by Cara Black
“Give me a quick orientation course, won’t you?”
“Quick . . . ?”
“Things I should know.”
“When putting a drink down, place the other hand on the table first, feel around for obstacles, then place the drink next to your hand. Stairs can be difficult, especially judging the last step. Move slowly, feel ahead with your foot and keep a hand on the banister.”
“Let’s eat lunch.” Not only was she hungry, she needed to practice.
Eating was agony. She was so hungry and the food was so hard to locate. She kept spearing the plate with her empty fork. At this rate, in order to survive she’d have to pick up her dish and lick it like a dog. She ended up lifting the dish, using her fingers, and scooping the food into her mouth.
“We all do that the first time,” Chantal said. “But next meal, it’s not allowed.”
After lunch, Chantal took her on a tour. “Quick technique time. Let’s trail the walls.”
Were they going rock climbing?
“Stick your hands out a little in front,” she said, pulling Aimée’s arm. “Comme ci. ”
Aimée’s fingers slid over metal and glass.
“That case houses a fire extinguisher,” said Chantal. “You can tell by the curved handle. Feel it.”
Beyond that, Aimée felt smooth plaster and grained wood beams. Her hands traveled to a thick carved banister. Hallmarks of medieval construction. Many buildings, at the core, piggybacked on medieval foundations.
“Bend down, keep your hands in front of you so objects will make contact with your forearms instead of with your face. Bon! Do you feel the stone . . . how cold it is?”
Aimée’s fingers trailed over the chill smooth stone. Goose-bumps went up her arms.
“Remember, when you feel this you’ve gone too far down the corridor,” said Chantal. “Turn back.”
“But it seems like there’s a door here,” said Aimée.
She didn’t know how she sensed this.
Chantal laughed. “The Black Musketeers’ old escape route. They tore the rest of the building down but left this wedge. It’s funny what remains.”
Aimée felt Chantal grip her elbow.
“Take the Montfaucon gallows,” said Chantal. “Used before the guillotine until the 1700s. They tossed the corpses into pits and charnel houses in the Bastille. In 1954, when they excavated in my uncle’s boulangerie for a new oven, they found bones and remains from the Montfaucon pit. ‘Scratch the Paris dirt and find a body,’ my uncle used to say.”
Aimée agreed. In more ways than one.
Wednesday Evening
IN THE BLAND, MUSTARD-COLORED cell, Mathieu clenched and unclenched his fists. He felt naked and useless without tools in his hands. Paint had chipped off the metal bars and flaked onto the cement floor. He envisioned his clientele running in horror, his commissions withdrawn, and Suzanne quitting in disgust.
Right now, they were probably ripping up the floorboards, emptying his pots of varnish, and pulling apart priceless gilt frames. Soon they’d start on the basement. And then . . .
“Monsieur Cavour?”
Startled, he looked up and saw the flic . . . the Commissaire with the jowly face and bags under his eyes.
“Let’s have a talk, shall we?”
The Commissaire pointed to the cell door and the blue uniformed policeman unlocked it for him.
“I apologize for the accommodation,” he said. “Come with me. Coffee, tea?”
“Water, I’m thirsty,” Cavour said. “I’ve been here for hours, my shop can’t run itself.”
“Please understand, we need some questions answered.”
Mathieu’s jaw quivered. “I’m an artisan . . .”
“But of course, and a well-known and respected man in your craft. A member of the faubourg association . . . a distinguished member. Once a compagnard de devoir, a traveling craftsman, if memory serves.”
“Not me. Only those who complete the seven-year course and finish their chef d’oeuvre, Commissaire, can claim that distinction.” But his shoulders relaxed. This man had done his homework.
“What about your chef d’oeuvre?” he asked, motioning Cavour toward an opened door, the first of many in the long, linoleum-tiled hall.
“Never completed,” Mathieu said. “I attended the École Boule later.”
Inside, Mathieu heard the chorus to Verdi’s Requiem, a Palais des Congrès de Paris recording, emanating from a radio. On the cluttered desk, a computer terminal screen blinked and a sheaf of papers filled the oversized printer tray.
