At the door he stopped to listen, but there was no sound from outside, and after a minute he opened the door.
The apartment was on the fourth floor, the landlady’s apartment on the first. There was a stairwell in the middle of the building.
He moved silently to the railing and looked over, pulling back immediately. There was someone below. On the first floor.
Again he looked over the railing, and this time he waited long enough to see that it was Maria Soleres and a dark-haired man. Talking.
Quickly, his heart hammering, Juan Carlos started down the stairs, moving on the balls of his feet so that he would make absolutely no noise.
She had not come with their dinner. Was she now speaking to the police? Telling them about the people in the apartment on the fourth floor?
At the second-floor landing, Juan Carlos moved a little closer to the rail. He could hear the words now.
“… come to help them,” the man was saying. He spoke with a French accent.
“They are all dead up there, I think,” Maria Soleres said. “I saw through the skylight. The woman is dead in the tub, and the other two are dead in the bed.”
“What about Juan Carlos? Is he dead as well?”
“He was lying on the floor in the living room without clothes. He was dead, I think.”
“Why didn’t you go in?”
“I want no further part in this. You may go up and take them away. I want no further part in it.”
“I will need your help.”
“No,” Maria Soleres said sharply. “I will call the police, if need be.”
Juan Carlos crept farther down the stairs, until he was at a spot where the stairs turned a corner, around which he would be in their view.
“No…” Maria Soleres started to say, but her voice was choked off, and sounds of struggle came up the stairs.
It served her right, Juan Carlos thought as he stepped around the corner.
The dark-haired man with the French accent looked up from the inert form of Maria Soleres, raised his gun, and fired, hitting Juan Carlos in the throat and driving him back against the wall.
Juan Carlos raised his Uzi as the Frenchman fired again, and his finger jerked on the trigger. Just before everything went dark, he saw that the Frenchman was falling backward, several red holes in his chest and stomach.
23
It was hot in Atlanta when Newman stepped off the plane and crossed the tarmac to the Ford LTD waiting in front of the terminal. Janice Wilcox, Paul’s widowed daughter, was waiting by the car.
She was a tall woman, with a pleasant face that was somewhat reminiscent of her father’s, and a trim, almost athletic body. Paul had recently bragged that his daughter, at thirty, looked more like a girl of eighteen. She wore a black dress, a small black hat, and a dark veil across her face.
“I’m sorry, Janice,” Newman said as he reached her.
She lifted her veil, and he kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad you could come, Kenneth. I wanted to talk with you before we met the others.”
“Has there been any trouble with the arrangements, anything I can help with?”
She shook her head. “I want to know what happened there, Kenneth,” Janice said without preamble as they drove off. She was a very strong woman. A junior executive with one of the insurance companies here in Atlanta. She wasn’t giving way to hysterics now.
“There was an explosion, which was probably meant for me. Paul just happened to be there,” Newman said.
“What were you two working on?”
“I can’t say, Janice.”
She turned toward him and lifted her veil. “Is that what you told the police?”
“Yes. But I also told them that I think I know who killed him, and why.”
Janice’s complexion was pale and her eyes moist. Her lower lip was quivering at last. “I’m listening,” she said after a slight hesitation.
“It has to do with Lydia, my wife.”
“The Vance-Ehrhardt Company had him killed?”
“No,” Newman said. “While I was down there I had a run-in with the chief of the Buenos Aires police, Reynaldo Perés. Lydia warned me twice that he wanted to see me dead. Wanted to put some of the blame for her parents’ kidnapping on me.”
“That’s insanity. Isn’t it?”
Newman nodded. “I had just hung up from talking with her — she called to warn me that I would be assassinated — when the bomb went off.”
“My father was devoted to you. He spoke often of his work. How much he admired you. Said you were a man of principles. He told me once that you were the most honest man he had ever met. I told him to go out on his own. Start his own business. He had plenty of money. He had the knowledge, and certainly the talent. He could have made it. But he told me that he’d never leave you so long as you wanted him as a business associate.”
Newman was touched. He and Paul had become close friends over the years. Yet he had never known just how devoted Saratt had been. His death had been a terrible blow, made even worse by what Janice was telling him.
He reached out and touched her hand, but she jerked away as if she had been burned.
“The service is at two,” she said. “Afterward some friends and relatives will be coming to my house. But your presence isn’t necessary. I’m sure you have a lot of work to attend to. We don’t want to take up much of your time.” She didn’t have much control left.
“Stop it, Janice,” Newman said gently.
She was finally crying.
“I loved him too. He was a friend.”
“Catch his murderers, Kenneth. Catch the bastards and string them up,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Yes,” Newman said. But it would not be that easy. They’d probably never catch the real murderer, Perés, and it wasn’t likely they’d catch his henchmen who had actually placed the bomb. He, or they, were probably already back in Buenos Aires.
Paul’s remains — what the coroner had been able to reassemble — had been sent back to Atlanta for cremation. The minister who gave the sermon was evidently an old friend of the family, because he spoke in a choked voice of Paul’s childhood. There were a lot of people at the service, only a few of whom Newman recognized. Most were relatives who had visited Paul in Duluth at one time or another over the past few years.
He had been a popular man. Well liked, well respected. There were a lot of questions for Newman, who had been with him when he was killed.
“Have they caught the bastards, yet?” was the most common.
Afterwards, Newman had ridden to the house with an uncle from Buffalo who hadn’t said a word, and who refused to be drawn into a conversation.
Janice seemed genuinely pleased that Newman had come to the house, and she personally fixed him a drink and made sure he had something to eat.
“Will you be staying in Atlanta tonight?” she asked him.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. He had been thinking about Dybrovik and the Russian deal. Paul had not had the chance to set up a meeting away from Geneva before he was killed. It was going to have to be somewhere on neutral territory… such as Athens, they had decided. He felt guilty thinking about it now.
“I’d like you to stay, Kenneth. We could have the day together tomorrow. There’s a lot I’d like to ask you about my father.”
“I’d love to, but I just don’t know. I’ll have to call my office.”
She stared at him for a long moment. The house was filled with people, most of them standing around in little groups. “You can use the phone in the study,” she said. “First door on the right, upstairs.”