by Cara Black
“It’s more than that, Sicard,” she said. “What did he do for you in return?”
“Promised to help me when we got out.”
“That’s a lie. Come on, Sicard. What did he do for you?”
“Like I told you.”
“Do you have children, Sicard?”
He shrugged. “Never had the time.”
She nodded to the comic book and primer lying on the worn tile floor. It fit together now.
“I think you can’t read, Sicard,” she said. “That’s why you needed Nicolas, and now Joêl.”
Sicard kicked the wall. Plaster dust fanned over the tile. “Shut up.”
“You don’t understand the words in the notebook,” she said. “It drives you crazy, so close and yet so far.”
“Nicolas was stupid. Those aristos screw you.”
“In return, Nicolas was teaching you to read, wasn’t he?”
Shame and surprise showed on Sicard’s face.
“Nicolas could have gone to a Grande École,” she said. “He was bright, sharp, not like the other mecs in prison.”
Sicard averted his eyes. But he hadn’t let go of her arm. His grip was so tight, it was cutting off her circulation.
“That was the deal: you got him the job in the kitchen and he would teach you to read,” she said, trying to think how she could use this to get away. “Why not scratch each other’s back; nothing wrong with that.”
“At night, Nicolas showed me letters.” Sicard’s words came slowly. His brow furrowed. “How to turn them the right way.”
A dyslexic. He’d confused b and d.
“Then someone hanged him by his own socks from the meat hook,” he said.
From the open leaded-glass window came the toot of a barge, the sound of lapping waves. She thought of making a break for the window, but it looked too small to climb out of and there would be a long drop below to the riverbank.
“And they’ll get away with it, Sicard.” Her breath came fast. “If you let them.”
He wrenched her arm with the knife, grabbed the knife, and put it to her throat.
“You’re my ticket out,” he said. “I’ll make them pay in my own way.”
She had to reason with him. Perspiration dampened her brow.
Her eyes went to the hallway door, but he twisted her arms behind her, pushed her forward. Now he held her own knife pointed at the back of her neck. The sharp tip felt cold at the base of her skull.
“You think a little notebook will threaten the spoiled son of a ministry type, Sicard?” she said, gasping. “They have more people in their pockets than you’ll ever know.”
“Not if you help me.” He tightened his grip. “With your help, I’ll play them like a piano.”
“Better you find work. I’ll give you a job, Sicard.”
According to her father, Vidocq, the first head of the Sûréte and a former thief, had said often that it took a crook to catch a crook.
“My firm needs part-time surveillance staff,” she said. “We’ll arrange it with your parole officer.”
“Just like that, you’re offering me a job?” He gave another short laugh. “Desperate, eh?”
“My neighbor, Chloë, teaches a literacy class. You can learn to read.”
“Shut your mouth till we get to the car.”
The hair rose on her neck.
“What car? Where are you taking me?”
“My money’s gone and your promises don’t put food in my stomach.”
“But it could,” she said. “You don’t have to do this, Sicard. For kidnapping, you’ll go right back to La Santé.”
He opened the hallway door, looked both ways. No laundry cart, no maid. Deserted.
Sicard steered her across the landing, down the narrow winding stairs.
Too late.
Her arms were wrenched behind her painfully. Voices came from below. In that brief moment, Sicard tensed, holding her back. The voices receded. A door shut.
He shoved her forward, the knife point digging into her skin. His other hand squeezed her like a vise.
They reached the next landing. The last flight of steep, winding stairs was her last chance. She took two steps down; Sicard towered behind her. A master at this once, she prayed she remembered the technique René had taught her from the Dojo. A karate-type move he’d adapted to offset a mismatch with a mec twice his size, it was dependent on speed and surprise.
Now or never.
In a quick movement she snapped her head down as far as she could, gritting her teeth in pain at the wrenching of her arms. She squatted and butted her rear against his knees. Hard. Taken by surprise, Sicard’s grip loosened. He let her go with a shout as he lost his balance.
