Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  She heard what sounded like a hand covering the receiver, a muffled a conversation. Couldn’t make out the words.

  “I’ve got an appointment,” Elise said finally. “Talk to you later.”

  The phone had clicked off.

  Elise was holding back. What was she afraid of?

  Lost in thought, Aimée stared at the chipped gold paint on the Buddha’s back. Madonna’s “Material Girl” was playing now. René was dancing with one of Martine’s sisters, the one who was an editor at ELLE. Aimée pulled the report from her bag, opened it. Read through Elise’s statement again. No useful names.

  Elise seemed to want to blame Suzy for Bruno Peltier’s murder, but Aimée knew that didn’t make sense. She was also sure Elise was hiding something. Before Aimée could do anything else, she had to find out the second victim’s identity, verify her suspicions. She needed to find out if these other men were in danger, or if one of them was the killer.

  If she could get the victim’s name, she could cross-reference the photos she’d taken of the Laurent reservation page. The photos had all come out blurry except one, and that one was cropped, only half a page of names. Better than nothing. She’d start there. But first she needed to know who she was looking for.

  No name had been released by the flics. But she did know a flic. Her godfather, her tonton, Commissaire Morbier.

  Time to give him a call on Martine’s latest accessoire.

  Not in his office. After five minutes of wheedling and little white lies, she found out he was at the rue d’Anjou commissariat. According to her plan de Paris, which she kept in her bag at all times, that was a short bike ride.

  She waved to René, who was dancing with Martine’s sister. Dumped the cell phone by the Saint-Honoré cake and blew a kiss to Martine.

  Outside, the wet streets glistened under the lamplight. She made good time on her bike with Miles Davis in the basket. The narrow rue, named for the Duc d’Anjou, whose brother became Henri III, formed an eighteenth-century mélange of small and grand hôtels particuliers.

  In the courtyard, she chained her bike by the ancient blue police lantern and trudged up the stairs to the old-fashioned commissariat. An anomaly, lodged in a bourgeois apartment with wood banisters, stained-glass windows, and a parlor. According to the historical pamphlet sitting on the reception desk, Juliette Récamier, after whom the sofa was named, lived here, and the Marquis de Lafayette next door. The place was permeated with the smell of sweat and fear she recognized from every police station she’d been in.

  She asked the policewoman at reception if she could see Morbier.

  “You have an appointment?”

  She tried for an engaging smile. “I’m his goddaughter.”

  That and five francs fifty would get her a café noir, by the officer’s no-nonsense expression.

  The frosted-glass door of a nearby conference room opened, emitting tobacco smoke and laughter—and Morbier’s unmistakable low voice.

  “I’ll just pop in,” she said.

  “Wait, you can’t go in there,” said the policewoman.

  “Only take a minute.” Aimée slid past before the policewoman could stop her. She recognized a few police hands from her father’s days on the force. His old card-playing cronies: smiling Thomas Dussollier, whose daughter had sometimes played with Aimée when they were small; Lefèvre with his red-veined nose, who was stouter than she remembered. Lefèvre was a proud Orléanais, and it looked to Aimée like he’d been enjoying quite a bit of his favorite Orléanais beer, La Johannique, which was flavored with local honey. He always brought it with him when he came over to play cards; it was the first beer Aimée had ever been allowed to sip.

  And there was Morbier, his brown basset-hound eyes registering his surprise. His jowls sagged and his thick lips turned down in disapproval. An expression she’d met often as a teenager.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “Bonjour to you, too, Tonton.” she said. “Class is over, by the way.”

  Dussollier kissed her on both cheeks. “Long time, Aimée. Before you start curing the rest of the world, I wish you’d start on my arthritis.”

  She grinned. “Grand-père says the same thing.”

  “Bon, I’ll get in line.” Dussollier and Lefèvre paused at the door. “Best to your papa.”

  She nodded, grateful. Not many men on the force would acknowledge him these days.

  Morbier shook his head. Aimée noticed his thick, dark hair was silvering at the temples. He closed the dossier and nodded to the policewoman. “It’s all right, Morgane,” he said.

