Murder in Belleville

by Cara Black

  “Quit the riddles, Morbier, please,” she said.

  “Zdanine deals in nasty things. Me, I don’t care,” he said. “Street vermin die, and new ones flood the sewer. My turf is the Marais. But I want the girl, Samia, protected.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Samia’s young. Zdanine’s the father of her child,” Morbier said. “She made a mistake. She never needs to know I’m involved.”

  Aimée stirred the clumps of brown sugar in her cup. “And why would they tell me about plastique?

  “Leduc, you’re not a flic; they don’t know you,” he said. “That’s why you’re perfect.”

  “Attends, Morbier,” Aimée said. “How am I going to bring up the topic of plastiqueV

  He wiped his mouth, then smoothed his napkin on the table.

  “But they might sell you some, Leduc,” he said.

  Aimée paused in midsip; her eyes widened.

  “Hold on, Morbier—”

  Morbier eyed her closely. “But Samia’s young. Like I said, the young make mistakes.”

  “You’ve picked the wrong person.”

  His eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows. “And Martaud’s testy—you know the type. Wants the commissariat stripes and a coronary before he’s forty. I want Samia protected. If there’s any evidence left, make it disappear. Compris?”

  Aimée’s antenna came to attention.

  “What’s so special about Samia?”

  “Forget the questions, Leduc,” he said. “If you want my help.”

  Now she was intrigued. Curiosity overcame her fear. At least some of it. And Morbier was right; she needed to track down the plastique. Aimée sipped her coffee, concerned about the turn the conversation had taken.

  “What about Zdanine?”

  “Call him a procurer if you want to get technical, Leduc,” he said, blowing the air from his lower lip. “Tiens, this is Belleville, one works with the systeme. Zdanine’s claiming sanctuary in the church with the hunger strikers.”

  Again the church and hunger strikers had come up. She hesitated.

  “Call Samia. Tell her Khalil, Zdanine’s cousin, sent you,” Morbier said. “We know he’s a procurer who’s stuck in Algiers awaiting promised papers from his soon-to-be legal cousin.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Never mind,” Morbier said, beckoning the waiter for l’addition. “But it’s true, and Khalil’s just as nasty. Martaud wants him bad.”

  Her cell phone rang.

  “A11ô,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot,” Yves said.

  She flushed and turned away from Morbier. “What’s that?”

  “The appointment,” Yves said. “At Le Figaro.”

  “Sorry, but we never reconfirmed,” she said, keeping the disappointment out of her voice.

  She didn’t remember saying this, but she’d said a lot things the other night after the champagne. She’d even told him about the explosion and Anaïs. Is that all Yves wanted?

  “But on my voice mail messages, which you don’t seem to have listened to,” Yves continued, “I indicated I had meetings in Marseilles.”

  “Meetings?” Was he undercover or working on something Martine didn’t agree with—or both?

  “I also mentioned how amazed I was by the way you changed the temperature, how you altered the color of things. And how I’d like more of that,” He paused. “That’s if I remember correctly.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll have to check on that and get back to you,” she said, quickly gulping the rest of her coffee, aware of Morbier’s gaze.

  “You do that,” Yves said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  They hung up.

  “You’re blushing,” Morbier said, cocking his eyebrows.

  “I do that when I drink fast,” she said, rooting in her bag for a tip.

  Morbier grinned and said nothing.

  “Here’s Samia’s number. She lives above the hammam near the Couronnes Métro,” he said. “Pack your swimsuit, there’s a piscine adjoining the steam rooms.”

  Tempted for a moment, she paused. She hadn’t swum her regular lap quotas for several days.

  Morbier nodded. “Like I said, little fish lead to big fish.”

  “I don’t have time for swimming, Morbier,” she said. “Or to chase the Paris periphery for pond scum.”

  What was she doing at a café with Morbier wasting her time? She pushed back her chair, scraping the sidewalk, and tossed her phone into her Hermes bag.

  “Don’t go rushing off, Leduc,” Morbier said, wagging his nicotine-stained finger at her. “Last time you did that you had more broken bones than usual, remember?”

