by Cara Black
Aimée stared through the quadruple courtyards to the shiny lights of traffic on Boulevard de Sébastopol. Dirty grime-encrusted limestone balustrades didn’t hide the charm of the historic Hôtel Saint Chaumond, the ornately carved sculptural details or delicate sloping mansard roof and dormer windows. Once elegant, the classical facade was neglected and now nearly hidden under plastic shop signs. Clothing carts were parked in the adjoining cobbled courtyard, piggybacked against the wall like so many tired toys.
Aimée paused, catching her breath. These pitted cobblestones were murder on heels. Before her, a mahogany-faced man, perched against a cart, spoke Hindi into a cell phone as he consulted an order sheet. She wanted to join him and take a break but she had to make some plans. And needed a safe place in which to do so.
Mustering her energy, she entered the old converted building. The wire-cage lift’s door was padlocked shut, a stroller propped against the curved handrail. The sawing of the scales played on a violin reached her ears. By the time she arrived at the third étage her bag felt heavier than granite.
The cool expanse of hallway gave way to a series of double doors. Beyond them she saw a pair of carved wooden doors reaching from the tiled floor to the high ceiling.
She knocked. But the doors were so thick her knuckles made no sound. Then she saw a buzzer.
Etienne Mabry opened the door. His eyes widened. “Entrez.”
“Dinner ready yet?”
“Only if you’re the dessert,” he smiled, taking in her unusual outfit.
“I like to dress up.”
Aiming for a casual entrance, she stepped inside and promptly skidded on the waxed wooden floor.
He caught her elbow and grinned. “Talk about elusive. I thought you wouldn’t come and …”
“… now I’m early.”
He kissed her on both cheeks. His warm gaze lingered. He looked delicious in worn jeans and a faded Rolling Stones World Tour T-shirt.
Hooking his arm around her shoulder, he led her to a loft-like white room with high ceilings, sparse and clean. Antique black-and-gold lacquered Japonaise screens provided the only color. She pulled off the pink wig and fluffed up her hair. Her scalp felt damp.
“You look like you could use a drink. Kir royal?”
She nodded.“Merci.”
Silver-framed photos of small children and an elegant blond woman lined the white marble fireplace.
Of course, his wife was away. Or, worse yet, she’d be returning soon and he’d beg off dinner.
He followed her gaze. “My ex-wife and children. They live in Rouen. I see them on weekends.”
He handed her a flute of pinkish froth and sat beside her on the all-white couch.
“Salut.” They clinked glasses.
“How about you?”
Did she want to tell him how scared she felt, how at sea she was after Teynard’s murder, not to mention clueless about the alleged diamonds and her mother, who remained truly elusive?
“Me?” She felt nervous. Yet there was something so nice about him. Why couldn’t she relax? She took another sip of the kir.
What was wrong with her?
Here she was, in a tight vinyl PVC cat suit, throwing herself at him. Yet she was as afraid of intimacy as of Teynard’s killer.
“Involved with anyone?”
“Too busy.” Why did he have to sit so close? “You know me, work, sleep, and ride the Metro. I work too much. Like everybody else.”
Of course, right now she didn’t look like everybody else in her black vinyl and dog collar.
“How can I help you?” He touched her hair, ran his fingers down to her shoulder. “You’re full of contradictions, but that’s interesting. And I like you.”
“Feels like a relationship minefield to me,” she said. “At least right now.”
Etienne removed his hand from her shoulder, leaving a warm remaining patch.
“You’re like an alternating current,” he said. “Switching from hot to cold.”
So what if it was true … his words stung.
“What about your children and ex-wife? That’s more emotional baggage than I can handle.”
“Afraid of taking chances?” he asked. “Afraid of the work?” He shrugged, tracing his thumb down her cheekbone. His brownish red hair tumbled around his ears. A soft citrus smell came from his shirt. “What can I do? I’d like to try … but I guess you don’t want to.”
René and Martine would shoot her. Why wouldn’t she let herself go? Merde! Why did it have to be so difficult?