He tottered, his arms reaching out, trying to catch the railing to break his fall. She heard a crack as his back slapped wood and he crumpled down the stairs.
He was still breathing. She straddled his body, reached into his pants pocket for the notebook. In his shirt pocket she found the copy shop receipt. He stirred, moaning.
She found her Swiss Army knife on the floor beneath the Versailles brochure rack in the lobby and nodded to a surprised old woman behind the desk.
“Treacherous, those stairs,” she said. “Terrible. An accident just waiting to happen.”
She reached for the phone on the woman’s desk. Punched in 17 and handed the woman the receiver. “I’d ask them to hurry. The poor man’s in pain.”
* * *
AIMÉE WIPED PERSPIRATION from her brow as she crossed the Conseil d’Etat forecourt in the Palais Royal. She willed down the trembling in her shoulders and legs. There was no one to witness but the yawning high windows framed by pillars and topped by bas-reliefs and statues forever sightless and frozen in stone.
She took tortoiseshell glasses from her bag, found her black wool cloche, and pulled the brim low on her brow.
She mounted the Ministry of Culture’s wide staircase. Only vestiges of its former glory as Cardinal Richelieu’s palace remained. The doorknob she turned was mounted on a gold plate adorned with embossed griffons.
“Madame de la Pecheray’s in conference,” said her secretary, a man with a pointed Van Dyke beard and a dismissive air.
“May I leave this with you?” She smiled, handing him her card. “She asked me to contact her today.”
He scanned an appointment book. “I don’t see your name,” he said, eyeing the lit-up phone console on his pristine desk. “No guarantees that she’ll receive this before tomorrow. She’s in meetings all afternoon.”
Aimée doubted that. But there were other ways to find out.
At the outer reception door, her arms still smarting from Sicard’s grip, she paused to put on her coat. A messenger walked in, clutching several Frexpresse envelopes under his arm.
“By four? Impossible,” said the secretary. “I can’t disturb Madame de la Pecheray.” He paused. Aimée heard mumbling. “That important? I’ll try Tania. See if she can bring it in to her. No promises, though.”
Aimée slipped her arm in her coat. Down the hallway, white-plastered, gold-curlicued, Louis IV–sconced, she heard laughter. Inside of what looked like a series of high-ceilinged staff rooms, two women stood around a small espress machine. Secretaries.
Perfect. But she said a little prayer, just in case.
Aimée rushed in. “Excusez-moi, it’s an emergency. My cousin Tania . . .” she stifled a sob . . . “her father’s had a car accident.”
Startled looks greeted her.
“Tania Assouline?”
She had to mobilize them fast before they questioned her.
“He might not make it,” she said. “I can’t remember which office Tania works in. Please help me find her.”
“Tania, the councilor’s secretary?” asked one woman, stubbing out her cigarette in a coffee cup.
Aimée nodded, gave another sob. “Is that upstairs?”
“First door on the right.”
“Mais non,” said a blonde
setting down her coffee. “Tania’s organizing de la Pecheray’s investiture in the Grand Salon.”
The woman took her arm. “Take the back stairs, it’s quicker.”
Before she could reach the Grand Salon, she saw Gabrielle at the end of the hall conversing with several men in pinstriped suits. Aimée speeded up, but before she could reach her, Gabrielle had turned the corner.
By the time Aimée made it to the corner, Gabrielle had disappeared. She could have gone into any of the offices lining the hall. From the stairs on her right she heard the clattering of heels. A voice. She took a chance and ran down the modern stairs.
On the lower level, the hallway fanned into a wide underground corridor. Gabrielle’s blond head bobbed in the distance. Thank God. A sign with CANTINE and an arrow pointing left appeared on the stucco wall.
But Gabrielle passed the canteen turnoff and went into a tunnel, which narrowed. Gabrielle lowered her head, speaking into a cell phone. To get reception down here, she must have a phone with special transmission for national security, Aimée thought.
Aimée tried to keep pace with her. Where was she going?
And in such a hurry?
