The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [40]
Kanarack’s drink came and for a minute he let it sit on the bar in front of him. Then, picking it up, he took a small sip and felt the warmth of the mixture of coffee and liqueur as it went down. He could still feel Osborn’s hands around his throat, the fingers digging savagely into his windpipe trying to strangle him. That was the part he didn’t understand. If Osborn had been there to kill him, why did he do it that way? A gun or a knife, sure. But bare hands in a crowded public building? It didn’t make sense.
Jean Packard hadn’t been able to explain it either.
It had been easy enough to find out where the detective lived, even though his phone number, along with his address, was unlisted. Speaking in English with an unwavering American accent, Kanarack had placed an emotional call to the Kolb International switchboard in New York just at closing. Saying he was calling from his car phone somewhere outside Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was desperately trying to reach his half brother, Jean Packard, an employee of Kolb International, with whom he’d lost contact since Packard had moved to Paris. Packard’s eighty-year-old mother was desperately ill in a Fort Wayne hospital and not expected to live through the night. Was there any way he could get in touch with his half brother at home?
New York was five hours behind Paris at this time of year. Six o’clock in New York was eleven in Paris, the Kolb offices there were closed. The New York operator on duty checked with his supervisor. This was a legitimate family emergency. Paris was closed. What should he do? At closing time his supervisor, like everyone else, was in a hurry to leave. With only a moment’s hesitation, the supervisor cleared the international computer code and authorized the channeling of Jean Packard’s home telephone number in Paris to his half brother in Indiana.
Agnes Demblon’s first cousin worked as a fire brigade dispatcher in Paris Central Fire District One. A telephone number became an address. It was no harder than that.
Two hours later, at 1:15 Thursday morning, Henri Kanarack stood outside Jean Packard’s apartment building in the Porte de la Chapelle section north of the city. A bloody twenty minutes later, Kanarack went down the back stairwell leaving what was left of Jean Packard sprawled on his living room floor.
Ultimately he’d given Kanarack Paul Osborn’s name and the name of the hotel where he was staying in Paris. But that was all. The other questions—why Osborn had attacked Kanarack in the brasserie, why he’d hired Kolb International to track him down, if Osborn represented or was working for someone else—Packard could not answer. And Kanarack was certain he’d been told the truth. Jean Packard had been tough, but not that tough. Kanarack had learned well his stock in trade in the early sixties, taught proudly and with relish by the U.S. Army Special Forces. As leader of a long-range reconnaissance platoon in the first days of Vietnam, he’d been thoroughly schooled in the ways of obtaining the most delicate information from even the most hardheaded adversary.
The trouble was that in the end all he’d gotten from Jean Packard was a name and an address. The exact same information Packard had given Osborn about him. So to his thinking, Osborn could only be one thing, a representative of the Organization come to liquidate him. Even if the first attempt had been sloppy, there could be no other reason. No one else would recognize him or have cause.
The ugly part was that if he killed Osborn, they would only send someone else. That is, if they knew. His only hope was that Osborn was a freelancer, some kind of bounty hunter given a list of names and faces and promised a fortune if he brought any of them in. If Osborn had happened on him by chance and had hired Jean Packard on his own, things still might be all right.
Suddenly he felt a rush of air from outside and looked up. Le Bois