Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black

  If they wore gold chains and could break arms, she could.

  She nodded.

  The small warehouse contained the remnants of Gothic pillars, sprouting tulip-like but crumbling with age. In one room, sides of glistening marbled beef hung from hooks in an open white-tiled refrigerated locker. Chill blasts of air hit her knees. Two men, African or Caribbean, wearing assorted gold chains, stood against the clear plastic strips that hung there to keep the cold in.

  “Nothing out of order, Chief. Except these mecs were hiding in here.”

  “I work here,” said one. A lilt in his accent. Ivory Coast? Or another part of Africa? She couldn’t tell. “Screw you,” he continued. Muscular, in his twenties, angular face and jutting chin. He spit in the tiled trough running the length of the floor. Liquor was on his breath.

  “He the one?”

  Before Aimée could answer, the arson inspector tugged at the Chief’s arm.

  “Might want to call Immigration, Chief. Look at these.” In his hand were passports and identity cards. Romanian, Serbian, and Haitian, from what Aimée could make out.

  “Eh? May I remind you that we’re looking for evidence of arson?”

  She had to move fast.

  “Him and his friend.” She edged forward, sniffed. “Drunk as usual.”

  The other man, in dirty jeans and shirt stained with red splatters, leered.

  “That’s blood on your shirt.” She stepped closer. “Tell them where it came from.”

  “Who’s this bitch?”

  But she’d seen recognition on his face.

  His arm shot out. Aimée ducked and his fist slapped into a side of beef.

  “Get her out of here,” the Chief ordered.

  The arson inspector guided her to the front of the ware-house. She stopped at an aluminum counter under the hooks that held the saws. “They bring girls in the back,” she said. “All the time. I heard screams.”

  “The flics will question these men. We searched, but there’s no one else here.”

  And she had a sinking feeling he was right.

  “We’ll take your statement,” he said. “Wait in the courtyard.”

  How long would it take before Immigration questioned the mecs? And how much longer before they broke and revealed Mireille’s whereabouts? If they ever did.

  She stood in the hôtel particulier courtyard, alone. The ten-ants had gone back to their apartments, the firemen were packing up their hoses. What good had she done?

  “You just make trouble, don’t you?”

  Startled, she turned. A figure stood under the damp stone arcade. In the dim glow she made out a denim jacket, black jeans. She looked twice before she recognized him. Edouard, with his beard shaved off. Another persona.

  “Not enough,” she said.

  “I can’t figure you out,” Edouard said.

  “Don’t even try.”

  “So you didn’t find Mireille?”

  She stepped closer to him. Again breathed that lime scent, the scent Yves had worn.

  “Not yet.”

  “Do you always wear couture to false alarms?”

  She shrugged. “Amazing how designer wear holds up.”

  “Leduc Detective computer forensics has an impressive client list.” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “I’ve checked you out. You did criminal investigations until six years ago. I’d say searching for Mireille’s out of your line.”

  His hands on her shoulders tightened. Suspicion and anger shone in his eyes, those odd amber eyes.

  “You’re working for them, aren’t you?” he asked.

  She tried to step back, to loosen his hands. “Who?”

  “Admit it.”

  He drew her into the shadows, leaned her against the stone arch. His hands gripped hers and pulled them behind her back, tightly. Fear prickled up her spine.

  “Nice expense account from the World Bank, too.” He breathed hard. “Or do the Duvalierists pay you, eh? They go for style . . . just like you.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket. A handgun? With one arm he pinned her against the wall.

  “I think Mireille’s my sister,” she said. “My father knew her mother in Paris long ago. She asked for my help. . . .” Her voice faltered. She panted, took a breath. “Just who the hell are you?”

  He stared at her. His grip loosened. Light from a window played over his slanted cheekbones.

  “Eurodad.”

  Was that some kind of eurocop? It sounded like a cognate of eurotrash.

  “That’s supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Only if you’re a big player. You’ve heard of crimes against humanity?” he asked. “Eurodad’s an organization of NGO’s, advocacy and rights groups, based in Brussels. The full name is the European Network on Debt and Development. I’m their legal counsel in the financial recovery field,” he said. “We’re attempting to freeze Baby Doc Duvalier’s Swiss bank accounts.”

