Murder in Passy

by Cara Black

  “I did.” Pause. “Think.”

  Her shoulders tensed. “A leak. You’re investigating a leak.… ”

  “Trust no one, Leduc. No one.”

  The phone went dead. The floor creaked behind her and she jumped.

  “Who’s that, so early?” Melac said, his warm arms encircling her waist.

  “The plumber.” She said the first thing that came into her head and shoved the phone into her robe pocket. “He wants to finish work on our floor. At this hour, too!”

  He pulled her closer, nuzzled her neck. “But you’re shaking. Your hand’s like ice.”

  Trust no one, Morbier said.

  “Poor circulation.” She managed a smile, steeled herself not to pull away. “Coffee before your train?”

  His eyebrow lifted. “That call shook you up, I can tell.”

  And I can’t trust you, she thought, even after last night. Had he overheard her talking on the phone?

  She exhaled, shrugged. Miles Davis whined at the door. “Our concierge neglects things. It’s not the first time.” She made a fist and cocked it to indicate drinking. “The woman’s got a vendetta against me, leaves messages.… ”

  “But I can block those calls, if the number.… ”

  Why had he turned so curious? She needed to quit rambling, quit these lies before she messed up. She needed him out of here.

  She nestled under his shoulder, steered him toward the kitchen. “How about un express before Miles Davis waters the trees and I walk you to the Métro?”

  * * *

  AIMéE PARKED HER scooter in the viaduct under the elevated Métro at Passy. Light drizzle beaded the curling white bark of the birch trees, and her eyelashes. She wished she’d worn rain gear instead of a leather coat over her ruffled silk blouse and black denim pencil skirt.

  She found the café nestled at the bottom of the steps. At the crowded café counter, she wedged in the back among the horserace bettors. Wisps of blue smoke spiraled to the nicotine-stained ceiling. She almost didn’t hear her phone ring amid the whooshing of the milk steamer.

  “Aimée?” Martine’s voice whipped in the wind. “Where are you?”

  Aimée peered over the shoulder of the man shouting at the horses on the télé mounted in the wall. “In the back.”

  Martine waved from the window.

  “Voilà, I see you now.”

  A man slapped his PMU—Pari Mutuel Urbain, the racing association betting slip—on the counter. He shouldered his way through the three-deep crowd toward the cashier. The fetid air resulting from too many bodies, wet wool, and smoke filled the café.

  “Trying your luck on the horses, Aimée?” Martine said, raising her voice over the din of the télé and the shouts of the patrons. “Nice and quiet, too.”

  “Désolée, the only place I remembered near Radio France.”

  Martine smiled at the bearded man behind the counter and ordered. “Un thé à la menthe.”

  “You found something, Martine?” Aimée set down her espresso.

  “Yes and no.”

  Hope pounded in Aimée’s chest.

  Martine dipped the tea bag in the steaming cup of water. “Don’t get me started, Aimée.”

  Startled, she looked sideways at Martine. “What’s that look on your face mean?”

  “It’s not good.”

  “The Basques?”

  Martine opened a pack of Muratti Ambassadors, tapped a filter on the zinc countertop, and flicked her orange lighter. She blew a stream of smoke over her shoulder. “Did I tell you about the hoopla? A madhouse at Radio France.” Martine made a moue of distaste. “They cut my agribusiness feature in half. Assigned me to cover tonight’s Basque referendum reception, minor royalty—a Spanish princess—in attendance. To highlight the historical and cultural implications of ‘new’ Franco-Spanish relations. Boring. We’re becoming as royalty-mad as the BBC.”

  Aimée leaned her arms on the counter. “I’m more interested in your Sud Ouest connection. Don’t you have things to show me?”

  Martine, in a checked black-and-white wool suit, reached into her matching soft leather briefcase. She set two folders of printouts next to the ashtray and flicked ash from her cigarette. “Makes for interesting reading. I culled the highlights. My contact ran a search up to the present. Thin, but all they had.”

  She pointed to the other file with her red-lacquered nail. “Euskadi Action. Not a group a mother wants her daughter involved with, according to my source. A radical offshoot faction of ETA. But I didn’t have time to read it.”

