Murder in the Bastille

by Cara Black

  She chugged the Fire and Ice, a mixture tasting of tomato and strawberry zinging with tabasco. Curiously wonderful.

  “Look, I appreciate the drink . . .” she said, making as if to stand up. Hard in the cramped booth when she didn’t know which way to turn.

  She felt a tug on her elbow and decided to stay put. She wouldn’t have known what direction to go anyway.

  “Blame it on a school trip to England,” said Guy. “We saw dawn rise through the pillars at Stonehenge. And it changed my life.”

  He sounded serious.

  “I was fifteen,” he said. “Since then I’ve photographed hundreds of sunrises all over the world. After an eclipse comes the best sunrise. Incredible.”

  And she knew what he meant. She loved sunrises herself. Watched them from her window lighting up the Seine with a luminous glow. The quiet time before the city burst alive. Like a still breath before a large exhalation, feeling as if she were the only person on the planet.

  Yet, she’d imagined him otherwise; a life filled with surgery, consultations and patients. “How do you find the time?”

  “The baker loves me. We share a coffee. He’s the only other one awake at dawn on my street except for the newspaper truck. Or once in a while, kids coming home from rave parties.”

  “What was sunrise like this morning? Describe the colors.”

  Pause.

  He attempted to change the subject. “I live behind an old hardware store, famous for doorknobs. It’s been there since 1862, has more than 130 kinds. They specialize in Louis XIII style.”

  Why was he avoiding her question?

  “Did you miss the sunrise this morning?”

  “I don’t think it’s healthy,” he said, his voice hesitant, “talking to you about this . . .”

  “Please, tell me about the colors,” she asked again. If she couldn’t see the sunrise, she’d like to hear about it. Visualize it.

  “As I said . . .”

  “But I want you to,” she said. “Then I can see it in my mind. I miss seeing the sunrise.”

  “So you like them, too.”

  A pause.

  Had she made points with her doctor? He grew more human all the time.

  A band of pewter fog covered the Pont Neuf,” he said. ““Peach lightened up the horizon, spreading and reaching for the blue.”

  “What kind of blue?” she asked.

  “Innocent. Baby blue. The stars and streetlights twinkled until the bands of color became one brightness.”

  She wished she could see him; the shape of his eyes, how his mouth moved, if his cheekbones slanted, and how light glinted in his hair.

  “It’s not something I broadcast,” he told her. “Some might say I seem obsessed.”

  “Having a passion isn’t necessarily obsession. I’m just wondering what you look like.”

  That must be the Fire and Ice talking.

  “Chantal’s a bad teacher if she hasn’t . . .”

  “But she has,” she said, interrupting him as she passed her fingers over his face. Tentatively, she traced his chinline, felt the stubble and the soft border of his lips. His mouth. It would be rosy and he’d have straight white teeth. Her fingers traveled his earlobes, then his long fringed eyelashes that never seemed to end. Black or dark brown hair? Maybe tobacco red? She felt his forehead, smooth and . . . she stopped. Down girl . . . try and control yourself.

  “Like this,” he said, taking her other hand, sliding it, with his, along her eyebrows and framing her eyes.

  “I’ll leave it to the professional,” she said, enjoying this. Now if he could only give a massage.

  The next table had gone quiet.

  “Encore?” asked a voice near them.

  “Feel like that pastis?”

  “You buying?”

  “Two double pastis, merci,” he ordered.

  After the drinks landed on the table, she felt proud as she hooked her pinky over the glass’s edge to gauge just the right amount of water to pour into the milky pastis. The anise aroma hit her along with the buzzing conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the smoky atmosphere. Comfortable and familiar, even though she couldn’t see. The feeling that things could be worse crept into her mind. After all, there was a man at the table.

  Not her man. Not her table. But it was a start.

  Arm-in-arm they walked to Madame Danoux’s. She heard the hushed sound of the cars passing over the cobbled street. It must have rained while they were in the café. The car tires sounded different.

