by Cara Black
“Et alors, Sophie said she’d told you!”
She clenched her hands. The bile rose in her stomach.
“You believed her, Morbier?”
He glanced at his watch, an old one with a frayed leather band. “She’s in London by now.”
Incredulous, she stared at Morbier. “Why did you let her go?”
“You. You didn’t tell me to cuff her to the chair, did you?” he said. “I would have. Sophie said there was nothing you could do.” He shrugged. “No one can babysit her if she doesn’t want it.”
True. A scared Sophie might be safer in England, but it left Aimée in the dark.
“Didn’t you ask her about Thadée, question her about the jade?”
“Stubbornness runs in your veins and those of your ‘friends,’ too!” Morbier said. “She said she didn’t know anything. And you know what, I believed her. Then she made coffee, complimented me on my taste in Havana cigarillos, and left.”
Aimée wanted to steady her shaking hands. Couldn’t. Not since Thadée Baret had landed in her arms. But she wouldn’t let Morbier see them. Couldn’t let him know the stress had gotten to her.
“Morbier, do you think I can’t handle this now because of . . . my eyes?”
“Leduc, I recommend you stick to what you do best. Computers.”
“But René. . . .”
“Have they called back?”
She shook her head. “I told Commissaire Ronsard.”
“Good,” Morbier said.
“But he thinks I lured Thadée into the street so he could be killed.”
“The kidnappers will call. Ronsard knows his stuff. He’ll get them.”
She had to convince Morbier. Persuade him now. Like milk, he soured quickly.
“Morbier, you have to speak with Ronsard. Persuade him I had nothing to do with shooting Baret or abducting Sophie. And that René’s in great danger.”
“I’ll try.”
And with that, he locked his door and ushered her out.
AIMÉE WOVE her way among the bicycles and buses stalled on rue de Rivoli. The stench of exhaust and beeping of horns wore on her nerves.
She tried René’s number again, then listened to her messages. Nothing.
The faint hope she’d nursed with respect to Guy died. Guy hadn’t been one to burn up the phone lines. But he’d written her letters from Geneva, putting into words his impressions and feelings about life, and for her. A sketch in the corner, a line of poetry here and there . . . she’d read them over and over. An old-fashioned part of her loved the words he’d penned and even the crisp paper he’d touched.
She missed him. She hesitated, but she knew she had to explain. She called his office. “Doctor Lambert, please,” she said. “It’s Aimée Leduc.”
“He’s with patients,” Marie said, her voice clipped and frosty. “I’ll relay the message.”
Was Guy refusing to take her calls?
With a heavy heart she mounted the spiral staircase and opened the door of Leduc Detective. Startled, she saw a young man in his early twenties, with light brown dreadlocks to his waist, eating tandoori chicken next to an open laptop. Turmeric and curry smells filled the office.
“Mind telling me how you got into my office and what you’re doing here?” she said.
“Sorry, I’m Saj de Rosnay,” he said with a sheepish grin, wiping the corners of his mouth. “René gave me a key, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
René’s encryption genius certainly knew how to make himself at home. Saj sat crosslegged in her chair, his laptop and files strewn over her desk. He wore beige cotton Indian pants, vest, and flowing tunic. Tibetan turquoise hung from his neck. But with his pale complexion and amber eyes he looked all French.
“René asked me to prepare some data for you,” Saj said, pointing to the spreadsheets all over the recamier. “Sorry, but I’m not quite there.”
René trusted him. And right now she needed his help to keep the business running. She’d reserve judgment until she saw what he could do.
“I’m Aimée,” she said, biting back her comments about his work habits. She hung up her coat and shook his hand. Her stomach growled; she hadn’t eaten this morning.
“No problem,” she said. “Let’s see what you’ve got so far.”
“Try a pakora,” he said, gesturing to the open cartons. He pulled an Indian shawl around his shoulders, recrossed his legs as he sat on her chair. “I found something interesting when I factored large numbers and then . . . look!”
