AL02 - Murder in Belleville

by Cara Black

  In her room she opened her armoire, found the green street-cleaner jumpsuits she was looking for, and stuffed them in her bag. In the unused bedroom, once her father’s, she looked in his art deco chest. She didn’t like going in his room, much less through his drawers. Once they were opened, her father’s scent assailed her. The familiar wool and cedarwood of her childhood. She found his lockpicking kit, the tools wrapped in dark blue velvet. He’d taught her how to wire an explosive, crack a safe, and tap her own gas meter/phone line. He’d said, “It’s just so you know the score.”

  SEVERAL HOURS later she opened the creaking door of Favela Chic, smoky and lit by strings of tiny pink and melon-green lights. The early-evening beer drinkers sat at tables covered with floral oilcloth.

  Sébastien was flirting with the young Brazilian waitress when Aimée sat down at his table by the window.

  “Orangina, please,” she said.

  “Make that two.” He smiled.

  “Muito obrigada.” The ringlet-haired waitress nodded.

  Sébastien turned his head to watch the waitress sway toward the kitchen. “She seems the rave party type,” he said, stretching his long legs and leaning back dangerously in the small chair.

  He’d discovered the art poster business after he’d gotten his nose out of the white powder. And the needle out of his arm.

  Her little cousin was making good. Aimée felt happy for him. All six feet of him. He engulfed the chair and table like a big black bear. The black leather studded pants, biker jacket, and bushy black beard contributed to the illusion.

  “I’m considering a lease on the shopfront at the rue Saint Maur corner.”

  “You must be doing well, Sébastien,” she said.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Some nice museum orders came in.”

  “Congratulations. I’m proud of you.” And she meant it.

  After they ate, Aimée had paid the bill, and Sébastien arranged to meet Maria-Joao, the waitress, after closing. He lit a cigar.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Help me collect some garbage,” she said.

  “The human kind?”

  “More inane,” she said. “And stinkier.”

  “Why am I not surprised at that remark?”

  “We’re going to break into someone’s apartment,” Aimée said. “You’ll help me steal her trash.”

  “Not my first choice of evening plans,” Sébastien said.

  “Little cousin, you owe me at least one lifetime,” she said. “I remember clearing your airways and getting you on your feet before the SAMU arrived,” she said. “Not to mention ditching your stash in a roof rafter before the flics raided the place.”

  “And for that,” he grinned, “I’m your slave.”

  “Good. Let’s walk, digest our food before the job,” she said. “Did you park your van in Place Sainte-Marthe?”

  “Bien sûr,” he said. “And brought everything you requested.”

  Sébastien shouldered his bulging leather bag. They reached Eugénie’s building on rue Jean Moinon. The narrow street lay deserted and dark. The streetlight bulbs had been smashed. Probably, she figured, so the junkies could do business without an audience.

  “My old lycée is near here,” Sébastien said.

  “And it’s changed,” she said. “Now it houses the temporary part of the morgue.”

  “Hold on here, eh?” he said, recoiling. “I don’t break into morgues.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I already have.”

  He blinked, then shook his head. “Shouldn’t we get to work?”

  From her bag she handed him the extra-large green jumpsuit with PROPRIÉTÉ DE PARIS on the back, worn by the garbage collectors. She stepped into hers, zipped it up, and tied a scarf around her hair. He pulled a ski cap low over his eyes.

  “We’re going to use an American technique,” she said.

  Sébastien’s eyes gleamed.

  “Like Dumpster diving?” he said. “We’re dressed for it.”

  “Nothing so glamorous,” she said, her mouth crinkling in distaste. “Too bad. The garbage gets dumped every day. But since the building’s slated for demo and there’s no gardien we might find something.”

  Eugénie’s apartment windows were shuttered and silent. A striped tomcat slinking down the street was the only sign of life. Part of Aimée didn’t want to do this. Hated to do it.

  She inhaled, taking a deep breath. The frigid air hit her lungs. She stifled a cough with her gloved hand and slipped her digicode enabler into the door’s keypad to unscramble the entry code. She hit a button and the bronze handled, hand-carved building door clicked open.

