by Cara Black
She handed Saj the printout from Nathalie’s file.
“Like this?”
Saj scanned the printout, gave a low whistle. “Let me work on this. You’ve got a devious little mind, Aimée,” he said, clicking away nonstop.
“As they say, ‘Takes one to know one.’” She picked up her bag. Time to do the footwork. “Call me when you find something.”
AIMÉE TOOK the Metro to station Guy Moquet, named for a seventeen-year-old Communist Résistance fighter. She paused on the platform and saw the copy of his last letter, dated 1943, from prison, behind a glass plaque. Seventeen years old. The lines that stuck in her head were his only worry being that he might have died in vain. What would he think now, if he’d lived?
She tried Cloclo. No answer. She climbed the Metro steps into the bone-chilling air. She bent against the wind climbing rue Lamarck, passed a parking garage, a funeral parlor, a small instrument shop from which a man was carrying a violin case, a shoemaker with miniature porcelain shoes filling his tall window. Reaching Place Froment, she confronted six small streets intersected by a kidney-shaped island facing a café under a red sign reading TABAC. Opposite nestled a motorcycle riding school, a bakery, its glass panels painted with fading belle époque threshing scenes, a hip resto, and a pharmacy with a lighted green neon cross above its window. A bourgeois enclave. Had Conari been wrong? Had she wasted a trip?
She walked by a small Arab grocer’s with bins of fruit and vegetables outside under a canopy. Across the way stood Hôpital Bretonneau, once a children’s hospital, now inhabited by squatters, judging from the graffitied LIBRE ART, LIBRE ARTISTES sign. Huge and taking up most of the block.
She turned on rue Carpeaux. Entered the corner café with its smell of wet dog. A spaniel lay behind the counter next to the owner, who had a cell phone cupping his ear. From the look of it, the café had last been decorated in the fifties.
The owner nodded to her, the phone still cradled on his shoulder.
“Monsieur, I’m looking for the Turkish grocery store,” she said.
He jerked his thumb out the window toward the blackened stone hospital wall bordering Montmartre cemetery.
“Merci.”
How had patients felt about the view from their windows, a tree-speckled cemetery bordered by a high wall containing the final resting place of Émile Zola, among others?
Aside from the vineyard, and the cemeteries, the hospital occupied one of the largest sites in the area. A demolition and renovation approval sign dated 1989 was posted on the wall but the place still hadn’t been rebuilt.
Then she spied the Turkish grocery, a storefront with bins of fruit, packaged Parmalat tomato sauce, and a dusty hookah in the window. Inside, Turkish music whined and two men played cards on the counter by the cash register. The narrow store was crammed to the old roof beams with canned food, rubber sandals, oddments, Turkish tapes and videos.
“Bonjour, Messieurs,” she said, picking up a bottle of Vittel and laying a few francs on the counter. “Salaam Aleikoum.”
“Aleikoum salaam,” said the older of the two men, returning her greeting.
“If I may interrupt you for a moment,” she said, “my friend Petru used to live upstairs, but he’s moved. Any idea where I can find him?”
“Petru?”
“A Corsican. He changes his hair color more often than I do,” she grinned. “You know who I mean, eh?”
“Haven’t seen him for a while,” the man said. His companion said something in Arabic. “I’m sorry, my friend said since yesterday.”
She thanked him and went through the open door to a small apartment foyer that smelled of pine soap. A young woman in a blue smock, her hair in a thick black bun, mopped the cracked tiles.
“Pardon, Madame, I’m looking for Petru, a Corsican. Did he leave a forwarding address?”
The woman set her mop in the metal pail. “Gone.” She paused and wiped her brow. “Here people don’t leave addresses when they move,” she said. Her accent was Portuguese. “Clean, all clean, the place is vacant.”
A glittering earring hung from the woman’s pocket. It seemed familiar. Aimée stared at it. “How beautiful. It’s pink Diamonique, non?”
The woman clutched the earring and backed away.
“Madame, did you find this on the steps, or in Petru’s apartment?”
The woman shook her head.
“A prostitute came here looking for Petru, didn’t she? She wore costume jewelry like this,” Aimée said.