  Aimée picked the cigarette from Martine’s fingers, took a deep drag. The nicotine jolt went right to her head.

  Martine took back her cigarette. “You quit.”

  “I’m always quitting.” Aimée tapped her heeled boots.

  Martine exhaled a stream of blue smoke. “Prada boots. Nice.”

  “Borrowed them from you, remember?”

  “No wonder.” Martine leaned back, cocked her head. “Who is he?”

  Aimée sighed. She could never keep anything from Martine. “That obvious?”

  “You’re glowing.” Martine grinned. “For once, you’re following my advice. In a way. Knowing you, une aventure, the one-night kind?”

  “The flic.”

  “Lean over: time for a spanking,” Martine said, crushing out her cigarette. “Never learn, do you?” But Aimée saw the wheels spinning in Martine’s head; a job, possible advancement. “So he was good, eh, like last time?”

  A pang went through her. Too good. “I don’t trust him.”

  “He’s married?”

  “In divorce proceedings, custody issues.” She took a cigarette from Martine’s pack of Murattis. “But that’s not why.”

  Martine lit her cigarette. “I’m listening.”

  So she told her. Everything. Like she had since they were sixteen.

  “Sounds like Melac’s watching his back, wants to keep his job, make alimony payments.” Martine shrugged. “So either keep it physical or ignore his calls.”

  “Morbier said trust no one.”

  “He’s right,” Martine said. “In his situation, I’d say the same.”

  Once a leak sprang, it watered everything. But she had an idea. “How’s your sister’s husband’s cousin?”

  Martine glanced at her watch, set some francs on the counter. “The half-deaf one with the hots for you? Florent?”

  “That’s him. I forgot his name.”

  “Still half-deaf, still has the hots for you,” she said. “As usual, he asked after you last Sunday at dinner. Promoted, I think.”

  Even better. Florent worked in an administrative branch of the RG. She couldn’t remember which one. “Then I should take him out to lunch.”

  “Don’t play with him, Aimée. He’s naïve.”

  “And he’s forty-five years old, a grown man still living with his mother.”

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Martine’s eyes narrowed. “You’d use him to find what the RG has on this woman’s involvement with ETA?”

  “Put that way, no. I couldn’t.” She averted her eyes. “But the woman Morbier loved was murdered and he’s the suspect; who knows what they’ve done to him. He’s protecting his informer, something to do with his case in Lyon, so he’s got no alibi. I need to find her murderer.”

  “Makes a kind of logic,” Martine said. “But the ETA connection’s a stretch. A twenty-year stretch.”

  “Somewhere to start, Martine.”

  “Somewhere to dead-end, quick.” Martine picked up her bag. “See for yourself tonight. Join me. As I said, I’m covering the Basque minister’s announcement of the agreement. You’d get to see a princess and find out how defused ETA’s become. ETA’s bombings alienated their old power base; people want no more violence. Meet the man, listen; he’ll tell you.”

  Out on the windswept street, the drizzle had stopped. The Métro thundered by overhead. Martine checked her much-used Vuitton agenda. “Time for my news featur
e. All seven minutes of it.”

  Martine gestured to the distant sphere-like aluminum-coated Radio France building, referred to by all as the Camembert. “Awful, non? Five kilometers of snaking corridors and half the time I’m lost. See you tonight, Musée Marmottan, six-thirty.”

  Now she could check out Euskadi Action’s demonstration at the same time.

  Martine hurried over the cobbles and turned the corner. The wind picked up, scattering shriveled leaves from the gutter. The roar of the Métro receded as it crossed the Seine.

  A few low dark clouds threatened rain. Aimée left her scooter protected under the arched metal Métro supports and climbed the steep, narrow Passage des Eaux, pinched in a deep groove between tall limestone buildings. Wide enough for two-legged creatures. Just. A lone glass lantern on a curled metal rod hung like a stubborn raindrop determined not to fall. She looked beyond the deep butterscotch walls in the crackling, hard autumn light paling on the roof tiles.

