Murder in Bel-Air

by Cara Black

  “Oh, he had many names. Rolf Uiders, Peter Uhlsdorf, Fritz Lammers . . . a South African national, ex–Foreign Legion, mercenary, last seen in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on Sunday. That is, until last night, when he was found dead.”

  Merde. She smoothed back her hair, red streaked this month, making sure a spiky tuft covered her shrapnel wound. The hard wood chair pressed into her spine. The backs of her knees perspired.

  “We’re running tests on the knife in his breast pocket for possible links to a recent homicide. A young half-Ivoirian woman. Know anything about that?”

  Fishing. But she cursed herself for not checking the dead man more thoroughly. She kept her face expressionless.

  “We know you visited our safe house on rue de Pommard. There’s video to prove it.”

  Hoodie stood and hit a key on the desk laptop. Turned the screen in her direction.

  A smudged figure in the shadows, the distinctive silhouette of her ankle boots, captured by a camera trained on the safe house door. Her head down, scarf over it, disguising her features.

  Lacenaire nodded to the video. “See? I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”

  Deny. Non, he’d expect that. Play dumb. “Who’s that?”

  He hit rewind. She recognized the legionnaire coming out of the door, his lips moving . . . There was a glimpse of him pulling out his pistol, then his shoulders as he stopped. The thupt, thupt of shots muffled by the suppressor.

  Then the action was out of camera range.

  After a long pause, there she was again, going in the side door. Head down. Not great-quality footage. The hedgerow branches had grown since the camera was first installed, she figured.

  “Let’s try this again,” he said. “Did you kill Hans Volker because he attacked you?”

  Like she’d answer that.

  He looked bored. “I doubt it myself.”

  Attack. Feint. Parry. Classic fencing moves. Exactly the interrogation techniques her grandfather had described in his lectures.

  “Forensics concludes this idiot shot himself, so to speak. His pistol fired on ground impact. Plus, with his prints all over and gunshot residue on his hands . . . I couldn’t prove anything else. A few kicks in the head weren’t what killed him.”

  What did he want from her? How long would it be until she found a way in to ask about Sydney? But she kept quiet.

  “Then there are the homicides that happened shortly afterward in an old bomb shelter by the national rail tracks. Not that they really matter—just a sad footnote, really.”

  The back of her neck was covered in sweat.

  “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Like she’d admit it.

  A sigh. “That’s not my concern. Our asset, Gérard Bjedje Hlili, a foreign national under our protection, remains in danger. This dead man, Hans Volker according to his latest alias, discovered the safe house, and our asset fled. Disappeared. But you know that.”

  She would have been stupid not to probe and get details.

  “How did your asset get away?” she said. “When?”

  “Unknown at this time.”

  She believed him. They didn’t know where GBH was either—that was probably why she was really here.

  “Why didn’t this Hans Volker stop him?” she asked.

  “A bit late to ask him, non?” Lacenaire said.

  The man in the hoodie was taking notes, she realized.

  “We were hoping you’d know that.”

  “Why’s he so important, Lacenaire?”

  “So full of questions all of a sudden.” Pause. “Gérard Bjedje Hlili’s the only politician popular with the under-thirty population in Côte d’Ivoire. An age group composing almost fifty percent of the country. This group’s support is vital in the impending coup d’etat. Hlili’s their big player. And we believe he’s going to use certain documents to bolster his power.” Lacenaire tented his fingers. “Sydney Leduc told you where to locate him.”

  She clenched her knuckles. Light slanted from the skylight, and she studied the pattern it made on the floor.

  “Find him.”

  She bit her tongue before she could blurt out that this wasn’t her problem, or at least it wouldn’t be once she got Germaine’s stash to GBH. “I don’t understand.”

  “Très simple. We want you to locate this man who was under our protection.”

  “Why did you let him escape?” she said.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’ve got no clue who he is or where to find him.”

