Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  “I still check that name every few years.” He passed what he had over to her. “But that’s the last record I found.”

  Her shoulders sagged, her eyes deep pools of longing. And for a moment he saw a vestige of the young woman she was—the heartbroken young woman.

  “Who was it?”

  She opened her lizard-skin handbag, took out her wallet. “Silly, but . . .” A much-thumbed black-and-white photo in a Plasticine case: a smiling boy in short pants with a side part in his hair. “Yves, my little brother.”

  Heinz nodded in understanding. He turned the pinkie ring on his finger, the initials worn away from years of remembering, like the one worn by his own little brother. At least she had a photo.

  “You did include a train timetable here in the envelope?”

  “And a ticket, Heinz. I knew you’d want to talk to the priest yourself.”

  Paris · Saturday, 2 p.m.

  Aimée worked on her histology report at the kitchen table, Miles Davis at her feet on the warm tiles. The kitchen was full of the yeasty smells from her grand-père’s rising brioche dough on the counter, where it sat in a bowl covered by a damp dishtowel. Outside the window, low-lying mist, like an old man’s wispy beard, wound over the Seine. The gunmetal sky promised rain.

  The phone rang. She hoped it was Elise.

  “Weren’t you going to call me?” said Martine.

  “Mais oui, Martine.” She’d forgotten. Oops.

  “You forgot. How could you—”

  “Forget your birthday? Never. In fact I’m wrapping your present right now.”

  Her eye caught on Miles Davis. She pondered how he’d look with a pink bow.

  Martine squealed. “Don’t tell me. But I hope it’s what I want.”

  Good thing she’d doubled back and bought that one-of-a-kind silk scarf last week from the Saint-Germain boutique after Martine gushed over it.

  “What’s with your pager, Aimée? You never answer.”

  Where had she put the damn thing? She should check it for messages.

  “Don’t forget the party’s Madonna-themed,” Martine went on. “You’re bringing Florent, of course.”

  She couldn’t tell Martine that going to a party was the last thing she felt like doing. “Alors, Martine, last night . . .”

  “Tell me later. I’m counting on you.” Click.

  Looking at her notebook, she gulped. She had to finish her histology report and make the deadline today. She’d gotten one extension already, couldn’t afford to blow this one.

  And what could she do with the puppy nestling at her feet? He’d peed twice on the carpet this morning. She couldn’t leave him here.

  “Allons-y, Miles Davis, time to go to school, okay?” she said, not wanting to move.

  In answer he jumped up into her lap.

  Fifteen minutes later, the report as done as she could make it, she forced herself to stand and headed to her armoire. The Breton striped shirt and classic cropped cigarette trousers? Or pencil skirt and retro silk blouse?

  Her fingers paused on the Chanel. The first treasure she’d found at the vintage stall at the flea market. Her hands had caught on the silk lining of something at the bottom of the bin. A Chanel jacket. Un coup de foudre, love at first sight.

  “Une classique. Can’t say I remember wearing that, wish I had,” said the chignoned middle-aged woman at the flea market stall.

  “How much?” Aimée asked.

  The worn cuffs didn’t detract from the jacket’s simple, elegant line.

  “Of course it goes with your cowboy boots; un peu chic, très éclectique.” The woman smiled. “Those authentique?”

  From her summer abroad in America looking for her mother, when all she’d come back with were the boots.

  “Oui, from Houston.” Courtesy of a desperate phone call to her father to beg for a money order. “May I try it on?”

  And she did, in front of the cracked oval mirror, the stall’s merchandise flapping in the wind around her. She surrendered to the silk lining. It breathed style, panache.

  “For you, mon enfant, a thousand francs.”

  Her heart fell. “Not in my budget.” She tried to bargain. “It’s years old.”

  The stall owner’s eyes narrowed in bargaining mode. “But never out of style. See, even with your jeans, the jacket adds classe. Trust Coco, I’ve always said. A little black dress or a jacket of hers takes you everywhere.”