Threads of numbers stretched over the laptop screen. Impressive.
She nodded and grabbed a warm, crisp, potato-filled pakora.
“I’m curious about you, Saj.” She figured he was a hacker, like most of them, who enjoyed the thrill of penetrating a system, leaving a calling card, but not destroying it.
“Fire away,” he said, stretching his arms and doing neck rolls.
“You’re on loan from the Ministry, n’est-ce pas?” she said. “One of the hackers they train for use in the computer division, instead of sending them to prison.”
Something in his eyes shifted. Had she gone up a notch in his estimation?
“Rehabilitation, they call it,” he smiled.
She opened her laptop at René’s desk, booted up.
“What makes you so important to them, Saj?”
“Things I can do make it too scary to have me as an opponent,” Saj said. “They didn’t know what to do with me so they sent me to the hacker academy to keep tabs on me. But I’m into meditation for the world good. And I refuse to crack Swiss bank databases any more.”
She grinned, rubbing her eyes. Meditation! That’s what had gotten her into this mess.
“Should we wait for René?” he asked.
Her stomach clenched. Would he want to work, to get involved, after he heard about René? “Can I speak in confidence?” she asked.
He nodded, his dreadlocks hitting his elbows.
“He’s been kidnapped. I’m waiting for a phone call from men who took him.”
“For real?” Saj’s eyes widened.
She gave Saj a brief account, leaving out the part concerning the jade.
“A ham radio operator’s ready to triangulate the call,” she said, connecting her phone to the charger. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to get involved since the Ministry’s on your tail. But I need help, and so does René.”
Saj shook his head, his brow furrowed. “René’s an artiste, deft and intuitive. I respect him, he’s taught me so much in the short time I’ve known him.”
Aimée turned away, fighting back tears. Saj painted René perfectly. Even if he had taken over her desk.
“René would want us to work, not stew. I deal better with tension by working.”
“Me, too,” he said.
Three hours later, they’d finished the statistics, drafted a security proposal, and consumed the entire contents of the cartons of Indian takeout.
“Nice work,” she said.
She’d deliberately limited her comments to work. Saj was good. Very good. And he’d seemed to take to heart the news about René.
Every time the office phone rang she jumped and looked at the clock. Eighteen hours had passed and still no phone call.
“I’d like to help you,” Saj said. “Especially since René . . . well, he’s helped me.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” she said. “Give me your number, we’ll have more to do tomorrow.”
He handed her a card. “Namaste,” he said, putting his hands together in a gesture of peace. He gathered his laptop and left.
If she took the medication and used screen reading software, she’d avoid straining her eyes. Then she thought about the rent, her renovation contractor, Miles Davis’s grooming bill, René’s salary, and new equipment.
The phone/fax line rang. Her fingers tensed on the keyboard. She took a deep breath. She couldn’t blow it with the kidnappers this time.
Thursday
&nb
sp; NADÈGE GATHERED HER VELVET skirt and slid through the hole in the slat fence. She followed the weed-choked rail line to the old train tunnel, now blackened and dark. Moisture oozed from the moss-filled cracks in the stone. Beyond the tunnel lay the thieves’ market in the closed down rail yards.
Brick red, peeling rail cars were hooked up to cylindrical ones labeled liquid petroleum gas. She knew the homeless, the clochards who were fond of the bottle, slept in them between the periodic raids by the railway police. And weasels scavenged on the old tracks.
Nadège tried not to grimace as she passed the display of used Prada bags, Vuitton totes, and Christian Louboutin red-soled shoes spread on a blanket.
“Ça va, ma belle?” said Hortense. Her toothless grin and hollowed out face shocked Nadège. Once a model, Hortense had graced Elle magazine covers before the drug ravaged her. “Take your pick. Worn once, most of them.”
Nadège’s stomach cramped and her eyes watered. Withdrawal, never dramatic like in the movies, was more like an aching flu, so bad her bones hurt, laced by nausea and sweating. Now she used the drug just to become “normal,” forget getting high. And she hated it.
