Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black

  Morbier was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, like his parents and grandparents before him.

  He nodded. “And I vote Socialist in every election.”

  “Didn’t you quote Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to me when I was still wearing diapers?”

  “More like knee socks, Leduc,” he said. “I’m glad you re-member. But don’t tell me she’s a victim of the system. Murder’s breaking the law, no matter what the excuse.”

  “Then tell me how it makes sense. Mireille had relatives in Benoît’s village; he helped her.”

  “Relationships sour.”

  “That’s all you can say? Physically, she’s not strong enough to sever his ear. She had an accident in the sugar mill. I saw the scars on her arms.”

  Morbier looked down at his glass. “A distinguished ENS professor and world-renowned researcher’s seen arguing with an illegal immigrant,” he said. “He’s murdered and she disappears.”

  “Too simple, Morbier. Other people wanted him silenced.”

  “Where’s the proof, Leduc?” he said. “Give me something to work with. But you can’t, can you?”

  She threw the napkin down and stood. “Excuse me a moment, Morbier,” she said, pointing to the WC, a cubicle near the bar.

  “Don’t get any ideas about leaving, Leduc.” He pointed in turn to the car parked in the street.

  She wedged herself into a closet-like Turkish toilet complete with hanging chain, hole in the floor, and walls papered by peeling seventies posters of rock groups. She punched in René’s number, pulled the chain. Over the flushing, she heard his voicemail recording.

  Frustrated, she left him a message mentioning the Paris Club. Then she cupped her hands at the tiny sink, splashed cold water on her face, and wished she didn’t feel naked with-out lipstick. She pinched her pale cheeks for color.

  Back at the table, she found two plates of steak haché and golden brown frites. Morbier paused, fork embedded in a morsel of rare beef dripping with red juice.

  What little appetite she still had now deserted her. She picked at the white bread, molding the bits together.

  “Et alors?” Morbier said. “You did that as a child, too.”

  “What?”

  “Pulled out the white part of the baguette and sculpted little figures.”

  She dropped the crumbs, stared at him. “What’s this lunch really about, Morbier?”

  Morbier lifted his wine glass to hers. “Salut. It’s your saint’s day, Leduc. Saint Ame.”

  He’d remembered. She’d been named after a Benedictine monk from Grenoble who founded a monastery, became a hermit, and died in 630 A.D. Could she help it that in the hospital, her mother had stuck her finger on the calendar and saw Saint Ame, saying “Ame; that sounds like love” . . . and she could pronounce it . . . Amy.

  “As your godfather, it’s one of my duties, Leduc,” he said. “Another is to protect you, if you let me.”

  “Edouard shares a saint’s day with Benoît,” she said. “So that’s his involvement, right? It’s personal to him.”

  “Ask him, Leduc.”

  The smells of grilling meat, of people crowded into the low-ceilinged room were getting to her. The murmured conversations, clink of glasses.

  “Commissaire?” A hesitant blue-uniformed flic stood at their table. “The Brigade chief called. He needs you out in Meudon near the Observatoire.”

  Morbier stared with longing at his half-eaten steak. “Another sighting of that damned Fiat Uno in the suburbs?”

  The flic nodded and turned his cap over in his hands.

  Morbier set a wad of bills on the table, pulled the napkin from his collar, and wiped his chin.

  “Meanwhile, they’re waiting to question you, Leduc.” He shrugged. “Look, I tried.”

  “Tried, Morbier?” she said, clenching the napkin in her fist.

  “Officer, wait for me outside.”

  The flic took off to the waiting car. Beyond lay the bell tower of medieval Saint Etienne du Mont. Cloud wisps hovered in the night sky.

  “My influence extends only so far. The Brigade’s on my neck, Leduc. Help me out, and yourself too. Explain to them. Get Mireille to give a statement. My Immigration contact can work something out if she’s innocent.”

  Here it came. A deal. She smelled it.

  As always, he’d make her work for it.

  “Don’t tell me your Immigration contact’s interested in helping a murder suspect with motive and opportunity who’s in hiding, as you reminded me?”