  She flinched, fingering her throat at the memory of the rooftop in the Marais. The concussion, the lacerations needle-like over her skin …

  A glass was knocked to the floor at the next table, jerking her back to the present.

  “Think of it this way, Leduc,” Morbier said, lighting another cigarette from the smoldering butt in the ashtray. “If you trace the plastique to the source, you might nab the mistress’s killer.” He shrugged. “Get some shitheads off the street. The murderer could be, as de Gaulle said, ‘Chier dans son propre lit,’ shitting in one’s own bed. Criminals often do. A common mistake.”

  “I think de Gaulle was referring to the Algerian crisis in that instance, but you’ve got a point,” she said, a smile fighting its way over her mouth. “But like Papa used to say, things don’t always seem as they appear or he would have been out of business.”

  “Keep an eye on Samia, that’s all,” he said. “Samia grew up in the housing projects with gangs, Rai’ music and tattooed bleakness. But trouble, like Zdanine, tends to follow. Far as I’m concerned, Zdanine is scum, but he’s connected.”

  “D’accord, I’ll call and meet her,” she said, “but I’ve got to change.”

  “Make sure,” he said, wagging his finger, “you dress appropriately.”

  She walked toward the Metto. On the corner the outdoor tables at Chez Mireille Bistrot were full. The hcdah boucherie Islamique held a steady stream of shoppers. Petulant whines of tired toddlers in their strollers, and the rumble of the Métro below greeted her accompanied by fumes from the 95 bus, direction Austerlitz. She wondered how Sylvie could have hidden in this dense quartier, where a woman would be noticed. Especially a good-looking woman. She shouldered her bag for the Metto ride to René’s.

  Aimée paused at the stairs of the Couronnes Métro. She felt someone’s eyes sizing her up. The bearded men wearing chechias and flowing white habayas stared at her from the Abou Bakr Mosque entrance. Her shoulders tensed. Les barbes—the Islamic fundamentalists she’d read about. Their staring disturbed her, rattling in her brain all the way to René’s.

  RENÉ’S HAUSSMANN-ERA building fronted rue de la Reynie—a tree-lined strip Aimée regarded as a minioasis from the nearby Les Halles, with its cheesy clothing shops, discount CD stores, and young crowd. His apartment overlooked a quiet, geranium-lined walkway wedged between buildings.

  René’s parking space was the same size as his studio apartment. But it certainly had more room, she thought, considering René’s obsession with the latest computer equipment.

  Computers and monitors, raised a cushion’s height from the carpeted floor, lined two walls. Books covered another wall. His window looked onto a hulking gray building, draped and scaffolded for renovation. From the stereo a voice rasped, “Serves you right to suffer” accompanied by a guitar riff filling the room.

  “James Lee ‘ooker,” René grinned. “Les blues.”

  Aimée smiled. Last time René’s infatuation had been Django Reinhardt.

  Two futons were piled in the corner. A poster showing the 417 types of French cheeses hung on the wall of his cockpit-size kitchen. Bodybuilding weights sat on the low counter specially designed for René’s height.

  Miles Davis sniffed her with his wet nose from his pillow beside René.

  “So far, lookin
g for Sylvie I’ve hit the Fichier firewall,” René said. “But this new software should help.” He pointed to several zip disks, stacked between the monitor screens filled with encrypted algorithms.

  “You’re a genius,” she said.

  He nodded, his eyes bright as his fingers danced over the keyboard. “Tell me that after I crack the code.”

  He was in his métier. No one she knew came close to his expertise.

  “What about the Swiss electronic switch on the explosive?” she asked.

  “Curious, that one,” René said, hitting Save. He stood up and stretched. He wore a grey tracksuit, the top fitting his long torso but the pants shortened. “Seems that circuit board hooked up to a relay—you know the kind in the movies where the mecs set the device to explode in ten minutes? Meanwhile they’ve driven five miles away and have an alibi.”

  She made a face, pursed her Chanel-red lips. That would complicate things.

  “However, reading the report,” René said, packing his practice bag for the dojo, “that doesn’t seem to fit. Seems they activated it from nearby, like you suggested, from the ‘fake’ SAMU van.”

  She picked up Miles Davis. But her edgy feeling remained.

  “Can you watch him some more?”

  René’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up?”

