Murder in the Palais Royal

by Cara Black

  She froze.

  “What business?”

  Melac edged off the wall. Tossed the empty Bertillon cup in the trash. “I thought you’d know.”

  “I’d give anything to know.”

  “You would?” Melac said. “I’ll remember that.”

  He dusted off his jeans, took a step, paused. “What I do know is that your father cut a deal for her. He was a good flic, and it ruined his career. A shame.”

  He’d gotten that all wrong, too. She took a breath. To give vent to the anger rising inside her would get her nowhere.

  “In point of fact,” she said, “one of his partners caught in a bribery scandal shifted the blame to him. That ruined his career.”

  She controlled her voice with effort. “But you’re right about one thing. Papa was a good flic.”

  “I’m not the only one interested in you, Mademoiselle.”

  “You’re playing with me,” she said, “thinking I’m a pawn that will let you take the queen.”

  “I heard you’d cooperate,” he said. “You’re the one being used.”

  Melac’s footsteps crunched on the gravel as he walked toward Pont Marie.

  Aimée stood rooted to the spot. The branches of the plane tree nodded in the wind.

  Alone.

  If her mother was alive, would she use her to launder money? The woman she remembered doodled on napkins, burned the milk she was heating on the stove for café au lait, and worried if Aimée forgot her jacket.

  All the old hurts surfaced. And this brother she hadn’t known existed, what had become of him? But this would get her nowhere.

  She had a hunch that whatever had happened to Nicolas in 1993 would explain a lot. The siddur weighed heavy in her bag.

  The streetlights’ gleam pocked the pavement’s surface with light. She felt someone watching her. Fear invaded her, from her head to the soles of her feet.

  She scanned the quai. Deserted.

  If she hurried, she could cross town to reach the synagogue, then make her meeting with Audric. Resolute, she pushed the digicode numbers, entered the courtyard, and found her faded pink scooter. With a quick turn, she keyed the ignition, hit the pedal, and the engine rumbled to life. Out on the quai, she took off her tight shoes, put them in the basket, rubbed her toe, then roared off. Using the narrow streets to avoid traffic, she hoped to make the synagogue before the service ended.

  The strike and traffic dictated otherwise. Streets clogged with bicycles, buses, and cars slowed her way. By the time she reached the synagogue, the people were filing out, joining friends talking in groups, everyone discussing how to get home.

  One of these people might know something about the sid-dur. At least there was more chance among older Polish Jews.

  She parked the scooter, pulled it up on the kickstand, and slipped on her heels. Holding the prayer book, she threaded her way through the crowd and spied an older couple, the man leaning on a cane, the woman squeezing the cheek of a toddler.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you, but I want to return this sid-dur to its owner.”

  The old man shrugged. “Ask the rabbi.”

  “Of course,” she said. Hoping to gain more, she opened the much-thumbed pages. “Before I bother him, I thought it better to check with someone in the congregation.”

  The yellowed pages crinkled. No one paid attention. “Do you recognize these names?”

  She pointed to the two names written in dark blue ink. The crowd had dwindled and the old couple’s gaze was locked on the red-cheeked toddler. She gave it one last shot.

  “Elzbieta and Karlosch Ficowska from Bialystock?” Aimée said.

  “Pronounced Beeyelischtok,” the old woman corrected. “That’s where I come from.”

  Excited, Aimée leaned close to her. “This wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  The old woman pulled up the reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. Scrutinized the names. Then pressed the siddur to her chest for a moment.

  “But that’s Effie and Carl!” She nudged her husband, the old man. “Effie and Carl Ficou! Look!”

  “Eh, they’re dead, Myra, you forget things.”

  “I don’t understand,” Aimée said. Disappointed, she realized the old woman had made a mistake.

  “I only saw this siddur every day,” Myra said. “Where did you get this?”

  “The names differ, Madame.”

