Murder in the Sentier

by Cara Black

  She was aware of Etienne’s vaguely citrus scent, his long lashes, his muscular arms.

  “I’m worried,” she said. “Christian’s been through so much.

  Did he stay with you last night?”

  Etienne shook his head. “Never showed up. I’m worried, too. He’s in financial trouble.”

  “Financial trouble?”

  René reached for a carafe and poured a glass for Etienne.

  “Merci,” Etienne said. “Frankly, it’s beyond my scope. I just manage investments. But the back taxes and liens on his father’s estate have mounted up. It’s horrific.”

  Strange, Aimée thought. Christian told her there was money. Lots of it.

  “Maybe he is being held at the Commissariat again?” René asked.

  “Doubtful, but he’s got to furnish them statements by Monday.” As Etienne turned his wine goblet, licks of candlelight danced over its surface. “I’m concerned. His father must have kept records. Christian was supposed to meet me at the bank. Then he called, said for me to meet him here.”

  She was about to say Christian had pulled the same thing on them. She looked over at René. But René’s eyes were on the women dancing in the hallway. Their shadows, distorted on the water-stained wall, twitched and jumped to the techno music.

  “Didn’t the Figeacs have an accountant?” She felt the pressure of Etienne’s leg, not unwelcome, as more people joined them at the table.

  “Excuse me,” René said, getting up. He winked at Aimée and nodded toward the hallway.

  “Our transactions were simple,” Etienne said. “He wrote checks.”

  “But Christian called you his financial advisor.” Had this been one of Christian’s big ideas, as Idrissa termed them?

  “A loose phrase.” Etienne’s smoke gray eyes probed hers, as if plumbing her psyche. Few men she’d met were so direct. It felt disturbing but nice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what he told you.”

  “Where could he be?”

  Etienne looked down. “With Christian, well … it’s typical. He makes plans and doesn’t show up.”

  Then her phone rang.

  “Allô?” But the music swallowed the response.

  It was impossible to hear. She checked the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. Then it hit her.

  “Pardonnez-moi, I have to take this call,” she said, tearing herself away from Etienne.

  In the next room, Hubert was holding court near large cubes of pastel Plexiglas. She hit the call-back button and got a gruff “Oui!”

  “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “What is this? Marie called. Georges here.”

  A call from Action-Réaction … finally!

  “What do you want?” Georges didn’t wait for her reply. “We’re leaving for Strasbourg tonight.”

  “I have to speak with you,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes. I’m on my way.”

  Either Christian was a flake or in trouble. Right now she couldn’t solve that. Back at the table, René’s vacant place had been taken up by newcomers.

  “René ran into his friend,” Etienne said. “He said you’d understand.”

  Aimée felt awkward. Had he left on purpose so that she could be alone with Etienne? The music’s pitch and the DJ’s voice escalated so it was hard to hear.

  “Désolée, but I’ve got to go. Something just came up,” she said.

  Etienne glanced at his watch. “I was hoping we could go somewhere together.”

  Torn, she figured Christian would come late or not show. Martine would call her nuts to leave but she had to meet this Georges and find out about her mother.

  “It’s business, je le regrette,” she said.

  Surprise crossed Etienne’s face. This didn’t happen to him often, she figured. Few women would walk away from him. Not if they were smart. Wrong place, wrong time.

  “Why don’t we meet later?” he asked. “At Rouge. I’ll bring Christian if he shows up.”

  Did he think she was playing hard to get?

  “Sounds good,” she said, trying to sound casual.

  “How will I reach you?”

  She pulled out her lip liner and wrote her cell phone number on his arm.

  “A bientôt.” Etienne pulled her close and gave her a bisou. His warm breath seared her cheek. She almost sat back down.

  Instead, she made her way through the packed crowd dancing in the hallway. Keep going, she told herself; she had no time for Etienne. No sign of René. Out on rue Feydeau she saw his car. Maybe he’d gotten lucky with one of the women.

