by Cara Black
“Albert was my second husband, you know,” said Madame Daudet, gesturing to chairs around a table which bore a file of supermarché coupons. The corners of her mouth turned down in a sour expression. “I never had to do such things before but the pension’s not enough.”
She pulled her reading glasses on and read the autopsy report.
“What’s this ‘petechiae’?”
“In layman’s terms?”
“I don’t speak medicalese.”
“Red pinpoint hemorrhages in his eyes. Their presence indicates strangulation.”
Madame Daudet’s brows creased with concern. “I don’t understand.”
But Aimée thought she did.
“Did he have enemies?”
“Albert?” Though she shook her head, the tight curls budged not a centimeter. “He supervised the tire warehouse for forty years. A joker. Always good with his hands, he was.” She pointed to the built-in shelves, like in a ship’s cabin. “I told the police the same thing. Don’t you talk to each other?”
If she thought Aimée worked with the flics, why enlighten her?
“I just need to clarify. Why do you think someone would do this?”
Madame Daudet scanned the report. “Albert talked. ‘Big mouth,’ I called him. To his face, mind you. He knew what I thought. No lies between us. That’s why I wondered. . . .”
She paused, her eyes wistful.
“You wondered if he’d run off at the mouth and it got him in trouble?” Aimée asked.
Madame Daudet nodded. For the first time Aimée saw tears in the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away.
“Was it something he mentioned to his comrades from the Sixth Battalion?”
“Some scam. For the first time, well, Albert kept secrets from me. I thought they were just old men with fantasies.”
“Fantasies?”
“Who comes out of war unscarred, eh?” she said, clipping the coupons, and putting them in the box. “But when the nightmares started again. . . .”
“Madame Daudet, what do you mean?”
“The nightmares Albert had!” Madame Daudet said. “He woke up screaming, bathed in sweat. The first year we were married, it happened every night.”
Aimée crossed her legs and shifted the file of coupons. Outside in the courtyard, footsteps sounded on the cobblestones. Despite the cramped warmth inside, a damp muskiness permeated the floorboards.
“From the battle of Dien Bien Phu, you mean?”
“He said odd things in his sleep,” she said. “Over and over, about a dragon.”
Aimée gripped the edge of the table. “A jade dragon? Did he mention that?”
Madame Daudet took her reading glasses from her nose. “A list of animals, he kept repeating it. But when he woke up, he denied knowing anything about them.”
The astrological animals of the Chinese zodiac? Excited, Aimée leaned forward. Was he one of the soldiers who’d looted the Emperor’s tomb? Did Madame Daudet know Gassot?
“What do his comrades in the Sixth Battalion say?”
“They’re scared,” she said. “Afraid the past has come knocking on their door. After I mentioned that his pants cuff was rolled up, Picq had such horror in his eyes. He hasn’t been in touch since.”
“Wait a minute.” Aimée scanned the autopsy report. In the description of Albert’s body there was a tattoo, a flower with a dripping knife, on his left calf.
“Didn’t you think it odd?”
“More like disrespectful, a careless staff error, so I made my thoughts known to the director.”
“I mean his tattoo.”
“They all had them. Some drunken Haiphong foolishness, Albert told me.”
“Doesn’t the Sixth Battalion keep in touch, meetings and so on?”
“You mean swapping war stories of the good old days in Indochina?” She shook her head. “Not like that at all. Albert was in the supply commissary. He hid behind his desk. I think he had seen some combat but he didn’t like talking about it. Most of the boys shipped in on transports, dallied with bar girls. But then who didn’t? Got shot up and shipped out in wood boxes or on troop transports. But me, I knew the old Indochina.”
Madame Daudet’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I remember the flame trees and the tamarinds by the grass lawn that spread all the way down to the mouths of the dragon.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand, Madame.”
“The Mekong has nine tributaries, like the nine mouths of the dragon, the Indochinese say,” she said. “My parents had parties, magical soirées with lantern lights, the banana leaves nodding in the breeze, tables of hors d’oeuvres and so many servants we tripped over them.”
