Murder in the Rue de Paradis

by Cara Black

  Aimée bent and picked up the bag before it got wet. The heavy black chador’s hem was trailing along the wet pavement. Her mind clicked into gear.

  “Merci,” said the little girl, all big brown eyes, twisting her hands in embarrassment.

  “No problem,” Aimée said. “Excuse me, but I’d like to ask your mother something.”

  “She’s my sister,” said the little girl.

  Aimée hesitated. “Your sister . . . ?”

  “She speaks Farsi.”

  “Aaah,” Aimée said. “But you look like a smart girl. Could you translate?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “Someone bad tried to hurt a woman here. And a man was killed. Right here this morning.” Aimée pointed to the yellow crime-scene tape. “Can you ask her if she saw anything?”

  A flurry of Farsi erupted. A pair of dark eyes in the rectangular scarf opening stared at her.

  “She says we’re late for the market.”

  “That’s all?” Aimée rooted for a paper-wrapped Carambar, found one in the bottom of her bag and showed it to the sister. “Can she have this?”

  The little girl’s eyes brightened.

  A short expletive in Farsi, then the little girl averted her eyes. “I’m naughty, she says.”

  Aimée leaned down close to the little girl. “I’m sorry to make you late.” Aimée didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m not allowed candy, but you’re nice for a French lady,” said the little girl, her fingers twisting her sundress.

  Stupid. Of course, candy from strangers in any culture was forbidden.

  “That’s a pretty dress.” Aimée straightened up and smiled again at the woman.

  “My sister made it.”

  “For your birthday?”

  The little girl shook her head. “She sews at work and at night. She just got home and she say’s we’re late.”

  “Didn’t your sister notice anything this morning . . . did the neighbors talk?”

  “How would my sister know? She’s always working at the atelier.”

  One last try before they left.

  “But this morning at 7 A.M., a woman wearing a chador was attacked here. Please, can you ask her if . . . ?”

  Aimée didn’t need a translation to understand the little cluck and shake of the head.

  “Non.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You ask funny questions.”

  A hand reached out from the black folds for the little girl’s. Aimée saw a flash of a red T-shirt inside; a whiff of Chantilly perfume drifted out. Then she stood aside and they walked by. Persistence had gotten her nowhere, and she still had gum remants stuck to her shoe. She unlocked the car. Nowhere.

  “Mademoiselle,” the little girl called back, “my sister says that’s prayer time.”

  Aimée turned. “Prayer time, you mean 7 A.M.?”

  “No one goes out. They pray at home or in the mosque. Like in our country.”

  “Your country?”

  “All the big girls wear chadors there.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “There’s a big blue mosque. I saw it, it’s far away.”

  Speaking Farsi, and a blue mosque. That might mean Tehran.

  The little girl’s hands twisted again. “My uncle lives there. We send him money but I’m not supposed to know that.”

  And then she skipped away beside the black chador.

  Tuesday Evening

  VATEL SAT BOLT upright, his chest heaving. Loud ringing had startled him. It was the phone; Ursana was calling him. Of course, this was all a nightmare, a terrible nightmare. Ursana was picking apricots in the grove or embroidering their baby’s clothes.

  “Roj bas,, Ursana,” he said, lapsing into Kurdish.

  “Allô . . . Vatel?”

  The words jolted him awake. Jolted him into awareness of the hot room lit by sparse evening light and the beeping of horns from the traffic on rue Saint-Laurent below his window. And the emptiness. She was gone. They were all gone.

  Glass shards twinkling like crystal were sprinkled over his security guard overalls that lay on the floor.

  “You there, Vatel?” asked Deranger, his boss.

  “Oui, Monsieur Deranger,” he said, recovering.

  He’d knocked the lamp over in his nightmare. Always the same nightmare. The white light, his father twirling, wearing the conical hat and flowing skirt, spinning in the old Dervish way. The dede, the Kurdish village seer of their outlawed Alevi sect, rocking on the red Kilim rug to the strains of the mandolin-like saz and beating a goatskin drum. His mother, her eyes closed, spinning near his father in the ritual cem, following the Alevi way of light. Their centuries-old worship of the sun and nature that stemmed from ancient Zoroastrian roots.

