Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  She needed to think how to use this to her advantage. No matter what happened with the painting, she needed to make sure Saj was safe, and learn the truth about her mother. But showing Dombasle the Polaroid had at least gotten her on the inside of the formal investigation, or some layer of it. Like an onion, her father said of cases involving more than one jurisdictional branch, keep peeling and try not to cry.

  She took the Polaroid back and stuck it in her pocket. “So in return I want the fixer.”

  “Who?”

  “When you find out, Raphael, let me know.”

  She put down her card and threw twenty francs on the table. Stood, waved at Louis, and slipped onto the quai.

  Wednesday

  MORGANE RAN ACROSS the cobbles into the rainy courtyard. Shivering and wet, she glanced up at their curtained window. Untouched since she’d left.

  Just as she feared, Flèche had gone out to locate the painting his way. Intimidation, his usual métier. Now she’d insist they do it her way or she’d let him loose.

  “The new phone books arrived,” said the agoraphobe, peeking out from her ground-floor window. “Every tenant takes their own. Not my responsibility, as I told your husband on his way out.”

  Always observant, this one. Morgane leaned down and picked up the heavy plastic-wrapped directory. “I’ll take it, merci.”

  Water ran from the roof tiles, splashed in silver eruptions, missing the rusted drain. On the damp landing she shifted the directory under her arm to unlock the door, and a blow hit her in the middle of her back. The air was knocked out of her. She stumbled forward, the directory falling on her foot. But not before her wrists were grabbed behind her and a bag pulled over her head.

  Stupid. Phone books wouldn’t be out for a few months. Such an old trick and she’d fallen for it. No doubt the attacker had bribed the agoraphobe.

  Hands pressed her shoulders down and plunked her on the floor.

  “You salaud,” she said, “this won’t get you anywhere, you.…”

  No answer. Only the systematic sounds of drawers opening, the few pieces of furniture being turned upside down, taut mattress fabric ripping. Professional. Her neck stiffened.

  “What the hell do you think you’ll find?”

  “The unexpected,” a voice said. “Looks like you’re in the dark in more ways than one. No clue to the painting, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Who are you?”

  Objects rained on her lap. Something damp leaked on her leg. The familiar smell of Miss Dior flooded her nostrils. Whoever this was had emptied her bag. She heard papers rustling, the jingle of coins, keys … her wallet?

  Clicking. “I thought so. Two calls to Luebet, your boss.”

  “Who are you?”

  “He can’t answer anymore,” the voice said. “They scooped what’s left of him from the Métro tracks.”

  Panic filled her. “You mean you …? Listen, he gave me orders by phone.”

  “Liar.”

  “Told me if we didn’t find the painting, he wouldn’t pay.”

  Sigh. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

  Morgane’s chest heaved. “Shoot me now and you get what? The painting’s disappeared.”

  “So you’re just a hired hand?”

  “Luebet didn’t hire me for my looks.” Her thoughts raced. “You’re some rogue flic?”

  A short laugh. “Worse. I think you need to convince me, Morgane.”

  Nothing for it but to tell the whole story. “Alors, five years ago, I worked in his gallery, lifted a series of Chagall lithographs from him. Long story. After I got out of prison, my son was diagnosed with leukemia. Then Luebet called me a week ago, told me we’re good now but he needs help. A job. He couldn’t do it, but I could. Like I’d refuse?” The cold floor against her legs chilled her.

  “This photo in your wallet,” the voice said, “your son?”

  A sob rose in her throat. “Please don’t touch him … he’s sick, please.”

  More rustling paper. “There’s a Swiss Clinic bill …?”

  “My son needs a bone marrow transplant.” Her throat caught. “I need money. I’ll do anything.”

  “How did you plan to transport the painting?”

  “But our man got there too late, there was no painting.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “My cargo freight contact at Orly.”

  A cough. “So, mother of the year, why threaten the private detective?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play innocent.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The key turned in the door.

  “That’s Flèche,” Morgane whispered. “An amateur. He went off half-cocked last night. Wouldn’t listen, uncontrollable … I don’t know what he’s done.”