  “We didn’t keep our old names. What for? To remain the target of those hunters?” She took off her reading glasses. “After the camp, I can’t remember my old name half the time, not that I want to. It’s from another life. But look at that fascist Le Pen, nothing’s changed here since Dreyfus and the Stavisky affair.” She shrugged. “We’re Jews, we wander, that’s what we do. Ready to leave at a moment’s notice. My bag stays packed at the door. My daughter calls me ‘ferukt’—crazy—and my granddaughter gets excited and asks when I’m going on a trip.”

  Aimée wanted to focus this talkative Myra on the names.

  “You’re sure it’s Effie and. . . .”

  “Carl. Bien sûr.

  ”

  The old man leaned forward. “Murder, I call it.”

  Aimée leaned closer.

  “What do you mean?”

  Myra took a handkerchief from her bag. Blew her nose. “A hit-and-run, left to die. What has the world come to, leaving old people to die in the street? So few escaped the Warsaw ghetto, and then they died in a Parisian gutter.”

  Stunned, Aimée tried to think. Why was this siddur Nicolas’s insurance? How did this involve René?

  “When did this happen?”

  “Like yesterday, I can see Effie in my kitchen peeling potatoes for latkes.”

  Aimée plumbed her brain. Latkes?

  “You mean December, at Chanukah? Last year?”

  “It’s some years ago, Mademoiselle.” The old man pulled her sleeve. His eyes were kind. “Myra remembers not so good. Forgets.”

  “Do you remember?”

  He sucked in his breath. Hard to do with his false teeth. “Open-heart surgery . . . I don’t remember time so good myself.”

  What could she do?

  “How can I give this to the family?”

  “Too late. They moved,” the old man said. “It was in the papers, our Yiddish paper,” he said, “and a small mention in the French ones. They don’t write about all the incidents. At least this one, people heard.”

  “What happened?”

  “Effie’s little grandson saw them run over.”

  Aimée took out a kohl eye pencil, the first thing she felt in her bag.

  “Can you tell me where the family lives now?”

  “Their daughter, Rachel, works for the SNCF.” The old man leaned on his cane. “She transferred to Lyon . . . Strasbourg? I’m not sure. Got married.”

  “They were your friends; can you try remembering anything else? Could this have happened in 1993?”

  His face crinkled in thought. A look of pain crossed his face.

  “You’re doing a good job, so helpful,” she said, concerned that she’d upset the old man.

  “I had my operation when?” He scratched his chin. “That’s right. In 1993.”

  The same year the synagogue in the Marais was torched. Hadn’t Nicolas said this was bigger than people thought? She’d discovered this couple’s prayer book in his belongings. Had he run over the old couple and left them for dead?

  Or was she looking at this the wrong way? Nicolas could have acted with students from the Cours Carnot. Had he taken the fall for all of them for the synagogue burning?

  But what kind of insurance was it to keep the prayer book of a couple who’d been killed? That only made sense if someone else had done it. If having the siddur pointed to them.

  But she hadn’t found anything inside.

  And why hadn’t the flics connected the hit-and-run to the burned synagogue?

  “Monsieur, where were Effie and Carl run over?”

  He
lifted his cane. Pointed to the sky. A pale glow silhouetted the jagged rooftops.

  “Over there,” he said. “Now I remember.”

  The light came from near the Opera. Place Vendôme, or. . . .

  “The wax museum. Effie and Carl took him for his birthday.”

  “You mean the Musée Grévin? But that’s in Passage Jouffroy.”

  “They lived two streets away.” He shook his head. “Killed on their doorstep on rue Bergère. A crime.”

  Someone there might remember. After all, it had made the papers. She could check this out.

  “Merci, Monsieur.”

  He stared at her. “You know who ran them down?”

  His age-spotted hand gripped hers with a slight tremble.

  “I think so. But proving it’s the hard part.”

  * * *

  HER SCOOTER WOVE through the cars on rue du Conservatoire. Her left hand gripped the handlebar; her right held her cell phone to her ear. Paco, her contact at Le Monde’s newspaper archives, had put her on hold.

