Murder in the Sentier ali-3

by Cara Black

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But really he was killed.”

  “Papa’s writing played the most important role in his life,” he said. “Everything else ranked below it.”

  “You’re proving it yourself,” she said. “He wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

  They sped through the empty Sentier streets. Dark buildings encrusted with grime illumined by globular street lamps peaked above them. Alleys and passages jutted like capillaries from a veinous hub, calcified by old coaching inns.

  “Christian—if I may call you that—with a suicide, the gun stays there. The .25 wouldn’t …” She paused, trying to say it tactfully.

  “I didn’t pay much attention but it was his,” he said. “The flics took it.”

  “Check the coroner’s office, ask where it is,” she said. “The coroner’s making a report, they’ll open an inquiry.”

  “Non,” he shouted. “Papa’s dead. I had enough of those reporters after Maman’s suicide. They printed those awful photos, the ones of her remains in the car. They’ll just hound me and want to rake up dirt.”

  “It’s painful for you, I’m sorry,” she said. Of course, he was right and how sad. But, she thought grimly, it didn’t change the fact that his father had been murdered.

  Aimée wished the bucket seat had a working seat belt. Christian Figeac seemed intent on crossing Paris in ten minutes.

  “Why can’t the past leave me alone?” he said. He combed his hair back with his fingers, stubby and bitten to the quick.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “Someone murdered your father. Now they’re after you.”

  He screeched his brakes on the quai before her apartment. They stopped with a jerk. “But I thought it was my fault.” He slumped over the wooden steering wheel, pounded the leather dashboard.

  “Christian, why did you think it was your fault?”

  “Below his standard, never reached his expectations … ,” he mumbled. Shadows curtained Christian Figeac’s face.

  All his life he had been haunted by high-profile parents; a renowned father and mother and a string of public tragedies. Sad to think of the pain stamped on his psyche.

  “You didn’t kill him. Someone else did,” she said. Then she told him how Jutta Hald had appeared in her life.

  “That’s why I contacted you. Think again,” she said. “Maybe she came to your door?”

  He shook his head.

  Again, he combed his stringy hair behind his ears with his fingers. It was as if he’d numbed out, refusing to deal with what she said. Who would want to know his father had been murdered?

  She hadn’t.

  She got out of the car, slammed the dented door. But she stood on the cobblestones, unable to move her feet. She had to make him understand.

  “What if it had been you in the apartment when it caught fire? You must realize you’re in danger. And I am, too. Someone knocked out your concierge and whacked me from behind.”

  She turned and let him see the throbbing welt on her head in the quayside light.

  Now he looked scared. And lost.

  “What can I do?” He shook his head. “Even if you’re right, everything went up in smoke.”

  True.

  “You said he kept things at the bank or with his publisher,” she said. “Idrissa transcribed your father’s work. I need to talk with her again. Perhaps something can still be found.”

  “Go ahead, she won’t talk to me.”

  “What’s her number?”

  “01 75 98 72 02.”

  She pulled out the first thing that came to hand from her bag, a lip-liner pencil, and wrote it down on the back of her hand.

  “You asked me to help you, remember?” she said. “If I were you, Christian, I’d be afraid.”

  “Did I say I wasn’t?” he asked. “So, girl detective, you think you will find out who killed my father?”

  She nodded. And she would find Jutta’s killer, too.

  He wrote another check, thrust it through the window at her.

  Surprised, she stared at him.

  “Not enough?” he shouted, reaching over to add more zeros.

  “Throwing money at me?” But René would shoot her if she didn’t take it.

  She took it. Michel’s loan hadn’t covered it all.

  A crow flew past, swooped, then perched on the quayside wall. His black silhouette was outlined against the lighted Seine.

  “Let’s look at the things he kept in the bank,” she said. “My mother’s trail led me to your father.”

  “Always your mother,” he said. “I hardly knew mine.”

  “Neither did I. And mine was American, too.”