  “Friends across the pond joined the party,” he said, parsing his words. “For political reasons, we need a contractor, an outsider such as yourself, to finish Sydney’s task. Technically, we can’t be involved.”

  Friends across the pond. Translation—the CIA. And Sydney had been working for them. She’d been lying again, telling Aimée her secret lives were all behind her.

  The smell of the coffee was getting to Aimée. “Didn’t you just say—”

  “We can’t be seen to be involved for political reasons of our own,” he said. “Sydney Leduc told us you would find him. Our agreement with her is based on your assistance. I can’t tell you any more.”

  Aimée blinked. “First you accuse me of killing a legionnaire; then you turn around and ask me to find someone I don’t know.” She shook her head, expelled air from her mouth. “C’est fou.”

  “As I said, it’s complicated.”

  “Isn’t this your job?” She gestured to the hive working below. “Why don’t you put your pack on the trail? Isn’t that what an intelligence boss does?”

  She caught a wince. She’d hit a nerve.

  “Given the players, it’s a delicate balance,” he said. “We’ve had to improvise, call you in.”

  “Lacenaire, I don’t see why I’d do any better than your crew.”

  “I’ll keep Sydney safe until you find him.”

  She stiffened. “What do you mean keep her safe?”

  He pulled a folded paper from his pocket. Torn edges, grid lined, like the note in Chloé’s diaper rash creme. A drawing of the mouse with the words Do the right thing.

  Angry, Aimée sucked in her breath. Slammed the demitasse down on the saucer. “I want to see her.”

  “She asked me to give you this. Said you’d understand.”

  “No deal unless I see her, comprenez?”

  “Desolé, no contact or she’d be compromised.”

  “Quoi?” She stood. “You’re holding her hostage?”

  “Not us.” A long silence. Lacenaire averted his eyes.

  Now she was scared. Couldn’t control the shaking in her hands. “You mean she’s in danger? Who’s holding her?”

  “Cooperate as soon as possible, and she’ll be safe.”

  But it was only his word on that. Yet she couldn’t ignore the note if her mother was a hostage. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

  “Try, or it will be too late.”

  Lacenaire had her where he’d wanted her all along—a patsy ready to go out on a limb.

  Did she have a choice? Decided to play along. “All right.”

  He nodded to the hoodie, who pulled a file from inside his sweatshirt. Set it on the colorless desk.

  “You didn’t get this from us. Compris?” said the hoodie.

  She opened it. GBH’s photo stared at her, a whole dossier clipped to it.

  Hoodie set down a burner phone. “You call when you find him. Only then.”

  Thursday Morning

  Twenty minutes later, another car, a dinged Renault, deposited her on rue Bailleul a block from Leduc Detective. During the ride, she’d read the thin file. It wasn’t much.

  As she walked, she tried to understand what she’d gleaned. For a moment, the pavement wavered. She felt a
burning sensation behind her eyes. Second time today. She heeded the signs. Leaned against a damp wall and closed her eyes. Deep breaths.

  How in the world could she find Gérard Hlili if the world’s intelligence services couldn’t or wouldn’t? She was one person.

  Their hands were tied for political reasons. Their friends across the pond were exerting pressure.

  Damn the CIA. And her mother for working with them. Again.

  “You trust these people, Aimée?”

  She’d spread out GBH’s dossier from the DGSE on the office floor. “Not further than I can spit.”

  Right away, René noticed the redacted pages. “Missing pages, sloppy. How obvious, non? Page seven and then page ten? You’d expect spooks to know their stuff. We pay those James Bond salaries; shouldn’t they find him?”

  Saj nodded. “That’s the truffle hounds’ job.”

  “At least their espresso’s grand cru,” Aimée said.

  “And you bought Lacenaire’s threat of international conspiracy?” said René. “My derriere.”

  “They need someone to do their dirty work, or they wouldn’t have drafted me.”

  “Then what’s their going consultant fee? Need I remind you we’re a business, Aimée?” He snorted. “And don’t tell me it’s for the good of the republic.”

