Murder on the Quai

by Cara Black

He who pees in the wind wets his teeth.

  Hopefully René had found something she could use. She needed to get to the bottom of this. Money, she had to trace the money.

  Would she trace the money to Elise?

  Behind the Palais de la Découverte, she passed through a crooked stone arch. René was waiting for her on a bench in a garden whose entrance she’d passed a million times and never known existed. A weeping beech and a pond with a waterfall, all sheltered below the street, quiet but for the sound of water. The leaves had changed—brown, copper, and orange. Evergreens, bamboo, and maples surrounded them. Carp fed at the surface among water lilies, leaving trails of glistening silver bubbles.

  “Private investment banks are a league of their own, Aimée.”

  “Tough security at Banque Lazare?” She hoped it wasn’t more than he could handle.

  “Break-ins are easier when you have the dial-in bank number. Which you handed me.”

  “I did?”

  “Going on the assumption that Pinel, the bookstore’s directeur financier, would access the bank’s computer directly through a dedicated line, I found the bookstore’s leased line on one of those transfer orders with the bank account number.”

  “How did you break this? Did you need a password?”

  “No, that’s too hard. Did it the easy way and analyzed the floppy. I knew what kind of programs they were using and how to crack them. It’s a pretty routine bit of cryptanalysis.”

  All geek to her but she nodded.

  “Pretty obvious crib.”

  “Crib?”

  “Crib means routine stuff, like a predictable series of numbers.” René sat up straighter. Happy to show off, she could tell. Fine by her. “I knew the first couple of bytes from the files copied onto the floppy probably come from a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. A standard for accounting data. They all have a beginning in common. I used several trial keys, the crib, until the program fell over like a dead canary.” He gave a proud little smile. “I did it the easy way.”

  He called that easy?

  René handed her a printout. “Here you see the shareholders, board member percentage holdings from off the floppy disk. That what you wanted?”

  Yes and no. This told her Elise reigned as financial queen—her family holding eclipsed the other men’s family share holdings, and she was now the only living board member. Mentally, Aimée underlined Elise in the suspect column.

  But it didn’t tell her the source of the money. Or prove it came from Nazi gold.

  “Any luck from what I found at the mairie?”

  “That gets interesting. The business license dates back to 1946, the year the four same men purchased the bookshop. But it incorporated under the business titled Foundry as of the sixties.”

  “They wised up, hired a financial advisor,” she said. A spiked chestnut pod crunched under her feet. Brittle and dry—like her investigation. If she could call it that. “Say they’d melted the gold, traded in gold futures and bundled it up in this private investment bank. Any way I can trace this fortune back to the gold?”

  “Time travel?” René shrugged. “Or a confession?”

  “A little late, René. All the conspirators are in the morgue.”

  “Alors, firms keep ledgers. Maybe there is a double set of account books?” René raised his hands. “I’d say either Elise Peltier’s next or she engineered it.”

  Neither a good prospect. She hated to admit it, but it looked that way.

  “Or the fifth German.”

  “You’re back to a Ludlum thriller,” said René, pulling a tartine out of his bag. “Even if there were a phantom fifth German, why would he come back now?”

  She liked bouncing ideas off René—no judgment, no bias. He actually tried to help, unlike Morbier.

  “The Wall just came down. Say he’s been stuck in Germany and now he can return to exact revenge.”

  René tore his tartine aux jambon et fromage in half, handed it to Aimée.

  “Merci.” Delicious. She hadn’t eaten since the brioche at dawn.

  “That doesn’t explain the murder of Baret, a month before the Wall came down.” Good point. “But put that aside for a minute. I don’t buy that it’s revenge. Not with gold involved.” René chewed. “Greed more like it. Say the fifth German returns for the gold after all these years, extorts a payoff, blackmail.”

  “Why kill his golden geese?”

  “The men refused to pay up? Or like a tontine scam—remember in that movie with Lino Ventura? What if there is no fifth German—they’re killing each other off, last man standing keeps the big payoff?”

  Thérèse Jagametti said the same thing. “But who’s left standing now?”

