Murder on the Left Bank

by Cara Black

  He didn’t have much, judging by the cardiac monitor’s erratic blips.

  “Name your price,” said Chopard. “Want to supervise the ministry’s computer security division? Or do you prefer the private sector? And I’ll throw in stocks, a seat on our board, as we like to call it—a shareholder position.”

  She cringed inside. So that was how he enticed the next generation, infused new blood. Money was the universal language. This shrunken old relic had hired troops, signed checks. The old man’s life was ebbing, so he’d farmed out the evil. A withered root whose tree branched and flowered. She wanted the names of the foot soldiers and brains of the next generation.

  “Why me?” she asked.

  “You get results, mademoiselle. Better we’re on the same side.”

  “Same side?”

  “It’s business.”

  That was what he called it? She wanted to spit. “I don’t play well with others and make a point of knowing who I do business with.”

  “Furnish the notebook, and I’ll introduce you to the board.”

  As if that would happen. Lying, cheating, stealing, murder, all in the course of a working day. For two centimes, she’d pour the bottle of rubbing alcohol into his IV.

  Instead, she leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “I want your goons called off.” As she spoke, she surreptitiously took René’s latest toy, a centime-sized listening bug, from her makeup case and stuck it on the metal bar under his hospital bed.

  “D’accord. You’ll receive an envelope on your way out. And picaillons for your pocket.”

  The old country term for chump change. She hadn’t heard anyone use it since her grandfather. And she didn’t come cheap. This man couldn’t afford her.

  She stood. So hot—she couldn’t stand this suffocating heat.

  Another rattling sigh. The old man reached for the needle in his wrist where the IV dripped.

  “Don’t scratch,” she said.

  “Call the nurse.”

  So he could grope her?

  “Morphine. More morphine.”

  Aimée nodded. “It’s time to forget the past. Move on. So I’m forgiving you.”

  “I don’t want your forgiveness.” He grimaced in pain as if a knife were gutting him.

  “It’s included in our agreement.”

  A lie, but she enjoyed his discomposure.

  “Il fait un froid de canard,” he said. It’s as cold as a duck. She’d heard the expression—it was used for the weather at the onset of duck hunting season.

  “No, monsieur, you’re too early,” she said to him. “Hunting season doesn’t start until the ice freezes.”

  “Ah, mais oui, your bébé’s with her grand-mère in Brittany. For me, the season’s started. It always pays to keep game in one’s crosshairs.”

  Aimée stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Your mother, la terroriste, sings for the highest bidder.”

  Had Sydney taken Chloé to make sure Aimée would hand over the notebook? Ensure she’d cooperate with the Hand? No, there was no way. Even after everything her mother had done, she would never hurt Chloé.

  Hadn’t Sydney said Aimée would hear lies? Her insides twisted.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  “It’s insurance. Bring me the notebook.”

  The door opened. A man in a green loden jacket beckoned her. As she was ushered out, someone else was ushered into the room behind her. The door was shut before she could catch a glimpse of who it was.

  Her knees trembled.

  In the entryway the green-jacketed man handed her an envelope. “Perform your duty.” He had a thick German accent. “We’ll be watching.”

  He gripped her arm—no way for her to double back and spy. He hit the buzzer, escorted her to the sidewalk. Disappeared back into the Villa de Port-Royal.

  The fear she’d been holding at bay invaded her mind. She thought of Chloé’s sweet face, a blind panic settling over her senses. Breathing hard, she punched in Melac’s number.

  A recording answered saying that the number had been disconnected.

  What could she do? Chopard had her bébé, wherever she was, in his sights. The Hand’s tentacles spread like a choking net.

  Answers. She needed answers. Punched in Morbier’s number.

  She wanted him to tell her it wasn’t true. That her mother wouldn’t work for the highest bidder—that Chloé was safe.

  “I want to know where Chloé is, Morbier.”

  “Why would you think . . . ? Isn’t she home with you?”

