Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  “Teach us accessorize,” she said, accompanied by a burp.

  The back of the limo filled with hoots of laughter.

  The girls were out for a good time. How could she turn it around? Only a car seat away from Tatyana, who appeared to be having the time of her life. The champagne flowed. Meanwhile, Aimée’s twenty-four hours were ticking away.

  Had she gone up the wrong allée? She’d assumed the diva negotiated with Tatyana for the Modigliani. Time to push.

  “Fashion’s an art, you know. Style takes thought.” Aimée pretended to think. “Think of building the perfect outfit as an artistic process. One must visualize the background, shade it with a working color scheme, accessorize to heighten the mood. Evoke a feeling. Think of a great painting. A Modigliani.”

  Tatyana’s mascaraed eyes narrowed. Had Aimée gone too far? Had Tatyana finally recognized her?

  The diva was speaking into her cellphone in loud Russian. Apparently someone on the other end was chewing her out.

  “Da, Dmitri.” She clicked off and her fuchsia mouth sagged in disappointment. “Must go Ritz hotel.”

  “But you booked the afternoon,” Aimée said, trying to keep calm. “We haven’t even hit Louboutin. His must-have red-soled heels.”

  The diva sighed. “For one time I having fun. With French woman, like friend, see real Paris. Not stupid boring Ritz. Meetings, always business.” A bitter laugh. “My husband Dmitri book me.”

  Dimitri kept his diva on a tight leash. For a moment Aimée felt sorry for her. How sad, if she really regarded Aimée as a friend.

  “Your husband appreciates art?”

  The diva snorted. “Dmitri buys culture. Like everything else. Now he buys museum.”

  Like Oleg had said.

  “Pay her.” The diva nodded to her bodyguard as the limo pulled up at the Ritz. But Aimée hadn’t even talked to Tatyana, had learned nothing. She couldn’t let her get away.

  A wad of francs were thrust in Aimée’s hand as she emerged. “Keep extra. It’s your tip.” The diva and Tatyana disappeared under the portico.

  Holding in her anguish, Aimée smiled at the bodyguard. “That’s too kind. But I’d like to give her my card. You know, for a more detailed tour.”

  “I handle that.”

  “Of course, please do.…” She played it another way. “I love the ladies’ room here. They wouldn’t mind if I used it, non?”

  The bodyguard leaned closer, placing her dry hands on Aimée’s … a fraction too long. Her scent of leather and champagne filled Aimée’s nose.

  No mistaking that body language.

  “You like women?” A definite come-on. Aimée wanted to crawl back into the limo and speed away. But it wasn’t her limo and it wouldn’t speed away.

  Aimée nodded. “And men.”

  “Bi, me too. Why frown on pleasure? A drink later, yes? I’m off tonight.”

  Aimée had never been propositioned by a female Russian bodyguard before. Always a first time.

  “Give me your number.” Aimée took Svetla’s cell phone and replaced it with hers before Svetla could object. “We’ll key each other’s number in. French numbers are so difficult.” As she keyed in a number that went to an answering service, she casually nudged her bag with her elbow so it landed on Svetla’s foot. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  As Svetla reached down, Aimée scrolled to the last three numbers dialed—all the same. Before she could memorize the number, Svetla palmed her phone. Shot her a look. “Tonight.”

  By the time Aimée entered the lobby, there was no trace of Tatyana or the diva. Conversations buzzed from huddled groups of men in dark suits, blue shirts, and red ties—the Ministry uniform. Definitely something high-powered going on. A hovering man, obviously a plainclothes hotel detective, had glided toward her.

  “May I help you?”

  Get lost, she wanted to say.

  “Madame Bereskova forgot something in the limo,” she said.

  “I’ll make sure Madame gets it,” he said, blocking her way by the Hemingway Bar sign.

  She brushed past him, flashing her father’s old police ID with her photo on it. The only way with minions like this.

  Hurrying down the long, plush carpeted corridor, she heard a hiss. A snap of fingers. “You! Here!”

  Tatyana, her eyes narrowed in anger, gestured at her from an alcove. Her long, red fingernails stabbed the air.

  “What do you want, spy?”

  “Simple,” Aimée said. “Call the Serb off.”

