AL02 - Murder in Belleville

by Cara Black

  “Khalil said to tell you I speak for him.”

  Samia half smiled, showing the edges of little white teeth. One of them was gold-capped and caught the light. “I mean no disrespect to a fellow sister, bien stir, but business is business,” she said. “And time for me to get dressed.” She was about to usher Aimée to the door.

  I’m blowing this, Aimée thought. Time to forget subtlety when the opportunity is walking out the door. “Samia, let me speak for Khalil and you for Zdanine,” she said. “I need to arrange more plastique. Eugénie was supposed to help.”

  Samia’s eyes widened; her round shoulders tensed. “I don’t like this.”

  “Who does?” Aimée made her tone businesslike and shrugged. “The last delivery man blew himself to Mecca before his ticket was punched.”

  “That’s history. Zdanine was only a distributor,” Samia said, shifting from one bare foot to the other as she scratched a calf with the opposite big toe. “He’s washed his hands of it now,” she said, her eyes level as she sipped tea. “Where it goes and to whom…” She let that hang in the musk-scented air of her kitchen.

  “From what I hear,” Aimée said, leaning closer, “this is the beginning.”

  Samia shook her head. “My clients are waiting. I’ve got to go-”

  Aimée wondered what kind of clients.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper and brushed her arm against Samia’s. “Wholesale,” she said, nodding her head. “Khalil understands profit margins. Do you?”

  Samia’s gaze wavered.

  “Wholesale,” Aimée said, growing more confident at Samia’s reaction. She drew out the word to underscore the importance. “No dropoffs. No francs and centimes. Just thousand-franc notes and bank accounts. Big ones. That’s wholesale.”

  “Zdanine deals with this, not me,” Samia said, but her dark brows wrinkled—unsure.

  “Sounds like you’re not equipped to handle orders,” Aimée said, pulling back, glancing again at her watch. “Khalil misinformed me. Forget I came. I’ll outsource this.”

  Aimée shouldered her bag and stood up. She’d put the offer out there, sweetened it, and waited expectantly.

  Samia’s full lips tightened.

  “Outsource?” she said, pronouncing the word slowly.

  “Khalil prefers to work with family, of course. However, it looks like I’ve no choice,” Aimée said and sighed. “Other roads lead to phstique. He assumed Zdanine’s linked to the supplier.”

  Samia’s eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t tell me about business.”

  “Just remember we came to you first,” Aimée said. “Later on, don’t say Khalil didn’t offer his family a fat slice of the tart.” Aimée studied her nails, trying to remember graffiti slogans on the Belleville Métro. “Like he says, ‘Brothers of the bled ‘countryside’ should unite!’”

  Samia snorted. “Bled!? The closest we’ve been to the countryside was when the colonials massacred those who couldn’t emigrate as servants. Khalil went back for his ‘roots,’ and now he can’t wait to get out.”

  She had a point, Aimée thought.

  “Am I too blanc for you, Samia, is that it?” Aimée asked.

  Samia didn’t answer.

  Frustrated, she didn’t know how to get information from Samia. So far she’d gotten zip. Aimée looked around, thinking furiously. She felt as if she’d gone north instead of south.

  She ran her fingers over a small CD player on the counter, and noticed the big-screen TV in the next room. A red-bordered overdue France Telecom bill lay on the windowsill. Now she had an idea.

  “You’ve got a nice life, Samia. Quite a class act.” Aimée strolled toward an open pantry lined with pate Turkish halvah, and Iranian caviar. “Better life than most. I’m a working girl. Hundred-franc uprights were all I knew, and burned-out cars were my place of business until I met Khalil. He became my patron, taught me things, showed me how to bleed the Johns and make more than my rent.” She looked meaningfully at Samia. “I’ll do anything the mec asks.”

  Samia looked away. Maybe the affluence was hard to maintain. Aimée saw a framed photo of an almond-eyed boy with a serious expression, the honey patina of his skin like Samia’s. He wore the short pants of a Catholic-school uniform, a bookbag slung over his shoulder.

  “He’s gorgeous,” Aimée said, and meant it. “Your son?”

  Samia nodded, her eyes lighting up. “Marc after Marcus Aurelius,” she said, a winsome expression crossing her face.

