Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  “So I’ll leave a message.” She glanced around the reception area. The scuffed green walls, the grilled metal gate. “It’s urgent.”

  “Much as I’d like to help.…” The nurse glanced at the blue-uniformed police by the doors. Shrugged. “We’re not allowed.”

  Panic flamed in her gut. “Nora still working nights?” She hoped she could leave a message for her friend.

  “Nora switched to the day shift.”

  A spark of hope. “We’re friends. Any chance you could let her know I’m here?”

  “Not a good time.” The nurse gave a harried glance down the green-tiled corridor.

  The phone rang at reception. Aimée hated to press her, but she had to get somewhere. “Desolée, I know you’re busy, but when’s Nora’s break?”

  The nurse expelled air. “Who knows? The X-ray technicians went on strike. We’re run off our feet.” She hurried off to answer a doctor’s call from the corridor.

  Great. The season of grèves. Spring must be coming.

  She recognized the flic near the elevator from Morbier’s team a few years back. A quick glance at his name badge—Delisle—and she rustled up her courage, determined to give it her best shot.

  “Officer Delisle?”

  He was olive skinned, dark-haired, and muscular. He snapped his notebook shut, favoring his left wrist, which was covered with a brace. Irritation and indifference suffused his expression. “The public’s not allowed here, Mademoiselle. Follow the signs to the patient wards, if you don’t mind.”

  “But we met a while ago. I’m Aimée, Commissaire Morbier’s goddaughter.” She gestured to his brace. “Carpal tunnel? Awful, I know the feeling.”

  A snort of laughter. “I wish. Scuffle on the ward this morning.”

  She wondered at that, and at why, as a seasoned officer, he was on a rookie posting at the criminal ward. Demoted? Injury? “Inmate patients, you mean?”

  He rocked back on his thick-soled shoes. “Big eyes. Now I remember you. How’s Commissaire Morbier?”

  Too much gray in his hair and a shuffle to his gait, but she kept that back. “Mismatched socks and a brain like a laser, as usual.”

  Delisle smiled. His upright stance relaxed—he’d thawed. She’d said the right thing for once.

  He shot her a meaningful glance. “You’re not allowed here, you know. I need to escort you out.”

  What else could she try to get him to bend the rules? She could go with the truth and get nowhere. Or lie and try to worm out info. Stall and hope that Nora would … what, go on a break? With a strike going on?

  “I just visited my neighbor, a stroke victim,” she said. “Thought I’d see if my old roommate Nora could have coffee on her break.” She tried for her most sympathetic look. “But what happened to you?”

  A quick shake of his head. “Doing my job.”

  “Hazard pay, that’s what I’m always saying to Morbier,” she said. “You men on the front lines deserve it.”

  Delisle shrugged. But she could tell he liked that. He thawed more and grew talkative, revealed that a slick operator had taken advantage of the normal chaos of a shift change to talk his way in.

  He’d be on his guard, then. She had a feeling that with this one her best bet was laying it on thick. “But how?” she said. “I mean, you’re so on top of it. The floor’s a locked facility.”

  She hoped she hadn’t overdone it.

  Delisle’s pager beeped. Eager to answer his page, he hit the elevator button. The door swooshed open. He gestured her inside.

  So far her attempt at charm had gotten her nowhere. Aimée got off on the next floor and hiked back up the concrete stairs to an EXIT sign. She figured Nora still hit the coffin nails. On the fire escape outside the EXIT door, several nurses stood smoking. The Seine, khaki green below, crested with waves from the gliding bateaux-mouches.

  Good luck, for once. Nora, a petite brunette, was crushing out a cigarette on the metal slat. Thank God.

  “Nora?”

  Nora looked up, grinned. “Didn’t you quit smoking, Aimée?”

  “Three days short of two months,” she said. “But who’s counting?” Aimée wished she didn’t want to snatch a drag so much. “Nora, can you do me a favor?”

  “Now?” Nora said. “We’re short-staffed, there’s a strike. I’m not even supposed to take a break.” Nora opened the EXIT door to the back stairway. “I’ve got to get back or there’ll be trouble.”

  Aimée needed to probe, and quick. “My colleague’s a patient, Saj de Rosnay. Know of him?”

