Murder on the Champ de Mars

by Cara Black

  Dinner served this late in a hospital? Or was it part of his special treatment?

  “I don’t want my soupe à l’oignon cold again,” he said petulantly. “They always forget.”

  “We’ll warm it up, Great-Uncle,” she said.

  A nurse appeared at the door, clucked. “Having one of those evenings, Corporal? Let’s go to the garden before we try dinner again.”

  And as quickly as he’d appeared, the gnome scuttled out wearing his gas mask.

  “Madame, this doesn’t concern your great-uncle,” said Aimée.

  “Good. I’m not moving him.” Madame Uzes, tall like her aunt, wore Chanel pumps and a beige cashmere sweater set. She sat down and glanced at her diary, seeming preoccupied. “If that’s all, Mademoiselle?”

  Great—the woman she’d lied to in order to see wanted to dismiss her. Well, that wasn’t going to work. Aimée sat down in the adjoining chair.

  “The priest at Saint-François-Xavier told me you’re in charge of Christian Helping Hands and you employ les manouches.”

  “Et alors?”

  “I need Drina Constantin’s address, contacts, any information you have that will help me reach her family members.”

  Madame Uzes looked up from her agenda. “Talk to her son, Nicu.”

  Aimée hesitated. “You don’t know? He’s dead.”

  Madame Uzes blinked. “What do you mean?” She snapped her diary shut. “But I saw them both a few weeks ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Knew?” Shock showed on her face. “When? What happened?”

  Aimée’s knees trembled. “Murdered this morning, the police have the details.”

  Madame Uzes dropped her diary. “That’s terrible.”

  Aimée swooped it up and handed it to her. “But you can help, non? There’s no time to waste.”

  “Help? But how?” Madame Uzes shook her head. “A Gypsy killing? Some vendetta, you mean. I can’t believe I let that young man into our home.”

  Great.

  “You misunderstand, Madame,” said Aimée. “Drina was in her last days; she had been put on hemodialysis at Hôpital Laennec. Last night, someone unplugged her from the machines and abducted her. Nicu was trying to find her.”

  “Drina disappeared?” Madame Uzes gasped. “But I don’t understand.”

  “Every hour she’s missing brings her closer to death. Any information you have will help. Can you tell me how you used to contact her?”

  Madame Uzes thumbed open her diary. “That’s the only address I have, a workshop near the La Motte-Picquet–Grenelle Métro stop.”

  The atelier on Passage Sécurité.

  Back to zero. She’d thought she might find something more here. But she had to give it another shot.

  “Tell me about the last time you saw Drina and Nicu,” she said.

  Madame Uzes thought. “Nicu delivered the kneelers, furniture Drina had repaired.”

  “Did they have a helper, anyone else with them?”

  “How would I know?” she said, bristling. “Désolée, I don’t mean to be unkind. I just spoke with Drina for a minute. My older daughter showed Nicu where to put the furniture.”

  The one who had the hots for him. Rose. The one who argued with her mother.

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t notice much, I’m sorry,” said Madame Uzes.

  Only the hired help, Aimée thought. Gypsies.

  Madame Uzes had the grace to look ashamed. “We try to bridge the differences,” she said. “Spread Christian fellowship and encourage those like Drina to join a cooperative.”

  “I need to know every detail. What’s your daughter’s number?”

  “Why? This has got nothing to do with her.”

  Au contraire, according to her little sister Lisette.

  “Better I talk to her than the flics, don’t you think, Madame? This is a murder investigation now.”

  She wrote it down with a quick nod. A different number from the one Lisette had given her. “Rose attends l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris.”

  The prestigious grande école nicknamed Sciences Po, in the 7th. Aimée stuck the info in her pocket.

  “Please try to think back to when you last saw Drina. It’s important, Madame.”

  Madame Uzes shook her head. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

  Aimée’s ears pricked up. “Have you remembered something?”

  “That’s right. Now I remember.” Madame Uzes stood up. “The time before last was when I saw Drina at church, maybe two weeks ago. Drina didn’t look well, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Hated hospitals. I urged her to see Doctor Estienne, a specialist who’s treated my family.”

