Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

  René hadn’t picked up the bills. Stared at them, crumpled and dirty in the low afternoon glow coming from the high windows.

  “Do it for the Givaray families whose sixty innocent relatives were slaughtered in revenge for a crime they didn’t commit.” She shivered. She pushed the photos across the table. “All Georges Ducray has to remember his papa by is an old photo. It’s different when you meet a human affected by this.”

  “You’re making this personal, Aimée. Looks to me this Georges Ducray’s a possible suspect. ”

  “Maybe you’re right, René. Still, can you just let a murderer steal the gold those sixty innocent people died for?”

  René was staring at the photo of Dufard, Peltier, the mayor, and the little boy. “They were executed, too?”

  “Non. This photo is from Chambly-sur-Cher.” She told him what she knew about each of the men in the picture.

  “There’s something familiar about that man, the mayor,” said René. “Too bad it’s blurry.”

  René shrugged. “Puzzles intrigue me. Still, without more info, this is a wild-goose chase.”

  “Plenty of meat to chew on here, René. I know someone who knows someone at the mairie’s archives.”

  René’s brow knit. “Alors, it’s pro bono. I don’t care for blood money.” He handed the cash back. Checked his laptop. “The disk’s files are encrypted. I need to open it with a program back at the computer lab.”

  “Merci, René.”

  She glanced out the door at the station clock, whose hour hand was on the 4. Late, so late already.

  René stuck his laptop inside his bag, stood up. Grunted. The laptop had to weigh close to ten kilos. “Contingent on one thing, Aimée.”

  What now?

  “Next week you’re taking me to Martine’s sister’s party at ELLE.”

  Paris · Late Sunday Afternoon

  Aimée rushed up the stairs of Pâtisserie Viennoise, a student haunt on narrow rue de l’École de Medécine. She loved the homey, wood-paneled old-style Viennese bakery. The butter smells. And its pastries.

  Her study group, at a back table, had gathered their books and were already breaking up. “Late as usual,” said Serge, the group leader. “C’est fini.”

  Merde.

  There was Florent, blond hair tousled, wearing a wool scarf she recognized as the one she’d forgotten in his apartment. Her insides wrenched as she watched him help a woman into her jacket. His new fiancée? Talk about throwing it in her face.

  “Désolée,” she said to Serge. “Here’s my section summary. I’ll get copies to the others.”

  “We’ve covered the section already. Handed out exam study questions.”

  Already? How could she catch up?

  “I saved you one.” Serge handed her a stapled sheet. “We’re eighty percent sure of the exam questions.”

  Stunned, Aimée scanned the sheets. “Don’t they call this cheating?”

  Serge’s eyes clouded behind his thick lenses. “Your boyfriend had already shared copies before I got here. Ethics matter little to first years. You do anything to make it into second year. You know that.”

  “Report him, Serge.”

  “I did once. Like that made a difference.”

  It made her sick. One of her fellow study groupers stashed the paper and winked at her. How could this be fair, or make for a good doctor?

  “You think it stinks?” said Serge. “Just wait until the exam.”

  “So only those students in the right study group will have a chance of passing? How do you go along with it?”

  “I don’t. But I’ve wanted to be a doctor all my life. I’d rather fight to be a forensic pathologist than battle an archaic medical system.” Serge shrugged.

  Just as corrupt as the flics—where only the inner circle got the leg up. No wonder her father had been glad to leave the force.

  She turned on her heel.

  Halfway down rue de l’École de Medécine, she felt a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the hurry, Aimée?”

  Florent pulled her close before she could stop him. His warmth, that smell of his—a trace of musk and lime—were so familiar it was hard to push him away.

  “Where’s your fiancée?” she blurted. Stupid. She wished the cobblestones would crack open and swallow her and her big mouth.

  “That’s not important.” He brushed her hair from her eyes. “You’re important.” He pulled her into the doorway of a bar, kissed her hard.

  By the time she came up for air, his arms had circled her under her jacket. “We’re going here for a drink and you’ll understand why.”

