AL05 - Murder in Clichy al-5

by Cara Black

  “I found you and helped free you,” Aimée said. “This man’s my godfather, he’s a Commissaire de Police. Show her your badge, Morbier.”

  “À vôtre service, mademoiselle, you’re safe here.” He winked, finding his wallet and opening it to show his ID.

  “Poor Thadée.” Sophie burst into tears, her shoulders heaving.

  “Listen to me, Sophie, someone on a motorcycle shot him, then came after me,” Aimée said, leaning closer. “I pulled him into the phone cabinet, where he died in my arms.”

  “We were divorced,” Sophie said, wiping her blue eyes with her sleeve. “But we remained friends. I became his partner at the gallery. We were always better at that anyway.”

  Sophie’s eyes were pools of hurt. Did she still love Thadée?

  “Can you remember what happened?” Morbier asked.

  Sophie blinked several times. “They took me to the morgue to see Thadée’s body this morning. It was horrible,” she said, her wide eyes filling with tears again. Her light brown hair was matted to her cheeks.

  “Did you talk to him before he was shot, Sophie?”

  “I only arrived from London this morning to prepare for the exhibition,” she said, rubbing her head.

  “But you must have talked, non? ”

  “He hadn’t even hung all the artwork for the show!”

  “Sophie, did he speak about jade?”

  She shook her head and winced. “The only time I saw him was in the morgue.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Tonight, after I checked the gallery for the shipment, I turned the light off in the bathroom. Someone grabbed me. Next thing I knew, I was hanging from the overhead water tank.”

  “Shall I call a doctor? ”

  “Give me a Doliprane, eh? Let me sleep.”

  Aimée reached into her pocket for the aspirin packet she carried. “Here. Do you know who Thadée owed money to? Had he mentioned—?”

  “Merde . . . aches like a. . . .” Sophie swallowed the pill, leaned back, her eyes closing. “Une catastrophe. The gallery exhibition’s supposed to be hung, but nothing. . . .”

  “I think he wanted me to give you something. A check?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sophie said, pulling her stained silk blouse around her. “A check for what?”

  “Do you know how he came into possession of . . . ?

  Sophie yawned. “I don’t know what you’re going on about.” She curled up on her side and within a minute she was snoring.

  Morbier shook his head. “I can’t take care of her, Leduc,” he said. “I work, remember. And this trouble’s not my business. My retirement’s around the corner.”

  “You always say that,” she said. He was the busiest commis-saire on the verge of retirement she knew.

  He shrugged and motioned her to a dark wood table by his window overlooking a dilapidated ironmonger’s courtyard in the Bastille district. The dark building’s corners were burnished by the moonlight.

  “Marc’s staying with me this weekend,” Morbier said. “I don’t have room for her.”

  His grandson Marc stayed with him more and more despite his Algerian grandparents’ frequent requests for visitation rights. They kept insisting Morbier’s choice of a Catholic boarding school was no proper education for a good Muslim.

  She pulled out a bottle of vin du Vaucluse from her bag, shoved a dirty plate aside, and reached for wine glasses above his cracked porcelain sink.

  She needed a drink. He looked like he needed one, too.

  “Open this and I’ll tell you about it,” she said, giving him no choice.

  “You know how long it takes to get old, Leduc?” he said, pulling out the cork and pouring. “Like this . . . pfft. Overnight. You wake up and . . .”

  “Santé,” she said, clinking her glass against his.

  She felt Morbier’s eyes on her. Studying her like the RG had.

  “How do you know René’s been kidnapped, Leduc?”

  She looked at her watch. “Morbier, it’s six hours since their phone call and I’m no closer to finding what they want.” She took a long sip, sat back on a wooden chair missing one of its three rungs, and told him what had happened.

  Morbier shook his head. “A hollow threat.”

  How could he say that? “Didn’t you hear about the shooting in the 17th?”

  “Not my quartier, you know that.” Morbier rolled his eyes.

  “Morbier, what should I do?”

  “Why ask me? Leave it to the professionals, Leduc.”

