Murder in the Rue de Paradis

by Cara Black

  “And you know Yves Robert,” she said.

  He nodded, watching her. “Big eyes, long legs. You’re Aimée, the one he goes on about.”

  Her stomach knotted. Yves had talked about her and Gerard didn’t know yet. His black camera case held stickers saying “Marriott Hotel–Sarajevo.”

  “A joke,” he said, grinning and noticing her gaze. “Yves insists I—”

  “Please, we need to talk,” she said. “Upstairs?”

  Gerard Langois signed in. She furnished ID to the reception guard and signed her name under his. Once through the automatic door, he took a quick left up a switchback of concrete stairs and then through a swinging door to a large low-ceilinged area with ten or so vacant desks and terminals. In a large cubicle at the corner, several men and women worked at desks. Banks of monitors showing breaking newsfeed perched on the walls. Fluorescent light panels flickered in the ceiling.

  “So you’ve let Yves come up for air, eh? I’m already late for the meeting,” he said, setting his bags on a desk, pulling out rolls of Agfa film. Amusement shone in his deepset eyes. “But since I’m a freelance clicker, just contracted to Agence France Press, I can afford to arrive stylishly late. Besides, the good stuff comes at the end.”

  Fancied himself Robert Capa, did he?

  “We’ll talk after the meeting, Yves’s waiting.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no easy way to say this. Sit down.”

  His hand stopped on the roll of film. His smile froze and his gaze never left her face. “What happened?”

  Her nose dripped as she sat. She wiped it with her sleeve. Tears threatened, but she willed them down.

  “The meeting’s cancelled. They should have informed you.”

  “Eh?”

  She took a breath and gave him the bald facts.

  For a full minute, shock painted Langois’s face, then hardened into anger mixed with hurt. “Damn fool. I told him.”

  “Told him what?”

  “When I met him at the Gare du Nord.” Langois shook his head. “I said leave it alone.”

  She pulled out the Eurostar ticket stub with her shaking hands. The stub she’d forgotten to give to Rouffillac. “Yours?”

  He glanced at it, nodded, then sat down on the edge of the desk.

  “Leave what alone, Gerard?”

  “His contact didn’t show.”

  She leaned forward.

  “What contact?”

  “That’s what I asked.” Langois sighed. “But Yves knows everyone, has contacts everywhere. Getting to his sources is like peeling the layers of an onion. ‘Better you see it when it happens, keeps your photos fresh,’ he always says . . . said.”

  Langois averted his eyes.

  He wasn’t telling her something.

  “So, like the flics, you think his contact was a junkie hustler? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “Eh? You mean that asthmatic, the suspect you mentioned?”

  She stared at him.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “When Yves met me arriving on the Eurostar at Gare du Nord, we waited thirty minutes at the gate for his contact.”

  “Any idea who the contact could be?”

  He shook his head. “No clue. But instead of leaving by the main exit, grabbing a taxi, and having dinner, as we’d planned, he insisted we take the tunnel.”

  “A tunnel in the Gare du Nord?” she said. “You mean to the Metro?”

  “I thought so,” Langois said. “But after a ten-minute walk underground we ended up by some construction. A spooky place. Yves kept looking around, glancing at his watch; he said this was their backup meeting point.”

  She had a thought. “Did he get any calls on his cell phone?”

  “No reception down there. Anyway, he said the contact didn’t trust cell phones. Wouldn’t use one.”

  She thought of the pebbles outside the loft window. Made sense.

  “So the contact didn’t show there or at the backup location . . . didn’t he give you some idea what it concerned?”

  “He asked one of the workers something. But I don’t speak Turkish.”

  Surprised, she leaned forward.

  “Yves spoke Turkish?”

  “He’s been stationed in Ankara as chief correspondent for the last six months until this. . . .” He stopped.

  The Anatolian sufi amulet, the Turkish puzzle ring, of course. Like he said, peeling the layers of an onion. She had to construct the events of Yves’s life before he met her at Microimage, so she could understand the events afterward.

  “And then?”