  She caught her breath. “What’s to understand?”

  He grinned. That smile in his eyes almost melted her. “It’s you and me. C’est tout.”

  “I don’t think your father agrees with that. Or that I do.”

  Florent’s smile faded. “I’m not going to let him ruin my life.”

  “Alors, make him stop ruining mine.” She pulled away, checked her vibrating pager. “Got to go.”

  “I’ve worked it all out.” Florent grabbed her hand. “My family has an apartment in Bordeaux. Two hours away. We’ll see each other every weekend.”

  Worked it all out. As if he and his family had decided the course of her life?

  “Un nid d’amour, a love nest? What, you’ll keep me as your maîtresse, that’s what you’re thinking?” She laughed. “Incroyable.”

  “I’m your bad boy, non?”

  Not her kind of bad boy.

  A little girl in a blue coat holding a doll pointed at them. “Maman, he’s a bad boy, he said. Will he get in trouble?”

  Her mother, a trench-coated blonde, steered her down the cobbles. “Don’t point, ma chère.”

  “Florent, it’s 1989,” she said. “Royal mistresses were acceptable back in le grand siècle. History has moved on.”

  “What’s the difference, though, really?”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “My family is descended from the House of Bourbon,” he said. “There’s my title to consider.”

  Like anyone cared about that anymore. “Join the eighties, Florent.” She shook her head. “Maybe you’re descended from royalty. I’m descended from outlaws. And outlaws don’t give a damn about titles.” She pecked him on both cheeks. “Chew on that, mon prince.”

  She smiled to herself as she strode away.

  She ran all the way to Odéon Métro, down the stairs, and made it to the platform as the number 4’s doors were closing. She changed and exited at the small Place de l’Europe, a starburst of streets with names of European cities, radiating out above the tracks of Gare Saint-Lazare. Once the busiest part of Paris, Place de l’Europe had been the subject of twelve of Manet’s canvases—Aimée had had that fact drilled into her by her art teacher in school. It had been a question on their test. Manet had even persuaded the railway to stoke extra coal so that he could paint the effects of belching steam—graphite grey when trapped inside the station, pearl and cloudlike against the sky.

  The neighborhood that Hausmann had built opened to wide, tree-lined boulevards. Plastic bags whipped in the wind and caught in the riveted supports and railings of an old aboveground depot. Bourgeois mansions dotted the pointed roundabout—still well maintained, but no one lived there anymore. Now they were art foundations, an educational institute.

  Scarf flying, jacket flapping, she hurried across the normally busy rue de Rome, the music district. The street was closed to traffic today due to roadwork, or maybe a demonstration—there was always something. She passed the shop where grand-père used to buy her sheet music, the violin makers, her piano teacher’s apartment with its trailing ivy, and the music conservatory. Strains of a cello drifted from a window.

  Her teacher, Madame Sisich, used to hand her a raw egg to hold in her c
upped palm, instructing her to keep her hands positioned just so when she played. She’d broken the egg once, but never again.

  Madame’s son, Blaise, worked in the documents archive section in the mairie of the eighth arrondissement. Thank God he’d returned her call—if anyone could help her locate the paperwork for Peltier’s private banque, Blaise could.

  “It’s crazy today, Mademoiselle Aimée,” said Blaise Sisich, kissing her on both cheeks. He wore a navy three-piece suit, and brushed back his brown hair to show that widow’s peak hairline that fascinated her as a child. He’d always shared Flavigny mint drops from a blue tin with her after lessons. “There’s a reception for our remaining Great War veterans today, following the Armistice celebration. That’s the only reason we’re open. Hurry, I’ve got to get upstairs.”

  In the mairie, a nineteenth-century hôtel particulier, Blaise led her through what had been the carriage entrance and garden where wedding shots were taken after a ceremony in the salle des mariages. She hurried behind him up the marble staircase to the ancien fumoir, the old smoking salon, now the deputy’s office.

  Piles of papers, files everywhere, smelling of moldy, mildewed paper. She bit her lip. “What happened in here?”

