The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [48]
Taking a wide lefthand turn, McVey found himself crossing a bridge over the Seine. It wasn’t what he meant to do. Now he was all turned around with no idea where he was. The next thing he knew he was in a stream of traffic going past the Eiffel Tower. That’s when one of those little things that always nagged him after an interview or interrogation started jabbing tiny pins in that certain corner of his conscience. The same kind of thing that had made him dial Vera Monneray’s apartment that afternoon just to see who answered.
Moving into the left lane, he watched for the next side street, took it and doubled back. He was moving along the far edge of a park where, between the trees, he could see the distant lighted ironwork mass that made up the base of the Eiffel Tower. Just ahead, a car pulled out from the curb and drove off. Slowly he passed the spot, then backed in and parked. Getting out, he pulled up his jacket against the rain, then rubbed his hands together to warm them. A moment later he was walking down a pathway that ran along the edge of the Pare du Champ de Mars, with the tower looming in the distance.
The park grounds were dark and it was hard to see. Overhanging trees lining the path gave some protection from the rainy weather, and he tried to stay under them as he walked. He could see his breath in the raw night air and he blew on his hands only to jam them finally into the pockets of his raincoat.
Gingerly dodging some sidewalk construction, he walked another fifty yards in the direction of the lighted area to where he could clearly see the tower reaching into the night sky. Suddenly his feet slid out from under him, and he nearly fell. Recovering, he walked on a little farther to where a street light shone on a park bench. The light from the tower spilled onto the grassy area where he’d just been. Most of it had been dug up, and was in the process of being replanted. Leaning against the bench with one hand, he lifted a foot and looked at his shoe. It was wet and covered with mud. The other was the same. Satisfied, he turned and started back for the car. It was why he had come. A simple follow-up to a simple answer to a simple question.
Osborn had told the truth about the mud.
25
* * *
MICHELE KANARACK had never seen her husband as distant and cold.
He was sitting in his underwear, a worn T-shirt and American jockey shorts, looking out the kitchen window. It was ten minutes after nine in the evening. At seven o’clock he’d come home from work, taken off his clothes and immediately put them in the washer. The first thing he’d reached for after that was wine, but he stopped abruptly after drinking only half a glass. After that he’d asked for his dinner, had eaten in silence, and said nothing since.
Michele looked at him without knowing what to say. He’d been fired, she was sure of it. How or why, she had no idea. The last thing he’d told her was that he was going to Rouen with Monsieur Lebec to look over a possible site for a new bakery. Now, little more than twenty-four hours later, here he was, sitting in his underwear and staring out at the night.
The night, that was a thing Michele had inherited from her father. Forty-one when his daughter had been born, he’d been a Parisian auto mechanic when the German army overran the city. A member of the underground, he spent three hours every evening after work on the roof of their apartment building clandestinely watching and recording Nazi military traffic on the street below.
The war had been over for seventeen years when he’d brought four-year-old Michele back to the apartment house and up onto the roof to show her what he’d been doing during the occupation. The traffic on the street below magically became German tanks, half-tracks and motorcycles. The pedestrians, Nazi soldiers with