Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  “We’ll stop at the church. Shall I keep Miles Davis tonight?”

  Aimée nodded. “Merci.” She pulled her scooter off the kickstand. Walked it over the damp cobbles. Paused. “What men, Madame Cachou?”

  “Un Russe,” she said.

  Aimée spine stiffened. The former KGB chauffeur had tracked her down already? But how?

  Madame Cachou made a sniffing sound. “Vodka seeping from his pores. Couldn’t fool me. The old coot stank to heaven.” She reached back behind the loge door. “He left something for you.”

  A Trotsyskist newspaper. It must have been the old man with the red-veined nose, drunk to the world, at Marevna’s resto. But he’d already left one for her with Marevna.

  “He said you’d understand.”

  Understand?

  Taped to the second page was a postcard-sized blue note card.

  Sainte Anne Hospital, Allée de Kafka. Friday, 5 P.M.

  “SIM CARD CLONED,” Saj greeted her. He was sitting cross-legged on his tatami mat, laptop in front of him, the neck brace still on but his arm without the sling.

  “Delay switch in place for the Bereskova Swiss bank account,” René said, smiling. Cables and wires were draped over a massage table that had been set up by the fireplace in the office. The scent of eucalyptus oil hovered. René noticed her look. “The shiatsu masseur makes office visits, Aimée. I feel new again. You look like you could use one yourself.”

  Like she had the time.

  “So you defused your situation, René?”

  “Big time, Aimée.” Maxence’s eyes shone from the desk next to René’s. “I’m in awe. Brilliant work. I’m designing a game based on the delay stock market option.”

  “Not for a while, Maxence,” René said. “I want to reenter the States with my own name, and not the way I left.”

  “How did you leave, René?” Aimée asked.

  “With a lot of luck and a drug smuggler,” René said. “More your style. Hate to think of all the laws I’ve broken.”

  “And with only a sombrero to show for it,” she said.

  “Don’t forget my clean conscience.”

  “What about Rasputin’s take on the oligarch?”

  René pulled a window up on his screen. “Interesting. Said we should ask the question: Why would a low-end oligarch create a museum in France? Tax laws in the UK favor the Russians more and they all create strings of shell companies to move their money to London. A museum in France doesn’t make sense, Rasputin says. Unless the museum’s non-profit, given government subsidies, tax loopholes to foster Russian relations, cultural exchanges, keep tsarist art stolen during the war or brought by the White Russians back here.”

  “What’s in it for the oligarch?” Saj asked, clicking keys on his keyboard. “Curry favor?

  “Loopholes, if you know where, exist in the regulations,” René said. “Money laundering and kickbacks become donations and a perfect conduit for bribes. Financial compliance on minimal security for non-profits. Too many big fish to catch—why pursue minnows in the arts?”

  “How does Rasputin know?” Aimée asked.

  “It’s all done through backdoor operations of hired hackers,” Saj said.

  René nodded. “True. He’s Estonian. The best.”

  René caught her look.

  “I didn’t ask any more, Aimée. Disrespect him once and he’ll never answer another email. Hired hackers set up the system to evade security nets and skirt financial compliance via loopholes. Nothing new. Done it myself.”

  “I don’t want to know, René,” she said.

  “Rasputin’s info checks out. Give it another eight months until an idiot talks, gets caught, and tumbles it,” he said. “The exchanges of art and culture translate to a Neuilly flat for a ministry official who accepts the bid from—”

  “A Russian metal cockpit aerospace firm,” she interrupted. “Like Bereskova?”

  René clicked and dragged a screen. “Such an easy way to move money, no questions asked. Bereskova gets the party to agree to the agenda and transfers the money to the official who happens to sit on the museum board.”

  “But he needs art credibility.” Rays of morning light caught and illumined the blue glass vase of daffodils on the fireplace mantel.

  “True. They didn’t think this through or have a long-term game plan. It’s all about now, while international cultural organizations go through minimal regulatory hoops. The Ministry of Culture is anxious for foreign cultural investment, so they ’spread their legs’—Rasputin’s words—to facilitate a Russian cultural center, museum, whatever.”

