Murder in Clichy

by Cara Black

  If people were watching Linh, and they had shot Baret . . . soon they’d be after her. If they weren’t already.

  She reached into the backpack to see what else was inside. What someone had tried to grab, what Thadée had been killed for. She loosened the buckles and lifted out several burnished silk-enfolded objects. She carefully unwrapped them and gasped. Jade animal figures. She took them out, one by one, and set them down on the stainless steel examining table. They looked like the animals of the zodiac she’d seen on the poster at the Cao Dai temple. The jade was intricately carved, and its opaque green milkiness radiated in the light. Exquisite. Eleven figurines, each no bigger than her palm.

  Guy’s office phone rang again. “Hold on, Aimée,” he said from the hallway. “Let me take this call.”

  Aimée stared at the jade pieces. Even to her untrained eye, they seemed to belong in a museum. Small, slender jade disks crowned each figure, except for two which showed old breaks.

  She fingered the smaller of the two loose jade disks. Worn lines, just visible, were carved into the jade. A kind of hexagram? She peered closer, realized the lines formed a primitive dragon.

  She re-counted. Eleven zodiac figures: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. Weren’t there twelve zodiac signs? One was missing. The Dragon.

  There was no way she was going to carry these treasures on the Métro to her office. She had to stow them somewhere safe, until tomorrow. Somewhere no one would think to look.

  The moonlight suffused and softened the hard lines of the examining room. Surely they’d be safe here overnight. She could nip into the office early and tell Marie she’d forgotten something. Meet Linh outside, and deliver the backpack, with its contents, to her.

  She opened the doors of white office cabinets filled with boxes of gloves, disposable syringes, and Steri-strips. Guy’s office staff must stock them regularly. She opened the cabinet under the small sink. Flush with its side was a piece of white particle board, perhaps intended to be installed as a shelf. She removed the containers of bacterial soap, stuck the backpack inside, fitted the particle board in front, rearranged the soap and closed the cabinet door.

  Guy walked in and handed her some pills. “Antibiotics to prevent infection and a stronger anti-inflammatory medication for your optic nerve. And go to the police. Doctor’s orders.”

  He pulled on his raincoat. “Sorry, I have to rush to hospital rounds,” he said, helping her into her coat. “You know, my apartment lease is ending and I’m looking for a new place. Bigger, in the suburbs.” He touched her face, cupped her chin in his hands. “Wouldn’t you like a modern place . . . somewhere near the Neuilly park for Miles Davis to run about in and bury bones?”

  Where had this come from? Give up her seventeenth-century apartment on Ile St-Louis, with its pear tree in the courtyard, temperamental electricity and sparse hot water? For the suburbs and a commute to work?

  Guy traced his fingers down her neck. “You could work from home. Do consulting.”

  Surprised, she pulled back. He was going too fast. “Guy, I’m a Paris rat, born and bred. I need to keep close to the sewers.”

  She still hadn’t told him that she was half-American, afraid it would raise questions: questions she didn’t know the answers to, about her American mother who had disappeared when Aimée was eight. Who had been linked to radicals and German terrorists in the 1970s.

  “I like riding my bike to Leduc Detective,” she said, neglecting to mention that her bike had been stolen the previous week. Again.

  “My colleagues want to meet you,” he said. He stared into her eyes, feathered her brow with kisses. His tone had turned serious. “Their wives keep busy in the suburbs and they wouldn’t dream of moving back . . . the crime, pollution, the traffic and noise.”

  “Then I wouldn’t have the Métro strikes to complain about,” she said, keeping her tone light. Or the grisaille image of a Paris winter, light reflected off the roof tiles with a bluish hue, to enjoy outside her window.

  The way this conversation was going disturbed her. Was he hinting at domestic duties?

  He looked at his watch, then back at her and grinned. “To be continued later. Remember where we left off.”

  AIMÉE TOOK the Métro, changed twice, and waited by the Louvre-Rivoli kiosk until she felt sure no one had followed her. She took a deep breath, walked the well-lit half block to Leduc Detective, and found René at work on his computer. She hung up her coat and made espresso.