  Christian looked away. He flipped the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to life. “I’ll stay with Etienne,” he said abruptly. “Meet me tomorrow at two at the Credit Industriel et Commercial in Place des Victoires.” And with that he roared off down the darkened quai.

  Surprised by his continual changes of mood, she climbed up the stairs. Miles Davis sniffed her with his wet nose as she entered the apartment. She pulled out the half-eaten baguette sandwich Hervé the fireman had given her and set it in his bowl on the kitchen floor. Then she stumbled down the hallway to her bedroom and collapsed on her feather duvet.

  Hours later, she woke up, her face wet, still in her sooty plumber’s uniform. Her thirties Bakelite bedside clock showed green fizzy numbers. She rubbed her eyes.

  3:04 A.M.

  She remembered. Everything had gone up in smoke.

  And she realized she’d been crying in her sleep, something she hadn’t done in years. Her pillow was damp with tears.

  Fragments of an old dream came back to her … running, trying to hand her mother something. Playing catch-up as always. But her mother was so far ahead … so distant. Aimée could only see her sleeve flapping in the wind. And then she was gone.

  Why had her mother left them?

  But she knew the answer. Deep down she knew she’d been a burden. She remembered her mother’s irritated glances. How she had stuck her paintbrush in the jam jar of cloudy turpentine, annoyed by the annual teacher conference. “Amy, such institutional parrots, they don’t teach you creative expression!”

  Aimée had felt confused. Did that mean she was boring and slow or that her teacher was? Or both? She only knew she didn’t measure up to what her mother wanted. Just the way Christian felt.

  Her strict teacher was fair despite her funny little chignon and severe curvature of the spine. “Scoliosis,” her father had called it, her mother adding, “Never stare at others’ deformities. Focus on the eyes.”

  The pain seared her as always. No differently than when she was eight years old. She undid the pants and shirt, kicked them onto the floor, and curled up in one of her father’s old shirts. Soft and worn.

  She stared up at the milky chandelier, many of its icicle drops missing, that hung from the plasterwork oval-inlaid ceiling. An occasional glint of light from the passing night barges was reflected in the crystals. Beside her, Miles Davis stirred in his sleep and nuzzled her. A cool breeze scented of the Seine drifted in through her open window.

  No way could she fall asleep. Only one remedy for that.

  She sat up in bed, pulled her laptop over, and went online. She searched deeper than she had the other night, finding more sites about the Haader-Rofmein gang. They’d existed until 1992, when some of the first-generation members had given themselves up. There was even a punk rock band named after Haader-Rofmein, noted for its song “Grandpa Was a Nazi, Papa Was a Commie, Oh My!”

  Since Germany had undergone denazification and the integration of a communist state in less than two generations, the Haader-Rofmein background and identity had complex implications.

  She realized the terrorists symbolized another era in which youths rebelled against postwar conformity, abhorring their government, which was filled with former Nazis, and the industrialists and financiers who had been members of the Wehrmacht. They took vi
olent political action. They wanted to overthrow what the Allies had created: a Germany divided between communism and strident capitalism.

  She found the old Interpol WANTED posters. So many fugitives had been on the run across Europe.

  Haader-Rofmein had kidnapped a wealthy French industrialist, Paul Laborde, near the German border. He’d died from injuries suffered during a shoot-out. After that, the gang members escaped or were imprisoned.

  She scrutinized the photos: radicals caught in a bank heist by the security camera, bombed-out houses, BMWs riddled with bullet holes spun out on the Autobahn, figures in dark glasses with their hands up being frisked by police, the blood-smeared cells of Kernheim prison where emaciated RAD leaders lay dead on the concrete, eyes open.

  No one resembled her mother. She was flooded with relief.

  She found Action-Réaction, which proclaimed itself the French counterpart of the German struggle.

  Apart from slogans inciting members to Eat the state and Join class warfare, Action-Réaction boasted its revolutionary ideas were in line with the 1789 French Revolution, blended with strains of Maoism and anarchism.

