by Cara Black
She jumped out of the cab on rue de Sèvres. The overgrown front garden hid the fact that the building had access to the next street. She picked her way over discarded metal and found herself under a soaring ceiling flaking plaster, chipped-nosed cherubs forever caught in flight in the boiserie. A collective artists’ squat. She waved at Artaud, the metal sculptor, who put down his welding torch to wave back. No one else paid her attention. In the old kitchen, she pulled on a silk jacket, another wig, new glasses. Slipped on her Louboutin sandals and left through the art gallery, which doubled as an underground cinema at night.
The taxi pulled up on rue Saint-Romain exactly per the plan.
“Anyone follow you?” she asked.
“I lost the motorcycle three minutes ago.” Poncelet described the rider as he wove through traffic: black helmet, visor, and black leathers on a matching bike—could be anyone. “My son will pick up your scooter, then park it at that garage on Ile Saint-Louis.”
“Brilliant, Poncelet. The spark plug’s temperamental. It’s Italian.”
“What do you expect?”
She struggled to wedge her scooter key off the chain, nicking her cuticle. Merde. She sucked the welling blood, and her mind went to the warm hand that had enclosed hers not twenty minutes earlier. She heard that wobble in her mother’s voice: Selfish . . . I wanted to see Chloé, touch her . . . We need to work together . . . Aimée’s heart thudded. It jarred her, how thin Sydney had appeared under her blazer. All that effort she’d gone to, enlisting Melac . . .
Aimée’s phone rang. René.
“Why don’t you update me? We’re worried,” said René, petulant.
“We’re going to plan B, René.”
“Remind me again—what’s Plan B?”
She lowered her voice. “The prints came back a match.”
There was a sound on René’s end that sounded a lot like his tea cup smashing on the floor. René cursed. “Mon Dieu, Mirko’s alive?”
She sucked in her breath. “On the loose and on a mission. I’ve been followed all day. I’ve just lost him—for now. Make sure the building back door’s open, okay?”
She glanced behind her. A bus.
“Go to the flics, Aimée.”
“Matter of fact, one should arrive in a few minutes. Don’t let him in until I get there. I’ll pack my things and Chloé’s.”
“You two should stay with me,” he said.
And fit where in René’s studio lined with computer terminals?
“We’re camping at Martine’s, more room,” she lied. “You and Saj take the laptops, and work at home.”
“What about Jean-Marie? He’s hit the vodka big-time. The guy’s a mess.”
“Has he talked to this Robert?”
“Not yet.”
She had to come up with a plan.
“Get Robert’s number,” she said. “Find an excuse to look in Jean-Marie’s phone. Then drive him to a hotel; put it on our card. Can you do that?”
“If Mirko’s loose, Aimée, you’re in danger.”
“Tell me about it. We don’t want Jean-Marie taken out next. So see that he gets settled somewhere safe. Then get in touch with Bella at Théâter de Nesle—a real battle-ax. Get her to keep watch over him.”
“Got it.”
Aimée left the taxi on rue Saint-Honoré, nodded to a woman working in a boulangerie as she passed through, and left a twenty-franc note by the crusty browned baguettes cooling on the racks. In the boulangerie’s rear courtyard, she opened the back cellar door of her office building. She crossed the stone-walled cellar and passed the garbage bins, reached her building’s staircase and mounted three floors. She hit the Digicode and stepped into Leduc Detective.
Loïc Bellan chewed on an apple, gazing at the dry-erase board. Merde! Why had René let him in?
“Your partner, Monsieur Friant, was having trouble with a big mec—quite drunk,” said Bellan. “So I helped them downstairs. He said I could stay.”
Bellan’s eyes hadn’t left the dry-erase board, where Aimée had taped up Mirko’s photo.
“You do have a story to tell me, Aimée,” he said. “And your hair’s different again. Fascinating. I’m listening.”