  “And what are you? It stinks, Morbier.” She hid her trembling hands under the table. “I’m scared,” she said, hating to admit it.

  Morbier looked away. He never liked dealing with emotions.

  “Call the RG man, Regnier,” he said. “Tell him. He seemed to like you so much.”

  “Like me?” She shook her head. “Regnier wants the jade. René’s life wouldn’t matter.”

  “Do you have a choice? Can you come up with the jade?”

  “I don’t trust Regnier and the RG as far as I can spit. They were responsible for papa. . . .The ministry never acknowledged our involvement or their responsibility. Papa had a dishonorable record until I made them clean it up. And it took two years. They still won’t acknowledge it was their mission. You think I’d believe them?”

  No flowers at the funeral, but a bill for her father’s autopsy.

  “Leduc, you don’t do that kind of work anymore, remember? If anything happened to René, could you live with that?”

  His words stung. She’d never forgive herself if René was hurt.

  But what he really meant was that she wasn’t up to it. The damage to her optic nerve made her useless. A liability.

  “I worked all through my hospital stay,” she said. “I don’t intend to stop now. The medication and meditation control it.”

  At least she hoped so.

  “Hostage negotiation’s a fine art,” he said. “How did they find you, and trace René?”

  “They must have followed me,” she said.

  Weariness had settled in her cold, damp legs. She noticed Morbier’s thinning salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper now. When he was tired, his jowls sagged, reminding her of a basset hound.

  Morbier poured them each another glass.

  “What if you were the target, Leduc? Victim of a setup?”

  Her chest tightened. “I wondered about that, too,” she said. “But why, Morbier? Then there’s the flic I saw with the RG. He was involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance.”

  Morbier raised his hands to ward off her words. “Not this again. Get a life, Leduc.”

  “When the secret service or their lackeys are involved, everything stinks.”

  Morbier pulled out a box of cigarillos and another of wooden kitchen matches from near his black phone. A relic, with a rotary dial. He scratched one of the matches and lit up a Montecristo.

  “I thought you quit,” she said.

  “These little cigarillos from Havana?” he said, tossing the empty yellow box into the trash. “They don’t count.”

  Like hell they didn’t. And what she wouldn’t give for one right now! She leaned over the table wishing she didn’t want a puff so much. Wasn’t that stop smoking patch working anymore? She rolled down her jeans waist. Merde! The patch was gone. She pulled out one from her bag, unpeeled it, and stuck it on her hip.

  “Like one, Morbier?”

  “After I finish this coffin nail,” he said, taking a deep drag.

  “Plant a word, I need to see the file on Thadée Baret. The kidnapper said forty-eight hours, Morbier,” she said. “Look into it, please.”

  Morbier shook his head.

  ”After all, what’s a godfather with an ear at Brigade Criminelle for?”

  “That’s rich, Leduc. I’m only there one day a week,” he said, rubbing his jaw.

  “It’s for René. Morbier, please,” she said. “I swear I won’t ask for any more help.”

&n
bsp; “You’ll deal with the RG?”

  She looked down. Noticed the peeling brown linoleum, his thin ankles and worn brown wool slippers, like those her grandfather used to wear.

  “Consider it,” Morbier said. “Otherwise I won’t stick my neck out. And I’m not even promising that. Lots of the old boys have retired.”

  She nodded.

  “How do I know you mean it, Leduc?”

  “You want a pinky promise?” she said, remembering when she was ten years old and making a pinky promise put the world in order. Too bad it didn’t do that anymore.

  “What about her?” Morbier gestured to the sleeping Sophie.

  “Just one night.”

  She held up the jade disk. It glowed with a pear-hued translucence in the dim light of Morbier’s galley kitchen.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean, Leduc?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m going to find out. Meanwhile, I’ll sleep on your floor and monitor Sophie to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion.”

  Morbier went to bed. She tucked the blanket around Sophie’s shoulders and tried René’s number again. Three rings and then a click.

  “Allô . . . allô?”

  She heard breathing. Her pulse raced.

  “René!”

  “The dwarf’s tied up at the moment. . . .” She heard snickering.

