Murder on the Champ de Mars

by Cara Black

  “Tomorrow. She requested Chloé’s birth certificate.”

  “Une formalité, I’m sure,” said René, looking grim. “Stay calm, Aimée. Morbier told me the lawyer’s good. The best.”

  “So you two are talking behind my back?” She balled up an old fax and tossed it at him.

  René kicked it back to her. “Only for your own good.”

  She held up the torn drink receipt from La Bouteille. “So far it’s the only lead I’ve found.”

  René shook his head, pausing his fingers on the keyboard. “Not this again.”

  “It’s related, René, part of a puzzle I can’t find a way into.”

  “Mais everything you’ve said, Aimée, it’s all conjecture. Too many ifs—if this woman’s alive, if she’s related to a woman murdered twenty years ago, if there’s a connection to your father. What does it even matter now?”

  “Not just any woman.” She took out the envelope containing Nicu’s birth certificate. Set it by René’s keyboard. “Djanka Constantin, aged twenty-four. My father investigated her homicide. René, it’s all connected but I don’t know how.” Then the tattered black-and-white photos she’d found in the envelope. “Here’s Nicu as an infant with Drina and Djanka—see, it’s labeled. Both Constantins. Look at their cheekbones. Tell me they’re not sisters.”

  René stared. “A beauty, Djanka.”

  She had almond eyes, an alertness captured by the camera, which had caught her lifting her baby’s feet in the air, a half smile parting her lips. A young woman full of life. A hint of the seductress.

  The looks had certainly gone to her instead of Drina.

  “Alors, this woman, my father’s old informer, insists on seeing me, but gets abducted before I arrive. This boy she raised as her son finds her notes mentioning my father, he’s knifed to death and the notes stolen—all within fifteen hours. I want to know who—”

  “You haven’t asked the important question, Aimée.”

  She was surprised to hear the note of interest in René’s voice. But he always liked a puzzle—she’d hooked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who’s this Pascal in the second photo? Besides being Nicu’s father?”

  Not that hungover after all. “You’re right, René. Nicu’s uncle would know. The one who wanted to bring her back from the hospital.”

  A sigh. “Then I guess it’s up to me to ask him.” René took his custom-tailored Burberry trench coat from the back of his chair, donned his fedora. “Need to look the part, eh?”

  “You mean it, René?” she said. “You’ll help?”

  “Time to hear some hot manouche jazz. Ferret around, look for the uncle.” He took the photocopied receipt, Maxence’s notes on La Bouteille, the photo and Nicu’s birth certificate from Aimée’s desk. “Call it delegating. Let me work on this. You finish the proposal, don’t blow tonight’s surveillance, and prepare for the lawyer.”

  Monday Afternoon

  THE GREY-WHISKERED GERMAN shepherd lying on the cracked brown mosaic tiling at La Bouteille aux Puces growled as René entered. Merveilleux. Already irritated by having had to trek through the flea market in the drizzle—he’d had to park blocks away—René was less than thrilled with the bared teeth and wet dog smell in the dim Gypsy café.

  Good thing he kept a packet of Chloé’s teething biscuits in his pocket. He tossed one to the dog, who chomped down. And begged for another.

  They parted as friends, and René continued past the blown-up photos of Django Reinhardt and Hot Jazz posters. The walls were stained pale yellow from nicotine. He doubted La Bouteille aux Puces had changed much since Django’s time. Or that the woodwork had been scrubbed since then. Near the WC stood a wood cabin marked TÉLÉPHONE—rare to see one of those these days.

  “Madame Bercou, n’est-ce pas?” René smiled with his most determined charm at the older woman behind the counter. “You’ve owned the café a long time, I understand.”

  The woman, wearing a violet scarf tied over a long braid and a blue cardigan under an apron, looked down at him. Squinted. Then shook her head.

  Not a graduate of Gypsy charm school.

  Had ownership changed hands? Or had Maxence gotten it wrong? He’d wasted his own time trying to keep Aimée from getting even more involved in this goose chase. But he’d driven this far, gotten his pant cuffs wet and he’d give it another go before he left.

