Murder in the Bastille

by Cara Black

  Now she remembered. She’d seen it, rushing by in the rain, parallel with the disused Opéra exit. The Chapel was tall, medieval-walled. In the centime-sized courtyard before the Chapel, large blue doors led to rue Charenton. A shortcut to Vincent’s office.

  But the doors had been locked. So, in the pouring rain, she had kept on to the hôpital entrance, the remnant of the Black Musketeers’ barracks, surmounted by a surveillance camera.

  Her thoughts spun. So easy for someone, if they had a key, to avoid the main portal. Or to jimmy the lock mechanism and avoid the surveillance camera.

  “Why would Dragos have this flyer? You wouldn’t suppose a thug for hire and dope seller would be religious.”

  “Says here one of the first French cardinals has a crypt there,” he said. “The holy water font was commissioned by the nuns of the Abbaye Royale de Saint-Antoine.”

  The scratch of the streetcleaner’s broom receded in the background. She heard the whirr of the small, green pooper-scooper truck, and exclamations from the pedestrians it dodged on the pavement.

  “Could Dragos have killed Josiane? But the man who called spoke without an accent, and he knew her. I’m sure of it,” she said. The thoughts spun faster and faster. “If Dragos is newly arrived he’d have a Romanian accent. And the field’s specialized. Hired thugs, muscle men, aren’t hit men, right? We’ve been through this before.”

  “If you say so,” said René. “But the Chapel’s right there. Dragos could have gone into it on his lunch hour. No, wait, it says here it’s only open one Thursday a month for services.”

  An idea came to her.

  “What a perfect place to stash something.”

  “Stash what?”

  “Whatever was in these glass beakers . . . wouldn’t it be safer there than on the péniche?”

  “But how would Dragos get into the Chapel?”

  She sat back against the cream-soft leather, let the breeze flutter over her.

  “Brault, the architect, knows more than he was telling you, René,” she said.

  “Shall we pay him a visit?”

  “Good idea, partner.”

  BY THE time she and René sat in Brault’s waiting room, the little light flashes behind her eyes had subsided. The grayish hue had deepened, lightened, fragmented, and then faded out like the snow on a TV screen.

  Brault was in a meeting. They waited. Aimée tried Morbier. No answer on his personal line. She left a second message. Then called Bellan. Also, no answer. With her luck they would both be at a retirement party for the Préfet.

  She heard René’s footsteps. “Merde, Brault’s crossing the courtyard, I see him from the window. He’s trying to avoid us.”

  “Go ahead, René, I remember the way. I’ll catch up.”

  She felt her hand grabbed, as René ran ahead.

  “Trust me, keep up,” he said.

  She stumbled, awkward and hesitant, to the elevator behind René. Why had she worn her T-strap heels? But the only other pair she had were boots. Just as high-heeled.

  On the ground floor, René pulled her along, “Run. We have to stop him before he gets into his car.”

  Aimée heard a car door slam, an engine start, then a gear whining into first.

  “Brault’s pointing to his wristwatch,” said René, his tone anguished. “I can’t believe it, he’s driving right by us. He won’t stop.”

  “Oh, yes, he will,” she said, waving and stepping off the curb in front of the approaching car. Brakes squealed at the last minute and she felt a bumper dust the hem of her leather skirt. A window rolled down.

  “Look, I’m late for a meeting,” Brault said irately. The revving of his engine almost drowned out his words.

  “Monsieur Brault, you’ll be late for a lot more if you don’t cooperate,” said Aimée. She edged her hands along the car’s warm hood. The wind picked up, gusting leaves, a garbage can and what sounded like a clay flower pot striking the stone pavement.

  “Threatening me?”

  “Where can we talk?”

  “I’ve told him everything I know,” Brault said.

  “You mean my partner?” she said. Aimée bent down, feeling her way toward Brault’s voice. “My partner suspects you withheld information. That’s trouble for you, since I feel inclined to name you and your firm in my legal action.”

  “What legal action?”

