Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black

  “I don’t understand,” Aimée said.

  “We say tim tim to indicate a riddle. Like, what goes in white and comes out mulatto. If you give up, you say bwa seche.”

  “Bwa seche?”

  “Bread. A mulatto’s like toast.”

  “How do you know my father is yours too?” Aimée asked. “I need more than this.”

  “I never knew him. All I had were the photos, that card. . . .”

  “What card?” Aimée remembered René’s words. A third-world country, the poorest in the world . . . Mireille suddenly appearing . . . .

  “These photos don’t prove he’s your father.”

  The torn photo taken at the Brasserie Balzar with her father smiling, Mireille’s mother sitting next to him in a sleeveless dress . . . a typical scene in the Latin Quarter. They could have been students. Her father would have been a recent police recruit at that time. Who were the other people with them? Who was Mireille’s mother gazing at? Who was missing from this photo?

  “They look happy,” Mireille said. “A group of acquaintances, friends . . . see those glasses? There were others. The photo’s torn off.”

  Aimée sat down next to Mireille. “Why did you come to the office of Leduc Detective?”

  Mireille took a small leather-bound journal from her bag, opened it, and handed Aimée a postcard. On the front was a yellowed map of Haiti, titled “The Pearl of the Antilles.” The other side, dated May 1964, bore a message: “Jean-Claude— all my letters have been returned. They took the farm, I need help. There’s no one else to ask . . . we’re in hiding . . . my baby’s five years old.” The inscription ended with a blotted ink smudge, as if tears had fallen and smeared the surface.

  The card was addressed to Jean-Claude Leduc in care of Leduc Detective, rue du Louvre, Paris. But it hadn’t been signed or sent.

  “My Auntie gave me this before I left,” Mireille said. “My mother had burned everything else. My Auntie assumed this was addressed to my father. She said it was all they ever found.”

  Was this true?

  “My mother never told me his name. I was seven years old when we had to hide in the countryside,” Mireille said. “We were always moving around. One day these big men wearing sunglasses and machine guns took Maman. The tonton macoutes. They shot her by the water pump.”

  “Why?”

  “Her face . . . I can’t forget what they did to her face. . . .” Tears dripped down Mireille’s cheeks. Her voice was faint. “Maman called me her princesse. She said that’s what he’d called her.”

  Ma princesse. The words struck Aimée like a blow.

  “He? You mean. . . .”

  “My unknown father.”

  “That’s what Papa called me too,” Aimée said. “But why did the tonton macoutes—”

  “Kill Maman?” Mireille interrupted. “For consorting with a Frenchman? Or maybe because Duvalier had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. One never knew. With all the massacres, what did one more murder matter?”

  “But it mattered to you.” Aimée leaned forward. “I’m sorry.”

  “My grandmother hated my mother.” Mireille wiped her eyes. “As for me, well, it seems having a mulatto bastard grandchild didn’t earn her points with her fancy neighbors in Pietonville.”

  Aimée didn’t know what to say. She stared at this woman who she hadn’t known existed two days ago, searching for a resemblance. There could be something. Perhaps the green eyes flecked with brown were shaped like her father’s.

  “I didn’t grow up in a place like this.” Mireille gestured around her. “Or have what you had.”

  Aimée felt a pang of guilt. But then René’s words about an inheritance reared up in her mind. Did Mireille want money?

  “My mother kept writing letters, but he never replied,” Mireille continued.

  That was so unlike the Papa she knew. Candlelight flickered; the smell of burning wax lingered in the air. Aimée wondered if she should dig out photo albums with snapshots of her father and show them to Mireille.

  “Her letters must have gone astray, Mireille,” Aimée said. “Maybe he didn’t know about you.” That had to be it. “Papa was a good man. I miss him. It’s sad you didn’t know him, Mireille.”

  “Maman’s family didn’t want to know me,” Mireille continued, her jaw set, as if Aimée hadn’t spoken. “To live, I cut sugar cane. I slept in the fields.”