  Nora thought a moment. “The blond with dreads, like a Rasta? Indian clothes?”

  Aimée nodded.

  “Not hard on the eyes, either,” she said. “His vitals look good, X-rays normal, no fractures, under normal observation for his neck injury, took his pain meds.”

  Nora’s pager vibrated.

  “Alors, forgive me, Nora, but they’re trying to nail Saj for manslaughter. Now robbery’s involved. This Serb—”

  “Serb?” Nora interrupted, frowning. “A Serb showed up demanding to see the accident victim—your colleague.”

  The hairs on Aimée’s neck rose. The Serb’s partner? “That’s what the scuffle was this morning?”

  “That’s not half of it,” Nora said as Aimée followed her up the stone back stairs. “The angry Serb was trying to visit his brother. Or so he said. Then claimed there was some family emergency. Lied through his set of whites.”

  All kinds of fear spun in her mind. “The Serb got Saj’s name?”

  “Who knows? Change of shift’s always chaotic,” Nora said. “Still, even if he did, no one gets in the ward unless they’re part of the medical staff or law enforcement. Tant pis.” She glanced at her watch. “Gotta go.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Never saw him.”

  “If he caused a scene, someone would remember. Markings, accent, his clothing?”

  “Smelled like a barnyard, they said.” Nora shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

  Aimée wrote down a message on the back of her card. “Can you get this to Saj, please?”

  “I’m not supposed to, Aimée.”

  “Please, Nora. If this Serb’s looking for him, he needs to be warned. Moved to another ward.”

  “Why?”

  “Saj ran over his brother last night.”

  “ ‘Ran over’ as in the brother’s dead?”

  “As in an accident,” Aimée said. She had to enlist Nora’s aid. “It was like he was dropped on the windshield. His ashen face, white hand … I can’t stop seeing him in my mind. But the odd thing, Nora—no blood. But one Serb is dead, and now another is asking for Saj.…”

  Alarm crossed Nora’s face. She nodded and slipped the paper in her pocket. Her clogs clipped over the stone and then she was gone. Aimée’s insides churned. Even under police supervision, Saj wasn’t safe.

  IN THE CAFÉ below Leduc Detective, Aimée cupped her bowl of café crème, the froth swirling over the cup’s lip. Like the whirlpool in her mind.

  The café windows were fogged up and the whole place smelled faintly of damp wool overcoat. The radio was tuned to the soccer scores. But she could only think of how Yuri Volodya owed her mother. Or so he said. But how? Was her mother alive? Or was he using her? And if so, for what?

  And Yuri Volodya wasn’t answering his phone.

  Last month Morbier had alleged her mother had gone rogue—dealt with arms dealers and terrorists. But Serbs? Art theft?

  Aimée had nothing to go on but nightmares involving tattoos. So many questions. She could kick herself for not insisting that Yuri explain everything then and there.

  The milk steamer whooshed. Zazie, the owner’s red-haired preteen daughter, rinsed glasses before going to school. Businessmen and workers from the nearby Louvre downed espressos, slapped francs on the zinc counter, and rushed out into the pearl-gray morning light.

  What had Yuri revealed, except that he knew her mother was American?
And what could that possibly have to do with a dead Serb or a stolen painting? She shuddered. What in hell had this terrible accident gotten them all into?

  She had half a mind to mount her scooter and go over to Volodya’s place, but she held back. Too much work waited upstairs, and with Saj in the hospital … and Yuri Volodya still wasn’t answering his phone.

  Last night her cell battery had been low so she’d turned it off. But Leduc Detective’s office number was on the card, too. What if Yuri had called her at the office?

  “René forgot this the other day, Aimée,” Zazie said, pushing something across the newly wiped chrome counter. “Mind giving this to him?”

  His classic car magazine. Aimée dropped her demitasse spoon.

  “What’s that look, Aimée?”

  “René got an amazing job offer from Silicon Valley,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “He’s gone.”

  “Just like that? Wow.” Zazie whistled. “René never mentioned it last time I saw him.”

