Murder in Passy

by Cara Black

  “Xavierre’s murderer’s my priority,” she said. “Irati almost let something slip. Call it instinct, but I know it links to Euskadi Action, the separatist Basques.”

  “And I have a bad feeling, Aimée.”

  She had to reassure René. “Listen, I called in a favor so patrols are on the alert for that Mercedes.”

  René said, “With a high-end car like that, they change the plates. That’s the first thing they do.”

  “You sound well informed.” Aimée’s finger ran over the calcium deposits streaking in her water glass. A wind rose, like a sigh, shivering the yellow and brown leaves.

  “I should.” He sounded miffed. “My car’s been stolen two times.”

  She heard clicking in the background. “I’m on a break at the symposium. Lots of interest in the security proposal you finished for me last night. Two potential clients already.”

  How could she have forgotten the two-day Data Encryption symposium René was participating in at La Villette?

  “Brilliant, René.”

  “Of course, you’re monitoring the data sniffer feed,” he said. “You know, working?”

  She’d set alerts, customized the feed, and prepared it to continuously download to her laptop. Automatic, but René didn’t know.

  “Of course.”

  Pause.

  “Why do I think you’re keeping something back, Aimée?”

  She couldn’t get him more involved. More compromised. And she couldn’t tell him that, or he’d protest.

  “I’ll finish the report. You concentrate on the symposium. Those potential clients.” She picked up her bag and buttoned her coat, wondering if Irati had taken the long route instead of the closest.

  “The juge d’instruction’s mentioned here, a Lucard,” René said. “His reputation’s solid. Distinguished record. Trust him to get the truth,” René said. “Now I wish I hadn’t told you.”

  Trust the system? The flics? René hadn’t grown up with them like she had.

  “Didn’t you insist on driving me to Xavierre’s, René? Saying you’re Morbier’s friend too?”

  “And I’m not?” René inhaled. “This makes me sick. I don’t understand what’s going on or why. But what if your interference backfires—on him?” René hesitated. “Or on you?”

  She shuddered, remembering Melac’s fingers tracing her cheekbone.

  “Right now, that worry is at the bottom of the list, René. Talk to you later.”

  The espresso machine grumbled in the background. The white-aproned waiter set down Aimée’s change on the round marble table.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve seen my friend?” She gave a little sigh. “I could swear she meant this café. Petite, long dark brown coat, carrying a Printemps shopping bag, shoulder-length black hair, early twenties?”

  The waiter jerked his thumb toward the zinc counter. “Just them.”

  A group of men wearing blue work jackets with the EAU DE PARIS water company logo on the back stood at the counter drinking beers with a chaser of red wine.

  “Le quotidien, their daily dose, same time every day.” The waiter spread his hands. Not good tippers, she figured. “Seems like there are always more of them.”

  He wiped a towel over the table. Paused. Gray-haired, sturdy black shoes with rolled-up toes that spoke of wear. Bad feet? But the talkative type, old school, proud of his métier, she could tell.

  “Nice that they keep your gutters sparkling clean,” she said to the waiter, cocking her head toward the workmen, her gaze still scanning the pavement.

  “Not the gutters.” He shrugged. “We’ve got the most picturesque reservoir in la ville.”

  “Here?” Aimée asked, engaging his conversation, darting her eyes over pavement. “Not the one in Belleville?”

  He shrugged. “Passy reservoir’s a well-kept secret. Caché, hidden above ground, too.”

  Sounded familiar. Had she learned that in school?

  “It’s like a private pool with a view of the Eiffel Tower, like going on a holiday.” He re-wiped the table with a towel. “The Carlingue liked the view.”

  Carlingue, a phrase she hadn’t heard since her grandfather’s day. Most referred to them as Gestapistes, the French auxiliary of the Gestapo. Run by Lafont, the convicted criminal, and Bonny, the former policeman. Her eyes widened.

  He caught her look. “So much so,” he continued, “that they reserved the tunnels under the reservoir for torture chambers. Convenient, right across from their offices.”

  “Offices? You mean rue Lauriston?”

  He nodded.