“I do my job, clean the halls, mop down the stairs and—”
“When was she here? Yesterday, last night?”
The woman made the sign of the cross. “I don’t steal.”
“Of course not. But did you see—”
“She’s saying I stole it?” The Portuguese woman’s eyes blinked in fear. She repeated, “I clean good. Verra, see. No lose my job. She’s hurt. Black eye, big, swollen. She come after me?”
“Bruised, you mean she’d been beaten up?”
The woman nodded.
“I tell her God will forgive her this life,” the woman said. “Tell her, go to Bus des Femmes. Get rest. They help women like her. She laugh at me. Then I find it this morning.”
She put it in Aimée’s hands. “Take it to her. No trouble. I make no trouble.”
Worried, Aimée wondered if she’d get there in time.
AIMÉE FOUND the Bus des Femmes, the mobile unit offering medical, legal, social, and practical support to working prostitutes, parked near Porte de St. Ouen. A long motor home, painted purple, emitting steam and the fragrance of coffee from its open door. Inside, a coffeemaker and leaflets covered a small table. A straw basket of rainbow-colored condoms hung from a window with “Take me, I’m Yours” printed on it. Lists of clinics were pasted on the windows. Two women chatted as they sat on long benches drinking coffee. Another woman was doing a crossword puzzle.
From their heavy makeup, miniskirts, and bustiers, Aimée figured most of the women were just taking a break from work. The close, warm air, filled with cheap scent, made for a relaxed atmosphere, the feeling of a safe haven.
“Like some coffee?”
Aimée paused before a young woman in a tracksuit with a folder under her arm.
“No thanks,” she said. “I thought Cloclo might be here.”
“I’m Odile, on-site legal aid.” She smiled and extended her hand. “Cloclo’s your friend?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “I think Cloclo was beaten up.”
Odile nodded. “We see it more and more. Many have moved off the main boulevards into more secluded spots: car parks, massage parlors, trying to avoid the Brigade des Moeurs, the morals squad. Or they work late nights, from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., when most people are at home, sleeping. But driving them underground makes them an easier target for violence.”
Of course.
“Is she Eastern European?” Odile asked. “Those girls do twenty to thirty clients a day to avoid a beating from their pimps.” Aimée hoped Odile hadn’t seen her wince.
“She’s older and works on rue André Antoine,” Aimée said. “She’s a chandelle,” she said, a prostitute who waits under a lamppost. “Have you seen her?”
“You understand we respect a woman’s right to privacy. No johns, no flics, or anyone else gets information. If you don’t see her here, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“If she’s with the doctor, could you tell her I’m here? She’s in danger.”
Odile shrugged. “That’s true for all of our women.”
Aimée saw the pamphlets on sex trafficking and hostels for women in crisis, the worn platform heels of the woman doing the crossword puzzle and the purple bruises on her legs that makeup didn’t hide.
“I haven’t seen her,” Odile disclosed.
Disappointed, Aimée crossed the boulevard toward the Metro. She figured Cloclo had been looking for Petru, too. Maybe she’d found out where his new place was but she’d disappeared. Pro
bably she’d given Aimée the runaround.
She peered in several fogged-up café windows, hoping to find Cloclo, but didn’t see her. At Café le Rotonde, the last one before she reached the Metro station, she looked inside. No Cloclo at the counter. But as she was about to give up, Aimée saw Cloclo, huddled in a black coat, her feet up, at a far back table standing flush against the tobacco-stained wall.
Aimée ordered and paid for a brandy. “You look like you could use something strong,” she said, setting it down in front of Cloclo. The café decor looked unchanged from the thirties except for the télé blaring above the bar.
“Not you again,” Cloclo said. Yet her hand shot out and took the small balloon-shaped snifter.
“Did Petru do this?”
Cloclo snorted. “Him?”
“Weren’t you on the way to the Bus des Femmes?”
“They don’t have this,” Cloclo said, downing the brandy.
“Bus des Femmes has a doctor, Cloclo. You should be examined,” she said. “Where’s Petru?”
“Why?”