  Once inside the foyer, she set down the leather bag she’d asked Sébastien to bring. He stuck a miniflashlight in his mouth and shone the beam, keeping his hands free. From inside, she handed him several pieces of felt, some Intermarche’ plastic shopping bags, and rubber bands. She wrapped the felt around her feet, pulled the bags over each foot, rolled rubber bands around her ankle to keep the bags up and indicated he do the same.

  “An American technique?”

  “It’s hi-tech all the way with me,” she said then climbed up the stairs. On the second-floor landing, she set down her bag. A bluish shaft of moonlight from the cracked skylight shone over their heads to the warped wood.

  “Shhh,” she said, putting her finger over her lips and unwrapping her lock-picking kit.

  Thursday Night

  BERNARD SCROUNGED IN HIS suit jacket pockets. Pills. Where were those pills? The little blue ones. The ones that calmed him down, marshaled his words into succinct phrases.

  The bottle was empty. He panicked. He’d already had the hunger strikers removed to the hospital. But after several hours they’d checked themselves out and returned to the church.

  Bernard paced back and forth in front of his desk. Rays from his weak desk light pooled on his worn office carpet. What could he do with these people? How would he get Hamid out of the church?

  Finally he found a broken blue pill in his pocket lining, chalky and only half a dose. He swallowed it, lint and all. Maybe it would help clarify his thoughts.

  The captain of the Compagnies Republicaines de Securite had disappeared; then the minister had paged him. But Bernard had no phone. No aide de camp. He just clung to a thin rope above the raging rapids of Interior Ministry politics.

  Bernard knew Hamid was too weak to conduct negotiations. And the buses bound for the air terminal were pulling up outside the church in Belleville. He remembered their rumbling engines. Like roars of hungry beasts waiting to be fed.

  AFTER AIMÉE’S REPEATED GENTLE coaxing, the cylinder lock opened. Relieved, she took a deep breath, then pulled out her Beretta. Breaking into a dead person’s apartment didn’t guarantee it was vacant.

  Eugénie’s door creaked open. Aimée hoped the apartment would surrender the woman’s secrets. Brisk currents emanated from the windows, hung with tattered lace. Aimée motioned to Sébastien.

  Alert for another presence, they padded into the apartment. Aimée almost tripped over a pile of building notices. Luckily Sébastien caught her arm. A musty odor trailed by faint whiffs of decay hit her.

  The place had been trashed. By the look of things, this was definitely professional.

  Aimée saw the detritus of the woman’s life in her ransacked apartment. It was as if Sylvie had been violated again, even in death. Aimée wanted to leave. But she had to put her feelings aside, get on with the job. Find something to point her toward the killer or killers whether it felt good or not.

  She padded into the front room, its windows facing rue de Jean Moinon. A bottle of Evian water had fallen on the floor, its contents long evaporated.

  The apartment reminded her of an old-fashioned waiting room in a doctor’s office—impersonal, bereft of life. She wondered why a well-off mistress of a minister would use this place. If Sylvie stayed here as Eugénie, there had to be a reason. And if the ransackers had foun
d something, she wouldn’t have a clue.

  Frustrated, Aimée scanned the rooms, but no answers came to her. Looking down from the window into the courtyard, she felt a strange sensation. She pulled her jumpsuit collar tighter around her neck.

  Aimée unrolled more sheets of felt. She nodded to Sébastien and they tacked them up over the windows. Better than the flimsy blackout curtains provided during the war, her grandfather had told her, and the felt material kept the heat inside. Always keep some handy, he’d winked. You never know when you’ll need to make an unannounced visit.

  Now she felt safer and took out her large flashlight. The period and layout of the apartment appeared identical to Madame Visse’s. However, in contrast with Madame Visse’s apartment cluttered with boxes, bright yellow walls, toys, and furniture, Eugénie’s was austere. Stark and deserted.

  Several cracks in the plaster flaked onto the floor. She figured the nicotine-stained brown walls hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the 1930s or before. In the hallway faint pink rose-patterned wallpaper peeled in places. Former gas fixtures converted to electricity showed frayed wires. To her this didn’t seem like a love nest or rendezvous spot for a minister and his mistress.