  She fumed at the stalled traffic and wanted to jump the scooter onto the pavement. But due to the strike, the sidewalks were full of commuters walking home.

  “How do you spell their name again?” Paco’s voice sounded tinny and the reception wavered. Everyone in the world was talking on their cell phones right now.

  “F-I-C-O-U, Effie and Carl.”

  “Nothing so far in November 1993.”

  Her heart sank. Had the old man remembered wrong? Was her theory shot to pieces?

  “There’s an article concerning a big demonstration by Le Pen supporters, and a list of the injured, but not those names.”

  Even if Nicolas had their prayer book, she couldn’t link him to the hit-and-run. He could have found it and kept it. A coincidence? But she didn’t believe in coincidences. And it made no sense for a rabid neo-Nazi to keep it as his “insurance.”

  How did this connect to René’s injury? What bigger picture didn’t she see? Another scooter cut in front of her. She saw the red tail light and braked just in time.

  “They don’t print victims’ names,” Paco said. “At least until notification of the family.”

  That helped her not one bit.

  Her nerves shot, she wiped the perspiration from her brow. The smell of roasting meat, smoke; she turned to see a bistro.

  Smoke and fire . . . of course. The date the synagogue was burned. She should have told Paco that first.

  “Try November third.”

  Paco sighed. “The microfiche machine jammed. I’m re-threading. Wait a minute,” he said. “Could this be it? ‘On rue Bergère, a fatal hit-and-run of an old couple while their young great-grandson looked on. Police in the quartier are asking anyone who saw a vehicle on rue Bergère at 10 P.M. to help with their inquiries. Neighbors were alerted when the cries of the three-year-old boy reached them and the couple were found’.”

  “That’s it?”

  “C’est ça.”

  She swerved into rue Bergère. A street of white limestone Haussmann-style buildings with iron balconies, a few shops open. “Does it give an address?”

  “No clue here.”

  “Merci, Paco. Do me a favor, fax it to my office.”

  She’d try the section of rue Bergère nearest the Musée Grévin. At least shops were open. At the second store she entered, the young Arab man, stacking cartons of yogurt, nodded. The small corner shop was clean and compact, and every inch of space was filled with canned goods and grocery items. A sprig of ivy trailed from plants in the window. The radio perched near the security camera softly played Arab music.

  “1993? I signed the lease and opened my shop on November first.”

  He’d been open only three days. Excitement ran through her. She hoped he’d remember.

  “Do you remember the old Jewish couple who lived near here killed by a hit-and-run driver?”

  The corners of his mouth turned down. “Horrific. I remember that child crying.”

  “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see the accident.”

  “Did the flics question you?”

  “For a few minutes.”

  “But you heard the child crying. Maybe you heard something else?”

  He stacked another carton of yogurt.

  “Made me sick,” he said. “I thought maybe I’d made a mistake to open here. But I tell you, I still see that three-year-old boy with blood on his little teddy bear.”

  Her stomach lurched. “You mean the child was hurt, too?”

  “Praise to Allah, non. I looked out the door and saw him.”

  “Can you show me where?” she interrupted.

  “You a flic?” His eyebrows rose.

  She handed him her card. “Aimée Leduc, private investigator.”

  “I’m Mahmoud.” He wiped his hands on his blue work coat, shook her hand. He called out to a woman in the back to help a customer, then led her to the street.

  A pool of yellow light from the street lamp shone on the cracked pavement. Rain puddles streaked with motor oil glistened purple.

  “Try to picture that cold November evening,” Aimée said, prompting him. “It’s late, the street’s dark except for that street lamp.”

  She waited.

  “I heard the child crying.”

  “And it sounded wrong,” she said. “You felt it was unusual for a parent to let a child cry like that.”

  “The child pointed that way.” Mahmoud indicated the gutter. “But when I asked him what’s the matter, he just said ‘Grand-mère’.”

  “Can you remember if you heard brakes, a car driving away?”