  “He got the keys to a great loft on the canal.”

  “Did he make calls on his cell phone?”

  Langois thought. “Can’t remember.”

  “What about his bags?”

  He shrugged. “Instead of dinner, he said he had to go, he would call me later. Otherwise, to meet up here tonight.”

  She thought about Le Monde, the front page on the floor with the Metro bombing headlines.

  “Does ‘a homegrown insidious network’ mean anything to you?”

  “We photographers just capture an image; the journalists don’t tell us much.”

  She had an idea. “How about the stories he worked on in Ankara?”

  Langois pulled out a small large-format camera, switched on the power. “Yves went native, got inside the militant Kurd organization, the iKK party. Fancied himself a Lawrence of Anatolia for a while, until the Agence reined him in.”

  Now the dark makeup she’d discovered on Yves’s face made some sense. . . . Suppose he’d applied it to make himself appear Kurdish?

  “Yves wrote incredible stuff. But he always played it close to the wire.” Langois’s voice deepened in sadness. “Too close. He hated Ankara, but the countryside captured his heart.”

  Langois clicked on his state-of-the-art digital camera. “Look.”

  Astounded, she stared at the photos displayed: an aquamarine sky over a purple blue mountain rising from desolate red earth plains, men in skullcaps, ragged suit jackets, and embroidered vests brandishing machine guns, old Kalashnikovs by the look of them.

  “This camera’s only available to the trade right now, but in ten years everyone will have one. Small enough for your pocket.”

  A little spark of hope flared up.

  “Do you have any photos of Yves?”

  “See.” He pointed to a tanned man dressed like the others amid what looked like the smoldering ruins of a village, chunks of breeze blocks, upturned scorched trees and blackened stones. A solitary doorway without a house—a doorway to nowhere—stood framing Yves.

  “He gave me this,” she said, showing him the amulet.

  Langois stared. “I remember how he bartered with the old Sufi. The Sufi insisted that it go to his betrothed, or bad luck would follow.”

  It already had.

  “Can you make me a copy of this photo?”

  Langois hooked up a cable to the printer. Within minutes, she had a damp photo of Yves gone native. Achingly handsome, his eyes lit by an inner fire. The only one she had to remember him by . . . better than her last view of him.

  “What if he dressed up again, played a part, and met with foul play . . . the junkie hustler might have been involved. Or not, and took advantage of the chance to grab Yves’s wallet and cell phone.”

  He shrugged. “Ask him.”

  “Too late, asthma attack; he’s dead. But his crony might know.”

  “Crony?”

  “When I find him,” she said.

  “Let me come with you,” Langois said.

  Aimée glanced at the time. “Are you ready?”

  “Hold on; I’ll check in with Georges, the attending.”

  Langois’s words raised more questions; she had to get access to Yves’s belongings, see what clothes or disguise he wore. Maybe his bag and papers were still at the Commissariat if the Brigade hadn’t requested them. Stupid; she couldn’t assume anything. Right now Rouffillac had a l
ot on his plate.

  In the cubicle, Langois held a long discussion with a gray-haired man in a long-sleeved shirt. Headphones hanging on his chest like a stethoscope made him resemble a doctor. By the time he returned, she’d trimmed Yves’s photo with scissors she’d found on the desk and stuck it in her wallet.

  “I’ve got a press shoot tomorrow, then an evening shoot at a women’s conference, some female Turkish MP, a cause célèbre and darling of the bobo set. Boring stuff. At least Yves—”

  He stopped his mouth pursed.

  “Made it interesting?” She turned away. Controlled her shaking hands. “You up for this or not?”

  “Never miss an opportunity,” he said, shouldering his bags.“That’s my creed. And I do want to help you.”

  At this time of the evening, the hustlers were working the Canal; the time was right to find Romeo’s crony if he hadn’t scattered and gone to ground. Only one way to find out.

