the mistake that would give him away.
“In case you’re wondering, I don’t know who the tall man is or what he’s up to. But I think you should know he is directly responsible for a number of other deaths involving people who knew a man named Albert Merriman or who you might have known as Henri Kanarack.
“Merriman’s girlfriend, a woman named Agnes Denblon, burned up in a fire the tall man set at her apartment building. The fire also killed nineteen other adults and two children, none of whom probably ever heard of Albert Merriman.
“Then he went to Marseilles and found Merriman’s Wife, her sister, her sister’s husband and their five kids. He shot them all in the head.”
McVey stopped, reached up and turned out a bank of lights.
“It was you he was after, Doctor Osborn. Not Ms. Monneray. But of course, after tonight, now that she’s seen him, he’ll be concerned with her too.”
There was a dull click as McVey turned out the second bank of lights. Then Osborn could hear him start back toward him in the dark.
“Frankly, Doctor Osborn, you’re in a heckuva pickle. I want you. The Paris police want you. And the tall man wants you.
“If the police get you, you can bet the bank the tall man will find a way to take care of you in jail. And after he does, he’ll go after Ms. Monneray. It won’t happen right away, because for a while she’ll be guarded. But somewhere on down the line, while she’s shopping or maybe riding the Metro, or having her hair done or in the hospital cafeteria at three in the morning . . .”
McVey came closer. When he was directly beneath Osborn, he turned and looked back to the darkened basement.
“No one knows I’m here besides you and me. Maybe if we talked, I might be able to help. Think about it, huh?”
Then there was silence. Osborn knew McVey was listening for the slightest sound and held his breath. It was a good forty seconds before Osborn heard him turn back, cross to the stairs and start up, then he stopped again.
“I’m staying at an inexpensive hotel called the Vieux Paris on the rue Git le Coeur. The rooms are small but they’ve got a musty French charm. Leave word where to meet you. I won’t bring anyone. It’ll be just you and me. If you’re nervous, don’t use your own name. Just say Tommy Lasorda called. Give me a time and a place.”
McVey climbed the remaining stairs and was gone. A moment later Osborn heard the service door to the street open, then close. After that, everything was silent.
62
* * *
THEIR NAMES were Eric and Edward, and Joanna had never seen such perfect men. At age twenty-four, they were seemingly flawless specimens of the human male. Both were five foot eleven and weighed exactly the same, one hundred and sixty-seven pounds.
She’d first seen them early in the afternoon when she’d been working with Elton Lybarger in the shallow end of the indoor pool in the building that housed the gymnasium on his estate. The pool was Olympic size, fifty meters long and twenty-five yards wide. Eric and Edward were doing butterfly stroke speed laps. Joanna had seen that before but usually only over short distances because the stroke itself was so demanding. At one end of the pool was an automatic lap meter that counted the number of laps whoever was in the pool was swimming.
When Joanna and Lybarger had come in, the boys had already swum eight laps, or a half mile. By the time she and Lybarger were finished, they were still swimming butterfly, stroke for stroke, side by side. The lap meter read sixty-two, exactly two laps under four miles. Four miles of butterfly stroke nonstop? That was incredible, if not impossible. But there was no doubt, because she’d witnessed it.
An hour later, as a male attendant took Lybarger off for an exercise in diction therapy, Eric and Edward had come out of the pool house and were preparing for a run through the forest,