by Cara Black
Here was the tipping point.
“Why, here . . . that’s the staff exit.” He lied for the first time. It would be his word against the street cleaner’s. With luck, other security workers in the quartier would have gotten off at that time, he wouldn’t necessarily be the only one in a jumpsuit. Or he could argue that . . . the man had made a mistake.
“This door’s closest if you’re going to the Metro,” Florand said, pointing to the door on rue de Paradis and leaning forward. “But you live only a stop away. Isn’t walking faster for you?”
“Not if I’m tired. That short ride makes the difference.”
“But wouldn’t the incident raise your professional interest, so to speak? Weren’t you curious?”
“I reported the attack, that’s my duty. I didn’t feel well.”
“Describe this woman for me again.”
“A tall black-robed figure.”
“Would you say tall for a woman?”
He nodded.
“And the face?”
Vatel shook his head.
“But you’re the only one who saw her, Monsieur Vatel. How do you explain that?”
“Look, I did my duty. I reported it. You mean she got away?”
Florand pulled out a photo. The mec with the slit throat. And again it all came back.
“Do you recognize this man?”
Vatel kept his voice calm. “I don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you see him in the doorway down the street?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Look at his orange pants . . . didn’t you see these, that flash of color?”
Vatel battled his confusion. Coughed. “It’s all in the report I called in.”
“Think, Monsieur.”
Static crackled from the police receiver clipped to Florand’s collar. “Unit 813, backup needed.”
Florand leaned forward, his eyes on Vatel, and spoke into the receiver. “Copy.” That seemed to be the end of the radio conversation.
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing, I’m not sure. It’s terrible, but why show me this . . . what does it have to do with anything?”
Florand uncrossed his feet; the chair scraped back.
“This victim was found where you reported seeing the woman.” Florand closed his notebook. “Had you seen that black-robed figure before?”
“Many women wear chadors in the quartier.”
You recognized the mark on the man’s neck, didn’t you, “Vatel?”
Vatel drew back.
“You saw the body and ran away in fear because you recognized the mark on the neck.”
“Look . . . I . . .” Vatel stammered.
“It’s distinctive. It reminded you, didn’t it?”
He was bluffing, Florand didn’t know. No outsider knew.
“Reminded me? Look I’m not a part of anything like—”
“The terrorist iKK who go under the guise of the Kurdish Workers Party?” Florand finished for him. “I can pull your papers, deny your carte de séjour. That’s just the beginning, Monsieur.”
Vatel flinched. This Florand was too close to the mark. No Kurd talked to the authorities. And if they did, they didn’t live long.
“But I’ve done nothing wrong. I reported an attack. You’re just targeting the Kurds, as usual. Where’s the proof?”
“Well, here’s your opportunity”—Florand’s chair scraped across the floor—“to prove me wrong. I need an ear in the quartier.”
Vatel backed up in his chair, his T-shirt drenched. “I live a quiet life, don’t mix with anyone, keep to myself.”
“We know. Your dossier’s specific on that.”
The hair stood up on Vatel’s neck.
“I suggest it’s time to change, Vatel, to broaden your ‘social horizons.’ To get out more.”
“You want me to inform?”
Florand pulled a cell phone from his pocket and set it on the table. “My number’s programmed on your new phone. If you’d like to continue working and have your carte de séjour renewed, Vatel, do you have a choice?”
Tuesday Night
AIMÉE CLUTCHED THE creased Printemps shopping bag to her chest as she joined Langois on the quai. He stood by the metal arched bridge in a pool of yellow streetlight. The laughter of a couple, walking arm in arm, echoed from the opposite bank.
“Did you shop in the Commissariat?”
“These belong to Yves.”
Langois averted his deepset eyes. Scared, or apprehensive? She couldn’t tell.
“Tell me if there’s anything you recognize.”
“You lied to obtain that, didn’t you, Aimée?”
“Stretched the truth, more like it.” She stared at him. “But why does it bother you?”