  “So incredible, they sent a private jet. They needed him right away.” Who could compete with that? Aimée pulled out her Chanel Red and in the gleaming reflection of the coffee machine reapplied her lipstick. She wished her hands didn’t shake. “Aren’t you late for l’école?”

  “I’m in collège, Aimée. Remember?”

  Almost twelve, or was it thirteen? “Of course.”

  Zazie pulled her red hair back in a scrunchie and grabbed her book satchel. Paused. “Do you miss René?”

  More than she cared to admit. Right now she wished she could talk with René, her sounding board and best friend. Hash out what had happened. “Zazie, he’s their new CTO—that means chief technology officer. Call me thrilled for him.”

  “I miss him too,” Zazie said. She knotted her foulard, snuck a look behind the counter. Virginie, her mother, had her back turned. “May I try your lipstick, Aimée?”

  Aimée slipped her the tube. “You’re growing up.”

  “Fluctuat nec mergitur.” Zazie dabbed her lips and rubbed them together.

  “My Latin’s rusty,” Aimée said. Drizzle pattered on the café’s street awnings.

  “Means, ‘It is tossed by the waves but does not sink.’ ” Zazie grinned and placed the recapped lipstick on the counter. “That’s the motto on the Paris coat of arms. We learned that yesterday. Remember that, Aimée—tossed by the waves but does not sink.”

  A wink and Zazie was gone in a gust of wet wind. A young boy with a book bag and an umbrella greeted her in front of the café door. Growing up, all right.

  Aimée checked her phone for messages; still no word from Yuri Volodya or Serge the pathologist.

  Time to head to work, check if Yuri had left a message on the office machine. And finish the report she and Saj should have worked on last night. She had a business to run, office rent to pay, and the rising cost of Miles Davis’s horse meat.

  INSIDE HER UNHEATED building foyer, she bypassed the creaking wire-cage elevator and mounted the winding stairs. She needed the exercise. And time to steel herself for an office empty of René. And, she realized, no Saj either.

  “Bonjour,” she greeted the new cleaning woman mopping the stairs, then continued up, keeping away from the banister to avoid snagging her leggings. She wished her waistband didn’t feel so tight.

  A dim glow showed from behind the frosted glass-paned door of Leduc Detective. Hope filled her. Had this been a bad joke? Had René changed his mind?

  “René.…” The words died on her lips.

  “He gave me his key.” A rail-thin, mop-headed young man looked up from behind the keyboard at René’s desk. “I’m his student. He told you, non? A replacement.”

  Her heart fell. No one could replace René.

  She eyed the scuffed Beatle boots, which matched the tousled Beatle bangs fringing his eyes, the skinny jeans and the black turtleneck. This kid was René’s star hacker? He looked twelve.

  “You’re Maxence, I presume?”

  A lopsided grin showed braces. “À votre service.” She guessed Québécois from his accent. A Canadian.

  She hung up her leather coat, tossed her secondhand Vuitton bag on the recamier. Unfurling her scarf, she flicked on the chandelier for more light. The crystal drops gleamed, thanks to the new cleaner’s feather duster.

  “Tell me you’re at least sixteen and I’m not breaking the child labor laws.”

  Maxence nodded, his hair in his eyes. “If you want.”

  Anger burned in her. “If I want? I want to follow the labor code. Does René know you’re … how old are you?”

  Maxence pulled out his wallet. “Sixteen, eighteen, twenty-two, whatever you’d like.” He fanned out a number of cartes d’identité like a hand of playing cards.

  She wanted to smack him. Slammed down her keys instead, almost upsetting the vase of daffodils. René had brought them in; every spring, he bought bunches from large-fisted Eastern European vendors at the Métro entrance. He wouldn’t be refreshing this vase anymore.

  “So you’re an outlaw, eh,” she said, “some boy genius? Let’s see your student card from the Hacktaviste Academy.” She scanned it. “According to this you’re eighteen.”

  The new radiator emitted blasts of heat. Almost too hot. He gave another lopsided smile. “This work experience will be great for my new gaming company. I need to learn on the job, juggle tasks, set goals. Like I will for my own company.”

  Her stomach churned. She debated telling him to put on his Beatles jacket and hike out the frosted glass door. “No room for interns here, desolée.”