  Nicu must have listened and taken her to Laennec. But that only led her back to the beginning. “Doctor Estienne treated her,” Aimée said. “But she was abducted from Hôpital Laennec last night during a busy shift change.”

  “But Doctor Estienne’s established a private practice here, in the next wing. He practices out of his own clinic, affiliated with Saint-Jean de Dieu,” said Madame Uzes. “Our foundation helps with medical bills, private supplemental care and meals if needed. Why wouldn’t Nicu bring his mother here?”

  Aimée wondered that too.

  Outside the window in the now-lit garden, Aimée saw the great-uncle rooting in a bed of peonies while the nurse tried to restrain him.

  “Désolée, I’ve got to go,” Madame Uzes said. “He’s digging trenches again.”

  FIVE MINUTES LATER Aimée found Dr. Estienne’s clinic in the next wing. So far she’d impersonated a family friend and a health liaison. She prayed the nice woman in billing wouldn’t ask Madame Uzes about her daughter’s trouble with the babysitter. She needed to talk to Dr. Estienne and find out as much as she could before the staff cottoned on to her.

  “Doctor Estienne’s at a staff meeting,” said the receptionist, a young man this time, wearing thick-lensed glasses. “Then he has a patient.”

  “How late do evening clinic hours run?”

  “I can fit you in at eight forty-five.”

  That would be twenty-four hours since Drina’s disappearance. She glanced at her Tintin watch. Less than half an hour.

  “You said you’re a new patient?”

  She hadn’t, but she nodded and accepted the clipboard and forms.

  “Oui, I’ll wait over there.” She took the clipboard to fill out on the lantern-lit clinic terrasse, which overlooked the private garden. Easy to keep a lookout from here and intercept Dr. Estienne before his patient. Here in the quiet, she tried the number Madame Uzes had given for her daughter Rose.

  Monday Night

  ROSE UZES IGNORED her ringing phone.

  “What if it’s Nicu? Answer it, Rose,” said Robert. “My film’s finished, and he’s up next.”

  Nicu didn’t have a phone. Annoying. “It’ll just be my stupid little sister.” Rose clicked her phone to vibrate without even glancing at it. “Nicu’s here somewhere,” said Rose. She scanned the dank artists’ squat under Pont Alexandre III, a former boathouse. Didn’t see him. “He promised.”

  “Late, he’s always late,” said Robert, hitting the lights to scattered applause.

  “I’ll find him,” she said, picking up their protest flyers.

  She made her way among the graffiti artists, a hip-hop DJ anxious to spin, a few of her fellow students from Sciences Po and the odd local. A reluctant Nicu had agreed to speak. He’d promised her.

  Yet, as usual, Nicu was late. “I operate on Romany time,” he always joked with her.

  Robert’s award-winning documentary film, Le voyage des Manouches, which highlighted the illegal destruction of encampments outside Avignon, had brought a raised fist or two from the crowd and shouts of, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité—now!”

  Where was Nicu?

  Without a manouche to speak to the truth of Robert’s film, they’d have to figure something else out. And soon. Meanwhile, Robert stepped onto th
e metal boat rig, a makeshift stage.

  “My film shows you what happened in Avignon. We can’t let the same thing happen here. March with us in protest tomorrow at the mairie of the seventh arrondissement,” he said. “Social housing in the quartier is mandated, and encampment rights for travelers should be, too.”

  “Et alors?” A voice shouted. “Where’s my rights? I’ve waited three years for housing.”

  “We need your voice, too. Everyone should be heard tomorrow,” said Robert. “Join us. The policy the mairie’s pursuing blatantly violates city requirements and your housing rights as well as the Roma’s. This report’s statistics prove it.” Robert took a sheet and read: “A wide disparity has been found in compliance and non-compliance with required social housing. The seventh arrondissement provides only between one and two percent available social housing in contrast to arrondissements in northeast Paris, which make up the maximum required twenty percent stipulated for the city.” Robert lifted up the paper. “See for yourselves. They’ll get away with it, like they do every year, unless we demonstrate.”

