by Cara Black
“A cheap phone with a phone card?” she said. “The only numbers on her speed dial are an architect, her astrologer, and a doctor at the Nuclear Office in Taverny.”
“Taverny?”
“He’s away. You’d find more in her apartment overlooking Marché d’Aligre.”
“But we didn’t,” said Morbier.
He’d dole out information to her bit by bit. Make her work for it. Like he always did.
In the background, Aimée heard voices. Phones rang. “BRIF,” someone answered.
Her shoulders stiffened. Realization flooded over her. No wonder Morbier moved around. “You’re with the explosives division. Terrorism. You never went to Créteil for a seminar.”
“I can’t say anything, Leduc,” he said, with a big sigh. “Go talk to Bellan. Give him your info.”
Instead of satisfaction at Morbier’s words, her heart sank.
“Look, Morbier—” she said, but he’d hung up.
She shook her head. What was wrong with him?
The phone rang.
“Don’t hang up on me like that . . .”
“But I didn’t,” interrupted Dr. Lambert.
“I’m sorry,” she said, surprised.
“Who would hang up on you?” Was that irritation in Lambert’s voice?
“My godfather’s good at it,” she said. “Look, I know I’m not your patient now, but . . .”
“I referred you because Reyaud’s an excellent retinologist,” Dr. Lambert said. “He can help you more than I’m able to right now.” She heard him take a breath over the phone. “The MRI results weren’t conclusive. Sorry, I know you were anxious about them. Take the medication, then I’m sure Reynaud will suggest another MRI.”
Her hopes were plunged into limbo again. She had better say goodbye: He was in the business of taking care of others.
“Thanks for telling me,” she said. “I won’t take any more of your time.”
“Reyaud’s treating you now,” he said. “I’m not. So this is a social call.”
Right. She’d embarrassed him and he was being polite.
“Dinner . . .” he was saying. “I know you drink. You eat, don’t you?”
“Me?”
Was he asking her out for dinner?
“Try to pick a resto. I’ll call you later,” he said. “After evening rounds, I’ve got a consultation, so it’s hard to predict just when.”
Pause.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Hang up on me. You’ll feel better.”
And she did.
Saturday
LOÏC BELLAN TRUDGED UP the wide steps, arguing into his cell phone. “No one’s there. The boat’s shut. Can’t the examining magistrate speed up the search permit?”
“All in good time, Bellan,” said the flic at the other end. “Keep your phone on.”
Along the quai, at the end of a row of plane trees, stood a small café. Grass carpeted the slope up to boulevard de la Bastille. Bellan took a seat on the terrace, ordered a café. No booze, he promised himself.
And he watched the navy blue péniche. He’d had worse stakeouts than this. The sun beat on his face, a fountain gurgled behind him, and the soft lap of wavelets against the hulls lulled him. The roar of Bastille lay right behind him, but one would never know it.
He’d brought his girls here once. When a very pregnant Marie had a doctor’s appointment and she’d begged him to take the afternoon off. A pang of regret hit him. Why hadn’t he done that more often? He’d taken his girls to the science museum at Porte de Villette, then for a slow canal ride all the way here. They’d loved it. So had he.
“Monsieur, monsieur!”
Bellan blinked his eyes. He must have dozed in the sun. No one was there. Or at the boat.
“Monsieur!”
He looked around. A small boy stood partly behind a tree, pointing to Bellan’s feet, where a soccer ball lay.
“Please throw it, monsieur,” said the boy. “We’ll get in trouble if we bother café patrons but . . .”
Bellan lifted the ball, stood and stretched, then walked over to the tree. Three young boys, the oldest no more than 10 years of age, a little bande from the quartier, eyed him.
“Whose ball?”
“Mine,” said a red-faced, tow-headed boy.
“Bon, I need some help,” said Bellan, sending the ball over the grass with a fancy kick. “You boys know about the boats, about the people who live on them?”
They stared. The red-faced boy caught the ball.
