Murder Below Montparnasse

by Cara Black

  “Never,” she said, hoping her voice wouldn’t break. “But it would get him payback and help me at the same time.”

  A snort. “What the hell …?”

  “Let’s call it two in one. I’d like him to take care of that mec who took care of his brother, compris?”

  One of the men looked up.

  “No love lost on my end,” she said. “I’m willing to pay.”

  Another one cleared his throat. She saw a bare nod of his head. The mec caught his look. For whatever reason, they had decided to trust her.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” he said. “Bois de Vincennes stables, the Hippodrome.”

  “His name?”

  “Goran.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re coming,” he said. “Better have his cash ready.”

  AIMÉE MET SERGE in the back lot of the morgue, the elevated Métro clanking above their heads. The Seine flowed darkly to their right.

  “You copied the report, right?”

  Serge made a long face. “And no one will ever know. Promise me, Aimée.” Serge looked around in the lot as if the authorities would swoop down any minute. Only a man wearing white boots hosing down a loading bay. Aimée didn’t like to think what went down the drain.

  “You’ve got my word,” she said,

  “And you’ve got the twins for next weekend,” Serge said.

  She cringed inside. Hyperkinetic three-year-olds? She’d have to take them to Sebastien’s wedding. They could be … what, flower boys? Ring bearers? She’d beg her cousin. Better yet, she’d let Saj teach them computer games. Serge’s wife never let them near a computer.

  “Bien sûr.” She smiled.

  A STABLE HAND in blue jeans poured water in a horse trough in the clear afternoon light. Flies buzzed; fragrant piles of manure steamed in the cold air. Aimée stepped around a bale of hay and jumped as she sent a nest of mice scurrying.

  “Lost, Mademoiselle?” said a man in overalls topped by a three-quarter-length blue work coat. He had a pronounced Eastern European accent. “Public’s not allowed in the stalls.”

  “But I’m looking for you, Goran,” she said. “Your friends called, non?”

  Goran straightened up. She saw piercing black eyes in a weathered face, a mustache, and thick brown hair graying at the temples. A face aged before his time, she thought.

  “You’re the one, eh?” He gestured to a back stall. “Make it good. I’m working.”

  She shook her head. No way in hell she’d let him box her in a rodent-infested stall.

  Goran eyed the groom. “I’ll deal with this and join you in the exercise ring,” he said, gesturing the other man out. The stable door clanged behind him. Uneasy, Aimée breathed in the horse smells, took in the old wooden enclosure and the high, dark ceiling.

  “Tatyana owes me and you’re going to—”

  “Show you the proof Feliks died by his own hand,” Aimée interrupted. “His autopsy reports the cause of death is heart failure due to Xylazine. He injected it by mistake.”

  Goran slammed the half-door on a whinnying horse. “Liar.”

  “I thought you’d say that. Read it yourself,” she said. “The same Xylazine you use to tranquilize horses here.”

  He pulled a bandanna from his overalls pocket, wiped his neck. “I know what it does.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “You stole it from the veterinary cabinet and furnished it to your brother for his job. A simple snatch-and-grab that went wrong.”

  “Xylazine doesn’t kill humans,” Goran said, his eyes hard and narrowed. “What’s all this to you anyway?”

  “Given a high dosage, it could. But you only gave Feliks enough to sedate the old man if needed.”

  “That freak killed my brother. Ran him down. I’ll take care of him for you—a pleasure.”

  “Feliks died before he hit the windshield. Read the autopsy.”

  He looked up in alarm. “Who are you?”

  “I was in the car, Goran. Your brother didn’t bleed; his heart had stopped pumping.”

  “Bitch. It was you.” He rushed at her. Only stopped when he saw her Beretta leveled at his kneecaps.

  “Feliks suffered an allergic reaction to the Xylazine,” she said, her heart pounding. “He died a few, maybe four, minutes after accidentally injecting himself.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all here.”

  “But I’m a veterinarian.”

  “So you say,” she said.