  “Un express, s’il vous plaît,” he said, trying to think of how to start a conversation, ease into questions. “Make it a double, Madame.”

  René climbed up onto the stool. Slipped. Wished he’d worn his loafers with the non-slip leather sole.

  She set a demitasse cup under the chrome machine. Brown, work-worn hands, swollen rheumatoid knuckles—every slow movement looked painful.

  He felt a twinge of compassion. His hip dysplasia pained him in the damp. What he wouldn’t give for a cortisone shot right now.

  Playing on the sound system was a recording of a twanging guitar with la pompe, the signature Django rhythm. On the walls, notices advertised nightly music. Photos of Django Reinhardt everywhere with his thin mustache and guitar held by the two fingers he played with, the deformed rest of his hand just visible. Gypsy cafés were the province of men, but the place was empty. Too early for the evening crowd, he figured.

  “Madame?”

  “Attends, need my hearing aid.” She stuck a small beige plug in her ear as she stepped from behind the counter to face him. Took his measure. “No auditions here.” Before he could open his mouth, she shrugged. “They’re held under the big tent up from Place de Clichy.”

  As if all dwarves wanted to audition for the circus? Typical.

  “That’s not why I came,” he said.

  “Have it your way, mon petit,” she said. “So the music, you came for the music, eh?”

  Not at all, he was about to retort. But it was a place to start. “Bien sûr,” he said with a smile, hoping to finesse it. “My nana loved this music,” he said.

  It was true. The speakers were playing “La Mer” now and the sound of Django’s haunting guitar strains had brought back memories of his grandmother. Nana used to play Django records on her phonograph. He remembered how she set the needle on the vinyl, the scratchy sound, the burst of guitar. She would grin and hug him, and they would dance with a dish towel to Hot Jazz. He had only been four when she died, but he remembered sitting with her as she lay in a big feather bed with iron railings. Nana’s thick grey bun had been tied with ribbon, her drawn face fully made up.

  “She danced to Django’s songs even in the kitchen,” said René.

  The woman set the wobbling demitasse of steaming espresso on the counter. Pushed the sugar at him.

  “Who didn’t?” she said, wiping her hands. “Everyone has Django stories. Ah, the stories. The old men drag them out at night; people like to remember.” She winked. “Duke Ellington sat here and played with him.”

  René sat up on the stool. “Duke Ellington, here?”

  “Everyone came to play with Django.” Her eyes danced. “Not bad for a self-taught guitarist who never learned to read or write, eh?” She turned away as if stopping herself. Afraid of letting her guard down. Typical Gypsy, he thought. Closemouthed to outsiders.

  “C’est vrai? I thought I knew a lot about Django, but I didn’t know he couldn’t read or write.” He hoped he hadn’t laid it on too thick. “You mean he couldn’t read music?”

  “Django couldn’t even take the Métro because he couldn’t follow the signs.” The woman was warming up again. “He took taxis, or walked if he’d gambled away his money.”

  “Must have been quite a character,” said René.

  A shrug. “Volatile, temperamental. An artist. Lived in his caravan or camped in hotel rooms.”

  René’s foot tapped to the beat. It was infectious. For a moment he wondered if his nana had swung on this tiny dance floor in her youth.

  He snapped out of it. This was a long enough trip
down memory lane. He needed to find out about Djanka Constantin.

  “Since you know so much, maybe you can help me,” he said, hoping the change of subject didn’t come off as abrupt. “Twenty years ago, in 1978, a young manouche woman named Djanka Constantin was murdered. Her killer was never caught. A drink receipt from La Bouteille was found in her pocket. Were you around then?”

  “Me? Non.”

  “Don’t you remember hearing about it?”

  She grabbed a towel. “That’s a long time ago.”

  “Do you remember her family?”

  A quick shake of the head. “Three francs fifty.”

  The Gypsy wall had descended, shutting him out. C’était typique, ça. Overcharged him, too. Alors, what else did he expect?