  Aimée nodded to Sébastien and pointed to the old workshop down in the courtyard. He’d agreed to search for the blue garbage bags if they were still there. He made an okay sign with his fingers, pulled out his tools, and padded downstairs.

  Back out in the hallway, the air was stale and frigid. But her gloved hands, clammy and moist, and the perspiration sticking the jumpsuit to her neck, made her feel like she was in a steambath.

  She shined her flashlight inside the narrow kitchen, with barely enough space for one person to stand and reach the drawers. A double gas ring cooker and scorched aluminum kettle were tossed on the floor. By the old enamel sink, an upside-down bottle of Maison Verte dish soap had run green in the sink, leaving a perfumed soapy gunk. Every drawer was pulled out. Strewn teabags littered the chipped Formica table. Grease-stained linoleum tiles, curling up at the edges, lined the floor.

  Apprehensive, Aimée stared at the bare hallway, noticing that chunks of the plaster were gouged out, creating gaping holes in the faded wallpaper. Whoever had trashed this place was looking for something—blowing up Sylvie hadn’t been enough.

  In the shadowy bedroom, a shredded black sleeping bag leaked feathers over the floor. An Ikea pine desk, the kind requiring self-assembly, had been pulled apart, one of the legs smashed and splintered against the wall. Below the window, she noticed a phone jack in the wall. She searched the room. No telephone.

  She found it hard to imagine the woman hadn’t had a telephone.

  Inside the bedroom closet was an orange crate filled with a pair of denim overalls, white shirt, and black sweater, turned inside out and ripped at the seams. A long black nylon raincoat hung from the only hanger, slit to ribbons. Aimée looked for a label.

  None.

  Curious, she edged further. Inside the cubicle-size bathroom was a shredded two-roll pack of Moltanel pink toilet paper. Pink tissue bits and cotton balls carpeted the stained tub. A large pump bottle of Sephora makeup remover, the expensive kind, had been emptied. The aluminum pipe under the sink had been removed, clumps of black hair and wet matter lay on the old tile floor.

  Aimée went to the window overlooking the courtyard. From below, Sébastien flashed a thumbs-up at her, then left to fetch the van.

  She turned, ready to untack the felt from the windows and leave, when something red by the empty coatrack caught her eye.

  She centered the flashlight beam and peered forward.

  Long wisps of what appeared to be red hair peeked out from the hall closet door.

  Why hadn’t she asked Sébastien to wait? Her flashlight beam centered on the closet door. She willed her hands steady and slowly coaxed the door open wider.

  A shag-style red wig lay on the warped linoleum.

  Nothing else. Aimée peered closer. The wig looked as if it had been tossed in as a casual afterthought. It had to be the one Sylvie used as Eugénie.

  A lot of things bothered her, but one thing in particular cried out. She walked back into the shadowed bedroom. It was the phone jack with no phone. But perfect for a modem. Had Eugénie used a laptop and gone on-line?

  She searched among the clothes in the closet. In the back pocket of the overalls she found the phone cord. The laptop had to be somewhere close.

  She shone her flashlight and began searching the closet. Testing each floorboard to see if it had been pried up recently, feeling each wallpaper seam for bubbles or uneven joining.

  Nothing.

  She sat back on her heels. Where would she have hidden a laptop?

  What spot could she have shifted the laptop to if she’d been caught off guard, with only time to slip the phone cord in her pocket?

  The battered desk had one drawer. She opened it. Empty. But the drawer stuck slightly as she pulled it out. Kneeling down, she pulled out her miniscrewdriver and poked the pine strut holding the drawer support. Cheap pine, staple-gunned in places. She felt around, found a knobby spot, pressed it. The pine strut flap popped open.

  A hidden drawer in plain view. Aimée was impressed. And if Eugénie had a wireless modem, she would have been more impressed. In France few people did. She and René lusted for one but were waiting for the price to drop.

  Aimée reached inside, exploring the crevices and ridges. She felt a smooth booklet and pulled it out. It was a manual for a new laptop. Either the men before had found it, or Sylvie had taken it with her and it had gone up in smoke.

  Outwitted or too late; either way it was gone.

  Dejected, Aimée knew the only place left to find answers was in the trash. Before she left, she unrolled the felt from the windows.