  Hurrying through the quiet Sentier streets, she reached Action-Réaction ten minutes later. The building on rue Beauregard, a squat survivor from the sixteenth century, had suffered a face-lift in the fifties. Unsuccessful by the look of it. Rusted neon signs advertised TEXTILE VASSEUR on the wall behind it. On both sides, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings leaned over it, their clay chimney pots askew on their slanted roofs.

  At the corner, several Pakistani men stood gambling on cardboard boxes. Beyond them, Aimée heard the gurgle of the drains as fresh water washed the gutters. Garbage containers, tall and green, peculiar to the Sentier, lined the street entrance.

  In the courtyard, a man pushed a wire clothes rack, full of swinging wool- and fur-collared jackets, jiggling over the cobbled way. An office window stenciled with EAT THE STATE fronted the grime-blackened courtyard facing a wall of bricked-up windows.

  A chill penetrated the dark courtyard recesses. She knocked on the door that read AR in faded letters.

  Aimée expected to find a lair of old radicals or a seething den of subversives mobilizing for the World Trade demonstrations in Place de la Concorde.

  But she had to knock several times on the thick wooden door. Only the narrow crescent of the July moon illumined the dark courtyard. Finally, the door scraped open. A man with graying corkscrew curls tight to his head and a broken nose peered out.

  “Georges?” she asked.

  “We’re in a hurry, entrez,” he said, looking around behind her.

  She stepped inside Action-Réaction’s squalid office. Posters and old Maoist leaflets covered the ceiling and walls like wallpaper. A sagging sofa was draped with threadbare African cloth, Che Guevara’s image smiled from behind the single pasteboard desk. The only concession to the present was a shiny new fax machine.

  A damp mildew smell came from the corners. Typical in these buildings, the rot and mold of centuries. But Che stayed forever the gorgeous revolutionary martyred in Bolivia, while the movement declined. Chunks of plaster were missing, revealing laths, and a fine powdery sprinkle covered the floor.

  Some men were passing around a bottle of Pernod, the licorice liquor.

  “Look, I’m sorry, maybe you can help me. I need to ask you about …”

  Georges did a double take. “Don’t I know you?” He took a long, hard look at Aimée.

  “I can’t believe it!” he said, moving closer to her. “Frédo, look. Look!”

  A thin man with paper white hair turned to look at her. “Nom de Dieu,” he said.

  In the glare of a naked bulb, she saw furled banners piled against the dank wall. She felt Georges’s face close to hers. Saw his bruised purple-red nose.

  “You look so much like her … the resemblance is amazing!”

  A cold shiver ran through Aimée.

  “What do you mean?”

  Frédo joined them. “You’re her daughter, non?”

  “Who?” Her hand shook, she couldn’t help it.

  “Tiens! You’re Sydney’s daughter!” Surprised, she noticed that their looks were welcoming instead of accusing. Finally, she’d found a connection to her mother. A positive one!

  “Amazing!” Frédo stood, beaming at her. “That look. So innocent and wild … you have it. But of course, I should know, eh? We were intimate.”

  Wednesday Night

  AIMÉE TOOK A LONG swallow, then passed the green bottle of Pernod to Frédo beside
her on the couch. The licorice smell didn’t even bother her anymore. Normally, it shriveled her taste buds.

  Had she arrived on another planet? Finally she sat with people who’d known her mother, loved her, and talked about her.

  “What luck our paths crossed, Marie!” Frédo said. “So you coordinate magazine photo shoots, eh?”

  Aimée hoped her wince didn’t show. “Crazy job. These art directors … so fickle, they changed their mind. Found another site on Boulevard de Sébastopol.”

  “But we found you!” Georges said, leaning forward from his perch on the cheap desk. He had a plastic bag of ice on his swollen nose. “Uncanny! Such a resemblance to your mother!”

  Why had no one ever told her that?

  Aimée put her hand out for another swig. Her trembling was controlled now. She took several deep gulps. On the wall was a framed yellowed notice from December 1981 titled “Our Sentier Initiative”:

  ‘Action-Réaction will organize the occupation of numerous secret ateliers or sweatshops in addition to helping rehouse a hundred or more foreigners: Turkish families, Senegalese, and refugees fleeing U.S. imperialism.