  Madame de Boucher’s account of her brother came back to her. Even today, rue Lauriston meant one thing.

  “The right address on the wrong side of history.”

  A philosopher too, this waiter.

  Just the street name sent shivers up the older generation’s spine. Few talked about it or about French collaboration. Few had survived.

  * * *

  AFTER TWENTY MORE minutes in the café, Aimée returned to the Marché Saint-Didier. Irati’s Mercedes windshield held a parking ticket. From the corner of her eye she saw four men sitting in the Renault, the gray Renault she’d seen before.

  She took clear black-framed glasses from her bag, put on a wool cap, pushed her scooter down the street, and knocked on the car window.

  “Pardonnez-moi, messieurs,” she said, affecting a singsong Breton accent.

  The man in the passenger seat ignored her. Most Parisians regarded Bretons as crêpe-eating provincials, seacoast simpletons.

  She knocked again, put her face to the window, and pointed to her tire. “Don’t mean to bother you.”

  The window rolled down. “Oui?” A curt voice.

  “My tire’s leaking air. Don’t suppose you noticed a garage nearby?” She gave a vacuous smile. Blinked, but not before she’d scanned the interior hi-tech radio and computer console visible under a jacket on a seat. “I’m new in the quartier.”

  “New, eh? Me too, Mam’selle.” The one in the passenger seat, tan and muscular, started to roll up the window.

  “I’m lost, too,” she said. “Can’t find Avenue Foch.”

  “Back there,” he said, eager to get rid of her. “Past the roundabout.”

  “You mean over there?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re a domestique, non?” She shrugged. “My madame doesn’t like it when I’m late for work.”

  Since the turn of the century, Bretons had immigrated to Paris, settling near Montparnasse, the station where they arrived. Many worked as housemaids in the 16th. Like Bécassine, in the comics her grandmother had read to her. Bécassine was always depicted as a bumbling Breton maid without a mouth, in clogs, who stumbled on adventures.

  She’d seen enough. “Merci.” Waved, then walked her scooter, noting the Renault’s license plate number. Undercover special forces were noted for driving late-model Renaults. The high-tech console in the car could spell GIGN, Groupement d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, the well-funded elite military unit of the Gendarmerie. Or RAID, Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion, the police version of the assault unit. They were in competition with each other.

  Interesting. Why was a terrorist special elite force—whichever one they were—following Irati unless she was involved with Euskadi Action? Time to find out what the hell Irati was up to.

  * * *

  AT LEAST SHE was one up on the watchers. Her scooter’s wheels crunched over piled leaves. She punched in Léo’s number.

  “She got away, Léo,” she said. “Any more activity on her phone?”

  “Time’s up. I’m booked solid on a project, Aimée,” Léo said. “You’re not the only one I’m helping. Right now my paying clients take priority.”

  “And I appreciate it. Morbier’s—”

  “Par for the 16th, eh?” Léo interrupted, disgust in her voice. “Born with pearls up their backsides.”

  Little rankled the Parisian in a cramped apartment more
than the 16th arrondissement’s wide leafy boulevards and huge apartments with rents higher than the Eiffel Tower. Or the conservative trappings of the old-moneyed inhabitants.

  “Bet she wears a quilted Chanel headband, too. Typical.”

  Something had ruffled Léo’s proletariat feathers. “Hold on. What’s bothering you, Léo?”

  “Partying so soon after her mother’s murder! Should I be feeling sorry for this Irati?”

  “Party?” The murky outlines emerged, then cleared. “Do you mean the reception tonight at the Marmottan museum?”

  A sigh. “I only did this for Morbier, you understand?”

  “Me too, Léo.”

  * * *

  AIMÉE’S MIND REELED as she wove the scooter between vehicles on rue de Passy. Special-forces involvement pointed to terrorists, extremists like Euskadi Action.

  No doubt if Irati’s meeting at the market had been aborted, the fallback was at the Basque Spanish Marmottan reception tonight.

  At Xavierre’s house on rue Raynouard, her repeated buzzing elicited no answer. Nor were her calls on the house phone answered. She stepped back, looked over the wall, and saw the shuttered windows.