  “He’s in line for promotion,” Morbier said and shrugged. “And the ambitious type. The traffickers give his division a bad name. But if Mireille identified them and testified against them, a deal’s likely.”

  Mireille might even agree to it.

  And if she didn’t play along with Morbier, she had no chance of finding the real killer. “You’re right, Morbier,” she said. “Mireille’s desperate; she’ll try to contact me. But what good will it do if I’m being held at the Prefecture? Buy me some time.”

  He grimaced. “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “We had time for this bistro,” she said. “What’s a few hours? Fend the Brigade off. You’re going to the suburbs. What’s the difference?”

  “Got something up your sleeve, Leduc?”

  “I won’t know until I try. And I need your help.” She stood and pushed her chair in, then embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She felt his rough cheeks, smelled the same aftershave her father had used, saw his graying hair curling behind his ears.

  “Please, Morbier,” she whispered in his ear. “You know she’s innocent. No one will blame you if I do this. Just say we met later.”

  “I can’t, Leduc,” he said.

  “But you can,” she said. “You’re a Divisional Commissaire now.”

  She felt his shoulders tighten.

  “And it’s my saint’s day. Call it my present, Morbier.”

  She pulled away and saw Morbier’s red face. Morbier, blushing? She heard the engine start. The flic had put the flashing light on the car roof.

  “Morbier, I promise.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “Two hours, Leduc. Don’t disappoint me.”

  The flic stood, wide-eyed, in the doorway. She picked up her bag.

  “Looks like we’ve given him something to talk about, Morbier.”

  “All the way to Meudon, Leduc.”

  She quickened her step and hit the street.

  A BREEZE KICKED up on rue Toulier. She ran past the infamous Carlos the Jackal’s hiding place in the seventies. Now it was just a nondescript fawn-colored building. Carlos, during routine questioning in the doorway, had shot three flics. And that’s what had nailed him, in French eyes. No matter how grave his acts of worldwide terrorism, it was the shooting of French flics that had ensured him the lifetime sentence he was serving in Clairvaux.

  She felt uneasy at Morbier’s conversation, the lack of his usual probing questions. Was it the wine, or his fatigue? Looking back, he’d let her go too easily.

  She turned around to look for a police tail. A long-haired man, wearing a knotted scarf and stylish rumpled jacket, gesticulated to another standing in a small bookshop doorway. The Latin bookstore she’d shopped at in her Sorbonne days. The long-haired man said “Impossible. Kant and Heidegger, two divergent German philosophers. . . .”

  Just two intello’s in passionate discussion. Where else but here in the Latin Quarter, she thought.

  She checked her watch. Not much time. She headed to rue Buffon.

  En route, her cell phone rang. Professeur Zarek’s caller ID was displayed. She winced.

  “Allo, Professeur.”

  “Aimée, Sister Dantec had visitors,” said Professeur Zarek.

  “I heard. Where’s Mireille?”

  Aimée held her breath, afraid of the answer.

  “Sister Dantac works her magic in many ways. Full of sur-prises. For no
w, don’t worry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, Mireille’s wearing the habit, a ripe convert.” A child’s voice sounded in the background . . . “Grand-mère!”

  A habit. Perfect disguise. No one looked at nuns.

  Aimée relaxed. “Please, tell Mireille we have to talk.”

  “Must go,” Professeur Zarek said. Before Aimée could ask more, the professor ended the call. Another call came through; she heard René’s voice.

  “Aimée, I netted the Aèrospatiale contract,” he announced.

  She heard the pride in his voice.

  “Fantastic, René!”

  “Just waiting on your signature and one from the bureau chief.” René paused. “But what’s going on, Aimée?”

  He deserved to know. And he could help her.

  “Didn’t you get my message? Castaing’s protected by the Ministry. This World Bank funding proposal will pass.”

  “What’s that got to do with Mireille?”

  “If Mireille’s the prime homicide suspect, it makes things easier for some people. I’ve got two hours before the Brigade questions me,” she said. “That’s why I asked your help to dig into Castaing’s firm, Hydrolis, and its relationship with the World Bank. Didn’t you get my message about the Paris Club?”

