by Cara Black
She rang Martine on her cell phone. "Martine, don't trust the flics anymore."
"What do you mean?" Martine sounded more tired than usual.
"They took Rene out."
"Your partner?" Martine said.
"Listen, I need two things, d'accord?"
"Where's my story? You promised me," Martine said.
Aimee pushed the director's chair back and peered out the tall window. Shadows lengthened in Place des Vosges. Figures moved back and forth. They could be passersby or B.R.I., she couldn't tell.
"Send a reporter to check on Rene in the hospital. I can't go because they're looking for me. Break a story like 'Mysterious Shooting, Neo-Nazi Assassin with Swastika Tattoos.' Blow it up big on the front page. Right now, fax me that last cheat sheet."
"What kind of trouble are you in?" There was concern in Martine's voice. "Who is after you?"
"Take a number, who isn't? Here's the fax where I am." Aimee read it off the machine near the director's computer. "Check on Rene first, please! Do it right now, OK? And I promise you this whole thing is yours." She didn't add if I make it.
On the alert for a night cleaner, she wandered the rooms. Prosperous writers in Hugo's time couldn't be said to have lived in a sumptuous mode. In his bedroom she looked out and saw the dusk settling over the plane trees in the square. If there was a police presence she didn't see it, only parents attempting to round up their children from the playground.
She noticed a placard next to the folds of a brocade canopy that cascaded heavily to the floorboards announcing that the great writer had expired in this bed. Uneasiness washed over her. Did Victor Hugo haunt these rooms? Ghosts, ghosts everywhere.
The fax feed groaned. Startled, she bumped into a wooden armoire, which creaked, sending the mice under it scurrying down the hall. Rodents. She hated rodents. Dust puffed over the wooden floor. From somewhere deep in her shoulder bag, her cell phone tinkled and she choked back a cough.
"Look at this," Martine's voice crackled over the phone. "Can you find her with this photo?"
Aimee ran to the fax machine. She gasped when she saw the face, clear and unmistakable.
"I already have," she said.
Thursday Evening
"T HIS IS A IMÉE LEDUC," she said into her cell phone. "I need to see you."
A long silence.
"You're in danger. Go out the back of your building, there's a courtyard in the rear, right?" Aimee didn't wait for an answer. "Bring a hammer or chisel. Find the door to the alley, there's always one. It's where the horses were stabled; break it open. Do you understand so far?" Aimee waited but all she heard was a sharp intake of breath over the phone.
She continued, "Go to the button factory Mon Bouton, around the corner from Place des Vosges on rue de Turenne. Tonight it's open late. Go inside, but nowhere near a window. Leave now and I should get there just when you do." Still silence at the other end. "Whatever happened between you and Lili Stein is in the past. I'm doing this because she didn't deserve to be murdered. They're after you now. Leave immediately." Aimee hung up.
Aimee's brightly lit goal, the button factory, twinkled from over the rooftops and through the trees. One street over from the Place des Vosges, Mon Bouton inhabited a small courtyard.
Victor Hugo's canopied bed bordered on comfortable and apart from the scurrying noises, she felt safe. But now Aimee had to leave the museum without setting off the alarm. She tied assorted cleaning smocks and rags from a utility closet together with sheets she'd found under the bed of the great writer. She grabbed the guard's chair and slung it over the toilet. Few museums bothered to include skylights more than three stories high in their alarm systems. Here, two metal bars were strung across the thick, webbed glass. She swung the roped rags over the bars and hoisted herself onto the chair. Hunched below the rectangular skylight, she aimed her right foot and kicked one of the bars.
She wished she wore boots instead of several-hundred-franc high heels. After several attempts, the bar loosened enough for her to slowly wedge it out. But it was still too narrow for her to slide through. She kicked again and again. Finally she kicked the second bar loose and pulled herself up slowly. As she released the handle, the skylight popped open. The night air was clear and crisp amid the chimney pots and slanted roofs.