  “Not many people appreciate sunrise,” he said, his tone low in the damp street. “They’d rather sleep.”

  “My father pulled the all-night shift. When I was little, the only time we’d have to talk was before I left for school,” she said. “Sunrise was the best time of the day for me.” She remembered his worn bathrobe, tired face, and grin as he poured her steamed milk and chocolate. His thick, unread work files on the table by her bookbag. She shook off the memory.

  “What’s on this street, Guy?”

  “Café, fabric store for decorators, the offices of the La Rochelle Film Festival, and of Médecins san frontières,” he said, pausing.

  Was there something else he wanted to say?

  “There’s a uniform manufacturer, a public relations agency . . . it’s written in Chinese but it looks like a wholesale accessory shop. In the courtyard there’s an organ grinder’s supplier. He’s the only one who still makes the music rolls.”

  She recalled something: the sheets of music from Clothilde’s café . . . and the sheet of music René found in the garbage at Mathieu’s. Did they connect? But she’d think about that later. At the door, she reached for his hand, not knowing where to plant the customary bisous on his cheeks.

  “I didn’t learn much about the MRI,” she said. “But I enjoyed myself. Merci.”

  “That’s the point,” he said. “Chantal and the others frequent the bar we went to. The owner was a madame way back when, a ‘character,’ as people say.”

  “A colleague of Mimi’s?”

  He laughed. “That’s the rumor. People watch out for each other here. The quartier takes care of the non-sighted.”

  Her heart chilled. “Not well enough. I was attacked in the passage and Josiane was killed.”

  “But the serial killer’s . . .”

  “It wasn’t him. It was someone who knew Josiane.”

  “Let’s concentrate on the present,” he said.

  And then she felt his fingers on her lips. Then his lips on hers. Warm and searching.

  And she was 16 again . . . late kisses in a hallway at night, stolen and wonderful. Something mysterious revealed for the first time.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he said.

  What did he see in her?

  The door opened. “Dr. Lambert . . . is that you?” Madame Danoux’s distinctive contralto filled the hall.

  By the time Aimée got to bed, her tiredness had evaporated, leaving a brittle restlessness. Didn’t patients fall for their doctors all the time? What a cliché.

  Again, she wondered what had appealed to him? She was blind. Had it been pity . . . a mercy gesture?

  Yet, he hadn’t said he was married or involved. She hadn’t felt a ring on any of his fingers.

  And what good would she be to a man? How could it go anywhere? Did she want it to go anywhere?

  Stop.

  But he knew how to kiss. If she didn’t quit this, she’d be fantasizing about him all night. Forget counting sheep. She had to switch gears, distract herself, but she couldn’t call René, it was too late.

  She felt for the laptop, trying to ignore the mustiness and mothball scent emanating from the corner armoire, wishing Miles Davis, her puppy, was curled at her feet. As usual.

  But thank God, he was with René’s neighbor in Les Halles. He needed care and she couldn’t provide it. Maybe they could enroll in the guide dog course together.

  After booting up the laptop, she
created a file, titled it Chanson and typed in what bothered her. A big list in no particular order. And as she typed, the voice repeated the words. After five minutes she played the list back.

  Over and over.

  Then she arranged them in order of importance. Blindness, Vincent’s obstinate refusal to furnish the hard drive, and Mirador with Draz, the scum, rated as the top three.

  And René. She worried about his health, what he’d found out, and what he might miss. She often missed things, only to notice them later. Or details might hit her as she walked away or in the middle of the night.

  Like now.

  This was the kind of thought process she’d learned from her father and grandfather, growing up in a household of policemen. Not to mention the smoky Pelote nights with half the Commissariat playing cards around the kitchen table. The talk. The nuances, the glances, the tipoffs. The way they treated their indicateurs. Every flic nourished informers. Had to. By osmosis, she’d absorbed what to be aware of, what to suspect, and how to tell when something was being withheld.