“Not my office, I’m borrowing it,” the flic said apologetically. “But it’s tidier than mine. Sit down.” He pushed a blue-tinged plastic bottle of Vittel toward Cavour and sat down.
“Tell me why the murdered woman had your chisel, Monsieur Cavour,” he said simply. “Then you’ll be released and I can go home after a twelve-hour shift.”
Mathieu didn’t want to believe this was happening. Didn’t want to think of the suspicions this tired-looking man with the jowly face entertained.
“But who was she . . . this unfortunate person?”
The Commissaire sat forward in his chair, his eyes intent. “Didn’t you know the woman who lived in the passage behind you?”
Was the Commissaire trying to trap him?
“I don’t know people who live next to me in my own passage anymore, and I’ve lived there all my life,” Mathieu said. He spread his arms out in exasperation. “Bien sûr, I know the old inhabitants, the people I grew up with. But the quartier’s changing. Old people die and the property’s sold to upstarts— architects who make apartments into lofts, developers who tear down historic buildings and atéliers to build new condos.”
“Don’t call me an expert but my impression is that the quartier’s already mixte, rich, gay, some craftmen like you, young families, singles into the nightlife, couples; it’s Paris today.”
“All gougers and opportunists!”
“Did you classify Josiane Dolet as one of them?”
Mathieu blinked, taken aback.
He felt the Commissaire’s eyes boring into him.
“Josiane? Never, she’s my friend, a member of the historic preservation association . . .”
“Past tense, if you please,” he said. “How did you know her?”
Sadness washed over him.
“I bury my head in my work. . . . People call me a hermit,” Cavour said. “But I have so much to do, it’s easy to fall behind. The apprentices from École Boule, well . . . the way they work differs from my approach. Bon, their technique is good but . . .”
He shook his head, lost in thought, and lapsed into silence.
Despite École Boule’s prestige—the founder Charles Boule invented the chest of drawers—Mathieu knew the young ones didn’t like the long hours. Or the minute attention to detail. Tedious, they’d tell him. They rejected all the things drummed into Mathieu by his father. His father never gave him a day off, yet these young ones expected holidays, sick days. Demanded it. But Mathieu was old-school and his craft would die with him.
“Tell me about Josiane Dolet,” the Commissaire said.
Mathieu hesitated. Mistrust flooded him. How much should he reveal?
Thursday Morning
AIMÉE SHUDDERED. SWEAT BEADED her upper lip. She balanced herself against the smooth Formica-topped chest of drawers beside her. She’d never realized how difficult putting on her underwear could be. Forget matching or even clean. Wearing a leopard thong with the black lace bra wouldn’t matter, not even if they were inside out.
First she had to find them, then get one leg in and then the other, and pull them up.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Loud and in front of her.
Merde!
You might want to close your door,” said a familiar voice. “Aimée recognized the distinctive rolling r’s of the Burgundian nurse.
“Not on duty at the hospital?”
“Time for my nap,” she sa
id. “I work a split-shift today.”
Aimée heard a yawn.
“We’re neighbors,” the nurse said. “A perk of my job; I get lower rent, an ascenseur instead of winding stairs to the sixth floor, a room—not a closet like the maid’s room on rue Charenton, and a real kitchen and bath.”
Aimée sympathized. Living in her seventeenth-century high-ceilinged apartment with extensive foyers and a cavernous diamond-tiled hallway didn’t always make up for the galleylike kitchen and postage-stamp bathrooms.
“Call me Sylvaine,” the nurse said.
Aimée felt her hand grasped by a a warm one.
“Aimée,” she said.
“Feel free to ask for help. That’s part of my rent package, too.”
Aimée felt shy, but her legs were freezing. That she stood practically naked in full view from the hall hadn’t occurred to her. Yet on second thought, she realized, few inhabitants would know the difference.
