Murder on the Champ de Mars

by Cara Black

  “The prime minister’s security had you on CCTV?” His brow furrowed. “I don’t like it, Aimée.”

  “Think I do?”

  “And I haven’t helped you much,” said René. “All I got from Madame Rana was expensive fright. She wouldn’t translate.”

  While René told her about his visit, she reapplied her mascara. Nothing they’d learned seemed to have gotten them anywhere.

  “Why not go with the simple scenario?” René said. “A jealous Pascal murders his lover, Djanka, dumps her in the moat—it’s not far from the quai d’Orsay. Then, guilt stricken, he commits suicide. The family pays hush money to close the investigation. End of story.”

  If it were that simple, why had Drina been abducted? “Not end of story, René.”

  “D’accord, say the younger brother pays a hit man to kill his brother, reasons unknown, and his lover Djanka, too,” said René. “Drina takes Nicu, her sister’s son, to protect him. They melt into the countryside—”

  “Hold on, René. From what Nicu told Rose, my father gave Drina the all clear and she and Papa struck up an ‘arrangement’ for her to inform. Then Nicu was murdered for her notebook containing proof.”

  “All these years later? All these years after your father’s death? Didn’t Nicu tell you she lived in Avignon now?” René leaned back in his chair. “Tonight’s edition of France Soir details the police investigation into Nicu Constantin’s ‘hate’ murder by right-wing youths who targeted Gypsies at the Métro.”

  She shook her head. “Too convenient. Whoever murdered him stole the notebook, too.”

  “So what, then? Roland Leseur’s so desperate to keep the secret of his brother’s affair that he hired a minion to kill the son after all these years?” said René. “Non, he’d call up a pal at the Ministry of Defense and request a black op to handle it.” René stretched his arms over his head. “That scenario work for you?”

  “You read too many thrillers, René. Yet you’re right, there’s a black-op flavor to it.” Hadn’t Thiely at the École Militaire intimated the same thing?

  “How many years has he had to tie up a loose end? This is dangerous, Aimée—for you and Chloé. Let it go. Your five minutes are up,” said René as Maxence entered with his equipment. He hooked up the remote and plugged it into René’s bank of receivers.

  “All systems go, Maxence.” René scanned the screen, looking at a moving green dot. “Wait, why has this been activated already?”

  Aimée pulled out her scooter keys and winked. “Roland Leseur. I put a tracker in his wallet. Now we’ll see if he goes and visits the Ministry of Defense.”

  AIMÉE STOOD IN the small round salon upstairs at the Maison des Polytechniciens, the magnificient early eighteenth-century building where the reception was being held. This land had once belonged to Queen Margot, and the building had later been owned by Louis de Béchameil, after whom the sauce was named. De Béchameil had persuaded Jean-Antoine Watteau to decorate his hôtel particulier, and Watteau’s painted ceiling remained—a whimsical panoply of frock-coated monkeys on swings. During the Revolution it was the seat of power for the quartier: later in its history it was the headquarters of the national medical academy, a museum and a center of a movement for the French Renaissance. Finally École Polytechnique acquired it, “for their alumni,” as the hostess informed her, “and also available to hire for weddings and DJ parties in the vaulted subterranean cavern.”

  Maxence had reprised his role as car valet, and was standing downstairs in the entrance hall, beside the escalier d’honneur, a winding staircase with smooth dark-wood banisters and filigree swirls. The conservative crowd—not one of them under fifty—drank and mingled. After a half hour of surveillance, sipping jus de pamplemousse and nibbling crudités, she’d begun to suspect the comte’s imagination at work. While his extended family talked behind his back, nobody seemed to have it in for him and his company. The comte’s cousin, the engineer, was short and mouse-like, with weak blue eyes behind thick-lensed glasses and a prominent nose—the only prominent thing about him. He seemed even less of a threat than the other members of the comte’s family. After all this surveillance, it appeared simply that the comte exhibited a paranoid streak.