She threw her bag on her desk, unclipped her wig, and kicked off her sandals. Hit the ceiling fan switch and headed to the espresso machine. Her mind raced.
“Café?” she asked.
“Guess I’ll need it.”
The dark brown stream dripped into the two demitasse cups. Simple, keep it simple, her father always said.
“Sugar?” she asked.
“I’m sweet enough. Merci.”
She’d forgotten his corny sense of humor.
Only after she handed Bellan the espresso did his gaze swivel around and take in the office. Chloé’s crib by the old sepia sewer maps on the walls; Aimée’s father’s mahogany desk, where she worked; her grandfather’s photo in his old Sûreté uniform. The original Leduc Detective license.
“This place breathes Jean-Claude and le vieux—that’s what we called your grand-père,” Bellan said.
“I know what you called him,” she said, thinking fondly of her grandfather. She packed Chloé’s stuffed owl and a few bottles into a leather holdall. “But you’re here for a big fish. If you want to land him, I’d like something in return.”
She needed Bellan on her side.
“Everything I say stays here,” she said. “Between us.”
“How can I agree if I don’t know what ‘everything’ means?”
“Look, someone’s been following me. I lost the tail for now. But I won’t put my baby at risk, comprends?”
“Who’s asking you to? Alors, tell me from the beginning.”
“Let’s start with the fingerprints. You got a match to Mirko Vladić?”
“Via the National Central Bureau in Nantes. And a confirmation from Interpol. It’s all automated now.” He snorted. “How can I use the prints in an investigation if I don’t know which one? But that’s why you need me, non?”
Smart. “This works both ways. Get me off the hook, and you land a big fish wanted by the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.”
He liked part of this; she could tell. Would be stupid not to. And her father had once said Bellan ranked at the top of all recruits he’d known.
“I’m listening.” He handed her a fingerprint match verification so fresh her palm smudged the printer ink.
“These match a Serbian war criminal who was under indictment from the Hague,” said Aimée, “until an ICTY team saw him blown up near Foča about a year ago. Or thought they did.”
Bellan tossed the core of his apple in the trash. “According to this evidence you brought to my attention, Mirko Vladić’s here in Paris, alive. And you’ll make a statement to this effect?”
This part got tricky. No way in hell did she want to make a statement.
“Alors, two members of the ICTY team from Foča died in engineered ‘accidents,’ and a third—the drunk you met—could be next.”
Bellan’s phone rang. He glanced. “Nantes’ calling.”
“Please let it wait.”
“That was you in Erich Kayser’s flat,” said Bellan, his tone matter of fact. “A witness claims you pushed him. Can identify you.”
“Me? He saw me for one second in a window across the street—a brunette in a dark room—and he’s going to pretend he saw me commit murder? I didn’t push Erich Kayser. I never even met him.”
“You ran away. Looks pretty guilty.”
“Put yourself in my place, Bellan. Would you stick around? Get pushed next?”
“You could have told the truth,” said Bellan, sipping his espresso.
“And be questioned, spend all night in a cell?” She pushed up her sleeves. Damn heat. “Like I can p
ay a babysitter that kind of overtime. Get real, Bellan. Erich Kayser was killed by Mirko Vladić. You know it. I’d gone to see him after Isabelle’s death and was too late to save him. You’ll never prove I was there—the concierge thought I was Isabelle.”
“We’ll get back to that,” said Bellan. “Let’s see your theory of how the fingerprints on the Orangina bottle connect him to the murder.”
“Theory? We’ve done the work for you.”
She pulled another dry-erase board down so she could sketch a map of the quartier as she spoke.
“We’ll start here at the café tabac on the corner of rue de Rennes and Vieux Colombier, with the Métro in front. On Monday night, the CCTV camera shows Suzanne Lesage, formerly of—”
“I know her. Go on.”
“Who recognized Mirko inside buying cigarettes. We figure Mirko left out the side door, which the camera doesn’t cover.”
