The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [60]
As he came in, he looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was exactly 1:15 in the afternoon. Taking off his raincoat, he looked over at the phone. Earlier that morning he’d picked it up and started to dial the bakery to make certain nothing had gone awry and that Kanarack was at work as he should be. Then he had the thought that if something happened and things went wrong, the call could be traced back to his room. Immediately he’d hung up. Looking at the phone now, he felt the same urgency of wanting to know but decided ; against it.
Better to trust to the fates that had brought him this far and assume Kanarack would be spending his Friday as he had spent his Thursday and probably every other workday of the past years, quietly, doing his job and keeping the lowest profile possible.
And now, Osborn took off the tan chinos and dark Polo cardigan he had worn to the Louvre and changed; into a nondescript pair of faded jeans, with an old sweater pulled over a plaid L.L. Bean flannel shirt, Even as he carefully tied his running shoes and put the dark blue watch cap bought at a surplus store that morning into the side pocket of his jacket, and turned, finally to prepare the tools of the day, filling three hypodermic syringes with the succinylcholine—even as he did all that, with the clock ticking down to the moment he would leave for the movie theater on boulevard des Italiens, Henri Kanarack was already parking Agnes Demblon’s white Citroën less than a half block from his hotel.
32
* * *
HAIR COMBED and neatly shaven, Henri Kanarack was dressed in the light blue overalls of an air-conditioning company repairman. He had no trouble entering the service entrance nor of taking the maintenance elevator to the mechanical room floor. Jean Packard had given him Paul Osborn’s name and the name of the hotel where he was staying. He had not had Osborn’s room number or he, would most certainly have given that up, too. Hotels did not give out room numbers of guests, especially five-star hotels like Osborn’s on the avenue Kléber where the clientele was wealthy and international and carefully protected from outsiders who might have a political or personal ax to grind.
Picking up a toolbox from the mechanical room, Kanarack walked down a service corridor and took the fire stairs to the lobby. Pushing through the door, he stopped and looked around. The lobby was small, finished in dark wood and brass, and decorated mostly with antiques. To his left was the entrance to the bar and directly across from it, a small gift shop and a dining room. To the right .were the elevators. Opposite them was the front desk, and behind it, a clerk in a dark suit was talking with an extraordinarily tall, black African businessman who was apparently checking in. For Kanarack to get Osborn’s room number, he needed to get behind the front desk. Purposefully crossing the lobby, Kanarack approached the clerk and, when he looked up, immediately took the upper hand.
“Air-conditioning repair. Some problem with the electrical system. We’re trying to locate the trouble,” he said in French.
“I know nothing about it.” The clerk was indignant. That haughty, superior attitude was something Kanarack had hated about Parisians from the day he got there, especially when it came from salaried workers who made little more than he did and barely made it from paycheck to paycheck.
“You want me to go, okay. The problem is not mine,” Kanarack said with an animated shrug.
Instead of arguing, the clerk dismissed him with a tepid “Do what you have to do,” and turned back to the African.
“Thanks,” Kanarack said, and walked behind the desk to a position beside the clerk where he could examine a line of electrical switches directly above the master guest register. As he bent over to study them, he could feel the press of the .45 automatic tucked in the waistband under the bulky overalls. The short silencer fitted to the snout pushed against his upper thigh. A