  But not her call—the comte was paying her for surveillance, and she’d deliver. She took careful notes in her head as she scrutinized each of the engineer’s conversational partners. So far there had been a middle-aged man with a protruding chin and an elderly dame. Judging by the advance guest list, a monsieur from a Geneva-based pharmaceutical company and the engineer’s mother.

  She sighed. She’d forgotten how tedious surveillance was. She walked over to the staircase and shot a glance down to Maxence at his post in the foyer full of black and white marble. Murmured into the stamp-sized microphone clipped inside her beaded bolero. “All quiet on the western front?”

  In her earwig she heard Maxence clear his throat.

  A signal. Alert now, she readied her palm-sized camera. The comte’s cousin must have called ahead for his car. A moment later she followed him as he headed downstairs with his mother, still deep in conversation with the Swiss man.

  If she hadn’t had her camera ready, she’d have missed it. On the staircase the engineer whipped something from his pocket. When they got to the marble foyer, he reached to shake the man’s hand. Hiding the camera as best she could behind her hand, lens aimed through her parted fingers, she snapped as many pictures as possible. After the handshake the engineer’s hands were empty. Caught that, too.

  “Target’s handed off to protruding chin,” she said softly into the mic. “Monitor and stall the protruding chin until I reach his car.”

  “Oui, Monsieur, the light blue Peugeot?” Maxence was saying for her benefit. “That’s parked at the far end. If you’ll take a seat on the recamier, s’il vous plaît.”

  She brushed past Maxence, heard the car keys drop into her open beaded clutch. Two minutes later she’d installed a tracker in the rear left wheel well, clipped a mini microphone to the car’s interior clutch stick base and passed the keys, wrapped in a fifty-franc note, to the waiting voiturier.

  Maxence arrived at her scooter, which was parked under the eaves of the concierge’s loge, still in his valet attire. “Activation complete?”

  She heard a double click as the blue Peugeot started up. “I wouldn’t have picked le vieux,” said Maxence. “The one with the rheumy blue eyes and bad breath.”

  Just in case the comte had any other suspicious encounters, they stayed through the end of the party, which turned out to be a short affair. An hour later they were done.

  “It’s never the ones you expect, Maxence.” She turned the key in the scooter’s ignition and revved the engine, and they shot into the night. “Never.” And it made her think.

  After dropping Maxence at the Métro, she paused at the curb by a café, took her phone off mute and checked for messages. Nothing from Morbier or Dussollier. Should she call Dussollier, check in?

  Her phone rang. René.

  “I’ve got the feed recording,” said René. “Interesting. This engineer’s the comte’s cousin?”

  “Exactement,” she said. “The engineer cousin handed off something to a Geneva-based pharmaceutical company.”

  “Voilà, the Swiss man’s conversation is coming in loud and clear,” said René. “He’s listening to classical music and he’s talking percentages and shares he’s about to acquire from the comte’s cousin in the company. Sounds like he’ll get enough for a majority holding.”

  “Proof parfaite. Back up the recording, make a copy. I’ll write up my notes and download the digital photos. We’ll deliver a nice package to the comte tomorrow.” She reached for her helmet. “What about Leseur’s tracker? Any activity?”

  “Only typical evening activity for a middle-aged homme politique. From the Assemblée Nationale, Leseur walked to his local Picard, for a gourmet frozen dinner, I imagine, then to his apartment off Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

/>   She almost dropped her helmet on the cobbled street.

  “You followed him, René?”

  “No need. This tracker does it and works more smoothly than a melting brie,” said René. “I followed him visually on my computer.”

  “How? Does this involve some new geekoid program, René?”

  “You should see it, Aimée.” His voice rose with excitement. “It’s a prototype in development. It overlays a visual onto a street map—it shows everything, monuments, landmarks, restos, shops.”

  “Sounds amazing.” A streetlight cast a furred yellow glow through the trees. Outside the Métro entrance, people sat at the café terrace under a spreading awning.

  “My friend invited me to alpha-test it for his new company,” said René. “It even pulls his location from the Internet and plugs it into its programming. I’ve got Leseur’s address, Aimée, which I cross-checked after hacking into the ministry’s site.”