  “Hope you’re telling the truth,” the voice hissed in her ear, “for your son’s sake.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Flèche’s words hung in the air. “Look, put the gun down, we’ll talk about the painting. We don’t have it, but I’ve got a lead … just calm down.”

  “What lead?”

  “Plenty in the pot for everyone,” he said. “The bitch will lead us to the fixer.”

  A short laugh. The door closed. Morgane heard footsteps. The rustle of fabric. Flèche kept a knife strapped to his calf under his jeans. If only she could get out of the way … but she couldn’t see. Couldn’t move.

  “Why’s the fixer important?”

  “The old geezer hid the painting,” Flèche said. “The bitch told me everything. We stuck her head under water like they did to the old geezer.…”

  Morgane struggled but her wrists didn’t budge. “Idiot,” she said. “You won’t find the painting that way.”

  As she’d feared, Flèche had rushed in headlong and now half the world would know. He’d brought attention and trouble to the door. If only she could cut her losses. Run.

  “She’s right,” the voice said. Morgane realized now it was a woman’s voice. Low, rasping, a foreign accent. “So that was you. Are you going to do that again?”

  “I’m on that Leduc until she coughs up, or else …” Flèche said.

  Morgane heard the hiss of a match lighting. A swift inhale. Could taste the plume of smoke Flèche exhaled. Idiot.

  “Or else what?” the woman asked in that curious accent.

  “I’ll make her talk.”

  “Wrong answer. Pity, Flèche. Stupid nickname—for an arrow, you’re dull as a post.”

  “Tant pis,” Flèche said, his footsteps moving past her. That smell of cigarettes that clung to his clothes. “You want a bigger cut, why do you deserve it?”

  She had to warn this woman. Even though she’d attacked Morgane, bound her and threatened her, Morgane trusted her more than this idiot who’d get her killed.

  “He’s got a knife strapped to his leg,” she said.

  “That’s too bad, Flèche. I don’t like uncooperative types.”

  Morgane heard the unmistakable sound of a revolver cartridge clicking into place. An intake of breath.

  “And no need to look for the fixer anymore,” the woman said. “Here I am.”

  “What the …?”

  The rest was drowned in the crack of a gunshot. Morgane tried to make herself small. Sounds of shattering glass and a loud thump on the floor next to her. What felt like a man’s arm—Flèche’s—hitting her shoulder. Morgane shivered in terror. Then an oozing, warm wetness on her sleeve. That metallic smell. Her fingers came back sticky with blood.

  She tried to scream but it froze in her throat. Nothing came out.

  Her body tensed, expecting the gunshot. Expecting to die. But she couldn’t force her mouth open to plead for her life. Could only sputter a few words. “My son … needs me … I beg you.…”

  Only the chill draft from an open door answered her.

  Wednesday

  DOUBTS CLOGGED AIMÉE’S mind like the leaves stuck in the quai’s rain-swollen gutters. D
ombasle’s informant antiquaire orchestrating a buy of a Modigliani at the flea market—it all seemed too easy.

  Or maybe she was paranoid.

  But it reminded her of the apricot tart her grandmother left to cool on the windowsill one long-ago summer afternoon—a flock of crows had swooped down and left not even a crumb. Was there a swarm of scavengers picking each other off for the prize?

  She needed a plan, quick and dirty. Grabbed her cell phone.

  Oleg answered on the first ring.

  “Mademoiselle Leduc, you’ve thought of something? Want to talk?”

  Still rude. He’d kept her number on his caller ID.

  “Call off the Serbs and I’m more than ready.”

  A snort. “I don’t understand.”

  Damp air laced with the fresh scent of rain hovered on the quai. Aimée shook the water off her Vespa cover, took out her keys, and shouldered her bag. The sporadic showers made one feel damp all the time, her grand-mère used to complain. Nothing ever dried.

  “Didn’t you send the goon last night to plunge my head in a bucket, like he tortured your stepfather?”

  A swift intake of breath. “What?”

  “Lucky my godfather’s a flic and—”

  “Nothing to do with me,” Oleg interrupted. “You’re wrong.”

