Murder in the Rue de Paradis

by Cara Black

  Pain wrenched her. She took Yves’s cold white hand in hers and tried to rub it warm. Dirt rimmed his fingernails. He’d put up a fight. She leaned down and raised his hand to her face. The hand he’d brushed across her cheek in the warm dark of the previous night.

  Non, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t happening.

  She touched the face that had pressed against hers, now stiff and cold. This was the man who’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

  “The commander didn’t tell me how he died,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the attendant said.

  “They slit his throat.”

  She fought waves of pain, a rippling anger. “I’ll find out who did this, Yves,” she whispered to him. She placed a black tendril of hair behind his ear. Her thumb came back sticky, smeared with a tan streak. She held it up to her nose, smelled it: the floral scent of makeup. She noted a thin tan line behind his earlobe, a smudge in the cleft of his cheek.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  The attendant pulled a small clipboard from his white jacket pocket. “You’ve seen enough to identify him. Yves . . . ?”

  “Yves Robert, an investigative journalist for Agence France Press,” she said, her words coming from far away, mechanically. She made her feet move. One in front of the other.

  “Mademoiselle!” the attendant called after her.

  She ignored him. Out in the hallway she ran to the WC, made it to the bowl, and threw up. Threw up until nothing came out. Her stomach wrenched with dry heaves; there was an acid taste in her mouth. Her body shook; tears ran down her face. Who would slit Yves’s throat? But that red swirl. . . . And why had Yves worn makeup?

  Someone pounded on the door.

  “Eh, you don’t own the facilities!” said a woman’s voice. “My bladder’s bursting.”

  She let go of the bowl and, shaking, got to her feet, washed her face, and rinsed her mouth.

  “About time!” said an old woman who glared at her.

  Aimée leaned against the cold tiled wall, trembling. She had to find some answers. A reason. Something.

  But when she reached the second floor office of her pathologist friend, Serge, the receptionist looked up with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Serge’s en vacances,” she said, fanning herself with the thin morgue-personnel directory. “He’ll be back at the end of August.”

  “Can I speak with . . .” She paused and took a breath, made herself say it. “The attending autopsy pathologist?”

  “They autopsy in the morning,” the woman said, glancing at the wall clock. “We’re on vacation schedule, half days. Everyone’s gone now.”

  No help there. No answers. Just a potted palm withering in the dense office heat.

  “Merci.”

  Hollowness gnawed inside her. Emptiness.

  She walked down the wide staircase, past the bust of Pasteur, out the doors of the red-brick morgue to the quai. But she couldn’t make sense of Yves in that closed steel drawer, rough stitches sewn down his chest.

  She pictured him in the middle of the night sitting at the window, his face flushed. Details came back to her: the musky scent of him on the duvet, the coarse sheet, the hot air clinging in the loft corners. He’d said he couldn’t talk about what he did. Stupid. Why hadn’t she pressed him, why hadn’t she insisted?

  Under the now-threatening charcoal clouds, bateaux mouches glided by, making silver ripples in the green Seine. Humid heat baked the cobbles under her feet. Not a breath of air stirred the plane trees lining the embankment. René’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She didn’t know how long it was before she answered. In the particle-charged air, her hand brushed her shirt and it shocked her, crackling and clinging with static electricity.

  “Did you clear things up?” René asked.

  “René . . .” she couldn’t say the words. If she did, it would make it more real.

  The cell phone reception wavered. “Can you pick me up, René?”

  A few reluctant, soft drops of rain fell, darkening the cobblestones.

  “I’ve got this last report printing,” he said, exasperation in his voice. “Can you grab a taxi? 10, Passage du Desir.” His words broke up. “. . . the real estate agent can squeeze us in right now . . . you know I’m catching a train for the country.”

  A male pigeon, its violet-purple feathered breast puffed out, strutted toward a drab female.

  “Aimée?”

  The drops fell, leaving a pattern of wet spots on her shoulder. “Something wrong?” Before she could summon the words, the line cut out. A crack of thunder, then a jagged bolt of lightning illuminated everything. And the sky opened.