  Marco, a graffiti artist, stood up. “I say we claim ground on the Champ de Mars.”

  A few snickers in the crowd.

  “Why not? This is the greenest arrondissement in Paris,” Marco continued, wiping his forehead in the humid air. “There’s space for everyone, not just the ministries and the elite.”

  The concrete rumbled under Rose’s feet from the nearby underground RER train. She hated the squat, especially the mildew, resin and oil odors from the boats that pervaded the atelier space. She glanced around, again wondering why Nicu hadn’t appeared. So unlike the Nicu she knew. She shivered, remembering the feel of his warm arms holding her under the duvet the other night.

  “The film’s advisor’s joining us tonight,” said Robert. “He’ll talk about his life, the manouche nomadic tradition, the musical heritage and Gypsy jazz—”

  “Romanticizing the Gypsies?” interrupted a balding man wearing a duffle coat. He stepped out of the crowd. “Free spirits? Music lovers? Pah, all clichés. I live here. Talk to my neighbor. Our street’s had three break-ins, all by eleven- and twelve-year-olds. The Roma teach kids to steal.” He shook his head, clucked in disgust. “They use their own children.”

  Marco stepped forward. “You’re right, they’re being used. Used and victimized by the system that’s kicking families out on the street. Where can they go, how can they survive? Don’t they have a right to live as they wish, like we do?”

  Two other men joined the man in the duffle coat. “By stealing? Nothing justifies robbery, the filth and garbage they leave behind in the encampments, the begging.”

  “But you see, it’s a vicious circle. If we made it easier for them to access our social services and education—”

  “Education?” The man was shouting. “But their children drop out of school!”

  Rose noticed several figures in hoodies moving toward the center of the crowd. Filing in behind them on the paths they had cleared were skinheads with tattoos on their necks, brass knuckles glinting on their fists.

  Robert jumped down to face the trio who’d pushed their way forward.

  “Living in squalid caravans and stealing?” The duffle-coat man was saying. “That’s a lifestyle to promote?”

  More shouting. Any minute, Rose realized, a fight would break out. She edged backward, nervous, frantically looking for Nicu under the coved stone arch. Earlier, she’d been wishing he would show up, but now she was hoping he wouldn’t.

  Her phone vibrated, and this time she answered. Her sister. “Why don’t you pick up?”

  “I told you never to call. Quit bugging me, Lisette. Tell Maman I’m studying.”

  “Maman’s out. Least of your worries. Your boyfriend Nicu’s in trouble.”

  “He’s not my … what trouble?”

  Glass shattered in the crowd. The raised voices drowned out her sister’s reply.

  “Lisette?”

  She clicked off, searching through the crowd. She had to warn Nicu, get him out of here if …

  She was shoved hard from behind, and her leaflets scattered to the concrete as she fought for balance. Marco and the graffiti artists were facing off against the skinheads. “You’re talking about a people that’s been persecuted, disenfranchised and run out for centuries,” Marco was shouting.

  Rose’s chest felt tight in the humid air. Angry mumblings and red perspiring faces surrounded her. Why couldn’t people discuss this reasonably?

  “This is a complicated situation, with a long and entrenched history,” she said, raising her voice to be heard and earning herself some dirty looks. “There’s no simple solution. But if we all work together, the entire community will benefit, not just les manouches.”

  “Quit with the bleeding-heart excuses,” the duffle-coat man said. “If they live here, they need to follow the law like you, me and everyone else.”

  “Who says they don’t?” Marco shouted. “You can’t jump to conclusions about an entire group of people based on one or two members.” He’d climbed onto a chair now and was speaking to the crowd. “How can these people trust a country that rounded them up and put them in internment camps during the war?”

  Looking around, Rose realized her friends from Sciences Po had scattered and gone. The shouting was escalating. She felt a hand close around her ankle, then she was tumbling to the ground and into a whirl of arms and legs. Afraid, she yanked her leg free and crawled, panting, to a peeling boat hull. She pulled herself up. The entrance doors were open, three steps away. If she could just reach them, she could get out of here.

  Then her foot caught on something, and the next thing she knew she was landing on her knees and elbows on the damp concrete and staring at the trailing black laces of a pair of military boots.

