by Cara Black
She had more luck on the opposite corner at the tailor’s.
“I know who you mean, the Gypsy,” said the thin old man, hunched over a thrumming sewing machine as he guided fabric through it under a harsh desk light. “Keep to themselves, those manouches. Thieves.”
Great, another bigot. “Monsieur, this woman canes chairs. She is an artisan, not a thief.”
“Et alors? Enough of them are. One pickpocketed me on the Métro last week. I filed a report and the flics just laughed at me.”
“I’m sorry, but this woman’s dying,” she said. “She was abducted from the hospital, her atelier’s been trashed. People here don’t want to know or to help. Do you know anything that could help me find her?”
“You don’t look like a flic.”
“I’m not.” She took out her PI license. “Did you notice anything unusual this morning or last night?”
“What’s it worth, Mademoiselle Columbo?”
A smart ass. But she didn’t have time to shake him down, there was no love-thy-neighbor feeling in this quartier. “This look right?” She put a fifty-franc note on the fabric.
“Why don’t you sweeten it?” he said.
She forced a smile. “Give me some juice to sweeten. Do you remember seeing someone at her atelier?”
His foot paused on the sewing-machine pedal as he put the note in his shirt pocket. “My back window upstairs looks onto the passage. Two or three nights ago, looked like the flics were there. Unmarked car.”
The flics?
“And you know this how?”
“My son-in-law’s a flic in Nantes. Did a stint plainclothes.”
“Go on,” she said.
“Odd, I thought, seeing flics by her place. Then I see her coming from the Métro with a shopping bag. She stumbled, her bag fell. Looked ill, I thought,” he said. “Left a few minutes later, her hands empty.”
Drina had been well enough to walk. “Like she’d dropped something off, that’s what you mean?”
He nodded, not looking up, guiding the fabric under the punching needle. The hum of the machine filled the small shop.
“Can you remember what day this was? The time?”
He paused. Lifted up his foot and thought.
“I’d just eaten dinner. Spaghetti vongole. So Saturday.”
“Why did the unmarked car strike you, Monsieur?”
“Nothing’s open. Barely anyone walks there at night.” He pressed his foot on the pedal. The machine hummed to life. “But there was someone watching the street.”
“How could you tell?”
“Who stands smoking on the corner in the rain for an hour?”
So the night before she went missing from the hospital, Drina returned from the Métro and someone watched her. She’d left something in the atelier, according to the tailor. Hidden it?
Her phone rang. “Merci, Monsieur.” She slipped another fifty-franc note down.
She stepped outside the tailor shop to take the call and headed toward the passage.
“Oui?”
“Where are you, Aimée?”
“Coming from the tailor’s. He noticed someone watching the street two nights ago. What have you found?” She turned into the short passage and saw Drina’s locked atelier.
“You need to see this. There’s half of Drina’s notebook.” He sounded excited.
“I’m coming,” she said, breaking into a run. “Let me get my scooter.”
“I’m at the phone booth on the corner, under the Métro.”
She got on her scooter, popped the kickstand and inserted the key with the phone still to her ear. “What’s in the notebook?” she said as she started up the alley.
“You’ll see. Names, numbers, places. It’s torn. It’s sort of like the notebook she keeps accounts in.”
“Anything you recognize, Nicu?”
“I don’t know. Lots of numbers …”
“Phone numbers, Nicu?” she interrupted, trying to crane her neck above the traffic. An old Fiat pulled in front of her, taking its sweet time.
“Ah non, like she enters her sales. Five hundred francs every month”—a horn blared, cutting through his words—“entries end in June 1989.”
The year Aimée’s father died. Going on her assumption that Drina informed for her father—maybe a record of payoffs?
“What names?”
Over the line she heard scuffling, shouts. Alarmed, she sped up. “What names, Nicu?”
“Where are you?” he said, terse and distracted.
Traffic had ground to a halt at the red light.