  “But you were a child.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t the only one.” Mireille shook her head. “When I got taller, I could work in the factory. But an aunt found me. I got lucky; she took me in. She confirmed that my Papa was French but said I had to keep quiet about it. These things were dangerous. Auntie scraped up money for me to attend the lycée. I got a scholarship to the collège in Gonaives.”

  How differently their lives had turned out, Aimée thought. She felt a deep connection to Mireille. She’d been an only child and now, suddenly, it felt as if a vacuum in her existence had been filled. But could she be sure Mireille’s story was true?

  “I trained as an accountant and worked in the Banque National office in Port-au-Prince. But, in the last coup, every-thing crumbled. I had to leave.”

  “And now?”

  “With no papers?” Mireille shrugged. “No one like me got an exit visa from Haiti.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would an exit visa matter?”

  Mireille blinked in surprise. “Educated people can’t leave unless they have connections and money to grease palms with. Otherwise there would be a mass exodus, and only poor cane-cutters would be left.”

  Aimée stared at her. “Yet you made it here.”

  “People Auntie trusted smuggled me across the border to the Dominican Republic. For a price. Then I sailed to Guadeloupe.”

  “Guadeloupe’s a department of France,” Aimée said. “You could have gotten papers there—”

  “With what?” Mireille interrupted. “All my money went to the man who’d made the arrangements to get me to France. Fifty of us spent weeks at sea, hidden in the cargo hold. At the port in Calais they jammed us into huge lorries. The drivers stopped on the outskirts of Paris.” Mireille closed her eyes and took a breath. “They demanded we work off the ‘surcharge’ for all the unexpected bribes they’d had to pay. Liars.”

  “You mean they were human traffickers?”

  “Traffickers? I don’t know this word. The drivers saw a chance to make money from us. Their cut, they said.”

  “Frenchmen?”

  “African blacks, muscle men, who spoke French.” She nodded. “I remember their gold chains, bad breath, their drinking. They laughed and refused to give us back our papers.”

  “What papers?”

  “My ID card from Haiti. That’s all I had. They intended to sell us to pimps or to sweatshops. But I got away.”

  Mireille paused. “At least I thought I’d gotten away. They threatened to cut our throats if we tried to escape. To set an example, they said. If they catch me, they’ll kill me.”

  Now she had all the pieces of the puzzle, Aimée thought, but she didn’t know how to connect them. It still didn’t make sense. Moments passed, marked by the drip of candle wax.

  “When you appeared at my office, I was surprised,” Aimée said. “Forgive me, I should have been more. . . .”

  “Like a sister?” Mireille’s voice sounded almost childlike now. She stared at her feet. “I assumed you knew about me.”

  Nonplussed, Aimée shook her head. Whatever she said seemed wrong. And then she brightened. “We’ll get to know each other.”

  Bonding, wasn’t that the word? It might take time, but they’d find things in common. She tried to think what those could be. Her parched throat cried out for water, but she didn’t want to go get it, not just now. She hesitated, afraid to believe, desperately wanting to.

  She hunted in the rack under the ebony-inlaid mother-of-pearl end table. She found a bottle of St. Emilion, blew the dust off, found a corksc
rew in the drawer and two mismatched Baccarat wine glasses.

  “Here.” She filled a glass and handed it to Mireille, who clenched her fist around the stem.

  Aimée swirled the dense St. Emilion, sipped, then set her half-empty glass down. She had to ask. “You don’t really think its the traffickers, do you? You think you’re being chased for Professeur Benoît’s file.”

  Mireille nodded. “I did what Professeur Benoît asked me to do.”

  “What’s inside the envelope?”

  “I do not know.” She crossed herself, then opened her bag. “You’ll know what to do with it.”

  “First, you must explain to the flics how you came by the envelope. They’re looking for you. Talk to them and clear things up.”

  Mireille shook her head, twisting the hemp bag’s strap in her fingers. “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand?” Aimée took Mireille’s other hand. “Try me. Mireille, I’ll help you get the file to the right person. But you’re a murder suspect. You need to speak with the flics.”

  “I never meant . . . but to understand. . . .” Mireille hesitated. “Growing up like this, you can’t imagine. . . .”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Aimée’s mind. She leaned for-ward. “Did Benoît threaten you, Mireille?”