  “Catholic school?”

  “He’s baptized,” Samia said, a hint of pride in her voice.

  “Must cost,” Aimée said, rubbing her fingers together.

  Samia stiffened and turned away. “Zdanine helps us; he furnished the flat.”

  “But he can’t help you now, can he?” she said, not waiting for an answer. “He’s stuck in the church.”

  She saw the struggle in Samia’s eyes.

  Aimée knew she’d reached her when she’d talked about her little boy. And she knew Samia had money trouble.

  “Look, if you’re not interested, at least help me connect with Eugénie,” Aimée said.

  Samia’s blank look answered her.

  “You’ve got to go, haven’t you?” Samia said, her veiled politeness strained. “I’m late.”

  Aimée tore a paper sheet from her datebook and wrote her cell phone number down. “Think about what I’ve said. Call me in a few hours.”

  Disappointed that Samia hadn’t taken the bait outright, Aimée went down the worn stairs, past the hammam, and onto the street. She hoped when Samia got desperate she’d call.

  “HOW MUCH?” Aimée asked the man with the armful of watches on rue de Belleville.

  “Fifty francs,” he said, brandishing his arm close to her nose. He jiggled a phosphorescent tangerine plastic band with a yellow happy face off his wrist.

  “Not my style,” she said.

  Her cell phone rang.

  “Didn’t we have a meeting?” René asked.

  She thrust fifty francs into the man’s palm, grabbed the watch, laced up her hightops, and took off running.

  By the time Aimée returned to the office she’d convinced herself she’d find Sylvie’s killers through the Maghrébin network. However, at this rate it could take a year.

  René looked up from his book, his large green eyes hooded. She didn’t like it.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, looking her up and down. “You’re supplementing our income?”

  “Didn’t we get the EDF contract?” she said, sitting down heavily.

  “Like I said, the nervous little manager liked us,” René said, leaning back in his orthopedic chair. “But the big EDF guy in the sky doesn’t want to ‘piecemeal’ the security system, or so they say. He’s got a point. The Seattle firm offered a bid on comprehensive services. Impressive.”

  Aimée stood up, fire in her eyes. “So can we.”

  “Already have,” René winked. “I roughed a basic package together,” he said, pulling out a thick folder. “A draft, of course. But I thought we might want to throw in something special. A little extra.”

  “Exactly. Some pièce de résistance,” she said, tossing her leather jacket on the coatrack. She scratched her head, then opened their office window overlooking the Louvre. The knock of diesel engines and the occasional cry of a street vendor competed with the roar of Paris buses.

  “Let’s get to work, partner,” she said, unsnapping the studs on her sleeves.

  After an hour they’d redone their network vulnerability scan and thrown in maintenance too. A realistic offer. And at lower than what they figured the other firm would bid. She felt good, at last, to work on something concrete. Aimée took a deep breath and faxed their offer to the EDF.

  Her cell phone rang.

  She prayed that Samia was on the other end.

  “Allô?”

  “Philippe denies e-e-everything,” Anaïs said, her voice thick and slurred.

  Relieved finally to
hear from Anaïs, she was startled at her tone.

  “He won’t s-s-speak of her.”

  “I’ve been worried, trying to reach you,” she said, terrified by the way Anaïs sounded. She grabbed a piece of paper. “Let me come and get you. Where are you?”

  “Somewhere,” she said, her voice slipping away. “Martine and the housekeeper take Simone to preschool. But s-S’Something’s wrong. S-s-sent you a cheque. Philippe’s afraid. I didn’t tell you—S-Sylvie gave me the envelope—”

  “I need to talk with you, Anaïs,” she said. “Where is that envelope—?”

  But Anaïs hung up before Aimée could finish. Worried, she called Philippe. No one answered at the de Froissarts.’ She tried the ministry. Philippe’s cordial secretary had no idea where Madame de Froissart could be reached but again promised Aimée she’d see that the minister got her message.

  Fat chance. She’d begun to feel the only way to bag Philippe would be to grab a rifle and haunt the ministry.

  She searched the mail on her desk and slit open a letter addressed to her. She waved Anaïs’s check in the air.

  “Our account’s ten thousand francs richer,” she said.

  René blinked.

