“It looks,” Matt said, “as if it’s been here for centuries.”
“It looks like a dump,” Mickey said. “Is this the best we can do?”
“This is it, unless you want to go back to Bordeaux.”
Mickey wordlessly turned the engine off and got out of the car.
The only accommodation available was one room. It had two single beds and a washbasin. The bath and water closet were in separate rooms down a narrow corridor.
“And I’ll bet you snore, too, don’t you?” Mr. O’Hara inquired.
Their dinner-roast lamb — was very good, and so was the wine. At nine o’clock, they retired to their room.
“I want to get up early, find their house, and take a couple of shots,” Mickey announced, “then hang around for a while to see if I can get a couple of shots of Festung, and then get the hell out of here.”
They called their respective maternal parents, turned off the worldwide telephone because the battery was running low, and then got into bed.
“You know what else-besides forgetting to charge the phone in the car-you made me do when you decided to drink everything in Paris last night?” Mr. O’Hara inquired across the dark room.
“I can hardly wait to hear.”
“I didn’t call that jackass in the embassy.”
> “You can call the jackass in the embassy in the morning,” Matt said.
They were both asleep by half past nine.
When it is half past nine in Cognac-Boeuf, France, it is half past three in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
At 3:33 P.M., Dianna Kerr-Gally, Executive Assistant to the Honorable Alvin W. Martin, stepped to the mayor’s door and coughed.
“What’s up?” he inquired.
“I’ve got Eileen Solomon on the line,” Dianna said.
“Put her through,” he said.
“She wants to know if there is any reason you can’t see her right now.”
“See me? As opposed to talk to me?”
Dianna nodded.
“Did she say what she wants?”
Dianna shook her head, “no.”
He shrugged.
“You think I should talk to her?”
“I think you should tell me if there’s some reason you can’t see her right now.”
“Tell our distinguished district attorney that my door is always open to her,” the mayor ordered. “And stall whatever’s on the schedule until she shows up.”
The Honoable Eileen McNamara Solomon, trailed by Detective Al Unger, appeared ten minutes later in the mayor’s outer office, and was immediately shown into the inner office by Dianna Kerr-Gally, who stood just inside the door.
“This is between the mayor and me,” Eileen Solomon said. “Do you mind?”