  “What?”

  “Did he hold the promise of a job over your head, demanding that you sleep with him?”

  Mireille would not meet her eyes.

  “Or did he attack you? You defended yourself, of course, you never meant to hurt him, but you hit him too hard.”

  “Me?”

  “If this was self-defense and you were scared and ran away, explain it to the flics—”

  Loud knocking on the front door interrupted her.

  Mireille bolted from the chair, terror in her eyes. “He’s here . . . he found me.”

  “Who?”

  Mireille backed up against the wall. “The killer’s here . . . he’s found me . . . don’t you understand?”

  The knocking continued, loud and insistent.

  “I didn’t kill the professor. He helped me. They want the file . . . you have to believe me, Aimée.”

  Aimée couldn’t take the chance of handing over her own sister . . . or any woman . . . to a killer.

  The knocking had become pounding. And somehow, Aimée realized she believed Mireille.

  “Help me, mon Dieu. Look at my hands. I didn’t cut his ear off. How could I? My left arm is almost useless. The tendons were severed in the sugarcane factory. I still can write, but I have no strength in it.”

  No wonder she’d held the glass that way.

  Panicked, Aimée looked around the room. She remembered a small niche in the wall, the hidey-hole used to conceal priests during the Revolution. As a little girl, she’d hidden there playing hide-and-seek. Maybe Mireille would fit.

  She ran her fingers over the wood panels. Felt the smooth wood, the ridges. Then her index finger caught the well-worn wooden knob. She grabbed it and turned. The small panel half-opened to a space built in the paneling. A crawlspace, dark and smelling of dust.

  “Hide in here, Mireille.”

  “In there? But it’s too—”

  “Quick, there’s no time. Trust me.” Aimée brushed the cob-webs away, gestured, and helped Mireille inside. “Just until I get rid of him.”

  She closed the panel, heard it click, and prayed Mireille had enough air to breathe. Aimée’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

  Who would be calling at this time of night?

  She took her unlicensed Beretta from the hall secretaire drawer. On her tiptoes she stared out the door peephole. Darkness.

  She stepped back, hit ANSWER on her cell phone.

  “Open the door, Leduc,” Morbier’s voice said. “I’m waiting.”

  What was Morbier, her godfather, a Commissaire, doing here? Shocked, she almost dropped the phone.

  “I didn’t see you through the peephole.”

  “Try again.”

  On her tiptoes, she looked again and saw Morbier’s face shadowed in the dim light. Alone.

  She unbolted the door, a bad feeling in her bones.

  “Kind of late for a visit, Morbier,” she said, letting him in.

  “Do you always greet guests with that, Leduc?” He gestured to the Beretta. “Mind putting it down?”

  She set the safety and stuck the gun in the drawer. “No of-fense, Morbier. Just a precaution.”

  Morbier was more than usually rumpled: his brown tie hung loose, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his corduroy jacket with patched sleeves hung over one shoulder. His thick hair was now more salt than pepper at the temples, the circles under his drooping eyes more pronounced. He bent and petted Miles Davis, whose tail wagged nonstop.

  “Miles has gained a little weight,” Morbier said. “He needs exercise.”

  “You dropped in to tell me that?”

  She figured Morbier’s men had trailed Mireille. Either he knew she was here and was playing ignorant, or he’d dropped in to sniff around.

  “Didn’t you call me today, Leduc?”

  “Me?” Just her luck that she hadn’t managed to hang up before the system traced her call. “My phone’s acting funny, the call list—”

  “Going to offer me a drink, Leduc?” he interrupted.

  He wanted to visit. But with Mireille in the cramped airless hidey-hole, she knew she had to get rid of him.

  “Why didn’t you call earlier, Morbier? I’ve got an early meeting in the morning,” she said.

  “Me too.” He stood, feet planted, unmoving. His shoulders drooped; his complexion had an unhealthy sallow tone. “A Brigade Criminelle meeting concerning you.”

  “I don’t understand.” She kept her tone casual.

  “I’m thirsty, Leduc.”

  She wasn’t going to be able to get rid of him.