  “Sounds too easy,” Saj said. “Then why doesn’t everyone do it?”

  “The regulations are brand-new. Went into effect this year. Few know. But one glitch.”

  Of course. Aimée had been waiting for this. Worried, she tapped her heels.

  “The time factor,” René said. “The ministry’s co-funding arm dries up tomorrow. But institutions who’ve applied are grandfathered in.”

  “Meaning Bereskova’s paper museum’s in?” she said. Maxence was listening, eyes wide with excitement. Aimée had almost forgotten he was there, he was so quiet. For once. “Then what will the Modigliani give him?”

  “Credibility.”

  “He needs the Modigliani.”

  Saj nodded. “Rasputin puts the info up and promises that it will go viral in three continents within, say, three to four hours. He’s dying to—”

  “Put a collar on him for now,” she said. “We need the timing right. I’m not sure.”

  “No muzzling the wild man,” Saj said. “If we try, he’ll take the reins and run.”

  René sat up. “I see the problem. If we delay the funds transaction, where’s the proof? That’s what you mean, Aimée?”

  “Exactement. I need to get my hands on the painting first.”

  “Even if the sham museum’s a front?” Saj said. “And Marina’s deposit slip proves it?”

  “Exposing layers like this takes time,” René said.

  “Time we don’t have,” Aimée said. She set down her bag, poured herself a warm espresso from the still-dripping machine. “If we screw up the timing.…”

  “I’ve got an idea,” René said.

  “Like what?” Saj readjusted his amber beads.

  “If it could scam Wall Street, it could scam a Swiss bank.” René padded over to his desk. “But give me two hours.”

  “I haven’t found the Modigliani,” she said, feeling off her game. Was it the water torture, or those drugs? She’d felt so tired, sad, and confused after Melac left this morning. “I think I’m anemic.”

  “Take care of yourself for once.” The skin around René’s green eyes creased in concern. “Get a blood test. Iron supplements.” He opened a screen on his computer. “But our girl wonder falls off the job? We’ll forgive you once—but to give up?”

  “Did I say that, René?”

  “We’re covered here.”

  “You mean you’re staying, René?”

  “If you’ll have me, Aimée,” he said. Then he looked down, got off his ergonomic chair. Reached for his briefcase. “But I understand if you feel otherwise. I let you down.”

  Three pairs of eyes stared at her.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I need your help, René.”

  He grinned, climbed back on his chair.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  SHE NEEDED TO go back over everything. From the beginning. In the office, while everyone worked, she propped the dry erase board against the massage table. Studied the timeline of events from the Serb’s accident on Monday night, Yuri’s murder on Tuesday, then Luebet. Pored over the notes she’d made at Madame Figuer’s kitchen table, the details from her to-do list on Oleg and Tatyana, Damien, the concierge at rue Marie Rose.

  What cracks in their stories had she missed? What wasn’t she seeing? Her eye caught on her grand-père’s commendation from the Louvre on recovering the Degas—she could see the
framed certificate just above the dry erase board.

  She searched the old file cabinet for all his files. The ones she’d planned to digitize but never got around to.

  Then she found it. The old investigative report on the stolen Degas. She’d been ten at the time. After her ballet lesson, he’d taken her to the art recovery unit in the complex at the préfecture. She remembered how huge the place felt, how musty it smelled. In a vault, he’d picked up a small bronze statue. Smiled at her. “This could be you, Aimée.”

  A small bronze ballerina, no taller than an uncut rose stem, her tutu suspended in midair like fluff, caught in the act of a twirl. Mesmerizing. So lifelike.

  She could almost hear the rustle and swish of the short tulle skirt, the grinding twist of the leather-toed shoe on the wood stage floor of l’Opéra.

  The old grande dame had been so thankful to Aimée’s grandfather that she willed the ballerina to the Louvre, much to the chagrin of her heirs.

  She pored over her grandfather’s cramped writing on the yellowed pages in his case report—surveillance, suspects, alibis, possible motives, a diagram of interrelations.