And then the centime dropped. Hurt and anger flared inside. “Petru’s your pimp, right? You lied, even after I warned you of the danger.”
Cloclo waved Aimée away with her costume-jewelry-be-ringed hand.
“My head’s splitting. Listen, he paid me to tell him when I saw you,” she said, rubbing her temple.
Paid her? “I’ll double it. Where the hell is he?”
And for the first time Aimée saw fear on Cloclo’s made-up face. “I have to go,” she said and scrabbled for her purse.
Aimée reached over and clamped her hands on Cloclo’s shoulders. “Not until you tell me where I can find Petru.”
Cloclo’s eyes darted around the café. “It’s not safe. And he’s not my pimp.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me.”
Cloclo downed the brandy.
“They took him.”
Aimée stiffened. “Who?”
“A van pulled up; some mecs grabbed him and drove off.”
“Mecs with black caps and down jackets, one with bad teeth?”
Cloclo nodded.
“Where?”
“They sped off, I don’t know where.”
Aimée noticed the red welts on Cloclo’s neck, pictured Cloclo’s bleak future. She threw the earring and fifty francs on the water-stained table. “Go see the doctor, Cloclo.”
Friday Evening
DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER the wet street filled with buses and taxis. Passersby gripped shopping bags and hurried, their coat collars raised against the frigid air.
Aimée was stumped, didn’t know where to turn, where to look. She called Strago. No answer. Then she had an idea.
Sebastian, her cousin, knew the club scene. She reached him at his framing shop in Belleville. The pounding of hammers in the background told her that her little cousin was working late.
“Sebastian?”
The pounding ceased, replaced by the slow whir of a table saw.
“Rush order, Aimée,” he said. “Twenty prints to frame and hang for a resto opening tomorrow. No time to climb roofs tonight.”
His business had taken off. She felt proud of him. And he’d been clean, drug free, for four years now.
“One question, I’m looking for a DJ spinning vinyl, Lucien Sarti. Got an idea where I could find him?”
“What’s his moniker?”
“DJ moniker? No clue. He’s a Corsican musician, plays a blend of techno and polyphony.”
In the pause, she heard grinding and the punch of metal.
“He could spin in a style totally different from his own music.”
“What do you mean?”
“Trad, cyber, synth, eighties industrial, trance. You name it,” he said.
She didn’t have all night. How could she ever find him?
“Sebastian, please narrow it down.”
“DJs cater to the club crowd, that’s how they make a living. The good ones create a style and guard it. Lead double lives. I know a flic who spins vinyl near République, but you’d never know it. A down and dirty place full of goths, punks, metal-heads, and transients.”
Hadn’t Yann said Lucien slept rough?
“What’s it called?”
“Gibus on rue du Faubourg du Temple,” he said.
“Gibus . . . argot for a flip-flop cap?”
“The same. Everyone spins there at one time or other.”
She could start there. And with a little work, she had the perfect outfit.
DOWN A PASSAGE under the railway lines she found Gibus. There was no name outside, only a scuffed graffitied door, where a few goths stood smoking. She heard the flutter of wings as pigeons swooped from the rusted rafters above.
The roofed passage once had been occupied by depots and warehouses for goods arriving by train. Now freshly painted signs proclaimed it to be a future site for an Internet and software hub dubbed “Silicon Alley,” sponsored by the government. Judging by the peeling walls and dilapidated buildings, they had a long road ahead of them.
Aimée walked through the door, passing twenty francs to a skinhead with several gold teeth.
“DJ tonight?” she asked.
He nodded and unlatched the worn velvet entry rope, leading to a corridor with fluorescent pink walls. “It’s goth night, mind the stairs.”
Goth. She wouldn’t look too out of place with her long black net dress and matted black hair extensions. If Sebastian had steered her right, someone in the DJ network would know Lucien. She descended in the dark, holding the metal banister of a thin spiral staircase, and felt her way along the damp wall of the stone vaulted underground passage that was vibrating to the thrum of heavy metal. Her hands came back moist with an oily patina.