  “You’re Jean-Claude’s daughter?” The policewoman cocked an eyebrow. “But I remember you doing your homework after school, when I was a rookie.”

  Aimée grinned in recognition, noticed her stripes. “That’s right. Made sergeant, eh?”

  The phone rang. Morgane winked. “Say hello to your father.”

  “Merci, Morgane.”

  Aimée noticed a big blackboard with Gucci heist written on it. Names—a few celebrities she recognized. “Big case, eh?”

  He shrugged. “I’m assuming school’s going well and you’re studying for exams?”

  As if she’d tell him otherwise.

  “Fine. Could you do me a favor?”

  “Favor? It’s not a good time, Aimée. This isn’t even my turf—Robbery pulled us over here and I’m stretched thin.”

  He ran all over the place. Always had.

  “The Eighth is rampant high-end crime.”

  Who knew?

  “Rolex watches nabbed, a Gucci heist off the Champs-Élysées, boutiques and jewelry stores robbed in broad daylight. A highly organized gang.”

  “I’ll be quick,” she said. “Can you take a look at the report from last night’s homicide—the body recovered under Pont des Invalides? I need to know the ID of the victim.”

  “Eh?” She heard surprise in his voice. A rarity.

  “Only take a second, Tonton.” She smiled.

  “That’s classified information, Aimée. What’s it to you?”

  “Didn’t you refer Elise Peltier to Papa? This is for her case.”

  “Attends, Aimée. How does this go together?”

  “Doesn’t it? Or you think there’s a random serial killer shooting old men execution-style on the quai?”

  Cellophane crinkled as he opened a new pack of Gauloises. He scratched a match on the table edge, lit up. Took a long inhale. “Let me talk with your father.”

  Treating her as if she were still five years old!

  “Papa’s in Berlin. He asked me to follow up with you and find the man’s identity,” she lied. She remembered the joy of stealing his Gauloises when she was younger.

  “Quoi? Don’t you have exams?”

  Couldn’t he talk about anything else?

  “Bien sûr, and Papa’s got rent to pay. I’m helping out.”

  “Tell your father that information’s under wraps, pending family notification.” Morbier flicked ash. “He’ll understand.”

  Fat lot of good that did her.

  “Aimée, did you run this by your father?”

  What her father didn’t know wouldn’t bother him. Plus he’d lied to her.

  She nodded. “You referred Elise to us, Morbier. But we can’t help her if we don’t know the second victim’s name.”

  They stared at each other. Blue smoke spiraled in a coil up to the high ceiling.

  “How about just saying oui or non to some names, that work?”

  “What in the world’s gotten into you . . . ?” Pause. “Since when do med students have time for side gigs?”

  “When it involves family,” said Aimée. “Elise is my cousin.” Another half-lie. She took out the list of names she’d pulled from the Laurent reservations book after ruling out one- and two-pe
rson parties. “Mondini, Guerbois, Pribault? Anything strike a bell?”

  “What are we playing, Questions pour un Champion?”

  The télé game show.

  “More like a game where you tell me if you recognize the victim’s name.”

  “And I’d do that why?”

  “To assist Papa’s inquiries and identify the next potential victim. That work for you?”

  His heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “And your father wants this information? Sounds like you do.”

  “Didn’t you refer Elise Peltier to Papa? C’est-ça, non? We’re just trying to do what you told her we would. She says the flics do nothing.”

  “Pah, there’s a forensics slowdown. The brigade criminelle deal as best they can. She’s a nuisance.”

  Should she try a personal plea? “Can’t you do a small favor for your own goddaughter?”

  “So I used to take you to ballet lessons,” he said, exhaling. “So what?”

  So much for that strategy. One for the minus column.

  “Look, I’m in the middle of a robbery investigation. Full-on.”

  “What’s new?” Aimée said, annoyed with him now. So stubborn. “Elise broke down in tears in our office, begging us. Her fiancé says a police suspect turned out to have an alibi.”

  “Et alors, the brigade criminelle’s got to prioritize, but they’re investigating and she’s not helping by meddling.”