Her head swam. All she knew was that she felt she was in way over her head.
“Look, Etienne, I’m a disaster with relationships. Like Latin in the lycée, those ancient intricate verb tenses elude me. So do relationships. It’s some complicated thing I can watch but not duplicate.” She shook her head. What a loser she was. “Sorry for whining.”
“Making excuses is more like it,” he said. His citrus scent had transferred itself to her skin. Bad. But she didn’t want to rub it off.
And then she wondered if it mattered how she’d screw up this time … he certainly was walking in with his eyes open. Tiens, he was of age, a consenting adult.
“You’re a funny woman … wild and innocent all at once!”
Georges had described her mother like that.
She pushed his hair behind his ears and knew she was headed for trouble.
“Tempus fugit,” he mumbled in her ear.
“What does that mean?”
“Time flies … your first Latin lesson,” he breathed on her hair, pulling her close. “Not difficult, is it?”
Friday Evening
STEFAN STOOD IN THE shadowy courtyard outside Action-Réaction’s window. He’d seen Jules Bourdon case the building an hour ago, then go inside. Even after all these years, his moves were classic. The same. Should he confront Jules? Ask Jules why he had killed Jutta and Romain Figeac and tried to shoot him?
Grow up, he told himself. For once. Stand up. After all these years of hiding, now he was being hunted by the con man who had recruited him. The big talker, the mastermind of the disaster-ridden Laborde kidnapping.
Strange to say, the Brigade Criminelle and the gendarmes had been the ones who’d actually killed Laborde. He’d seen it in the papers later. All the gunshot wounds resulted from the police rifle attacks on the farm before they firebombed it.
Was Jules ransacking the office, looking for twenty-year-old loot? He couldn’t be that stupid. Especially if he’d survived as a mercenary in Africa. Jules had a cultivated nose for money. So he’d be sniffing after whatever he thought Beate and Jutta had hidden.
Silence. He peered in, his head up against the yellowed lace curtain. No one. A door was open. The door to the cellar.
Stefan crept inside the Action-Réaction office. Beams from a flashlight shone in the darkness below. He moved toward the cellar, then stopped. The wooden floor creaked behind him. A whiff of patchouli wafted in his direction. The scent from the commune. Ulrike’s scent.
He turned, saw the gun, and stiffened, his baffled look replaced by fear.
Friday Night
SOMETHING CHIRPED NEAR AIMÉE’S ear. Groggy, she reached out. Warm skin. Crisp sheets. She blinked in the darkness. Now she remembered where she was. And the glow she’d felt afterward. Still felt.
She reached for her cell phone and Etienne’s citrus scent rose from the skin of her hand. Too late. She’d missed the call but there was a voice message. Her Tintin watch said ten o’clock.
She rolled from the bed and tiptoed over the sisal rug, down the long hall, toward the kitchen. They’d never made it in here for dinner.
She was starving and thirsty. Where were her clothes? She found the cat suit in a heap on the floor, her bag and shoes under a chair. She’d check her messages, drink some water. Then get some for Etienne and crawl back in with him.
She couldn’t find a glass in the dim kitchen or drinking water, but did find a bottle of champagne. A nice, fro
sty Veuve Cliquot. Leaving it on the counter, she searched for glasses. She stumbled through café -style louvered swinging doors into a pantry.
The pantry counter was loaded with stacks of dishes, a polished silver coffee set, and an answering machine. She found glasses in a cupboard. Beside her, the machine clicked on without ringing. Odd. But she knew you could bypass ringing if you just wanted to leave a message.
“You’re late, Jules!” said a raspy voice.
She froze.
Jules? Jules Bourdon?
“The café off Place Ste-Foy. Bring Figeac’s son. And hurry …Nessim’s with me.”
Click.
Footsteps came from the kitchen. Was Christian here?
“Tonton?” asked Etienne. “Are you back?”
She was about to answer.
And she went rigid with fear. With a sickening certainty she realized who Etienne’s tonton, his uncle, was. Jules.