  Bon, she’d done all that. Timelined events. Followed everything step for step per her grandfather’s example.

  Correction—her grandfather had rechecked the alibi of the old dame’s trusted secretary. The hospital nurse, who was finally back from vacation when he followed up, had never seen the secretary the night of the robbery when the secretary claimed to have been visiting her mother.

  It was the little things, the details, that made 2+2 = 5, as her grandfather had said.

  Aimée knew where to start.

  “Let’s pull up the numbers from Marina Bereskova’s phone.”

  “Done.” Saj handed her a printout. “Pretty self-explanatory. Calls to Dmitri, Svetla the bodyguard, Tatyana, a boutique.…”

  “And this one?”

  Saj shrugged. “The bank?”

  She pulled out her cell phone and checked the call log.

  The same number. Received two days ago at 6:10 P.M. She thought back. Damien the printer.

  Her head spun. How did he connect to Marina? Wasn’t she Tatyana’s friend? Why was Marina talking to her friend’s husband’s rival?

  “I’ve got an idea. Try Dmitri’s number from one of our disposable phones.”

  “I just tried. Still working,” Saj said.

  Could it be so simple?

  “BONJOUR, MADAME FIGUER,” she said on the phone. “I want to send flowers to Damien’s aunt, but.…”

  “Madame Perret? She’s at death’s door. He’s beside himself, that young man.”

  That answered her first question.

  “Voilà. But I forgot which hospital she’s in.”

  “Damien moved her to a nursing home,” said Madame Figuer.

  “Vraiment? Where?” The old busybody should know, just as she knew everyone’s business. And never kept her mouth closed.

  Pause. “A private one. Expensive. Near the Métro at Mouton Duvernet.”

  “But I thought she was too ill to be moved. Can you remember?”

  “On Villa Coeur de Vey, I think,” she said. “How’s the case going?”

  Aimée clicked her pen. “Another call, Madame, got to go. Merci.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she parked her scooter outside the Monoprix cornering the thin slice of an alley. On Villa Coeur de Vey, next to the charitable organization that handed out free food, she found the nursing home.

  “Madame Perret?” the dark-haired receptionist said. “Too late, I’m afraid.”

  “She’s passed away?”

  “Her nephew took her home. Contacted hospice. He’s following Madame’s wishes.”

  Aimée thought back.

  “When was that?”

  The receptionist consulted her computer screen. “Let’s see, we discharged her Tuesday to Hôpital Broussais for a CAT scan. Oui, the ambulance took her.”

  The morning of Yuri’s murder.

  “Her nephew accompanied her, I assume.”

  “He made the arrangements,” the receptionist said.

  Something about this bothered Aimée.

  “Did you see him?”

  “Tuesdays I’m off. But ambulances only transport patients.”

  “Then her nephew met her at Hôpital Broussais?”

  The receptionist pulled the readers down from her head.

  “You’re a flic, non? I’ll need to see identification, Mademoiselle.”

  Aimée flashed her father’s police ID with her photo.

  “Alors, a note here says the hospital’s CAT scan machine was broken,” the receptionist said. “Madame Perret was brought back here in the ambulance.”

  How did that fit in?

  “Anything else?”

  “We were unable to contact her nephew until late afternoon,” she said. “He took care of the arrangements that evening.”

  “Tuesday evening?”

  The receptionist nodded.

  Damien told her he’d been with his aunt all day at the hospital.

  “May I check that cell number against the one we have for her nephew?” Aimée mustered a smile. “It’s routine.”

  The receptionist swung the screen for Aimée to see. She copied it down on her to-do list.

  “Such a caring young man, as I remember,” the receptionist said. “Very concerned over his aunt. Not many like that these days.”

  “But didn’t one of our force question your staff?” Aimée gave a sigh. “It’s about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for reports. We’ve got to follow the new regulations.”

  “You’re the first.”

  Sloppy police work. And on her end, too.

  SHE UNLATCHED THE gate of the printing works on rue de Châtillon. Today the courtyard lay quiet. No pounding machines or delivery camionnette. An older woman she hadn’t seen before stood locking the warehouse door.