Now the tunnel branched in several directions. From somewhere came a moldering smell of damp, the drip of water. Tools and what looked like plumbing equipment lined this section. She figured they were under the fountain in the Palais Royal now.
Gabrielle turned left. The tunnel snaked and darkened. Ahead, lights illumined a rusted metal electrical control panel. She remembered the plumbers descending into the tunnel under Madame Fontenay’s building. The old woman had mentioned tunnels underneath Palais Royal, implying that the chef, Carco, could have gone underground and surfaced at the medal shop.
But Gabrielle knew her way through the tunnels too. Shivers went up Aimée’s neck, still sore from the knife scratch.
Gabrielle’s heels clattered up the chipped stone stairs.
Moments later, Aimée found herself facing an immense blackened boiler, cold and unused for a century by the look of it. A whiff of perfume lingered among the musty smells. Gabrielle had come through here.
She found a door, opened it, and stood in a hallway among spotlights on black metal stands sheeted by red, blue, and orange gel filters. A forest of mobile spotlights.
“Excusez-moi.” She smiled at a lighting technician wearing a workcoat. Cables and extension cords webbed the red-carpeted floor.
“Did you see a blond woman just come out, Monsieur?”
He shook his head, chewing a pencil, and split wires off a power cord with pliers.
“Better watch your step,” he said.
Opposite, she saw the double glass doors leading to the Pal-ais Royal hemmed in by crates of sound equipment. The tunnel Gabrielle traveled could have branched to another tunnel on the other side of Palais Royal where Clémence had been strangled.
So easy.
“How can I get out, Monsieur?”
He pointed behind him. “Use the temporary exit.”
“Merci.”
Aimée pushed through the heavy swinging doors and found herself in the darkened Comédie Française theatre. A set was being erected by a stage crew. But no Gabrielle. How could she just disappear?
And then Aimée saw a flash of blond hair in a second-floor balcony box. She retraced her steps, hopped over the cables, and took the steps up to the balcony floor. A red velvet rope with gold tassels blocked the way. She slipped under the red rope and tried each door. She found Gabrielle in the third balcony box, huddled on a red velvet theatre seat, speaking into her cell phone.
Gabrielle looked up in alarm. She wore a dark blue Chanel jacket, a twisted rope of pearls around her neck.
“Who are you?”
Aimée removed her glasses and the hat and stuck them in her bag. Her fingers found the button on the micro recorder by her wallet. She pushed RECORD.
“Remember me now? I’ve got proof now that you paid Nicolas to cover up your son’s role in the synagogue burning, Madame,” Aimée said, catching her breath. “And I don’t think you’ll want your lawyer present.”
“Aah, so it’s you. But I attempted to leave the money.” This well-coiffed woman looked frantic, a different person from this morning. Lines creased her well-made-up face. Her mouth, with perfectly applied dark red lipstick, trembled. “Money, that’s what you want,” Gabrielle said. She scrabbled in her pocket. Her hand came back with an envelope thick with francs. “Why didn’t you tell me at the apartment? Count it.”
Aimée figured Clémence had tried to blackmail her.
“Not my style, Madame.”
“‘Style’? Alors, you’ll buy style with this,” Gabrielle interrupted. “Give me this notebook. Tell your client there will be more when I see all the proof. But deal only with me, leave Olivier and my husband out of it.”
“I don’t think so.”
Gabrielle scanned the theatre. Nervous and in a hurry, Aimée thought. Itching to have her gone. Gabrielle had made a rendezvous to meet someone.
Aimée wondered who.
On the blue spotlit stage, technicians moved scenery with the façade of a chateau painted on it back and forth, to directions shouted from the director. A sound track of baroque chamber music played low. No one heard or paid them any attention up here in the balcony.
Gabrielle thrust the envelope at her again.
“Take it,” she said. “Consider this over. Finished.”
“But it’s just the beginning,” Aimée said.
“What’s wrong? I came as fast as I could. Maman?” Olivier stood in the red-velvet-lined balcony box. Anger suffused his face as he recognized Aimée. “You!”
