The Cézanne Chase (45 page)

“Not about the gun.”

“She said?”

“She began to cry. Then I blurted out that it didn't make any difference—that I didn't have the real painting. That I had a copy.”

Oxby reacted as if he had been sledgehammered in the pit of his stomach. He whispered, urgently, “Then what—”

“She asked where the real painting was, and at that instant I felt that our charade didn't matter anymore, that I was safely in Aix, and so was my painting. I told her that Alex Tobias had brought it over, that it was safe with him.”

“Wrong, wrong!” Oxby said. “Astrid's in this with Vulcan, sometimes called Dr. Metzger, real name Peder Aukrust—a Norwegian, trained pharmacist, and skilled chemist. He's had all bloody day to locate Tobias. Find Ann, tell her to send Sam Turner to the Nègre-Coste hotel. Tell her it's damned important and to be careful.”

 

Aukrust waited for the night clerk and his friend to return to their books. He considered the elevator but only briefly and went to the stairs. They were wide and carpeted to the second level, after which they narrowed and curled continuously to the upper floors.

At the third level he heard a television and inhaled the pungent aroma of garlic and burnt olive oil. The walls were covered in a brown paper figured with trees and birds. The lights were cream-colored globes, suspended from brass chains. He slipped off the green wrapping from the flowers and cradled them in his arm, continuing to room 28. From his pocket he took a three-inch-long aerosol can and uncapped it. He rapped lightly on the door.

A pause, then a male voice. “Who is it?”

“I know it's late,” Aukrust began in his smooth baritone, pronouncing each word in an accented English he had practiced repeatedly, “but I have flowers for Mrs. Tobias, a gift from Mr. Llewellyn and also Gustave Bilodeau, who is my friend at the Granet.” He cupped the aerosol can in the palm of his hand.

The door was unlocked and opened. Helen and Alex Tobias stood in their bathrobes, side by side. Helen Tobias was embarrassed that her hair was full of curlers, as she was plainly preparing for bed. Aukrust stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. He held out the flowers to her. “These are especially for you.”

She took the flowers and smelled them appreciatively. Then Alexander Tobias stepped beside his wife, “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “This is no damned time to deliver flowers—”

Aukrust pulled his hands from under the bouquet, and as he did, he released the valve and a puff of white mist spread out from the flowers and into two startled faces. With the burst came an intensely sweet floral scent that Helen Tobias was able to enjoy for exactly two seconds before the flowers fell from her hands and she and her husband collapsed to the floor. Aukrust put a mask over his mouth and nose.

“I'm happy you approve, Madame Tobias. Jasmine and rose mixed with my own blend of enfleurane and nitrous oxide.”

He went directly to the closet and found clothes on hangers, small packages of gifts, and two pieces of luggage, which he carried to the bed. The one tagged with Alexander Tobias's name was locked, its scruffy appearance perhaps a bit too deceptive. Aukrust opened it with pliers and a knife, then slashed at the lining until he discovered the false bottom. There he found the flat metal case wrapped in a sheet of black plastic.

 

From the Musée Granet to the Hôtel Nègre-Coste was three blocks, or five hundred yards, or so Oxby guessed it to be as he ran along Rue Frédéric Mistral, the Cours Mirabeau directly ahead. Lights shone from three of the six rooms on the third floor of the hotel, and he computed that the room farthest to the left was the one occupied by Alex and Helen Tobias. At the entrance he looked back for Ann and more hopefully for Sam Turner, but neither one was in sight.

“Are the Tobiases in their room?”

“Yes, I'm sure they are,” the young receptionist said.

The girl looked up from her book. “A friend came, a doctor, for Madame Tobias. She is not feeling well, he said.”

“When was that?” Oxby asked.

“Ten minutes, maybe a little more.”

“Is he still with them?”

The young man shrugged, “We can't tell from here ... sometimes they go out the back door to the parking area.”

“Call the room . . . quickly, then the police!”