  Clicking sounds.

  His line was bugged.

  She hung up. No doubt she was being watched.

  Hurrying, she ducked into a bistro several doors down, pretended to be waiting for a friend. Checked the time and activated the listening bug by pressing the button in her makeup kit. Counted to three and dropped a fifty-franc note from the envelope she’d been given on the mosaic tiled floor. A moment later she motioned to the waiter. “I think someone at that table dropped this.”

  “Merci, mademoiselle,” he said, picking it up.

  Clutching the note, he asked clients at a large table if it was theirs, and soon other gazes were attracted to the note. When heads were turned, she took the nearest trench coat off the coatrack without being noticed.

  In the small space behind the velvet draft curtains ringing the door, she slid her arms into the coat. An Isabel Marant, chic, only a wine stain on the cuff. Found a knit cap in the pocket. Seconds later, with a new look, she glided out and dipped into the Métro. Ran and caught the last train of the night.

  Friday Morning

  An insistent buzzing pulled Aimée from a nightmare of chasing a stroller down a long dark corridor . . . only to find the stroller empty, Chloé gone. She sat bolt upright. Her face was wet, her hair damp and matted. She’d been crying in her sleep.

  No Chloé, a strange apartment, a cold fear filling her. Was her baby safe? She hated being apart from her this long.

  She tried to remember where she was. Dawn light filtered through balcony doors over the white couch she’d slept on, the hanging plants, the Moroccan rugs, the high ceiling, and the carved woodwork.

  Then she remembered the previous night. Remembered coming here to Martine’s colleague’s apartment on Boulevard Auguste Blanqui. Tossing and turning all night.

  Her phone was buzzing.

  René’s number.

  “Delivery.”

  The apartment overlooked an L-shaped courtyard full of linden trees with their yellow-green flush of autumn coloring. Below, a watchmaker, one of the few left in the quartier, stood in his leather apron behind his shop, smoking.

  She opened the door to René and Maxence, who was carrying a large bag. Aimée smelled coffee and buttery brioches. René cleared space on the table.

  “Not bad,” said René, surveying the high-ceilinged nineteenth-century Haussmannian interior. “Martine’s friend’s an aristo?”

  “Journalist at Le Monde diplo, René,” she said.

  “So you’re watering the plants for une bobo with a trust fund.”

  “Did anyone follow you?” She tore a warm nub of a brioche, cupped her palm to catch flaking crust before it fell on her laptop. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.

  “We had the taxi circle the block twice,” said Maxence, “got out behind the garbage truck.” He crinkled his nose. “Fragrant, too.”

  “I hope you got everything I asked for,” she said.

  René nodded, opening the lid of a coffee cup. “Even the uniform, and don’t ask me how,” he said.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw René swallow a pill with his coffee. She felt a guilty pang. She’d been so caught up, so selfish, she’d forgotten about his appointment with the heart specialist, the one he’d
lied to her about.

  “What’s wrong, René?” she asked.

  “What’s wrong with what?”

  “I mean, why are you hiding your visit to the cardiologist?”

  Maxence looked up in surprise.

  “Since when is that your business?” Angry, René slapped down the coffee cup, spilling hot brown foam. He used his monogrammed handkerchief to swipe up the mess.

  “Since you’re my best friend,” she said, her eyes brimming. “And I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Chloé’s who you need to concentrate on. To keep safe.”

  “Answer my question, René.”

  “I’ll say it once. No more. Every few years my ticker acts up due to the rheumatic fever I had as a child. Medicine controls it.” He pulled out his laptop. “Now can we get to your wild-goose chase of a plan?”

  She and Maxence shared a look. Discussion closed.

  She had to focus, concentrate. Believe Chloé was safe.

  Trust. Trust her mother for now. Trust Melac.

  Otherwise she’d fall apart. Be no good to her daughter.

  Now for the plan she’d concocted with René. He clucked his tongue, shook his head.