  AIMÉE PARKED BY Cristallerie Schweitzer, the last crystal restorer in Paris. The hospital for broken beautiful things, she used to call it. As a little girl, she’d clung to her grandfather’s coat pocket, trying to keep up with his fast pace over the cobbled Canal Saint-Martin quai as he carried his auction-find chandeliers here for repair. The workroom shelves, she remembered, were filled with etched Lalique vases, crystal globule pendants bigger than her fist refracting a rainbow dance of light onto the high walls. A place that smelled of turpentine and a special glue composed of sheep bone marrow, her grandfather had told her. Now, Schweitzer loomed, a dark turn-of-the-century hulk, the roof eaves a haven for pigeons with their soft bubbling coos.

  She opened the car trunk and—true to his Boy Scout nature—found René’s set of car tools, oil, toll receipts, a flashlight, and binoculars. Score one for René.

  “Great night shots,” Langois said, checking the adjustments on his camera. “Old metal drawbridge, the Hôtel du Nord, beret-wearing barge captains: Inspector Maigret country, eh?”

  “We’ll check out the action on the quai,” she said. “You’ll get the ‘real’ pulse up around the curve.”

  “I could use a drink,” Langois said.

  Two bridges up the canal, they stopped in a late-night café. From a table under the outdoor awning, they had a perfect vantage point for observation of the canal opposite on quai Valmy. And a clear view of the action on the embankment.

  Her cell phone rang as Langois ordered a Stella Artois.

  “Allô?”

  “You haven’t changed your number, Aimée!” René scolded.

  “I think the Brigade’s taken care of that, René,” she said. “They took my SIM card, probably cloned it, and are enjoying our conversation right now.”

  “I doubt it,” René said. “That’s illegal.”

  “That’s never stopped them before.”

  She explained her “conversation” with Rouffillac.

  “Buy a new phone, Aimée.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  So far the killer hadn’t called her, either because he was Romeo, and was dead, or more likely the killer was someone else who hadn’t noted her number.

  “Look, Aimée, I can’t begin to understand your grief,” said René. “But I know Yves wouldn’t have wanted you compromised.”

  Compromised . . . that didn’t enter the equation. Justice, meted out to whoever murdered Yves, did.

  “If he’d wanted you to know more—”

  “Nothing makes sense. But I gave all the information I had to Rouffillac at the Brigade Criminelle.”

  “Bon.” He sounded relieved.

  “And I filled out a form to claim Yves’s belongings.”

  “What will they show?”

  “They mean something to me, René,” she said, lowering her voice.

  There was a pause before René said, “Of course.”

  She debated telling him more. Why worry him further?

  “On top of all of this, Saj called,” he said. “The Fountainbleu firm’s computer network had a leak so I’m coming back early.”

  “René, we’ll handle it. You’re on vacation.”

  “I can’t take my mother’s rich food,” he said. “I’ve gained a kilo in the last few hours!”

  “Give her the chance to spoil you for another day.”

  “Only if you enlighten Microimage. No security by obscurity, I say.”

  Too bad she and René hadn’t insisted on a security-lesson clause for all front-line staff prior to contract approvals.

  “Can you raise the subject of a Security 101 course?” René asked. “No reason to knit the sweater if an untutored staff is going to unravel the yarn.” She heard splashing, like a fountain, in the background.

  If that would ease his mind, she’d do it. “Makes sense. Deal. How’s château life?”

  “The moat’s pea-green with algae. Otherwise, Maman’s busy with the comte’s new acquisitions, comme habitude.

  ”

  The comte, a circus aficionado, had met René’s mother at the Cirque d’Hiver and offered her a job running his musée de mécanique—mechanized toys—at his château. She’d raised René there, and Aimée suspected she was more to the comte than just his museum keeper. René never spoke about it, only said that growing up in the drafty château, attending the village school, had opened his eyes. Opened them, she’d guessed, to ridicule as a little person.

  “Maman and the comte grew excited when I told them about the Passage du Desir,” René said. “Just think of Leduc Detective’s expansion . . . we’d give Saj an office and hire some of my student hackers.”

  She suppressed a groan. All that took money. Money she didn’t have.

  Langois claimed her attention, pointing to figures moving on the opposite embankment.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, René.”