  “I thought you drank green tea now,” he said. “Part of your ‘regimen’ ”.

  He meant for her condition; she was still recovering from loss of vision caused by injuries inflicted in the vicious attack she’d suffered in the Bastille district.

  “I drink that, too, René.”

  Homeopaths and Western medicine . . . she tried them all with an impatient wish for a miracle pill to strengthen her optic nerve. Time and tranquility—Guy’s prescription—were what she didn’t have.

  Invoices were piled high on her mahogany desk. The office, apart from computers, scanners, and fax, had changed little since her father and grandfather’s time. On the wall, old maps portrayed Paris divided by arrondissement, one showing the ancient walls, the other the sewer tunnels webbing the foundations. The armoire containing her father’s old uniform and her disguises stood by her grandfather’s desk, his auction find, which had belonged to Vidocq, the former thief who had become Paris’s first Police Inspector. The room was full of memories, the only history she had.

  What had she gotten into now? She didn’t want to lose all this. Or her livelihood.

  “Things smell, René. Bad.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Sit down, René.”

  “But I am sitting,” he said.

  The yellow glow of the streetlight slanted across the parquet floor as René leaned back in his customized orthopedic chair. She sank into the Louis XV chair in need of re-upholstering, put her feet up on the lit à la polonaise, a Second Empire daybed, another auction find of her grandfather.

  “Thadée Baret was shot. He died in my arms,” she said.

  René’s large eyes bulged. “Were you hurt?”

  “Just a graze. Guy stitched me up,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “Let me see,” he said.

  She flashed her bandage and told him the rest.

  “Take that jade to the temple tomorrow, Aimée.”

  “I intend to,” she said.

  “I had no idea . . .” René’s voice trailed off. He shook his head. “But we’re in a crunch, I need help with the stats to clear this report by tomorrow’s deadline.”

  “Bien sûr,” she said. “Don’t forget you encouraged me to do this favor for Linh.”

  “Aimée, I thought it would be simple. Don’t forget your promise to stay away from this kind of thing,” he said. “The promise to yourself. And me. Your new regimen and meditation.”

  She bit back a retort and stared at the statistics pile on her desk. Better make a dent in it. She worked silently for a half hour, preoccupied. Then she stopped.

  Should she confide in René? She’d always dumped her love problems on him and asked his advice. “Guy wants us to move in together. In the suburbs!”

  “You . . . living a doctor’s wife’s life, doing lunch?”

  René turned away but not before she saw an odd expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter René? Are you afraid it spells disaster for our relationship?”

  “Do you think it’s your style, Aimée?”

  She rubbed her eyes. Funny, he’d encouraged her to see Guy, her one-time eye surgeon, until their relationship grew intimate.

  “The truth? I always thought. . . .” His words trailed off.

  “Thought what, René?”

  But he’d shut his laptop case and pulled on his custom-tailored raincoat. He avoided her gaze.

  “I’m late,” he said. “My Firewall Protection class
at the Hacktaviste Academy starts in twenty minutes.” He supplemented Leduc Detective’s income by teaching hacking safeguards. Her guilt increased, knowing how the damp air aggravated his hip dysplasia, something he never mentioned.

  “Saj will help us fine-tune the Olf project,” he said. René had raved about his student Saj, the encryption genius. With work mounting, they needed help. And Saj, according to René, was a find. “Will you be all right, Aimée?”

  “Look, René,” she said, holding up the smallest jade disk, which she’d put in her pocket. Its milky-hued translucence shimmered in the light, mirroring René’s green eyes.

  René shook his head again. “I don’t feel good about this.”

  “There’s more, René. Linh said men were watching her and the temple.”

  “Call the flics.”

  “And say I ran away from a murder scene?” she interrupted. “That I may have been a target? And someone chased me?” She sat down, wishing her arm didn’t still sting.

  He paused at her desk, his laptop in his bag. Hurt, and something else, showed in his eyes. “You have to make up your own mind. Think of your future, your health, a relationship . . .”