  “But Duvalier fled Haiti years ago,” she said.

  “And we allege that he stole the equivalent of 1.7 to 4.5 percent of the Haitian Gross Domestic Product for every year he was in power,“ Edouard said.

  Not exactly chump change.

  Her eye fell on the Boucherie Chazel truck parked to the side. She’d been stupid. It was staring her in the face.

  “Sorry, I overreacted,” he said, loosening his grip. “Let’s try this again. I’m a good guy.”

  “Now’s your chance to prove it, Edouard.”

  She took his hand, pulled him through the dark arcade, and tried the back door of the truck.

  Locked.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “Play along with me.” She put her finger over his lips. A fireman and the Chief, their backs to them, stood in discussion at the large door that opened onto rue Saint Victor.

  She tried the driver’s door; also locked. Then the passenger side. The door opened. Too drunk to lock it, she thought.

  She half-crouched, Edouard behind her, in the rear of the truck’s small aisle. Old meat odors assailed her; butcher paper crinkled underfoot. Aluminum meat trays shone in the gleam of her penlight. She saw a figure hanging from a meat hook.

  She gasped. Mireille, wrists tied with her arms above her, hung suspended from the hook. Her bare feet dangled in the air. Dried blood encrusted her swollen mouth.

  Aimée rushed forward. “Quick! Get her down!”

  Was she alive?

  Edouard lifted Mireille from the hook and set her down on the ridged metal floor. He felt for a pulse.

  “Mireille?” Aimée knelt to smooth back the hair that was matted to Mireille’s face. Her skin felt cold to the touch. She rubbed Mireille’s thin arms to get her circulation going.

  “A weak pulse,” Edouard said. “She needs a hospital. Quickly.”

  Aimée thought of the Fire Chief at the entrance, the ambulance. The time it would take to explain . . . and there was not a minute to spare.

  “You look talented,” she said. “Ever hotwire an engine?”

  “My car’s out front. . . .”

  “So’s the fire inspector.”

  And then she felt bumps in the crook of Mireille’s elbow, saw the purple tracks of injections. Now Mireille’s short, shallow breaths alarmed her even more.

  “Keep rubbing her,” Aimée said.

  She unlatched the truck’s hood, as quietly as she could. At least the old truck had a simple engine. Was it the red or the blue wire? Which distributor cap . . . she searched her memory for the one time she’d hotwired a car during a surveillance with her father. Prayed she’d connected the right one. And shut the hood.

  The engine turned over. It gave a jerk and she grabbed the door. Edouard sat behind the wheel.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked.

  “I figured you attach a plus to a minus.”

  “Hang on,” Edouard said. He shifted into first and let out the clutch as she crawled to Mireille lying in the back. He gunned out of the courtyard while she rub
bed Mireille’s arms and legs.

  THE HÔPITAL VAL de Grâce emergency entrance swarmed with ambulances and the flashing red lights of flic cars, the aftermath of the collisions on the periphérique.

  Mireille couldn’t wait hours for treatment, nor could she face questioning by the flics. She groaned and her eyelids fluttered.

  “It’s all right, Mireille.” Aimée cradled Mireille in her lap, her jacket wrapped around her to keep her warm.

  “That flic’s checking our license plate,” Edouard said.

  Tissot had put an alert out for the truck.

  “Back out. Quick.”

  Aimée grabbed her cell phone. It was the middle of the night. Should she?

  “Allo?” The phone was answered on the first ring. At least she hadn’t awakened her.

  “It’s Aimée Leduc. Sorry to call you so late.”

  “No problem. Old people don’t sleep much.”

  She heard her inhale, imagined the cigarette smoke curling over the wood desk.

  “Forgive me for asking your help again, but. . . .”

  “Another run-in?”

  “Overdose, I think. She’s illegal.”

  “Since when do you take in strays, Aimée?”

  The truck jolted over the cobbles. The floor shook as it took a corner.

  “She’s my sister.”

  Something rustled in the background. A door shut.

  “Not here. My granddaughter came down with the chicken pox. All my children are here for the week.”

