by Cara Black
The card read, “Etienne Mabry, 28 Boulevard de Sébastopol.” There was also an office in the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange.
“He’s your attorney?” she said.
“My financial advisor on stocks.”
On the stairs, two older women paused, speaking in a Slavic dialect. Mops and buckets were in their hands. “Agence Immobilière sent us. The agent wants the apartment cleaned for a showing.”
Downstairs, the flics took Figeac to a waiting Peugeot. Aimée didn’t know whether to be relieved that Bellan hadn’t asked her to accompany him, or suspicious.
Bellan drove away without so much as another glance. As soon as the car turned the corner, she ran back to Christian Figeac’s apartment.
Sunday Morning
READY FOR THE DRIVE into Paris, Stefan eased the old Mercedes onto the périphérique. He adjusted the headphone for his left ear. His only good ear. The one able to hear subtly differing tones and low frequencies.
The opening strains of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” rippled over him. The notes calmed him, transported him back to the commune. To the crisp autumn day when the Pink Floyd record played continuously like a theme song. Back to the day Ulrike tore the joint from his hand and shoved a Mauser in it.
“Time for you to join the Revolution,” she’d said, throwing an ammo clip onto the sheets next to a long-haired girl. “Not sleep with it.”
It was either that or leave the commune. Time to go the distanz. The long-haired girl, his Maoist tutor, not only smelled of vanilla, her kisses tasted of it. And he’d grown comfortable there.
Ulrike’s eyes, dark and flat, were hidden behind the sun glasses she always wore. To conceal her intellect, he realized. Or the fact that she’d cofounded and edited the radical German paper Dié social. She gave no hint of her astute dissection of current politics. Or her influence on them.
Mousy and awkward, at times painfully shy when in front of the group, Ulrike, with her distinctive patchouli fragrance, kept her distance from Ingrid and Marcus, the rock star revolutionaries.
Yet Ulrike needed their in-your-face terrorist pranks and brazen lifestyle to publicize the Revolution. They needed her brains and media prominence for credibility. Molding urban guerrillas to fight the Revolution was the only thing they agreed on.
The endless ideological conflicts, studying Marx and Mao, bickering over who slept with whom, Marcus’s ranting if he couldn’t get his drugs, Jutta’s sullenness, all drained Ulrike. Stefan sensed that right away.
He looked up to her. She’d cultivated him after a demonstration in Colmar. “You have potential,” she’d said. “The Revolution needs people like you.” He was eighteen, she twenty-eight, a mother of twins, who’d given up her children and life for the cause. Like Ingrid. But Ingrid was different, stone cold and calculating.
“Go downstairs, Stefan, help pack the van,” she’d said that day. “We’re going to visit our brothers.”
“Brothers?” he’d asked as he struggled into his faded, patched jeans. The glamour was fading from his Revolution.
“Action-Réaction,” she said. “Our French brothers and sisters.”
Stefan shrugged. He had a hard time keeping up with the various radicals.
“Ever been to Paris?”
Stefan shook his head.
Her mouth crinkled in a small smile. “Join the Red Army and see the world.”
Stefan remembered their 1972 Paris visit, full of endless espresso, Moroccan hashish, and sleeping on the floor in an intellectual writer’s fancy apartment. What a contrast, he’d thought, to nearby rue Saint Denis, where every kind of hooker waited in the crumbling doorways.
They had been hosted by the writer’s wife, an American actress and Revolutionary wanna-be. She supplied them with wine and champagne, played with their guns, and popped pills.
Her young child, his overalls dirty and torn, followed her around. She’d pay attention to him sometimes, blowing hashish smoke in his face to keep him quiet. Stefan remembered Ulrike’s stricken look at this. But Ulrike kept quiet. The actress wrote big checks for their cause, found them a safe house, and slept with some of them.
Action-Réaction’s organization proved loose. But they were passionate and had a certain Gallic flair. Dogma’s for the boche, they’d said, discussion and dialectic for us.
Stefan liked that.
