The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [89]
Lebrun took a deep breath and closed his eyes. This was a clash of cultures. Americans were boors! Further they had absolutely no sense of propriety!
“Let me put it this way for you, mon ami. You are in Paris and this is Saturday night. Mademoiselle Monneray may or may not have been on her way to rendezvous with the prime minister. Whichever it was, I suspect the investigating officers felt it more than somewhat indelicate to ask.”
McVey took a deep breath of his own, then walked up to Lebrun’s desk, leaned both hands on it and looked down at him. “Mon ami, I want you to know that I fully appreciate the situation.”
McVey’s rumpled suit jacket was open and Lebrun could see the butt of a .38 revolver, a safety strap over the hammer, resting in the holster on his hip. Where most of the world’s police carried nine-millimeter automatics with a clip that held ten or fifteen shots, here was McVey with a six-shot Smith & Wesson. A six-shooter! Retirement age or not, McVey was—mon Dieu!—a cowboy!
“Lebrun, with all due respect to you and France, I want Osborn. I want to talk to him about Merriman. I want to talk to him about Jean Packard. And I want to talk to him about our headless friends. And if you say to me— ‘McVey, you already did that and let him go’—I will say to you, ‘Lebrun, I want to do it again!’”
“And with that in mind, chivalry and everything else considered, I’d say the most direct path to the son of a bitch is through Vera Monneray no matter who the hell she’s fucking! Comprenez-vous?”
47
* * *
THIRTY MINUTES later, at eleven forty-five, the two detectives sat in Lebrun’s unmarked Ford outside Vera Monneray’s apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune.
Quai de Bethune, even in traffic, is less than a five-minute drive from the headquarters of the Paris Préfecture of Police. At eleven thirty, they had entered the building and spoken with the doorman in the lobby. He had not seen Mademoiselle Monneray since she’d gone out earlier that evening. McVey asked if there was any way she could get back into the building without passing through the lobby. Yes, if she came in through the back entrance and walked up the service stairs. But that was highly unlikely.
“Mademoiselle Monneray does not use ‘service stairs.’” It was basic as that.
“Ask him if he minds if I call up?” McVey said to Lebrun, as he picked up the house phone.
“I do not mind, monsieur,” the doorman said crisply in English. “The number is two-four-five.”
McVey dialed and waited. He let the phone ring ten times before he hung up and looked at Lebrun. “Not there or not answering. Shall we go up?”
“Give it a little time, eh?” Turning to the doorman, Lebrun gave him his card. “When she comes back, please ask her to call me. Merci.”
McVey looked at his watch. It was nearly five minutes to midnight. Across the street, the windows of Vera’s apartment were dark. Lebrun glanced over at McVey.
“I can feel your American pulse wanting to go in there anyway,” Lebrun said with a grin. “Up the back service stairs. A credit card slipped against the lock and you’re in, like a cat burglar.”
McVey took his eyes off Vera’s window and turned to Lebrun. “What’s your relationship to Interpol, Lyon?” he asked quietly. This was the first opportunity he’d had to bring up what he’d learned from Benny Grossman.
“The same assignment as yours,” Lebrun said, smiling. “I am your man in Paris. Your French liaison to Interpol in the severed-head cases.”
“The Merriman/Kanarack business is separate, right? Nothing to do with that.”
Lebrun wasn’t sure what McVey was getting at. “That’s correct. Their help in that situation, as you know, was in “providing the technical means to convert a smudge into a clear fingerprint.”
“Lebrun, you asked me to call the New York Police Department. Finally I got some information.”
“On Merriman?”
“In a way. Interpol, Lyon, through the National Central Bureau in Washington, requested the NYPD file on him more than fifteen hours before you were even informed they’d made a clear print.”
“What?” Lebrun was