She had to reach the button factory on rue de Turenne across the roofs of Place des Vosges. With her skirt hiked up over her thighs she climbed the peaked eaves and straddled corbels. The spiky ears and tails of gargoyles perched below her on the right. She made her way across the rooftops sliding over ancient slate tiles, her high heels scrabbling for purchase on the sleek surface. Open windows and skylights exhaled vestiges of classical music, the clatter of cooking pots, the scattered moans of lovemaking. She gripped a moldering brick exhaust cone and felt a wet mushy turd under her palm. Rodents.
Steamy, greasy vapor shot out of the cone as Aimee grabbed at rusty iron rungs leading over a high bricked abutment. Climbing, breathing hard, she pulled herself up each rung slowly. The smell of frying onions from a lighted kitchen below assailed her nostrils as a little boy cried out, "I'm hungry, Maman!"
At another series of roofs she stopped, kneeling high above the Marais, to catch her breath. More rungs led to a sloping roof over the button factory courtyard. Spread-eagled, she worked her way along the chipped shingles, using her toes to find niches when the rungs twisted or came loose. Slipping along, clutching at oily slate shingles broken off in places, she reached a metal overhang above the courtyard. Probably a twenty-foot drop. If she could clamp on to the rusty fire-escape ladder and slide down, it might just be a ten-foot drop.
She aimed for the tin gutter next to it. Lying facedown, she scooted herself forward a few feet at a time until she finally grasped the chute leading to the rain gutter.
She had to say one thing for this designer wear, it held up under tough conditions. If the chute couldn't bear her weight she'd have to reach out, push off the gutter, and grab the fire escape quickly. Which happened as soon as she'd thought it. She grabbed at the tin gutter which squealed as her fingernails raked over it.
She tried desperately to hold on to the narrow ridge of the gutter as her legs swung wildly in the air. Cold air rushed around her as she reached for the fire-escape rail with her other hand. This is it, I'm done for, she thought. A wild circus act before I splatter on the cobblestones in an Issey Miyake suit hiked over my thighs. Her father's grinning face next to a faded sepia likeness of her mother flashed through her mind. Her only chance was a dumpster below her filled with God knew what.
She screamed as the gutter broke and she dove towards the dumpster.
And plunged, somersaulting, into the cold night air.
She landed sitting upright in a dumpster full of buttons that cushioned her fall. Red, green, and yellow ones. Glossy and shining in the moonlight that peeked over the trees. The buttons ground against each other as she reached up to the dumpster rim. Her hand slipped and she was buried under mounds of buttons. Jesus, would she be suffocated by these colored disks after she'd survived a twenty-foot fall from the roof?
She finally managed to pull herself up, crunching scores of buttons. The courtyard seemed amazingly quiet. Pulling her skirt down, she shook herself, and a myriad red, green, and yellow pellets rained on the cobblestones. She'd landed in a batch of defective button rejects. She tramped into the side door of Mon Bouton.
"Ça va, Leah?" Aimee kissed her.
Leah's eyes opened in wonder at her appearance. "Such a nice suit!" She came closer, being myopically shortsighted from sorting buttons for so many years. "Is it. . .?"
"Murder." Aimee nodded, feeling guilty for abusing Leah's trust.
At that moment the door opened slightly and Aimee turned.
"I'm here." Albertine Clouzot's housekeeper, Florence, hesitated. "I almost didn't come."
Aimee gently took her arm. "You're safe here, Sarah."
The former Sarah Strauss wore a black pageboy wig fra
ming her startling blue eyes. Gaunt and tall, her beauty still glowed. She stuck her trembling hands in the pockets of her raincoat.
She stared at Aimee. "But I noticed the same man who'd been out front when I returned from shopping. He was still there after you called."
"We need to talk. Coffee?"
The only other noise came from the hissing espresso maker on the gas stove top. Leah turned off the workroom lights, leaving only a dim spotlight on the cooktop. She nodded conspiratorially and left the room.
Aimee guided Sarah to a long wooden refectory table, gouged and scarred, alongside galvanized metal tubes and cylinders that sorted buttons. She poured steamy black espresso into two chipped demitasse cups and slid the bowl of brown sugar cubes across the table.
"Someone's out to kill you." Aimee sipped her espresso. "They're after me, too."
Sarah looked up from the demitasse cup, startled.
"What does the swastika carved into Lili Stein's forehead mean?" Aimee said, rubbing her hand on the wooden table.