She crouched down in the dark pantry and put her finger on the erase button. A quick whoosh and the message was gone. She half-crouched below the swinging door.
She saw Etienne’s rumpled hair silhouetted against the backlit stove, the gleaming of the champagne bottle in his hand.
Had she misunderstood. Was she wrong—all wrong?
Ready to rush into his arms, she saw the barrel of a .357 reflected in the silver surface of the coffee pot.
Through the slats in the shutters, she saw him staring at her bare feet, the gun aimed right at her as he shoved the door open.
She slammed the door closed on his hand. He yelped, the gun flew away, and the champagne bottle clattered to the floor.
She rushed out.
“Salope!” he yelled, grabbing for the gun with his other hand.
She clubbed him with the champagne. A loud crack and he slid to the floor. She heard a yelp, then he grabbed her ankle. Twisted it. Pulling her off balance and slamming her into the cabinet.
She righted herself and kicked him hard in the head.
Panting, and terrified that Jules would return before she could find Christian, she grabbed dish towels and bound Etienne’s wrists and ankles with them. Then she stood back, wondering how she could have slept with him. But she had.
Another smart relationship choice! She pulled him to the laundry porch by the ankles, shoved him out there, and locked the door.
As she picked up the .357 she wondered if it had killed Jutta and Romain Figeac. She struggled into her PVC cat suit, and in the hallway found a red leather zip-up jacket. She pulled on the jacket, stuck the gun inside her leather backpack, and slipped into her shoes.
Then she went to look for Christian.
The long hallway led to a series of old offices, closed off by glass partitions.
A low moaning came from the fourth one.
She saw a needle in an aluminum kidney-shaped tray and Christian standing beside it. His eyes rolled up in his head and she was just in time to catch him before he fell to the floor.
Just her luck! They’d been giving him dope. Etienne had probably kept Christian here since she’d last seen him, the liar.
Christian was tall and heavy-boned for such a thin person.
“Don’t check out on me, Christian. Move. You have to walk.”
She hooked her arm under his and tried to help him. At the same time, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 18 for the paramedic-trained pompiers. “My friend’s OD’d, what do I do?” she asked.
“Keep him walking until we get there.”
She gave them the address.
“We’ll meet you on Boulevard de Sébastopol.”
She prayed Christian could hold out and that they’d make it to the street before Jules came looking for him. She made him walk.
He kept nodding out, his breathing stopping then slowly starting.
On the landing she paused and listened. She took the back stairs just in case. Narrow winding rusty ones. And all the while she kept talking to Christian, making him move his feet, and slapping him awake.
By the time the pompiers arrived, they’d made it to the boulevard and Christian’s eyelids were fluttering. The blue-suited crew took over, tying him down in their ambulance van and giving him a shot of Narcan, the junkie jaws of life. He struggled to sit upright and almost gave one of the crew a black eye.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Christian, you’re safe,” she said.
“We’ll stabilize him at the hospital,” the paramedic said, getting an IV going in Christian’s arm. The emergency van took off.
IN THE café’s tarnished wall mirrors, Aimée watched the two men, huddled in conversation. She didn’t know which was Nessim,
Michel’s uncle. She remembered what she and René had found out about his laundering of profits and false bankruptcies.
Where was Jules?
Too bad she couldn’t see their mouths well enough to read their lips. The heavyset one, wearing wire-framed glasses and with a tonsure of graying frizzy hair, drew with his finger on the table. The man across from him, completely bald, nodded his head from time to time.
A certain urgency permeated the late evening crowd, mostly habitues of the quartier. Conversation buzzed at the crowded zinc bar, while the miniskirted cashier with the beehive hairdo made change and shouted orders back to the kitchen through the dense haze of cigarette smoke.
A harried waiter leaned across her table. He whisked aside crumbs, wiped the marble top with a blue cloth.
“Un café noir,” Aimée said.
He cocked his head and disappeared.