  “Won’t know until I try,” she said.

  “Alors, tell me more about this Chopard ‘hiring’ you to bring him the notebook,” René said.

  “That vampire? Cut off his head, and he’d grow three more.” Her fingers drummed the table. “He says my . . . mother . . .” It still felt strange to say. “That he’s paying her off to keep Chloé as insurance.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” said René, handing her a telegram. “But this came from Melac.”

  Arrived safe.

  She sighed with relief.

  “I like Martine’s theory that she’s CIA,” said Maxence, occupied with hooking up the phone line and router. There was humming, intermittent beeps. Maxence set down sheets of paper covered by numbers and small red stars.

  What in the world?

  She watched as Maxence organized the sheets and taped them together. On his knees, he removed a bulky black-and-silver box that reminded her of an old radio transceiver from the bag. Maxence slid open the window facing the courtyard. Reached on his tiptoes in his scuffed Beatle boots and set an antenna in a flowerpot of red geraniums.

  “Voilà,” he said, coming back to the table. What a geek he was. And only eighteen. Like poor Marcus.

  “Tell me how it works,” Aimée said.

  Maxence swiped his bangs from his forehead. “I tapped the throwaway mobile. Used a base station emulator,” he said, his Québécois accent more pronounced in his earnestness.

  “A spirit catcher,” René chimed in.

  “They’re expensive,” Maxence said. “I borrowed my friend’s uncle’s. This spoofs the cell tower operations, so the flics can gather any private data they want without a warrant or you even knowing it . . .”

  “Aah, an IMSI-catcher,” Aimée said. “Do those ever work?”

  “If used correctly.” Maxence shrugged. “It pretends to be a legitimate base station on the mobile phone network and tricks the phone into routing its call via the base station emulator, where the data can be decrypted.”

  “Meanwhile, the IMSI-catcher passes the call on to the network, so the suspect has no idea they’re being monitored.” Maxence studied the sheets. “Given the time of the calls to the burner phone, the caller was . . .” He paused and superimposed a map of Paris on transparent tracing paper over the sheets. Drew a circle. “In the thirteenth arrondissement between the quai d’Austerlitz and the quai François Mauriac.”

  “Amazing. But that was yesterday,” she said. “Wouldn’t the caller keep switching phones?”

  “Bien sûr,” Maxence said. “But as long as you’re contacted on the same burner, the system works. It operates on the same principal, RDF—radio direction finding—that the Nazis used to find clandestine radio operators in Paris. That was passive, though—they could only listen. But base station emulators can manipulate.”

  The stuff this kid knew.

  “How does this get us closer to the notebook?” she asked.

  But Aimée never heard the answer. The burner phone delivered to her apartment the previous night rang. Maxence adjusted the antenna, nodded for her to answer.

  “Oui?”

  “The person you visited died last night,” said the robotic voice.

  “You mean Chopard?”

  “Naughty girl, installing a bug. But the deal remains the same.”

  Stupid. Last night no signal had ever been emitted—it had been found right away.

  Maxence motioned for her to keep talking.

  “Wait—” she started to say.

  The phone went dead.

  Maxence fiddled with the machine. “I’ve got to regraph and decipher coordinates.”

  How long would that take? An hour? Two? She didn’t have time to wait.

  She had to find the notebook. Where could she even begin looking?

  And then she saw a voice mail. It was from Gaëlle, Besson’s assistant. Why hadn’t she noticed it the night before?

  “Meet me at the office.”

  With Maxence busy with equations and René on their project, she jumped in the shower. Toweling off, she scanned Martine’s friend’s bursting armoire. The journalist favored vintage and classic, a woman after Aimée’s own heart. And size.

  Slipping into a man’s crisp white shirt and a vintage Ungaro black silk-lined pantsuit, she packed up what René had brought. Donned the chic trench. One her mother would approve of—silly how that bothered her.