  “Meet us in the electrical shop in rue Sedaine,” she said. “The small one, around the corner from Café de l’industrie, in five minutes.”

  “Why should I?”

  “If I were you, I’d come,” she said. “The police want Josiane Dolet’s phone. Now that they know Vaduz, the serial killer, had already had a fatal car accident, and couldn’t have killed Josiane, they’re interested in . . .”

  Cars honked behind them.

  “That’s my boss,” said Brault, gunning the engine. “And the administrative staff. Get out of the way.”

  “Running over a blind woman doesn’t look very good,” she said. “Any way you put it.”

  I know the shop,” he admitted, and roared off. “

  * * *

  “SO I lied,” she said, holding René’s elbow and trying to keep in step with him over uneven cobblestones.

  “Brault’s smart,” said René.

  “Then my lie should get him there.”

  A buttery lemon smell came from her right where she figured Café de l’industrie stood. She’d frequented the café, enjoyed the unpretentious crowd and simple décor. No branché Bastille types here. Turn-of-the-century plates studded the walls. Old wooden tables paired with mismatched chairs. Even a mounted rhinoceros head above the bar.

  “Here?” asked René.

  “Are we in front of a narrow electrical shop with fifties irons in the window?”

  “Just several old Moulinex vacuums,” said René, “like Maman had at home.”

  “Feels right.”

  Aimée remembered the shop’s worn steps, the iron and rust smell inside, and Medou, Monsieur Fix-it, they called him. His shop was one of the few places left to get an appliance, no matter how old or from what era, repaired. Medou kept cases filled with widgets, wires, and rotary dials. Anything needed to keep one’s grandmother’s ancient fryer working. Or most anything else.

  He’d also been in the Résistance. The rear of his shop connected to an old wallpaper factory, once the meeting site of La Fiche Rouge members, a cell of Eastern European Jews active in the Résistance. Two of them had slain a Wehrmacht soldier in the Barbès Métro station. Later they were betrayed, as rumor went, by the Communists in Bastille. The youngest, Maurice Rayman, had been twenty years old.

  Now it was a studio de danse, replete with buffed ash wood floors, ballet bars, an upright piano, and huge gilt mirrors propped against the walls.

  “Bonsoir, Monsieur Medou,” she said. “Still playing in the boules league?”

  “I’m too old for bowling, eh, but my trophy’s in the back,” he said.

  Silence.

  “Go ahead, René,” she said, gripping his elbow harder, “go where he shows you.”

  She heard René clear his throat. She’d love to see the look on his face when they entered the dance studio.

  “Merci, monsieur, our colleague will be joining us.”

  Her vision field brightened. The skylight must be uncovered. Surprised, she realized how light and dark planes crisscrossed in front of her. Not uncommon, the retinologist had said . . . what was that song . . . a whiter shade of pale?

  But worry tugged in back of her mind. Did this, perversely, signal damage? Was this all just a tease?

  “How do you know about this place?” asked René.

  “Now if I told you, I wouldn’t have any secrets, would I?” she said, feeling her way to the wall. “This should convince Brault to unburden himself in total secrecy.”

  “Says here, hip hop, salsa, tango, and ballet classes offered,” said René.

  “You might meet someone here at a c
lass, René,” she said.

  “That’s my line to you,” said René.

  Footsteps, then a muttered curse. Brault had arrived.

  “Blackmail won’t work,” said Brault. “I’m going to speak with the Commissaire myself . . .”

  “Go right ahead,” she said, tracking his footsteps and turning that way. “He’ll weigh whatever you say against what I tell him. And he’s my godfather.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I already told you, the name’s Aimée Leduc,” she said. “Take a seat, let me explain. There’s a chair here somewhere, isn’t there?”

  She gestured vaguely, heard a chair scrape over the wood.

  Then took a deep breath, explained about Josiane, the attack, and her blindness.

  Brault stayed silent.

  “Tell me,” said Aimée, “what’s the matter with Dragos?”

  “Who knows?”

  She detected surprise in his voice.

  “Asbestos exposure? Tainted water?” she asked. “Is that it?”