“Ever see anyone go onto that dark blue péniche?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“André, Marc, Charles! Lunch!”
Good Catholic names.
“Can’t you boys help me?”
They backed away.
“Ask Bidi, he’s bigger than us. The shop at number 22,” said the red-faced boy.
Then they ran past the trees.
He must be losing his edge. After he paid for the coffee, he walked past the hedge and trees.
Number 22, boulevard de la Bastille was a nineteenth-century apartment building. There was a grocery under a striped awning at street level. Bins of bright green peppers, leeks, zucchini, endive spears, and melons lined the façade. From the doorway, Bellan sniffed the detergent smell of a freshly mopped floor.
“Attention, monsieur, it’s still a bit wet. May I get something for you?” said a bald older man, wiping his hands on his apron, from behind the cash register.
“Bidi, may I speak with him, please?”
“Of course, he’s in the back,” the man said and smiled. “Bidi!”
Bellan noticed the narrow shop’s crammed shelves. Crammed but neat. Organized. Every available space filled: boxes of pasta, flour, tins of cocoa, vacuum packed coffee, biscuits, chocolate or butter, rice, Nutella, and jars of jam and tomato sauces, boxes of brown sugar, slim flaçons of Provençal olive oil and tarragon vinegar, tins of packed sardines and plastic shrink-wrapped eight-packs of bottled mineral water and Orangina. The small refrigerated section was crowded with milk, yogurt, packaged meat and cheeses: goat, sheep, cow, hard, soft, or semi-soft.
This little miracle of convenience was usually known as the arabe—because corner shops open late and on weekends, were usually run by North Africans. They existed all over Paris.
“Alors,” said the man. “He gets involved in his work, that boy. Bidi!”
Down the aisle, Bellan saw the back of a young man on his knees, stacking cartons of sea salt. His head bobbed; he wore headphones. Bellan tapped him on the shoulder.
“Pardon.”
He turned around and Bellan stiffened in surprise.
A smiling Down syndrome-afflicted boy looked up at him.
“Bidi?”
“Ouai?” he said.
Bellan caught his disappointment before he blurted something he’d regret. What could he get out of this boy? A big fat nothing.
“I’m sorry, I thought you might help me, but you’re busy,” said Bellan, hoping to make a tactful exit.
“Are you shouting because of my headphones?” Bidi said, his words slow but clear. “I took them off. See.” He pointed to them around his neck. “I can hear you.”
Had he been shouting? Bellan’s next words caught in his throat. “I . . . I . . . some children said you might know something.”
Bidi got to his feet, dusted off his knees. “Ouai,” he said, nodding his head. He had oval close-set eyes, a small mouth, and freckles. “They told me. Said you looked like a serious man.”
Bellan felt perspiration beading his brow. Was it that hot? He opened the top button of his shirt.
“You scared André,” Bidi said. “But André’s scared a lot.”
“Do I scare you?”
Bidi grinned. “Non. I like your shirt. My brother has one just the same.”
“Merci.” Bellan shifted on his feet. Marie had picked the shirt out at Printemps for his birthday.
“The boys said you want to know about the boat. The
blue one.”
“Why yes, actually I wondered if people live on it, you know. But I suppose you’re too far away to see from here . . .”
“Why?”
“These men . . .”
“Are you a flic?”
Bellan nodded.
“A real one?”
Bellan pulled out his picture ID and badge. He didn’t know if Bidi could read. “It might be hard to read, but there’s my photo.”
“I can read. Monsieur Tulles says I’m very careful. Handle things just so. And in straight lines,” said Bidi. “Look, I put all the items in order: first by type, then by size, and then . . .”
“Bidi, I’m sure the policeman can see how good your work is,” interrupted Monsieur Tulles. He came up to Bidi, put his arm on his shoulder, smiled. “I’m so lucky to have you work here every day.”
“Ouai, after Madame died, you needed help.”
Bellan shuffled, felt excluded. And alone. Something radiated from these two. Something warm and caring that he wasn’t part of.