  All this way only to find a deaf old woman, a shrine to Django and memories of his nana. But he sensed the woman knew more than she was letting on.

  The dog growled. He heard a smack on the window, hoots of laughter. He turned around to see egg yolk dripping down the outside of the café’s window. Two teenagers in rain slickers gave off snickers and taunts.

  By the time the woman had grabbed the dog’s leash and gotten to the door, they’d run away.

  From the stool he could see the yellow smears on the window, watched her rub the stains off with a towel. Spit over her shoulder into the gutter.

  Not the first time, René figured.

  “Have you complained to the flics?” René said when she got back.

  She shrugged. “We say it’s better to turn sideways in the wind.”

  A Gypsy aphorism that seemed to cover a lot of bases. But he could use this to open her up.

  “Me, I’m an outsider, too,” René said, looking up from his cup. “Picked on, excluded in the village where I grew up. I took up martial arts and earned a black belt to compensate.” He rarely shared these details. “My life’s not so different from yours, Madame.”

  If the woman heard him, she didn’t let on. His attempt at solidarity fell as flat as the eggshells she’d swept into the gutter.

  “Et en plus you saw me, a dwarf, and assumed I had come for a circus audition,” he said. He hated playing the sympathy card, it went against his grain. But he needed to reach out and get her to relate. “It’s not like I can disguise my appearance.”

  She reached for a clean dish towel. “When the road bends, it’s hard to walk straight, mon petit,” she said.

  A crack in the wall. Good. He’d push.

  “Can you help? Isn’t there anyone who might remember Djanka?” said René. “A long-time client who would have been here in the seventies, or the old owner?”

  “What’s it to you?” she said.

  “I’m helping a friend.”

  “What do you care about something that happened twenty years ago?”

  “Djanka’s murder was filed away, forgotten. The flics didn’t care, she was just a Gypsy,” he said. “But it matters now to Drina, her dying sister, who’s been abducted from the hospital. Drina’s life is in danger, and I believe the secret of her location is linked to Djanka’s unsolved murder.”

  He’d made the last part up and hoped it worked. Sitting up on the stool, he rubbed his cold hands. Had he convinced her?

  “Come back later and talk to les vieux,” she said.

  And waste more time trying to pry open sealed lips? He needed a less vague promise of help.

  “Tant pis.” René felt in his pocket for his billfold. “So young and full of life, only twenty-four years old, a beauty, this Djanka. See.” He slapped the photo and a hundred francs on the zinc. “This help?”

  The woman pulled her glasses from around her neck.

  “Wasn’t called Djanka back then.”

  René’s spine straightened. His stool creaked. “So what did you call her?”

  “Aurélie.”

  “You knew her?”

  “She sang, her husband played guitar. He died in a fire in their caravan.”

  “Pascal?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  “Pascal’s not a typical manouche name, is it?”

  She gave a sideways grin. “What’s a name to us? We have many: three, four …”

  As many as a particular situation demanded, René knew. He had read the newspapers—last year a Gypsy crime king had been sentenced, but six months into his term, the flics discovered it was his brother serving in prison.

  “So she used Aurélie as a stage name?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, I never saw her after her husband died,” she said. “C’est tout ce que je sais.”

  He contained his excitement. Now he had something to tell Aimée.

  “Funny,” the woman continued, “you’re the second one to ask in as many days.”

  Another person had come sniffing around? He was getting somewhere. Excited, he tried to keep his voice level. “A flic?”

  “Not my business, mon petit.”

  But she’d labeled the man, René could tell.

  “It matters to me if I’m not the only one asking,” said René. “Tell me what this person asked you about.”

  She shrugged. “Didn’t stay long after I told him I’d never heard of her. Not my type of person,” she said. “You, you’re different.”

  He had gotten her to identify with him after all. And maybe the other mec hadn’t left a hundred-franc note on the counter.

  “Can you describe this man?”

  “Ugly mug. Chain-smoked.”

  René sucked in his breath. He was getting somewhere all right. “Old, young?”

  “Been around.” Her face broke into a lopsided grin.

  “So any scars, tattoos?’