  “Two hours? Go home, work on your laptop,” René said. “It’s safer. Mecs attacked you. Next time don’t count on being so lucky.”

  She turned into the breeze whipping down the street. “But I need the other pieces of the puzzle, René.”

  René cleared his throat. “Paris Club. Talk about big shots. I found out that Benoît submitted a paper to them last year. Give me a bit longer.”

  Excited, she walked faster now. “Merci, René. I knew you’d help.”

  “Only if you promise you’ll be careful, Aimée.”

  “Done.”

  She hoped René could link Castaing’s firm to the bigger players, expose Hydrolis as a provider of toxic water.

  Evening shadows sculpted the crumbling walls of rue Buffon. Aimée saw two mecs in bomber jackets standing in a doorway, the mecs she’d seen outside the café. The big one jerked his thumb in her direction.

  Cold fear gripped her.

  She backed up, turned, and ran straight into a uniformed flic on patrol.

  “In a hurry, Mademoiselle?”

  Friday Evening

  AT HER OFFICE desk, Léonie tightened the rubber strip above her elbow, swabbed her arm with alcohol, and reached in her bag for the syringe. Her hand came back with a bank statement, her wallet, checkbook, lipstick. But no retroviral ampoule.

  Perspiration beaded her brow. Castaing’s men! The damned thugs had shaken her, knocking her bag to the floor in the scuffle. Her medicinal injection was gone.

  She heard loud, insistent knocking on her office door.

  “Léonie?” A man’s voice.

  She steadied herself against her desk. Her supply was gone and she had no time to reach the clinic doctor. Her bones ached; chills racked her body.

  “Just a moment.” She found matches and with trembling hands lit the candle to Saint George. Then she turned the statue to reveal his other side, Ogoun the warrior. She bowed her head in prayer.

  The door burst open.

  Léonie raised her gaze and took in the mec. Polo, they’d called him. Polo’s stocky frame filled out a leather bomber jacket. She saw his dead flat eyes. And called on Ogoun’s spirit.

  “I’m praying, can’t you see? What’s so important that you can’t wait for me to open the door?”

  Polo hesitated, uneasy. One more used to following orders than thinking. “Monsieur Castaing told me to say ‘The file’s in the right hands.’”

  So they had taken Benoît’s file from the detective’s bag. The woman had been about to give it to her; she’d sensed it. But now Castaing had it and would use it. Just like his father, the bastard!

  “What’s his hurry?” She blew out the candle. Smoke rose as she muttered a prayer.

  “He’s gone.”

  She dropped her hands. “But we were supposed to go together.”

  “Not according to my instructions,” Polo said.

  Castaing had planned all along to shut her out of the meet-ing. Why hadn’t she anticipated this? Now she couldn’t con-front him, either to blackmail him or to negotiate with him.

  She reached for the dossier on Castaing that Royet had messengered over. Royet, in his role in the World Bank, under-stood “negotiations.” But it was worth nothing if she couldn’t confront Castaing before the meeting began.

  “Bon. You’ll take me to the meeting then.”

  “Monsieur Castaing left me no such instructions, Madame.”

  “It seems you’re unaware that he and I are doing the meet-ing presentation together, young man.” She summoned the little strength she had in reserve. “Bring the car to the door.”

  “But he said—”

  “Do you want to keep your job, young man?”

  He looked unsure. “I need to check.”

  She could not permit this.

  “Get me my coat, first, would you?” she said. Léonie reached into her desk drawer and palmed the keys. “It’s in the closet.”

  “I’m not sure about this,” he said, rocking back on his scuffed loafers.

  “Help an old woman, won’t you?” She summoned a smile, gestured to the tall door flush with the carved woodwork. “I’m cold.”

  Polo opened the closet. “There’s just boxes in here.”

  “Sorry, my coat’s hanging in the back,” she said. “Can’t you see?”

  But Polo’s answer was muffled by the slam of the closet door and its click as she locked him in.

  Castaing figured he’d sewn it up. Not as long as she had a breath left in her body. She grabbed her cane, touched her juju, and walked out the door.