  “You’re part of that, René.”

  But she spoke to the closed office door.

  Why had she blurted out her dilemma about Guy? Was René afraid she’d give up Leduc Detective? She began to wonder . . . was he preparing to move on, to form an alliance with his friend who had a computer shop, or to go corporate? Tears welled in her eyes.

  He’d get bored in a week. He’d hate corporate life. She imagined the snide remarks he’d endure about his size, told herself he wouldn’t really do it, and buried her head in her hands.

  The office, quiet for once, echoed with memories; her father’s old typewriter in the corner and Leduc’s first detective license, circa 1944, framed on the wall bearing her grandfather’s prisonlike photo, the one where he looked like he had sucked a lemon.

  All of her life was here.

  Tears wet the Post-its on her desk. Could she walk away from all this, consult from a home office as Guy suggested? Could she run Leduc Detective by herself?

  And what about René, who’d saved her life, and fought at her side when her world had fallen apart and she couldn’t see? Taken up the slack, kept the agency running. And fed Miles Davis.

  Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Made him talk about it, listened to him?

  So unlike René . . . he’d hesitate to tell her but . . . she couldn’t imagine not talking with him or sharing sushi take-out when they worked late at the office.

  She wiped her eyes, downed her pills. Took a deep breath and switched on the computer. She couldn’t lose René. Besides her godfather Morbier and her dog, he was all the family she had. But she had to put that aside; she’d call him later.

  She booted up her computer and searched. Twenty minutes later she found one entry specific to Cao Dai temple lands. A 1958 article, posted on an obscure mining website, by a Frenchman named Gassot of the Mining Engineer Corps affiliated with the Sixth Battalion. This article, on geologic excavations in Indochina, briefly mentioned a Cao Dai Temple and nearby emperor’s tomb that had been looted of national treasures. Chinese underground forces claimed that the missing hoard, objects from the fourth century, belonged to them. But Ho Chi-Minh and the French colonials laid claim to them, too.

  The Vietnamese government blamed the Cao Dai, who were safeguarding it—as Linh had said. The theft had occurred as the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the death knell for French colonial rule in Indochina, raged. Aimée read between the lines and figured the French had wanted the treasures for the Louvre.

  She found a Nicorette patch and stuck it under her clothes, near her hip. Her mind spun. Jade, and a junkie dying in her arms . . . what was it really about? Was the jade she had hidden part of the looted treasure she’d just read about?

  Her hands trembled. Time to go home.

  “WORKING LATE again, Aimée?” asked Nico, the balding owner of her local café.

  She kissed him on both cheeks. “How else can I keep Miles Davis in dog food?”

  He wiped the zinc counter as he set a glass down in front of her. Worn stools and warmth from a working heater accompanied by the pings of an old pinball machine in the corner gave the café a comfortable feeling.

  “The usual?”

  She nodded and he poured a glass of red wine. The dense garnet-red wine left a sediment in the bottom of the ballon-like glass. Nico was the kind of mec who listened to her stories when no one waited for her in her cold apartment under the sheets. A mec who would stifle a yawn and share a bottle at the zinc counter.

  Aimée . . . how are your eyes?” “

  “Pas mal. Haven’t stopped me yet, Nico,” she said.

  “Not even the TGV can stop you when you get going, eh? As your papa used to say.” He wiped his wet hands on his none-too-clean apron and untied it. “Share a verre with me, my treat?”

  “Next time, Nico,” she said.

  He jerked his thumb toward an entwined couple nestled in the corner.

  “They can’t decide between a rough little Sangria or a smooth Veuve Clicquot.” He winked. “Two ends of the spectrum. Do they want to dance on the table? Or feel it tomorrow, behind their eyeballs?”

  The man in the far corner pointed to the champagne.

  “Excuse-moi, a decision.” He reached for the champagne flutes and a tray. “Back in a minute.”

  Aimée sipped her wine.