Aimée hoped this was going somewhere.
“My father planted rubber trees. Kept big accounts with the tire manufacturers he supplied on the île de la Jatte.”
Aimée tried another tactic. “Was your husband a rubber planter, too?”
“Paul, my first husband, was a naval attaché.” Her eyes misted over. “I polished his épaulettes, kept the gold braid just how he liked it. We’d go to Café Parisien, you know, where the right types were seen: the governor, and everyone of importance. Such a scent of frangipani in the courtyard! At one time they called it the Paris of the East. Gustave Eiffel designed the post office, can you imagine?”
Aimée didn’t think she expected an answer.
“But there’s no more rue Catinat now. Our beautiful ochre villa’s a community center, someone told me. They don’t even call it Saigon anymore,” she sighed. “We wore hand-sewn silk tea dresses. No one wears things like that anymore. And we changed several times a day, très élégantes. The humidity, you know. Dense, heavy like a wet blanket all the time. I’ll say one thing for the natives, they knew how to dress for the weather.”
“Did you know the de Lussignys over there?”
“My dear, we dined with them at the Café Parisien,”
Madame Daudet said, a trace of hauteur in her voice.
To Aimée it sounded sad, so long ago and so far away.
“Was the old man a jade collector?”
“He loved everything native, including his mistress,” she said. “Life seemed perfect until the guerillas bombed the café. As far as I’m concerned, it ended then. All the guerilla warfare that followed, attacks on us by the Hoa-Hoa and Cao Dai.”
“Cao Dai? But it’s a religious sect.”
“Religion cloaks many things.” Madame Daudet shrugged. “A political vehicle for les asiatiques. Paul always said that. The Cao Dai had an army. At first, I didn’t blame them. Starving on the streets, well, we could see that. With all those green shoots in the rice paddies, I wondered where the rice went but the guerillas took it. They brainwashed the peasants. Our servants, too. Imagine, after all those years, and how generous we were! Those betrayals hurt. But I prefer to think, well, not everyone.”
A true colonial childhood, Aimée thought. And now she had come to this. Aimée noticed the small armoire, the door ajar, which held only a few housedresses on hangers.
“When my old nanny died, a devout Buddhist, they laid a banana on her stomach, as a guarantee of an afterlife. Imagine!” she said, sighing. “The Cao Dai bury their dead sitting up.”
“With jade?” Aimée asked.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” she said.
Outside the weak sunshine slanted on the wall. The voices of children and the bouncing of a ball echoed from the recesses of the courtyard.
“How can I get in touch with Picq and Gassot?”
“Bad lot,” she said. “I always said it. They proved me right, the flics did.”
Frustrated, Aimée wished the woman would give her facts, not hints. Gassot might have the clue to the jade she needed. “What do you mean?”
“They were arrested for possession of explosives,” she said. “Last I heard, they were in jail due to their crazy scheme.”
“Gassot, too?”
“Seems he can move fast desp
ite his peg-leg.”
“So he escaped. Where could I find him?”
Madame Daudet pulled back.
“I think he knows why your husband was killed,” Aimée said. “Please, tell me how to find him.”
Madame Daudet blessed herself and kissed the gold cross around her neck. She pointed across the narrow yard to a five-story hotel with peeling shutters, that displayed the sign HÔTEL, and a phone number with the old-fashioned prefix BAT 4275. There was a shuttered café below it.
“Are they ever open?”
Madame Daudet rolled her eyes. “A money-laundering front for some gang. At least that’s what Albert said. No wonder Gassot lives there cheap.”
And then Aimée remembered the address she’d gotten from the police. The building Thadée owned in the back of the gallery courtyard: What had the faded old blue sign said? A warehouse or manufacturer?
“Either your husband, Picq, or Gassot left a contact phone number at the anciens combattants. Was it the telephone number of the tire warehouse?”
Madame Daudet nodded.
“Were there other men from the Sixth Battalion in their group?”