“You’re dealing with big guys like Rouffillac. He used words like jurisdiction, evidence-tampering . . . he’s playing on his home field, he knows the rules.”
“Big guys like him don’t play by the rules, trust me. Don’t you want to know what happened to Yves?”
He nodded.
“Rouffillac’s more concerned with Metro bombings and terrorism. He didn’t know about Romeo, hadn’t even questioned anyone at Agence France-Presse. I’m not waiting until he catches up.”
A nagging suspicion deepened. Langois, someone so obvious . . . had he made up a story? Had he killed Yves?
“Or maybe there’s a reason you didn’t talk to him before?”
“My fault,” he said. “You’re going to blame me, right?” He gestured, his hands slicing the air. “But I only worked with Yves for three weeks. My first field assignment. Yves taught me the ropes. Told me to follow his lead and keep my mouth closed; I’d get better pictures that way.” Langois wiped his brow. “I should have urged him to coordinate with AFP instead of playing the lone wolf.” He expelled a long breath of air. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was in awe of him. And you’re right. I should have insisted.”
Guilty. But a little too late. He seemed like a kid who was in over his head.
She looked in the sack, took the plastic bag labeled “Morgue,” and opened it. There was a typed sheet listing clothing: a bloody yellow World Cup T-shirt, blood-spattered orange pants, boxers, scuffed Adidas had been forwarded to the lab at Brigade Criminelle. Other than that, it held his worn brown wallet and the cell phone recovered from the suspect Renaud Vorner, aka Romeo Void. Yves’s cell phone battery was dead. The ache of disappointment filled her.
“No briefcase, no laptop.”
“Yves used Internet cafés in cities to file his stories,” he said. “But most of the time we were in the countryside. In the devastated villages, they had no electricity, not even a generator.”
In the wallet, she found only an expired phone card. The rest of the contents, she figured, had been cleaned out by Romeo the junkie. Dumped in the garbage. Gone.
She stroked the wallet, then slid her hand inside again. Empty. Nothing else. What had she expected to find . . . the murderer’s name?
She put the wallet back inside the sack. She checked the bag itself, but found nothing else.
She pulled out the wallet again, searched each compartment, felt each seam and then felt a loose one behind the billfold compartment. She pried the fabric back and found a scrap of paper. With her fingernails, she pulled it out. A scrap torn from the lining of a La Perruche brown sugar-cube box. On one side of it were yellow and green parrots. She turned it over and in the streetlight saw writing in unfamiliar script with dots over the letters. Her heart skipped. She held it up to Langois.
“Recognize this language?”
Langois stared, then pointed to one of the words. “Kadeski, that’s Turkish for street. But the rest I don’t understand.”
A scrap of paper in Turkish in Yves’s wallet?
“What do you think it means, Langois?”
“I don’t know.” He drummed his hands on the bridge’s metal railings.
Battling tears, she said, “What haven’t you told m
e?”
“When I came out of the bathroom in the loft,” he said, “I overheard Yves talking about some network.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She thought of “the insidious network” Yves had circled in the newspaper.
“A vague mention of a network? It could mean anything. You know that. Besides, Aimée . . .” he said, drawing his words out, “. . . Yves wouldn’t want you to get involved.”
“Involved? A little late for that now.”
“That came out wrong, sorry,” he said. “I mean he cared for you; the last thing he’d want would be for you to be in danger.”
First René, now Langois!
“It’s a guy thing, right? Women can’t handle this.”
Langois shook his head. “You don’t need to prove you’re tough to me, Aimée.”
For a moment, she wondered if she was too hard on him.
“He worked on exposés: political corruption, scandal, government ties with industry. You know that, he was an investigative journalist. But without his contact, he said he didn’t know who to avoid.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“From the way Yves acted, it was as if . . .” Langois paused.
She wanted to wrench the words from his mouth. “Go on.”
“He needed another piece, proof . . . but I’m guessing. The AFP meeting earlier tonight was to tell if the ducks lined up, that’s what he said.”
She folded the shopping bag, putting it inside hers. And then it stared her in the face.