  She searched for its headquarters or an address. Aside from an article on sweatshop worker rights in the Sentier and the listing of an address for an information office at 7, rue Beauregard, there was nothing. She finally fell asleep.

  TUESDAY

  Tuesday Morning

  BE RESPONSIBLE, SHE TOLD herself when she woke up. She had to act more responsibly. Not let this obsession take control.

  She called Action-Réaction, got an answering machine, and left a message, using the name Marie, saying she’d like an appointment as soon as possible.

  After walking Miles Davis on the quai, she dropped him at the groomer’s for a much-needed trim, then stopped at the charcuterie for his favorite steak tartare. By eleven, she’d finished tests on the Media 9 security fire wall and e-mailed them to René.

  Time for her to visit the person who’d know more about Romain Figeac’s work than his own son—Alain Vigot, his editor.

  Below her apartment’s marble staircase, she wheeled René’s battered Vespa over the old losange-patterned tiles. He’d loaned it to her since her moped had been stolen last year. Riding across deserted Pont Marie, a low glare reflecting from the Seine in the absence of pollution haze, she realized most Parisians had begun their annual vacations.

  Over on the Left Bank, Aimée shoved the Vespa in the rack outside Tallimard Presse. Once a cloister, this medieval stone building with baroque and Empire additions still projected a meditative aura.

  “Alain Vigot, please,” Aimée said to the middle-aged receptionist. “He’s in conference,” she replied after consulting an appointment book.

  A yellow light spiraled from the turreted windows, softening the framed photos of Tallimard’s authors and illuminating the arched recesses in the thick wall. The small reception lobby teemed with couriers delivering packages and an exodus of secretaries going out for lunch.

  “I’ll wait.”

  The receptionist tilted her tortoiseshell-framed glasses down her nose. “Better make an appointment.”

  “D’accord,” Aimée agreed. “This afternoon?”

  “Nothing until … let’s see, after Milan …” She looked up. “Laure, this goes to Monsieur Vigot.”

  A young woman wearing a gray miniskirt and tunic top thrust a file onto the receptionist’s desk and picked up a large envelope with “Alain Vigot, éditeur de fiction” written on it.

  “Laure, when does Monsieur Vigot return from Milan?”

  “Late September,” Laure said, turning toward the door, obviously in a hurry.

  “Any way you could squeeze me in today?” Aimée handed Laure a business card.

  “Monsieur Vigot’s in a lunch meeting.”

  “Christian Figeac suggested I speak with him.”

  “I’ll give him your card,” Laure said, her mouth pursed in a tight line.

  “Merci, it’s important.”

  “Like I said, I’ll pass it along.”

  Not much of a guarantee, Aimée thought.

  She left, then waited outside the Tallimard entrance until Laure emerged. Aimée followed her, at a distance, two blocks to Brasserie Lipp on Saint Germain des Près. Laure nodded to several publishing types, smoking and drinking at the sidewalk tables. The fashionable crowd, wanting to see and be seen, preened under the awning.

  She was surprised when Laure continued several blocks down Saint Germain to a small covered passage, Cours du Commerce St. Andre, then turned left. Didn’t Alain Vigot lunch with the trendy world of French publishing?

  Laure entered a small café in the middle of the glass-roofed passage next door to a crêperie stall. Aimée’s mouth watered at the smell of Nutella crêpes. Her favorite. She’d only had a brioche with her coffee this morning.

  Aimée ducked into the tabac opposite, thumbed a copy of L’événement, and prepared for a long wait. The painted wood shop fronts showed the passage’s gentrification. But Laure emerged empty-handed only a few minutes later.

  Aimée hesitated, then opened the café door. The door’s lace curtains swayed and the hanging bells tinkled. A few heads, all of them male, looked up from the zinc counter.

  The clientele stood drinking, watching a motorcycle rally on television. The revving of engines and shouting voices of announcers, raised to a fevered pitch, filled the air.