  She bit her lip. “My mother’s life.”

  A silence settled on the office, broken only by the distant hum of traffic on rue du Louvre. Then René slammed his fist on the desk. “That’s coercion.”

  Saj made a time-out signal. “Not if Aimée holds the aces.” He pointed to the contents of Genelle’s envelope taped to the dry-erase board. “Did the DGSE ask you about any of this?”

  She shook her head.

  “Bon. I’d say you’re one up on them. From what they told you, they’re operating on the idea that GBH has Genelle’s documents, non?”

  Aimée nodded.

  “Don’t forget the dead legionnaire had GBH on his shopping list,” said René. “He’s got a trigger-happy accomplice.”

  True.

  “We need to find out who he represents,” René said. “Who else’s trying to keep their finger in the tart.”

  Then she remembered Lacenaire’s tidbit about the knife that had been found on the legionnaire’s body. “What if his shopping list started with Genelle?”

  “Killing her before he got the documents doesn’t make sense,” Saj said.

  That had been her thought. Yet he hadn’t exactly been a pro, from what she’d seen.

  “Unless he screwed up, Saj,” said René, “like he did last night.”

  René’s phone trilled. He took the call. Before Aimée could dissect GBH’s file and life any further, an alert came from her laptop. A reply to her query on the zouglou LISTSERV from Senegal.

  Salut mon amie, Jinsti here. I love zouglou, too. And I like your name and cool intro.

  Some Internet sleaze trying to hit on her? But it could be a chance to wheedle out info on Germaine Tillion. Better respond.

  Aimée typed a reply: Génial. Can’t find DJs like GT here. A music desert. Need her tape mix, thirsty too long.

  A few seconds’ delay. Then a reply: Know the feeling. She spins vinyl in Abidjan. Club Madou.

  Not for a while. Seems MIA . . .

  Yeah, her brother got shot.

  What happened?

  Politics. You need to check out Fatima. She spins like you don’t believe.

  It went on like this until she tried: Jinsti, help me out. I promised my friend a DJ GT tape. How can I find one? You don’t think she’s stopped spinning?

  I’ll ask around. Got to go.

  A probable dead end. Yet as her father had always said, you don’t know what you’ll find if you don’t look. She thought of all the nights he’d worked, combing through his notes, hunched over reports, looking at the same details yet again. Just one thing, he’d say, small as a speck of sand, and it can get you there.

  Sand. She’d felt sand in the envelope from the Grand Hôtel d’Abidjan. What time was it there?

  It took a few minutes to locate the number. She got through and the phone rang, a tinny faraway sound, until a recorded voice answered. She left a message.

  René wrote legionnaire and accomplice on the dry-erase board. He circled accomplice. “I’ll take this on.”

  “All yours,” she said.

  “Tell me what the DGSE said about the legionnaire and his aliases.”

  As she did, René jotted down the info.

  “You think the accomplice found GBH, murdered him?” she asked.

  René picked up a fax that had come in. Showed her a police vehicular report. Aimée winced. René’s classique car, his pride and joy that he polished and waxed every week, destroyed.

  “I’ll find out if he did,” said René, his jaw set. He grabbed his tailored Burberry trench coat. “No one blows up my car without payback.”

  Thursday, Midmorning

  “Got my present?” René smiled at Idris, a fellow gaming nerd, over the Air France information desk. René’s feet dangled from the white plastic stool. Outside rain thrummed against the high coved windows in the cavernous terminal at Invalides. Created for the 1900 exposition, the symmetrical building, with its view of the grass-covered Esplanade des Invalides, reminded him of an orangerie.

  “The things I do for you, René,” Idris said, slipping a thick envelope into René’s waiting, stubby fingers. “You owe me.”

  A Dungeons and Dragons addict like himself, Idris gamed at an old café near Châtelet. It had been Idris’s haven since back when he’d travel in on the Réseau Express Régional from the banlieue or suburb where the neighbors burned cars in his housing project. For more than ten years, he and René had kept a monthly rendezvous while Idris worked his way up the Air France IT ladder.