“Where’s Mr. Know-it-all?”
But Hortense had nodded out, slumped against the lichen-covered stone tunnel. Nadège passed the young hustlers warming their hands by a fire of burning railroad ties. An aging clochard sold cartons of Dunhill cigarettes, and a man stood by a pile of copper pipe with a sign saying “TEN FRANCS EACH.” He rubbed his hands in the cold and shook his head when Nadège asked him if he’d seen her connection. The sky darkened with rain.
Desperate, she asked a thin man taking water from the old rusted faucet, ignoring his leer.
“Looking for candy, eh. Know-it-all’s a no show today.”
Merde! “C’est vrai?” she asked.
“What’s it worth to you?”
His eyes were like brown stones. He smelled of earth and the decay around him.
“Take a hike,” she said.
“Name the time and place.”
Not even in your next life, she thought.
She hurried over the rail lines. Her hands shook. She needed some courage to meet her father. Juste un peu . . . she’d cut back. Would cut back even more, if only she could get through the next hour.
Old covered yards led to abandoned, decayed buildings. Nadège had avoided this area after Thadée cautioned her against the heavy-duty types controlling it.
She climbed a rusted-out staircase. Dampness clung to the graffitied walls pockmarked with age. Inside, water dripped and a terse conversation echoed. She bent down and picked her way over the metal rods, avoided the broken glass and randomly strewn bricks to get closer. “. . . Flics can’t find her, how can we?” She recognized two of the men huddled in a group. One had threatened Thadée last week, the one who had a van.
Did they mean her?
Her hands shook so much, she couldn’t hold onto the railing. She backed out, step by step. Right into the arm of the leering man from the faucet, his hands still damp.
“What’s your hurry?”
She pushed his hands away, took off running, and didn’t stop until she’d reached the fence.
SHE RUBBED her nose and tottered into her father’s home-office on her highest heels. Her feet were sore, brutal mecs were looking for her, and she had nowhere else to go. The flu-like symptoms of withdrawal slammed hard: every part of her ached, feverish and sweating.
“Bonjour, Papa.”
Her father sat by a roaring fire talking on the phone, frowning. Her stepmother’s room had been vacant.
“I told you never to come here,” he said, after finally hanging up.
“But it’s about Thadée—”
“Oui, the funeral,” he said, rubbing his tired eyes. “Behave this time. If you make a scene at the church service I’ll have all your contact with Michel cut off.”
She shook her head. “Why won’t you ever listen to me, Papa?”
“Because when I do, it’s what’s running in your veins that talks, not my Nadège.” His eyes moistened. “I blamed Thadée. And now drugs killed him.”
“Non, Papa,” she said. “Not drugs. . . .”
“Nadège, wake up,” he said. “Try the clinic. . . .”
She shriveled in fear. He meant St. Anne’s, the psychiatric hospital. The dank looney bin on the site of a medieval convalescent house for those with contagious diseases. The place where he’d committed her mother after she’d been thrown out of the last private clinic.
Her mother had never come out.
She had to make him understand.
“You’re not listening,” she said, pacing back and forth. “Thadée owed—”
“His dealers,” he interrupted. “What can I do? A scandal will erupt unless I cooperate.”
“Who cares what people think? He’s dead, they killed him.”
His eyes narrowed. “What was the last thing Thadée said to you?”
What did he mean?
“ ‘Meet me at my place.’ Please, Papa.” Why was he so stubborn; she needed a place to stay. Somewhere safe. “So his dealers threatened you,” she said, “and you’re more worried about that than about me?”
The phone rang. She knew he wanted to answer it, yet his eyes caught on her torn shoes. Pain and hurt softened his look.
“Did he ever mention your grand-père’s art collection?”
She could never confide in him. Not now.
She slammed the door on her way out.