  “Can you help me or not?”

  A sigh. He stabbed out his cigarette and the Ricard ashtray clinked into a water glass. She’d seen him do that a thousand times. Another sigh as he stood up. “No promises.”

  While she waited, she munched the crudités and jambon cru she’d pocketed from the party. Shared some of the ham with Miles Davis, who’d woken up.

  “Who’s this?” Morbier had returned with a stack of folders. Miles Davis licked Morbier’s pointing finger. “Another of your grand-père’s strays?”

  She told him.

  “Meels Daveez?”

  “He likes you, Morbier. Can’t you just tell me the victim’s name?”

  “How do I know? I grabbed the latest homicide reports. Takes time to go through them. So read me your list of names quick or we don’t do this at all. I’ve got a meeting.”

  Better than nothing.

  She read out the names she’d culled from the reservation log in the photo. “Mondini, Guerbois, Pribault.”

  Morbier thumbed the reports, keeping them out of her view. Shook his head.

  “Dubois, Pepy . . .”

  “Any with a B?” asked Morbier.

  “Could be . . . ” She pulled out the blurry photo again, but the angle of her hurried shot distorted the letters. “Would it be Ba . . . looks like B-A-R . . .”

  “Baret?”

  Had to be. Party of three. Two other names listed in the left margin—those names she could make out.

  “That’s him. He dined with an Alain Dufard, and Philbert Royant.” She tried to contain her excitement at the discovery—after all, it could be a coincidence. The blurry name might be something else entirely; the second murder victim, Baret, might not actually be a friend of Bruno Peltier’s, or have anything to do with him at all. But she remembered what her grand-père had said about coincidences—they usually weren’t. “Those other two men need to be warned,” she said.

  “Warned?”

  “What if they’re in danger?”

  “That’s supposition, Aimée.”

  “A supposition you can’t afford to ignore. Were Bruno Peltier’s friends, whom he dined with the night he died, even questioned? Now it looks like a second man from that group has been executed in exactly the same way. I don’t need a crystal ball to tell you the others might be next.”

  Morbier snorted. “Well, our crystal ball’s called evidence.” He gestured to the board. “This is how it’s done. Piecing together solid evidence to build a case.” Another shake of his head. “Now look. I have my hands full with my own cases. This isn’t even my department. Belongs to the brigade criminelle, who have it under control.”

  Under control? Hadn’t he hinted the case ranked low in priority?

  “Now you tell your father he owes me.”

  Lichtenberg, Former East Germany

  Saturday Morning

  “You owe me this, Gerhard,” said Jean-Claude Leduc, pulling his wool scarf tighter in the slicing wind.

  Gerhard, his contact, put his hands deep in his coat pocket. Jean-Claude heard coins jingle.

  “And my contact owes me,” said Gerhard. He was an unusual-looking man, with high Slavic cheekbones, slanted eyes, and thick black hair. “You know how it works.”

  Favors begat favors here on the grey street in Lichtenberg, where the Stasi had their headquarters on the outskirts of Berlin. The prewar buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes. The HQ, a stark, oyster-grey concrete building, stood next to a weed-choked bomb site. It had once housed the main office of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin; before that it was a Wehrmacht officers’ mess.

  “Et alors? I expected the documents ready and waiting for pickup. Like we’ve always done, Gerhard.”

  “My contact went out celebrating,” said Gerhard. “He got drunk after the Wall fell, set fire to his Trabi. Expecting a Mercedes like everyone drives in the West.” Gerhard grinned. And when he did, the Asian in him surfaced. The child of a Mongolian soldier and Prussian mother, he’d been conceived in the Battle of Berlin as the Soviet troops invaded. Gerhard never knew his father. After a long night of drinking, he once told Jean-Claude he doubted his mother knew him either. She’d been hiding in the basement when a Soviet Mongolian troop found her. His mother hanged herself when he was two. There were many like Gerhard, Russenkind, though Gerhard said no one talked about them. He grew up in an orphanage in what became the East.