  “Lost?” the woman asked, a frown marring her mouth.

  Aimée’s heels sank in the gravel. “Looks like you’re closing early.”

  “I’m not the boss,” she said.

  “Where is Damien?”

  “Full of questions, aren’t you? Take a number.”

  Such helpful staff, a tradition here, she thought, remembering Florent, who’d attacked her in the truck.

  The woman shrugged. “I’m off the clock. Forever. He’s shut down the factory.”

  No wonder. It all added up.

  “Everyone’s gone.”

  Aimée saw a light upstairs at the back window.

  Watching her? “I guess I’ll try reaching him another way.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’m locking up.”

  Aimée walked out of the gate.

  The woman locked the padlock. Without a goodbye, she walked toward the Métro.

  Aimée turned into the park, following the wall away from the maison de maître—the former squat she now recognized, where Yuri once held a Trotskyist banner and her mother had been arrested—to a worn path among some rosemary and lilac bushes. It ended at the back of the printing works. A scattering of metal rungs led up the crumbling masonry, rusted in places, well worn in others.

  She came up with a plan while she climbed, gripping the worn rungs, testing her weight each time. At the top, she reached a ledge covered with pigeon droppings. Two stories above ground and hidden by wild lilac bushes. A perfect view of Yuri’s atelier from the lighted upper floor of the printing works.

  She punched in René’s number.

  “Any verdict, Aimée?”

  “Nothing happens until I find the painting,” she said. “I’m at Damien’s printing factory.”

  “But Rasputin.…”

  The ledge by her foot gave way. Rocks tumbled and she grasped a rock higher up. Heights, she hated heights.

  “Hold on.” She pulled out the phone numbers Saj had printed out. “Do you see a call to or from 06 78 90 42 30 on Marina’s call log?”

  “
Service was cut … but yes, that’s on the list.”

  “Call that number in three minutes. Use one of the throwaways in my desk drawer. Say you’ve got the money, tell him the plans have changed, to bring the painting. You want to meet now.”

  Aimée heard René swallow. “If he asks where?”

  She thought quick. “Café Zèbre at Alésia.”

  “You’re serious? Do you need me for backup?”

  Too late for that now. Merde.

  “Convince him you’re the contact, your boss wants him to deal with you. Keep him talking as long as you can. Please, René. And fake a Russian accent.”

  She clicked off. Switched her phone to vibrate, stuck it in her bag, and edged her way to the lighted window. Behind the bushes lay a grilled balcony invisible from the park. She climbed onto it. Stood at the curtained French doors. Silence.

  She tried the door. Locked. Merde. Just as she was about to take out her lockpick set and get to work, she noticed another set of French doors half covered by lilacs. One of the doors was open. A fat black crow perched on the balcony ledge, eyeing her with his pinpoint yellow gaze. A sweetish smell grew stronger as she slid sideways into a semi-dark room with flickering candlelight.

  She heard a phone trill. Footsteps. Bravo, René.

  Her eyes adjusted to the light. Votive candles on the floor silhouetted a bed with a rose satin duvet. And she froze.

  Lying on it was a white-haired woman in an old-fashioned lace nightgown, centime coins on her lids to keep them closed, hands crossed in prayer with a blue-beaded rosary trailing from them.

  Aimée realized the source of the sweetish stench. The old woman must have been here since Damien brought her back from the clinic. Dead and decaying for several days.

  The flap of the crow’s wings came from the balcony. Aimée made herself move.

  Damien stood in a high-ceilinged workroom that overlooked the silent printing presses below. Rays of late afternoon light glowed on the old wood, giving off a burnished honey hue.

  To one side were piled boxes; on the other, paper-cutting blades and a sharpening stone were grouped on a long-gauged worktable partly obscured by more boxes. To her right were shelves with brass wire rolls and boxes of metal type.

  Dotting one wall, like flypaper, hung lopsided yellowed cardboard signs with raised dots of Braille. Remnants from the turn of the century, when blind laborers worked the presses. The past clung to the dust-filled corners.