Sarah shook her head.
Aimee had to get her to talk. "Sarah, this is all about the past. You know it!"
Fear and mostly sadness shone in Sarah's eyes. She whimpered, "A curse, that's what it is. Following me all my life. Why does God allow this? I read the Torah, trying to understand, but. . ." And she collapsed, crying.
Aimee felt guilty for her outburst. "Look, I'm sorry." She leaned over and put her arm around the woman. "Sarah—do you mind if I call you that?" She lifted Sarah's chin up. "I never would judge your actions fifty years ago. I wasn't alive then. Just tell me what happened." Aimee paused. "Tell me about you and Lili."
"You found her body, didn't you?" Sarah said.
Aimee's stomach tightened.
Sarah looked down, unable to meet Aimee's eyes. "She'd changed."
Aimee's curiosity had been colored by fear. Ever since she saw the photo of Lili in the crowd when Sarah was tarred with the swastika.
Sarah spoke slowly. "That's all so long ago. Some of us spend our lives making up for the past," she sighed.
"Did she. . ." Aimee couldn't finish.
Sarah pulled off her black wig. "Do this?"
The scarred swastika across her forehead showed even in the dim light. Sarah nodded. "If Lili hadn't, someone else in the mob would have."
Aimee was amazed at the weary forgiveness in her voice.
Sarah read her eyes. "But she stopped them from hurting my baby. She persuaded the crowd to leave us alone. Helped me find shelter." Sarah sighed. "After fifty years, I saw her again, it must have been just before. . ."
Aimee bolted to attention. "Before she was murdered?"
"I recently moved back to Paris." Sarah nodded. "As you know, I'd only just begun working at Albertine's. Lili still lived on rue des Rosiers. I followed her. But I couldn't deal with the past."
Aimee asked, "You followed her?"
"She'd been terrified during the Occupation. Filled with jealousy and loathing toward me. Being young, I didn't realize that; I believed Lili abandoned me when she escaped Paris."
She shook her head. "But that day we bumped into each other at the cobbler's. Somehow I got the courage and told her who I was. Jew to Jew, for the first time, we talked. Then she told me about Laurent."
"Laurent?" Aimee said. She felt confused.
"She was afraid of Laurent," Sarah said.
Aimee shook her head. "Who's Laurent?"
"That troublemaker from Madame Pagnol's class so many years ago!" Sarah said. "Rumor had it he informed on parents of children he didn't like. A vicious type. Lili said she'd recognized him and had gone to talk with Soli Hecht."
Aimee stood up and started pacing, her high-heeled pumps crunching loose plastic chips and partial button forms on the floor. "You mean, Lili had recognized Laurent. Now. . .in the present day?"
Sarah rubbed her tired eyes. "Soli Hecht advised her to keep it quiet," she said. "Until he could come up with evidence. Documentation or something to do with her concierge. Help her prove that he wasn't who he said he was. Expose his identity."
"Wait a minute. Who is he?" Aimee said. She thought back to Soli's dying words. Lo. . .l'eau. "Who are we talking about?"
Sarah shrugged. "I don't know."
"Let me understand this," Aimee said and stood up. "Lili, using Soli Hecht's help, was about to expose Laurent, a former collaborator, who had hidden his identity. But why wouldn't she tell you who he is?" Aimee began pacing back and forth.
"Lili was getting nervous, then acting almost as if she didn't know me," Sarah said. "That's when she turned abruptly, said she was being followed. Later, after I picked up the dry cleaning, I saw her. She grabbed me, I don't know why, then ran away before I could talk to her."
"That's when the button came off the Chanel suit and got tangled in her bag," Aimee said, pacing faster now. "Did your conversation occur at the cobbler's?"
"No, outside, near the corner of the alley," Sarah said.
"What time?"
"Just before six, I think."
"You're in greater danger than I thought," Aimee said, unable to stop pacing. She had the pieces now to fit in the puzzle.
"Why?" Sarah mumbled. "Is it my son?"
"That's a separate issue. He abhors the fact that you are Jewish because it means he is too."
"Is Helmut after me?"
Of course, now it all made sense. Hartmuth was Helmut Volpe.