“Right down across the street. Stuck in a wall of cars and taxis.” She fumed inside as a passing bus shot diesel exhaust in her face. “Tell me, Nicu. What are the names?”
“Fifi, Tesla. The last entry says Tonton JC à six heures du soir Place Vendôme.”
Her gut churned. JC? Like Jean-Claude? Papa had died in the bomb explosion in Place Vendôme.
“I found something else, there’s pictures. My …” His voice cracked. “Come to the corner …” The rumble of the train overhead drowned him out.
“Pictures of what, Nicu? Please, can’t you tell me?”
Only the rumbling of the Métro. Her stomach knotted, her knuckles whitened as she squeezed the handlebars.
“Can you see me?” she yelled into the phone over the noise of the busy two-lane boulevard. So much traffic.
The call had clicked off.
Two cars zipped past her, honking at each other. She saw him now standing at the Métro’s stone pillar support. He waved. She motioned for him to wait, she’d come to him. A van pulled up between them, and she watched more traffic block her way. Buses, cars, trucks, scooters—everyone going somewhere. The Métro added to the urban cacophony.
Her heart was pounding. She felt so close to knowing the truth about her father.
The traffic thinned.
In the crowd of people that had suddenly assembled at the corner, she couldn’t see Nicu anymore. She pulled up. Then she saw why the people were huddling. Nicu lay half sprawled against the pillar, bleeding. His face frightened, he reached out to her.
Non, non … It couldn’t …
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Anyone a doctor?”
Aimée dropped her Vespa to the ground and ran toward him. His ripped hoodie was red with blood. His lips moved.
She heard a man on a cell phone demanding an ambulance. She pushed her way past a young woman bending toward him holding out tissues. Aimée knelt down besides Nicu. He was saying, “My bag. They took it.”
“It’s all right, Nicu,” she said, smoothing down his damp matted hair with her shaking fingers.
“Drina … you don’t understand,” Nicu said.
“I’m a doctor,” said a man’s voice, “let me through.”
“Don’t understand what, Nicu?” she said.
“Not my mother … why didn’t she tell me?” His trembling hand reached up to unzip his bloodstained hoodie. She saw an envelope in his shirt pocket. “I found this. Read the … take it.”
Numb, she took the envelope from his pocket as she felt the doctor move her aside.
She watched as the grey-haired doctor pressed his hands together against Nicu’s chest to staunch the blood. “Tell the medics to prepare for a deep puncture from a knife wound to the left sternal border. Ribs involved, possible internal bleeding.” The doctor looked up. Shouted. “Now!”
The man nodded, still on his cell phone.
Aimée shook off the cloud of horror and scanned the crowd. “What happened?”
“The boy was standing right here at the curb—” said the young woman, bloody tissues in hand.
“Oui, there was a blue van,” interrupted the woman next to her. “The boy was pulled in. I saw. Next minute, he stumbled out here and fell.”
“Yes, I saw too … he shouted at them. Then the van pulled away in seconds. It cut across the walkway—drove like un fou.”
The doctor leaned back on
his knees. “No pulse.”
Good God, she’d gotten Nicu killed. Guilt flooded her. Then alarm. Was she next?
If something happened to her, who’d take care of Chloé?
She stepped back. Voices in the crowd blended into one around her. “Oui, a van stopped, the door slid open …”
“Mon Dieu … The boy was staggering, he knocked my shopping bag …”
“Clutched his stomach … the van took off. I didn’t get a look.”
Aimée made her hands move, righted her scooter. Tried to put the key in the ignition. Her fingers, sticky with Nicu’s blood, kept slipping. Bile rose in her throat.
Get away. She had to get away right now.
Somehow she managed to walk her scooter to the street. The whine of a siren pierced her ears. Lights flashed; an ambulance pulled up on the corner. She flipped the ignition, revved the handlebar and weaved into the traffic.
Three streets later she pulled into a square. Blood—good God, her hands were covered in blood. And then she leaned over just in time as her stomach heaved, over and over until nothing more came out.