  She had a calculating twinkle in her eye. “A man must put grain in the ground before he can cut the harvest.” She extended her palm.

  He deliberated. Made to feel around in his pocket. Waited.

  “Maybe in his sixties, thick eyebrows,” she said, “a smoker, as I told you.”

  Could be anyone. He decided to move on and slid another hundred francs onto the counter. “I’ve heard in Romany culture, families insist on taking care of dying relatives. C’est vrai?”

  “Selon la tradition, oui,” she said.

  He wished he could remember Nicu’s uncle’s name, the uncle Aimée had mentioned. He decided to keep on trying. “Then why would a brother abduct his sister from the hospital and lie to her son?”

  “That’s not our way,” she said. “Families prepare the traveler by keeping vigil at the bedside. We fear vengeance if wrongs aren’t righted or forgiveness not granted before a person departs on their journey. Never happens. C’est tabou.”

  If what she said held true, this put the Constantin uncle in the clear.

  “Then who would?”

  “I could ask around but it’d cost you.”

  More? No chance of help from the goodness of her heart, if she had one.

  “Les gens du voyage move around,” she said. “Things get compliqué.”

  And René had little time. He took out three hundred francs—the rent due on his garage—and put a hundred and fifty on the counter with his card. “Half now. Half when I meet anyone who knew her.”

  His gaze caught on the Cirque Gitane poster beside the mirror. He recognized the uncle’s name now—stupid, it had been staring him in the face the whole time. René jerked his thumb at the poster for the Constantin family circus. “Radu Constantin I’ll talk to myself.”

  Monday, Late Afternoon

  AIMÉE RAN INTO her apartment building’s courtyard, her flounced wool Gaultier coat damp from the drizzle. She wished she’d thought to pack her umbrella—then immediately felt racked with guilt for even thinking of such a thing and wished instead she hadn’t sent Nicu to his death. But those thoughts would get her nowhere. The pear tree’s budding leaves dripped on the lichen-laced cobblestones.

  Only enough time to grab her laptop for tonight’s surveillance and zip back to the office in the waiting
taxi. Not even a moment to kiss Chloé, who was napping across the courtyard.

  Someone stepped out from the shadows under the eaves near the mailboxes. Startled, Aimée almost dropped her bag in a puddle.

  It was Donatine. The last person she wanted to meet. Melac’s squeeze … non, his damned wife.

  How the hell does she have the gall?

  “Aimée, it’s been bothering me since last night. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” said Donatine, her face concerned. Her long red braid snaked over her belted wool jacket. Shielded by an umbrella, she was dry from her rouged cheeks to her ankle boots. A perfect provincial. She was clutching a package with the brand-name Bonpoint, the chichi baby store, under her arm—“We got off on the wrong foot; please let me explain.”

  Aimée could feel words bubbling up in her mouth. Words like Why did Melac choose you over me and his child?

  “My lawyer doesn’t want us in contact,” she said instead, determined to keep her hands in the pockets of her coat. Otherwise she’d swat this woman out of the way.

  Donatine stepped aside. “Bien sûr. This package …”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “No conversations, no gift, no trouble.”

  “Hear me out for two seconds, please,” Donatine said.

  “I’m sorry.” She struggled to keep her tone businesslike. “My lawyer instructed me not to talk to anyone concerned.”

  “Melac thought that with your job you’d welcome our help. I’m a nurse.”

  She was smart, this woman, inserting herself into the equation like this. Persistent.

  “I’m sorry he never RSVP’d and that he’s ignored the baby—your beautiful Chloé,” said Donatine. “In your place I’d feel threatened, too.”

  Threatened. That about summed it up. And maybe a little jealous, too, though she’d deny it. The best defense was a good offense, her father had always said.

  Aimée attempted to hold her tone even. “You’re a stranger to me. Désolée. As I’ve said twice now, we can’t be in contact.”

  And if you keep pushing me, I’ll kick your kneecaps and ruin those ugly boots.

  Donatine’s pink-glossed mouth quivered. “It would mean so much to me if we were friends.”