  “Anaïs?”

  She nodded. “Let’s eat while I fill you in on the latest.”

  They ordered sushi from the new Japanese restaurant below their office, putting it under business expense.

  Over a spider crab roll and saba marinated mackerel Aimée told René about Morbier’s agenda and Samia, who baptized her son and wanted him to be French, while his father, a pimp and explosives conduit, claimed sanctuary in the church.

  “What about the Fichier in Nantes?” she asked. “Sylvie must have another address.”

  “So far no luck, but I’ll keep trying,” René nodded. “My friend loaned me a new identity morphing software,” René said, rubbing his stubby hands together. “For now why don’t I try it out on Sylvie?”

  “Be my guest,” Aimée said, putting down her chopsticks. “What does it do?”

  “A slight hitch remains,” he said. “We need a photo.”

  “I think I can do something about that,” Aimée said. She logged onto her computer, accessing the bank account with Sylvie’s password, beur. She dug around for documentation used to establish the Crédit Lyonnais bank account. After ten minutes she got excited when she pulled up Eugénie’s carte rationale d’identité photo.

  “Look, René,” she said, printing the image.

  For the first time she got a good look at the woman, not just her dismembered limbs.

  “Parfait!” René said. “Knockout!”

  “She’s good looking, striking—” She was about to add that no one, attractive or not, deserved to be torn apart by a bomb.

  “Knockout’s a new program. An image-masking software,” he said, “which works for anything involved in digitally enhanced images.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Watch this,” he said, his eyes bright with anticipation.

  Aimée slipped Sylvie’s photo onto the scanner.

  At his terminal René drew selection lines defining the inner and outer boundaries of Sylvie’s face. Knockout outputted the processed foreground—the object with colors removed—and a grayscale alpha channel that preserved the transparency of the original.

  “Short red hair?”

  “Like mine,” she said, remembering the wig. “Make it a bit more shaggy in the back.”

  He played around, then printed the image out. A seamless fit.

  “You’re a wizard, René!”

  “Try jogging people’s memory with that,” he said. “You know, for the right price the Maghrébin network performs similar functions. A gold Eurocard, driver’s license, even a Securiti socicde number.”

  “Merci,” she said, again surprised by Renéws depth of underworld knowledge. “I need to find out where this Duplo plastique comes from.” She pecked René on both cheeks. “Time to get busy.”

  “Where are you going?” His green eyes widened.

  “To jog Philippe’s memory,” she said. “Get his thoughts.”

  Before she’d unzipped her leather jumpsuit, her cell phone rang again.

  “Oui.” She caught herself before she blurted, “Leduc Detective.”

  “I’m waiting for you,” Samia said.

  She’d expected Anaïs but recovered quickly, “Samia, you’ve reconsidered?”

  “There’s someone you need to meet.” Samia’s voice sounded strained, tight. “Hurry up.”

  “What about Eugénie?”

  “He knows,” she said. “I’m at the hammam. Can you meet me in fifteen?”

  “I’m on the way,” she said, reaching for her jacket and tucking the Beretta in her pocket.

  This could be the break she was looking for.

  Friday Late Afternoon

  INSIDE THE HAMMAM-PISCINE, SAMIA slouched by the ticket booth overlooking the L-shaped pool. A thirties-style vaulted ceiling and salmon tiles housed the humid, chlorine-laced air. In the shallow end an old woman, her bathing cap’s tight strap separating the fleshy folds of her neck, bobbed up and down.

  Aimée’s eyes darted around the nearly empty pool. She preferred the piscine at Reuilly; cleaner, newer, and a short bike ride from her flat. A middle-aged man, kneeling with a long handled net, was fishing for something on the dark green bottom.

  “Do you have a car?” Samia asked. She’d changed into a narrow black trench coat.

  Aimée nodded. René’s Citroen sat parked nearby.

  “Let’s go,” Samia said.

  Wary, Aimée noticed her fluttery eyelashes, the orange-dayglo fingernails. Morbier was right. She was young. And Aimée was supposed to be protecting her.

  “Tell me where.”

  “The circus,” Samia said.

  Aimée followed Samia’s leather mules as they scuffed down the dank-smelling stone passage into the street.

