Carter took the key and made a detour through the hotel café on his way to the elevator.
Lily, following his instructions to the letter, was seated alone near the entrance. He dropped his duffel bag at the door and crossed the room.
"Calvados, ma petite, s'il vous plaît."
The woman behind the counter selected the bottle, wrapped it, and took his money. Carrying the bottle of apple brandy, Carter moved back through the tables. Passing Lily, he let his eyes flicker downward for the briefest of seconds.
Good girl, he thought.
Right beside her plate was a napkin. On it was written 412. One step beyond the table he saw her take the napkin, dab her lips, and carelessly slide it into her purse.
Going up in the elevator, Carter sighed with relief. He had made a good choice.
In the room, he unpacked, poured three fingers of the brandy into a glass, and sat down to write out the ad.
Pepe: Phone 391–444 at 5 sharp Saturday P.M. Monsieur B.
He waited another twenty minutes to make sure Lily had time to return to her room, and then he took the stairs down to the fourth floor.
His knuckles had barely brushed the veneered wood before the door opened and Carter popped inside.
"This is fun!" Lily said, her dark eyes flashing with excitement and an elfin grin on her face.
"Don't let it be too much fun," Carter said grimly. "Here."
He passed her the scrap of paper then spread a map of Marseille out on the bed.
"I'll leave first. You follow in exactly thirty minutes. The newspaper office is here, Number Eight rue Montparnasse. Take a taxi. After you place the ad. leave the office and walk down to the corner… here. That will put you on the Avenue du Prado. At Bond Point, rum right. At Armenienne, here, go in and pray."
"Pray?"
"That's what I said… for about twenty minutes. When you leave there, take a cab to the Baraly Museum, here."
"And that's where I play the whore?"
"Exactly. There is a little café just across the street, here. Take him there. And, remember, you'll be followed, but at no time look over your shoulder as if you were looking for it. Do you understand everything?"
She nodded.
"Good. Just be natural. I'll be close by all the time."
From a hallway in an office building across the street. Carter watched Lily enter the newspaper offices. The business took only about ten minutes, and soon she was out again, strolling toward the Avenue du Prado.
She looked good in a striped black and white pullover that stretched tautly across her breasts, and a black, shimmering skirt that hugged her hips and bottom like a second skin.
With spike heels, a beret, and mesh stockings, she looked just tacky enough to pull it off.
He could have brought in an experienced operative from the Paris AXE headquarters, but that would have taken time. And there was a good chance that little Lily could perform better anyway. True, there was the risk factor, but with only two small things to perform — and Carter himself on her like glue — it was unlikely anything dangerous would happen.
He watched her turn at the Avenue du Prado, then shifted his concentration back to the newspaper offices.
An untrained eye might not have seen such an infinitesimal change.
Carter didn't miss it.
Above the doorway was a large clock. Just beneath the clock's face was a three-by-four-foot digital readout of the current temperature.
It had been blinking regularly since his arrival. It was now turned off.
It didn't take much looking. They were at a sidewalk table in the café directly below Carter. One was a short, paunchy man with a thick shock of black hair that seemed to be constantly tumbling over his eyes. The other was a little taller but lean as a reed and nattily dressed in a beige gabardine suit. His arresting feature was a horribly pockmarked face and dark eyes that seemed to recede clear inside his skull.
The short, fat one, a paper under his arm, took the point after Lily. The second waited several minutes to see if his comrade was followed.
When he was sure this was not the case, he picked up the trail himself.
Carter made the rear of the building in less than two minutes. He had already reconned the cab stand in the middle of the block. It had not been left unoccupied in the twenty minutes he had been checking it.
And it wasn't now.
"Eglise Armenienne?"
"Oui."
"An extra thirty francs," Carter added in French, "if you make it in five minutes or less."
The G-force of the leaping taxi put him hard against the seat and kept him there for the full three-minute ride.
There was a newsstand directly across from the church. Carter made for it and browsed through racks of paperbacks until he spotted Lily.
Without any hesitation, she walked up the steps and entered the cathedral.
They were exactly thirty seconds behind her, with the taller one now in front. Both of them went a block beyond the church, where they paused at a storefront and conferred out of the sides of their mouths.
Short and pudgy was elected. He returned and entered the cathedral.
Carter did not wait. He purchased the Paris edition of an American skin magazine and took to the street.
Two blocks past the hollow-eyed window watcher. Carter turned onto Rue Paradis and found another cab.
"Musee Baraly?"
"Old."
"Take your time," Carter said, easing back into the seat and lighting a cigarette.
Carter sat, sipping brandy and espresso, in the café directly across the street from the Baraly Museum. Lily had entered the building nearly a half hour earlier. Her two watchdogs were close behind.
Now he watched her crossing the street arm in arm with a tall, athletic specimen in a dark blue, conservatively cut suit. He was about six-three, with wide-set blue eyes, a tanned and seamed face, and just the right amount of steel gray at the temples to give him age and a little class.
He did not have the look of the typical killer. But then Bluebeard wouldn't have.
An excellent choice, Carter thought, one eye on the magazine, the other on the couple.
They sat down three tables away, just close enough for Carter to hear part of their conversation.
Acne-face entered and took a table by the window. Short and pudgy made for a phone booth near the museum steps.
Bingo, Carter thought, and sipped his brandy.
"I am just a working girl, monsieur," Lily was saying, "not a whore."
"Oh, my dear, I'm sure of that. But I am sure you wouldn't turn down a slight gift for your favors…?"
"Of course not," Lily said and smiled coquettishly.
"Then, shall we go? My apartment is just around the corner."
Lily shot a quick look out of the corner of her eye at Carter.
He returned the look with a barely perceptible shake of his head while sipping from the cup of espresso. Whoever short and pudgy was talking to on the phone. Carter wanted them to have plenty of time to arrive.
Lily played it to the hilt. A seasoned actress — or courtesan — couldn't have done it much better.
When the mark began to get too insistent about leaving, she played him along by running her hand up his thigh under the table. When he got too amorous, she got slightly angry, and when he showed signs of cooling off, she whispered all the erotic things she was capable of performing.
When Carter saw the black limousine pick up short and pudgy and move on down the block, he moved to the counter and paid his check.
Lily was already up and moving toward the ladies' room in the rear. She would go on through the hall and exit a rear door into the alley.