  Jean-Claude rubbed his hands. So damn cold. “Why is it you’re just telling me now?”

  “I’m not,” Gerhard replied. “When your daughter woke me up in the middle of the night, I told her, too.”

  His heart caught. “She called you? Why? Something wrong?”

  His little princess, worse than a squirrel after a nut.

  “Nein. Not from what I heard. She was going to leave you a message at the hotel.”

  Jean-Claude hadn’t had time to check in.

  “What did you tell her exactly, Gerhard?”

  Gerhard scanned the windblown street. “Your daughter? I said my contact went incommunicado, I think. She woke me up.”

  A man in a leather jacket walked by, stopped to greet Gerhard in Russian. Gerhard spoke Russian, German, French, and British English, the Allies’ language of his childhood on the rubbled Berlin streets.

  “Give me a little trinkgeld for my contact. You know, so he can get himself some schnapps for his hangover. Hair of the dog, you call it?”

  Gerhard still surprised Jean-Claude with his inimitable Berliner gallows humor, cynical and irreverent. Not even the most hardened homicide flics he knew came close.

  Reaching back in his overcoat pocket, Jean-Claude pulled out a handful of West German marks. “What else did my daughter say? You didn’t tell her anything, give any names, did you?”

  Gerhard’s eyes narrowed as he looked over Jean-Claude’s shoulder. “There’s my contact, he’s going in the gate. If I don’t hurry I’ll miss him.”

  Jean-Claude reached in another pocket and thrust a wad of American dollars in his hands. “Get it, Gerhard. Beg, borrow, steal, promise anything. I mean it.”

  Gerhard nodded. “Wait for me in that Kaffeehaus. The same one.”

  The wind whipped gusts of shredded paper and a yellowed Berliner Tageblatt down the street as Jean-Claude watched Gerhard go. The time was now, before Stasi officers shredded and burned their way through several decades’ worth of intel
ligence files. They wanted to protect informants, hide government crimes, and cleanse the archives of any evidence that would be used against them. Or, in some cases, they wanted to sell the files to the highest bidder.

  Walking through the Berlin streets, Jean-Claude felt the euphoria and confusion—all the rules and regulations were out the window. He had to make the most of the chaos as the Wall came down.

  He lingered a moment on the street. Felt a curious tingling up his neck, like a sixth sense. He turned around. Only vacant windows like hollow eyes, a man and a woman pushing a baby buggy across the windswept street. Their laughter floated on the wind.

  His remembered pushing Aimée in a buggy like that. She’d been muffled up for a cold November. Sidonie’s arm was in his, her other clutching a sketchbook, as they walked on the quai after her drawing class. He remembered stopping in the steamy, warm café. Sidonie’s laughter at Aimée’s look of delight as she tasted her first sip of chocolat chaud.

  A bus pulled up, the couple mounted, and then it was gone. He was alone again on the grey street.

  In the Kaffeehaus, a utilitarian establishment heated by a coal stove, he debated on a coffee. Went with the bière. With his change he went to the phone cabin by the dirt-streaked window. Seventies prefab blocks, anonymous and drab, were scattered between rundown nineteenth-century buildings.

  He tried Leduc Detective. No answer; he left a message. Worried, he tried Aimée’s pager. The phone ate up his coins before he could put in the hotel’s number to retrieve his message.

  What had Aimée been up to, calling Gerhard in the middle of the night? For now he put that aside as he sat at the gouged wooden counter. He had to keep the desperation at bay, to count on Gerhard succeeding, as he always had.

  From force of habit his mind went to Monday’s upcoming surveillance at Place Vendôme. Ticked off the boxes again, mentally checking each task. Each dreaded task.

  A reminder had arrived in this morning’s telegram with the message No one ever leaves. He’d thrown back, Watch me.

  He pulled out Soli Hecht’s card. Pushed it back and forth between his fingers. But why would Soli offer him a contact when Soli could go for Sidonie’s files himself—as eager as he appeared for her Hezbollah connections? Or would he use Jean-Claude to do the work while he had bigger Nazi fish to fry?