  “Meet me in the kitchen,” she said.

  Miles Davis trailed Morbier down the hall, sniffing his trouser cuffs. She ducked into the salon. Now, if she could reassure Mireille that Morbier’s visit was the perfect opportunity to relate what had happened, to shed some light on Benoît’s murder . . . that circle of salt . . . Aimée turned the knob.

  The hidey-hole was dark.

  “Mireille?”

  Empty, except for the dead, stale air inside. She felt in the worn dust-filled grooves, groping within. Her hands encountered nothing but cobwebs.

  “Need help, Leduc?” She heard Morbier’s footsteps in the hallway.

  “No. I’m coming.”

  She grabbed another bottle of wine and glasses, began to run, then stopped and returned for the corkscrew. She felt a current of warm air now and noticed the window, open to the courtyard. The night breeze made the candle flame flicker. The only remnant of Mireille was her wooden comb, left behind on the chair where she’d sat.

  Her heart sank. Mireille had fled, too afraid Aimée would betray her. By airing her suspicions and accusations, she’d scared her off. The opportunity to learn who was following Mireille or what Benoît’s “file” signified was gone.

  In the kitchen, Morbier stood silhouetted before the window, the light from a passing bateau mouche framing his hair like a halo. A long, low toot and the barge disappeared under Pont de Sully, leaving white wavelets in its wake.

  “What’s the occasion, Morbier?” Aimée asked.

  “Besides the moon in Scorpio?” He gestured to the web of clouds obscuring the tip of a sliver of a moon.

  She set the bottle down and dusted it off. She worked the corkscrew, wondering what the Brigade Criminelle wanted with her.

  “Aaah, St. Emilion. Nineteen sixty-eight, an excellent year even though Sorbonne protestors shut down the quartier,” Morbier said without skipping a beat. “But to hear those Sixty-eighters talk now, it was the highlight of their lives. Everything’s gone downhill ever since.”

  He stared at the label. “I should come more often, Leduc, if you’ve got this lying around.”r />
  “That would make a change,” she said. “The last time you were here was for Papa’s wake.”

  He stared at the sediment in his glass. “So it was. I’m sorry, Leduc.”

  He’d never apologized to her in his life. Or spoken of the past. What had come over him?

  “Confession time, Morbier?” The words came out in that accusing petulant little-girl tone before she could stop them. Part of her wanted to open up, to confide in him. But the time had passed when she could rely on him as she had years ago.

  “Not me. Your turn, Leduc.”

  Morbier set a Polaroid photo by his glass. In lurid color, it showed Azacca Benoît with matted hair, the skin at his hair-line flayed. This time his eyes had been closed.

  Her stomach churned.

  “Do you recognize him, Leduc?”

  “Should I?” She kept her voice calm with effort.

  “They ran your Vespa registration through the system. It was parked in front of the place where he was murdered, on rue Buffon. And don’t tell me your scooter was stolen.”

  She put the bottle down before she dropped it. “Sarcasm’s not becoming, Morbier.”

  “Want to tell me about it, Leduc?”

  “You suspect me?”

  “If I did, Leduc, we’d be having this conversation at the Prefecture. We found a witness, but I can always use. . . .”

  “Bon, then you wasted a trip here.”

  “Did I say witness?” He shook his head. “Wishful thinking.”

  She paused in her twisting of the corkscrew.

  “Now I see I’ve caught your attention, Leduc. The flics dis-covered a married couple—married to other people, that is— in the bushes, as well as a doddering caretaker. Their evidence amounts to zip.”

  “You’re a Divisional Commissaire now, Morbier,” she said. “A big promotion. Too important to pursue an investigation in person, I would have thought.”

  She poured the wine into his glass.

  “Right.” Morbier sniffed and took a sip. “I shuffle more papers now. The piles get bigger.”

  “Why are you working this investigation, then?”

  “I’m not,” he said. A vein pulsed in his temple. “Leduc, the responding flic knew your father.” Morbier shrugged. “He recognized your name and alerted me. You know, it’s like a family. On the Force, we do favors for each other when one of us gets involved.”