  Eventually Aimée brought the woman down, but still it emptied her snout-nosed piggy bank. Couture, the woman insisted, meant hand-stitched work, fitted lines, something to wear for years—cheap at the price if you consider true quality. And at this price until it rots off my back, Aimée thought, feeling like a sucker all the way home on the bus.

  From then on, she added a bit of Chanel if she found a piece at the flea market or consignment shop. Learned how to combine, accessorize with a scarf or old pearls. The goal was to look effortless and tousled, not too studied, spontaneous—the real chic, as madame insisted.

  For Martine’s party, she donned her cowboy boots, a silk T-shirt softer than skin, and the Chanel, then slipped into her lined leather overcoat.

  In the courtyard, her breath fogged as she pulled her bike out from behind the old stable. With Miles Davis wrapped in his blanket in the straw bike basket, she double-knotted her scarf. Her pager beeped somewhere in her bag. She checked, but it wasn’t her father or Elise. Annoying. Was the battery low again? She’d deal with it later.

  She rode out of her courtyard onto the quai, over the damp leaves and along the Seine. At the corner she turned, narrowly missing the chestnut seller’s cart. The aroma of roasting chestnuts and damp leaves—autumn smells—filled the street.

  Ten minutes later, she was at l’école de médecine, passing the engraved wall plaque honoring doctors who had given their lives in the First World War. In the campus courtyard of Université Paris Descartes, Miles Davis watered the cobblestones. Aimée turned in her histology report and got a stamped receipt from the department secretary. By then her pager was beeping nonstop, piercing little shrieks. What appeared to be some kind of code in repetitive alphanumerics streamed across the small pager window. Had the thing jammed?

  Miles Davis whined and pulled at his leash. Without a working pager, Elise and her father couldn’t contact her.

  “Isn’t there an electronics shop near here?” she asked the secretary.

  The secretary put her hands over her ears. “You need René.”

  “Who?” Aimée tried hitting the off button, but the power switch kept sliding. It fell off.

  “The only one who understands these infernal machines.”

  Did she have time?

  Piercing shrieks erupted again.

  “That’s breaking my ears. You need René,” she said again. The secretary wrote down an address at one of the Sorbonne’s science divisions and waved her away.

  The Sorbonne’s Université Paris annex in the rear of Palais de la Découverte reeked of damp paint and mildew. The “temporary” classrooms that had been lodged here since before the Second World War were lined with peeling notices, and there was an old bomb shelter sign—Abri—with an arrow pointing to the cellar. Aimée shivered in the cold warren of passageways. She passed through the student lounge with an upright piano and sagging sofas and found the computer lab, a few terminals bathed in the dirty pearlescent light streaming through tall windows.

  The only occupant was a male dwarf with brown, curly hair. He wore a tailored wool coat and clicked away one-handed on a keyboard. With the other hand he popped glistening orange segments in his mouth.

  “Bonjour, I’m looking for René.”

  “Pager problems?” he said, a deep voice for a small person. Absorbed in whatever program he was running, he didn’t look up.

  She set down her ba
g. Wished she could grab an orange segment. “So you’re the pager wizard?”

  “Depends. It’ll cost if I can fix it.”

  She didn’t care. “I’m desperate.”

  She noticed his goatee and big green eyes as he looked up and gave her the once-over. “You, desperate?”

  In more ways than she wanted to admit.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  Aimée shrugged. “Can you fix it?”

  “Give me a second.” He stood, flicked the pager over, pulled out the battery, inserted a new one, and attached a new power button.

  Handsome little devil, she thought, noting his long torso, short arms, and muscular legs. Tried to remember the answer to last week’s exam question—were achondroplastic dwarfs disproportionate and hypochondroplasia dwarfs proportionate, or vice versa?

  He pressed the power button several times. Clicked messages. “Hmm. You’re getting a message. It looks like what’s called ‘leeting.’”

  “What’s that?”

