Murder in Pigalle (25 page)

Preterm labor? Fear scorched her. “My baby, you have to save my baby.” She was shouting. Her words, muffled in the oxygen mask, vaporized with her breath.

She wanted to kick herself free, but restraints strapped her ankles to the gurney. The stark ambulance lighting glared whiter than daytime; the medics poked and read from the machines. What was wrong with these idiots? She thrashed her arms, yanked the mask off. Wetness spread over her legs and ankles; her arms were streaked with blood.

“Check my baby,” she said, gasping.

“Calm down, Madame. We know what we’re doing,” said the frowning medic. “First we have to stop the bleeding. We’re about to apply a compression bandage.”

“Then compress, for God’s sake.” Just one year of premed but she knew the signs: jumping heart rate, elevated blood pressure,
all putting her and her baby at risk. She panted. Wild-eyed, she looked around. She needed to center, get control. Something beside her was whirring, and she recognized a smaller version of the ultrasound machine her doctor had used.

“You’re listening to my baby’s heart?”

“First things first,” said the red-cheeked one. “You need to calm down. Leave it to us.”

“Don’t talk to me like an
idiote
,” she said, trying to breathe deep. What if the trauma stimulated uterine contractions? Why were the first-response team always men?

Oh, God … calm down, she had to calm down.

Cold, viscous gel was rubbed on her exposed stomach, the rest of her covered by a white cotton sheet. She felt pressing on her stomach. Heaviness.

The medic strapped the mask back on. “Breathe deep, again and again,” he said. “No spotting. That’s good. Relax. Keep still so I can listen to your baby’s heartbeat.”

She felt pressure. More heaviness.

“Give me the other gel,” said the medic.

“We’re out,” said his partner with a quick shake of his head. The siren rose, drowning the rest of his answer.

The ambulance made a sharp turn. Stopped with a screech. Cymbals, a wheezing accordion then shouts over the siren.

“
Merde
! And now a traffic accident, too?” he said. “We need a Doppler to check fetal heartbeat. This one only checks blood flow.”

“You mean it’s not the right one?” she shouted. The mask fogged. She tore it off again. “My baby’s not even six months. Give me something to prevent contractions.”

The medic sucked in his breath. Not good, she could tell.

“We need to prep you.”

A throbbing cramped her stomach. She shook her head as he tried to put the mask back on her. Bit down hard on his finger.

The medic yelled out in pain.

“I feel a contraction.” Tears brimmed her eyes. “You’ve got to save my baby.”

“This will shut her up.” She felt a jab in her arm.

The rest happened in a cold, white blur.

S
WEAT BEADED
Z
ACHARI
É’
S
forehead in the moist, decaying air. The team’s headlamp beams bobbed over the lichen-encrusted stone. Water dribbled down the walls, and rats scurried in the dark. Layers upon layers, centuries of muck and detritus surrounded them in this narrow tunnel. Dervier had tunneled into the ancient sewer and excavated with precision. In single file, they stepped over the jagged concrete into a storeroom.

Their headlamp beams caught on silver tea sets, old masters in antique frames and jewelry filling glass display cases. This subterranean storeroom of Hôtel Drouot, the auction house, reminded him of a glorified pawnbroker’s, overflowing for the upcoming auction.

Ramu grinned, took out the tools from his bag. “Like old times, eh?”

Ripe for the team’s picking. And three minutes ahead of schedule.

“Hurry up, old man,” said Tandou, wiping his hands. He was grinning, too.

The cavern storeroom was lined with shelves of porcelain dinner plates, bronze statues, silver bowls, paintings, more display cases of jewelry and even a nineteenth-century mattress-delousing machine. Dervier’s men got to work filling the canvas sacks with the jewelry and smallest items first.

Zacharié spotted his destination, a metal door lit by a
lantern. Dervier had already snipped its padlock with his wire cutters—they would replace it on their way out—and Zacharié followed him to a second old, rusted padlock on a second metal door. With a quick tug, Dervier opened the door to reveal a mildewed
abri
, a bomb shelter from the war. Peeling notices dated March 1942 indicated a thirty-person capacity. Seconds later Dervier cut the third door’s rusted padlock, rubbed olive oil on the door’s hinges and pulled it open. Ahead, a short series of concrete steps led up to the courtyard.

Two key cards were slipped into Zacharié’s hand.

“The yellow for the
rez-de-chaussée
entrance and the white for the top floor.” Dervier checked his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes from when I disable the alarm. Then I padlock all three doors and trigger open the courtyard exit.”

“I knew you could do it, Dervier.” Zacharié hit his stopwatch. “See you in nine minutes.”

While he went into the next building, Dervier’s crew would be stocking up on a haul worth a good number of zeros to waiting auction houses in Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Aix-en-Provence and Nice. By next week, when the items were discovered missing, Dervier would have re-cemented the tunnel hole and replaced the re-rusted locks on the metal doors.

The added beauty to their plan was that once Dervier disabled the alarm with his remote, Zacharié would be able to enter the temporary Ministry storage depot via the subterranean bomb shelter, only crossing through the building’s unmonitored courtyard, without leaving any trace on the video cameras stationed in the front foyer or street entrance.

A quick in and out.

His goal lay in the temporary repository of Ministry files that had been stored here after a basement had flooded. While his team busied themselves emptying the auction house’s cavern, he’d remove the file Jules had hired him to steal.

There’d be no connection between the jobs. If later, during
inventory audits, the file couldn’t be found, it would be assumed it had been misfiled, misrouted to another location in the usual bureaucratic fashion. At least that’s what Jules was counting on.