  Tatyana’s mascaraed eyes crinkled. “Like I know what you mean? Get lost or I call—”

  “Dmitri? I’d like to meet him.”

  Tatyana’s thick foundation creased in a network of fine lines. Not as young as Aimée thought. Or else the woman had had a hard life.

  “Maybe you want him and the flics to know you hired—?”

  “Shhh.” Tatyana gestured to ladies’ restroom. “In here.”

  Tatyana checked the cubicles, the closet with extra hand towels and soap, the dish with coins for the attendant. Empty. “I make it quick before the pipi lady come back,” she said, arranging her sleek blonde bob. “Quit hounding my husband.”

  “Oleg called me.”

  “I mean following us around, like yesterday and today,” Tatyana said.

  Yesterday? “You’re paranoid, Tatyana. Give me the Serb’s number. The contact.”

  “What do I know?” She shrugged. “It’s his brother. He’s pissed, out of my control. Right now you want a cut. Fine. Ten percent.”

  “Quit haggling,” Aimée said. “Bereskova’s your buyer, right?”

  “He has museum.” Tatyana pouted.

  “He’s a Lenin stalwart, or an art connoisseur?”

  “What he knows about art fits in my toenail. Maybe the babushkas in his orphanage idolized Lenin.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tatyana’s eyes glinted. “Fifteen percent?”

  Aimée tried another angle. “Why is your diva friend unhappy?”

  “So much money and still unhappy. I don’t know.”

  “Quit the act, Tatyana. Cooperate or—”

  “Dmitri not big oligarch now. More like a gardener,” Tatyana said, glancing at her watch. A white Chanel. A gift from the diva or an imitation, Aimée couldn’t tell. “He needs art, this museum.”

  “A gardener?”

  “Dmitri plants seeds, adds fertilizer, water, like that.”

  “I don’t understand.” She wished Tatyana made more sense.

  “Dmitri grows connections, like you say. Needs to make himself legitimate again. Now he have so many little projects, all seeds he’s trying to plant to grow into something big, put him back on top. Museum is one seed.”

  Then it fit together. Dmitri was the buyer.

  “So Dmitri wants the Modigliani to legitimize his museum and gain connections?”

  “Who knows? But he owes krysha, we call it in my country—it’s how you do business.”

  “Krysha?”

  “Protection and patronage.” Looking bored, Tatyana smoothed back an eyebrow in the mirror. “Maybe Lenin means something to him.” A short laugh. “Dmitri comes from nothing. He was raised in a collective orphanage. Worked at a factory all the way up the apparatchik ladder. A self-made man. But last year he backed the wrong—how you say—Eurocrat? I give him credit. He wants to be back at the top.”

  Aimée’s surprise must have shown on her face.

  A bitter laugh. “No secret. The price of doing business. That’s Moscow rules. Honor krysha if you want to stay alive.”

  “So you furnish the Modigliani and he owes you, non?”

  Tatyana’s cell phone rang. She checked the number. “I must go. He’s pressuring me.” Her tone went serious. “I need the painting. We make it work for everyone.”

  Aimée blocked the door. “The Serb threatened my partner. You’re not leaving until I find him.”

  Tatyana hesitated, considering. “Avenue Claude Vellefau
x, a café-bar by the hospital. That’s all I know.” Her eyes narrowed. “All right, twenty percent. But furnish it tonight.”

  “TATYANA GAVE UP the info too easily,” Aimée said.

  Back at Leduc Detective, she’d finished her account and a bottle of fizzy Badoit after handing Saj his clothes and malware program. The office was filled with the scent of sage still smoldering in the incense bowl—Saj’s ritual of purification and cleansing of auras. After last night, she agreed to it. Aimée flicked her lighter and lit another bundled stick of sage, wishing she were lighting a cigarette instead.

  “She sounds desperate if she offered you twenty percent,” Saj said, sitting on his tatami mat, a program running on his screen. “Or she’s playing the oligarch. On the other hand, he could be playing her, too.”

  “You mean he’s got his own feelers out?”

  Saj shrugged, then winced. “Aimée, tell the flics. That one from the art squad who liked you so much. The one who wants to set you up for a buy.”