  “In Serbia I’m qualified, but—”

  “Here you contributed to your brother’s robbery jobs.”

  He stepped back. “Feliks was small-time. Go after the big players in the suburbs with Kalashnikovs.”

  Lay the blame on someone else.

  “Feliks’s body was covered with prison tattoos. He’s Serb mafia, like your friends at the café.”

  A muscle in Goran’s cheek twitched. “Ever walked on the wrong side of the street in Zagreb?” His voice rose. “Or get thrown into a cell with warlords—the mafia? You don’t get out alive unless you join. We escaped, our family didn’t.” His lip trembled. “You wouldn’t know what it’s like to sleep on the street, on the floor of a café if we were lucky. No job. Feliks met up with former soldiers here. I told him to stay away from them.” He sighed. “But he saw me, a qualified doctor teaching veterinary courses at the university, shoveling horse shit.”

  “Don’t look for pity from me,” she said. “Trying to attack my friend at the hospital, threatening him and defacing his home. What medical code of ethics do you follow? Injecting horse tranquilizer, taking a hit job for revenge and money?”

  “Think I earn enough to bury my little brother?” His shoulders slumped. “I owe the café owner, we slept there.…”

  Aimée’s neck went hot. She hoped to God they wouldn’t appear. But they’d smelled money.

  “He’s all I had left. But that freak—”

  “The injection killed him, Goran.” She thrust the autopsy into his shaking hands.

  “Non, non.…” A low wail welled up from him. Then a searing animal-like cry of pain. Horses kicked the stall, whinnied. His cry raked her skin raw.

  “What’s going on?” A veterinarian in a lab coat rushed into the stable, followed by the groom. “Goran, what’s wrong? You’re hurt?”

  The veterinarian leaned down and noticed the autopsy in the hay. “What’s this?”

  Should she let the vet read it? Goran would be fired. Arrested. Then she’d learn nothing from him.

  And she could tell—from his sweating brow, the nervous toe movement of his boots—he knew something.

  Before the vet could reach for the report, Aimée picked it up. “Bad news, I’m afraid. His brother.…” She let her voice trail off.

  Goran crumpled against the wooden stall, destroyed. Despite everything, she pitied him.

  “I’m with the Red Cross, doctor,” she said. “May I speak with him alone?”

  “Use the tack room. Jacky, get some water,” he said.

  Five minutes later, Goran was slumped on a chair by hanging bridles and horse brushes. A dazed look on his face. “I killed him.”

  “Take a sip.” She handed him the water. “Now shut up and listen. I didn’t turn you in, but you need to help me, understand?”

  “Why?”

  She thought of Yuri’s saying about the Serbs—an unlucky man would drown in a teacup.

  “Your plan went wrong and you’re devastated. But you’re going to call the café and tell them the hit’s off. Go to Chantilly, where there are plenty of horses, and work there. Start fresh.”

  He looked up. “Why would you do that? I killed my brother.”

  “Then prison appeals to you?” she said. “Tonight the flics will question every stable in Paris and within a twenty-five kilometer radius.”

  His eyes bulged in fear.

  “Accessory to murder and theft. Prison, deportation.”

  “Deport me back to Serbia?” The reality hit him.<
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  “Or did I get it wrong—you returned the next morning and tortured the old man?”

  “Me, why? What’s the old man to me?”

  Or had he attacked her in her office? But Goran spoke with a thick Serbian accent, unlike the voice over the speakerphone. She looked at his hands. Slim palms; thin, tapered fingers—not like the meaty paws that had grabbed the roots of her hair. Her scalp tingled.

  “So convince me, Goran. Start talking.” She kept her eyes locked on his. “Like I said, you can start over. In return for my not turning you in, you tell me everything—how you met Tatyana, Feliks’s role—each detail.”

  “I don’t know. Feliks worked alone. He wanted it that way.”

  “Lie to me and I turn you in,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “Tell your café friends you’ll meet them later. Make the call.”

  He nodded, punched in a number. Mumbled something in Serbian. Clicked off.