  Aimée felt as if she were underwater, submerged in memories. Yves’s lopsided smile, the bubbling champagne, the red slit across his throat; everything swirled through her mind. From somewhere, a horn honked in an insistent rhythm. Sheets of warm rain pelted her face.

  Shivering, she looked up through wet eyelashes to see a taxi, its windshield wipers scraping in futile attempts against successive waves of beating rain.

  Tuesday Noon

  “ALL PRAISE TO Allah,” Nadira breathed, finishing her prayers. She rolled up her prayer rug and hid it in the niche she’d made between the wood slats under the bed in her room. An attic room that Balzac, in the novel she’d attempted, would have described as a garret. Her window overlooked the statue that stood in the center of the circle in the middle of chic Place Saint Georges. Exclusive, tree-lined, and encircled by nineteenth-century townhouses.

  Nadira’s cell phone vibrated right on schedule.

  “Oui?”

  “The swallow flies over the stones,” said a voice in Farsi. The line clicked off. The jihad had started. She swallowed hard, hoping that in her two years as a nanny, she’d prepared sufficiently for this new mission.

  A devout Shi’a, she’d followed Allah’s will, disclosed to her by the mullah behind the grande mosque in Tehran. Nadira had been orphaned when she was only nine—an age at which she was considered to be a woman and eligible for marriage— and been one of those lucky to be chosen for study in the mosque’s orphanage. Later, handpicked by Ruhal, an Iranian Sorbonne-educated teacher, now a hardline cleric in the post-Ayatollah regime, she’d been enrolled in French classes. More grooming and training ensued until she’d been selected for the mullah’s overseas division for further jihad activity. That day, pride and gratitude had swelled Nadira’s heart.

  “Tiens, Nadira.” Madame Delbard, her employer, the wife of a French pharmaceutical firm manager, called from the stairwell. “Paul’s waiting.”

  “I’m coming, Madame!”

  She took a deep breath, checked the wide-mouth thermos, and tucked it into four-year-old Paul’s Lego backpack. She picked up the infidel’s symbol, a gold crucifix, clasped it and hung it around her neck, before she shut the door. Downstairs, she grinned at the waiting mother and little Paul.

  “The rain’s stopped and we’re all ready. Goodies, too.” Nadira smiled and helped Paul slip his pack over his shoulders.

  “Which park today, Nadira?” Madame Delbard asked, flicking specks from her peach-colored Chanel suit and adjusting her pearl earrings in the mirror of the entryway. An expensive floral scent rose from Madame, competing with the sprays of flowers she insisted that the florist deliver fresh every day. Their apartment encompassed two floors in the former townhouse of the mistress to the Duc de Grammont, as Madame never tired of telling her.

  “The Buttes Chaumont, Paul’s favorite, of course.” Nadira kneeled and slipped a sun hat onto little Paul’s blond hair. “And a treat if he listens well to Nadira!”

  Adoration and excitement battled in Paul’s eyes.

  “I loved that park, too,” Madame Delbard said, with an indulgent smile. “Off you go, take your time. Don’t worry about packing Paul’s clothes later, Nadira. We’re not going to the country house after all. We’re stuck in town a bit longer.”

  “But Maman . . .” Pau
l pouted.

  “Desolée, cheri, but we’ll do something special instead,” she said. A small sigh escaped her. “Nadira, tonight my husband’s got a dinner engagement and my appointment might run late.”

  Perfect, thought Nadira. No added chores; she could feed Paul and put him to bed early, then prepare for her mission. She took Paul’s hand in hers, gripping the stroller handle with her other.

  “D’accord, Madame,” she said and curtsied. Madame liked that.

  * * *

  IN THE PLAYGROUND of Buttes Chaumont, a former gypsum quarry with a superb view, turned into a park by Baron Haussman, Nadira rubbed sunscreen on Paul’s nose, then on her own skin. With her topaz eyes and light complexion, she could pass for European. The Shah’s era had spawned many like her, once members of the educated elite, now in prison or exile.