 

Aukrust was at the door when the phone rang. He glowered at it then set the lock and pulled the door shut behind him. For a precious few seconds he stood motionless, eyes closed. At the stairs he
heard footsteps coming toward him. He about-faced and started up to the floor above. At the turn of the staircase he stopped and was able to see a man's legs coming up the stairs and running in the direction of room 28. Aukrust started down, slowly at first. Then when he was past the second floor, he took the steps two at a time to the lobby. A silent television picture flickered in the lounge. Coming from the reception desk was a man's loud voice demanding Alexander Tobias's room number. Aukrust crouched in front of the television, twisting dials as if he were a guest trying to sift static from the picture, but his eyes never strayed from the lobby. The man hurriedly ran past him and up the stairs.

It was quiet again until the student receptionist and his girlfriend began chattering in French about all the strange people who had come to visit the Americans in room 28.

 

Oxby lifted Helen Tobias onto the bed and covered her with a blanket. Then he helped Tobias into a chair.

“Describe him, Alex, and stop wincing that he got the best of you.”

But Tobias did wince; his anger at being outsmarted wasn't about to go away quickly. “He was tall ... light hair . . . a mixed accent I couldn't place . . . late thirties—that's most of it Jack. He came in the room and poof—I'm out!” He looked at his wife. “Helen's all right?”

“You're both fine,” Oxby said as he ran his hand across the bottom of the empty suitcase. “Bloody bastard got it.”

Sam Turner was at the door. “What happened?”

“Tell you as we go.” He nudged Turner back through the door.

 

Aukrust ran to his car, angry that he had parked in the tourist shopping zone. When he reached the wide boulevard he was met by a crowd of university students gathered outside a popular cafe. Several formed into an obstreperous mob and circled his station wagon. They tapped on the roof and stared insolently through the windows at him. Aukrust pushed his door against one of them and leaped from the car, roaring. They quickly retreated.

He entered the Cours at the midpoint of the half-mile-long boulevard. To his right, the west, automobile traffic thickened and circled around the Fontaine de la Rotonde, a garish display of water splashing over snarling lions and giant geese that was brilliantly illuminated with blue-white lights.

Aukrust's hesitation was infuriating; his vaunted decisiveness deserted him for the moment. Then he sped ahead, turning sharply to the left, nearly scraping against one of the thermal fountains. He patted his medicine case reassuringly, his eyes concentrating on the road ahead that would, in two hundred yards, shrink to the width of a single car and lead beyond to the sanctuary of the city's suburbs.

From behind him, as if catapulted out of the black void, a car without lights raced past, then all of its rear red lights blazed at once as the car braked abruptly and spun a precise 180 degrees, coming to a stop with its high beams shining directly at Aukrust. Aukrust reacted by jamming on his brakes and turning hard right, but as he did, the car opposing him turned in the same direction and sped toward him. As Aukrust turned sharply to the left a sharp sound erupted inside the car, as if the windshield had been struck with a rock the size of a fist. The headlights on the other car blinked high then low. At the same time there were two more loud cracks against the windshield. With the fourth came a different sound, a sharp, metallic snap, and the rearview mirror shattered. In four seconds, the entire windshield became glazed like ancient pottery, and in the middle of a million tiny lines were four bullet holes.

Aukrust came to a complete stop, backed up until he hit a parked car, then turned and pressed hard on the accelerator. The other car came at him again and as he continued forward he recognized the silver Porsche lurking next to him. Immediately he processed several thoughts, none in his favor: The driver was behind the wheel of a Porsche—a car that was faster and more agile than his old station wagon; the driver had a gun and was using it; the driver was LeToque.

Escape meant reaching the fountain and the busy streets beyond where he could meld with the traffic. But his car was not a sprinter, which suggested to him that if he weaved erratically he would force LeToque to stay behind him. But that strategy failed after a hundred yards when the Porsche drew alongside. Aukrust glanced to his left; at the instant he did, the window was shattered by two bullets. One tore away the end of his nose, amid a shower of fine glass shards that blasted against the left side of his face, blinding him in that eye, causing half his face to erupt in a mask of blood.