  “Such an inspiration, you know,” Georges said. “She surprised us. We thought she was soft, but she took action. So dedicated to the cause in her own way.”

  Dying to find out more, she figured she’d better not appear too eager.

  “We’ve been out of contact,” she said. “I’m trying to find her.”

  “Let’s see, she went to Spain….”

  “No, Greece with Jules,” Georges interrupted. “But that was in the seventies.”

  Aimée’s heart slowed. These men were out of date. Years out of date.

  “Jules?”

  “Jules Bourdon.”

  In the background, a radio played a plaintive Mozart aria Aimée recognized from The Magic Flute. Pamina’s mother’s voice trilled and vibrated, mourning the disappearance of her daughter, the daughter whom she’d tried to coerce to kill the rival king.

  Aimée’s grandfather had played the vinyl record on Saturday mornings. She’d heard the strains when she returned from her piano lesson and waited on the steps with the bag of warm brioches in her arms, until the aria had ended. As she didn’t understand German, she’d only learned the story years later. And figured out why her grandfather changed the record when she returned. The evil mother sacrifices her daughter … maybe that came too close to home.

  “You’re off there, Georges,” Frédo said. “She did time in Frésnes.” His mouth tapered into a thin line. “We all did. Wasn’t she involved in the squats we organized in the eighties?”

  “You’re asking me?” Georges didn’t wait for an answer. “We were in Frésnes together in the eighties, Frédo!”

  Bickering like an old married couple, she thought.

  “Sydney flitted like a butterfly … from thing to thing,” Frédo said. “Charming and elusive. One never knew her reality.”

  “But I heard she was involved with Haader-Rofmein,” Aimée said.

  “Didn’t you know, Marie?”

  “Know what?” Had Liane lied to her?

  Silence. Georges took a big drink.

  Frédo looked down. “What difference does it make now?”

  Her heart hammered at his ominous tone.

  “Tell me … she died?”

  “Rumor had it she went to find Jules. He became a mercenary en Afrique.”

  “Afrique?”

  “Old revolutionaries never die,” Frédo said. “They just fade away. Though some change colors.”

  The room’s atmosphere, close and stale, the glare from the hanging bulb, the tang of the Pernod and the whining violin made her claustrophobic.

  She got off the sagging sofa. People changed, moved on, evolved. Most of the former radicals probably had mortgages paid off and grandchildren. Not these men. They seemed stuck in a time warp.

  “Look at the former Maoists and anarchists in the Green Party or even in ministry positions,” Aimée said. “Even Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Danny the Red, he’s a European Parliament minister!”

  Frédo stood up. “We’ve got to get these ready for the congrès in Strasbourg,” he said, piling lists of signed petitions inside boxes.

  “When did you last see my mother?”

  Instead of answering, Georges motioned her outside. The dark courtyard held a welcome coolness. Water plopped from a mossy tap into a grooved marble urn. Probably the original water source, Aimée thought.

  “He was more than a little in love with her,” Georges said. “We all were.”

  Jealousy stabbed her. What right had these old radicals, these losers, to say that … had they ever really known her? Aimée’s words caught in her throat. Pangs of bitterness hit her. Even though she was Sydney’s daughter, she didn’t know her.

  “I’m sorry, Georges, I just want to learn everything I can,” Aimée said. “She left us when I was young.”

  “Some women have the equipment but they’re not made to mother,” he said. He turned away.

  She couldn’t see his face.

  “You’re better off if you realize that.”

  Aimée tried to catch his expression.

  “Was she a drug mule?”

  “We’re talking about the seventies. Who wasn’t into drugs, eh?” Georges said, throwing up his arms. “People were politicized in prison, their awareness heightened. Focused on the movement’s issues. Right now, two Action-Réaction members have been kept in solitary since 1987. They got married last year. Alors, the governor gave them a whole half hour!”

