by Cara Black
“So Chloé should just stay with Martine?”
Aimée needed to find GBH. To know Sydney was safe. But a pang hit her. She missed Chloé’s sweet baby smell, those apricot cheeks, and that drooling smile.
“Martine’s good with that, non?” Aimée said. “Let’s keep to that plan. I’ll come later tonight.”
Thursday, Late Morning
Aimée stopped at the concierge’s loge. Chloé’s diaper delivery should have arrived—Aimée had learned the hard way that she needed an office delivery as well as one at home.
“Bonjour, madame, has that package come?”
The office building’s Portuguese concierge, usually all smiles, shrugged. “Pas arrivé. I’ll keep a lookout.”
Aimée peered at the bundle of mail the concierge was still sorting. An envelope addressed to Séverine Lafont, care of Leduc Detective.
“What’s this?” Aimée asked.
A guilty look crossed the concierge’s face.
“Who’s Séverine Lafont?” Aimée demanded, her heartbeat speeding up. “Do you know anything about this?”
The concierge shook her head, her fingers picking at the buttons on her work smock.
“Has a letter arrived for this person before?”
Aimée had heard concierges used building addresses for scams to establish residency.
The concierge’s eyebrows knit in worry. “Mais non, mademoiselle.”
The poor woman was a terrible liar.
“But you will tell me the truth, non?” Aimée said. “And right now.”
“I’m helping . . . Not supposed to tell . . .” She took a breath.
“Do you want to keep this job?”
The woman laid a hand on Aimée’s arm. “But it’s your mother, mademoiselle. Mail arrives for her here under that name.”
Aimée’s back stiffened. “Since when?”
“Last month or so. She asked me to hold letters for her.”
Paid her well, too, no doubt, for a drop point for her alias.
“Told me she didn’t want you to worry.” A catch in her throat. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
Although she shouldn’t have been, Aimée was stunned—Sydney had been using her again. As the saying went, a tiger can’t change its stripes. Aimée turned the envelope over. “Any more correspondence?”
“Not since she last picked up several days ago.”
“Merci. And if you get another one”—she pressed her card into the calloused hands—“call me.”
Out on rue du Louvre, she waved at Marcel, the one-armed Algerian vet, busy at his kiosk serving a line of newspaper buyers. While she tried to hail a taxi—all full—she opened the envelope.
Madame Lafont,
We regret to inform you that due to an instrument malfunction, the medical technicians were unable to read the results of your CT scan on October 6. Please call to schedule a new CT appointment as soon as possible. Contact . . .
Her mother needed a CT scan?
Right away, she called the contact number on the letter. Cloud wisps curled in the pale azure sky.
“I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” said a nurse. “Patient confidentiality forbids me from disclosing medical information.”
“Let me talk to your supervisor.”
“My supervisor’s out.”
As if she’d take no for an answer. “Connect me to the department head.”
“He’ll tell you the same thing. Hold on.”
He did. Acknowledging only that, oui, with a medical release and affidavit signed by the patient and doctor, he could tell her more. Aimée hung up.
Fallen rust-colored leaves gusted around her ankles. The October late-morning light illuminated the outline of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée and, beyond it, the banks of the Seine. Everything but her mother.
Thursday, Midday
“I’m looking for a school for my daughter, and old family friends recommended that I visit you,” said Aimée, adjusting her scarf in the Sainte Clotilde office. “Perhaps you remember the Hlilis and their son, Gérard Bjedje Hlili?”
The young woman behind the desk looked up from a file she was reading. “I started last month.”
Great.
Aimée noticed a small girl waving goodbye to her teacher at a classroom door. Her father hefted her up onto his shoulders, and she laughed in delight. “Let’s go fast, Papa.”
Aimée’s mind went back to Melac hefting Chloé onto his shoulders the week before. To that rare warm afternoon picnic, those pinpricks of light dancing on the pond’s surface at the Jardin du Luxembourg. Watching them together, their matching eyes.
The young woman was saying, “Desolée. But I can schedule a tour for you.”
Aimée caught herself, forcing herself to ignore the pang in her heart. Smiled.
“Of course, but I wanted to meet that teacher they rave about . . .” She thought back to the ages Gérard had been when he’d lived here, did a quick calculation to guess which grade’s teacher would be most likely to remember him. “The fifth level.”
“Monsieur Tardi? He’s on sick leave.”
“Anyone else on staff you can think of who’s taught here for a while?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Before my time.”
Stall. Think of something. “What an architectural gem.” Aimée gestured to a balconied seventeenth-century limestone pavilion fronting the garden at the entrance. An out-of-place jewel in this modern seventies-school maze.
The young woman smiled. “Everyone comments on the pavilion. It was the hunting lodge of the duc de Guise back when this was all royal hunting grounds. Our founder started the school there in 1809 because of the healthy air for children. A hundred years the school remained open and grew before it was closed down, but luckily it was restarted during the occupation.”
The young woman wanted to be helpful, Aimée could tell. “Fascinating,” she said.