“I wondered, since your shop fronts the quai, if you’d seen men going back and forth?”
“They like feta cheese, pickles, and English soda crackers,”
Bidi said. He pointed to the next aisle. “Over there.”
Bidi’s watch alarm sounded. He turned abruptly. “I have to finish working. My job ends in five minutes.”
“Talk to the policeman, Bidi, it’s fine,” said Monsieur Tulles.
“But I haven’t finished my work . . .” said Bidi. His brow creased.
“The policeman needs information. And you are very observant, haven’t I told you so?”
Bidi’s face broke out in smiles. He looked with adoration at Monsieur Tulles. “You are a good man.” Bidi looked at Bellan. “Are you a good man?”
Bellan put his head down. Ashamed. “Not very often.”
“They are bad men. I know that.”
Bellan looked up. “How Bidi?”
“They hurt people.”
“Did you see them fight?”
“There was blood on their shirts. I said OMO worked best on stains.”
Customers came into the shop and Monsieur Tulles left to wait on them.
“One named Dragos has a ponytail and works at the Opéra,” said Bellan. “Know him?”
“I like the singing place. He paid me to bring food.”
“Aaah,” Bellan nodded. “So he wasn’t sick, then?”
Bidi shook his head. He scratched his muscular arm. “No food’s allowed backstage, but he showed me a secret way.”
Bellan’s eyes widened. Would Dragos Iliescu show this simpleminded boy a secret . . .? But Bidi wasn’t so simpleminded, Bellan grudgingly admitted to himself; it was more complicated. He pushed that out of his mind. Bidi seemed loyal, punctual, and a hard worker. That was how someone once referred to him, after his graduation from the police academy. Like a dog who responded to affection.
“Why did Dragos show you a secret way?”
“To bring his lunch. He didn’t like his bosses. He laughed at the big one and said he would show him.”
Bidi looked at his watch. “It’s time to go. Or I’ll be late. Can’t be late.”
“Will you show me?” asked Bellan, hesitant.
“No time. Later.”
Bidi stacked his last box, hung up his apron, slipped on his backpack, and was gone.
“Does he have an appointment?”
“He’s a bird watcher,” Monsieur Tulles nodded. “Every day at this time he watches the falcons nesting behind the Gare de Lyon clockface.”
Saturday Evening
“LET’S FIND WHERE JOSIANE was meeting Brault,” said Aimée.
Out on cobbled rue de Lappé, Aimée gripped René’s arm.
The early Saturday evening sounds in a quartier thronged with nightlife flowed around them. Laughter and voices spilled over the narrow street. Young voices, those who’d come into the Bastille for a good time. Later, surly and sullen with drink, they’d straggle home. Get sick in the Métro.
Some rollerbladed with gorilla masks, weaving in formation over the garnet-pink bricks outlining the old Bastille prison. They circled the Bastille column, passing the Café des Phares where patrons debated philosophy and solved the world’s problems on Sunday mornings.
The Bastille attracted them as it had since the days of the Bal Musette. Sophisticated ones might attend raves outside Paris in abandoned warehouses. But the tradition continued from the 30s, when movie stars and aristos had gone slumming on rue de Lappe. Despite the changing face of the quartier, working-class types still danced to the accordion, cheek-to-cheek, and everyone drank.
“Brault said it’s down from the Balajo,” she said. “What do you see?”
“Number twenty-four’s next to bar à Nenette,” said René. “There’s a wooden door covered with graffiti, leading to a courtyard.”
“Let’s go visit,” she said.
“Attention!” said René.
Too late. Her legs hit a metal marker, short and rounded. She crumpled onto the damp, cobbled pavement. Good thing she’d thrown her arms out and landed on her knees and spread palms.
“Where did that come from?” she asked, rubbing her shin. Her legs must be black and blue all over with the way she’d been bumping into things. She wouldn’t have a whole pair of stockings left. Better stick to wearing pants.
