Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  “My father’s left for Berlin,” Aimée said. “He’s sorry, he meant to say goodbye.” She rushed on, “Elise, did you know my mother?”

  Elise’s eyes widened. “Yes, l’Américaine.”

  Aimée’s pulse thumped.

  “So you do remember her?”

  “Yes, I think we have some photos.”

  Photos? Aimée didn’t even have one—her father had burned them all. “I’d love to see them. Learn about my family.”

  The radiator sputtered.

  “Of course. They’re somewhere. I’ll need to find them. Right now, I can’t leave my mother. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself. She’s talked of suicide, she hides her pills.” Elise’s mouth quivered. “My father’s murder’s taken over our life.”

  If Aimée found Suzy, distraught Elise would want to pay her back by finding those photos. Give and take, do a favor and get one in return—didn’t it work that way?

  “I’ll find Suzy, Elise.”

  Elise took her coat, then Aimée’s hand. Her wide-set, red-rimmed eyes welled again. “Merci for your offer. So sweet. Your father’s honorable and I’m sure that’s true of you, too. But I need his help.”

  Aimée’s heart fell. She smiled through the sting of her disappointment. “We’re family, Elise. In case you need anything, here’s my card.”

  She kicked the radiator until it sputtered to life. Then again for good measure.

  She looked at Sylvie’s desk—she should get started on that. It would take her mind off her looming academic suspension.

  Her hand hovered over the phone as she debated whether to call Florent and ask him about this weekend. Maybe she’d misunderstood.

  Fat chance.

  No doubt his horse-faced sister had enjoyed following her into the bathroom and dropping the bad news—putting Aimée in her place. Meanwhile, Florent was taking the coward’s way out.

  Forget calling Florent. She’d make him deal with her face to face at next Tuesday’s lab class. In the meantime, screw him.

  In two hours she’d finished logging and sorting the inbox, followed up on the outbox, filed dossiers, and typed her father’s notes. If only her father had let her computerize their system, she could have accomplished it all in under half an hour.

  She wished she had time to go back to that computer course she’d taken over the summer.

  Her eye caught on Elise’s folder, the generous check. Could she tie that up tonight?

  Didn’t her father always say you can’t make a goal unless you kick the ball?

  She rooted around in the file cabinet until she found her father’s notes from a similar case to Elise’s—a widow who had been investigating her late husband’s illicit affair. Aimée studied them. Simple.

  She’d make a list of key points from Elise Peltier’s notes—that was always the way her father built an investigation. Then add details from the police report to create a brief profile.

  Bruno Peltier, aged sixty-seven, of 34 rue Lavoisier, retired, discovered in the early hours of October 10 on the quai under the Pont des Invalides. Gunshot wound to the back of his head. He’d last been seen leaving his residence on foot at 8 p.m. for a dinner with old friends at Laurent, a posh restaurant off the Champs-Élysées in the old Louis XIV hunting lodge.

  When he hadn’t returned home by 3 a.m., his wife called one of the friends he’d been dining with. The friend’s name was not in the police report or in Elise’s notes. Bruno Peltier had never shown up at the restaurant, the friend said to his wife: they’d figured he had the flu. The police were called to the quai after a fisherman found him at dawn with his wallet and ID.

  Not much.

  She called Suzy.

  The number rang and rang.

  “Oui?” said a man, breathing heavily as if he’d come up the stairs.

  “Have I missed Suzy?”

  “Who?”

  Now what could she say? Think, she had to think. Come up with something plausible.

  “Excusez-moi, monsieur, but Suzy gave me this number.”

  “Et alors?”

  “I borrowed money from her on rue de Ponthieu a few weeks ago,” said Aimée. “I want to return it.”

  “Ah, you mean . . .” Pause. “I see.”

  See what? “Is this a public phone?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  Helpful, this man. “So where can I reach her?”

  “Comes and goes. I don’t monitor the tenants.”

  So Suzy rented. This was probably a public phone in the hallway. “What’s her last name?”

  “Don’t you know it?”