“Baptiste, the caretaker, has been here forever. Lives in the pavilion.” She pointed through the hallway to a man raking leaves—within earshot. Aimée had the distinct feeling he’d been listening the whole time. He dumped the leaves into an Eco-Emballages cart, the mayor’s latest scheme to make Paris green. Even her own concierge raved over Eco-Emballages and its environmental advantages. “You can speak with him, but I don’t know that he can help you.”
“Merci.”
Aimée smiled at the crooked-backed man in a bleu de travail, the timeless blue work coat men of her grandfather’s generation and one generation younger still wore. He had muscular arms and looked fit aside from the crooked back for a man who appeared to be in his fifties.
“The receptionist said you’ve worked here a long time, monsieur,” she said. “That you might be able to help me.”
Despite a flushed face and spider veins of a drinker, his brown-framed glasses gave him a bookish appearance. He continued raking the curling leaves without looking up.
“I’m the caretaker, mademoiselle,” he said. “Like my father before me.”
He must have grown up here.
“Do you remember Gérard Bjedje Hlili and his family?” she asked. “He attended school here until 1993.”
The damp leaves gave off the smell of autumn. Children’s voices came from the schoolyard.
The man’s hands tightened on the bamboo rake handle. So much his knuckles whitened. He knew something, and he was nervous. “Talk to reception, mademoiselle. I’m the caretaker.”
“But she’s new, monsieur. I think he came here looking for his friends—”
“No use asking me,” he interrupted. “I’ve got work to do.” A mask had come down over his face.
She stepped closer. “I don’t know what you know”—she lowered her voice, looking around—“but I’ve got something for him from Germaine. I want to do the right
thing.”
He straightened and blinked.
She slipped her business card into his work-coat pocket and walked down the path. At the gate, she paused. Caught him looking up at the pavilion. He quickly looked away. A minute later, he’d disappeared.
Thursday, Midday
Uneasy, she reached Avenue du Bel-Air four blocks away, turned right into rue du Pensionnat. She was scattering crumbs for Hlili, for her mother, but what if she was only attracting predators?
How well she remembered those low buildings on rue du Pensionnat. The long ivy-covered gate, the uneven cobbled courtyard of the old coaching inn that her grandfather used to point out to her after they’d spent a day at Foire du Trône in Bois de Vincennes—the huge carnival fair of medieval origins. She remembered holding her grandfather’s hand in one of hers, in the other the traditional sticky gingerbread pig, cochon aux épices. She remembered him telling her the story of how, in the twelfth century, the king’s son had died after falling off his horse, which had reared up, scared by a wild pig. How the sad king had banned pigs in Paris, the only exception being the pigs kept in the abbey of Saint-Antoine. How, thankful for the king’s favor, the monks had baked pig gingerbread cookies for the fair and how the tradition had continued for eight hundred years.
She remembered how they’d always detour home via the bar owned by Tino, Grand-père’s old colleague, off Avenue du Bel-Air. Tino’s bar was named Verse Toujours, an old phrase meaning, “Keep pouring, nonstop.” The first time she’d heard the name as a little girl, she’d thought Tino’s arm must have hurt from all the pouring and had offered him a Band-Aid. How her grand-père had laughed. The bar was still there, on rue du Pensionnat between Impasse des Arts and rue des Colonnes du Trône, the former wagon route that had once carried victims to the guillotine.
Drink in hand, Tino would sit her at the outdoor table by a bollard, and they’d play jeu de 7 familles with the same worn card set. Her grand-père was busy helping a friend, Tino would say—only years later had she realized Grand-père had been “helping” his mistress.
After cards, Tino would bring her another limonade, and they’d play the guessing game. Her favorite. He’d ask her how many streets radiated from Place du Trône, as he still called it. Or which dauphin the king had imprisoned at the Château de Vincennes. Or how many horses the stables in the old coaching inn across the rue held.
Tino, a retired beat flic, had grown up within the range of the bells of nearby Église de l’Immaculée Conception and seemed happy to stay there. He knew everyone in the quartier, their children, and their affairs, and he never forgot a face. She’d thought she’d stop by the bar and see what Tino knew about the EDF managerial enclave across the street, and about the Hlilis.
But now she stood in Bar Verse Toujours and barely recognized it. The old elaborately framed mirrors had disappeared, as had the zinc counter. The bar had been redecorated with American diner decor—the new rage—red tiles on the floor and the leather-seated banquettes replaced with stools and Formica tables. The thin middle-aged man behind the counter wore an apron that brushed his ankles and a perplexed expression when she inquired after Tino.
“The old owner?” he asked.
“A retired flic. Gave me treats when I was little, and we played cards.”
A nod. “People ask after him, but he’s been in the Cimetière de Bercy a long time now.”
Her heart fell. How sad. And there went that idea.
“How long have you run the bar, monsieur?”
It turned out he and his wife had taken it over a year before. It had been empty since Tino’s demise.
“It’s a struggle, I don’t mind saying,” the owner said.
“Do you know your neighbors across the street at the EDF?”
“Them? Think they’d spend a centime here?”
Aimée figured that was a rhetorical question.
“What about that concierge?” she asked. “I forget her name . . . She still there?”