She forced herself to clean up at the fountain, wash the blood and bile away. But washing it away wouldn’t take Nicu’s blood off her hands.
When the shaking stopped, she sat on the grass and opened the envelope, stained with bloody fingerprints. Why hadn’t he put this in his bag?
In it she found two black-and-white photos. The first was of two young women, one holding a baby. Written on the back was Djanka, Drina, Nicu. The next was of a young couple squinting into the sun, the man’s arms around the woman, who was holding a baby. On the back was written Djanka, Nicholás and Pascal. With them was a creased, much-folded birth certificate. Nicholás Constantin, date of birth June 12, 1977. Under “father” it was blank, and in the mother’s column were the words, Djanka Constantin, aged 24.
If Drina wasn’t Nicu’s mother, who the hell had he just died for?
Monday Morning
ROLAND LESEUR HUNG the framed iridescent butterfly on the office wall in his ministry, beside his brother Pascal’s commendation from le président. A Phengaris arion, the latest addition to his collection, the violet blue of the insect’s wings reminded him of Françoise’s eyes. He let his gaze pass over the collection. These winged creatures, suspended as if caught in flight, made his heart quiver. Little else did these days.
“Excusez-moi, Monsieur le directeur.” Juliette, his ministerial assistant, entered through the tall door, accompanied by a whiff of something citrus. Afternoon light glinted off the Seine through the window, catching in Juliette’s short, nut-brown hair, which glowed like her smile. “Jacques from Libération,” she said. “He wants a quick word.”
Fresh faced, young enough to be his daughter, idealistic like he’d been. Like they’d all been once. Even Pascal.
“Put him on, Juliette.”
But Jacques—mid-forties, like Roland; balding and thick waisted, unlike Roland—stood in the doorway. “Roland, can you give me five minutes?”
Roland was inclined to refuse, but he shrugged as Jacques helped himself to a seat on Roland’s Louis Philippe office chair.
“Why not, Jacques?” He pulled out that smile he’d perfected over the course of years in the ministry, as a haut fonctionnaire. Jacques, a socialist, wrote for the left-leaning Libération—not Roland’s choice of newspaper—but he was a respected journalist. “Hold my calls for five minutes, Juliette,” Roland said. “Ever seen my collection, Jacques?”
“Bien sûr, Roland,” he said. “But I’m not here for that.”
Never one for small talk, Jacques.
Jacques’s gaze drifted over the framed butterflies, but lingered on Pascal’s 1978 commendation. Pascal, the youngest député in the history of the Assemblée Nationale.
“Please take this as coming from a friend,” Jacques said. “I’ve known you, what, twenty years?”
Roland nodded. “Twenty-one. We met at Pascal’s funeral.”
Jacques’s hand went to his forehead, shading his eyes for a moment. Then he looked up, his thick brow furrowed. Jacques was genuinely worried.
“Et alors, it’s serious. Why are you here? Get to it, Jacques.”
“Off the record, you understand.” Jacques leaned forward. The Louis Philippe chair creaked. “You’re a friend, I knew your family. This concerns Pascal.”
“My brother?” Roland said. “Talking from beyond the grave?”
“Roland, I wanted to warn you,” said Jacques. “You won’t like this, but the editor’s going ahead with an exposé.”
“Another scandal?” Roland folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “What do you ever print but scandals?”
“There’s a memoir coming out. Libération is going to run an accompanying article about governmental corruption, and Pascal’s mentioned. Often.”
Roland’s jaw clamped. “He died twenty-one years ago. Such old news, your editor must be desperate.”
Jacques twisted in the chair. He took his case and stood. Roland had never seen this seasoned journalist look so uncomfortable before.
“Bad idea, let’s forget I came,” said Jacques. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
Worried, Roland shook his head. “Please tell me what you feel I need to know. I’m sorry, I see this isn’t easy for you.”