"No, he told me you were in trouble. He's trying to save you. And Lili tried to save you too," Aimee said.
"What do you mean?"
"From Laurent. Can't you see?" Aimee said, trying to control her excitement but her words spilled out. "Think about how, as you talked with Lili, she changed. How she pretended not to know you and edge away. He was there, somewhere. She did it so he wouldn't know who you were." Aimee sat down close to Sarah. "I promise, he's not going to get you!"
FRIDAY
Friday Morning
HARTMUTH'S NIGHTMARE S WERE FILLED with ice tongs and crying babies. Sleep had eluded him.
There was a slight knock on the door from the adjoining suite. It would be Ilse. He pulled on a robe and shuffled to the door.
"Mein Herr," Ilse said, her eyes bright as they quickly swept his room. "You are back! I checked late last night but your room was empty. We missed you!"
Hartmuth forced a grin. "This rich French food, Ilse, I'm not used to it. If I don't walk, it just curdles in my stomach."
"Jawohl, you are so right. Myself," she sidled closer to him, "I miss our German food. Simple yes, but so good and nutritious." Without missing a beat, she continued, "I don't mind telling you, mein Herr, that Monsieur Quimper and Minister Cazaux are of the old school. Because of their sincerity, all the delegates have agreed as of tonight to sign the treaty. But of course, this happens tomorrow at the ceremony. And with your signature to make it unanimous."
"What time is the ceremony, Ilse?" he said in as businesslike a tone as he could summon.
"Nineteen hundred hours, mein Herr," and she smiled. "In time for the CNN worldwide news feed. A nice touch, I thought." She lumbered to the door. "Unter den Linden."
The treaty was as good as signed.
Friday Noon
AIMÉE KNOCKED TWICE, THEN again. Slowly, Javel opened the door wearing a tattered undershirt.
"I'm busy," he said, not smiling. "There's nothing more to say."
Aimee put her foot in the door. "Just a few minutes; it won't take long," she said and slid through the doorway.
He grudgingly stood aside in the hallway.
"Does this go into your shop?" Aimee said, pointing at a damp, moldly door.
He nodded, his eyes narrowing.
She quickly climbed the three stairs and pushed the door before he could stop her.
"Eh, what are you doing?" he said.
By the time he had painstakingly climbed the steps she was back out the door again and had shot past him down the narrow hallway.
He caught up with her in the parlor and found his tongue. "You're just a nosy amateur detective running around in circles," he said.
Aimee stared at him. "You heard the whole thing, didn't you?"
"What are you talking about?" he asked angrily, gripping the back of his only chair.
"In this shop and around the rue Pavee. The spot's so close I bet you can spit that far," she said.
He spluttered, his eyes furtive. "None of this makes any sense. You're all the same!" He hastily shut the drawer in his pine kitchen table and moved to his rocking chair.
"Is that why you decided to take the law into your own hands, be a vigilante for a fifty-year-old crime?" she said.
He was obviously hiding something. She sidled next to the table, opening the single drawer by its rusted knob.
"What are you doing? Get away from there!" he yelled.
Aimee felt under Arlette's hand-embroidered napkins and reached towards the back. She pulled out a string bag and yarn from the drawer. "Why did you keep it?"
"Keep what?" he said.
"Lili Stein's bag and her knitting," she said as she lifted it out of the drawer.
"I-I found it," he said.
"On Wednesday you overheard Lili and Sarah talking about the past," she said. "From what you overheard, you thought Lili had killed Arlette, fifty years ago. After Sarah left, you confronted Lili. Lili vehemently denied killing her but she called Arlette a thieving, opportunistic blackmailer who had it coming to her. Didn't she?" She paused, looking at Javel's glittering hate-filled eyes. "Or words to that effect. You reached in your pocket for the only thing available," she said and pulled a thin wire out of her pocket. "You followed her, then strangled her with one like this from your shop. Finally, you carved the swastika to make it look like neo-Nazis."
She dangled the metal shoe wire in the air. "See the clear plastic at the end of this that protects and makes it easy to lace through the holes. That bit came off next to Lili. The other end is in the police evidence bag," she said.