  “Please meet me. I have what. . . .”

  In the background, she heard scuffling. The sounds of splintering wood.

  “Not now,” a voice said.

  Then a cry. René’s cry. And the line went dead.

  Nervous, she tried Léo.

  “Allô, Léo?” she said. “Could you locate it?”

  “In five seconds?” Léo said, her voice sleepy. “The Northeastern sector antenna responded; he’s in Paris. Keep him on longer next time.”

  “Merci,” Aimée said, pacing the worn wood floor.

  Thursday Morning

  AIMÉE WOKE AT 6 A.M. to darkness, her shoulders and legs stiff.

  Twelve hours had passed since the first kidnappers’ call. She had to get to work. Morbier snored in his back bedroom. Sophie lay asleep, after a night of twisting and turning on the couch. But she had no fever, hadn’t thrown up.

  Aimée wrote “Call me when you wake up” on a graph-lined piece of paper and put it on Morbier’s kitchen table.

  She swallowed her pills with an espresso at the corner café on Morbier’s street and made it to her apartment, changed into a black leather skirt and long pullover. She walked an eager Miles Davis on the fog-lined quai, then dropped him at the groomers’ for a much-needed trim.

  Aimée tried Gassot’s number again but it rang and rang. Frustrated, she wanted to beat her head against the stone wall. So far, she was spinning her wheels in the sand.

  On her calendar the day was circled in red . . . payday. Time for René’s paycheck. All over France, veterans and retirees collected their pensions. Most banked at their post office accounts.

  That’s where Gassot would be! Too bad her bike had been stolen. She jumped on the Number 74 bus to Clichy, passing old ladies walking their chichiteux dogs in front of bourgeois gray Haussmann buildings.

  Aimée knew the Clichy area, boasting bigger apartments, was about to become the next “in” place. It was becoming sprinkled with avant-garde boutiques whose back windows overlooked the trainyard, with newcomers who could ignore that water wasn’t connected to the main around the clock, and the fact the quartier had been “in” once before, then out. Far, far out.

  Here Degas and Zola had argued at Café Guerbois, over Zola’s infamous article on the Salon that had refused Manet’s painting of Nana, a courtesan. Now the café was a Bata shoe store.

  The rail lines, a symbol of modernity and access to the lush countryside for the Impressionists, were now grimy and soot-encrusted and the countryside better known for cinderblock HLM low-rent council housing. Place de Clichy’s former 1930s showcase Gaumont cinema had become the 1970s do-it-yourself Castorama hardware store.

  Aimée left the bus. Her shoulders slumped when she saw the line at the post office trailing out the door. How could she find one particular veteran in a sea of old faces?

  She took a black marker and on an envelope wrote “Hervé GASSOT, anciens combattants,” as she’d seen done at the airport.

  On her third trip walking the line, an old woman tugged at her sleeve. “What’s he done?” she asked.

  Aimée noted the sixtyish woman’s white hair held in place by a hairband, the tailored winter-white wool coat with dirty, too short sleeves, scuffed 70s Courrèges patent leather ankle boots.

  “Nothing yet,” Aimée said. “Can you help me?”

  The woman shrugged and looked away.

  “Feel like a coffee?” Aimée asked.

  “Un demi’s more my style,” she said.

  “Bon,” said Aimée. “Let’s go. My treat.”

  They ended up across the street in a working class café facing Avenue de Saint Ouen. Aimée tapped her chipped nails on the zinc counter as the old woman knocked back a beer and then another.

  “Alors, Madame, have you seen Hervé Gassot?”

  The green jockeys’ jerseys flashed on the mounted télé above the bar. Besides them, the espresso machine whined as it steamed milk and a line of drab raincoated commuters waited to purchase the November Carte Orange pass or a phone card. Aimée could use both.

  “I see him around. Plays cards.”

  “So you know Gassot well?”

  “Who knows anyone well? That’s relative, n’est-ce pas?” she said. A slight white froth edged her lip. “The Existentialists would argue that we can never know anyone, really.”

  “D’accord,” Aimée agreed.