  Seemed René favored Leseur for the murderer. And René had more, she could tell by the energy in his voice. He loved new toys.

  “So what else does your wonder program tell you?”

  “Most hauts fonctionnaires live in state-furnished apartments, you know, at the taxpayer’s—our—expense. But not Leseur. This program pulls up property records and owners. His family owns two apartments in the same building off Boulevard Saint-Germain.”

  “Where are you going with this, René?”

  “His brother Pascal Leseur committed suicide in one of them.”

  Shocked for a moment, she wondered what that could signify. If anything. “I’m surprised they didn’t sell it.”

  “Sell in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the most desirable part of the seventh? Where all their neighbors are aristocrats?”

  Aristocrats with threadbare apartments, like the Uzes. Laughter, the slam of a door as a couple got out of a taxi.

  “But getting back to murder over suicide: Roland had proximity, if not motive, since he lived upstairs,” said René. “And he could dump his brother’s lover in the moat.”

  She remembered Leseur’s reaction to her questions: as if he had happy, fond memories of the sisters. On a practical level it seemed possible that he’d killed Djanka and Pascal, but she wasn’t convinced about motive.

  “Wasn’t he younger? Might he have been away at school? Can you check on that?”

  Silence except for clicking.

  “René?”

  “Hold on, I have to restart. My connection’s slowing down.”

  Great.

  “Give me a few minutes.” She heard René suck in his breath. “Almost forgot, a Martin called for you. He said you knew where to find him. I hope this means—”

  About time.

  “Call me when you’re up and running, René.”

  A CURL OF cigarette smoke rose from between the fingers Martin tented on the table at his banquette in the back of Le Drugstore. “Let me tell you a love story, Mademoiselle Aimée.”

  An expensive one, considering what she’d paid Martin for information.

  She nodded. Took a sip of Evian, mindful of the old framed poster opposite that showed two fishermen on a riverbank opening their bières. The caption read, WATER? THAT’S FOR THE FISHES.

  “This love story,” said Martin. “It goes back to Victor Hugo and his hunchback. Remember Esmeralda, the seductive Gypsy? Well, during the war an alliance was formed in the Berry countryside.”

  She nodded again. “You mean between the Gypsy King and the Leseur patriarch, who was part of the Resistance.”

  “Tiens, tiens, you already know. Why did you ask for my help?”

  “Keep going, Martin, I’ll tell you when I don’t know.”

  Martin sucked on his cigarette. Tapped the ash into the Ricard ashtray. “The alliance continued long after the war, and a few alliances formed under the sheets, too. If you understand.”

  “Pascal Leseur fathered Djanka Constantin’s child.” She sipped her Evian.

  “Then I owe you a refund …”

  “Désolée, Martin. I won’t interrupt your love story again.”

  “For all this Pascal’s faults, and it seems there were many, he loved her. Had loved her since they were children. A grand amour. And he loved the boy. To prevent a scandal … well, I don’t know the details, but your father hid her sister and the child. Later she informed for him, mais then she disappeared again, this time to Avignon, after your father passed.”

  Martin would never say “murdered.”

  “She was afraid, that’s why—because she saw Papa blown up in the explosion. She told me, Martin. Told me as she was dying. She knew his murderers. Who are Fifi and Tesla?”

  “Ask Radu Constantin.” Martin flicked his ash. “He’s waiting for you outside in the Mercedes. My next appointment’s here, Mademoiselle Aimée. Kiss the baby for me.”

  “Merci, Martin.” She pecked him on both cheeks. Wished she didn’t want to suck up the smoke from his smoldering cigarette butt.

  At the corner of the Champs-Élysées, Radu Constantin leaned against the hood of his brown Mercedes, smoking. Like he had at the hospital, he wore a fedora. He appeared more haggard, with deep pouches under his eyes. “Le petit said you found my sister before she went into a coma.”

  Sounded like he had a problem with that. She pulled her bolero tighter. “We alerted you as soon as we could. Didn’t you get to the clinique in time …?”