“But I think the ducks have lined up,” she said, and looked at the paper in her fist.
She knew who would help her figure out how.
“Where can I drop you, Gerard?”
Tuesday Night
“PAUL, REMEMBER TI N T I N ’ S dog Snowy . . .” Nadira paused on page 18 of Tintin and the Sceptre d’Otakar. Paul’s little sleepy breaths answered her. He was asleep at last! His blond curls were half under the duvet; his arm clutched his doudou, a stuffed bear with a missing eye.
She stifled a yawn and switched off the lamp. The blue room was painted with murals of Babar. It was a huge room for one child. In the Tehran orphanage, thirty of them had slept on the floor in a room half this size.
On the landing, a seam of light came from under Madame Delbard’s bedroom door.
“Nadira?”
Caught, Nadira turned and smiled. Madame Delbard stood there, a robe over her cream peignoir, emitting the perfumed odor of La Prairie night cream. Madame spent more on face cream than she paid Nadira in six months. Yet it didn’t diminish Madame’s apparent age or the effects of butter and cream. Like all Western women, a soft, wasted life, Nadira thought, without prayer or purpose.
“Oui, Madame,” she said. “Paul just fell asleep.”
“You’re a jewel, Nadira,” she said.
Monsieur Delbard, she figured, hadn’t returned and Madame was waiting up for him. Like she did every night. Nadira’s eye fell on the empty open pill bottles on the dresser. And for a moment Nadira pitied this privileged woman with a straying husband.
Inside Madame’s high-ceilinged peach-walled room, the late news flickered on the télé.
“Would you mind dropping my dress off at the dry cleaners tomorrow?” Madame said, a slight slur to her words.
“Oui, Madame.” Nadira gave her a tight smile. On the télé, in the background, a uniformed CRS riot squad patrolled a Metro station.
Madame handed Nadira a blue dress on a hanger. “Attendez s’il vous plait, since you’re going, my black suit’s got a spot, too.” Madame turned toward her armoire.
“In other news,” the announcer said, “this afternoon Jalenka Malat, the first Kurdish member of Turkish parliament, visited a suburban infant créche serving Kurd asylum seekers.”
The muscles of Nadira’s neck tightened. Her target.
She saw a reddish-brown-haired short woman leaning over a crib. “Madame Malat, a Sorbonne graduate,” the announcer continued, “thanked the French government for the generous subsidies making this possible. . . .”
“Don’t forget Paul’s playdate tomorrow, Nadira,” Madame said, handing her another hanger.
“Pardon, Madame?”
“It’s on the calendar,” she said, slightly irritated.
Nadira summoned another smile. “But you’ve forgotten, Madame. Wednesday’s my day off.”
“Desolée, Nadira, I had to change it,” Madame Delbard said, unruffled. “Didn’t you notice? I wrote it in yesterday.”
Madame couldn’t change things when she pleased. Nadira’s mission depended on Wednesday being her free day. She clutched the hangers. “Madame, I’m sorry but I made a doctor’s appointment.”
For once Madame could ferry her son to a playdate herself.
“But you must reschedule it, Nadira,” she said, yawning. “Monsieur and I have an afternoon reception in Neuilly, followed by dinner.”
Nadira bit back her frustration. “Madame, my apppoint-ment—”
“Your days off are subject to change, Nadira. It’s in your contract. Sleep well.” Madame shut her door.
The cook could take Paul . . . then Nadira remembered, Wednesday was her day off too. She’d ask Carla from the playgroup, she’d done the same favor for her. But she recalled Carla saying they were leaving en vacances. Stymied, Nadira climbed the stairs to her small attic chamber.
She washed her feet in the small basin in her room, covered her head, and pulled out her prayer mat. Then she prayed to overcome her shortcomings, her apprehensiveness after seeing this woman on the télé. And then her mind cleared and the way unfolded to her. She’d take Paul. She’d use the stroller to hide the rifle. A perfect cover.