  “I hope you’re at home. In bed,” he said.

  What he didn’t know wouldn’t bother him.

  “Don’t worry, René,” she said. “A demain.”

  “To Yves.” Langois clinked his glass against hers.

  She nodded. “To finding Yves’s killer.” She drank water and popped two more Doliprane. With luck, she’d sweat this cold out. Feed a fever, starve a cold . . . or was it the other way round?

  Langois set some francs on the table. “Looks busy over there.”

  Time to find Romeo’s crony.

  An algae smell drifted from the narrow ribbon of the dark inky canal. Langois gestured toward the shadows. The sound of shuffling and voices came from dark slanted shadows on the stone embankment. The leaves rippled. Two men stood engaged in a close conversation. She shivered, knowing that S & M types frequented the riverbanks.

  “He look like the one?” Langois asked.

  She saw a man poking a long-handled broom at the branches. He hooked a plastic bag and lowered it, his hands trembling. He wore tight red jeans and a skin-tight red long-sleeved shirt, and had gold-tipped short hair, sporting a young look at odds with his ravaged wrinkled face. Rail-thin and jumpy; the “glam” punk type Giselle had described.

  She nodded, her heels catching in the cobblecracks as she approached him.

  “Where’s Romeo tonight?” she asked the man.

  He looked her over. “You weren’t his sort, ma chére.”

  He used the past tense. Word traveled. He knew.

  Then he shot an appraising look at Langois.

  “Neither was Yves, the mec murdered on rue de Paradis,” she said.

  She pulled out Yves’s photo. Stepped forward and held it up so he could see.

  “Know him?”

  “Why should I?”

  She saw his concave chest heaving, shoulder blades sticking out. Pathetic. The man needed a fix. More than that, he needed a good meal. And rehab.

  His hands gripped the handles of the blue plastic bag. She noticed the scratch on his neck.

  “Was Romeo an informer?”

  “For the Brigade?” The man snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”<
br />
  “Sorry, I mean was he helping an investigative reporter?”

  He shook his head. “Not his style.” His voice rose. “Romeo didn’t kill that mec.”

  “I agree,” she said. From his comment, she realized that this man knew more than he let on.

  He pointed at Langois. “What’s he want?”

  “How about a photo?” Langois asked.

  “Forget it.”

  “He’s a friend,” Aimée said. “Tell me what happened, then we go our way.”

  “Why do you care about Romeo?”

  “I’m Aimée, you’re . . .”

  “Berto’s my work name.”

  But Berto had no takers. She noticed a thin sleeping roll on the stones, a pair of scuffed sandals. He didn’t have much.

  “Business looks slow tonight,” she said.

  “Eh ma chére, do you think anything I say matters to the Brigade?”

  “Do I look like the law?” She paused.

  “Not unless they’re wearing designer clothes as an undercover disguise these days,” he said, with a sneer.

  “Et alors, we’ll keep it just between us.” She reached forward, a wad of francs in her hand.

  He eyed the money.

  “Interested?” she asked, her tone coaxing. “Tell me what you saw on rue de Paradis.”

  His long skeletal fingers darted out, and she jumped back just in time. As fast as a fox, this Berto.

  “Talk first,” she said. “Then the money.”

  “Over there. Your friend stays here. No photos, understand?”

  Langois nodded and backed away. She joined Berto under the shadowy hanging branches. She wondered if Berto used the hospitals in winter, as some of the homeless did to survive. They’d enter a hospital coughing, the main thing being to look like they belonged there, heat food in the staff kitchen, get boiling water, and sleep near the hospital incinerator, of course, timing the dump schedule. And with three hospitals in the quartier, they’d survive the winter. But she doubted Berto would last until the next one.

  Berto leaned forward, his words coming fast. “Romeo and I would take rue de Paradis en route to Gare du Nord.”

  “Gare du Nord?”

  “Well, for our early-morning commuter clientele.”

  She controlled her shudder.

  “I heard the street cleaner shouting.” He scratched his arms.