“Nemours. He’s a gourmand who loves food more than life itself. We all thought he’d go first, with his cholesterol!”
“But your husband was the first. And someone’s after his remaining comrades, aren’t they?”
Madame Dinard looked down. “I don’t know.”
Aimée tapped her heels on the wooden floor wanting to steer the conversation back on track.
“What about Nemours?”
“He follows Picq. They’d meet with Albert at the tire warehouse. When Albert retired, he became a part-time custodian. After work, they’d go to play belote upstairs in the café on rue des Moines.”
Now it made sense. She’d met them already. The day she confronted Pleyet in the upstairs room of the café, the day after Thadée was killed. She shivered with fear.
Could she have it wrong? Had they killed Thadée, then their comrade Albert, out of greed?
“Did Albert ever mention Thadée Baret? He was related by marriage to the de Lussignys.”
“Mais bien sûr, all the time!” she said. “Albert loved talking to Thadée about Indochina. Thadée ran the gallery. He received it in the divorce settlement. Once the de Lussignys owned the tire factory. They were rubber barons who intermarried with the natives,” said Madame Daudet, her mouth crinkled in a moue of disgust.
“May I keep the autopsy report?” she asked.
Aimée nodded, wondering if it would wind up on the shelf next to Bernadette of Lourdes. She thanked Madame Daudet and left. But now she’d learned of the old men’s connection to Thadée and where Gassot lived.
Outside on the street, she ducked into a doorway and checked her cell phone. Two messages.
The first was from Pleyet, finally returning her call.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Call me back.”
She’d call him after she found Gassot. If she worked it right, she’d have information to barter with Pleyet.
The next was from Martine.
“Allô, Martine. How’s Sophie?”
She heard Martine inhale on her cigarette.
“Safe in her room. The valium helped,” Martine said. Her husky voice rose. “Interesting news, Aimée,” she said. “The Brits dropped out of the oil rights bidding. And seems the Chinese have transported impressive drilling rigs to the bay off Dingfang, on Hainan Island. They’re raising territorial issues. But right now it looks like Olf and the Chinese are neck in neck.”
“Great, keep going, Martine.”
“There’s a rumor of fat ‘commissions’ for the inside track to the oil rights. I’m still on it.”
AIMÉE ENTERED the narrow corridor of Gassot’s hotel, her shoulders brushing against the peeling, fawn-colored walls. A single bulb lit the hall. But she imagined that the pensioners who lived here appreciated it. Better than a cardboard box over their heads in an abandoned lot.
The smell of grease from a nearby kitchen hovered. Chirping came from the reception booth, a particle board structure, under a Art Deco sign advising NO EVENING VISI-TORS ALLOWED AFTER DARK. FULL AND DEMI-PENSION WITH CAFÉ MEALS AVAILABLE.
Judging by the grease smell, she doubted the inhabitants chose full pension if they could afford to dine elsewhere. A tall man wearing a raincoat and holding a watering can stood in the doorway leading to a concrete rear yard.
“Looking for someone?” he asked, in a hoarse voice, the guttural roll of consonants betraying his Russian origin. His eyes took in her legs and he grinned. “I’m available.”
A stab at Slavic humor?
She gave him a big smile.
“Which room is Monsieur Gassot’s?”
“Eh? What’s that?” he said, blocking the doorframe in a swift movement.
“You heard me,” she said, keeping the smile on her face.
“Which room does he stay in, Monsieur?”
“Spell that name for me, eh. My hearing’s gone. Everything else works fine.”
She reached for the cell phone in her pocket. As he set down the watering can, she punched in the hotel’s number. Seconds later the phone rang in the small reception area.
He glanced at the phone, his eyes unsure.
“Go ahead, I’ll wait,” she said, still keeping the smile on her face with effort.
“Please sit. Wait over there,” he said, entering the reception cubicle to answer the telephone.