  She told him about Morbier’s lead.

  “Call me if you need backup,” he said. “I’ve got another bag of shank bones in the fridge,” he said as she made for the door. “You’re welcome to hit the dojo with me.”

  “Next time.”

  “Be careful,” René said, giving her a meaningful look.

  AIMÉE HAILED a taxi at the roundabout that dropped her at her rue du Louvre office. By that time she’d arranged a rendezvous with Samia within the hour.

  Inside her once elegant nineteenth-century office building, with the ancient dark green water spigot in the foyer, she was tempted to take the birdcage elevator. But the tightness in her leather trousers told her no. She hiked the three steep flights. On the landing opposite the smoky bevel-edged mirror, she unlocked her door.

  She hurried past her desk, stacked with Paris pages jaunes and manuals on secure cryptosystems, to the back storage room. She never missed leaving criminal work, but the old regret hit her. To play it safe, she pulled on her bullet-proof vest, made especially thin, the spy-store clerk had told her, for those “special occasions.”

  She rifled past hangers containing a blue rubber-strapped fishmonger’s apron, the traffic jacket with SUBURBAINE stencilled on back, her lab coat embroidered with “Leduc” from her premed year at Universite René Descartes, and an acid green sequined feather-boa affair from a defunct sex club in Pigalle.

  After some deliberation and flirting with the boa, she chose a black leather jumpsuit, a relic of a friend’s drug-dealing days. The leather unitard, composed of zippered pockets and quilted patches, fit skintight. She struggled into the legs and zipped it over her black lace bra. A zebra-striped foulard draped around her neck completed her ensemble.

  After applying makeup she stepped into slingback black heels. She threw her red high tops into her bag in case she had to deal with more slick cobbles. Quickly she painted her nails so they could dry in the taxi.

  Forty minutes later she’d emerged from rue du Louvre, hailed a taxi, and arrived at Samia’s.

  The hammam’piscine turned out to be a bland, renovated eighteenth-century building with popcorn stucco facing the street. She handed the driver a hundred-franc bill and told him to keep the change, grinning at his comment on how well her business must be doing.

  If only he knew.

  She gave a small smile, bidding him adieu when he began offering to drop clients her way.

  By the time she entered the courtyard of the hamman-piscine, she’d taken Morbier’s suggestion to heart. Right now Samia was her entree to the plastique and the Maghrébins, her only source other than Gaston in Café Tlemcen. Slim at best, but a start, she reminded herself. And more of a lead than she’d had a bit earlier when her only view had been seeing les barbes in front of the mosque.

  A tatouage parlor stood next to a shop with dusty windows and a faded red sign with BOUCHERIE-VOLAILLE still visible. Besides the hammam-piscine in the cow, they were the only other occupants. There was something appealing about the quiet air of neglect, she thought. As if the buildings held together almost from force of habit.

  Inside the unrenovated interior, the walls were covered with rainbow-colored graffiti of Nique le flic—screw the cops. Colored handprints were imprinted over doorways, in the Muslim style, to guard dwellings. A narrow winding staircase, the steps grooved and worn, mounted upward. She wondered what it would be like to live here. Or to grow up looking at this graffiti every day.

  Samia Fouaz lived above the tiled rex de chaussée, on the first floor. A stroller, string shopping bag, and a shiny four-wheeled cart filled the landing. Once polished and exquisite, Aimée-imagined.

  After several bouts of knocking, the door opened to a curvaceous figure in a peach lace teddy unself-consciously scratching her rear. Samia’s light-honey-colored face was puffy, her eyes bleary, and she yawned loudly.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Samia—”

  “Pas de problème,” Samia said, eying her up and down.

  Samia took a breath, pursed her mouth, then seemed to come to a decision. “Let’s make this quick.”

  Nonplussed, Aimée recovered quickly. “Sounds good,” she said, aiming for casual.

  Inside, trying to bury her nervousness, Aimée followed Samia’s sashaying down the yellowed hallway, its walls littered with calendars from local Arabic butchers on boulevard Menilmontant. Samia’s scent, a mixture of musk oil, sweat, and something by Nina Ricci, trailed in her wake.