  By the time she got to the corner, Sébastien had loaded two blue garbage sacks in back of his van. He gunned the engine as she opened the door. They took off down rue Jean Moinon, narrowly missing the striped cat.

  “Ça va?” he asked, staring at her.

  “I’ll know after we check what you found,” she said, the sodium streetlight glistening above her.

  They sped into the raw Paris night along rainwashed, cobbled streets.

  THE OLD tack room where they unloaded the garbage occupied a courtyard corner of Aimée’s building on He St. Louis. Once used by horses stabled in this former Due de Guise mansion, it now housed discarded window frames, a ganglion of PVC piping, and twenty-five kilogram Placoplâtre Mortier adhisif sacs. On one side stood an old porcelain stove, its broken tiles and legs tilted, canting lazily against the stone wall.

  “Having fun yet?” Aimée said as they sifted through the bags of Sylvie’s trash.

  Sébastien, intent on his work, hadn’t bothered to look up. They both wore gauze masks. But there was no way of getting around the smell.

  “I’ll need a hammam session,” Sébastien said, “after this.”

  “Me, too,” she said, visualizing the hammam: hot marble slabs, steam rising to the arched white marble ceiling, her grime scrubbed away by black soap and a loofah, the small cups of mint tea, her body rubbed to mousse-like consistency by the iron-armed masseuse.

  “Tiens, Aimée,” Sébastien said, holding up soggy sprigs of something dark green and slimy.

  She nodded. “Let’s keep the organic matter over there.”

  Aimée’s flashlight shone amid the candles she’d lit, casting a medieval glow under the vaulted seventeenth-century ceiling. Over the industrial-strength clear plastic, they’d spread out the contents of the garbage bags on the stone floor. She and Sébastien were hunched over sorting the contents.

  They’d gotten lucky, she realized, to find the uncollected trash. The éboueurs must have figured the building was uninhabited.

  Thirty minutes later they’d sorted the bulk into three piles: paper, perishables, and other.

  The other consisted of a pair of black Prada shoes. They were marred by a broken heel,
but & la mode. The thin arched sole was barely scuffed. Hardly worn by the look of them, Aimée noted. And very nice. Sylvie had expensive taste.

  The perishables: apple peels, almond shells, and the green slimy thing. She sniffed. Mint. Cotton balls smudged by tan foundation, sparkly blush and black mascara streaks.

  She surveyed a half-used jar of Nutella, a white plastic Viva bottle of sour milk, and a smashed carton of strawberry Danette yogurt.

  They bundled the piles back up and shot them in Aimée’s trash bin.

  “I know I owe you, Aimée,” Sébastien said, “but next time let me repay you in other ways.”

  Together she and Sébastien sifted all the papers into several piles: Monoprix circulars advertising April sales, crumpled receipts and envelopes, and torn gray paper. Aimée picked up a goldenrod sheet, like those plastered on posts around Belleville. Printed on it: AMNESTY FOR THE SANS-PAPIERS—MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! JOIN THE THE HUNGER STRIKERS’VIGIL—PRESSURE THE MINISTRY—MUSTAFA HAMID’S FAST ENTERS THE19TH DAY.

  She sat up. Her heart quickened. She remembered Philippe’s reaction to Hamid on the radio: his anger and how he’d taken off in the car. Had Sylvie picked up this flyer and tossed it—or had she kept it for a reason? Was there a connection?

  Aimée turned it over. On the other side was smudged writing. The name “Youssef’ and “01 43 76 89.” She wondered if this could be a phone number of one of the Arabes, whom the baker Denet disapproved of, hanging around Eugénie’s. Aimée put it aside.

  Sébastien assembled the gray pieces on an ironing board while she smoothed them with a travel iron. After ironing the strips flat, she set them in rows, adhering them to a clear contact sheet. She did this several times until all the gray paper had a contact front.

  “Now for the interesting part,” she said to Sébastien.

  They trudged upstairs to her apartment, the temperature only a few degrees warmer.

  No welcoming lights, no heat.

  And no Yves. Too bad. She’d tried to push Yves out of her mind. But thoughts of him kept popping back in.