  “Who knows?” Suddenly René hit his forehead. “That’s right. I knew he looked familiar.”

  “Who?”

  “The man in that old village photo you showed me. He reminds me of an actor I saw in a performance a few weeks ago—the name escapes me. One of those theaters on rue des Mathurins, just up from the chapel where the monarchists congregate.”

  Her mind perked up. Renaud de Bretteville? “Chapelle Expiatoire. Elise lives right across from it. Remember the play?”

  “Which one was it? I’ve seen so many lately. Maybe I still have the ticket stub . . .” René rustled through his wallet. “Mais non. Oh well. The photo reminded me of him, that’s all. Life’s funny, eh?”

  A coincidence? Never in an investigation, her father would say. Build your case by wearing down your shoe leather, getting statements, checking out each detail. If it doesn’t pan out, file it away because that detail might just come back to bite you.

  And the most important advice: if it niggles at you, go scratch that itch.

  Right now her itch was Banque Lazare, the private investment bank. Not for the likes of her—one needed a minimum of a million francs to open an account. The no-nonsense lobby breathed wealth, all white marble and understated bronze accents.

  She asked to speak to the bank officer who dealt with Foundry.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist asked her.

  “Mademoiselle Peltier sent me,” she lied. “I need to speak to the account manager before the police do.” How easy this lying had become. Aimée flashed her PI license.

  The receptionist blinked and checked something on her screen. “Your name again, s’il vous plaît?”

  “Aimée Leduc.”

  “The account liaison is Madame Fontaine, but she’s out until this afternoon.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb her, but it’s urgent.”

  “Un moment.”

  But it was more than un moment before the receptionist, who made several phone calls, explaining the situation each time, said “Understood” and passed over an address on a piece of paper.

  “Madame Fontaine’s at Théâtre des Mathurins. She can spare you five minutes.”

  At a theater? Another coincidence?

  “It’s around the corner from the department store Printemps.”

  Aimée knew it well.

  The sky was a dove grey, amber traffic lights gleamed on the buildings. She kept to broad Boulevard Haussmann—the business hub of the upscale, yawn-inducing commercial section of the eighth arrondissement. Buses and bicycles passed; office workers on break smoked on the pavement. A few cafés, shops, and the characteristic Haussmannian buildings—limestone façades and wrought-iron balconies.

  On the sidewalk, near Place Saint-Augustin, she noticed the weekly wine-tasting signs under the awning of Les Caves Augé, her grand-père’s favorite wine shop. She peeked inside, inhaled the musky oak-barrel smells from one of the oldest wine merchants in the city: the nineteenth-century dark-wood interior patinaed with time, still crammed from floor to ceiling with every kind of wine, aperitif, liquor. The owner had laughed when her ten-year-
old self said it belonged in the Guinness Book of World Records. “More like in a Balzac novel,” he had said. “Balzac lived just up the hill, you know. They say he’d nip down here.”

  She hurried past Berteil’s washed-out yellow façade, a boutique for old-lady types who think they’re très sportives, according to Martine. A block further was Square Louis XVI with its dark foliage and shadowed vaulted stone, an overgrown ruin-like appearance in the middle of Paris emitting damp leaf smells. She turned on rue de l’Arcade. A few minutes later she stood in the foyer of Théâtre des Mathurins.

  The playbill windows were empty. Merde. She had no clue if it was the theater René had mentioned. Inside the Italianate lobby—deserted apart from the nymphs carved overhead—she caught the sound of someone talking inside the theater. Shrieks from a microphone.

  A woman with a sleek bob stood on the stage giving directions in a cut-glass accent. Très grand bourgeois.

  “Madame Fontaine?” Aimée asked when she finally got her attention.

  The woman nodded to the sound-crew tech, a bored twenty-something who sucked a hand-rolled cigarette. “Ah, the bank called me, but, mademoiselle, I can give you five minutes only.” She called to the sound-tech crew, “Adjust the mic volume, s’il vous plaît.” She said to Aimée, “Give me une petite seconde.”