  Mireille needed attention now. “Val de Grâce and all the nearby hospitals are full from a twenty-car accident. Traffickers pumped her full of something and she’s cold, turning blue. Her breaths are shallow and infrequent. Her pulse rate’s 40. What should I do?”

  “Wait.” Aimée heard the sound of cards flipping on a creak-ing old Rolodex.

  “39, rue Gay Lussac. Les Soeurs de Labouré monastery. Go to the rear chapel. Look for Sister Dantec.”

  “But she’s—”

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said. “You know what to do, Aimée.”

  She did?

  “Don’t tell me you forgot what I taught you,” said Pro-fesseur Zarek.

  She ended the call.

  AIMÉE TRIED TO recall information from her medical textbooks on overdose, possible internal injuries, appearance of blunt trauma to the head. Blunt trauma could result in concussion. To combat an overdose, get the victim on his feet and moving to prevent cardiac arrest. But this is contraindicated if internal injuries are present. It all spun in her head. Right now she had to keep Mireille’s circulation going, just to keep her alive.

  She shouted the address to Edouard. Felt around for butcher paper and covered Mireille with an insulating layer, lifted her arms, rubbing them, then elevated her cold bruised legs higher than her heart. Trying to make and retain her body heat.

  The truck jolted to a stop.

  “What’s this place?” Edouard asked.

  “Drive in the back, near the chapel.”

  A few moments later, she heard voices. Footsteps. Fear jolted her. The side door rolled back on grating hinges.

  “Hurry,” said a small nun in a long black habit, a silver cross on her white starched bib-like collar. The nun gathered her skirt, stepped forward and with surprising strength took Mireille’s legs. Aimée climbed out, holding Mireille’s limp shoulders.

  “The order rises in an hour.”

  Aimée looked around. Edouard had disappeared.

  “We’re cloistered nuns, Mademoiselle,” said the nun, noticing her gaze. “We take the vow of partial silence.”

  No men allowed. No one outside the order, for that matter. Professeur Zarek had real pull, she thought.

  The clinic for the cloistered nuns contained three small pristine examination rooms and a state-of-the-art operating theater.

  Professeur Zarek was already there, untying the scarf around her head. She tossed her coat over a chair and opened her black bag. “I’ll examine her in here.”

  She helped the nun lay Mireille, who had begun to moan, on the operating table.

  “Don’t hurt me . . . please.” Mireille stirred, thrashing her arms.

  “You’re safe now.” Aimée smoothed the wet curls from Mireille’s chalky face.

  Her eyes widened. “Where am I?”

  “Sister Dantec, if you’ll asssist?” The small nun nodded, offering the professor a green surgical robe. Professeur Zarek washed her hands at the large aluminum sink, then tied a mask over her mouth.

  Sister Dantec swabbed Mireille’s arm with antiseptic. The tang of alcohol hovered in the air. Then she prepared the IV and tapped the needle, her eyes never leaving Mireille’s arm as she searched for a vein.

  “I found one, Professeur.”

  She stepped back and a needle was inserted into a vein in Mireille’s arm.

  “We’re running a line, Aimée, giving her Narcan to reverse the effects of drugs. Sister?”

  “Oui, Professeur.”

  “Low blood pressure. I need D50, the dextrose cocktail.”

  Mireille moaned and twisted on the table.

  “Can I help?” Aimée asked.

  “Keep her calm, Aimée.”

  She leaned down and brushed the matted hair from Mireille’s damp forehead. “The doctor’s here, Mireille, it’s all right.”

  Mireille grabbed Aimée’s hands. Tears pooled in her eyes. “I lost everything. . . .”

  Aimée winced. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Calmestoi.”

  Mireille gripped Aimée’s hand tighter. Tears streamed down her face. “No way to get Benoît’s file. I’m just trouble, they’re going to kill me. . . .”

  “She’s agitated, Professeur,” said Sister Dantec. “Blood pres-sure dropping.”

  Aimée controlled her shudder. “Non, Mireille.” She pulled Mireille’s bag from hers. “See. . . .”

  She held up the key, the holy cards. ”When I was looking for you, I found your bag.”

  Recognition shone in Mireille’s fluttering eyes. Her shallow breaths slowed.