“I know you’re tired and I don’t want to impose but . . .” Aimée said. “Mind helping me get dressed? If you get me started, I think I can manage.”
“Organization,” Sylvaine said. “It all comes down to organizing, putting and keeping things in the same place, developing a system that works for you. Makes you independent.”
Aimée liked that idea.
A half hour later Sylvaine and Aimée had arranged LeClerc’s face powder, Chanel red lipstick and lip-liner, and Chanel #5 scent within reachable distance for Aimée and organized her drawer of patterned panty hose, bar of dark chocolate, and cell phone so Aimée could locate them. They’d hung her leather miniskirt over the chair back and angled her boots by the door. Aimée felt thankful René had brought her the essentials on his first visit.
“My mother was blind,” Sylvaine said. “But you’d hardly have known it. At home anyway. She did everything. Even managed homemade foie gras for Noël. As long as someone carved the goose, she said.”
“She sounds amazing,” Aimée said.
A welcome breeze entered the small studio via the window.
“And bullheaded,” Sylvaine said. “She wouldn’t have got far without that strong will of hers. We had our own secret way to communicate. At least, I thought it was secret until I saw some of the deaf-blind people use it too.”
Interested, Aimée asked, “How’s that?”
“We did it for fun. If we were somewhere and she didn’t like something, she’d block print instead of whispering or being rude.”
“Block print?”
“Palm printing . . . it’s simple. You form the words in capitals on someone’s palm or forearm. Like this.”
Aimée felt Sylvaine take her arm. Then Sylvaine’s finger traced lines and curlicues on it.
“It tickles.”
“All the letters are composed of one to three strokes,” Sylvaine said. “A U is a rounded one stroke. The V slants . . . feel the difference?”
Aimée nodded. Sylvaine’s presence dispelled the cold isolation she had felt.
“What did I write?”
“The doctor was . . . no is . . . chunky?”
Sylvaine’s throaty laughter filled the room.
“Do me one more big favor,” Aimée said. René had left her room too soon to give her the information. “Write down on a paper the numbers from this phone’s speed dial on a piece of paper. Then I promise to leave you alone.”
“Pas de problème, but you’ll owe me,” Sylvaine said. “There are three numbers.”
Aimée felt a paper thrust into her hand.
Then a beeping came from somewhere at mid-level where Sylvaine stood. “Oops, I’m being paged,” she said. “Time for my shift.”
Aimée felt guilty. “Sorry that you missed your nap.”
“Rien de tout! Drop by my room, it’s four doors down on the left. We’ll have coffee and talk. I need to interview another patient for my nursing course, someone other than eighty-year-old Madame Slavinksy who falls asleep after three minutes and wakes up thinking we’re in the Warsaw theatre watching a performance of The Threepenny Opera.”
After Sylvaine’s last footsteps echoed down the hallway, it struck Aimée. For a brief time, with Sylvaine, she’d forgotten she was blind. The first time since it had happened since that night.
The phone rang.
“Allô?”
“I’m mad at you, Aimée,” said Martine, her voice husky as usual. “Furious.”
“But why? Won’t Vincent cooperate . . . is he badmouthing me?”
“You didn’t let on. I’m your best friend,” she said. “Tell me it isn’t true? You’re . . . you’re. . . . It’s not permanent, is it?”
“I was going to tell you,” Aimée said. “I didn’t want to ruin your big evening.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “I feel terrible. What do you need?”
What she really needed, Martine couldn’t provide.
“Don’t worry,” said Aimée.
“René says Lambert’s the specialist in Paris,” said Martine. “But there’s always Dr. Smoillet in Lyon, who helped my father. Or the eye clinic in Genève.”
Martine’s father had had routine cataract surgery, and the eye clinic in Genève specialized in macular degeneration. Neither was her problem. But she knew Martine wanted to help.
“Martine, I need decent dark glasses,” she said. “Miles Davis chewed on the only pair I have, not that it matters to my vision . . .”
“Say no more, they’re on the way,” she said. “I’ll engage a nurse to help you at my cousin’s apartment. Round the clock care.”