  Stupid to sleep with Melac. And to like it. She wanted to kick herself. Panting, she reached the last step and stood atop Passy. Beyond the passage summit loomed the Trocadéro hill on the right. Below lay two-story buildings and flashes of green: back courtyards and streets threading the old village, widening in places and reverting to the original horse-cart dimensions. No hint of the stone vaulted cellars and passages underneath, honeycombing ancient quarry tunnels. Hidden, covered, like everything else so far.

  The sky opened and she ran for shelter.

  * * *

  IN THE ROOM the Balzac museum pamphlet described as his “study,” Aimée paused at Balzac’s simple wood writing desk. At least the place was dry, the heater worked, and quiet reigned until the next tour of this labyrinthine series of small rooms—a strange place where one entered on the third floor, then descended a corkscrew staircase to the first. Like entering the neck of wine bottle.

  But a place in which to think. Figure out Melac’s angle. At La Crim, she’d seen his empty desk. The receptionist confirmed he’d taken leave. But a leave of two days, as he’d said? Or two weeks? She couldn’t be sure. There was no guarantee in the sweet talk of this man who’d put her under investigation last month.

  Morbier’s cryptic comment about the leaking robinet in the jail’s visiting room made sense now. A leak. A leak in the force.

  Knowing Morbier, he was keeping something close to his chest. He could have been putting on a show for watching eyes in the visiting room. Just like him.

  Her mind went to the secrets he was keeping from her, hinted at by a gesture, a word when he was unaware. This gray past buried deep. As if she didn’t know. Didn’t suspect what had really happened to her father. Or her mother. Every time she’d asked, his answer had been to tell her to leave the past alone.

  She paused by the window overlooking the narrow, walled back lane. The heater hissed, emitting puffs of warmth. In the terracotta vase, an arrangement of burnt orange-red maple leaves glowed in the light. But the maple leaves provided no answers.

  Nor did the bust of Balzac with his opaque marble stare. A debt-ridden Balzac had rented rooms here in Passy, then a village outside Paris. Hounded by creditors, he’d often had to escape out the back door and down the lane. In spite of this, he’d written much of his early nineteenth-century saga, the many-volumed Comédie Humaine, and drunk fifty cups of coffee a day at this gouged wooden desk. She could relate to that.

  She chewed her lip, trying to face the fear that was making her insides shiver. She kept reliving Melac’s appearance in the hallway, his nuzzled kisses along her neck, his insistence on knowing her feelings, his curiosity about the phone call. The probing of his gray eyes.

  She didn’t do flics. Simple. She’d ignore the way he’d made her feel, his warm legs entwined with hers under the sheets, this talk of a “relationship.”

  No mistaking the veiled panic in Morbier’s voice. He needed her help. The little he’d given her—a leak, an informer he couldn’t name—didn’t point her to Xavierre’s murderer. Unless a bent flic had murdered her to put blame on Morbier and derail his investigation. She doubted that. But this Lyon case, this leak? She put that aside for now.

  She had to concentrate on the info Martine had given her on Xavierre’s background. Find a link, figure out if it led anywhere. Her father had always said think like the perp; if you don’t know the perp, go to the suspect; no suspect, back to basics— the victim.

  In the Balzac museum’s narrow reading room, she opened Xavierre’s file. Reading from the faxed newspaper articles dating from 1974, a whole other aspect of Xavierre Contrexo emerged. Student ETA activist and supporter, implicated in a bombing in Navarre that claimed a policeman’s life. Along with two other students: Timo Baptista, and a man simply referred to in the newspaper as Agustino.

  The painter. No wonder he regretted the past and devoted himself to painting and making peace his life’s work now.

  She sat back, wondering if this Timo Baptista had taken the oath, too, and served time in prison. Morbier’s words rang in her head. The trio from Bayonne. Had he known of Xavierre’s ETA past?

  According to the next article, also dated 1974, Xavierre’s lawyer, d’Eslay, bright and from a wealthy family, had found mitigating circumstances, and there was a retrial. Xavierre had served seven months in total. A later article mentioned they had married and had one daughter. Then the only mentions were of the Basque cultural and art society fund-raisers and society events over the years, of Bayonne and Paris charity functions. A divorce. His last year’s obituary in Sud Ouest.