  And then the thuds of Turkish artillery pounding the village. The beaten-earth floor shaking. Vatel reaching out for his mother as she spun away. His warning shouts, which no one heard. The drum beating louder, rushing water surging everywhere. Rising up the whitewashed stone walls of their farmhouse. Ursana, his wife, holding the telephone, a smile on her face above the red slash of her slit throat, floating by, her belly ripped open and their unborn baby—

  “. . . rotating shifts, the duty guard en vacances,” Deranger was saying. “Alors, did you hear me?”

  Vatel caught his breath.

  “Of course, Monsieur Deranger,” he said.

  This wasn’t his village, no Turkish military was lobbing grenades, forcing Kurds to evacuate. This was not a damp prison cell, there was no knife under his fingernails nor electric cattle prod searing his flesh until he furnished names.

  “So you can work the early rue de Paradis security shift tonight?”

  Vatel gripped the sheets tighter. Rue de Paradis . . . and this morning’s discovery came back to him. The man’s body lying in the tiled doorway, his throat slit with the distinctive curling slash under his ear, a mark the Yellow Crescent left on “informers.” Informers like him.

  And he was a wanted man.

  “Much as I want to help Monsieur Deranger, I’m feverish, I woke up with the flu,” he said, putting the sheet over the receiver, coughing. “I’m too sick even to work my shift tonight.”

  “That puts us in difficult situation,” Deranger said, his thick voice low and raspy from the pack a day he smoked.

  “I’m sorry. Why don’t you ask Nohant?”

  “Nohant do a double shift? But that’s overtime.”

  “He always says he could use the money.” Vatel paused. He’d bring it up now. “I know the Cour des Petites Ecuries building needs staff, saw it on the board. I worked overtime there last month and I liked the hours. . . . Can you put in for a transfer for me?”

  “Something wrong? Someone was asking about you.”

  Already? He gripped the phone. Did the Yellow Crescent’s tentacles extend here? Killing here, like they killed back home?

  “Non. Who?”

  “That’s all I heard from Nohant,” Deranger said. Papers rustled in the background. “I’m checking.” More rustling of papers. “Cour des Petites Ecuries lost two staff, the manager requested help,” he said, decisive now. “Report there tomorrow night. I’ll do the paperwork.”

  Deranger hung up. The transfer seemed too easy. Vatel figured Nohant had complained. Or Deranger had sniffed the scent of trouble. Right now he couldn’t worry about that.

  The damp sheets twisted around his legs, sweat dampened his forehead; he envisioned dawn breaking over the arched doorway on rue de Paradis, the body in the shadows.

  He had to calm down, reason this out. No one intent on murder would have noticed him inside the double thick glass building doors, or counted on him observing them from his guard post inside the showroom. Yet he couldn’t be sure.

  A loud “Merde!” came from his open window, then the opening strains of Navarro, the police drama following the TF1 evening news. The sound of his next-door neighbor’s loud temperamental télé filled the courtyard
. The smell of garlic wafted up from a kitchen below.

  Vatel rubbed the scars on his chest left by the cattle prods. Three days of the Turkish Yellow Crescent’s torture, and he’d revealed the location of the iKK Kurd guerillas’ camp in the mountains. During a prison riot, he’d escaped and stowed away on a Black Sea tanker. He knew he could never return to Turkey. But then, he had nothing to return to.

  In the Vieux Port of Marseilles with the last of his money, he bought a fake ID. Hungry, he hitchhiked to Aubagne, the Foreign Legion recruitment center where they never asked about your past. He passed the rigorous physical and mental screenings. After four months of basic training, he shipped out. A misfit, like everyone in his troop, he survived a tour of duty in Angola that caused him to relive the flooding of his village every night. He only slept in the day, when he could.

  Five years later, the end of his contract found him in Paris, fluent in French and with a new identity. Still he feared a glance of recognition on the street. Even though he was twenty-three, not the eighteen-year-old bearded rebel who’d brought destruction on his fellow Kurds, his village, his family. The fear of a hand around his throat as he entered his dark foyer never left him.