  How could doing a simple favor for Linh have gone so wrong? And what should she do now? But the full-bodied wine with a smoky aftertaste had no answers.

  She tried René’s cell phone. No reply.

  She set five francs down, bid Nico à bientôt and turned the corner to her apartment on quai d’Anjou. Fingers of fog curled under the Pont Marie and spilled over the wet, cobbled quai.

  A figure walked a dog along the riverbank below. Two men in wool overcoats stood by her door. Another joined them as she approached.

  She gripped the pepper spray in her pocket.

  “Mademoiselle Leduc?” said the one smoking a cigarette. Pale-faced and with dark, darting eyes, he emitted a bristling energy. The stubble on his head could have used a trim, or maybe he was growing out the shaved-head look.

  “Hasn’t your mother taught you manners? How to introduce yourself, and apologize for accosting a young woman alone?”

  “Guess she forgot,” he said, with a narrow-lipped smile. “In my job, it’s not required.”

  “And what would that be?” She scanned the quai, saw one man behind the trunk of a plane tree, another against the stone wall, the barge lights silhouetting his cap. Not exactly a subtle show of force.

  “I can’t speak officially. Let’s say I’m employed by someone who guards the common good. . . .”

  “Someone with nasty methods?”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “Now, show me what’s in your bag.”

  He’d seen too many old movies. And the way he watched her, his eyes intent on her mouth, bothered her.

  “What common good?”

  “We work in the national interest.”

  Typical RG talk. Straight out of the Renseignements Généraux manual. One of the men shifted, the gravel crunching under his feet by the wall.

  “You’ll have to show me some ID. I’d feel stupid if I were to be robbed on my own doorstep.”

  The two men moved closer and she backed up, pulling out her pepper spray.

  “Back off or I start screaming and you get this in the face.”

  She wished she had her Beretta. But those days were over. No more climbing over rooftops or hanging from rusted pipes. She’d promised.

  “Du calme,” he said, and flashed his card.

  “I can’t read it,” she said pulling out a flashlight. At least she could smack one of them in the face with it and get the talker with the spray.

  “Fabien Regnier, Renseignements Gén
éraux,” she read. “Guess you think that impresses people.”

  “Not you, I’m sure,” he said. “But you’ve dealt with us before, on contract. In a ministry surveillance context, remember?”

  She bit her lip. The ministry surveillance on which her father had been killed in an explosion. It had been five years ago, but was as vivid to her as if it were yesterday. She’d never known the RG were involved.

  “So for old time’s sake, hand over the bag,” he said.

  “Just like that, out here on the cobblestones? You’ve got more balls than you were born with, expecting me to . . .”

  “We want what’s ours,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “You have no authority,” she said. “What do you mean, yours?”

  “I think you know.”

  Two additional men drifted from the shadows, a stocky red-haired man and a lean one with a stringy ponytail down his back. They enclosed her in a tight ring. The red-haired one spread a much-thumbed France-Soir newspaper over the wet cobbles. Fabien Regnier, if that was his real name, gripped her bag. She winced as he emptied it, shining her flashlight on the contents as he picked through her Nicorette patches, ultra black mascara, a broken turquoise earring, her worn Vuitton wallet, cell phone, Chanel No.5 purse-sized atomizer, well-thumbed cryptography manual, Swiss Army knife, the holy card from her father’s funeral, an Egyptian coin, and a letter containing Guy’s poem.

  “C’est de la poésie, ça?” asked one of the men reading the poem with a furrowed brow. “Calling you a wild orchid, your rose complexion’s rough beauty . . .”

  “That’s personal,” she interrupted.

  “But it’s very well written, Mademoiselle.” Fabien Regnier grinned, passing it around. It infuriated her. They were looking through a window into Guy’s soul and using it for a cheap laugh.

  “Where did you put it?” he asked. His eyes were hard. He leaned close to her face. “The jade.”

  She had to think fast. “Since you know so much, how come you don’t know it’s gone?” she said, making it up as she went along. “Pfft, stolen from my office while someone barricaded me in the supply room.”