The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [132]
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.
“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