“Madeleine, that old battle-ax? She’ll leave in a box.” He hiked his shoulders in a shrug. “Good luck.”
Thinking she’d need it, she opened the small door in the ivy-covered wall onto the row of old stables—now garages. More upscale than she remembered from when she was a child.
If she’d met Madeleine, the concierge, before, her memories were faint. Childhood observations were veiled; a limonade had loomed most important at that time. She’d use Tino as an entrée to start the conversation.
“Tino, that old coot?” Madeleine wore a flowered work coat and a bun corkscrewed to her scalp. She slapped down the mail she was sorting and made a sign of the cross, her work-worn hands brushing her ample bosom. “Tino’s with his maker now.” A sigh. “Bless his soul and not to speak ill of the dead, but his family informed, you know.”
Surprised, Aimée stepped back and her heel caught in the dirt of a flower bed. “He served in the police, madame. You mean he had informers?”
“I mean they squealed on les bofs.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together to indicate money. “People knew. His father denounced our neighbor. Buerre, oeufs, and fromage.” Bofs—the term for black marketers during the occupation. “Certain people made a lot of fric then. No one forgot.”
She hadn’t.
“Apple doesn’t fall from the tree, eh? Tino was just like his father. During a demonstration at Place de la Nation, I saw him coming out of Printemps, smug as anything. ‘Got a good deal?’ I asked him. Got a bad deal for the unions full of les communistes. He’d been surveilling and taking photos of the demonstrators from the roof ledge of Printemps.”
Determined not to get defensive or hear sad, horrific tales of the dark times, as her grandfather had called them, Aimée tried to get back on track. “I work for an insurance firm contracted by the EDF,” she said, using a made-up story. “Actually, that’s the reason I’m here, and I was hoping you could help.”
“Why would I do that?”
Aimée gritted her teeth. Smiled. “Of course, you know all about your building tenants. The expert, non? We’re investigating a claim by the Hlili family, who lived here for several years until 1993. Do you remember them?”
“What’s this about?” The concierge’s small eyes narrowed, and her crow’s-feet radiated so they looked like a Himalayan relief map.
“Boring workman’s compensation claims—wouldn’t interest you,” she said. “Routine inquiry. Can you recall the family?”
“Les Africains.”
So she did.
“Apart from acting high and mighty, the Hlilis kept to themselves.”
“Didn’t their son attend Sainte Clotilde’s?”
“Most of the tenants’ children do. This to do with him?”
Madeleine was alert and interested now.
Aimée pretended to consult notes in her Moleskine. “We’re not allowed to discuss ongoing claim issues. Have you seen him recently?”
“I might have,” she said, self-importantly. Looked around the courtyard and back. “Then again, I might not.”
Did this battle-ax want a bribe? For Aimée to cough up for a mean-spirited woman who’d badmouthed Tino—Aimée’s grandfather’s friend, who’d been good to her? Furious, Aimée didn’t care whether the war stories were true or not.
“A mention of how helpful you’ve been in my investigation wouldn’t go unnoticed in your pension, I’m sure,” she said. Smiled again.
“You can do that?”
“Up to you.”
Fat chance.
“Funny, I’ve never heard of that,” Madeleine said.
“It’s a new policy. They’re sending notices this week in the mail.”
And hell would freeze over.
“News to me.”
Suspicious, she hadn’t bought it yet.
Aimée checked a folder in her bag, pul
ling out a contract template she kept for prospective clients. Flashed it too quickly for the woman to read it. “This one . . . Ah, non, I forgot the updated version.”
That did it. Madeleine opened her mouth, unleashing a fountain of information. Aimée filled two pages of her Moleskine with notes and even wrote over her to-do list.
“A funny teenager, I remember,” Madeleine said.
“Funny in what way?”
“He had some strange friends. They played strange games,” she said. “There was something about a local bully. Went by the name Crocodile. An African thing? I don’t know. He pretended not to remember when I asked last week.”
Aimée’s pencil lead cracked in her Moleskine. “Last week? You’re sure it’s not more recent, maybe yesterday?”
“Like I’d forget when it’s market day.”
In theory, he had been staying at the DGSE safe house then.
“Was he here to look for his old friends?” Aimée asked.
“People do, you know,” Madeleine said, thoughtful. “They look for home. Years after the war, in the sixties, the woodworker down the street came looking for his wife. He’d survived the camps.” She shook her head. “Never found her.”
Gérard had done the same. Searching at his old apartment, school. His quartier.
“Did Gérard find his friends?” Aimée asked.
“No one’s here from that time.”
“But it’s only been what, six years? Not so long.”
“They come and go. New batches of managerial trainers and pfft.” She turned to wave at a couple coming across the courtyard and called, “I put your mail inside!”
There had to be a reason Gérard had come here. She sensed it. Grasping at straws, she said, “Do you remember his friends?”
Madeleine nodded.
“Do you have their addresses? I mean, to forward on mail.”
“I might.”
Of course she did. She knew everyone’s business.
“Would some of his friends live in Paris, in the quartier?” Aimée asked.