  No reply.

  “Mirador exposes the workers to unsafe conditions, eh?”

  Silence. Then a bird twittered from Medou’s shop. And all she could think was of was how a caged bird must feel. Caged in darkness.

  Back to business. “Look, we need to know,” she said, hoping she faced in his direction. She knit her fingers on the ballet barre, to keep her balance. “If Dragos suffers serious health problems, others must be in danger. As a professional, you’re obligated to inform those in the area.”

  “My architecture firm designs for Mirador, that’s all.”

  “Dragos was nabbed selling Ecstasy. He’s in Hôtel Dieu, sick as the dog he probably is, with burn marks. Care to comment? And if you don’t, I guarantee Commissaire Morbier will be more interested than I am.”

  “You two don’t give up, do you?”

  “That’s rhetorical, n’est-ce pas?” said René. “In fact, we become vicious.”

  Aimée repressed her smile.

  “Whatever I tell you stays off the record. D’accord?”

  “Of course,” said René.

  “No asbestos or poison. Nothing toxic at the site, I’m sure. The code’s strict and we follow it. After all, the planning commission has to sign off on each job. But I do know that Dragos wanted lead.”

  “Lead poisoning?”

  “Lead.” Brault’s voice dropped and he sounded tired. “Dragos boasted a lot when he was drunk. He kept saying he could make a profit on lead.”

  “What did Dragos mean?”

  “Beats me.”

  “How did you know Josiane?”

  “Josiane wrote articles for L’événement and Libération, deploring that all eight Green seats in the European Union had been lost. She wrote pieces on human rights, not popular mainstream themes. I respected her; she wrote what she believed. And she dug for truth. But I don’t know what she found, if anything.”

  “Whatever she found killed her,” said René.

  “Did Dragos find any lead?”

  “No clue,” said Brault. “Listen I’m running late . . .”

  “But it doesn’t make sense to me,” said Aimée. “Why would you associate with Josiane if you work for Mirador?”

  Brault was full of talk. Good talk. Yet, 10 minutes before he’d been about to run her over.

  “I’m an architect. Not a developer,” he said. “There is a difference. My goal has been to preserve the quartier, however I can, in my own way. Keep the flavor. But in business, sometimes you work with the devil. That’s my experience. Mirador’s not much worse than the others. At least I thought so at first.

  Josiane understood she had to protect her sources, that I couldn’t be quoted.”

  Why was he so secretive? Couldn’t he just spill it?

  “We know about the Romanians evicting old people in the middle of the night . . . What else is there?”

  “That’s it,” he said, seemingly surprised. “Josiane was going to expose this practice of Mirador’s. I helped . . . in secret.”

  Of course. He wanted to have the job, look good, and salve his conscience at the same time. Or was she too hard on him?

  “Then what happened? What did Josiane tell you?”

  “We were going to meet,” he said. “She called me. Sounded excited. But insisted we talk in person.”

  “Where was that?”

  “She never showed up.”

  “Where and what time was your meeting supposed to be?”

  Silence.

  “Of course, it’s not my business,” said Aimée, wishing she could gauge his reaction. “But you were having an affair with her, weren’t you? Isn’t that what you don’t want to admit?”

  But she was the one surprised.

  “Vincent Csarda was. Not me.”

  That came off his tongue quickly.

  “What do you mean?” asked René.

  “Josiane and Vincent were having an affair.”

  That didn’t make sense. If it were true, wouldn’t Josiane have spoken with Vincent in the restaurant?

  “How do you know this?”

  “That’s my guess. Somehow in the way he talked, he left me with a sense . . .”

  Silence.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Vincent owed someone,” said Brault, his words measured.

  “Owed who?”

  “I felt from the way Vincent spoke, he was more like a conduit,” he said. “And some women like that tortured male type.”

  “That’s news to me,” she said. “Weren’t you attracted to her? Were you jealous of Vincent?”

  A small laugh. “Not me. I go the other way.”