He’d also liked Beate, a long-haired American hanger-on. Like Ulrike, she showed a certain élan and she understood his halting French. Or seemed to. He liked their midnight talks over vin rouge, sharing dreams under the chandeliers. Subversion with style.
He’d met leftist students in Action-Réaction. Ones who kick-started the cause through terrorism, but a decade later were the main force behind the Green Party. He’d even recognized a Maoist years later on the news; he’d toned down, bought a suit, and joined the ministry.
But he’d never told Beate, or Ulrike, the plans Marcus outlined for him.
“How about a drink?” Marcus had asked him one afternoon.
They’d gone to a nearby café where cart pullers stood drinking panaché, beer laced with lemonade.
“Here’s your urban guerrilla future,” he’d said, introducing him to a mec standing at the bar. “Meet Jules.”
Jules smelled of Gitanes. His shaggy hair in a stylish cut hit his shoulders. A Che Guevara T-shirt peeked from under his slim-fitting jacket. Another French intello, in expensive clothes, flirting with revolution.
“Marcus spoke of you.” Jules shook his hand, then pulled him close. “I like you already.”
The radioactive look in Jules’s eyes nailed him. Restless and lethal.
“We’re doing something big,” Jules said, dinging his glass with his finger. The insistent ping echoed in the quiet cafe. “Every piece needs orchestration, fine-tuning. No detail is too small.” Jules signaled to the barman wiping the zinc counter. “Encore.” He turned to Stefan. “And you’re the linchpin.”
The bewilderment on Stefan’s face and a warning look from Marcus made Jules simplify.
“I hear you’re good with engines. You’ll drive the getaway car.” He winked and raised his cloudy amber glass. “Salut.”
Now, as he drove into Paris, Stefan realized he’d guessed wrong. Jules was an arnaqueur, a con man, using the cause for his own purposes. But, Stefan reasoned, hadn’t they all … in one way or another?
Paris had changed over the years, he thought, but it still made him nervous. He shuddered, easing the old Mercedes into the parking spot. Time for his quarterly visit. Time to pick up some goodies. The older he got, the more careful he grew. No big amounts to attract attention. Just a little at a time.
He adjusted his Basque beret, donned dark glasses and a brown raincoat. Outside the car, he walked fast, his hands swinging by his sides.
For all he knew, some off-duty flic might recognize him from the old Interpol wanted list. Now they called it Europol. Same thing. He was still wanted. They all were. Small chance after all this time, but the fear jelled his bone marrow some nights.
He bought a mixed floral bouquet. Like always. Inside the cemetery gate, he took a deep breath. Not to worry, he told himself, patting the tools inside his pocket. This wouldn’t take long.
Flowering plane trees swayed in the weak breeze. Distant traffic and shouts of children in the nearby playground hummed in his good ear.
He walked down the path to the mausoleum, pulled the grill gate open.
The coffin was there. He raised the lid. It was empty.
He stood stock-still. Shock waves hit his heart.
Where?
He collapsed onto the sandy gravel.
Who? Had Jules taken it?
Sunday Afternoon
AIMÉE KNOCKED ON THE Figeac apartment door. The Polish cleaning woman who answered surveyed her with narrowed eyes. She had a weathered face with high cheekbones and was wearing a short blue skirt and rolled-down ankle socks with sandals. Radio talk blared in the background.
“Pardon,” Aimée said. “You remember me, eh? I’ve come to gather the owner’s things.”
The woman leaned on her mop, tucking wisps of hair back under her scarf. “The immobiliére doesn’t want people in here,” the woman said, shaking her head.
“Bien sûr, the agent’s right,” Aimée said, thinking fast. “But he forgot his carte d’identité.”
“We’re not supposed to … something to do with insurance,” the woman said, shaking her head.
“Only take a moment.” Aimée smiled, hoping she sounded more authoritative than she felt. She edged her foot in the doorway.
“Tanya!” the other cleaning woman shouted from inside. The rest of the words were in Polish.
“Go ahead,” Aimée said, “I’ll just pop into the study, then leave.”
The woman looked at her wristwatch, hesitating.
“We’re running behind,” she said. “Got two more places to clean today.”