Tuesday Night
AIMÉE SHIFTED INTO neutral and scanned the sloping street of neo-Classical white stone façades which gave little clue to the elegant townhouses and courtyards behind them. In this upscale slice of the quartier, few saw what lay behind the arched wooden doors. “Nice quartier, Gerard. Which way?”
“Make a right, then pull into Number 58.”
She pulled into the courtyard of a Directoire style 18th-century hôtel particulier. The entryway was wide enough for a coach and horses. The Citroën made it with centimeters to spare.
“You didn’t tell me you’re a rich kid.”
“I wish,” Langois said. “Just a good friend of the owner’s son. His family gives tours and capitalized on the fact that Napoleon’s legation secretary lived here. Aristos have a lot of upkeep, you know. There’s a loose connection to Balzac and a printing press in the backyard. He was hopeless with money, but at least his mentor, Madame de Berny, turned it into a prosperous venture.”
Langois’s hand paused on the door handle.
“I believe Berto,” Langois said. “I doubt that he’d make that Turkish man up.”
She agreed. “But the hard part is how do I find him?”
It would be like looking for one pebble on the quai. She didn’t know where to turn. And then she grew aware of a stricken look on Langois’s face.
“What’s the matter?”
“I shouldn’t do this.” He reached in his bag and extracted a coffee-stained file folder. “If you breathe a word, I’ll get in trouble.”
She leaned forward, the steering wheel pressing against her ribs. “In trouble over what?”
“It’s Yves’s draft of his article on the Kurds,” he said. “We were supposed to work on it tonight. I needed his text for the accompanying photos.”
Her hand trembled. Small brown demitasse cup rings patterned the blue cover. Yves’s coffee rings.
“But why didn’t you tell me this before, Gerard?”
“By law, it belongs to Agence France-Presse. You know, intellectual property rights; they drill all that into us before we sign a contract.”
“No problem. May I read it?” She wanted to grab it out of his hands.
“It’s my only copy,” he said. “Can I trust you to return it tomor
row?”
For a type who followed the rules, Langois was taking a big chance on her.
“Of course.” She reached out and he handed her the much-thumbed file folder. “I appreciate your trust in me. I won’t let you down, Gerard.”
She gave him her number and wrote down his. “Call me if you think of anything.”
“Read Yves’s draft. It should give you the background. Like I said, he got tight with iKK radicals, the ones labeled by the Turkish military and everyone else as terrorists. But one night Yves argued that they were just what we’d term ‘activists’ here, protesting against a repressive regime.”
She nodded. Now she had something to go on. She’d have to study it later. As she drove out of the courtyard, Langois waved and closed the massive dark-green doors.
She gunned up the deserted rue d’Hauteville, tired and needing more Doliprane. Yet she couldn’t rest until she checked out that paper from Yves’s wallet. She knew only one person to ask: a passing acquaintance, but she had to try.
She turned back on rue de Paradis, made a left, then parked. By the time she pressed the concierge’s buzzer, chills racked her. She prayed he’d be up. She waited. In the dark street, a cat meowed from a doorway.
She heard the smaller door that was cut into the massive green entry creak open.
“Oui?” The Turkish concierge, Mehmet, to whom she’d spoken last night as he was sweeping the Microimages courtyard, stood there, worry beads clicking in his hand.
“Pardon, Monsieur, I consult with Michel at Microimages. You remember me?”
He blinked sleep-blurred eyes. “There’s a problem? Michel said nothing.”
“No problem. May I ask a favor?” She held up the sugar wrapper.
“I need my glasses . . . come inside.”
She edged over the lip of the door frame into the dark portico and followed him inside the concierge’s lodge.
On the wall, a framed black-and-white photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stood above a tattered, much-fingered map of the quartier and a calendar with a nearby butcher’s address.
“Forgive me; it’s late, but. . . .”
“Sit down, Mademoiselle,” he said, shuffling over to a single burner by the lace-curtained window overlooking the courtyard. The walls of brown wood patinaed by the years and the ’50s floral wallpaper had seen better days. From the adjoining small room, she heard what sounded like a Turkish video.