  “We had a minor flood. Most of those records you requested should be here. Somewhere.”

  In this mountain of mildewed paper? More than the usual reams of bureaucratic paperwork. Daunting.

  “What if it’s damaged? That’s if I can even find it.”

  Blaise shrugged. Dusk hovered outside the rectangular window. “Remind me again why I am letting you into the archives?”

  “These?” She handed him Café Crème cigarillos in a brown-and-white box, his favorite Henri Wintermans brand from Holland.

  Blaise grinned. “My wife would shoot me. Merci.”

  “Any way to point me to la liste électorale and business licenses?”

  “Here and here.” Two paper mountains on a marquetry-inlaid desk.

  Narrowed it down a bit.

  “I close up this wing in forty minutes.”

  “Then I need to hurry.”

  She pulled up a worn Louis XVI chair and got to work. Ten minutes into a behemoth stack of CVAE, la cotatisation sur la valeur ajoutée des enterprises, she’d found the Foundry file.

  At least the ancient office had a fax machine. She paged René with the number printed on the black rotary phone. A moment later, the high-ceilinged office echoed with ringing.

  “Allô?”

  “Found it, Aimée?”

  “Think so. What’s your fax number? I’ll fax the pages over.”

  He gave it to her. “Stay on to make sure it goes through.”

  She hit his number, fed in the pages, and heard a corresponding rumbling and grinding.

  “Came through,” said René. “What’s this Banque Lazare on the floppy?”

  “Their private bank, according to what I’ve found.”

  “I’ll see if I have what I need to access a site and poke around Foundry. Meanwhile, find the bank’s business license.”

  She used the fax machine to copy the sheets while she sorted through two hundred business license folders. The eighth arrondissement was the business district, le quartier des affaires. There was Banque Lazare—the tax number, the shareholders.

  Voilà.

  By the time Blaise returned, she’d faxed René, made a rendezvous to meet tomorrow, restacked the files, and stuffed the copies in her bag, which was heavy with Georges Ducray’s info.

  “Merci, Blaise,” she said.

  “Got what you needed?”

  “Let’s hope.” After he locked the door, they walked down the marble staircase, now lit by the huge tear-drop crystal lamp.

  He clicked open the Café Crème cigarillo box. Offered her one.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Darkness blanketed the street. Tired, her bag hanging heavily across her chest, she dreamed of bed and Miles Davis’s little wet nose. Still another two blocks, then two Métro changes. She paused to light the cigarillo. Felt a jolt to her lungs.

  No one was out this Sunday evening. The small commissariat in the mairie was dark too. She heard clinking cutlery, a radio newscast from a window. Brrr. Looked around for a taxi. Nothing.

  A ripple of unease traveled down her back.

  She pulled her leg warmers up to her knees, puffed on her cigarillo, and put on her headphones. ZZ Top launched into “She’s Got Legs.” She kept step to the twanging guitar, eager to reach the Métro and get off the deserted street. The drumbeat pounded. At first her mind didn’t register what it meant—a sailing shard of glass splintering into diamond dust at her feet. A gunshot had shattered the window of the building beside her.

  Her reflexes kicked in. She dropped the cigarillo and dove behind a parked Mercedes, pulled off her headphones and crawled, peeking to see where the shot came from. The revving of an engine, a metallic whine as a bullet scorched the car hood ahead of her.

  Someone was trying to pick her off.

  No one even looked out their window. Damn, the shooter was using a suppressor.

  A taxi’s blue light shone ahead by the stairs to the rue du Rocher overpass. She slung back her bag, scrambled to her feet, and ran. Her breath came in spurts, her heels wobbled. Why hadn’t she worn her high-tops?

  That taxi looked familiar. Looking back, she could make out a dark figure inside pointing something at her. Dumb move number two.

  She zigzagged, veered right. Pumped her legs as fast as she could. The taxi careened toward her. Shots pinged off the stone wall, erupting in limestone bursts. Why wasn’t there traffic, a bus? Other people? But then she remembered the road closures.