  She adjusted her pink sun visor, matching skirt, and large white sunglasses, trying to ignore the nakedness of exposed knees and uncovered hair. She longed for the security of the veil. But she’d studied the other nannies’ outfits and knew she must blend in with them on the park bench. Not to look out of place was most important, Ruhal had said over and over. Her mission demanded it.

  “Thirsty?” Nadira asked.

  “Non,” Paul said, his eyes on the slide.

  “Ah, but I am,” she said, pulling out the extra wide thermos and winking at the other nanny, then averting her eyes from the big-boned Swede in a halter top who fanned herself on the playground bench near the sandbox.

  “Can I go slide?”

  She took the thermos and, as if as an afterthought, reached down into the backpack, then handed a caramel to Paul. “Go ahead.”

  She pushed the Lego backpack with her sandal-shod foot, and it lodged under the bench. A few minutes later, she stood and joined Paul, glancing back. The man in the blue track suit whom she’d seen by the trees was gone. And so was the backpack.

  By the time Paul tired of the slide and the teeter-totter, it was time for more sunscreen and a drink.

  Back at the bench, she reached down and felt underneath. The Lego backpack was back. Fuller and heavier. “Like an Orangina?”

  Paul’s eyes gleamed. A favorite, forbidden by the dentist.

  “Let’s wash your hands first.”

  In one restroom cubicle, with Paul in the next, she unzipped the Lego backpack and unscrewed the thermos top, looking for instructions. Inside she found a ticket for a symposium on Women in the Arab World to be held at the Kurdish Center, featuring Jalenka Malat, member of the Turkish parliament, as a speaker. The first Muslim woman, and a Kurd, the ticket read, to be elected to parliament. From under the thermos in the backpack, she pulled out the dull gray metal barrel, forearm, scope, mount, and silencer of a disassembled high-powered rifle. The model she’d been trained on. But she figured her assignment would be like her last job, which had been to drop the rifle off in her local café’s cleaning closet.

  “I can’t reach the paper,” Paul said.

  “Okay, Paul,” she said, about to screw the thermos top on. Her fingers froze. A message in Farsi was glued to the underside. It read “This is your target. Prove yourself worthy of Allah.”

  Tuesday Afternoon

  AIMÉE LEFT THE taxi at Passage du Desir. This part of the passage, straddling two boulevards, narrowed into a lane lined with three-story brick and cut-stone buildings, now damp and dripping with rain. Two centuries earlier, the passage had been the haunt of prostitutes. Later, artisans had filled the small shopfronts. Now gentrification had brought upscale trendy designers.

  She stood in the high arched entry to the alley until she grew aware of René, beckoning from his vintage DS Citroën, pulling up at the curb.

  “You’re sopping wet,” he said. “Get in.” He leaned over and opened the door, his engine idling. His car radio was tuned to a scratchy Mozart concerto to which the windshield wipers kept time. “A bus skidded, big accident, sorry. Why didn’t you wait inside?” He paused. “Mon Dieu, you’re white . . . what’s the matter?”

  “I just identified Yves’s body at the morgue.”

  “What?” René’s mouth dropped open. “Yves . . . but he’s in Cairo.”

  “Not any more.”

  “I’m sorry, Aimée.”

  Her wet hand shook as she pulled his phone from her pocket.

  “But what happened?”

  “Un moment, René.”

  Information connected her to the Commissariat.

  “Maillol,” he answered.

  “Commandant, who’s this homicide suspect in Yves . . . the case—”

  René blinked and reached for Aimée’s other hand.

  “Why?” Maillol asked.

  “I need to speak with him.”

  She heard a sigh.

  “He’s in custody, of course,” said Maillol. “According to procedure, we can’t have the public involved.”

  “I’m not the public,” she said. His attitude spurred her on. “For starters, did this suspect admit slitting Yves’s throat?”

  She felt René shift on the damp leather upholstery.

  “Maillol, please, it’s important. Give me five minutes to talk to him.”

  “A suspect in custody charged with a homicide and you’re asking to interrogate him?” She heard him suck in a breath. “May I remind you, it’s the Brigade Criminelle’s business now.”

