The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [99]
“McVey will have you watched like a hawk, waiting for you to get in touch with me.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going back to work. I’m on for thirty-six hours. Hopefully, by the time I’m through, they’ll be bored and assume I was telling the truth.”
“What if they don’t? What if they decided to search your apartment and then the building?” Osborn was suddenly frightened. He was in a corner with no way out. Never mind the condition of his leg; if he tried to get out and they were watching, they’d nab him before he’d gone a half block. If they decided to search the building, eventually they’d find their way up to where he was and he was done for anyway.
“There’s nothing else we can do.” Vera was strong, unruffled. Not only on his side and protecting him, but very much in control. “You have water in the bathroom and enough to eat until I get back. I want you to start exercising. Stretching and leg lifts if you can, otherwise make sure you walk back and forth across the room for as long as you can, every four hours. When we do leave, you’re going to have to walk.
“And make certain you keep the window curtain pulled when it gets dark. The dormer is hidden in the roofline, but if someone’s watching, the light would give you away in a moment. Here—”
Vera pressed a key into his hand.
“It’s to my apartment—in case you have to get in touch with me. The telephone number is on a pad next to the phone. The stairs open into a closet on the floor below. Take the service stairway to the second floor.” Vera hesitated and looked at him. “I don’t have to tell you to be careful.”
“And I don’t have to tell you you can still walk away from this. Go to your grandmother’s and deny you had any idea of what went on here.”
“No,” she said, and turned for the door.
“Vera.”
She stopped and looked back. “What?”
“There was a gun. Where is it?”
Vera reacted, and Osborn could see she didn’t like the sound of what he’d said.
“Vera—” He paused. “If the tall man finds me, what am I supposed to do?”
“How could he find you? He has no way to know about me. Who I am, or where I live.”
“He didn’t know about Merriman, either. But he’s dead just the same.”
She hesitated.
“Vera, please.” Osborn was looking directly at her. The gun was to defend his life, not shoot policemen.
Finally, she nodded toward the table under the window. “It’s in the drawer.”
52
* * *
Marseilles.
MARIANNE CHALFOUR BOUGET reluctantly left eight o’clock Mass only ten minutes after it had begun, and only because her sister’s weeping was causing other parishioners, most of whom she knew well, to turn and look. Michele Kanarack had been with her less than forty-eight hours and in the entire time had been unable to control her tears.
Marianne was three years older than her sister and had five children, the oldest of whom was fourteen. Her husband, Jean Luc, was a fisherman whose income varied with the season and who spent much of his time away from the family. But when he was home, as he was now, he wanted to be with his wife and children.
Especially with his wife.
Jean Luc had a voracious sexual appetite and was not ashamed of it. But it could be problematical, even embarrassing, when his urges overcame him and he suddenly swept his wife off her feet or out of her chair and carried her bodily into the bedroom of their tiny three-room apartment, where they made wild, and loud, love, for what seemed hours at a time.
Why Michele had suddenly come to live with them and for how long he couldn’t understand. All married people had problems. But usually, with the help of a priest, they worked them out. Therefore, he was certain that Henri would show up at any moment, begging Michele to forgive him and go back to Paris.
But Michele, through her tears, was just as certain he would not. She had been there two nights, trying to sleep on the couch in their minuscule living room/kitchen, trampled by the children as they crowded around the small black-and-while television, fighting