  She reached in the secretary’s desk drawer for the petty cash box. She checked the amount—enough for a bribe? Her father would shoot her. She had no idea what he needed to pay his informers. Then again, she could replace the petty cash and then some with Elise’s check.

  She pulled a petty cash receipt off the pad and started filling it out. Eight hundred francs, more than a nice evening out with wine, should do the trick.

  “Look, I’ll just drop the money off, leave it with you. Give me the address . . .”

  Money. According to her father, it worked most of the time. And saved a lot of standing around in the cold for hours. At least she hoped it would.

  This could be fun, she thought, checking her mini surveillance tools, which she had fit into her makeup kit: lock-picking set (just in case), tweezers (always handy for a stray eyebrow or a sliver-sized piece of evidence), waxed thread (useful for stitching a hem or tying slingshots), nail polish (to stop a run or to mark territory), and, for key impressions, putty she hid in her blush compact. From her father’s collection, she chose the palm-sized light-weight camera and extra film.

  Gauze-like evening clouds zigzagged over the Louvre as she ran to the Métro. Shouldering her secondhand Vuitton carryall—a summer score from the flea market—she hopped on the second-class car, pulled out her anatomy textbook and highlighter, and tried to read. Five stops later she noticed the woman next to her, a sophisticate in a black YSL trench and pearls, had fallen asleep. Aimée nearly had, too.

  A short walk under the bare-branched trees on the brightly lit Champs-Élysées, then a right past the tiny art cinema, Le Balzac, one of her premed Friday night haunts; down narrow, winding rue Lord Byron, named for the poet who, according to her grand-père, had never set foot here. Off rue Washington, she found Suzy’s address by walking through a tall carriage entrance that led to Cité Odiot, a grassy enclave bordered by towering plane trees. An island of calm. She breathed in the damp leaves, heard twittering birds in the hedge. Such an oasis, three blocks from the jammed, busy, yet seductive Champs-Élysées and the death-trap roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe.

  This quiet, dimly lit green enclave, surrounded on both sides by rose and cream buildings, extended half a block. Exclusive and hidden. At odds, she thought, with the peeling stucco of the leprous gatekeeper’s loge.

  A quick scan of the names on the row of mailboxes and she spotted a label that read S. Kimmerlain/R. Vezy. Could that be Suzy? She reached in with pincered fingertips and came back with a France Telecom ad flyer addressed to Suzy Kimmerlain, #402. She pulled out the camera from her leather jacket pocket and snapped. Always document everything—her father’s dictum ran through her head.

  She felt like a secret agent in those old spy movies.

  The gatekeeper poked his head out of the loge. She didn’t need his help now. To avoid him she slipped behind a column and then ducked into the stairwell. The climb to the fourth floor—narrow winding stairs, like in a medieval tower—would give anyone a workout.

  Neither door on the landing held a nameplate. No one answered at the first. At the second, a woman with her head wrapped in a towel cracked the door. A green gel mask covered her face.

  “Oui?”

  “Suz
y?”

  “If you’re selling something, I don’t want any.”

  “Please, Suzy . . .”

  “She’s gone to work,” the woman interrupted.

  Great.

  “But I owe her money,” said Aimée, sticking with her earlier improvisation. “She told me to bring it here.”

  “Vraiment?” A shrug of the pink bathrobe-clad shoulders. “Leave it with me.”

  Did she look stupid? Aimée shook her head. “In person, she said.”

  The kettle whistled. Over the woman’s shoulder Aimée could see a narrow chambre de bonne. A bare-bones accommodation, a former maid’s room, in a quartier luxe, only a few blocks from where the wealthy Monsieur Bruno Peltier had lived.

  “Wait a minute. You’re the one she talked about, non? You used to work together?”

  Aimée nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Then go find her at work.” The woman started to close the door.

  Merde. “But I went and she’s not there,” she lied.

  The woman expelled a rush of air as if Aimée were slow. “Try the Alibaba.”

  The door shut in her face.