  Dombasle. The one with the nice eyes. “He wants a patsy.” Part of her wanted to confide in Dombasle, get his advice, but the other part knew she had to handle this alone. Finding the painting would lead to her mother. But first she had to neutralize the Serb.

  And the hours were ticking away, her deadline looming. A tingling sensation ran up her arm.

  “But tell him what? That I ran away after I found Yuri tortured, and took the art dealer’s photo before he was pushed on the Métro tracks?” She shook her head. Reached in her desk drawer and shuffled the reports until she found her mascara and kohl eyeliner. She needed a quick touch-up. “Alors, the Serb’s brother made a fool of police security at Hôtel-Dieu, threatened you, who they regard in their own twisted logic as a suspect.” She stood, headed to the back armoire. “I need to neutralize the Serb, and not in this outfit.”

  Behind the plumber’s overalls, nurse’s uniform, and other disguises in her armoire, she found jeans, a vintage charcoal Sonia Rykiel cashmere tunic, and a black chrome metallic jacket.

  “Slow down, Aimée,” Saj said. “Don’t go this alone. Or run off half-cocked without a plan.”

  “Good point. I’ll bring my bag of tricks.”

  “Act tough, then. Don’t say I—”

  “Didn’t warn me? This mec’s ruthless—you’re injured, and what if you’d been home alone? He’s carrying out a vendetta. Until he learns you didn’t kill his thief of a brother, he won’t stop.”

  “You don’t have to prove that to me. Or that you’re brave.”

  Brave? The last thing she felt. “Look, my mother’s involved and I need you safe.”

  And then she remembered. “Where’s Maxence? Don’t tell me he’s playing hooky already?”

  “Been and gone to René’s for the cables I need. You need me working.” She heard the smile in Saj’s voice. “Someone has to be beside this kid. He’s good, Aimée.” Suddenly he looked a little bleak. “But don’t forget, boss, I need you.”

  “Still hurts, Saj?”

  He nodded. Winced. “What can I do from here? How can I help?”

  She thought. “Find out what you can about this Bereskova. His business, the museum. Tatyana intimated it’s a front.”

  “Odd, non, that she’s so up-front on that score?” Saj said.

  “That struck me, too.” She pulled out her map and located Avenue Claude Vellefaux near the hospital where Serge gave pathology seminars. Why hadn’t she heard the lab results from him? She tried his number again; his phone went to voice mail.

  At the office door she paused. “What’s our alarm code disarmer?”

  “Hare krishna hare krishna.”

  “A Hindu mantra?” She’d learned that much from Saj. “Feels like sacrilege or something.”

  “Krishna won’t mind. Means we’ll chant several times a day.”

  HER SCOOTER IDLED at the red light on Canal Saint-Martin. Irritated, she pulled on her gloves, watching the locks move the water slowly under the arched bridge. Like everything else today. Slow.

  A barge made its way into the water, filling the basin with shushing ripples as a small heron winged its way over the bank.

  She found the café across from the peeling stuccoed walls of Hôpital Saint-Louis, built in the seventeenth century to contain plague victims. The area still felt isolated. She noticed the young drug dealers on the corner of nearby rue Jean Moinon and a Chinese hooker emerging from a car, two blocks down from the hooker turf on rue de Belleville. Edgy and mixed.

  The Serb mafia café fit right in. Soccer team pennants on the nicotine-stained walls, mismatched chairs at gouged wooden tables. The turn-of-the-century frosted-glass windows were fogged with smoke.

  The clientele matched the decor. Several large-shouldered men, bouncer material, wore tracksuits and huddled over beer and dice at the half-zinc, half-Formica counter.

  A shame to ruin the counter like that, she thought. And a bigger shame to see no espresso machine.

  “Badoit, s’il vous plaît,” she said to the man behind the counter. He looked up from the dice, revealing a craggy, pitted face and dark-knit brows. He was the size of a truck.

  “No Badoit.”

  “Bon, something sparkling, as in water.”

  He popped the bottle top of a Knjaz Miloš.

  “Nice label.”

  “From Serbia, my country,” he said, as if challenging her.

  “Bon.” She smiled, took a sip. Mineral-tasting fizz trickled down her throat. “We’re off to a good start, you sharing with me and all.”