Fat chance. She ran past him and into the back yard, skidding on the wet concrete in time to see a white-haired man slipping into a dilapidated lean-to shed. Rabbit hutches covered with wire-mesh lined the old wall, celery stalks peeking through the holes. She slammed the hotel door shut with her booted heel, found her Swiss Army knife, and wedged it between the door jamb and door handle. The Russian gorilla would have to kick the door down to open it. She had no intention of losing Gassot now.
“Monsieur Gassot, I’m not a flic,” she called. “I know you’ve been avoiding me. You were an engineer at Dien Bien Phu. I read your article about the looting of the Emperor’s tomb.”
The shed door scraped open. A knife blade glinted.
All she had in her bag was a can of pepper spray and Chanel No. 5.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She had to get him to listen to her. “Aimée Leduc. Your friend Albert was murdered. You could be next.”
What if he’d been responsible? But whatever he’d done she needed to gain his confidence. Convince him to talk to her.
He edged out of the shed. Even under the 1960s-era gray twill raincoat she saw his well-built frame and muscular arms. And his limp.
“What’s that to you?”
“I was hired by a Cao Dai nun to find a set of jade astrological figures. Let me do my job. Talk to me.”
The Russian kicked at the door.
“Call this mec off,” she said. “Or I’ll treat him to pepper spray.”
“Where’s your gun?” Gassot asked.
She shook her head. The gutter dripped. Big splats of water landed on her boots. “I’m a private detective. No gun.”
Too bad it sat in the hall drawer of her apartment.
Gassot stood, rain glistening in his white hair, holding the knife with an unreadable expression.
“Why was Daudet killed? Why are they after you?” she asked.
And by his eyes, she knew she’d said the wrong thing. She’d lost him.
“I’ve lived this long, so you should know I’m not stupid enough to fall for your approach. I know you were hired to avenge the past.”
“Avenge? Wait a minute, you’re confusing me with someone else.”
Gassot’s mouth twisted. “It was a mistake. We never meant to do it.”
Do what? She had to reel Gassot in. Get him to trust her. She remembered what Linh had said.
“War’s a series of mistakes,” she said. “But you couldn’t have been more than nineteen or tw
enty years old. What did you know? The important thing was you saved a Vietnamese man’s life. The life of this nun’s father.”
“What nun?”
“A Cao Dai nun named Linh asked me to bring her the jade figures.”
“She wasn’t a nun then.” Gassot flexed his knuckles but he still held the knife. “Not when we fought at Dien Bien Phu.”
“His grandchildren are in need of the jade hoard. One’s in a Vietnamese prison for protesting the régime and his sister’s this nun who is petitioning the International Court of Justice to bring about his release,” she said, embellishing. “And you were in the Sixth Battalion, one of the men who looted the jade treasure after the battle.”
Gassot’s mouth trembled.
Aimée lifted the absinthe-green disk into the dull gray light. It glowed.
“Didn’t you find this?”
Gassot’s mouth trembled. He stepped closer and let out a deep breath. “And a lot more. We were surveying, digging trenches, but we hit an old ammunition box. There were twelve figures inside. The next day they were gone.”
She’d been right. She placed the jade disk on the rabbit hutch ledge, staying far away from Gassot’s knife.
“There’s another, isn’t there? It’s called the Dragon. The most sacred.”
Gassot turned over the small jade disk in his hands, then punched the rabbit hutch, his shoulders beaded with rain.
“You have it, don’t you?” she said. “And the dragon makes the set complete.”
“By rights they’re all ours. But I never saw them again.”
“A museum director put the figures up for auction here in Paris a month ago,” she told him. “Then they were withdrawn. He was murdered in the men’s bathroom of Parc Monceau. You know that, Gassot, don’t you?”
Silence. She saw defiance in his eyes.
“If the jade is stolen from its true owner, bad luck follows the thief,” he said.
“So you killed Thadée, then Albert, because he wanted a bigger share. Demanded it.” She was guessing. “Did you arrange to meet Dinard and murder him, too?”
Gassot shook his head. “Think what you want.” He turned the jade piece in his hand again.
“You’re not the only ones who want the jade,” Aimée said. “Albert’s wife said you and the others concocted some scheme.”