  “You were on Villa d’Alésia the night of the robbery, weren’t you?”

  A shrug. “Feliks didn’t want me involved,” he said.

  Aimée thought back to the police report Serge had shown her in the morgue. The contents of the Serb’s stomach.

  “But Feliks ordered a kebob takeout from rue d’Alésia. The receipt was in his pocket.” She took a guess. “You shared it, didn’t you? Lie to me again and the deal’s off.”

  Goran hung his head. Nodded. “He was so blasé. I worried about him. The danger. But he kept saying.…”

  Blasé? “Just a routine job, non?” she said. “He’d done this a lot.”

  Goran’s shoulders sagged again. “He shouldn’t have been a criminal. Feliks was such a gentle boy when we were children. He changed after Pristina. The massacre in the town square, the roundups in the hills … our family thrown in a pit.”

  Pain creased his brow.

  “You waited behind the old man’s house by the wall in the rosemary bushes, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “I worried for him.”

  “But Feliks didn’t come out the back like you thought, right, Goran?”

  He looked up. In his lined face, his eyes brimmed with tears. “I heard sirens.”

  “Did you see a white van?”

  “A white van?”

  “Think back. Which way did you run?”

  “I went through the park by the wall. Then toward the Métro … non, I waited in the park.”

  Aimée nodded. A queasiness rumbled in her stomach. Residue of last night’s drug, she thought, but the horses pawing in their stalls, the manure, the leather tang of the saddles didn’t help. She wanted something to settle her stomach, but she couldn’t stop. This went somewhere. She needed to keep pressing him.

  She sat down cross-legged on the earthen floor, took a deep breath. Then shoved aside the hay, brushing away the mouse droppings with her boot. With her finger she drew a square and lines in the dirt. “Goran, think of this as a map. Here’s the park, here’s the wall behind Yuri’s.”

  “Yuri?”

  “The old man Feliks attempted to rob. But the painting had been stolen.”

  “Phfft,” Goran expelled air in disgust. “Painting, jewelry? I don’t ask. All I know is this Tatyana contracted Feliks for a job. Never paid him, you understand. Now she owes me. A job is a job.”

  His words echoed what Oleg had told her. She drew a circle. “See, here’s the old townhouse with shutters. Show me where you were.”

  Goran stared. Then pointed. “Here, maybe there. I kept walking in the bushes trying to find somewhere to climb over the wall. So dark, and every place was so high.” He blinked, shook his head. “I couldn’t get out.”

  “You remember something, don’t you?”

  He put his finger in the dirt. Scratched an X.

  “In the park I hid below the wall here. Looked for a rock, a tree. I saw a van drive by two, three times. That’s right,” he said, almost to himself. “Like it was circling the block.”

  Aimée started to nod, but every time she moved her head queasiness rose from her stomach. She kept still, willed it down.

  “You noticed because you were looking out for your brother,” she said. “You watched out for the flics.”

  “At first I thought it was the police,” he said, his finger hitting the dirt. “But no blue light, no blue letters.”

  The pieces fit together. The person who fought the Serb—a member of Luebet’s gang? Now it seemed everyone who knew of the Modigliani had tried to steal it.

  “Where did the van go?”

  “It pulled over, waited.…”

  “How long?”

  “The driver got out.… Wait, I remember, I heard metal noises. He was doing something on the back of the van.”

  Aimée remembered the white van shooting out in front of them, Saj downshifting and honking the horn.

  “I don’t know after that,” Goran said.

  What was she missing here? “So you left? Took the Métro?”

  “I waited maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Climbed the fence, then I walked. Along here.” He trailed his finger in the dirt along rue de Châtillon.

  “What did you see? People, lights?”

  He closed his eyes, thinking. “Some lights in windows, a small factory, but no one saw me. I avoided the Métro.”

  “Where did you head?”

  “Tombe Issoire, a place full of squatters. I was supposed to meet Feliks there, but he never came.”