  He grabbed a paper and wrote something down. “See, a code like this, using numbers to represent letters. So here ‘loser’ is 10ser. But this? 3838—well, the first part, 3838, means bébé. and the rest—that’s saying back off or else. Looks like someone is threatening you.”

  A frisson rippled up her spine. “Who is sending them?”

  René shrugged. “Want my help or not? Leave it and come back later. Or better yet, tomorrow.”

  “You’re kidding, tomorrow? This petite chose?”

  But René’s attention was taken by two male students, one blond and gangly, the other in a jean jacket, striding into the room. Before she could ask how much fixing the pager would cost her, the jean jacket grabbed René’s arm. She could almost smell the testosterone.

  “You owe us, petit,” he said. “Pay up.”

  “Your motherboard’s beyond repair,” René said. “Kaput.”

  “We want a refund.”

  “Didn’t you understand when I said no refunds for work done?”

  “Talking like a professional?” The blond laughed. “More like a pint-sized amateur.” He shoved René into the corner.

  She didn’t like the feral look in the blond’s eyes, or the way he pushed René. Bullies. “Leave him alone,” she said. Miles Davis growled.

  “Stay out of this,” said René, shooting her an irritated look. “I don’t need your help.” Perspiration dotted his forehead.

  Jean jacket looked her up and down. “Don’t you have fingernails to file?”

  Her damn pager erupted in more shrieks.

  Torn, she wondered what to do. She couldn’t stand by and watch the bullies beat René up. Her knuckles whitened, clenching the chair’s back.

  “Cough up this time or else . . .” Jean jacket lifted his fist, aiming at René’s head. René caught his wrist, twisted his arm behind him, and shoved it upward in one move. So quick she almost missed it.

  “Act funny and I break your arm,” said René.

  Jean jacket winced in pain. Nodded. René let go, shoved him forward. “Out, both of you.”

  Miles Davis broke off his leash, shot like a bullet, and bit the jean jacket’s leg. “Aïe . . . merde!” Moaning, the bully tried to bat the dog away. “Pull that mutt off or I’ll have animal control put him down!”

  “Not before I put you down, comprends?” René grabbed the leash and pulled Miles Davis off. “Take this with you.” He threw the bag with their motherboard after the two mecs.

  When they had left, René said, “Why did you try to defend me?” His green eyes flashed. “Who do you think you are?”

  Her cheeks reddened. She’d hurt his pride. Stupid.

  “Two against one didn’t seem fair,” she said. Weak, it sounded so weak.

  Not a scratch on him. “What you really mean is you didn’t think a man of my stature could defend himself,” he said. “I’m a black belt. Don’t need some bourgeois Left Bank bobo like you to fight my battles.”

  “You proved that. Désolée.” Abashed, she averted her eyes. She rummaged in her bag among mascara tubes, her lab notebook, ELLE magazine, and her keys and found a treat for Miles Davis. “You’re impressive, René. Vraiment.”

  “So’s your attack dog.” René brushed dust from his shoulders.

  “Him? He’s a stray. I’m just looking after him for my grandfather.”

  Miles Davis’s black button eyes were trained on Aimée.

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “So how much to fix my pager?”

  “I need a drink,” he said. “Or two. Although I was going to go to the theater for the late matinee.”

  She checked her Tintin watch. Good God, Martine’s party—she was late. The idea of going alone terrified her. A loser whose “boyfriend” was getting engaged to someone else this weekend.

  “Drinks I can handle,” she said. “Feel like a party? An exclusive one?”

  His eyes widened. “Like a date?”

  “Pushing it, aren’t you?” Stupid—she needed his help. Grinned. “More lively than the theater.”

  He smiled for the first time. “Give me three minutes and your pager will be like new.”

  Now she had to put on a happy face for a party. She wished she could be spending her time tracking Elise down. Getting in touch with her father so she could tell him what had happened. Pursuing links to the second murder.

  “Got any enemies?” René asked, studying her pager.