“I’m sorry,” said René. “Bollards dot the walkway, to prevent cars parking.”
She knew in the old days they prevented carriages running into the building.
“These resemble chess pieces, pawns,” said René.
That was what she felt like. A pawn in life’s game. Advancing from square to square but ending in a stalemate.
She heard the unmistakeable crowing of a rooster from inside.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Uneven cobbles greeted them. The crowing grew louder and the strains of an organ grinder accompanied it. A pocket of life, unchanged and utterly Parisian, part of the passages and courtyards honeycombing the Bastille.
“Lost your way, monsieur et mademoiselle?”
“Er . . . you could say that,” said René.
“But you might help us,” said Aimée. “Do you make organ grinders here?”
“And the sheet music,” said the man who’d offered to help them. “With the holes punched in them so the platen can ‘read’ the notes.”
“Do you know Josiane Dolet? I’m asking because she was meeting a friend here on Monday night.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Anyone here who might?”
“Hard to say. A few of us live here. The others work in the ateliers in the day. I’m alone here now.”
The clucking of hens came from nearby.
“Who owns the chickens, monsieur?”
“They belong to Ravic, the ironsmith.”
“He still works in iron?”
“Mais oui,” the man said. “The iron forge stands behind the chicken cages. He’s closed today. Gone to his niece’s wedding.”
“Merci for your help, monsieur.”
Another dead end. She turned and tugged René’s arm.
They walked past the chickens. Strains from the organ grinder’s tinny music rose behind them.
And then it clicked. Of course. She turned back, grabbed René’s arm.
“May I ask, monsieur, does Ravic work with lead?”
“All kinds of metal. Not just iron. He supplied me with a lead compound for my new handle. My old one wore out.”
“Wouldn’t that be heavy?”
“Not that heavy.”
Her ears perked up.
“Not that heavy?”
“Ravic uses thin leaded sheets,” he said. “Mixed with some alloy, for strength.”
“Does he supply craftsmen in the area?”
Silence. Did he shrug or shake his head?
“I’m sorry but I can’t see you.”
“Mais
oui,” he said, a chuckle in his voice. “He supplies everyone.”
“Merci, monsieur.”
Buttery smells wafted from somewhere as they reached rue de Lappé. René told her to wait, then she felt something warm put in her hand.
“What’s this?”
“A Bastille pavé, a cobblestone,” he said. “At least that’s what the boulangerie calls them.”
“It tastes more like chocolate pastry,” she said. “Delicious.”
She clutched René’s elbow as they walked, cupping crumbs with her other hand.
“What are you getting at, Aimée?” asked René.
“Do you remember what Brault said about Dragos looking for lead?”
“So what does that mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I need to reach Vincent,” she said. “To find out. Let’s go call from a café. We’ll try another number.”
“VINCENT CSARDA, ” he answered at the first ring.
“We need to talk, Vincent.”
“Impossible. Look, sorry,” he said. “Let me call you later.”
“This can’t wait, Vincent.”
“Bad time right now,” he said.
“Your bad time’s just beginning if we don’t persuade la Proc to ignore your affair, Vincent,” she said, improvising as she went along.
“What do you mean?” His voice lowered.
“Having an affair is your business except . . .”
“Join the planet, Aimée Leduc,” he said. “Get back to reality.”
“It’s who you had the affair with ‘Inca,’ ” she said.
She heard rustling, as if his hand covered the phone. Mur-murred speech.
“How do you mean?”
“Kinky, threesome or however Inca liked it,” she said. “Short for Incandescent.”
“Who?”
“Those hot e-mails make it hard to convince the Proc you had no involvement with Incandescent.”
“Leave my business alone,” he said, his voice brittle. “Our contract has ended.”
“And to think, a moment before you apologized!” she said. “But in a court of law, as I told you, we’re still responsible. Monday’s the court date, René expects the subpoena to issue then.”
“I can’t talk now.”
“Vincent, I’ve got the software to prove it. And I will. It’s personal now.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.