  No luck here. She glanced at her Tintin watch. The Marmot-tan reception would begin soon.

  Her unease heightened. With Morbier in the garde à vue, Irati and her fiancé blaming Morbier didn’t look good. If Irati knew something, wouldn’t it make sense to tell the flics? Why shield her mother’s murderer?

  Again her mind went back to René’s words. Protecting one you loved would make you lie.

  She powered her cell phone back on. One message from a blocked number. She hit LISTEN. Only a rustling, low cough, a hang up.

  Morbier? She’d missed him, couldn’t call back. Stupid.

  She buttoned her coat against the rising wind. A taste of moisture settled the air. Like the orage in the south when hot Mediterranean currents hit humidity from the Atlantic. A storm was brewing.

  Her phone trilled. She answered on the first ring.

  “Meet me,” said Agustino, his voice terse. “Twenty minutes, Jardin du Ranelagh.”

  Surprised, she cupped her phone closer to her ear. A change of heart? Guilt? she wondered.

  “I’ll make it in ten,” she said, reaching for her scooter key. “You know who murdered Xavierre?”

  “No flics,” he said. “Can I trust you?”

  A frisson went up her spine.

  “Count on it. But wait, Agustino. You know who—”

  “The documents, Xavierre, it’s all linked,” he interrupted. “They’ll stop the accord. Wait for me.”

  “What documents? What do you mean?”

  “Not now.” He hung up.

  She angled her bag over her shoulder, revved her scooter, and took off.

  * * *

  SHE SAT ON the green slatted benches, her coat pulled tight around her, in the Jardin du Ranelagh near the pony stand. Despite the wind, bundled-up toddlers escorted by designer-clad governesses took pony rides led by a red-cheeked old man. A fur-coated grandmother or two watched from the sidelines. Another world, Aimée thought. The pampered upper middle class. Balzac’s refuge had yielded to old-fashioned refinement for the protected few with a leavening of commerçants, workers, and boutiques.

  Too bourgeois for her.

  Mansions, all equipped with surveillance cameras, studded Avenue du Ranelagh. Nestled in the ivy-covered walls, their frames poked out from above the intercoms. So the rich protected themselves. Nothing new. Behind her lay the Musée Marmottan, a belle époque mansion housing the Monet collection donated by his family. The clouds had parted; late-afternoon light hit the ornate metal scrollwork above the doors.

  Agustino’s terse words nagged at her. What did he mean by documents? Why didn’t he hurry up?

  The ponies circled a worn dirt path. Their snorting breaths misted in the air. Aimée turned around and stared at the museum’s limestone façade and tall windows, the cameras trained on the low, blue grilled fence. This was the site of the Basque accords announcement reception to be held in an hour.

  Twenty minutes became forty. No Agustino. Unease prickled from her black-stockinged calves to her scarved neck.

  She pulled out her LeClerc compact, touched up her face, and angled the mirror to reflect the Marmottan’s façade: only surveillance cameras and the blue grille fence.

  Was Agustino hovering somewhere, afraid she’d alerted the flics? Or had his courage deserted him? Tension knotted her stomach.

  She’d give him another ten minutes before going to the entrance around the corner. She applied Chanel red to her lips and stood. After a few steps, she paused and scanned the park. Twilight had long since dusted the limestone mansions facing the square; sunset’s orange ribbon faded from the Marmottan museum’s slanted rooftops. The pony stand stood shut and dark in the park opposite.

  More than an hour now. And she’d be late to meet Martine. Maybe he’d entered already? Brown leaves scattered over the toffee-colored gravel.

  She turned the corner. Light glimmered in the Marmottan’s upper floors, framing the ground floor ablaze with lights. She imagined a gauntlet of security and a guest list check-in. No doubt a formal receiving line inside the reception.

  But instead of Euskadi Action protestors, valets stepped forward to open the doors of limos depositing evening-gowned and tuxedoed guests. She saw Martine’s blond head, visible beyond the tall doors. A clap of thunder, the first sprinkles of rain, and she ran inside.

  Wednesday Early Evening

  “ENCORE, MADEMOISELLE?”