  Raï music pounded from a room in the rear. At the far end of the apartment Aimée saw violet gauze billowing from the ceiling, bordered by curtains embroidered with tiny mirrors.

  Samia gestured to a chrome metal stool fronting a counter. A galley-style kitchen lay behind that, small, scrubbed, and spotless. On an upper shelf sat a glazed earthenware dish covered with a pointed lid, a tajine. Above that stood a qettara, a copper still for distilling rose- and orange-blossom water. Aromatics with rosewater, Aimée knew, drove away the dj’inn, protected against the evil eye, and attracted good spirits. Aimée hoped the good spirits were with her—she needed all the help she could get.

  Against the gray linoleum, Aimée noticed Samia’s bare feet hennaed with intricate swirling patterns.

  Aimée wondered about Samia’s connection to Morbier. Samia looked young and tired, like a housewife who’d tarted up for a husband with little result. She gestured again for Aimée to sit down.

  “Tea?” She smiled, her face opening up like a flower.

  “Merci,” Aimée said, accepting the de rigeur small glass of steaming mint tea, sweet and fragrant. Acustom, she knew, observed even among enemies at the Mideast peace talks.

  The fading afternoon sun shone into an open window overlooking the courtyard. Several women, their Arabic conversation echoing off the stone walls, entered the hammam door below.

  “You mentioned Khalil when you called,” Samia said. She looked even younger in the kitchen’s light.

  “True. And Eugénie, part of Khalil’s—”

  “Tell him this for me,” Samia interrupted, turning and pounding her fist into her palm. Her gold bracelets jangled. “Zdanine’s doing all he can, eh? Compris?”

  Surprised at Samia’s change of manner, Aimée stopped short, her mind racing. She hoped Samia couldn’t check with Khalil about her. Why had she accepted Morbier’s story that he’d “fed Samia information?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.” Aimée barely kept her voice steady.

  “Last month was the last time,” Samia said, determined. “No more. Lay off!”

  For a vulnerable-looking thing she packed a punch, Aimée thought. Her friendly demeanor had vanished.

  “Tiens, S
amia,” she said, trying what she hoped was a winning grin. “I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot me.”

  Samia expelled a whoof! of air in disgust. She talked tough for eighteen, Aimée thought, or however old she was.

  “Khalil isn’t patient,” Aimée said, improvising as she went along. “Poor mec, he’s stuck in Algiers.”

  She had to persuade Samia to talk, pass on her plastique connection.

  “Not my concern,” Samia said, a petulant edge to her voice. But her quick anger had deflated. “You tell Khalil to deal with me himself,” she said. “I’ll get word to Zdanine.”

  “Khalil said to tell you I speak for him.”

  Samia half smiled, showing the edges of little white teeth. One of them was gold-capped and caught the light. “I mean no disrespect to a fellow sister, bien stir, but business is business,” she said. “And time for me to get dressed.” She was about to usher Aimée to the door.

  I’m blowing this, Aimée thought. Time to forget subtlety when the opportunity is walking out the door. “Samia, let me speak for Khalil and you for Zdanine,” she said. “I need to arrange more plastique. Eugénie was supposed to help.”

  Samia’s eyes widened; her round shoulders tensed. “I don’t like this.”

  “Who does?” Aimée made her tone businesslike and shrugged. “The last delivery man blew himself to Mecca before his ticket was punched.”

  “That’s history. Zdanine was only a distributor,” Samia said, shifting from one bare foot to the other as she scratched a calf with the opposite big toe. “He’s washed his hands of it now,” she said, her eyes level as she sipped tea. “Where it goes and to whom…” She let that hang in the musk-scented air of her kitchen.

  “From what I hear,” Aimée said, leaning closer, “this is the beginning.”

  Samia shook her head. “My clients are waiting. I’ve got to go-”

  Aimée wondered what kind of clients.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper and brushed her arm against Samia’s. “Wholesale,” she said, nodding her head. “Khalil understands profit margins. Do you?”

  Samia’s gaze wavered.

  “Wholesale,” Aimée said, growing more confident at Samia’s reaction. She drew out the word to underscore the importance. “No dropoffs. No francs and centimes. Just thousand-franc notes and bank accounts. Big ones. That’s wholesale.”