  Friday Evening

  “YOU ’RE SURE IT’S those two, Mademoiselle?” The earnest blue eyes of the young uniformed flic assessed the men coming down the street. Then focused on the bruise on Aimée’s arm.

  Them or Castaing’s other minions. It didn’t much matter to Aimée. They’d block her access to the lab.

  “They stole my bag, Officer!”

  “I’ve radioed for backup,” he said.

  “But if you don’t hurry, they’ll get away.”

  One of the big-shouldered mecs halted on the pavement. Unsure.

  “That’s him!” Aimée accused.

  By the time the officer had read him his rights, cuffed him, and led him to the arriving police car, she was long gone.

  This time she skirted the laboratory building entrance, keep-ing to the shadows. Past the crumbling walls with drains and wires snaking to the roof. Through the lighted windows, she saw the dinosaur skeletons hanging from the rafters. She smelled the wild lilac scent, which had mingled with the metallic tang of Benoît’s blood. The image of his sprawled body, his severed ear, played in her head. She forced herself to keep going. Gravel and fallen leaves crunched beneath her feet. She peered in the windows of the modern laboratory where Benoît and Huby had worked. A strip of fluorescent lighting shone above the cabinets. She tried Dr. Severat’s number.

  No answer.

  The lab doorknob didn’t turn. Locked. She crept around the side of the building. An orange plastic barricade stood at the rear, the only evidence of yesterday’s flooding.

  The laboratory van was parked with its back doors open, revealing stacked wooden crates.

  “Time for a beer, eh?” a man said, grinding his cigarette out in the gravel. He shut the van doors. Footsteps crunched on the gravel, walking away. One of the double lab doors had been left ajar.

  She climbed the ramp, entered the building, and found her-self in a supply room with high shelves lined with chemicals and beakers. Not here, she thought, and opened the next door. Chrome and stainless-steel counters gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

  She heard the discreet hum of the ven
tilation system and a low whirring.

  She tried Huby’s office door handle. Locked. Back near the built-in cabinets, she saw light under the door to a storeroom.

  Inside, she saw crates and more crates against the yellowed moisture-stained plaster walls. Tools, ropes, and cords hung from a ledge. A small red light blinked from the gray intercom panel laden with dust protruding from the wall. On it, buttons were labeled: LAB 1, LAB 2, CENTRAL OFFICE. They’d remodeled the state-of-the-art lab, but not this long walk-in store-room leading God knew where.

  Her gaze rested on the legend on the box, “HYDROLIS PORT-AU-PRINCE RESEARCH SPECIMENS—KEEP COOL.” A triangle with an “H,” the Hydrolis logo, was stenciled in black on several of the crates. A packing slip, dated Monday, with a signature she deciphered as Benoît’s, was attached to them. But inside lay sty-rofoam forms, packing straw, and nothing else. Empty.

  A small refrigerator stood in the storeroom. She opened it and saw a specimen tray holding several sealed glass test tubes, containing brown pinkish matter in clear gelatin, labeled “PORCINE SAMPLES #6 FARM PORT-AU-PRINCE ENVIRONS” with an “H” in a small triangle in the corner. Again, the Hydrolis logo.

  It was beginning to make sense. Here were the pig-tissue specimens Huby had shown her under the microscope on Tuesday. Benoît had received these tissue samples from Haiti on Monday.

  What if he’d viewed these samples and analyzed them, but hadn’t had time to write a proper report to corroborate his findings? Say he’d noted down his discovery of mercury and lead in the porcine tissue samples, and placed his notes in the file she’d found.

  Instead of leaving them in the old lab in the adjacent building where he’d worked, Benoît had had the tubes sent here to protect them. Smart. His colleague Huby would have con-firmed the toxicity in the samples, ignorant of the implication.

  Saddened, she realized Benoît hadn’t been smart enough. And not only he, but Huby too, had paid.

  But she thought back to Huby’s protestation that Benoît’s murder was an accident, how he’d ducked her calls. Perhaps he had hoped to use Benoît’s work for his own purposes. Academic rivalry, publish or perish, the vital path to a professor-ship and tenure?