  Fat lot of good that did her now. She wasn’t in the field. She had to depend on René. And part of her worried about people’s cruelty to him because of his stature.

  She wanted to tear her short, spiky hair out, but not seeing the result would ruin the pleasure. All she could do, besides stew, would be to put her fingers to work. She felt around, made sure the modem wires hooked into the phone line.

  She couldn’t do much about her blindness. But she could find out if Mirador had a website and garner info from it. René would get the scoop from Josiane’s editor, but in case it might help . . . she’d call in the morning and butter up whoever hired the casual labor . . . assuming she got that far.

  “Bienvenue à Mirador,” came a slick media-trained voice at the website. She found the fiscal and corporate structure, how they complied with building codes governing construction.

  She hoped René had reached everyone on Josiane’s speed dial. . . . Had the killer’s number been listed? Was that why he wanted the phone? Or did he think the last call could be traced? That thought jarred her.

  Of course, if she planned to murder someone she wouldn‘t be that stupid. And she didn’t think he was. But the attack on her, the similarity to the Beast of the Bastille’s method bothered her. In its very similarity, it seemed too planned to resemble the serial killer.

  Disturbing. This was someone with access to inside knowledge. Fear danced up her spine.

  Draz, the Romanian, might have prior convictions. A long shot. She didn’t even know his last name. Or if he was in the country legally. But checking on the off chance that he had a prior record would save a lot of time if he did. Her father always said “follow your nose.”

  What he left out, but adhered to faithfully, was procedure. She’d grown up intimately acquainted with investigative procedure, having done her homework, and lost several baby teeth, on the Commissariat marble floor. Following procedure, if nothing else, eliminated unnecessary legwork—now at a premium, since there was only so much René could do on his own.

  She found the cell phone, hit the number of Le Drugstore . . . once the sole all night pharmacy and café in Paris. The worn 70s decor, pricey service, and the location on the Champs-Elysées deterred her visiting. Not to mention the suburban backwash attracted by the seedy glitter.

  “Martin, please.”

  “You are . . .?

  “Aimée Leduc, Jean-Claude’s daughter.”

  Pause. He must be checking.

  “Call back in three minutes.”

  “D’accord, merci.”

  Standard operating procedure for contacting Martin, her father’s old informant. At least he was still alive and he seemed to be in operation.

  After one A.M., despite rain, sickness, or citywide strikes, Martin held court at a back table. He sat near the rear exit, where he could easily slip away.

  The phone cabinet, down the tiled stairs branching left from the restrooms, functioned as his communication center. No cell phone, but he brokered information, traded it like a commodities broker. If he didn’t know, he’d find out. Not always a lot, but quality. And worth every franc.

  He owed Aimée’s father for saving his skin at least twice. And being of the old school, that counted. Certain ethics prevailed and debts transferred, like a legacy, to offspring. Aimée knew she could count on Martin for something.

  She counted to 180 then called the number for the phone cabinet.

  “Bonsoir, Martin.”

  “Aaah, ma petite mademoiselle!” his voice boomed, gritty like gravel on an unpaved road. ”Such a long time. Ça va?”

  She imagined his oversized tortoiseshell glasses, his gray wavy hair combed back, prominent nose, and dancing eyes. A charmer in his own roguish way. Her father always said Martin could have been a first class ship’s cruise director if he’d only trod the straight and narrow.

  The last time she’d seen Martin was the day before the bombing in Place Vendôme that had killed her father. He’d furnished information about a gang in the eighth arrondisse-ment. Unrelated. But countless nights, when she’d woken up, she’d wondered if it really was.

  The department hadn’t sent flowers when her father died, but Martin had. A bouquet of yellow jonquils. And a donation to the war widows, her father’s favorite charity. Crime created strange partnerships.

  “And your dog, smarter than ever?”

  The pang of missing Miles Davis hit her.

  “Smarter than me, Martin,” she said.

  “You need an appointment?”

  That was his term.