  Maria, Princesse de Villargoza, fifteenth in line to the Spanish throne if her aunt, the Infanta, renounced the succession, shook her head.

  “Non, merci.” Maria smiled at the balding thirty-something man at the resto’s bar. Too old. “Dinner reservations.”

  The man set the empty wine glass onto the gleaming bar, stood, and left for the lounge. No fun, that one, Maria thought. She caught her reflection in the gold-framed mirror and adjusted her spaghetti shoulder strap.

  Maria sipped her white wine and winked at the barman, who was tall and muscular under his black vest. He ignored her. Pretentious, the place a crashing bore, she thought. No way to treat royalty, even, as her father reminded her, one with obligations. At home in Madrid, the bouncers recognized her, ushered her past the club line, undid the velvet rope. There were five trendier places no farther than a finger touch on her speed dial where her ID wasn’t questioned or even looked at.

  Snobisme, typical, as her friend would say. And where was she? Stupid to insist on meeting here. Weren’t they going clubbing? As a Madrileña, her first rule was to avoid places such as this with the fossilized upper crust. Five more minutes, that’s all, then she’d leave. The ceiling of the cavernous room swayed a bit, an old train station converted into a “chic” resto. More like dead space, as hip as her toenail and full of bland couples oozing self-importance.

  Like the ambassador and his wife. So eager to present her at one of their rallyes—the interminable parties where old money and the titled ensured that their offspring and their money stayed together. Rallyes organized by mothers with lists of eligible bachelors of the same class; cinq à neuf for the young, six à minuit the teens, and then le bat as they got older. Four or five years of parties within the same milieu. She hated it, had refused to take part any more this year.

  No one would know where she was after begging off from the reception. Another yawn-stifling affair. Escape and enjoy freedom for a few short hours. Maria’s silver-buckled Birkin bag tumbled off the adjoining stool as she reached for a cigarette. One drink too many?

  “I’d hang on to this if I were you.”

  In the dim bar, lit by butterfly-like halogen lights, a man on a nearby stool set the bag in her lap. “Wouldn’t want it to get ideas.”

  Not bad, this mec. All in black, tall and not that old. He gestured to the glass-roofed ceiling. A startled wren fluttered high up.

&
nbsp; “They like sparkling things.”

  “And I’m not?”

  He gave a little grin. Glanced at his watch. “Not your kind of place, I’d say. Or mine either.”

  “Going to a club, but my friend’s late.” She flicked her lighter, inhaled, watching him from the corner of her eye. Definite pos sibility, this one.

  “Rouge-Bleu?”

  She shrugged. “Her call. I don’t know.”

  “Hot. The only place. She’ll know it.” He checked his phone. “The valet brought my car. First stop for me, then the rave later. See you there?”

  Rave? Her friend was half an hour late. What if she didn’t show up? She’d face a grilling from the ambassador’s wife, recriminations over preparations for tomorrow’s official duties. It sickened her half the time; the rest of the time it scared her. The endless round of charity functions at retirement homes with drooling seniors bent with age. So many vacant-faced old people with translucent paper-thin skin. The helpless feeling at the sadness and old-people smell trailing in their hobbled wake.

  “Let me ask her.” She hit her speed dial. Just voicemail.

  Irritated, she twirled a wisp of her black hair, spoke into the phone, and left a message, crossing her fishnet-clad legs. Thank god she’d changed from her “uniform” of the pastel pink wool suit to the black chemise-like mini.

  “Mind giving me a ride?”

  She smiled, knowing she looked older than eighteen, but figuring this mec could smooth his way past any bouncer anyway.

  “Finish your drink,” he said. “Won’t your friend come here?”

  She drained her glass. “I’ve taken care of that. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  MARIA LIKED ROUGE-BLEU: packed, celebrity-studded, crowded red sofas, filtered blue rays of light, the signature red-and-blue sapphire vodka cocktail fizzing with raspberries. A throbbing techno DJ mix. But the walls sagged and the lights blended now; sweat dotted her brow on the dance floor. The heat, the bending, twisting floor. She grabbed him. Lucas … wasn’t that his name? But a girl shook her hands off, laughed, and danced away. Where had he gone?