  Georges snorted, then squinted as he moved the ice pack up his nose. “It’s a blatant violation of the most basic human rights. We’re protesting outside Strasbourg prison, presenting a petition to the World Court in The Hague.”

  Maybe they weren’t the losers she’d thought. They’d stayed committed and dedicated to social change for more than twenty years.

  “What about the protests against the World Trade Organization at the Palais des Congrès?”

  “Tell me about it, eh!” Georges pointed to his nose. “This shiner’s courtesy of the CRS* riot squad,” he said readjusting the ice. “I’m getting too old for this.”

  She remembered the newspaper headline about the nerve gas Sarin. “What about that rumor of a copycat attack on the Metro, like that Japanese cult.”

  “Not Action-Réaction,” Georges said. “We’re for political change, not terrorism; that faction split off in the eighties.” Georges pointed to the buildings surrounding the courtyard. “But it’s a tradition in my family. Socialists for generations. Even an anarchist or two. During the Occupation, the Resistance had a stronghold here, courtesy of my uncle’s printing press. Funny thing is, a German headquarters was at the other end of the courtyard.”

  *Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité

  He stood straighter and grinned. “Before the war, the Sentier was home to newspapers and honeycombed with small presses, my uncle once told me. During power cutoffs, they’d print Combat, the clandestine Resistance newspaper, and counterfeit identification papers, by pedaling bicycles hooked up to the presses. In the eighties we squatted in the derelict buildings peppering the Sentier, agitating to rehouse the sans-papiers.”

  Aimée touched the cold, worn stone and wondered why her mother had gotten involved.

  “Some of the old machines were left in the basement,” Georges said. He rubbed his tired eyes. “We still use them. Same struggle against tyranny and oppression.”

  He made a pfft sound, shrugged. “Alors, it’s a tradition in this blue-collar quartier. Revolution has been fomented here since the Bastille. In central Paris one works hard to stay afloat: shop owners, printing presses, the rag and shag trade, right next to couture houses and the Bourse. But now that the dot-coms have moved in, things may change.”

  She’d seen the nonstop activity in the streets, felt the pulse. The people who lived here worked here, a remnant of old Paris.

  All
true but none of this got her closer to her mother or her ties to Jutta. Then a thought occurred to her. Romain Figeac was an old radical, he’d lived a few blocks away, and his wife was rumored to have been pregnant with a terrorist’s child.

  “But you must have known Romain Figeac … wasn’t he involved in Action-Réaction?”

  Georges frowned. “Figeac held a grudge against us after his wife left him. Blamed us. Never got over it,” he said. “Like me, he’s a grown-up titi from the quartier. He supported the movement at first. When it was fashionable, he housed us all.”

  Now she was getting somewhere.

  “Did Figeac know my mother? I heard she helped Sartre with Haader’s interview about agit888. Do you know about it?”

  “An article?” He shrugged. “There were parties at Figeac’s apartment. Everyone went. But your mother and Jana, Figeac’s wife, never got along.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She thought Jana was too hard-core, too irrational, and took too many drugs,” he said. “But that’s all I remember.”

  “Georges, did you know Jutta Hald?”

  Sadness crossed his face. “Radicals pass through here all the time. But I’m not into violence. Our group never was … like I said, we split from the terrorists.”

  “Jutta just got out of prison, did you see her?”

  “My grandson said she came by, but I was at the manif demonstration.”

  “Did she leave you a message?”

  Georges shook his head. “Why would someone kill her?”

  Before she could say she’d found Jutta, he spoke.

  “Why don’t you help us?” he asked. “Like your mother.”

  Startled, she leaned against the dank wall for support. “What do you mean?”

  “Provide places to stay for those who’ve gone underground,” he said. “In the seventies we had a goal. We still do.”

  “But I don’t …”

  “There’s someone now. If you want to know about Jules, he’s the one to ask,” Georges interrupted.

  “Who?”

  “No names.”

  He was right. It was better not to know.

  “And my mother …?” She felt Georges had deliberately left things out, withheld information.

  “Her life was revolution and art,” he said. “So you’ll help?”