  He swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Please give me a chance,” he said, his cockiness gone. “I’ll do anything. René thinks I’m good. Let me help your part-timer, Saj.”

  She knew the flics might hold Saj in garde à vue longer. Or his injuries could slow him down; he might need to take medical leave.

  Maxence’s hopeful eyes bored into her skull. After all, René recommended him. Did she even have another option? Might as well try him to see what he could do.

  “On a trial basis,” she said. “But you might take an early and permanent lunch.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d checked the mail stacked on the marble fireplace ledge and started running the virus scans, checking the monitors for daily security contracts. All put in place by René. The whole operation could almost run itself.

  “Keep your eyes on the systems and print out the reports and spreadsheets,” she said.

  Maxence nodded, eager now. “Then shall I download the info onto René’s desktop files, make a backup?”

  She nodded. Not so green after all. Her heart wasn’t in this day-to-day stuff; she’d let the kid handle grunt routine and monitor his work.

  Ongoing reports filled her desktop screen, and she took her laptop from the drawer. On it, she pulled up the old files she’d digitized from her father’s dossiers. She’d transcribed his notes during the long November evenings after his death in the bomb explosion in Place Vendôme. A painful exercise in hopes of finding some clue to the explosion. But the leads had all gone up with him in a ball of fire and smoke.

  All those years in the police force had instilled in him the habit of recording names, places, descriptions of people he interviewed or investigated—any memorable characteristic or quirk—in pocket-sized leather-bound notepads. Each entry, each date and name or initial, constituted a piece of a case her father had worked on. A detail he’d rechecked to fit pieces together. His scent clung to the notebooks. The pain lessened over the years, but never completely went away. For that reason, she kept his original notebooks rubber-banded together in the safe. Touching them hurt too much.

  Now, she searched her father’s case files under V for Volodya, and Y for Yuri. Nothing. She kicked off her ankle boots, rubbed her stockinged feet on the smooth wood floor, and wished she had an espresso. René had forgotten—correction, she had forgotten to buy coffee beans.

  Quiet reigned, apart from Maxence�
�s clicking fingers and the distant thrumming of traffic outside on rue du Louvre. With the report summaries done, she concentrated on refining her search. She limited the parameters to her father’s cases involving indicateurs, or snitches. Problematic, since her father often referred to his informers by initials or nicknames. Again, nothing under V or Y.

  Her grandfather’s cases went back to the thirties, a few from the Surêté he’d carried with him as private clients when he’d founded Leduc Detective. She hadn’t gotten to digitizing those yet.

  “Quite a history here,” Maxence said, gesturing to the wall with her grandfather’s sepia photo, complete with waxed mustache; Leduc Detective’s original license, circa 1925; her father’s first case in the newspaper; the old sewer maps of Paris.

  “Nice that you’ve kept it in the family,” he said.

  Looking down on her from the wall was her grandfather’s commendation from the Louvre for service to la République in recovering a Degas. Another stolen painting. She had her grandfather’s notes on the case. Somewhere. Fascinating, but not what she was searching for—she needed to find some connection to Yuri Volodya and her mother.

  Think. Think like her father.

  Trusting her gut feeling that Volodya had dealt with Leduc Detective in the past, she continued cross-referencing dates, names, and initials. Thirty minutes later, after eliminating the non-matches, she sat back, rubbing her big right toe along her left ankle to help her think.

  “Remember your first impression,” her father had always said. “Nail it down or it comes back to nail you later.” Often all you had were first impressions to go on. She thought back to her first impression of Yuri Volodya, the old Russian—“a little Cossack,” one of the medic crew called him. Belligerent, scared. But a criminal?

  Under RUSSIAN in her father’s case file, she found a photocopied Le Parisien newspaper article of a Trotskyist rally and conference in the 14th arrondissement. Dated 1972. A grainy photo showed what appeared to be an abandoned Regency-style townhouse splattered with graffiti, slogans, and banners with the hammer and sickle. A squat, according to the article, housing assorted anarchists and radical leftists in Action-Réaction. More photos showed smiling members with armbands holding posters. Her eye caught on a younger man, with more hair but stocky then like now. Yuri Volodya.