“Whoa Martine, you’re wonderful but I’m learning to help myself. And I need to stay here, they’re still running tests.”
And she wasn’t really sick. Battered, blind and concussed, but that was different. She didn’t need a nurse.
The phone clicked. “Sorry, I have to put you on hold,” said Martine.
By the time Martine came back on the line, Aimée had gotten one of her legs into her black tights.
“This magazine will kill me yet if the typesetters don’t,” she said, sounding frazzled. “The typesetters were on strike, but we took care of that. Now the major account in Bordeaux has ‘problems’ with the concept of our article on the ‘new’ winemakers. Nom de Dieu, I have to go or they’ll pull out of the coming issue. And their five pages of advertising.”
“Can’t Vincent go?”
“These types need the editor to hold their hand. I’ll come by as soon as I get back.”
ABLE TO use the phone now, Aimée felt more confident. It had only taken her three tries to reach René.
“René, any luck finding the software I need?”
“Not too bad,” he said, klaxons honking in the background. “I’m picking up cables near Montgallet Métro.”
He must be on rue Montgallet, a street lined with old storefronts that housed discount computer shops, Aimée thought. One of René’s favorite haunts. Many were run by families from Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India.
“It’s a Diwali sale,” René said. A diesel truck shifted, the sound of gears scraping like the ragged cry of an animal in pain.
“Diwali? The Hindu festival of lights happens in November, René,” she said. “Nice try. It’s still October.”
“A pre-Diwali sale. Rajeev will give us a good price. He’s helping me with setup.”
She wondered if René, her partner, had thoughts about a future with Rajeev, who was a part-time programmer as well as a shop owner. She wouldn’t blame him if he did. She realized she had to help René with Vincent’s hard drive, even if it were the last job they did together. But she couldn’t worry about that now. Or she would give up and fall apart.
“René, did we do a shred analysis of Populax?”
“You mean a scan to see if deleted files were really gone?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Non.”
She detected interest in his voice.
“Exactement,” she said. “Vincent’s stubbornness bothe
rs me. Let’s check the operating system. That should tell us if the file system was freed.”
She heard raised voices in the background. “Then we should see if the OS wrote a special one-character code to the beginning of the directory entry for any file,” René said. Aimée could hear his mounting excitement over the voices in the background. “It would mark any file as deleted. But unless it’s overwritten, the file info is still stored in the directory and the data still exists on the hard drive.”
“Even with our low-level software tools, we could read any deleted files,” she said.
She felt around for her leather backpack. Found it hanging on the hook and slipped the straps around her shoulders.
“And if we find something incriminating on Populax’s sys- tem, it’s better to know your enemy than be surprised, as they say,” she continued. “PR and marketing firms steal from each other all the time. And since the Judiciare’s not asking for anything else, just the hard drive info, suppose we found evidence of a nasty white collar crime? It would give us a bargaining chip with Vincent.”
“We could even get Vincent to pay us to delete it,” René said, admiration in his voice.
“But first we’ve got to find out what files exist,” she said. “And I don’t know how fast I’ll be using a voice-activated program,” she told him. “If you come to visit again, they moved me to the residence behind the hospital. Room 213.”
“By the way, I checked the databanks,” René said. “She bought her cell phone on rue Sainte Antoine.”
Aimée took a deep breath.
“And she was?”
“Josiane Dolet, lived at thirty-four, rue de Cotte.”
The initials J.D. . . . of course. Now that she knew her name she could find out more.
“Wonderful work, René!” On her right she heard the tap of a cane on linoleum. Closer and closer.
“I’ll come to see you as soon as . . .
“Take your time, René,” she said, reaching for Chantal’s elbow. “I’m going shopping.”
* * *
“THIS IS my friend, Chantal,” said Aimée, making the introduction to Lulu Mondriac, the owner of Blasphème.
Chantal had accompanied her so she could navigate. Lavender oils and frangipani fragrance from the scent counter wafted across to Aimée as Lulu acknowledged the introduction.