She continued through the pieces of her puzzle: Isabelle Ideler’s death; her visits to Charlotte, the morgue, and the Dutch embassy; how she’d wound up attempting to inform Erich Kayser—arriving too late.
Bellan, demitasse and saucer in hand, had moved to sit on the edge of René’s desk.
“Get practical,” he said. “How could a Serbian paramilitary thug engineer all this?”
Aimée sipped. Nodded. Bellan’s remark was a good sign. “I wonder, too. It’s an elaborate plot, sophisticated, involving access to airline luggage, medical records, surveillance.” She paused. “If there’s a mastermind behind this, using him . . . Alors, I’ll just keep to what I know. Mirko speaks French—how much, I don’t know, but Mirko’s family lived here when he was ten to twelve. He attended school on rue Madame and lived on rue Palatine—close to where the deaths of both Isabelle Ideler and Erich Kayser happened. He’s back in his old hood, knows the quartier.”
Bellan pointed. “Tell me more about this.”
She drew a line from the café tabac to Charlotte’s apartment on rue Madame, showing him where Isabelle had stayed. Another line up rue de Fleurus to the gates of Jardin du Luxembourg. Aimée described Isabelle’s path through the park. Made an X for the apiary, where Isabelle’s body had been discovered and where Pauline had picked up Mirko’s Orangina bottle.
“He’s a murderer making it look like accidents,” Aimée said.
Bellan twisted his watchband of worn brown leather, flicked the buckle. Thinking.
“A dead Serbian war criminal surfaces in Paris,” he said, his words measured, “to knock off members of an ICTY team who could identify him. That’s what you’re saying?”
“I think it’s more than that. Why resurface now?”
“You mean why chance it? That’s easy. Le Sénat’s hearings on the Balkans will determine the military budget there.”
“How does that threaten him?”
“It threatens the military.”
Tingles ran down her arms.
“That’s too broad. Vague.” She tried a hunch. “What about an arms dealer who had too much to lose?”
“I’m a flic, good at my work, love what I do. Now my job’s liaising with a branch that’s carrying on a long rivalry with the military. You know how that goes.”
Like she cared. But if Bellan was mentioning this, it meant something important.
She decided to throw out the names, see if they stuck on Bellan’s brain. “Anything to do with Gourmelon, the snitch, or Dravić, a dead arms dealer?”
Bellan’s demitasse rattled on the saucer as he set it down.
She’d hit a chord. Suzanne’s words “mistakes were made” again came back to her.
But he was too good a flic to let anything slip and brought things back to Aimée. “If I’m to proceed, you need to make a statement, Aimée.”
“Bellan, if mistakes were made—maybe supplying arms via Mirko or supporting the ethnic cleansing—someone wants it quiet. The ICTY operated under a sealed indictment.”
“Et alors?”
“Mirko survived, and whoever got him out of Serbia and to France wants things quiet. He’s protected.”
“Conjecture.”
But he was thinking; she could tell.
“Come to the commissariat, and I’ll take your statement,” he said.
With an APB on her? She wasn’t spending the night in a cell. “You’re kidding, right? Make my part go away.”
“I’m a flic, like your father was. We do this the right way.”
“The right way’s open to interpretation,” she said. “You’ll get the credit, engineer the coup of arresting him for crimes committed here and abroad.”
His phone rang again. He glanced at it. “That’s my Interpol contact. Mirko’s fingerprint identification has hit all the agencies. The Hague, local forces in Serbia. Do we do this or not?”
If only there were a way to do it without her name on it. She had to nail Mirko. She nodded, sat down, and began typing at her computer. “Right here. Right now.”
“That’s the deal?”
“Along with protection for Jean-Marie and vindication for Suzanne.”
He sighed. “Then I need Mad Max.” He noticed her look. “Not the movie. A general. He’s a legend. The mastermind leading to Carlos the Jackal’s capture.”