  Monday Night

  THE WHITE TRAILER by the exit to the Ségur Métro stop looked out of place, René thought, with its sign reading MADAME RANA: Chiromancie; Tarologie; Médium; Voyante du Passé, Présent et Avenir; Spécialiste des Photos et de l’Écriture. Quite a varied clientele she must get here, René figured; she was right on the border of the chichi 7th arrondissement and the more proletariat 15th.

  From Gypsy café to circus to a damn fortune-teller. Madame Bercou, or whatever name she went by, from La Bouteille aux Puces, had called him and given him this fortune-teller’s address. He’d paid enough for it. Now he wanted answers. But what could a fortune-teller, who lied for a living, tell him about the Constantins?

  The well-lit street lay deserted. He knocked on the clean, white trailer door. “Madame Rana?”

  “Un moment, s’il vous plaît,” came a voice.

  A few minutes later a woman, in what René recognized as a cobalt-blue Givenchy wool coat like one Aimée had in graphite, descended the trailer’s steps. A Maltese peeked out from her matching leather tote. She disappeared around the trailer in a mist of Guerlain.

  “Entrez,” came the voice.

  Inside the caravan, the decor favored purple and red; the walls were padded, cushion-like. A young woman stood before a purple-draped table. She wore a long skirt with small mirrors woven into the fabric, an embroidered peasant blouse, gold hoop earrings and plenty of eyeliner. A little too much for René’s taste.

  The young woman sat down before a brass tray, shuffled a deck of tarot cards. To her right was a display of quilled feathers and satiny, polished hematite stones that invited one to touch. For a moment he visualized Chloé, who put everything in her mouth these days, choking on one. A chandelier of black glass hung from the ceiling, and a clump of sage smoldered in an abalone shell. He fought the urge to cough and run out of this bordello-like herbal cocoon.

  “A tarot reading, or your palm?” She looked up with a rehearsed smile. “Or for you I’d suggest throwing the stones. The stones respond to magnetism, your will and courage.”

  Choices, choices, choices.

  She looked to be in her midtwenties. Too young, from what
Madame Bercou had told him. “You’re not Madame Rana.”

  “It’s prepay.” She gestured to the sign indicating the type of credit card taken—Carte Bleue—and the manual credit-card imprinter, the kind known as a “knuckle duster.”

  René sat down, sinking into the purple fabric. “I’ve prepaid via Madame Bercou at La Bouteille. Comprenez-vous?”

  The words turned her red-lipsticked mouth into a moue of disappointment. “It’s my mother you want. She’s out.”

  “D’accord.” René met her gaze. “I’ll wait.”

  “Could take all evening,” she said, peering out of the curtained window resembling a ship’s porthole. “And I’ve got standing appointments, clients booked until late. Désolée.”

  He’d been kicked out of better places than this trailer, with its polyester curtains and IKEA candles.

  “You do report your earnings au fisc, I suppose?” he said. “Display your business license somewhere? I assume you pay the three percent surcharge for bank cards?”

  “We have an arrangement, the flics know we’re here. So you can’t scare me by threatening to tell them. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Payoffs and protection. René would have to use something else for leverage.

  “But I’ll tell you this for free,” she said. “I see bad things in your aura.”

  “Yours, Mademoiselle, doesn’t look that good either.”

  She grabbed his hand, splayed out his pudgy palm. “Hmm, a split love line.” She looked up, her thick eyeliner creasing at the edges of her lids. “Must hurt, loving a woman who thinks of you as only a friend.”

  René blinked. How did she know? He pulled back his hand and tried to recover, sitting back on the purple cushions and crossing his legs. He thought of a comeback. “Too bad Drina Constantin’s death will make her brother Radu get nasty. Especially when he hears you refused to help.”

  The girl became very still, her hands frozen in the act of picking up the deck of tarot cards. On top was the skeleton holding a scythe.

  “Maman, wake up.” The girl stood and pulled back the curtains behind her to reveal an alcove with a berth like you’d find in a train sleeper compartment. A middle-aged woman with a hairnet over a black bun sat up and yawned.