  “Benoît left . . . the key . . . envelope . . . the key . . . to Marie Curie’s. . . .” Mireille’s words trailed off. Her jaw slackened.

  What did she mean?

  “Intubate, Sister. She’s stopped breathing.” She took an instrument from the tray to slice open Mireille’s trachea so a tube could be inserted.

  Horrified, Aimée stepped back. “Oh my God.”

  “Aimée, wheel the ventilator over here,” said Professeur Zarek.

  Aimée stood rooted to the floor, paralyzed in fear.

  “You know what to do.”

  Her mind blanked. She wanted to run away.

  “Now, Aimée!” the professor barked. “Now!”

  Galvanized, her mind on autopilot, Aimée spun around to the ventilator. She scanned the controls, switched the power on, and wheeled the machine over. She took the blue plastic intubation tube, now connected to the endotracheal tube in Mireille’s throat, from Professeur Zarek’s hand.

  “Connect the tube to the left socket,” said Professeur Zarek.

  That done, Aimée looked at the ventilator screen. Little lines danced across it. She watched them, mesmerized, praying each time a line moved that Mireille would live. Seconds that felt like hours passed.

  “Good job, Sister Dantec,” said Professeur Zarek. “You too, Aimée. See?”

  Mireille lay draped by a green sheet, eyes closed, her breathing even.

  “Her pulse is climbing,” said Sister Dantec.

  “We’ll keep her on the ventilator until she breathes on her own,” said Professeur Zarek. “Could be ten minutes or a few hours. I anticipate it will be sooner rather than later. We’ll have to see.”

  “You must leave,” said Sister Dantec. “The convent rises in less than an hour.”

  “But Mireille?”

  “Do you think we haven’t done this before?” Professeur Zarek laughed. “Sister Dantec loves new conver
ts, eh, Sister?”

  “All God’s children. Even you, Professeur.”

  “Never give up on me, do you, Sister?”

  Aimée stood, watching these two small women working as a team. Professionals. She felt useless. Her shoulders ached, scratches and cuts stung her knees and arms. She slipped the key into her pocket.

  Professeur Zarek pulled the retractable arm of the X-ray machine over Mireille’s head.

  “Barring internal injuries and complications . . . I won’t know for a while,” said Professeur Zarek. “But she’s responding well, so far.”

  “Will she live?” Aimée choked back a sob.

  “Count on it,” she said. “Your sister’s strong, Aimée. Now let me get to work.”

  “Bien sûr.” Aimée stopped in mid-step. The truck. “I’ll move the truck.”

  “Already taken care of.”

  Amazing, this little nun, she thought, and imagined little gremlin nuns at work behind the scenes.

  “Now, if you don’t mind. . . .” Sister Dantec stared at her pointedly.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Professeur Zarek looked up with a strange expression. “It’s good to feel useful again, Aimée. You’ve brought some excitement back into my life. Now leave it up to us. Go to bed.”

  THE DARK SMUDGE of night hovered over the slanting rooftops and iron grillework balconies on Boulevard Saint Michel, broken only by the glow of the streetlights. The boulevard lay still, except for the thrum of the engine of a newspaper van. A man stacked newspapers in a pile in front of the kiosk, took the van’s wheel, and drove away. A crow cawed from the gabled eaves above her.

  Aimée rubbed her eyes. Alone. Except for the crow.

  She’d taken care of the traffickers. They’d be behind bars, at least for now. She wished she felt more relieved. But she knew that whoever wanted Benoît’s file would keep looking for Mireille.

  The peal of a church bell made her jump. She fingered Edouard’s card. She needed to find out what he knew. Her heels clicked over the pavement as she walked down the wide deserted boulevard.

  Friday Early Morning

  SHE PRESSED THE numbers on the digicode panel at the door of Edouard’s building. The door clicked open, revealing a small courtyard. Fading moonlight polished the sloping glass roofs of ateliers nestled in the courtyard. A few stars studded the lightening sky. Nameplates of upscale architecture firms dotted the atelier doors. Tendrils of ivy snaked up the walls. She inhaled the lime tree scent and crossed the stone pavers dappled with shadows.