The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [41]
Across the street, Osborn sat behind the wheel of the Peugeot and watched the same man come out, glance back in through the door, then walk off. Osborn shrugged. Whoever he was, he wasn’t Kanarack.
The baker had gone into Le Bois at five fifteen. It was now almost a quarter to six. He’d made the drive back from the river park through rush-hour traffic in less than twenty-five minutes, and had parked across from the bakery just after four. It had given him time to canvass the neighborhood and get back into his car before Kanarack came out.
Walking a half-dozen blocks in either direction, Osborn had found three alleys and two deliveryways leading to industrial warehouses that were closed. Any of the five would do. And if tomorrow night Kanarack followed the same route he’d taken tonight, the best of the five would be right on the way. A narrow alley with no doors opening onto it and without streetlights, less than a half block from the bakery.
Dressed in the same jeans and running shoes he now wore, he’d a watch cap low over his face and wait in the darkness for Kanarack to pass. Then, with a full syringe of succinylcholine in his hand, and another in his pocket to make sure, he’d attack Kanarack from behind. Throwing his left arm around his throat, he’d jerk Kanarack backward into the alley while at the same time driving the needle solidly into his right buttock through clothes and all. Kanarack would react hard, but Osborn needed only four seconds to complete the injection. All he had to do then was let go and step back and Kanarack could do what he wanted. Attack him or run away, it would make no difference. In less than twenty seconds his legs would begin to lose feeling. Twenty more, and he’d be unable to stand. Once he collapsed, Osborn would move in. If there were passersby, he would say in English that his friend was American and ill and he was helping him into the Peugeot at the curb to take him to a medical facility. And Kanarack, on the brink of skeletal muscular paralysis, would be unable to protest. Once in the car and moving, Kanarack would be helpless and terrified. His entire being would be concentrated on one thing alone, trying to breathe.
Then, as they sped across Paris for the river road and the secluded park, the effects of succinylcholine would begin to wear off and Kanarack would slowly begin to take in air once more. And just as he was feeling better, Osborn would hold up the second syringe and tell his prisoner who he was and threaten him with a stronger, far more potent and most unforgettable shot. Then, and only then, could he sit back and ask why Kanarack had murdered his father. And have no doubt whatsoever that Kanarack would tell him.
23
* * *
AT FIVE minutes past six, Henri Kanarack came out of Le Bois and indifferently walked two blocks to enter the Metro station across from the Gare de l’Est.
Osborn watched him go, then clicked on the overhead light and checked the map on the seat next to him. Ten and a half miles and nearly thirty-five minutes later, he drove past Kanarack’s apartment building in Montrouge. Leaving the car on a side street, he walked a block and a half and took up a position in the shadows across the street from Kanarack’s building. Fifteen minutes later, Kanarack came walking up the sidewalk and went inside. From beginning to end, bakery to home, there had been no indication he thought he was being followed, or in danger. No sense at all of anything other than daily routine. Osborn smiled. Everything was on track and running as planned.
At seven forty, he pulled the Peugeot up in front of his hotel, gave the keys to an attendant and went