  If Papa had said it once, he’d said it a thousand times: “Ninety percent of surveillance consists of tedious plodding and persistence.” Find a name, a location, and follow up. Keep following up until you find a thread, a path leading somewhere. As he once said after a long night’s surveillance, “Investigating is just not going away.”

  He tried to make his work sound boring, but she carried boredom in her rucksack in a biology book.

  So far she’d found Suzy’s full name, her address, and gotten the name of her current employer, all in exactly forty minutes. Now she needed to record it all, write it into a report and log billable hours.

  Totally manageable.

  Gare de l’Est, Paris · Friday Evening

  “Mesdames et messieurs, sehr geehrte Damen und Herren . . .” the announcer droned in a nasal tone as the night train to Berlin pulled out of Gare de l’Est. Jean-Claude Leduc settled back against the leather seat in the dining car, a Stella Artois in front of him, an unread copy of Le Monde boasting photos of jubilant Berlin crowds pulling the Wall down.

  He took a long sip, opened his briefcase to scan his checklist for the Place Vendôme surveillance. His informer had been contacted, the equipment was ready. He’d be poised to go once he picked up the van Aimée reserved. Bon. All done, he shoved the list back inside his briefcase.

  Even his notes made him feel dirty. Under protest he’d agreed to one last job. The damn thing stank to high heaven. The nastiest of all and in the “defense of the country.” That catchall phrase meaning quite another “defense” but he’d be paid not to make a fine distinction. The last one, he’d told them, then I’m out.

  If they didn’t cut him loose . . . He put that out of his mind.

  Then he pulled out Gerhard’s telegram. Reread the terse message: Doctor’s prescription ordered. Available 24 hours only.

  Code from his contact that East German Stasi police were about to bring to light Jean-Claude’s missing wife’s records—secret and damning documents. That old longing bubbled up inside him. Why couldn’t he let go?

  In his jacket pocket he fingered the locket containing a snip of Aimée’s baby hair—the one thing Sidonie—he never used Sydney, her American name—Leduc had taken with her when she’d left more than a decade ago. The locket arrived in an envelope last night, a signal that he and Aimée were in danger. A signal to make good his promise.

  An old promise to the woman who’d ruined his career, put their daughter at risk, who’d left him, and who still made his heart pound. The love of his life, the woman he couldn’t forget. The mother of his child.

  He’d always known her Stasi files containing evidence, long under un-bribable key, could sooner or later get leaked—her arms deals, the terrorist cover-ups. He’d promised long ago he’d use his connections before that happened. A damn ticking time bomb, and now with the Wall down and the Stasi files opening, time was of the essence. The only protection now was the thing that had driven them apart.

  Negotiating her prison release had got him drummed out of the force and driven him to the dark side, beholden to the Hand, a corrupt syndicate.

  Sidonie was on the wanted list; sought by the Hague war-crime investigators, the Cypriot arms dealer, and Balkan gangs she’d double-crossed. He’d always had to think three steps ahead, knowing those types would do anything to control Sidonie with her past and make her work for them. He had to protect Aimée, her chance at a career, a life without the tentacles of her mother’s crimes. Now was his only chance to erase her mother’s past for good.

  Over-reacting? Not when the secret services monitored him.

  Another sip. The Stella went down smooth. The wheels clacked rhythmically; the outskirts of Paris passed by in a haze of misted lights. He loosened his tie, his shoelaces, and sat back. Sighed. Those thoughts he’d kept at bay for so long threatened to flood in.

  You could only keep the past in the past when you weren’t going to a city that held its secrets, he thought. And Sidonie’s eyes, so like Aimée’s—those big almond-shaped orbs—filled his mind. Would he ever be free of this woman, his first love? The only woman who’d taken his heart? But he was reminded of her every day by his Aimée, who, damn it, resembled her mother in so many ways. He couldn’t control her, either.

  His eyes closed. His thoughts drifted.

  “That seat taken?”

