The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [145]
“Benny”—McVey turned back to the phone—"the victims would have been working in some kind of high-tech field. Inventors, precision tool designers, scientists maybe, even a college professor. Somebody experimenting with extreme cold—three, four, five hundred degrees below zero cold. Or maybe, the reverse—somebody exploring heat. Who were they? What were they working on when killed? Now, last: Microtab Corporation. Waltham, Massachusetts, 1966. Are they still in business? If so, who runs the shop, who owns them? If not, what happened to them and who owned them in 1966?”
“McVey—what am I, Wall Street? The IRS? The Department of Missing Persons? Just punch this into a computer and out comes your answers?—When the hell you want it, New Year’s 1995?”
“I’m going to call you in the morning.”
“What?”
“Benny, it’s very, very important. If you draw a blank, if yon need help, call Fred Hanley at the FBI in L.A. Tell him it’s for me, that I asked for the assistance.” McVey paused. “One other thing. If you haven’t heard from me by noon tomorrow, your time, call Ian Noble at Scotland Yard and give him everything you have.”
“McVey—” Benny Grossman’s voice lost its testy ebullience. “You in trouble?”
“Lots.”
“Lots? What the hell’s that mean?”
“Hey, Benny, I owe you—”
Osborn stood in the darkened window looking down at the street below. The fog was thick and the traffic almost nonexistent. No one passed on the sidewalks. People were home asleep, waiting for Tuesday. Then he saw a figure walk under a streetlamp and cross the boulevard toward the hotel. He thought it was McVey, but he couldn’t be sure. Pulling the curtain back across the window, he sat down and clicked on a small bedside lamp, illuminating Bernhard Oven’s .22 Cz. He felt like he’d been hiding for half a century, yet it had only been eight days since he’d first looked up and had seen Albert Merriman sitting across from him in the Brasserie Stella.
How many had died in eight days? Ten, twelve? More. If he’d never met Vera and come to Paris, each one of those people would still be alive. Was the guilt his? There was no answer because it was not a reasonable question. He had met Vera and he had come to Paris, and nothing could change what had happened since.
In the last hours, while McVey had been gone, he’d tried not to think of Vera. But in the moments when he did, when he couldn’t help not think of her, he had to tell himself she was all right, that the inspectors who had taken her to her grandmother’s in Calais were good, trustworthy cops, and not a corrupt tentacle of whatever the hell was going on.
Violence had struck him at an early age and its after-math had been with him ever since. The nightmares after Merriman had been shot, the crippling emotional breakdown that had ended on the floor in the attic hideaway in Vera’s arms had been little more than a desperate wrenching against an ungodly truth: that the death of Albert Merriman had settled nothing. The horrid, scar-faced killer he’d pursued from childhood had been simply replaced by a name and precious little else. In leaving Vera’s building—in coming out of hiding, risking the tall man, the Paris police and the chance that McVey, once face to face, would arrest him on the spot—he was admitting that he could no longer go it alone. It wasn’t mercy he’d come to McVey for, it was help.
A knock at the door startled him like a pistol shot. His chin came up and his head snapped around as if he’d been caught somewhere with his pants down. He stared at the door, uncertain if his mind was playing tricks.
The knock came again.
If it was McVey he’d say something or use his key. Osborn’s fingers closed around the Cz just as the knob began to turn. The door pressed inward just enough to insure it was locked. As quickly the pressure ceased.
Crossing the room, he leaned back against the wall, just to the side of the door. He could feel the sweat build up in the grip of the gun. Whatever happened next was up to Whoever was in the hallway.
“Sorry, honey. Ya got the wrong damn room,” he heard McVey