  “But where was Feliks supposed to hand off the painting to Tatyana?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  Aimée believed him.

  “Did you see the van again?” she said. “You were nervous, non? Had an eye out for white police vans.”

  He shook his head. “I kept my head down. Walked fast.”

  One last try. “The van. Think again. You said it parked here on rue de Châtillon by the park. Then it drove on. Anything strike you? The lettering on it, the model or make, scratches or dents, old or new?”

  “Was that who hurt Feliks?”

  He’d registered the bruise marks from the autopsy.

  “Someone beat him to the painting,” she said. “Try to remember. Could the van have been a rental?”

  He nodded. “Maybe. Maybe like those ones that service Orly.”

  Excited, she leaned forward. “A service van for catering, or packages like express post, or baggage handling?”

  His brow furrowed. “Now that I think back, like those. Just white, square, wedge back … a Renault? Too hard to see through the bushes.”

  Like every other Renault van in Paris. But she made one more attempt. “I know it was dark, but try to think. An older model, even a partial license plate?”

  “You’re joking.” He paused. Thinking. “Non, like new.”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “It had, like, you know, a temporary license until new plates come.”

  An itching feeling told Aimée he knew more. “But you haven’t told me everything, have you, Goran?”

  The smell of his fear and sweat mingled with the dust.

  “I’m giving you a chance, a way to start over. Quit holding out,” she said. “Feliks failed to show that night, so you returned in the morning, non? To find out what happened.”

  “What difference does it make? Feliks is gone.”

  “But that’s how you knew, or thought you knew, that Feliks was hurt and in Hôtel-Dieu.”

  “Feliks died. No one told me. By a fluke I found out myself.”

  Her anger rose. “Punching a flic and being thrown out of the criminal ward—you call that a fluke?”

  Goran looked shocked. “I want to go.”

  “Not until you tell me who you saw in the morning.”

  “What?”

  “How early did you go to Villa d’Alésia?”

  His mouth hardened. “You got what you wanted. Leave me alone.”

  “Had a coffee, maybe, at the corner café? Waited until people left for work to engage them in
conversation like you were a neighbor?”

  His eyes flashed. But by then she’d registered the tattoos just visible on his wrist where his sleeve was rolled up. Those prison tattoos, like Feliks’s. She controlled her shudder.

  “You’re good at that, playing someone else—that’s how you got your job here, non? You neglected to reveal your prison time, I bet.” She pointed to his tattoo. “Almost talked your way past the reception at Hôtel-Dieu …” She paused for effect. Raised her Beretta again. “Cough up and quit wasting my time.”

  His lip curled.

  “Feeling uncooperative? Then so am I.” She shrugged. “The café’s video surveillance shows the street movement. All I need to do is identify you to the flics. Let them deal with—”

  “Eight A.M.,” he said, his voice monotone now.

  She’d made up the video camera, but he bought it.

  “Give me the morning timeline.” She drew another line, curved like Villa d’Alésia to rue d’Alésia. “Point out who you spoke with and where.”

  He’d only spoken to the café owner, it turned out. She thought back to Yuri’s message while she’d been at the morgue, and later when he’d warned her off—around 9:45, according to when she’d checked her Tintin watch.

  “I took the Métro around nine thirty, my job starts at ten,” he said flatly. Glanced upward at the five time cards in metal slots behind the door. “Check my time card.”

  She did. Too late for Goran to have been the one to murder Yuri.

  “But here at this house—did you see anyone enter? Hear shouting?”

  He shook his head.

  “Or see the white van again?”

  He pointed to the X she’d made. “A little man with a Cossack hat went in there.”

  Yuri. Her pulse raced. “Would that have been nine or closer to nine fifteen?”

  “Like that.”

  Loud voices came from somewhere in the stable. Had Serge’s autopsy sparked the flics already? “Was he carrying something, like a package?”

  Goran shrugged. “A taxi blocked my view.”

  “But you remembered him.”

  “I remember Russians in my country with hats like that. Then the woman got out of the taxi.”