  “All the passenger manifests from Sunday through Tuesday, Idris?”

  Idris nodded. “We run one flight a day from Abidjan. Nonstop, six and a half hours.”

  “What if he made a connection?”

  “Then you’re out of luck.” Idris smiled, his bright white teeth perfect against a dark honey complexion. “Don’t forget, you’re my D&D partner tomorrow.”

  René shook his head.

  Idris’s eyes widened. “Quoi? You never miss—”

  “I’m involved right now . . .”

  “You mean in a relationship?” Then a huge grin. “Sacré bleu, about time, René.”

  Merde. At the bar the month before after their game was over, René had drunkenly opened his mouth about his feelings for Aimée.

  “Non, Idris . . . it’s complicated.”

  “C’est l’amour, René.”

  Only in his dreams. Aimée saw him as Chloé’s godfather and her own best friend and business partner—all that he would ever amount to.

  A taxi let René off at Bercy Village. The insurance agent met him in the SNCF freight yard near the soot-stained metal carcass that had been his car. Total write-off.

  René groaned. Nothing could ever replace this beauty, a limited edition with special features. The estimate the agent gave him for a replacement classique Citroën DS model—what a joke.

  But shooting those idiotic winos—that was murder. Senseless. And it could have been him and Aimée instead.

  Work would take his mind off the car. And the Bercy Café in the old wine depot was as good as the office. He took out the stapled passenger manifests. Fifteen hundred passengers. Groaned again—what a pain. Over a steaming cup of green tea, he got to work.

  Pen in hand, he halved the list by gender, crossing off females. Dismissed another quarter by age—too young or too old. From among the 750 remaining male passengers who’d arrived within the three-day period he had manifests for, he narrowed it down to two who had arrived on Monday�
��s early morning flight 03 from Abidjan.

  Passenger number 139 fit the bill agewise and was a South African national, but given his handicapped status—he’d been wheelchair assisted, as noted by the cabin crew purser—René crossed him off. Passenger number 723, Andreas Devacour—this passenger ticked the boxes. Thirty-six years old, birthplace Arles, a replacement passport issued in Abidjan. René checked the list he’d made from the aliases Aimée had given him: Hans Volker, Jochim Wilmsdorf, Karl Duisberg, Rolf Uiders, Peter Uhlsdorf, and Fritz Lammers. No match. But no reason there shouldn’t be one more alias. René knew that after a legionnaire’s service, they were given a new identity and passport.

  He found the place where Devacour was staying in France listed as Residence Crémieux on the embarkation card. Was this the mec with tattooed knuckles, now a corpse?

  Well, what better time to find out?

  René caught another taxi on the rain-slicked street. Close to the Gare de Lyon, he stopped at rue Crémieux, a rainbow of small houses on a pedestrian lane. Here? The rain abated, and he asked the taxi to wait.

  No Devacour, Andreas registered now or in the last month. A family guesthouse, the middle-aged owner added, not a single man’s idea of fun.

  Now what?

  Back in the taxi, René remembered seeing several two-star hotels, the kind that proliferated near train stations. Where you weren’t asked a lot of questions at registration.

  He asked the taxi driver, a young redheaded mec with a sparse matching beard, to take him back in the direction of the two-star hotels.

  “So you’re looking for someone?” the driver asked.

  “A friend of someone.”

  “Book me for an hour, and I’ll show you all the two-star hotels you want. If you find him in less than an hour, I’ll prorate.”

  The kind of thing Aimée would do. This would be expensive, and there was no client paying expenses on this case. If only he had his own car.

  “Deal.”

  At each hotel René asked for Andreas Devacour, Hans Volker, Joachim Wilmsdorf, and then the others on his alias list. Each time he slipped the receptionist some francs along with his card to sweeten the request, something he hated to do on principle. He also hated that his shoulders came up only to the reception counters and he had to crane his neck to look up at the receptionists.