  He lived in this quartier, anonymous, moving between worlds. The best way to hide, an old Legionnaire had once told him, was like a blade of grass on the lawn among other blades of grass. Kurds and Turks coexisted here, working as concierges, sewing in the sweatshops, worshiping in courtyard mosques, and filling the cafés. He had a job; there was money in his bank account. With his pale green eyes, light skin, and dark brown hair, he could pass for European—and, using his French name, often did.

  He took off the T-shirt sticking to his chest and pulled on a clean one. He had to keep busy, yet try to think. He swept up the filament and broken light-bulb shards from the floor, then boiled Turkish coffee in the long-handled copper pot. The tan foam rose until he added a soupçon of cold water to settle the grounds. Dark, strong, and intense, like at home.

  His hands steady now, he sipped the coffee.

  He had to prepare. One never knew. He put a tape in the player. Nilufer, the Kurdish singer, his one extravagance. Then he sharpened the kitchen knife on a whetstone until it felt razor-sharp. He strapped it to his calf.

  If the Yellow Crescent operated here, that crazy Mehmet would know.

  He heard a loud double knock on the door. Not the birdlike pecking of his eighty-year-old concierge.

  No one ever visited him. No one knew he lived here except his employers. Shaken, he imagined it was the iKK, bent on revenge, or the Yellow Crescent. Looking out his back window, he saw a panorama of jagged, broken-tiled rooftops, a steep four-story drop. Escape meant at the least a broken ankle. And that was if he was lucky.

  “Monsieur Vatel?” Another knock.

  Stupid. He should have turned off the tape player. He pulled on his pants over the knife strapped to his ankle, then peered out the peephole. He saw a blue uniform and shuddered. Even worse.

  “Brigade Criminelle,” said the voice. “Open up.”

  Tuesday Afternoon

  AIMÉE TOUCHED THE Citroën’s burning-hot steering wheel and flinched. The little girl’s last words echoed in her head: “Prayer time . . . no one goes out.” Yet the guard’s report said an Arab woman had been attacked. She wondered how this fit, or if it did.

  Could the woman have been Yves’s contact? Had he tried to protect her? She filed that idea away, wishing she could file the ache in her heart with it. She stepped on the gas pedal, her last view of rue de Paradis the crime-scene tape rippling in the faint breeze.

  The Canal Saint-Martin loft might hold answers. Yves must have left something, some trace. Until she searched it, she could only speculate. She’d have to speak with his colleague at Agence France-Presse, too.

  The tang of paint blew through the car window. Red potted geraniums on window ledges adorned freshly painted buildings. More evidence of the new face of the tenth, wrought by the urban gentry: bobos—bourgeois bohèmes—the young, affluent and casually dressed, leftist-leaning sophisticates, like Michel. Eager for this central, cheap quartier bordered by the grand boulevards in the south, the canal to the east, the train stations in the north, and the upscale Place Saint-Georges to the west. Buying property, as René intended, when small garment sweat shops and old leather warehouses and varied manufacturers vacated, was in vogue. Still, pockets of decaying hôtel particuliers remained, and the members of the traditional working class. Only now the working class and immigrants were Pakistani, Turkish, African, and bobos whereas at the turn of the century they’d been Poles and Russians.

  Rue Jean Poulmarch curved below the level of the canal in front of the loft she’d left this morning. She parked at the curb before an old wine merchant’s shop. Its black 18th-century grillework featured a sculpted gold lion, clusters of grapes, and the smiling god Bacchus.

  Inside the loft courtyard complex, she hiked up the stairs of the old printing works, hearing the tinkling of wind chimes. There was no answer to her knock on the loft door. She rapped again and waited.

  Still no answer. She scanned the other doorways, but the closed shutters and bulging mailboxes below indicated that many tenants were away. Snipping sounds came from behind tall bamboo trees on the ground floor. She looked down. Just visible on a small terrace, a figure wearing a loose-tied floral kimono and wide-brimmed straw hat was trimming yellow leaves off the trees.