  “Eh?” His brows knit closer together.

  One of the mecs jerked their thumb at him. “You raise or not?”

  He inclined his big head with the barest of nods. If she hadn’t been watching him closely, she wouldn’t have noticed. She realized this crew communicated in subtle ways.

  They’d sussed her out from the moment she walked in. At least no one had raised a gun. But she doubted the bulges in the waistbands of their jogging pants held packs of facial tissue.

  “No need to waste time, eh? Tatyana.…”

  “Who?”

  Like he didn’t know.

  “Russian, blonde.” That sounded generic. She racked her brain. “Sports a white Chanel watch—a client who referred me.” Also lame. She took a breath. “I have a job for Feliks’s brother.”

  She saw no reaction on his face.

  “Job? You’re in a café. My café. Go to the labor exchange.”

  “I mean a job for a specialist.”

  A smile spread over his jowls. An ugly smile that didn’t reach his dull eyes.

  “Construction, you mean—removals, concrete work. I refer you. But plumbers, you get Polish in their own their café, or the soup kitchen outside Notre Dame de l’Assomption church.”

  “Not that kind of work.” He’d make it hard. He didn’t trust her. She felt the others looking at her. Better to leave a card and then … what? Hope word would trickle down and the Serb’s brother would call her?

  Her cell phone rang.

  “Aimée, you’ve got to see this.” Serge’s excited voice on the other end.

  See what? She turned away from the counter. “Can’t you just tell me, Serge?”

  “I asked the lab to expedite a broader screening using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.”

  She looked back and noticed the men throwing dice. One had his eye on her.

  She lowered her voice. “So you found the cause of death?”

  “It took a lot of doing,” Serge said. “Let me tell you. This screen shows what peaks pop up, then we did a quantitative assay, looking at the peaks the compound fell in. Fascinating.”

  She turned away again, wishing he’d cut to the chase. “Say it so I understand it, Serge.”

  “Xylazine. An injectable horse tranquilizer. Not a high dosage, but the victim suffered an allergic reaction to it.”

  “Like anaphylactic shock?”

  “Similar. His body shut down within minut
es. But not before he’d gotten a few steps.”

  “So he staggered from Yuri’s atelier.…” That fit. “And you think …?”

  “The lab tech’s seen it before,” he said. “For a home invasion the thief takes precautions. In this case, a syringe of horse tranquilizer to neutralize the occupants if they wake up or return home unexpected. Not a lethal dose, but enough to knock them out and give him time to clean out the house.” Serge paused. “In this Serb, a portion of his bruising happened before death. I conclude he got interrupted, fought with someone, and stabbed himself by mistake.”

  “By mistake?”

  “A small needle puncture in his derrière. Aligning with the back pocket of his jeans.”

  He’d killed himself.

  “Brilliant.” Her mind spun. “But where’s the syringe?”

  “Check the crime scene report,” Serge said.

  She thought back. It might be in the bushes, in the gutter where he got caught between the cars, or it might even have fallen in the atelier that night and washed away in the detritus of Yuri’s overflowing sink.

  On some report she’d find it. But what she needed most was the lab report to prove this to the Serb’s brother. Suddenly, one more thing made sense. She reached in her jacket pocket for the straw she’d found at Saj’s, thought of the matching straw twined in Yuri’s trampled rosemary, and the barnyard smell Nora mentioned. “Where would he obtain this … what’s it called?”

  “Xylazine? Around horses.”

  “Meet me in ten minutes,” she said.

  She turned to the man behind the counter. Smiled. “I’m looking for the mec who works with horses,” she said. “There’s money in it.”

  He pointed to the door. “Drink’s on me. Go back the way you came in, Mademoiselle.”

  She ground her teeth. Wondered what the going rate for a hit ran to today. Took a guess.

  “Five thousand francs’ worth.”

  He pounded his fist. “For the long-haired freak who ran over his brother?” Shook his head. “You think money buys his brother back, stupid French bitch?”

  Her spine stiffened. She’d hit a nerve. The men in back advanced further up the bar, crowding her. Their heads down. Like a pack of hounds waiting for the hunt master’s command. Her damp shirt stuck in between her shoulder blades.