  A wild youth, then a 180-degree turnaround to patroness of the arts, of Basque culture. From all appearances, Xavierre had changed and led a different life.

  Not much progress or an arrow pointing to a tie-in with ETA today. Yet Agustino, Xavierre’s old compadre, hadn’t told her the whole story. Why not?

  Right away, she’d sensed he was hiding something. His reluctance, admitted “cowardice,” causing him to avoid facing Irati, stuck in the back of her mind.

  She’d question Agustino again. Still, no tie-in to Xavierre’s murder.

  Next she phoned Florent at the RG. After two calls, she reached his office. “Monsieur Florent’s attending the Strasbourg conference, Mademoiselle,” the saccharine-voiced secretary told her.

  “Until when?”

  “Monsieur Florent’s on holiday after that. Returns middle of the month, Mademoiselle. A cruise.”

  With his mother, no doubt.

  She left her number just in case he returned.

  Her arrows hit no targets, no return calls with respect to the Mercedes or Irati’s triangulated cell phone line. She sat back in the chair, shoulders slumped, rubbing her neck.

  So far she’d left messages and learned Xavierre had been involved with ETA years ago and had an RG file. And she’d slept with Melac, whom she didn’t trust. His citrus scent was still in her hair. Thank god Balzac’s bust was the only witness.

  The second file on Euskadi Action contained stapled articles and clippings. One printout dated two months ago from the Basque Watch security newsletter got her attention.

  Bylined in the article was ETA’s motto Bietan jarrai, “Keep up on both,” illustrated by ETA’s trademark symbol of a snake— representing politics—wrapped around an ax—representing armed fight. A little shudder ran through her. Headlined FRENCH BASQUE ETTARAS AFFILIATED WITH ETA, the article pointed to a logistical network of ettara in France using a pool of mostly youths scattered across the Pays Basque who were willing to engage in missions under ETA’s political guise.

  French and Spanish police seek to reduce ETA’s capability by banning the political wing of the movement, which seeks an independent, autonomous Basque state. The logic to banning the political wing, which has operated for the last decade under different names— Euskadi Action the most recent—is that both wings are inextricably linked.

  Banning the political branch, authorities hope, would reduce the flow of funds and support to the militan
t units or ettaras of Euskadi Action. Yet other authorities disagree, arguing a ban would stimulate robberies used to fund ETA operations along with “revolutionary taxes” exacted on local businesses under the guise of protection.

  No one knows just how far the covert organization extends. Authorities estimate the ettara active in France using false passports and identities—members who are trained to kill and who work in cells of four people— could number a hundred youths.

  Not a comforting thought. Her mind went to the Imprimerie Nationale heist, figuring it was connected. After all, to travel, to operate, one needed ID. Hard to find hundreds of clean passports for an activist group any other way. And profit by selling the surplus to fund operations.

  She scanned the next article, from January 1992, focused on GAL, the dirty war. The article gave background on France’s vaunted tradition of a haven, an asylum for political dissidents, citing Lenin, Trotsky, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Notably, since the Spanish Civil War in the thirties, it had been a sanctuary for refugees from Franco’s dictatorship, and the tradition continued into the eighties of providing political-refugee status for ETA militants, even refusing Spanish extradition demands.

  But things changed, she noted, with the “dirty war.”

  From 1983 through 1987 forty attacks on French soil by GAL, Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación, mercenaries hired by high Spanish officials, shot, kidnapped and blew up ETA members and innocent French bystanders. Responsibility extended to the highest offices in Madrid’s ministry. GAL mercenaries crossed the French border to wage war on refugee ETA members, and on French civilians thought to collude.

  More than ten years later, with new disclosures and impending GAL trials of high military officials, ETA violence renewed with ettaras enlisted from disaffected youths. Known activities include sabotaging rail lines for a new high speed train from France to Spain. The planned route, a Y shape with 80% of the rail lines underground, runs aboveground the rest of the way through the Basque countryside. Authorities dismiss the sabotage as tactics by local business, under the cloak of ETA, to reroute commerce to their area.