  The quartier felt like a crypt. Her crypt.

  She made the staircase, ducking as she ran up. That cab couldn’t follow her here. Safe, she’d be safe if she made it up to rue du Rocher.

  Panting, sweat running between her shoulder blades, her lungs straining, she regretted that cigarillo. At the top she grabbed the railing and struggled for breath. Dark windows looked down on her. Two options: run uphill toward Parc Monceau or downhill to the Métro at Saint-Lazare. She chose the latter. Headlights loomed, a car raced toward her. The gypsy taxi had swung around and come gunning up the wrong way on the one-way rue du Rocher.

  Out for her blood.

  The street-level window ahead of her was grilled. Nowhere else to go before the car gained on her. With no time to think, she pushed the door’s buzzer, pushed again.

  Several green garbage bins stood near the street lamp, so she kicked one and then another into the street. Anything to slow the taxi down. Over the screeching of the taxi’s brakes, the door buzzed open.

  Thank God. But not for long.

  An old man in a flannel robe shook a fireplace poker at her. “Quelle emmerdeuse, you’ve no right to making a racket, waking the whole—”

  Like she had time for this? “Call the flics, grand-père, report the gypsy taxi outside.”

  “Why?”

  She stumbled in past him, slammed the door. “He’s trying to kill me, that’s why. Now make the call and jot down his license plate number.”

  Pounding came on the door.

  “Vite! Where’s the way out?”

  He pointed.

  She ran through his house, past garbage bins reeking of yesterday’s fish, out into the moonlit walled courtyard. She was surrounded by period details, wrought-iron balconies—a picturesque trap.

  The old liar. Back in the foyer she searched for the cellar door. Bien sûr, right behind the pungent trash. Locked.

  She heard the front door click open.

  She overturned the trash, ran like hell. Pounded the courtyard door of the next building. “S’il vous plaît.”

  A buzz and it opened. “Up here, quick.” A woman weari
ng a silk dressing robe, beat-up wool slippers, and a copper saucepan on her head beckoned.

  Not thinking twice, Aimée ran up to the landing. The apartment, all in pink pastels with swag draperies and old-fashioned Japanese screens, was redolent of an old-lady lavender scent.

  “It’s the Boches, they’ve come back, non?”

  Go along with her. Aimée nodded. “I need to get out, madame, can you help me?”

  “Won’t be the first time,” she said, picking up a silver-tooled musket that looked like it last saw action in the Napoleonic wars.

  Slamming of doors, footsteps coming from the courtyard. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t wait it out—what if the old man hadn’t rung the flics?

  “Madame, which way?”

  “Through here.” The galley kitchen opened to a dim, narrow landing. “Take the escalier de service. My grandmother snuck the Communards out here to escape the Prussians.”

  The crazy madame’s thin mouth cracked in a laugh, her face a web of wrinkles. Aimée had never seen such an old woman. Her voice, at odds with her face, had the high pitch of a young girl’s.

  “Take the steps to the cave, left door and the tunnel leads to . . . I don’t remember, it’s been so long.” The woman put a rusted long-handled key in her palm. “Don’t worry, when the Boches come I can handle myself.”

  Did every member of this generation fear the Germans would come back?

  The escalier de service led to the cave. The key turned in a creaking, water-rotted door. Once inside she pulled out her penlight. A slime-covered tunnel. Scurrying sounds, splashes. Long, greasy tails slithering in the muck.

  Rats. The size of bunnies. A bite from one of these . . . She couldn’t think about that—only about escaping. Her mind went back to the tall double doors by the outside stairs, some water station servicing les égouts, the sewers under the rue du Rocher. If she could work her way there, she’d exit on the adjoining street. Right where she’d come from.

  The damp metal stairs corkscrewed down to a narrow walkway over gushing water smelling of sulphur and worse. Light shone from a glassed-in office where two men smoked. Hard at work as usual, these public employees of le service de l’eau de Paris.