  He blinked and saw Soli Hecht, the old Nazi hunter, a bent man with a white beard and round glasses. Soli set down his overcoat, then his malacca cane. The diner car’s lights reflected off his glasses so Jean-Claude couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

  Jean-Claude shuffled the telegram into the file and closed the folder.

  “And if I said it was?”

  “That would look rude, Jean-Claude.”

  He sighed. Moved the file into his briefcase. The vultures were descending on Berlin to pick its carcass clean.

  “So unlike you. You love company, non, Jean-Claude?”

  “Don’t start, Soli.” Jean-Claude sipped his beer. “We finished that business last year.”

  “We did?”

  Not again. Well, he wouldn’t open himself up to allegations by this Nazi hunter, who’d accused him of bilking descendants of Jews lost in the Holocaust. He hadn’t, but Soli Hecht had a lighting-rod sensitivity to those in his trade.

  Finding missing persons had always been Leduc Detective’s bread and butter. Now, as the winters passed, the agency’s cases concentrated on families looking for Jewish survivors, their property long lost and their inheritances often ground into dust.

  Soli ordered a glass of Bordeaux. Settling back, his gaze took in the last Parisian suburbs fading in the mist.

  “How did you get involved with someone like her?” said Soli.

  Jean-Claude’s hand tensed on the beer’s cold frosted glass.

  “What do you mean, Soli?”

  “L’ Américaine, the terrorist—your wife, Sidonie Leduc.”

  Stupid. He must have fallen asleep with the damn file open.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “You’re wrong there. She’s linked to the Palestinians and Arafat.” Soli sipped his wine. “We’ve had intel she trained in a Hezbollah cell in Syria. Of course she’s got contacts in Hezbollah.”

  Jean-Claude stiffened. Was it true?

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Soli?”

  “Tell you that I knew your wife’s wanted?” said Soli.

  Merde. Did everyone know?

  “I mean tell me you’re Mossad, Soli,” said Jean-Claude.

  Soli grinned. “You never asked.”

  “So she’s on your hit list?”

  “You know I can’t talk a
bout that.”

  “Stick to old Nazis, Soli. Argentina, the south of France—plenty to choose from.” Jean-Claude rubbed his eyes. His mind was racing, turning Soli’s words about Sidonie training in a Hezbollah camp over and over. What else did the Mossad know or suspect?

  “So how did you become involved with her, Jean-Claude?”

  Jean-Claude downed his beer. Set it down, leaving a ring on the dining table cloth. “A personal matter, c’est tout.”

  Why had he said that? He was off his game.

  “Jean-Claude, I know you’re going after her records. Not a bad idea since lots of people are interested in Sidonie Leduc, aka Sydney Hartman.”

  Jean-Claude’s heart thumped.

  “We’ve got all night, Jean-Claude.” Soli sipped his wine. “These things work in mysterious ways, as you’re aware. I might know someone who might know someone who might have access to information, that kind of thing.”

  A bargaining tone in his voice. That unreadable gaze behind those thick-framed lenses.

  “What do you want, Soli?”

  “Maybe I can help you and you me. Tell me the story. Convince me she’s small-fry, if you can.”

  Jean-Claude’s fingertips traced the rim of the empty glass. ”She’s the mother of my daughter, Soli.”

  “Oui, but it’s her Hezbollah contacts that interest me. A certain Abbas Musawi, a raid in the Bekaa Valley. Find him and we do business.”

  As if Jean-Claude could promise that?

  “Deal,” he lied.

  “Call me a student of human nature,” Soli said. “Fascinated to know how people connect. Tell me how you met, Jean-Claude.”

  He groaned inside. Hated to talk about the past.

  Usually the hypnotic lull of the train, the rocking motion, the muffled whistle at the stations, put him to sleep. But tonight, across from Soli, he let it take him back to that first time he and Sidonie had met.

  “It was the sixties. De Gaulle was back in power—the Fifth Republic—and I was policing a protest on the Left Bank.”

  Soli nodded. “Those days I remember. You were one of the Hirondelles, eh, wearing that cape?”