Instead of sitting back down, Jacques walked to Pascal’s framed presidential commendation, then to the window overlooking the Seine. His bald crown shone in the sun. Perspiration glimmered on his neck.
“Minister Chalond’s former teenage boy lover wrote a memoir—not even that scandal-worthy, given that Chalond’s long dead and the remaining family all senile. This now mature man has cirrhosis of the liver.” Jacques paused.
“Pascal? Gay?” Sunlight slanted onto the Aubusson rug and warmed Roland’s arms. “Au contraire.”
“The issue being that he serviced others in the ministry as well. Others who are very much alive.” Jacques paused. “It has other implications. This boyfriend heard pillow talk and gossip, attended dinners. He overheard deals being made—promised ministerial posts, do-this-and-the-ambassadorship’s-yours favors, bribes disguised as foreign-delegation junkets.”
Roland folded his arms tighter against his chest. “So? Why would the public believe a boy prostitute with twenty-year-old stories?”
“The issue, Roland, is that the exposé was thoroughly researched, all allegations verified. Pascal led two of those foreign delegations.”
Roland shrugged. “That’s all part of the public record, Jacques.”
“Cover-ups can still do damage twenty years later. They’re a threat to certain officials. I know Pascal was your older brother and you—”
“Idolized him? Say it, my father always did.”
Jacques averted his gaze. He pulled several stapled sheets from his case, set them on Roland’s desk. “I never gave you this, Roland.”
Roland didn’t want to look. Wouldn’t. Then his eye caught on “… honeypot sting … police hush money … homicide of Pascal’s Gypsy lover … reputed ‘suicide.’ ”
Good God. The fear he’d smothered all these years made him break out in a cold sweat. His arms tingled and blood rushed to his head. Dizzy, he gripped his desk, knocking the papers to the floor. Could it be true? Had Pascal’s suicide been a murder?
“I just didn’t want you blindsided,” said Jacques. “I’m sorry. It goes to print next week. I heard rumors of an investigation.”
Roland bent to pick up some papers, trying to recover. “I’m having my attorney read this.”
“Wouldn’t matter,” he said. “He’s got media lined up. Matter of fact, he is the media.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Charles Frenet, aka the teenage lover, is the former announcer on RTL. He’s been paid off to keep this quiet all these years, I imagine. Now he’s broke, wants a new liver. The interviews go live day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll stop him.”
“Good luck with that.” Jacques shot him a meaningful look. “Françoise’s husband’s name came up. There are implications …” Jacques sighed. “What you can do is warn Françoise.”
Monday, 11 A.M.
AIMÉE’S EMPTY STOMACH was knotted in fear. Her raw throat hurt and she was trembling. She tried to piece the implications together as she sat on a bench under a canopy of linden trees. Her mind spun.
She had sent Nicu to his death.
Focus. She had to focus. Drina was still out there. Whoever she was.
Put it together, her father had always said, piece together the puzzle. If you fail, try again. And again.
Half a notebook. Drina now fourteen hours gone and counting; her limbs would be ceasing to function.
Loose ends—she only had loose ends. Names and a few family photographs. And without the notebook, which she’d never had a chance to see, it led nowhere. She had zero.
Nothing to follow up on.
Chloé depended on her. What kind of fool was she, putting herself in danger like that? And she’d found nothing but a trail of smoke and names.
Part of her wanted to run away from the whole damn thing. Erase what had happened. As if she could. If she stopped now, whatever Drina knew about her father’s killer would go with her.
Her father’s words came back to her from an afternoon at the park long ago when she’d fallen off the swing. “No pity party, Aimée. If kisses don’t make the tears go away, be a big girl, put on the Band-Aid.” Her ten-year-old self that afternoon needed to put on a brave face and get back on the swing.
If she gave up now, Nicu’s death would mean nothing. Any chance of finding her father’s killer would disappear.
She hitched her bag over her shoulder. Time to put on the Band-Aid, get back on the swing and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. If she didn’t, she could be next.