Anger overwhelmed his fright, and pain overrode all. There was no way to reach the agony inside his eye, no way to wash away the tiny bits of glass that burned with such excruciating intensity. Desperately
he forced himself to drive forward, trying as he did so to steer into the tormenting car to disable it or get past it.

He straightened and aimed as best his vision allowed toward the blur of lights shining on the big fountain. His foot pressed hard to the floor, and it seemed he had broken free when he was a hundred feet from the fountain ... then fifty feet....

The last bullet entered the rear window and lodged high in Aukrust's back in the soft flesh in his shoulder. It wasn't a fatal hit but a lucky one, which caused him to turn the wheel sharply, aiming the car over the sidewalk and into the carved stone wall surrounding the fountain. The front of the station wagon rose up as if trying to climb over the wall then teetered and fell back.

The door opened and Aukrust tumbled out onto his knees. He struggled to his feet and walked on stiff legs to the fountain. When he reached it he continued to walk, his legs churning futilely against the waist-high wall. He fell forward, his face submerged in cold water that would soothe the cuts and wash the bits of glass from his eye.

But neither eye would see again. Aukrust was dead.

Oxby and Sam Turner had witnessed the entire, bizarre chase, had heard the gunshots, and had sprinted after Aukrust's station wagon on its final, desperate run. After pulling the body from the fountain and confirming that Aukrust was dead, Turner started for the car.

“Stay away from it, Sam! Put your head inside and breathe just once, and you'll be as dead as this poor bastard.”

J
anuary 23 was a wintry London day, and on the Thames the wind swirled doggedly—cold, penetrating, rippling the water that was the color of the thick scraps of purplish clouds beginning to drift in from the northwest. Aboard the duty boat were Sergeants Jennings and Tompkins of the Thames Division. From the Metropolitan Police were Sergeant Jimmy Murratore and Detective Chief Inspector Jack Oxby. The men from Scotland Yard had been picked up at Westminster Pier, and the black-hulled boat was now seven miles east of Tower Bridge and three hundred yards astern of Alan Pinkster's converted tug
Sepera.
Ahead of the tug, four hundred yards farther east, was another duty boat. Both were in continuous radio contact with each other by way of a scrambler on a high-range FM frequency.

“Ten before two,” Jimmy said and lowered his binoculars. He pointed at the south bank of the river. “That's Woolwich Ferry. Two quid says Kondo comes out of there.”

Oxby pulled the wool tam down across his forehead. “On time, I trust.”

“Suppose he's not,” the young detective said. “What's your plan if he doesn't show at all?”

Oxby patted the pocket of his peacoat. “I've got warrants for search and arrest. I want Kondo, too.” He eyed Murratore severely. “Don't give me a problem I don't want, Jimmy. Any doubts about your information?”

“We heard right, didn't we, Jeff?”

“It's on tape,” Sergeant Jennings said.

Jimmy said, “They meet today, right out there.”

A tone sounded, high pitched. Tompkins answered, “Come in.”

“Small craft entering the river from vicinity of Woolwich Ferry. We'll assume patrol duties. Confirm.”

“Confirmed.”

“I see him,” Jimmy said. “Movin' at a turtle's pace. But he's movin'.”

“Can you confirm that it's Kondo?” Oxby said.

“Another two quid?”

Oxby shook his head. “No one took you up the first time.”

They turned in a tight circle then cruised slowly toward the south bank of the river, assuming for all appearances that they were a duty boat on regular patrol. The four men stared across at
Sepera
and at the small cruiser approximately a half mile away. Now it was lying still in the water, as if anchored.

“He's not moving now. Not until he thinks it's clear,” Oxby said.

They waited.

“Inspector?” Jimmy Murratore said. “We've barely talked since you got back, and I've got a few curiosities to add to the list you put on the chalkboard a while back. Like, who or what killed Vulcan?”

“A little Frenchman named LeToque tried his damnedest, but Peder Aukrust took a whiff of his own medicine. The same poison gas he used to kill Clarence Boggs spilled loose from his medicine case when his car crashed.”

“Ann said they didn't find Llewellyn's painting in his car. Where was it?”