  In the Citroën, Samia’s gaze wavered as Aimée adjusted Renéws customized seat and pedals.

  “Which circus?” Aimée said, turning on the ignition and hearing the powerful hum of the engine.

  “Cirque d’Hiver,” she said. “If you don’t hurry up, we’ll miss him.”

  “Who?” Aimée asked, shifting the car down rue Oberkampf.

  “The man you’re dying to meet.” Samia’s full lips were set in a firm line. “He wants to see you, too. Just to make sure.”

  “Make sure of what?”

  Samia shrugged. “To see that his wholesale line goes to good hands.”

  Aimée kept her surprise in check. Samia had found this connection fast.

  Something about it made her uneasy, nervous. Didn’t Samia know about the explosion?

  “What about Eugénie?”

  “My feelers are out,” Samia said. “She owes me money.”

  Aimée wondered why the Maghrébin network hadn’t spread the news about Sylvie/Eugénie’s death. Odd—were they cagey because they’d sold the plastiquel

  Aimée found no parking spaces anywhere and klaxons blared in annoyance. She ended up parking under an ARRÉT GÉNANT towing sign, among several other cars on rue Oberkampf. They reached the Cirque d’Hiver, a circular nineteenth-century building resembling a tent, topped by a bronze statue of an Amazon on the roof and two bronze warriors on horses over the entrance. Circus posters proclaiming past glories—the Bolshoi Circus, Chinese glass balancers, Mongolian contortionists, Hungarian jugglers, and Canadian trapeze artists—were pasted outside.

  The Cirque d’Hiver brought back memories to Aimée: traditional Christmas day visits with her grandfather, chewing the fluffy pink barbes à papa which turned fuchsia in her mouth. The monkeys sitting on the accordionist’s shoulder as he played while strolling through the audience, the spotlight’s glare on the rhinestone-studded trapeze artists. As a child she’d loved the ink-black darkness and heat from the spotlights trained on the big ring.

  “Do what I say,” Samia said, jolting
Aimée from her reverie. Samia pulled her coat tight around her and stared at Aimée.

  “So if we pass the test, the big man gives us a contract?” Aimée asked. “My client’s picky. He wants Duplo plastique.”

  Samia looked at Aimée’s wrist and grinned.

  “C’est chouette!” she said tapping Aimée’s new watch. “I need one,” she said and strutted toward the red entrance doors.

  Samia was a kid. Aimée didn’t like this, but then she didn’t like much of what had happened so far.

  The Cirque d’Hiver nowadays rented the hall for everything from fashion shows to rock concerts in its one-ring circus. Aimée wondered why they kept the circus posters, mostly from the sixties and seventies, behind smudged glass in the carpeted lobby. Neglect or nostalgia for former glory?

  Muffled laughter and applause came from behind greasy-looking doors. A private show of Stanislav the Stupendous—Budapest’s third natural wonder, his name framed by tiny lights—was scheduled for the evening.

  “Auditions for new acts,” boomed a bored woman at the barbe à papa concession. She exhaled a funnel of smoke rings into the air and shook her head. “Sorry. Pas possible. Too many guests disturb the animals’concentration.”

  “We’re a late addition to the guest list,” Samia said, nudging Aimée.

  Aimée slipped a hundred-franc note across the counter. “Of course,” she said, “we won’t disturb their concentration.”

  The cigarette hung from the side of the woman’s mouth. Her blue shadowed eyes narrowed as she looked Aimée up and down. “We all need to live, eh?” she said, pocketing the note. “Enjoy the show,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the doors.

  They walked by gilt-edged walls with plaster chipped in a few places. The cirque seemed frayed at the edges.

  But despite the deserted foyer, they weren’t alone. She felt eyes following her.

  Inside, she and Samia stopped, gripped by the scene under the elaborate chandeliers. Four children and four men in brown leather rode motorcycles into the ring. They parked their bikes and the men lay on top of them and juggled the children with their feet.

  Scattered applause burst from the few onlookers in the worn red velvet seats. Samia tugged Aimée’s arm and motioned for her to join the front row. They sat down, their faces highlighted by the ring lights. Aimée was struck by the soft contours and sharp edges shadowed in Samia’s face. As if she were mixte, French and Algerian. Awe shone in her eyes.