  “I just saw the couple.” He pointed to the gutter. “I thought they’d fallen down. But all that blood . . . and the old woman’s eyes were open.”

  “Did you see anything else, like her handbag or things that might have fallen out?”

  “Now that you mention it, non.”

  A distracted look filled his eye. “It felt like time slowed. Like, how do you say . . . slow motion?”

  Tragedies did that. Time slowed, and each moment passed in freeze-frame.

  “I can’t forget. The little boy cried and I held him. The neighbor from upstairs,” he pointed to a dark window, “she leaned out, then called the police. But she’s moved now.”

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  He shook his head. “Everyone thinks Arabs and Jews hate each other. But in Palestine, my neighbors and the corner butcher were Jews. We lived together. I don’t understand what their people and my people do to each other. We’re cousins.” He shook his head again. “It wasn’t right, what happened to those people, and that little boy. He’d picked up a dirty candy wrapper from the gutter.”

  And then it hit her. “Did you have customers that evening before the accident?”

  “I’m open until midnight. People come in all the time.”

  “But you’d just opened, were still building your business. You said you couldn’t forget that night.”

  He nodded. “It was tough at the beginning. I didn’t have many customers.”

  “So you’d have a few customers, maybe people not from the quartier but en route somewhere else?”

  She pulled the Cours Carnot file from her bag, pointed to Audric’s photo. “Think back. He limps.” Then she showed him Olivier’s photo. “Did you see either of these boys?”

  Mahmoud studied the blurred carte d’étudiant photos. “Why?”

  She tried a hunch. “Could they have been with another boy, a skinhead type?” She remembered Nicolas in the video that convicted him. “I’m asking because that night, the skinhead burned a Jewish synagogue in the Marais.”

  “Religious persecution? Against Jews, you mean.”

  “The couple were Jewish.”

  “But the flics called it a hit-and-run.”

  She opened the Voici and pointed to the page. “Do you recognize him?” It was Olivier’s photo, with a twig-thin model draped o
ver his shoulder.

  “I don’t understand,” Mahmoud said.

  She thrust the file photo toward him for comparison. “He’s the same person.”

  “So?” Mahmoud fingered the prayer beads circling his wrist. He wanted to get back to work. Or was he hiding something?

  “Did either of these boys come into your shop?” she asked again.

  She didn’t hold out much hope.

  “Four years ago? You’re asking me to remember customers who might have come into my shop?”

  The light blurred on the cobblestones. Her toe throbbed, and she’d reached another dead end.

  “It’s a stretch, I know, but I thought since that night’s remained so vivid in your mind. . . .”

  “I wish I could help you,” Mahmoud said.

  “Such a crime, to leave old people lying in the gutter, their little grandchild looking on,” Aimée said, trying one last time. “If that happened to my grandparents, I’d. . . .”

  “Let me see that again,” Mahmoud said. He stared at the photos. He stabbed Olivier’s picture with his finger.

  Shivers of excitement ran up her spine. “You remember now, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “This one was drunk. He broke a display case and made a scene when I refused to sell him wine. But it happened before the old couple’s accident. With all that happened that night, it paled in comparison. I remember now. My wife was terrified and wanted me to move.”

  Mahmoud saw them drunk the night of the synagogue burning; Nicolas had the old couple’s prayer book, not his trophy but what he planned to use as his insurance. Insurance for or against what?

  “There’s a customer,” Mahmoud said.

  “One more thing, please,” she said. “Do you remember anything they said?”

  “Apart from calling me a dirty Arab?” He gave a small shrug. “That’s part and parcel of doing business.”

  * * *

  ON HER SCOOTER, Aimée headed toward the café to meet Audric. She’d confront him, insist that he take her to Olivier, who hadn’t answered her calls.

  Ahead of her, theatregoers spilled from the Thèâtre du Palais Royal, blocking traffic. Impatient, she squeezed the handlebar brakes, overhearing the well-dressed theatre crowd discussing the adaptation of Feydau’s seventeenth-century farce. Others moaned about the already-full taxis.