  “No more than usual.”

  René snorted. “What does that mean?”

  She pulled her compact from her bag and checked her makeup in the mirror. “I hand out my business card with the pager number like candy.”

  But her fingers shook as she freshened up her Chanel red lipstick. Everything crowded in on her at once, as if she were battling an ocean current, struggling to stay on the surface, to breathe—school, Florent, her father’s lying about her mother and his secret trip to Berlin, the murdered man floating at the quai, the threatening pager message.

  “I thought you were a student.”

  She nodded. “First-year med.”

  Hanging by her teeth.

  “And you fix computers?” she asked.

  “A sideline.”

  Miles Davis’s tail wagged. She handed René her self-made Leduc Detective card. “Since taking a surveillance job last night, I’ve given out about ten of these.” She thought about it; the clubs on rue de Ponthieu, Suzy, Marc, the bartender, the man working the café where she’d bought Suzy coffee, Elise’s fiancé.

  “How does a med student have time to do surveillance?”

  “Got to earn my allowance,” she said. He thought she was a spoiled rich kid. “Leduc Detective’s my father’s firm.”

  René’s eyes popped. “Do you have a gun?”

  “Not with me.” It was home in the spoon drawer—the gun was last year’s Christmas present from her grandfather. Looked like it was time to get it out. Brush up her skills.

  By the time René had done his magic—something he referred to as ReFLEX Telelocator Numerical Protocol—and reset her pager, Miles Davis needed to water the plants.

  Glints of midafternoon sun broke through black-and-blue-tinged clouds, revealing patches of indigo sky. The wet zinc mansards gleamed. The afternoon wind whipped the damp leaves around Aimée’s ankles as she walked her bike above the quai, René at her side. After the first few minutes of walking with him, she’d stopped feeling so awkward about towering over René. About four feet tall, she figured. He kept pace; once he tripped, caught himself, and she pretended not to notice.

  Now her eyes were drawn along the khaki-colored Seine to the spot under Pont des Invalides. Caught on the yellow crime-scene tape flickering in the wind. The execution spot.

  Here, just behind the Palais de la Découverte.<
br />
  Her mind returned to the night before: the blanketing mist, the police Zodiac’s blue glow, the shouts, that piercing white light illuminating the dark red hole in the back of the man’s head, the rag in his mouth.

  Suddenly she had a powerful feeling that she had missed something. In the shock of discovery, something had eluded her—what was it?

  “I’ve got to check something out.”

  René’s brow shot up. “What about the party?”

  “Only take a minute.”

  Ahead on the quai, wavelets buffeted the docked bateaux-mouches as a barge glided past. Passengers huddled in line, waiting to board.

  “Don’t tell me the party’s on a boat? I get seasick.”

  She leaned down on the quai by the blocked-off area under the bridge’s arch. The dark moisture-stained cobbles radiated a metallic damp.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Anything here strike you as out of the ordinary?”

  As an outsider he’d have fresh eyes. Not that there would be much left at the scene a whole day later.

  René snorted. “Besides the crime-scene tape?”

  Something flickered at the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t quite capture it.

  “Weird echoes down here,” said René. He gave a shiver. “Spooky.”

  “You’re right.” She whistled, heard the echo bounce and play under the stone arch and over the curdling water. She studied the dim spot under the arch.

  “Why did we come here?”

  She’d pulled out the photo, consulted it. Tried not to focus on those dead eyes but instead on the shadows surrounding him on the quai.

  “Alors, playing some game, Aimée? Either we go to the party or . . .” He paused. “I’ve got places to go.”

  If she didn’t explain, he’d leave.

  “Désolée. Last night I was standing right here when the police found this man. A waterlogged corpse.”

  René looked at the photo in her hand. Shivered. “Gruesome.”

  She nodded.

  “If you wait here long enough, maybe you’ll catch him,” René said, finally. “The killer always revisits the scene of the crime.”

  She looked up in surprise. “And you know that how?”