  Two minutes later she was out the door.

  It was market day on Boulevard Auguste Blanqui. Shoppers with string bags bustled among booths of seasonal vegetables and the Reinette apples Chloé loved, just in season; a fishmonger shouted, “Moules by the kilo!” and the cheese seller’s apron was stained with runny yellow Brie. Aimée wove between crowded market stalls, alert in case she had a tail. Satisfied, for now, that no one was following her, she hurried up the two long blocks to Besson’s office on Boulevard Arago.

  When Aimée arrived, Gaëlle was in deep conversation with another partner, all allure and innocence, fawning on the partner until he’d disappeared into the next office and closed the door.

  She turned to Aimée, her black eyes hard and red lips tight.

  “Éric’s not coming back,” she said, almost spitting the words. “He’s left me to close up his office, transfer clients. But that’s not why I called you. There was a message for you on the office voice mail.”

  “A message?”

  “Marcus stashed the item.”

  She already knew that. “Where?”

  “She didn’t say. That was the whole message she left on the answering machine.”

  Aimée wanted to scream with frustration. It had been weeks—no doubt the notebook was long gone by now anyway. “Wait, she who?”

  “A girl.”

  What girl? “Karine?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t leave a name.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  A shrug. “I only heard the message last night.”

  Lili.

  “She had a little bit of an accent. She said the hiding place was mysterious, but she didn’t say where it was. She said, ‘Tell the detective,’ that you’d understand.”

  She would? She hadn’t even known Marcus or anything about him. What was she supposed to understand?

  “Do you still have the message?” Aimée asked. “Can I hear the exact words?”

  Gaëlle, efficient as always, found the message in no time and played it for Aimée.

  Lili’s voice: “Marcus stashed the item. Tell the detective the hiding place is mystic. She will understan
d.”

  “The hiding place is mystic,” Aimée repeated. “Not mysterious.” Could she mean Miss Tyk, the graffiti artist?

  Aimée would find out.

  “Marcus lived upstairs, correct?” she said. “I need the keys.”

  Gaëlle found them on an old-fashioned key ring. “No one’s touched the apartment since the flics, but I’m having movers come in today. Donating everything.”

  “What about his mother?”

  “I told you before she’s unstable. Et alors, that’s Éric’s job. After she was hospitalized, Marcus was alone. Éric tried to help him, but I wouldn’t call Éric father material. Or nominate him as a role model.”

  From her expression, it looked as if she knew from experience.

  Surprised, Aimée said, “What do you mean?” Éric had always seemed like the overachiever, detail oriented and conscientious.

  “This office looks impressive, non? But he’s leveraged his assets to the hilt.”

  Before Aimée could ask if that was related to the divorce, Gaëlle answered the ringing phone.

  The back servant’s stairs, narrow and winding, led to a converted attic room with a sloping ceiling and a mansard window overlooking rooftops. Faded, old-fashioned blue floral wallpaper; mismatched chairs; a mattress on the floor; dirty socks cluttering the duvet; posters on the walls; and a shelf of thin graphic novels—a typical adolescent boy’s room. Except the posters, she realized, were high-end prints by tag artists who showed in galleries. Expensive.

  Like the ones at Demy’s foundation award ceremony.

  She recognized one, a busty Parisienne in biker leathers—she’d seen others in the same vein painted on walls all over the quartier in Butte-aux-Cailles. Miss Tyk had a signature style, a black stenciled figure paired with a line of poésie or a pun.

  She punched in Demy’s number.

  “Aimée, is everything okay? Xavier has been asking about you.”

  Heat rose to her cheeks. She’d never gotten back to him about the wine tasting.

  “Busy, like always, working on your website,” she said, stretching the truth. “Off the top of your head, where are the Miss Tyk creations painted?”

  She jotted their locations down in her red Moleskine. On the opposite page was her grocery list, and tears welled in her eyes when she saw formula and diapers. How she missed Chloé.