“In return you get the CD I found in Erich Kayser’s apartment with his report. Maybe you’ll find an answer in le Sénat’s hearings.”
“You stole it from his apartment?”
“Better me than Mirko.” She slid it over her desk. “It’s yours now.”
Admiration and irritation fought each other in Bellan’s expression. “You’re wasted here, Aimée. I could keep you busy in a legal way.”
Like that was going to happen. “What’s Mad Max’s claim to fame besides the Jackal? That’s ancient history.”
“Pas du tout. The legend operates out of Hôtel de Brienne with carte blanche to consolidate all Balkan intelligence. Agents and officers report directly to him, even over their superiors.”
Mad Max had the chain-of-command thing down. Sounded like the one to get things done.
“Who’s following you, Aimée?”
“The spooks who committed Suzanne, maybe? Or your people?”
“My people?” Bellan shook his head. “I’ve removed the APB.”
“Vraiment? Where do you get the authority?”
“I convinced la Proc. Took doing. So you owe me.”
“Not as much as you owe me for this feather in your cap.”
“Mirko’s a gangster, hit man, right?”
“And a war criminal who raped and murdered little girls.”
Bellan looked startled at this. Paused. “And you know this how?”
“Look at the reports on Foča’s mass graves. Sickening.”
“If you know about Mirko, no doubt he knows about you, Aimée.”
She pushed that aside. All she could imagine, if they caught Mirko, was the long road to trial. Her required testimony. Then a knock on the door one night, in a year, three years—a gun in her face.
How far did Bellan’s influence stretch? Could she trust him? But she had to cut the doubt, the luxury of worry—no other option existed.
He took her printed-out statement. His phone trilled again.
He answered this time. Turned away. A few ouis before he hung up, pocketed the CD. “Mad Max thanks you for your cooperation. Your name will be kept out of the investigation, at least for now. And he says to please leave this to the investigators.”
“He said please?”
Bellan gave a half shrug as he stood to leave. “I added that for politesse.” His eyes turned serious. “Sounds better than an order, non?”
His footsteps echoed down the stairs.
Loud and clear—she was supposed to stay hands off. She’d fulfilled her promise to Suzanne. So why the cr
eeping unease as she packed extra diapers into the carryall?
She tossed in several burner phones, extra SIM cards, from the collection René kept in his drawer. Left her laptop.
On René’s desktop screen, a message had popped up.
Robert Guedilen, 56 rue Jacques Callot. A number at his office on Boulevard Saint-Michel at l’École des Mines.
No time like the present. She punched in his number.
“Monsieur Guedilen’s in a meeting,” said the receptionist over the phone. “He’ll be back within the hour. May I take a message?”
“I’ll call back,” Aimée said. “Merci.”
She worried over Jean-Marie and wanted his colleague’s information, if he had any. She wanted to assure Suzanne but had no way to reach her now. Her call to Melac got a busy signal.
Frustrated, she left the way she’d come. Poncelet was waiting in the taxi and shifted into first as she closed the door.
“Where to now?” His eyes gleamed.
As she pulled out the address given to her by her mother—how odd that sounded—Aimée’s cell phone rang.
“You gave me your card,” said a breathy, guttural voice she recognized as that of Gilberte, the Montenegrin concierge of the building by Galerie Tournon. “Showed me a photo. Remember?”
Aimée stiffened. “I remember. What about the photo?”
“Fourteen bis rue de Condé.” The phone clicked off.
Saturday, Late Afternoon
“So you’re on her speed dial? Good job, Montenegrin whore. Glad I followed her here.” He held a knife to Gilberte’s baby’s throat in the booster seat. The baby whimpered. “Do I take care of him now, tomorrow, or—?”
“Non, non, I say nothing,” Gilberte pleaded. “I disappear. We go.”
The zanata, filthy Montenegrin whore, shook, still on her knees. Clutched his leg. He shook her off, stamped her cheap phone to pieces.