  “She’d departed on her journey.” He removed his fedora. Put it to his chest. Wind whistled and shook the overhead plane-tree branches. He looked up. “You broke our tradition, violated our customs.”

  She shivered. A sign? For a moment she wondered if Drina stirred in their midst. But she had to get past this woo woo.

  “I’m sorry, Monsieur Constantin. Truly sorry.” She shook her head. “Instead of blaming me, what about the doctor who was paid off and her abductors? Hold them accountable, not me. Demand an investigation into her case. Get to the root of this and insist on prosecuting the guilty.”

  He pulled Le Parisien from his coat pocket. Shoved it in her face. “You think the press gives us justice? That this works?”

  “Pas du tout. But it doesn’t hurt. What you did protesting last night was instrumental in bringing this to public attention. It makes the people responsible nervous. Makes them sweat.”

  A snort. “As if that will ever happen.”

  “Don’t you want to make the system, however flawed, work in your sister’s favor? Like it never did during her lifetime or your nephew’s.” She couldn’t read his expression. “Hadn’t she returned because of her illness, because she needed her family?” Aimée tried her hunch, moving closer to Radu. “To say goodbye? But it had to be on your terms, non? Wasn’t that why you and Nicu argued?”

  “Stop.” He raised his ring-weighted hand. The thick gold band on his pinkie glinted under the streetlight.

  He did blame her. No understanding shone in his face—not that she expected any. He’d lost a sister and a nephew, after all. She could feel his numb grief—but she also sensed that it was partially rooted in guilt over the past.

  “What did my sister say in the clinique?” His voice rose, whether in fear or suspicion, she couldn’t tell. “I know she spoke to you.”

  Should she hold back or tell the truth to this irrational man who resented her? Blamed her? If she walked away, like she wanted to, it would get her nowhere.

  “I expect information in return, Radu. It goes both ways, or you wouldn’t be here. Martin told me.”

  He hadn’t. But if Martin had gotten him here, Radu wanted something—and that “something,” whatever it was, was her bargaining chip.

  He jerked his head in agreement.

  “She witnessed my father’s murder years ago. Told me to ‘make it right’ and find those implicated. She gave me two names—Fifi and Tesla. Martin says you know them.”

  “That’s all? You broke our traditions for that?”

  She’d have understood disappoint
ment, but where was the bite of anger in his voice coming from? What did he expect? “So I broke your traditions, some taboo,” she said. “To me, murder’s a taboo. How about you tell me how you know Fifi and Tesla.”

  “That’s years ago.” He put his hat back on his curly black hair.

  “I’m listening.”

  He opened his car door. “Why should I tell you?”

  She almost kicked the door shut. Playing hard to get and lying—well, she could play that game, too.

  “Guess you don’t want to know what your sister said about you.”

  Radu Constantin paused, his coat lapel bent upward in the wind. A shrug of what she took as defeat. “Non, that’s all scattered with the wind. Like her spirit. Gone.” He opened the car door. Paused. “She mentioned those names.”

  Aimée’s breath caught. “What did she say about them?”

  “That’s why she had to hide, she said. That’s all.” Radu averted his eyes. “I blamed her for mixing with gadjo, like always, and refused to help. Then she disappeared.”

  He’d shunned her when she’d asked for help.

  “But why had she recently come back to Paris?”

  “To make her peace, to depart among her people. But the gadjo found her.” He looked up at the night sky hazed by clouds. “Me, I wanted her forgiveness.”

  And she believed him.

  AIMÉE STOOD FOR a long moment watching the Mercedes disappear into the cars on the brightly lit Champs-Élysées. Radu Constantin’s sad case was one of too little, much too late.

  Her phone vibrated in her inner jacket pocket. René.

  “Leseur’s on the move, Aimée.” She heard him clicking the keyboard in the background. “He’s going down rue du Bac. Now he’s turning onto … rue de Grenelle. Maybe he’s walking his dog …”

  “Or maybe not, René.” She plugged in her earphones, put on her helmet, keyed the ignition and revved the engine. “Guide me from the Pont de l’Alma. I should be crossing it in three minutes.”