  A bus whooshed by, spraying water from the puddles. She stepped back but not in time. Droplets shimmered on her leather leggings. “Act like that,” she said, irritated, wiping herself off with a café napkin from her bag. “No information then.”

  “Either you have the Modigliani or you don’t,” he said.

  This wasn’t going well. Accusing him might not have been the best plan. But she had a feeling.

  “Oleg, you’re in the dark with a buyer and no painting,” she said. “Guess we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

  “Attends, I never intended for this to get out of hand.”

  Her foot paused on the kickstart. Her hand gripped the phone. “What do you mean?”

  “The buyer’s anxious.”

  “So you hire someone to threaten me?”

  “Never. You’re crazy.” His voice rose a notch.

  “But to kill your own—”

  “I’d never hurt Yuri. Ever.”

  “Expect me to believe that? He sent you away, never regarded you as his.…”

  “Son?” Oleg said. “You don’t understand. Tatyana—we never thought the Serb would die. That you’d run him over.”

  Realization hit her gut. “You hired the Serb.”

  “A fiasco.” He’d admitted it.

  “The Serb bought it before he hit our windshield,” Aimée said. “His partner’s an angry dog and I want him brought to heel or—”

  “What can I do?” His breath caught. “A simple job.…” What sounded like a sob erupted. He sounded afraid. “But I never hired anyone to hurt you. Or Yuri. Don’t you get it?”

  She believed him. He sounded in over his head. But he was withholding something. She leaned on the quai’s stone wall, overlooking the rippling Seine. Below chugged a long, open barge loaded with sand like she remembered from years ago. Didn’t see many of those these days.

  “Then explain. I’m listening, Oleg.”

  “Tatyana knew someone who knew someone,” he said finally.

  “Too vague, Oleg.”

  “A word here and there, back channels, I don’t know,” he said. “Zut, part of me wanted Yuri to keep it. A family heirloom.”

  His depiction of himself as a solicitous stepson contradicted Madame Figuer’s, Natasha’s, and Damien’s accounts. Again, that suspicion niggled—had he stolen the painting and concocted an elaborate scheme to derail the flics? And now answered her call to find out what she knew?

  “I wish we could have kept that painting. The Modigliani spoke to me, I told you,” Oleg said. “But we’re working people. Tatyana convinced me, said this buyer has a private museum, people would admire it. Yuri needed money for an operation. I thought he’d come around, given time.”

  She doubted that part. Yuri was a feisty old goat who wanted things his way. Hadn’t he “hired” her?

  “You invited him over for dinner, Tatyana cooked his favorite meal. But he refused to let you sell the painting,” she said. “Ruined your plans. He’d found a fixer to handle the painting.”

  A sigh. “He told you all this, then you know.…”

  She wouldn’t disabuse him of the idea that Yuri had confided in her. Or reveal that she knew nothing.

  “But someone stole the Modigliani before the Serb got there,” Oleg said. “And now his brother’s demanding payment. A job’s a job, he insists, no matter the outcome.”

  That she could believe.

  “Call him off, Oleg.”

  “Believe me, I want to,” he said. “I tried.”

  “Tried, Oleg? Tell me how you contacted him.”

  “By cell phone, but he doesn’t answer.”

  Why couldn’t he just spit it out?

  “Give me his number. He’s gone vigilante on my colleague.”

  Pause.

  She wanted to kick him. Raised her voice. “Now, Oleg. I need it”

  Aimée reached in her bag, grabbed a pen from the car insurance company, and wrote the number on her palm. A seagull strutted down the wall, squawking. She covered her other ear to hear better.

  “Tell me who else wanted the Modigliani,” Aimée said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Holding back again.

  “I think you do, Oleg,” she said. “There was blood on the wall.”

  “Look, I’ll give you a percentage,” he said, sounding rushed now. “Think it over.”

  He thought she wanted in on the profit. Thought she knew the painting’s whereabouts. Damien’s words came back to her. “But Damien heard you argue that night.”