  But it was her franc and she didn’t care to discuss philosophy. She wanted to know about Gassot. On top of it, this lady in white didn’t smell all that fragrant.

  “So you’ve seen him around?” Aimée said. “What about today in line at the poste?”

  “I’m still thirsty.”

  Aimée nodded to the barman to give her another.

  “He came early.”

  She pushed the holder with boiled eggs toward the woman.

  “Try one, tastes good with a demi,” she said, noticing the tremor in the woman’s hands. Her thin legs.

  The woman cracked the egg. With effort, she peeled the eggshell. Bits of white shell sprinkled on the floor. She took small bites and chewed slowly, each bite measured.

  Aimée had a sinking feeling that this was the woman’s meal for the day. A loud ringing sounded in the woman’s pocket. She pulled out an alarm clock, white and oblong, with large numerals on it.

  “Time for my scrub,” she said. “Wonderful hot showers at the municipal pool.”

  “So where does Gassot play cards?”

  “He cheats, you know.”

  Aimée hid her smile. “Alors, Madame,” she said. “Can’t you help me?”

  “I’ve seen him in the square,” she said, shrugging.

  “What does he look like?”

  She pointed to an older man leaning against the counter, drinking a verre; white haired, stocky. Like a lot of older men in the quartier. The woman shrugged.

  Aimée figured the old woman was hungry and needed a drink, that’s all. But Aimée didn’t begrudge her the food. She put some francs on the counter, stood, and hitched her bag onto her shoulder.

  “But Gassot’s peg-leg gave him trouble today,” the woman told her.

  At last! Aimée paused and leaned closer to the old woman, hoping gentle prodding would elicit more information.

  “You mean he has an artifical limb?”

  “He limped more than usual,” she said. “Might get a new one, since he cashed his pension today.”

  “An injury from the Indochinese war?” she asked.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “He was an engineer, wasn’t he?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Ta
lked about oil drilling. How he couldn’t do that anymore with his pegleg. Worked with drawings.”

  “Merci, Madame . . . ?”

  “Madame Lorette,” she said. Her eyes changed. “Sorry, I haven’t helped you much.”

  Did she notice the pity in Aimée’s gaze?

  “Look at my hands. You wouldn’t know it, but once I was a concert pianist. Schubert was my forte. I even played at the Châtelet concert hall.”

  Did this woman have someone to help her? “Do you have family?”

  “I wasn’t a very good mother,” she said. “Some women shouldn’t have children. And my daughter knew that.”

  “Maybe so, Madame Lorette,” Aimée said. “But children eventually get on with their life.”

  Aimée felt a pang of sorrow. Had her own mother felt that way? For a moment she wished her mother was sitting in some faraway café thinking about her, knowing guilt like this woman. Whenever she’d asked her grand-père about her mother, he’d sigh and shake his head. “Ma petite, some women aren’t meant to be understood. Just to be loved.”

  And in an odd way, she did understand, had no choice but to accept it. But deep down, a part of her waited for the mother who’d left one day without explanation. A woman who’d gone to fight revolutions and change the world, but left a little part of it incomplete.

  After finding that old letter from her mother in the Sentier district, Aimée had known it was time to move on.

  “You know my mother left us,” she said. “Like you, I guess she did better without children. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love me or that you didn’t love your daughter in your own way.”

  She slipped Madame Lorette fifty francs and hoped it wouldn’t be spent all at once. But she’d found something out from the old woman. Now she knew where to search for Gassot.

  AIMÉE DISCOVERED six orthopédistes in the 17th arrondissement. Two had retired, one specialized in sports injuries and the other two, in mastectomy fittings.

  The last, near Clichy, didn’t pick up the phone. But her father’s words rang in her ears: “Check each lead or you’ll regret it later when it smacks you in the face.” So she bundled her shearling coat around her and trudged down rue Legendre to the last address.

  The Centre Orthopédique was a small taffy-colored storefront nestled in an ancient building. Wooden legs and old corsets filled the shop window. She pulled a pair of heavy brown-framed glasses from her bag. A sleepy-faced middle-aged man answered Aimée’s knock.