That put them on call at almost any hour, for any reason.
Monday’s request was simple: Watch the lone exit at the apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune that the police were not watching, the entrance to the doorman’s living quarters. If a good-looking man about thirty-five came out, report it and follow him.
Both girls had followed Osborn to Dr. Cheysson’s office on rue de Bassano. Then Sami had trailed him to Aux Trois Quartiers on boulevard de la Madeleine, even flirted with him and asked him to help pick out a tie for her uncle while he was waiting for his suit to be tailored. After that, Colette had followed him into the Metro and stayed with him until he’d gone into the cafe across from La Coupole.
That was when Bernhard Oven took over, watching as Osborn left the cafe and crossed boulevard du Montparnasse to enter La Coupole at five minutes after seven.
At five foot ten and in dark hair, jeans, leather jacket and Reeboks, with a diamond stud in his left ear, Bernhard Oven was no longer a blond, tall man. He was, however, no less deadly. In his right jacket pocket, he carried the silenced Cz .22 automatic he’d used so successfully in Marseilles.
At 7:20, convinced that McVey had come by himself, Osborn got up from where he sat near the window, eased past several crowded tables and approached him, his bandaged hand held gingerly at his side.
McVey glanced at Osborn’s bandaged hand, then indicated a chair next to him, and Osborn sat down.
“I said I’d be alone. I am,” McVey said.
“You said you could help. What did you mean?” Osborn asked. His new suit and haircut meant nothing. McVey had known he’d been there all along.
McVey ignored him. “What’s your blood type, Doctor?”
Osborn hesitated. “I thought you were going to find out;”
“I want to hear it from you.”
Just then a waiter in a white shirt and black pants stopped at the table. McVey shook his head.
“Type B.”
LAPD Detective Hernandez’s preliminary report on Osborn had finally reached McVey by fax just before he’d left Lebrun’s office. Among other stats it had included Osborn’s blood type—type B. Which meant that not only had Osborn told the truth but that the tall man’s blood was type O.
“Doctor Hugo Klass. Tell me about him,” McVey said.
“I don’t know a Doctor Hugo Klass,” Osborn said, deliberately, still nervously wondering if there weren’t plainclothes detectives somewhere in the room waiting for McVey to give the signal.
“He knows you,” McVey lied purposefully.
“Then I’ve forgotten. What kind of medicine does he practice?”
Either Osborn was very good, or very innocent. But then he’d lied about the mud on his shoes, so there was every possibility he was doing the same here. “He’s a Ph.D. A friend of Timothy Ashford.” McVey shifted gears in an effort to make Osborn stumble.
“Who?”
“Come on, Doctor. Timothy Ashford. A housepainter from South London. Good-looking man. Age twenty- four.
You know who he is.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then I guess it wouldn’t make any difference if I told you I had his head in a freezer in London.”
A middle-aged woman in a lightly checked suit at the next table reacted sharply. McVey kept his eyes on Osborn. His statement had been offhand but loaded, designed to elicit the same kind of reaction from Osborn it had from .the woman. But Osborn hadn’t so much as blinked.
“Doctor, you lied to me before. You want me to help you. You’ve got to give me something I can use. A reason to trust you.”
The waiter came with Osborn’s coffee, set it on the table in front of him and then left. McVey watched him go. Several aisles away he stopped at the table of a dark-haired man wearing a leather jacket. The man had been sitting alone for ten minutes and so far had ordered nothing. He had a diamond stud in his left ear and a cigarette his left hand. The waiter had stopped once before but he’d been waved off. This time the man glanced in McVey’s direction, then said something to the waiter. The waiter nodded and walked away.
McVey looked back to Osborn. “What is it, Doctor, you feel uncomfortable talking here? Want to go somewhere else?”
Osborn didn’t know what to do or think. McVey was asking him the same kind of questions he had the first time they’d met. He was obviously looking for something he thought Osborn was involved in, but he had no idea what it was. And that made it all the harder because every answer he gave seemed to be calculated avoidance, when, in fact, he was only telling the truth.
“McVey, believe me when I tell you I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I did maybe I could help, but don’t.”
McVey tugged at an ear and looked off. Then he looked back. “Maybe we should try a little different approach,” he said, pausing. “How come you pumped Albert Merriman full of succ—een—ill—choline? I pronounce it ‘ right?”
Osborn didn’t panic, his pulse didn’t even jump. McVey was too intelligent not to have found out, and he’d prepared himself for it. “Do the Paris police know?”
“Please answer the question.”
“Albert Merriman—murdered my father.”
“Your father?” That surprised McVey. It was something he should have considered, but hadn’t, that Merriman had been an object of pursuit for revenge.
“Yes.”
“You hire the tall man to kill him?”
“No. He just showed up.”
“How long ago did Merriman kill your father?”
“When I was ten.”
“In Boston. On the street. I was there. I saw it happen. I never forgot his face. And I never saw him again, until a week ago, here in Paris.”
In an instant McVey fit the pieces together. “You didn’t tell the Paris police because you weren’t finished with him. You hired Packard to find him. And when he did, you looked for a spot to do it and found the riverbank. Give him a shot or two of the drug. Get him in the water, he can’t breathe or use his muscles, he floats off and drowns. Current is heavy there, the chemical dissipates quickly in the body and he’s so bloated nobody thinks to look for puncture wounds. That was the idea.”
“In a way.”
“What way?”
“First, I wanted to find out why he had done what he did.”
“Did you?” Suddenly McVey’s eyes tracked off. The man in the leather jacket was no longer at the table where he had been. He was closer. Two tables away in a clear line to Osborn’s immediate left. A cigarette was still in his left hand but his right was out of sight, under the table.
Osborn started to turn to see what McVey was looking at when suddenly McVey was on his feet, stepping between Osborn and the man at the table.
“Get up and walk ahead of me. Out that door. Don’t ask why. Just do it.”
Osborn got up. As he did, he realized who McVey had been looking at. “McVey, that’s him. The tall man!”
McVey whirled. Bernhard Oven was standing, the silenced Czechoslovakian Cz coming up in his hand. Somebody screamed.
Suddenly the air was shattered by two booming reports, one right on top of the other, followed almost immediately by a hailstorm breaking of glass.