“I’ll make it quick,” Aimée said, stepping inside. “For your help, merci.”
The woman moved back reluctantly.
Thank God they hadn’t started in Romain Figeac’s writing room yet.
Aimée walked into the tall-windowed room, closed the door, and locked it with the key Christian had used. Pulling on latex gloves from her backpack, she found her Swiss Army knife and surveyed the room.
No bookshelves lined with books. No photos. No announcements tacked on the wall. Not even old mail or torn envelopes. Just a secrétaire, with cabriole legs, in the middle of the room. The room’s stillness and stale air bothered her. But she knew people had shot themselves with a .25 and lived. It didn’t add up.
She opened the desk’s only drawer. Full of off-white, thick vellum paper.
Blank.
On the desktop lay a wooden pen and an assortment of nibs by a bottle of bleu des mers du sud Waterman ink. The typewriter, a shiny red Olivetti, was a classic. Under it was tucked a sheet of paper, a reference sheet, on which appeared a series of page numbers and typographical error symbols. A copy editor’s comments, she imagined.
She looked closer. Under the Tallimard logo, a line read, “From the desk of Alain Vigot, éditeur.” In the bottom right-hand corner, she saw “agit888 … Frésnes,” written in blue ink, running off the paper.
Frésnes was the prison where Jutta said her mother had been held!
She didn’t know its significance but she folded the paper and stuck it in her backpack.
If Romain Figeac wrote in ink, then transcribed it on the typewriter, where were the boxes of his work—as well as newspaper clippings, photos, or research notes? Where would Idrissa have put them?
She got on her hands and knees and went over the sloping wood floor looking for a floor safe.
Nothing but dust and cracks in the honey-colored parquet.
The floor creaked every time she moved. No wonder Christian Figeac heard noises. Or thought he did.
Dust motes flickered in the fading light slanting through the windows. She knew she was missing something. What, she didn’t know.
She sat in the desk chair, an old leather one. Then put her head down on the desk. She measured from that point to the red-brown bloodstain smudged on the wallpaper. At least a meter and a half.
She knelt. With her Swiss Army knife she cut away a long rectangle of the bloodstained floral wallpaper from the recess bordering the door frame. She peeled it down to the baseboard. Another layer of smudged wallpaper, older and with a faded blue striped pattern, emerged. The bloodstain was fainter.
She cut into the faded stripes, peeled off a section, and found an older layer with dense clusters of roses. Quaint, turn of the century.
Dark red blood splatters had even soaked into this old-fashioned rose wallpaper. Not only gruesome, she thought, but odd.
Carefully, she pulled the wallpaper down to the baseboard and pried loose the edge.
A dark red congealed clump had seeped down. She sat back; she really didn’t want to do this. Jutta Hald’s face flashed before her.
A faint metallic odor came from the dried, encrusted blood. She scraped up a sample, took a glue stick from her bag, and rubbed it over the wallpaper. She pasted each layer, except for the old-fashioned roses, back on and smoothed them over.
Still on her knees, she checked the creaking parquet floor. At the tall window, the rooftops of the Sentier spread before her, squat chimneys, impossibly angled rooflines, and bricked-up windows opposite.
Doubtful if anyone could see in.
She traced her gloved fingers over the cold glass windowpanes. Felt in the grooves where glass was framed by metal. Something hard was stuck between the glass and metal.
She wedged it out, fingered it.
A small ivory bone fragment.
She turned the fragment over in her palm. Curved and with jagged lines, like a river seen from space.
She felt around more. Near where the metal joined the floor was another bone bit.
Apprehension came over her. What gun had sufficient force to scatter bone this far?
She’d come here looking for clues about her mother. And they were here somewhere. But if Romain Figeac was a suicide, she was his onetime neighbor Madame du Barry.
The door rattled as the knob turned.
“Mademoiselle, we have to clean in here!”
Aimée scanned the room again, wondering where the writer’s files could be kept.
“Open up at once or I’m calling the agent!”
She slipped the bone fragments, the wallpaper sample, and then her gloves into a Baggie. Time to get out of here.