“It’s all here.” Aimée held up Nicolas’s notebook. “Records of the money sent to Nicolas to keep quiet. The old couple’s prayer book. One count of vehicular manslaughter, if you’re lucky.”
“But my son didn’t kill anyone,” Gabrielle said. “He knows nothing about that old couple.”
Aimée stepped close to Olivier. “Explain it to her, Olivier.”
His face went white. “You’re obsessed.” He backed up, shaking his head.
“Then I will. You torched the synagogue,” Aimée said. “Then ran down the old couple. You were drunk, you didn’t care. You left their little grandson crying in the gutter, covered with blood.”
“What are you talking about?” Olivier said. But the pretense of outrage didn’t reach his eyes.
“No one connected the accident to the synagogue fire until now,” Aimée said. “At first I thought you were covering up for someone else.”
She still did. If she pushed him enough, maybe he’d crack.
“Nicolas kept their prayer book for insurance,” Aimée continued. “He refused to cover up any longer. You paid a guard to silence him for ten thousand francs, the going prison rate. Clémence was pregnant and broke. She attempted to blackmail your mother. You couldn’t risk her opening her mouth.”
“But Olivier had no idea,” Gabrielle said, twisting her pearls. “You can’t believe my son—”
“Audric told me everything, Olivier,” Aimée interrupted. “Nicolas had given me proof, or so you assumed,” Aimée said. “So to discredit me, you had René, my partner, shot Monday night.”
“Who?” Genuine surprise filled his eyes.
Olivier wouldn’t get away with it this time.
“Count on the Brigade Criminelle launching an investigation,” Aimée said. “It’s just a matter of hours until you and your parents sit in a cell.”
“Wait.” Olivier shook his head. “Don’t involve them. It’s all my fault.”
A quiver of unease shot through Aimée. This was too quick.
“What do you admit?”
His lanky frame crumpled on the seat. “Nicolas, Clémence, the old people.”
“And René?”
“René? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Olivier said.
Gabrielle’s eyes widened. “Impossible. You neve
r went to the synagogue.” She shook her head. “Papa found you, he told me he picked you up that night.”
“Shut up, Maman.
”
“He said he’d smashed the car bumper. . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Keep quiet, Maman.” Olivier stood and stepped in front of her. “I did the rest, but I didn’t touch your partner. I couldn’t have.”
Olivier’s words stopped Aimée in her tracks.
“What do you mean?”
“Monday night I was partying at the rave in Neuilly,” he said. “I didn’t get back till dawn. How would I know your partner anyway? I saw you last night for the first time at the church.”
She wished she didn’t believe him.
“My boy’s innocent.” Gabrielle’s voice trembled.
“Non, I did it,” Olivier said. “I confess. Even so, you won’t convict me. That’s not proof.”
And now Aimée knew. The pieces fell into place. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
“Forget the heroics, Olivier; quit covering up,” Aimée said.
“Look, all this started as a schoolboy prank,” Gabrielle said. “Things got out of hand. We wanted to protect him.”
Burning a synagogue, a “prank”?
“‘Protect him’? You were protecting your job and your husband’s position.”
“Can’t we keep this quiet? We can come to an arrangement.” Gabrielle’s voice rose. “What does it matter now? The poor boy’s dead. We paid him, I admit. That’s all,” Gabrielle said. “It’s terrible that he committed suicide. I feel responsible.”
“It wasn’t suicide. He was murdered.” Aimée stared at Gabrielle. “Don’t you see? Nicolas was out of control. Your husband had to stop him.”
“My husband?” Taken aback, Gabrielle’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Stop it!” Olivier shouted, his eyes flashing.
She’d touched the right nerve.
“Your husband picked up a drunk Olivier after the synagogue burning and ran over the old couple. Instead of owning up, he fled.”
Gabrielle was speechless. Her face sagged. She looked a decade older.
“I saw your husband minutes after Clémence’s murder Wednesday night,” Aimée said. “He escaped to the ministry via the same tunnel under the Palais Royal you just used. He’d returned to make sure the job was done right.”