  Aimée wondered at the woman’s focus on the situation here—whatever it was. The stage was vacant apart from an armchair, a side table, and a microphone apparatus. Madame Fontaine realigned the chair with a stage mark.

  “We’re preparing for a talk in our philosophe series. C’est immense, standing room only when the big hitters lecture. Eat à la brown bag—something I saw on New York’s Wall Street—you know, get your culture at lunch.” Madame Fontaine was clearly impressed with herself and her trendy, forward-thinking copycat ideas. “Banque Lazare sponsors this little series,” she said, “our petit bouillon de culture. I’m easing the transition since Monsieur Peltier’s passing. It was a priority to him and to the bank that we stand by this important piece of culture.”

  Benefitting from a nice tax write-off too, Aimée figured. But that fit in with the theater foundation reception that Renaud mentioned Bruno Peltier sponsored. Rich people loved tax write-offs that made them feel like they were contributing to a cultural legacy.

  Madame looked at her pointedly. “Now if that’s all?”

  Where were the five minutes?

  “I’m here about an investigation into the Foundry corporation and its ties to the bank.”

  “That’s confidential. I only discuss bank business with clients.”

  Aimée scrambled to come up with something to get the woman to talk. “But madame, why’s that?”

  The woman’s face had turned stony. “Silly of you to come and waste my time.”

  “Then you’ll deal with the police, who have questions,” she lied. “Didn’t the bank tell you Elise Peltier hired me?”

  “Get authorization in writing.” She waved a dismissal and returned to readjust the microphone, obsessed with her flurry of minutia.

  Stupid, what had she expected? A forthcoming banker? As if they existed.

  Frustrated, Aimée looked around for playbills of upcoming performances. In the lobby, a short man in overalls with a cigarette hanging from his mouth stood over a box of electrical wires.

  He shook his head at her query, the long ash of his cigarette threatening to fall on the theater’s mosaic tiles. “Playbills go up this afternoon.”

  She didn’t know for sure this was the theater René had meant, anyway. She’d try the theater next door.

  But before she left, she’d take one more shot.

  “Do you know Renaud de Bretteville?”

  The electrician nodded. “He’s the troupe director. Those photos in the side foyer are all his productions.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Eh? He’s an actor.” He shook his head and ash drifted to the floor. He rubbed it out with the toe of his shoe. “Like a lot of actors—at ease everywhere, at home nowhere.”

  A philosopher, this electrician. But she could learn something.

  “You mean kind of lost?”

  He lifted his tool kit. “Except of course when he’s on stage. He’s a real bête de scène, a born actor.”

  That and ten francs would get her an Orangina. So far, her trip here had been a waste.

  In the red-velvet-wallpapered side foyer, she scanned the glass displays of former productions: a maquette of the theater used in the 1890s for seating, old programs, photos. An illustrious history boasting the plays of Camus, Baudelaire, Beckett . . . on and on. Bored, she searched the photos, spotting Renaud in different roles—a cavalier, a pirate. In one production, as part of an ensemble piece, he wore sabots, the wooden clogs worn in the countryside. Her grand-mère had a pair.

  It wasn’t a coincidence—the actor René thought looked like Mayor Gaubert must have been Renaud de Bretteville. Renaud, who appeared to be in his forties or fifties, looked very much like the executed mayor had in the old photo. She searched in her bag for a comparison, then remembered she’d stuck the photo on the butcher-paper outline.

  Her arms tingled. Eerie. How could that be?

  What were the chances—a Parisian actor with an aristocratic name and a mayor murdered in a village during the war?

  She had to find out.

  A few blocks down narrow rue des Mathurins, Aimée’s pager vibrated—Elise? She retraced her steps to the corner café, ordered an Orangina, and hopped downstairs to the phone cabin.

  But it was a hoarse, cigarette-infused voice she recognized as Suzy’s, asking to meet. Why Suzy? Why now?

  She bounded up the stairs, almost plowing into a waiter bearing a tray of Ricard, threw ten francs on the counter and left, her Orangina untouched.