Thursday
TIGHT DUCT TAPE BIT into René’s ankles, cutting off his circulation. His wrists, tied behind his back, stung. He chewed the kerosene-smelling rag in his mouth. He couldn’t stop panting nervously, his nostrils working hard under his small, flat nose. The cartilage had never developed properly due to the diminished volume of pituitary secretion, a common problem for those of his size. But he doubted these mecs would notice.
Every so often the gravel-voiced man kicked him. He heard murmured conversations somewhere. Waiting; they were waiting for someone, or for instructions.
Musky, mildewed odors surrounded him. His nose itched and ran. They’d taken off the burlap bag. Old timbered beams held up the damp wall, part brick, earth, stone, and flaking stucco that he faced: as if someone had once meant to resurface the old cellar and had given up, abandoning piles of cobwebbed bricks and worm-holed planks.
The light from a sputtering kerosene lantern flickered with a low hiss. He watched a trail of black ants mounting a brick by the sweating moisture-laden wall, moving a large crumb. It looked impossible. He watched them to keep his mind sharp, alert. And to avoid dwelling on the ache in his hip.
He could just make out numbers and letters written on the stone: 5/3/1942, Renault factory bombing, and the name Etienne M. He tried to peer closer. More names on the wall in a faded, old-fashioned script. Now he knew, he was in an old bomb shelter, an abri, one of 22,000 shelters used during the war.
He remembered his mother’s tales of running to the shelters or sometimes to the Métro. More often she’d gone to underground cellars and caves. Most Allied attacks had focused on outlying train depots and factories that had been taken over by the Germans.
Fat lot of good this information did him; he could be anywhere. If only he could locate his phone, reach it, and call Aimée.
“Get some beer while you’re there,” the gravelly voice said somewhere behind him.
“Where?”
“Next to Bata.”
“No names, shut up!”
Bata . . . the shoe store? René closed his eyes.
“He’s asleep.”
How many Batas were in Paris? They were usually in low-rent quartiers. Places like la Goutte d’Or, the African section, or Belleville or Clichy.
They’d left the rags in a wet pile on his raincoat. Even that he could live with. He disliked more the fact that he could see them. A bad omen for kidnap victims. It meant the kidnappers didn’t care if they could
be identified; the victim wouldn’t be around long enough to identify them.
Forty-eight hours. Then dismemberment and death.
Thursday
AIMÉE HEARD THE HUM of the fax machine. Apprehensive, she stood up to read the fax. Was it René’s captors, with a meeting place?
“Meet me downstairs at the Musée Henner. Dinard.”
Dinard, the jade expert!
Twenty minutes later she stood in front of Musée Henner, a weathered, sand-colored stone museum that displayed the blue, white and red French flag. Rain pelted the cobbles. She doubted if Dinard had had time to research the jade. But he wanted it.
She needed to string him along, glean information from him. His present interest must stem from the RG’s visit.
Aimée entered and saw a wooden staircase mounting to the upper floors of the eighteenth-century townhouse left to the state by the owner, a mediocre German painter. A fresh-faced young woman at the reception met her.
“You’re here to see the curator?”
Aimée nodded, not knowing what else to do, and followed the young woman’s directions to the bowels of the museum. Too bad; she would have liked to see the view from the top.
The sign on the door read CURATOR. She knocked and Dinard’s assistant, Tessier, opened it. He motioned her inside to a room with a computer on a desk next to piles of papers. Oversized art books filled the bookshelves; a large oval window overlooked the back courtyard
She stayed by the door, prepared to back out. “Where’s Dinard?”
“Monsieur Dinard asked me to collect the jade pieces,” he informed her, his forehead beaded with perspiration.
She played for time. “Why the fax, and the mystery?”
“He’s had to leave for the hospital for a hypertension screening.”
“No offense, but I’d rather give him the pieces myself,” she said. “My understanding is that he’s investigating their origin and provenance.”
She noted the perspiration on his brow and how he kept smoothing back his brown hair. A nervous habit she remembered from their previous brief meeting at Dinard’s office.
“They’re holding something over you, aren’t they?” Aimée asked.
