"Folsom, Allan - The Day After Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Folsom Allan)

whereabouts for a grievously concerned family. No mention was made that
the face belonged to a head that had no accompanying body.

By nightfall not a single call had come in.

In Paris, a different sketch had more luck. For a simple hundred-franc
bribe, Jean Packard had been able to shake the memory of one of the
waiters who had pulled Paul Osborn from the throat of Henri Kanarack
while they struggled on the floor of Brasserie Stella.

The waiter, a small man, with slight, effeminate hands and a like
manner, had seen Kanarack a month earlier when he had been employed in
another brasserie that had closed shortly afterward because of a fire.
As he had at Brasserie Stella, Kanarack had come in alone, ordered
espresso, then opened a newspaper and smoked a cigarette. The time of
day had been about the same, a little after five in the afternoon. The
brasserie was called Le Bois on boulevard de Magenta, halfway between
the Gale de I'Est and Place de la Republique. A straight line drawn
between Le Bois and Brasserie Stella would show a preponderance of Metro
stations within the area. And since the stranger did not have the
appearance of a man who took taxis, it was reasonably safe to assume
he'dd either come to each by car or on foot. Parking a car near either
card at evening rush hour to linger alone over an espresso was not a
likely happenstance either. Simple logic would suggest he'dd come by
foot.

Both Osborn and the waiter had described the man as having a stubble
beard or "five o'clock shadow." That, coinciding with his working-class
manner and appearance, made it reasonably safe to presume that the man
had been on his way home from work and, since he had done so at, least
twice, that he seemed to be in the habit of stopping for a respite along
the way. All Packard had to do now was make the rounds of other cafes
within the area between the two brasseries. Failing that, he would
triangulate out from each, until he found still another cafe where
someone would recognize the man from Paul Osborn's sketch. Each time he
would show his identification, explain that the man was missing, and
that he had been hired by the family to find him. On only his fourth
try, Packard found a woman who recognized the crude drawing. She was a
cashier at a bistro on rue Lucien, just off boulevard de Magenta. The
man in the sketch had been stopping there, off and on, for the past two
or three years.

"Do you know his name, madame?"

At this the woman looked up sharply. "You said you were investigating
for the man's family, but you do not know his name?"

"What he calls himself one day is quite often not the same as the next."

"He is a criminal?"