  She took a shortcut through Passage Puteaux, a sleepy, glass-roofed passage with a bar à vin, lines of flowerpots, and a forgotten feel. Two short blocks later, she walked into the old Marché de la Madeleine, the vaulted stone entrance partially obscured by the starred hotel next door. What had once been a covered local fruit, produce, and flower market now was a characterless courtyard, home to a few lunch spots, mostly Asian, for office workers in the modern buildings behind. She found Suzy smoking.

  “About time, kid,” said Suzy, smiling. “I’m in a hurry and doing you a favor.”

  In a hurry for what, Aimée wondered.

  “Because you liked the Chanel No. 5 sample, Suzy? Or because you’re afraid?”

  Suzy’s grin faded. She wore a faux fur bolero jacket with shoulder pads, a leather pencil skirt, and dark glasses. “Just listen. Then make of it what you will. You never heard this from me.”

  Aimée took out her notebook and uncapped her kohl eye pencil. “I’m all ears, Suzy.”

  “Rue de Ponthieu’s protected by the Corsican gang. Everyone knows this. Grandmothers and even the flics.”

  Her mind went back to Morbier’s chalkboard diagram in the commissariat—the high-end robberies.

  “But the Corsicans got upset because there’s a gypsy taxi that’s been playing out of bounds.”

  Aimée shivered. The same driver who’d attacked her twice, no doubt. “Playing out of bounds—you mean not paying protection money?”

  Suzy took a puff, exhaled. “Among other things, but it’s pas de respect. This gypsy taxi driver’s causing problems on the gang’s turf.”

  “Et alors?”

  “The Corsicans want the gypsy taxi.”

  “What’s that to you, Suzy?”

  “Do you know who I work for?” Suzy looked around. “Listen, kid. The Corsicans feel if one gets away with it, others will follow.”

  “You work for the Corsicans, Suzy?”

  “Not officially and I’ll deny it. Everyone who works on rue de Ponthieu has to butter their brea
d, if you know what I mean.”

  Aimée tried to digest that.

  Suzy exhaled a plume of smoke.

  “Attendez, you said gypsy taxi on their turf,” she said, thinking back to the other night. “So you’re saying the Corsicans suspect the gypsy taxi driver of . . . what?”

  Suzy shrugged. “The old geezer, Bruno—the one you asked me about. The driver might have used his cab to kidnap and kill him. Maybe some others, too.” Tossed her cigarette, stubbed it out with her toe. “That’s the rumor.”

  “Do they know the driver’s identity?”

  “Like they tell me, chérie?”

  “Did you lure Bruno to Laurent the night he died? Are you involved with the taxi driver?”

  “Bruno invited me, remember? But I split. Good thing, too.”

  And Aimée believed her. Suzy was afraid of the Corsicans.

  “Still, I don’t get it, Suzy.” She did but wanted Suzy to spell it out.

  Suzy pulled out the Chanel No. 5 sample Aimée had given her, spritzed it on her wrist. “Before the Corsicans launch into a full turf war, I’m whispering in your ear, asking if you have any leads on the old men’s murderer. My job’s to provide tips, compris? They’d like to make an example of whoever did this.”

  And leave the flics out of it?

  Disappointed, Aimée shook her head. “I need leads myself. I got shot at last night and . . .”

  “That was you?”

  “You heard?”

  Suzy gave a little nod. Took out a compact, checked her lipstick in the mirror. “A warning, kid. If you find him first, turn him over to the Corsicans. That’s how it’s done.”

  “How it’s done?” Aimée’s mouth went dry.

  “Welcome to the real world.” Suzy snapped her compact shut. “Make the call. My neck’s on the line here. My boss wants information.” She handed Aimée a card from the club.

  Bile rose in her stomach. “Suzy, get the hell out of this. Leave that club. You’re smart, you don’t have to . . .”

  “I’m smart so I’m alive, tu comprends?” Suzy’s bravado didn’t match the quiver in her voice. “Like it or not, you’ve joined the big league. Wise up.”