The cleaning woman shook her fist, but Aimée was out the door and bidding her adieu before she could do anything else.
“SO YOU’VE joined the big boys now, eh, Serge? Working on a Sunday?” Aimée said, dumping the Baggie on the Institut Medico-Legal’s stainless steel counter. “Congratulations!”
Serge Leaud, with his rosy cheeks and trimmed beard, appeared too dapper to be a pathologist. He looked up from his microscope. “At least I don’t have to run from Belleville to Quai des Orfèvres! They saddled me with the blood inquiries.”
From Leaud’s window, distant pinpricks of light could be seen twinkling on the quai. The muffled clatter of the Metro as it crossed Pont d’Austerlitz reached them in the white-tiled lab. Arctic air-conditioning brought goose bumps to Aimée’s arms.
“Seems I’ll never live down that Luminol case in the Marais,” he said.
“You’re a world authority on Luminol now … why would you want to?” she asked, gesturing around the lab. The high-powered microscopes and microtomes for tissue sectioning were impressive.
“I’d like to see my twins once in a while. My wife says they’ve forgotten how to say Papa.” He grinned, setting down long-handled tweezers. “But something tells me this isn’t a social call.”
Aimée was about to reply when a posse strode into the adjoining waiting room, three big-shouldered men in black suits.
Aimée grabbed a physician’s lab coat, slipped it on, and set the Baggie on a glass specimen tray. “I need your help, Serge.”
The men burst through the lab doors. Only Renseignements Generaux, an intelligence-gathering arm of the Interior Ministry linked to the police, entered the morgue’s lab like that.
“Gentlemen, we’re wrapping up a minor detail before I finish your report….”
“We’ll wait, Dr. Leaud,” interrupted the biggest one. He had a headful of curly red hair and thick lips parted in a smile. “No pressure, you understand, of course. Our report goes to the Quai des Orfèvres.” His grin widened and he glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. “Within the hour, you understand. Priorities. But don’t rush on our account.”
Priorities my derrière, Aimée thought. Leave it to the RG to act as if the rest of the law enforcement world didn’t exist.
“Dr. Leaud, this detail puzzles me,” she said, sticking the glass tray in front of Serge, sliding the specimen from his
microscope and ignoring his look of surprise. “These lines. Those striations. Visible more closely under magnification, I suppose.”
One of the RG men cleared his throat. Another tapped his blunt fingers on the windowsill.
She emptied the Baggie onto a fresh petri dish, slipped it under the microscope. “Quick and dirty, doctor, then I’ll leave you to these gentlemen.”
“No need for magnification to see the beveling,” Serge said. “It’s obvious. But to see the powder residue, it’s useful.”
She smiled at the biggest man. “Forgive me, but Dr. Leaud’s extensive background in forensic pathology saves so much time.”
Serge Leaud put his eye to the lens, whether to keep from laughing or to hide his trepidation, she wasn’t sure.
“Interesting,” he said slowly. “Give me a brief description of the recovery scene.”
She did, mentioning the suicide and caliber of the gun.
“Nice fragment of occipital bone,” he said a minute later.
A part of the skull, she remembered that much from her year of premed at the Ecole des Médicines.
“Those lines are part of the lambdoidal suture,” Serge Leaud said.
“Lambdoidal suture?”
“The union between the bones of the cranium, on the side of the skull,” he said. “What’s this?” He pointed to the other items.
“A wallpaper sample I obtained,” she said. “From a wall a meter and a half away from the victim.”
Serge Leaud turned a knob and adjusted the microscope light. He studied a portion of the sample. “There’s the blood mist from the blast. Distinctive spatter and darker stain. Heavier particles follow.”
He looked up at her. “Did you say this was a suicide with a .25 that perforated the skull?”
Aimée nodded.
“You’re telling me a .25-caliber perforated the skull and sent tissue spattering against the wall?”
Aimée shrugged, watching his eyebrows knit.
“Sounds like a contradiction, eh, Dr. Leaud?” the red-haired RG man said. His feet beat a rhythm on the linoleum floor. “More like a .357 or a .44.”
