Rouen, Henri would be asked to manage it? Would they move there? It would be wonderful to raise their child away from the bustling lunacy of Paris.
“I don’t know,” he’d said harshly. He’d been asked to go and that’s all he knew. And with that he’d hung up. Now he stared at Agnes Demblon and waited for her to say something.
“What do you want me to tell you?” she said. “That yes, maybe the American did recognize you and hired a private detective to find you. And that now, since he was in the store, and since that foolish girl gave him the names of the employees, we can assume he has found you or soon will. Assume, too, that he has no doubt reported that back to the American. All right, suppose it’s so. Now what?”
Henri Kanarack’s eyes glistened and he shook his head as he crossed the room for more wine. “What I don’t understand is how the American could recognize me. He’s got to be a dozen years younger than I am, maybe more. I’ve been out of the States for twenty-five years. The fifteen in Canada, the ten here.”
“Henri. Maybe it is a mistake. Maybe he thinks you are someone else.”
“It’s no mistake.”
“How do you know?”
Kanarack took a drink and stared off.
“Henri, you are a French citizen. You’ve done nothing here. For once in your life the law is on your side.”
“The law means nothing if they’ve found me. If it’s them, I’m dead, you know that.”
“It’s not possible. Albert Merriman is dead. Not you. How could anyone make the connection after so many years? Especially a man who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve when you left America.”
“What the hell is he after me for, then, huh?” Kanarack’s stare cut through her. It was hard to tell if he was frightened or angry or both.
“They have pictures of what I looked like then. The police have them and they have them. And I haven’t changed all that much. Either bunch could have sent that guy to look for me.”
“Henri—” Agnes said quietly. He needed to think, to reason, and he wasn’t. “Why would they look for a man who is dead? Or, even if they did, why would they look here? Do you think they are sending this man to every city in the world on the off-chance he might bump into you on the street?” Agnes smiled.
“You’re making something of nothing. Come, sit here by me,” she said, smiling gently and patting the worn couch beside her.
The way she looked at him, the sound of her voice reminded him of the old days when she’d been not as unattractive as she was now. Of the days before she’d purposely let herself go for that very reason, so that he would no longer be attracted to her. Of the days before she refused him her bed, so that after a while he would not want her. It was important that he vanish wholly, to absorb the French culture and become French. To do that he must have a French wife. To make that possible it was necessary that Agnes Demblon no longer be part of his life. She had reentered it only when he had been unable to find work and she’d convinced Lebec he needed another hand at the bakery. After that, their relationship had been totally platonic as it was now, at least as he saw it.
But for Agnes there wasn’t a day her heart didn’t break at the sight of him. Not an hour or a moment when she did not want to take him into her arms and into her bed. From the beginning she had done it all. Helped him fake his own death, posed as his wife crossing the border into Canada, arranged for his false passport and finally convinced him to leave Montreal for France, where she had relatives, and where he could disappear forever. She’d done it all, even to the point of giving him up to another woman. For no other reason than she loved him so much.
“Agnes. Listen to me.” He did not come to sit beside her; instead he stood in the center of the room staring at her, the glass no longer in his hand. The room was absolutely still. There was no sound of traffic outside, no sound of people arguing in the apartment downstairs. For a moment she thought maybe the couple who lived there might have taken the night off from their loud and constant bickering and gone to the movies. Or maybe they were already in bed.
It was then she caught sight of her fingernails, which were long and ridged and should have been cut days ago.
“Agnes,” he said again. This time his voice was little more than a whisper.
“What we don’t know, we have to find out. You understand?” he said.
For a long time she kept looking at her nails, then, finally, she lifted her head. The fear, anger and rage were gone from him, as she knew they would be. What was there instead was ice.
“We have to find out.”
17
8 A.M.
TODAY WAS THURSDAY, October 6. The morning sky, as predicted, was overcast and a light, cold rain was falling. Osborn ordered a cup of coffee at the counter and took it over to a small table and sat down. The cafe was filled with people on their way to work stealing a few moments before getting on with the routine of the day. They sipped coffee, toyed with a croissant, smoked a cigarette, looked over the morning paper. A table away, two businesswomen jabbered in high-speed French. Next to them a man in a dark suit, with a shock of even darker hair, leaned on an elbow studying the newspaper
Osborn had reservations on Air France Flight 003 leaving Charles de Gaulle Airport on Saturday, October 8, at 5:00 P.M., arriving nonstop in Los Angeles at 7:30, Pacific Daylight time, the same evening. The appropriate thing, as fit into the overall scheme, would be for him to contact Detective Barras at police headquarters, inform him of his reservation and time of departure and politely ask when he could pick up his passport. Once that was done, he could get on with the rest.
It was important he kill Kanarack sometime Friday night. He needed the cover of darkness not just for the act but to prevent Kanarack’s body from being discovered too soon and too near Paris. After some simple research, the Seine, his first idea, had become his chosen waterway. It flowed through Paris and then wound northwest through the French countryside for some 120-odd miles before dumping into the Bay of the Seine and the English Channel at Le Havre. Barring some unforeseen complication, if he could get Kanarack into the river at some point west of the city after dark on Friday night, it would be daylight Saturday at the earliest before his body was discovered. By then, in a good current, it should have traveled thirty or forty miles downstream. With luck, maybe more. Bloated and with no identification, it would be days before the authorities determined who he was.
To cover himself, Osborn would need an alibi, something that would place him somewhere else at the time of the killing. A movie, he thought, would be easiest. He could buy a ticket, then make some valid disturbance with the ticket-taker going in, just enough so that later, should the question arise, that person would remember his being at; the theater. His proof would be the ticket stub with the time and date of the show. Once having taken a seat in the darkened auditorium, he would wait for the film to begin and then slip out a side exit.
The timing of everything would depend on Kanarack’s daily routine. A call to the bakery had established it was open from seven in the morning until seven in the evening and that the last freshly baked goods would be available at approximately four P.M. He’d seen Kanarack it the brasserie on rue St.-Antoine at about six. The brasserie was at least a twenty-minute walk from the bakery, and since Kanarack had left the brasserie on foot after Osborn’s attack on him it was safe to assume, as Jean Packard had earlier, that he either had no car or didn’t use one in commuting to work. If the last baked goods were available at 4:00 and Kanarack had been at the brasserie at 6:00, it was also reasonable to assume that left work sometime between 4:30 and 5:30. Though it was still early October, the days were growing short. A glance at the paper predicted that the rain falling now would continue for the next several days. That meant it would be getting dark even earlier. By 5:30, easily.
Osborn’s immediate order of business was to rent a car and look for an isolated area on the Seine, west of Paris, where he could get Kanarack into the water without being observed. Afterward he would drive to the bakery and then back again to make certain he knew the way.
Finally, he would go back to the bakery and park across the street, being certain to arrive no later than 4:30. Then he would wait for Kanarack to come out and see which way he went. Up the street or down.