  Only one round table at the rear of the dark café was occupied. A man with thin graying hair and round, black-framed glasses sat at it, reading, oblivious to the noise. A white linen coat was draped over the back of his chair, his shirt was unbuttoned. Blue ink marks stained his shirt cuffs. He nursed a large bière and a copy of Le Figaro.

  She checked to see if someone else was expected. But there was only one setting, a basket of bread, and a very full ashtray.

  It seemed he had his own version of a lunch meeting.

  “Monsieur Vigot?” she asked.

  His eyes, behind his owl-like glasses, looked small and tired.

  “Oui.” He gave a curt nod. “And you are?”

  “Aimée Leduc. Pardon me for disturbing your lunch.”

  He said nothing.

  “May I take a few minutes of your time?”

  “Concerning?” He looked up, leaned back, and crossed his legs.

  “Romain Figeac.”

  “No interviews about Monsieur Figeac,” Vigot said. “I’ve made that clear….”

  “That’s understood. I’m a detective,” she said. “Christian Figeac hired me.”

  Now maybe Vigot would listen to her.

  “Why?” he asked, reaching for his glass. He eyed her more closely this time.

  “Could I sit down, please?” she asked with a big smile. “Maybe you can help me, I can’t figure Christian out.”

  Amusement crossed Vigot’s face. “Have a bière brûlée with me. I guarantee it will help.” He waved to the waiter, who had a mobile charge machine stuck in his waistband. “Encore … deuxbières bière brûlées.”

  The waiter nodded.

  Aimée sat down. She moved the mustard pot and bread basket to the side. She didn’t like the way Vigot’s eyes swept up her legs.

  Almost immediately, the glasses of bière flambéed with gin arrived. Little of the alcohol had burned off.

  “Salut,” Vigot said, clicking glasses.

  Fruity fumes and acidic hops tore down her throat. If drinks could signal a color, she figured this would flash fuchsia.

  “Christian still raving about ghosts?” Vigot asked.

  Aimée watched him as she sipped. He seemed relaxed, his eyes calm. Not glazed. Like she would be if she kept drinking this stuff.

  “Monsieur Vigot, what was Romain Figeac working on when he died?”

  Alain Vigot’s white puffy hands remained steady on his glass. “Christian still got that on his mind?”

  “Actually, Monsieur,” she said, “it’s personal.”

  If
Vigot was surprised, he didn’t show it.

  “You knew him a long time, didn’t you?”

  “Forty years of friendship, a working relationship,” Vigot said, taking a long sip. “From the rocky to the sublime.”

  Aimée traced the condensation on her glass with her finger.

  “Figeac’s prose was velvet smooth, like a baby’s cheek, but his mind was more barbed than a hacksaw. In literature that’s called the hallmark of a civilized mind.”

  “And what about at the end?”

  “Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you but he hadn’t written in years. Dried up.”

  She didn’t believe him or like his condescending manner. Voices rose from the bar. A close smoky haze reigned over the tables.

  “Christian said he was writing again,” she said. “Furiously, as if possessed.”

  Vigot shook his head. “All I saw was a scared old man.” He sighed. “I should have paid attention, seen it sooner.”

  “But you were his friend.”

  “A good friend!” Vigot’s eyes sparked. “I carried him for years.” His brow creased. “Compiled the anthologies, reissued works to keep his name alive. That American pute … she killed him.”

  Did he mean Christian’s mother, the actress?

  “But she committed suicide ten years ago,” Aimée said.

  “He never got over her,” he said. “Never wrote the same. Something had died.”

  Aimée wished she was outside instead of in this dark masculine sports bar with this sad-looking man.

  “Why don’t you lunch at Brasserie Lipp?”

  He grinned. “With all the literary sophisticates?” He surveyed her legs again, took another swig, and finished the glass. “Romain and I had an inside table; we lunched there for years. It bothers me to go there.”

  He nodded to the waiter again and pointed to his glass.

  He turned to her with a restrained smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me …”

  “But I haven’t gotten to why I came here,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Figeac’s apartment burned down last night,” she said.

  Vigot’s eyes narrowed. “Is Christian all right?”