  “That bleeding heart?” Oleg said. “Damien should mind his own business. Yuri never gave me a chance whenever I tried to help him. But Mr. Do-Gooder’s always at his beck and call, when he’s not demonstrating, or at the hospital with his dying aunt. He wants first place in line for her inheritance.”

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you.”

  Oleg hung up.

  As long as Oleg thought she had access to the painting, she had value. But he might have already told her everything he knew. The desperation in his voice sounded real enough.

  Aimée tried the Serb’s phone number. Out of service. A disposable phone. And a dead end.

  She kicked loose gravel at the stone wall. Alarmed, the seagull took off, his wings making a flapping whoosh as he skimmed the dimpled surface of the green-brown Seine. The color reminded her of lentil soup.

  She rang Saj. Gave him the latest.

  “What did you expect, Aimée? Thought the Serb would answer and apologize?” Saj sounded worried. “Like a slap on the wrist would make any of them walk away? High stakes like this?”

  She figured these were rhetorical questions. “Bon, Oleg lives not far from Yuri in the fourteenth.…”

  “So pay him a visit,” Saj said. “Meanwhile, since I don’t have the thumb-drive prototype.…” He paused. “I’d like the anti-malware program that’s in the drawer at my computer desk at my place. Can you stop by? Grab my stress busters while you’re at it?”

  Her neck felt hot with shame. “Don’t tell me you came from the hospital to the office without even going home?”

  “Good thing, too, with you getting attacked,” he said. “Someone’s got to mind the office with René gone. Look, I want to keep the business going, forget what I said before.”

  Guilt riddled her. Unlike René, loyal Saj stuck with her. And he needed help in return.

  “Bien sûr, Saj.”

  After punching in 12 for directory assistance, she found Oleg’s address. One bit of luck, thank God. First she’d stop at Saj’s—the least she could do. And it was en route. She donned her helmet again and gunned her scooter to the Left Bank. Not ten minutes from Yuri’
s on Villa d’Alésia lay rue des Thermopolyes, a village-like street battling developers. She saw the jagged walls of half-demolished buildings with a faded Dubonnet sign, the abandoned plot an attempt at a community garden with a rusted pinwheel turning in the wind. Farther on, she passed pastel two- and three-story maisonettes, painstakingly restored, and the taffy brick walls of the occasional small workshop. Saj lived in one of these.

  A churchbell chimed in the distance. Pastoral and quiet. She keyed in his door code and reached his studio on the second floor. Diffused light from the slanted glass roof bathed the former workshop in a clouded vanilla. On the oblong window facing the courtyard, something was painted in red, like graffiti. Art? But when she got closer, she saw the misspelled words slashed like blood spatter: I’ll get you murderrer.

  Her heart jumped into her throat. She gasped. Stepped back, and stumbled on Saj’s pile of encryption manuals. She didn’t need a high IQ to know the handiwork of a Serb bent on vengeance.

  A creak behind her startled her and she turned to see a female figure in black Goth garb. “Can’t get away this time.”

  Aimée dove under Saj’s kitchen table just in time to avoid the swinging scythe. She scooted on her hands and knees as fast as she could over the tatami mat. “Hold on, I’m Saj’s friend,” she said, meeting the woman’s heavily made-up eyes, black holes in her white face. “Who won’t get away?”

  “Like I believe you? I heard those noises this morning.…”

  By the time she’d convinced this Goth neighbor—Solange, or Sheila, the Celtic name she preferred to be called by—that she wasn’t out to kill Saj, five precious minutes had passed. But at least she could get some information, if Sheila had seen the Serb. “So you heard him. Did he speak? Have an accent?” she asked.

  “I was rushing to work and heard loud noises. That’s all.”

  Work, in the morning? Not some vampire party? Aimée blinked.

  Sheila noticed her reaction. “Had to open my medieval shop on rue du Couédic early today for the confluence gathering. The tribes request it, you know,” she said, her high-pitched voice at odds with her appearance—black lace, tapestry-festooned apron, and matching black fingernails. She resembled a milkmaid from Hades.

  “Then I found the door open, and no Saj. I’m worried.”