  “Not the usual way, Martin,” she said. “It’s urgent. Thugs evicting tenants in the Eleventh, a Romanian named Draz.”

  “You know how I operate.”

  He required a personal visit to impart information. He used the phone as a tool, brief and to the point.

  “The murdered reporter, Josiane Dolet, what’s the word on her?” she said.

  “I want to help you but . . .”

  “No disrespect Martin, but I can’t come to meet you,” she said. “Logistics problems.” She didn’t want to admit her blindness. Never show a vulnerable side to a thief; it came back to haunt you.

  “These days I’ve cut back,” he said.

  She doubted that.

  “It’s not like before,” Martin said. “The new gangs, new ways of operating . . .”

  Paris had plenty of crime to go around.

  “You’re the best, Martin,” she said. “Who else knew the Hsieh Tong sliced the bookie in the Thirteenth but you?”

  Few penetrated the Asian underworld around Place d’Italie, but Martin had his sources. Even the flics used him there. Stroke his feathers enough and he should fly.

  A low throat-clearing came over the phone. He slept all day but must smoke two packs a night. She’d never seen him without a lit cigarette between his fingers or burning in a nearby ashtray.

  The thought made her wish for that Gauloise she’d shared with Mimi.

  “Quality’s important, Martin, that’s why I’ve come to you.”

  She heard a low chuckle. “Not that I owe you?”

  “Life’s a flowing river, currents combine,” she said.

  “You’re so like your father, bless him,” Martin said.

  “It’s been five years, Martin,” she said.

  She remembered the explosion, searing heat, and crawling on the bloody cobblestones. The charred limbs of her father, his shattered reading glasses somehow forgotten in her pocket. And the emptiness that followed.

  “We were set up, Martin.” As always she wondered why. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Pause.

  “Don’t you work on computers now?” he said. “Gangs in the Eleventh seem too low-rent for you.”

  “Evictions, they’re rent-a-thug style,” she said. “East European bodybuilder types. But they must stick their thumbs in other tartes. See what you can dig up. I’ll call you later.” />
  “Tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “It takes time. I’m an old man, remember?”

  She hoped Martin could deliver. Time passed, and she knew, to solve a homicide, new information couldn’t come soon enough.

  She punched in several numbers and finally connected with the central office at the Quai des Orfèvres.

  “I’m Commisaire Vrai’s adjutant,” she said, “requesting a search on an East European, goes by the name Draz. No surname known. I’ll wait.”

  She knew they’d find Vrai was on leave if they checked. They did. Good.

  “No luck with your computer?” the voice asked.

  “We want to cast the net wide.”

  “Searching Draz.” Whirring came from the background. “Nothing.”

  “Try entries with D.”

  Aimée heard a yawn.

  “Twenty-three entries. But there might be more; not all the files have been made available online.”

  “Meaning they’re sitting in the Commissariat files?”

  “Or moldering away in the Frigo.”

  “Any ‘D’s’ in the Eleventh?”

  “Right now the only person detained in the past six months with a D is a Dicelle . . . transvestite trafficking in amyl nitrate. Sentenced.”

  “Thanks for checking.”

  She sat back. The clock ticked. Too bad she couldn’t see what time it was. Why hadn’t she asked Chantal for one of those talking clocks?

  The lack of police interest in the attack on her bothered her. But as Morbier implied, if the Préfet wanted things nice and tidy to close the Beast of Bastille case, there stood little chance they’d exert themselves.

  Would Morbier help? He was edging toward the finish line of retirement, too. These days he seemed more withdrawn than ever. And Loïc Bellan detested her.

  If only she could interface with Europol. She needed a last name. Had to have it. Tomorrow, she’d get René to lean on the architect . . . he might know more.

  Meanwhile, she checked in with the answering machine at Leduc Detective. It felt like not just a few days but forever since she’d been there. She accessed and listened to the voice mail. A query for security work referred by a current satisfied client. Nice.