Outside, in the narrow street, Aimée saw droplets of water fall on carts parked on the broken pavement. A fitful July rain danced and skirted the façades, teasing Parisians anxious for the arrival of a tepid August that still seemed too far off. Trucks blocked access to the small square.
She surveyed the small Bar Tabac. An Asian man, his cell phone on the table, took orders from a fabric catalog; two shop girls picked at an Auvergnat salad; an older blond hooker she’d seen on Saint Denis ate choucroute, part of the day’s Alsatian sausage special, and kept an eye on the racing results flashing on the télé perched above the bar.
Aimée realized the place stretched from one street to the other; the bar side fronted busy rue d’Aboukir while the restaurant tables opened to narrow rue Ste-Foy. The women, with their clients, disappeared into Passage Ste-Foy, a covered alleyway wedged between peeling buildings. And right across from her table. Perfect for a getaway, Aimée thought.
She watched the two men. Friar Tuck shook his head, pulled a notebook from his pocket, and wrote something. Aimée couldn’t see the other man’s reaction since the waiter had appeared with her café noir and blocked the mirror.
When she could see again, they’d stood up, their chairs scraping the linoleum, and were headed out the glass doors. Aimée took a gulp of espresso and threw some francs on the table.
They paused in front of the old stone portal of the passage by the Roseline sign. She couldn’t see their faces, only their black suit jackets beaded with rain and the frizzy-haired man’s fist pounding his palm. And then the other man violently shook his fist.
Aimée pulled the leather jacket’s collar up for protection against the rain and turned to study the café window. Men clustered in doorways, leaning on their hand trucks and smoking. She tried to appear nonchalant as rain beat down, avoiding a tall African woman in blue leather hot pants sashaying into the passage.
And then they were gone. One man walked toward the square and the other disappeared into the passage.
Whom should she follow?
The heavyset man took off down the street in a waiting black Peugeot.
She slipped into the graffiti-covered sandstone passage. A blackened crust of grime coated the damp walls. Drainpipes leaned crookedly, loose electric wires trailed from the ceiling. The passage opened to an unroofed area lined with green garbage bins, then forked toward some stairs, mounting to vestiges of the ancient ramparts.
/> On her left was an entrance to the crumbling, flaking stairway. A musty coldness hit her. The stairs sagged and creaked as she mounted them. She heard moans from behind doors, and over the passage roof came the whine of sewing machines.
From a coved window on the small landing she saw the man’s shiny bald dome in the apartment across the way. Instead of a light well where the buildings joined, there was open space. In medieval times, she imagined neighbors conversing with each other across the way or the king’s men leaning out and throttling their enemies.
The bald man turned. And before she could duck, he saw her staring at him. She moved aside.
Opposite her, a door opened. Inside the room, a man combed his stringy hair with his fingers before a cracked mirror. His false teeth on the cheap dresser caught the light.
“Adieu, chéri,” the pute said, tucking franc notes into the tiny pocket of her blue leather hot pants. She shut the door, showing no surprise at seeing Aimée on the landing.
“My horoscope today said quick and easy.” She rolled her eyes. “Not even slow and hard!”
Aimée controlled her shudder at the thought of the old man.
“Know him?” Aimée gestured across the window to the bald man. “Over there.”
“Not as a client but … ” the pute said, her voice trailing off.
Aimée hoped she invited a confidence. She folded a hundred-franc note and gingerly slipped it into the woman’s already stuffed pocket.
“As my landlord,” the woman continued, as if there’d been no pause. “The salaud’s raising our rent and won’t even fix the hall lights. At night, with my johns, I have to use a flashlight.”
“His name?”
“You a flic?”
It was Aimée’s turn to roll her eyes. “Would I hunt small fry like this?”
“Didn’t think so, but then you could be some new type of undercover,” the woman said.
“People hire me,” Aimée said. “Kind of like you. Every job isn’t picture-perfect or smooth sailing but it keeps my interest.” She smiled. “I get bored easily.”
“You mounting a sting?”
He must be a bigger fish than she thought.