  The figure paused but didn’t look up. “That’s Charlotte Vaudier’s place. She’s not here,” came a man’s voice.

  Charlotte. . . . A green pang of jealousy hit her. Of course, she could be Yves’s colleague . . . could have been.

  “Pardon?”

  “I saw you this morning,” said the figure, the voice low-pitched.

  “I forgot something—” her throat caught. Yves’s warm arms and his lopsided smile came back to her. He had been here, with her, not even twelve hours ago. Now it felt like another life.

  “I don’t keep track of her friends.”

  Yet he’d been observant enough to spot her.

  She walked downstairs to the terrace.

  “Can you help me?”

  “So you can tell the junkies and they’ll break in again?” A young man pulled off the sun hat, revealing narrow cheekbones, widespread eyes, and tweezed eyebrows. He reached for his cell phone as if it were a weapon. “I don’t think so, Mademoiselle. You’d better leave. Now.”

  She pulled out her card and showed it to him through the stalks of bamboo.

  He reached for it with clear-polished fingernails. A better manicure than hers! “You need more ID than this little detective card anyone can print up.”

  She stifled her frustration. He might be able to put her in touch with the owner . . . this Charlotte. She rooted in her worn Vuitton wallet and then flashed her detective license.

  He stared. “It says computer security here on this card,” he pointed out.

  “Correct. That’s my job now, but I was trained in criminal investigation. Now, Monsieur . . . ?”

  “Lolo,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “We don’t let just anyone in.”

  “But I’m not just anyone. I stayed with Yves; ask Charlotte. Where can I reach her?”

  “I forward Charlotte’s mail to Ulan Bator,” he interrupted. “She’s researching the Uighar tribe.”

  Outer Mongolia. Not much hope of information here. She’d struck out again.

  “Did you see Yves leave early this morning?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “If you’re checking up on behalf of his wife, some kind of spousal surveillance, forget it. We mind our own business here.”

  Her patience vanished.

  “Nothing like that, Lolo. He was murdered this morning. If you saw or heard anything. . . .”

  “Nom de dieu . . . where?”

  She shook her head. “Nearby. I’m sorry to insist, but anything you can tell me may be vital.” She waited.

&n
bsp; “Such a good-looking man.” He sighed.

  So he knew Yves.

  “What time did you last see him?”

  Lolo leaned back against a trellis of ivy. “Your boyfriend?”

  She nodded.

  Lolo expelled a gust of air from his lips. “Love’s a bitch, don’t I know it. Charlotte’s friends stay here all the time. He picked up her keys yesterday.” He rolled his eyes.

  Aimée tried not to think of what he meant by “friends.” She shivered, feeling chilled despite the heat. She had to get inside.

  “I’m late for an appointment,” she said, improvising. “You must have an extra set of keys.”

  He waited.

  She pulled out a hundred francs, slipped it into his palm.

  He looked around, set down his shears, and smoothed back his hair. “Just a minute.”

  SHE STARTED IN the loft’s stainless steel kitchen, determined to view it as if for the first time. She checked the cupboards. A nice set of blue-and-white Dansk dinnerware, the requisite pots and saucepans. A silver Alesio espresso maker, apparently unused. The designer kitchen was sterile and impersonal. She found a plastic bag and emptied the contents of the garbage can into it.

  Last week’s Le Monde, a circular from an electronics shop. It told her nothing. And then, beside the garbage bag she saw a piece of blue paper. She picked it up. A one way London–Paris Eurostar ticket stub, dated yesterday, arrival time 18:35, Gare du Nord.

  Alarms sounded in her head. Yves told her he’d flown in. For the second time she felt stabs of doubt. The Gare du Nord’s men’s room was well known as a male prostitute haunt; René’s words about a secret life came back to her. But a man who made her feel the way Yves had wouldn’t go right to Romeo, a hustler. After the messages he’d left on her cell phone, she couldn’t believe it.

  Romeo might have been his informer. Yet Romeo had stolen Yves’s wallet and cell phone, according to the flics.