The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [136]
“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