  Not only had she lost her eyesight, but her touch! Something didn’t feel right to her. Didn’t “smell” right, as her father used to say.

  “You still haven’t told us where and when you were meeting Josiane,” said René.

  “On rue du Lappe,” he said. “Number 24, in a courtyard across from the Balajo.”

  “Who picked the place?”

  “She’d consulted her astrologer,” he said. “She always did when she was afraid.”

  Aimée remembered how she’d chain-smoked and talked nonstop on the cell phone in the restaurant. Like most Parisiens. But Aimée remembered the fear in her eyes.

  A gust of air, warmed by the sun, passed by her legs. She heard René clear his throat.

  “So let me understand this, Monsieur Brault,” said René. “Josiane’s writing an exposé about Mirador’s practice of hiring Romanian thugs to evict old people from historic buildings. Mirador demolishes them and constructs upmarket buildings. Meanwhile, you sense she’s having an affair with Vincent, who’s somehow compromised. Dragos shoots his mouth off to you about making a profit on lead and then Josiane calls, saying she has to talk with you in person. But she’s a no-show.”

  “If you put it like that . . . maybe.”

  “Did she tell you she was having an affair with Vincent?”

  “Not in so many words,” he said, “but I felt it.”

  Maybe it was someone else.

  “Does Dragos have an accent?” asked Aimée.

  “I’m late,” said Brault, standing and pushing the chair back. It hit the wall with a dull thud. What sounded like keys jingled in his pocket.

  “Does he?” she pressed.

  “A thick accent,” he said. “Romanian’s very close to Latin.”

  The man calling on Josiane’s cell phone had had no accent.

  “So what’s your connection to Vincent?”

  “Vincent organized our ten-year anniversary ad campaign. He’s good. The best.”

  He was. And that always surprised Aimée. Maybe with his clients he sheathed his bristling manner.

  “Did Josiane introduce you?”

  Silence. “Let me think,” he finally said. “Must have been at that party last year. The antique dealer’s hôtel particulier with the exquisite little theatre.”

  “Was Dra
gos there?”

  “Why would he be there? As I recall, it was more the limo liberal set we’d mobilized for an Opéra fundraiser.”

  The set Vincent and Martine reported on in their new magazine.

  She tried a hunch.

  “Was Malraux there? He’s involved with the Opéra.”

  “But it was his place! He’s an Opéra patron,” said Brault. “A real aficionado! He donates furniture for the sets. That’s funny . . . now I remember. Dragos was moving furniture into the courtyard.”

  The cell phone vibrated in her skirt pocket.

  “Allô?”

  “Guess I’m popular, Leduc,” said Morbier, “you’ve tried to reach me several times.”

  “I found proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  Footsteps walked by her and Brault muttered something that sounded like goodbye or good riddance, she wasn’t sure which.

  “Vaduz didn’t kill Josiane Dolet,” she said.

  “Leduc, you still stuck on that?”

  “Like glue,” she said. “René will leave an envelope containing proof with Bellan, who closed the case too soon.”

  Silence.

  “What’s wrong, Morbier?”

  “All I want to do is retire. Keep my pension intact. Stay on speaking terms with colleagues I’ve worked with for most of my life.”

  “Why wouldn’t you, Morbier?” She didn’t like the way the conversation was heading. A bad taste formed in her mouth.

  “Leduc, I’ve been checking into your story. On my own,” said Morbier. “But the creek’s run dry. No leads. I’m sorry.”

  Another apology from Morbier? Amazing. At least he’d been trying.

  “What if her lover called her,” she said, “then killed her, using the Beast of Bastille guise.”

  “I like that. Shows malice and premeditation. Everything we need for the Judiciare,” said Morbier. “The department would look better, the public would forgive us. It’s nice.” He blew a gust of air into the phone. “But I’m afraid it’s too pat. You were hit on the head too many times, Leduc.”

  “I have Josiane’s phone,” she told him.

  If he was surprised his voice didn’t show it. “That’s evidence. Why haven’t you turned it over?” he said. “Give me a good reason not to nab you for witholding evidence.”