The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [67]
Kanarack’s eyes focused on a button in the Citroën’s ceiling upholstery. The act of doing it made him think about something other than the possibility of having to endure again what he had just gone through. To do it another time was impossible.
“My name is Paul Osborn. Tuesday, April 12, 1966, I was walking down a street in Boston, Massachusetts, with my father, George Osborn. I was ten years old. We were on our way to buy me a new baseball mitt when a man stepped out of a crowd with a knife and pushed it into my father’s stomach. The man ran away. But my father fell down on the sidewalk and died. I’d like you to tell me why that man did what he did to my father.”
“God!” Kanarack thought. “That’s what this is about. It’s not them at all! I could have taken care of it so damn simply. It could all be over.”
“I’m waiting,” the voice said from the front seat. Suddenly Kanarack felt the car slow. Outside he caught a glimpse of trees; the car turned and there was a jolt as they hit a pothole. Then they accelerated again and more trees flashed by. Another minute and they lurched to a stop and he heard Osborn shift gears. Immediately the Citroën backed up, then tilted sharply and continued downward. A few seconds more and it leveled off, then stopped.
Lack of motion was followed by a metallic sound as the emergency brake was pulled up. Then the driver’s door opened and closed. Abruptly the door beside Kanarack’s head jerked open and Osborn stood there, a hypodermic syringe in his hand.
“I asked you a question but I didn’t get an answer,” he said.
Kanarack’s lungs were still burning. Even the slightest breath was agony.
“Let me help you understand.” Osborn stood aside. Kanarack didn’t move.
“I want you to look over there!” Suddenly Osborn grabbed Kanarack’s hair and jerked his head hard to the left so that he could see over his shoulder. Osborn was trying to control his anger but it wasn’t working very well. Slowly Kanarack shifted his gaze, straining to see into the growing darkness past Osborn. Then the river came into focus not ten yards away.
“If you think you just went through hell,” Osborn said softly, “imagine what it will be like out there, with your arms and legs paralyzed. You’ll stay afloat for what, maybe ten, fifteen seconds? Your lungs barely work anyway. What do you think will happen when you sink?”
Kanarack’s mind flashed to Jean Packard. The private detective had been in possession of information he wanted and he had done whatever had been necessary to obtain it. Now someone was equally passionate about getting information from him. And he, like Jean Packard, had no alternative but to give it.
“I—was—a—contract—man.” Kanarack’s voice was no more than a raspy whisper.
For a moment Osborn wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. Either that, or Kanarack was fooling with him. Tightening his grip on Kanarack’s hair, he jerked it back hard. Kanarack cried out. The effort made him suck in his lungs. Terrible pain shot through him and he cried out a second time.
“Let’s try it again.” Osborn’s face was next to his
“I was paid to do it . . . Money!” Kanarack coughed. The expelled air seared like flame across his dry throat.
“Paid?” Osborn was shocked. That wasn’t what he’d expected, nothing of the kind! He’d always seen his father’s death as the random action of a crazed man. And lacking any other motive, so had the police. It was an act, they had said, done by a man who had hated his own father, or his mother, his brothers or his sisters. Done, he’d always believed, as an expression of unbearable anger and long pent-up fury, randomly and mindlessly unleashed. His father had merely been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
But no, Kanarack was telling him something altogether different. Something that made no sense. His father was a tool designer. A plain, quiet man who owed no