The passage widened into a cavern redolent of papier d’ar-ménie, the old-fashioned dark rose strips, folded accordion style, burned to freshen rooms, which left a distinctive aroma behind. A smell she associated with her piano teacher, an old Russian woman who burned it to hide the fact that she cooked on a hot plate and lived in the same single room she taught in.
Aimée sniffed something else. Cats, she figured, to keep down the rodent population. Fine by her.
Her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light given off by black candles burning in niches in the walls and lining the bar. The goth crowd, male and female, wore black lipstick and nail polish. They congregated against the moisture-laden walls or sat on what looked like prayer benches, presenting a tableau reminiscent of a medieval tapestry, updated with a twentieth-century twist. Several goths clustered deep in conversation, over a leather-bound volume whose cover bore a gold-embossed cross. Some après-club Black Mass negotiation?
She heard voices raised in an argument. Someone was being sick in the corner. In this kind of place, one kept moving to avoid a fight. She lifted her trailing hem and headed toward the bar.
Her second dive that night.
She ordered a Belgian beer laced with framboise—raspberries— from the barman. A row of silver rings curved up his ear and glow-in-the-dark bracelets shone up his arm like twisting fluorescent green snakes. She paid but stopped him from pouring the beer into a tall glass as she noticed the sink filled with scummy water. She took the bottle. Hygiene, she realized, was not a priority here.
State-of-the-art speakers blared from niches in stone coves. A woman leaning on the pewlike benches nodded to the beat, her black-ringed eyes like dark holes in her face, her chains clinking against the spiked dog collar on her neck.
“Who’s spinning?” Aimée asked, sidling next to her.
“MC Gotha, my boyfriend,” the woman said, pride in her voice. “Grooves, non? Zero le Crèche, he calls it.”
At least that’s what Aimée deciphered; the woman’s tongue stud garbled her words. The DJ bent over a turntable, big hair and tight black tank top, his silver-ringed fingers catching the reflection of the flickering black candles.
“I thought he’d show tonight
,” Aimée said, as if to herself. “I promised to return his mix.”
The woman shrugged, shifting on her chunky platform boots.
“That other DJ, you know, the Corsican musician?”
The woman’s black eyes narrowed. “Tonight’s goth.”
Aimée scanned the crowd. “He spins all over. I really have to find him.” She paused. “Bet your boyfriend knows him. Introduce me?” Unacquainted with the protocol, she figured it was wise to ask for an introduction, after noticing the pointed black nails and vial of garnet liquid, like blood, hanging from the woman’s neck.
“He’s busy,” she said. “Can’t you see?”
“Trouble, I’ve got trouble, if I don’t find the Corsican,” Aimée said. The Stella Artois bottle the goth held was empty. “Ask him for me, eh? I’ll get you a beer while you do.”
Hesitation painted the woman’s face as the DJ announced a break. By the time Aimée returned, they were standing together. Aimée handed her the beer and the woman rewarded her with another shrug and passed it to her boyfriend.
“Corsican? I know the one you mean,” the DJ said, reaching out his ringed hand. “He’s not here. I’ll give him the mix.”
She didn’t know what to do. She hesitated. What if she gave him a disc and he played it? Though she doubted one DJ would handle another’s mix—wasn’t it their signature, their stock in trade—? There was something about a man with black nail polish and a better manicure than hers that she didn’t trust. The only things in her bag were empty floppy discs.
“Dark hair and eyes, a musician who mixes polyphony and techno. We’re talking about the same one?”
“You’re the second one tonight.” The DJ made a face.
Second one?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s goth time, not laid-back time,” he said, “That one’s a lightweight.” He looked bored, gave a dismissive sigh. “Better luck in the chill room.”
So she wasn’t the only one looking for Sarti.
Chill room . . . was that here or at another club? She made her way back toward the bar and followed a couple into the dark cavern behind, crowded with milling goths. Their black attire was like a uniform. The smoke and the rotting smell from the walls not masked by the papier d’arménie was getting to her. And in the humid, swamplike air her hair extensions had begun to droop. Already the temporary adhesive had melted into telltale glop on her neck. If she didn’t leave soon they’d come off in big clumps. She pulled a net scarf over her head and hoped they’d stay attached.