  “But you know me . . . can’t you tell me something?” For God’s sake, he’d bounced her on his knee when she was little. Lightning was just visible now over the arch. Condensation formed on the windows. She felt too hot in the stifling, steamed-up car. She would grovel, pull any threads in the old-boy network. She had to do this.

  “You worked with Papa . . . my father. Bend the regulations a little, for his sake.”

  “I wanted to spare you the more sordid details,” he said. “Bon. The suspect’s a known junkie and male hustler with numerous convictions, one of the men who cruise the area at night,” he said. “Seems your boyfriend went both ways.”

  “But I told you, Yves was an investigative journalist. Maybe he was working undercover, interviewing a source. No doubt this mec attacked him.” And then she looked at her fingers, smelled again the trace of makeup that had been washed off by the rain. Doubt crept into her mind. But the way Yves had acted last night. . . .

  “In respect to your father, well, I told you myself. The Brigade’s handling it. I’m sorry,” he said. His voice softened for a moment. “I appreciate your making the identification. But now I’ve got a meeting,” he said, his voice again businesslike, and hung up.

  She leaned forward, cradling her dripping head in her hands.

  René sat, not saying a word.

  “None of this makes sense, René.”

  Yves appearing, disappearing, and now in the morgue.

  “Yves showed up last night. . . .” She couldn’t finish.

  “What happened, Aimée?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “It might help if you start at the beginning,” he said.

  She took a deep breath and told him what she knew.

  René listened, then set her phone in her lap. “I charged your phone battery. Maybe you should listen to your messages.”

  The red light blinked. Two messages. With trembling hands, she hit her voicemail button.

  A low cough, muffled, as if a hand was being held over the receiver. “Aimée.” Yves’s voice, deep and modulated. “Pick up . . . please.” A little breathless, a catch at the end. She wanted to bang her head on the windshield. Stupid, not recharging her phone. More coughing, waiting for her to answer and she hadn’t. “If you don’t know by now how I feel . . .” She heard a low, rich chuckle. He’d certainly shown her last night. These were not the words of a man en route to a sexual assignation. Then there was a pause and the sound of footsteps echoing, coming closer. “Call me back . . . salaam aliekoum . . . what the—?”

  Then the buzz of a broken connection
.

  Salaam aliekoum, the Arab greeting. She hit the voicemail again. One more message. Static, no words . . . clanging, and what sounded like the phone dropping. No more messages.

  If only . . . if only he hadn’t left her, if only. . . .

  She replayed it. Straining to hear more, another sound, another nuance, another detail.

  What she heard in his voice was his caring, and his need for her to respond. She wanted to yell “Say what you mean, Yves, say it . . . who’s there?”

  “It’s my fault, René,” she said, rubbing her wet eyes. “I didn’t—”

  “Save him?” René shook his head. “Check the time.”

  “What?”

  René hit the voicemail function. “Notice the time, 6:47 A.M. The next message is at 6:52 A.M.”

  She tried to pull herself together in the fog of pain. “What do you mean? He tried to call again?”

  She stared at René.

  “Or his killer did, Aimée, and hit the redial button,” he said, his brows furrowed with worry.

  A shiver of fear shot up her spine.

  She thought of Yves’s underlying tension despite his tendresse, and his wish to spend his life with her. Nothing indicated that he had gone out to seek a rendezvous with a male hustler in a doorway. Her gut feeling said he had been working undercover.

  “The street cleaner found him at 7 A.M., according to Maillol,” she told René.

  “Instead of blaming yourself, Aimée, share your information with the authorities.”

  Right, of course, René was right. More important than wallowing in pain, she had to piece this together. “True. René, Yves was telling me something. His last words before. . . .” She gripped the door handle. Squeezed it until her fingers hurt. Couldn’t say it.

  A man knocked on the steamed-up car windows. “Monsieur Friant?”

  “What bad timing . . . the realtor!” René said and rolled the window down.

  A middle-aged man’s smiling expectant face leaned in. He had a receding hairline and carried his suit jacket over his arm in the damp heat. “Quick. Both of you, please, not a moment to spare.”