It took him a minute and a half, according to his stopwatch, to reach the top floor and slide the white key card into the storage room’s lock. A tiny click, and he entered. The grey room smelled of damp and wet paper. Consulting Jules’s diagram, he bypassed cartons, boxes, shelves of files as innocuous as in a doctor’s office. His headlight beam revealing the labels, he located iixx.450dsM, a box like all the others. The Ministry file. He flipped it open with his gloved fingers.

Clipped on top was a note:
Addendum in ixx.451dsM1
.

Better take that, too.

He slipped both inside his jumpsuit.

He crossed the ivy-covered courtyard to the sewer access door—oiled and left unlocked by Dervier. Once he’d gone down the steps and was back inside the old sewer, Zacharié checked his time in the dripping tunnel. Four minutes ahead of schedule.

He heard a shout followed by a series of muffled pops coming from the auction house’s cavern down the tunnel. His pulse thudded. Shots? This wasn’t part of the plan.

Had the
flics
appeared?

Zacharié hunched down, terrified for his team, that he’d be next, the job ruined, his Marie-Jo …

A figure climbed over the jagged cement hole out of the cavern. From the silhouette he recognized the Corsican, who was clutching a duffel bag and headed his way.

No way was he supposed to be down here. He should be waiting in the car to move the goods. Zacharié’s hands shook. It all came together now—Jules had used the Corsican to betray them.

But Zacharié had the file Jules wanted. His mind raced,
debating whether he should escape, make a run for it through the sewer. Risk everything?

But that would put Marie-Jo in more danger and catch him up in a world of revenge. He had no weapon, no way to defend himself. Seconds, he had seconds to decide.

The Corsican paused, as if listening. Zacharié tried not to breathe. If he ran, he’d be heard the moment his feet splashed through the puddles.

But the Corsican stepped back into the hole.

No way could he trust the Corsican or Jules. He had to act. Wasting no time, Zacharié edged behind the metal sewer door, careful to keep it half open, as Dervier had left it.

A moment later the Corsican’s running footsteps splashed in the water, headed toward the door. Zacharié heard metal on metal, the snick and click, the unmistakable sound of a cartridge loaded. The Corsican was going to kill him, would already have killed him if Zacharié hadn’t been running so far ahead of time. Sweat streamed down Zacharié’s neck. He held his breath, kept his body rigid until he heard footsteps go through.

Un
,
deux
and on
trois
Zacharié slammed the sewer door shut behind the Corsican.

He tried to flip the bolt back. But it stuck and wouldn’t lock. Pounding and muffled yells sounded from the Corsican on the other side. His arms strained, pushing the bolt down, progressing a centimeter at a time. Grunting and heaving, he felt it wedge into place.

The Corsican would have to scale the two-story stonewalled courtyard to escape, or enter the building and set off the alarms. Zacharié had put him out of commission for now.

Panting, Zacharié ran back to the auction-house cavern to find his team. He skidded on the old tiles, sticky with blood. Horror-struck, he found his childhood friends sprawled among the jewelry glittering in his headlamp. Gunshots to the backs of their heads.

A sob rose in the back of his throat. Jules had betrayed him and his friends, hired the Corsican to seal their deal permanently. Zacharié would have been next. The traitor had escalated from felony to group murder.

Fear ground in his gut. How could he trust that Marie-Jo would be safe? He’d never known Jules to go this far, to take such risks—what was in the file that made him so desperate?

His only bargaining chip was the file in his overalls. No way would he give it up unless he had Marie-Jo. He held the only thing that would keep Marie-Jo alive.

In the Corsican’s duffel bag he found a pair of night-vision goggles, an extra ammo clip, gloves, an alternative lock, cell phone, folded sheets of plastic and even rags to clean up the blood spatter. A pro. Hired to erase all traces. The
salaud.

Zacharié shook with anger. Helpless. Why had he believed Jules again? Why didn’t he ever learn?

Groaning came from the floor. Tandou blinked, a death rattle in his chest. “Your daughter … never part of the plan. Believe me …”

A traitor, too? In league with Jules, scheming behind his back?

He knelt down at Tandou’s side. “Why, Tandou? Why betray me? He’s got my baby.”

Blood trickled from Tandou’s lips. “Never meant …”

Zacharié cradled his old friend in his arms. “Where’s Marie-Jo? Where’s he keeping her?”

Tandou’s labored breathing tore his heart.

“Tell me. I’ve got to …”

“Get him.” Tandou’s chest heaved. “Dervier’s bro … broth … in … knows the …”

And his lungs gave out. He’d gone, leaving a wife, three children and another on the way.

Zacharié stuck the Corsican’s cell phone in his front pocket. Goddammit. He’d find his daughter. But he needed help.

What had Tandou been trying to say? Brother? Dervier only
had a sister. Think, he had to think. Brother-in-law? Was the sister married? He thought he might have met the man at some holiday meal once; a picture of a chunky man in a turquoise shirt floated through his mind.

The Corsican’s phone kept lighting up with calls from an unknown number.

Jules.

He needed to let Jules stew, let the scenarios play in his head. The Corsican hit man had made two errors—miscalculating their timetable and leaving behind his phone. Now he was trapped in the courtyard until regular business hours. Jules wouldn’t know anything that had gone down, wouldn’t even know Zacharié was alive.

He had to use this advantage. Leverage it to find Marie-Jo.

He’d get that big-eyed pregnant one with the long legs to help him. The minute Zacharié appeared, Jules would send more goons. What better cover than a pregnant woman?

But he was covered in blood. Tandou’s blood. A sob caught in his throat.

No time to mourn this senseless carnage, cry over their betrayal. He needed to save his daughter. His hand shook as he rooted through the Corsican’s bag. He made himself take off his bloody shirt and put on the windbreaker the Corsican had brought for that very purpose.

Along the way he threw his bloodied shirt and overalls in a dumpster behind Monoprix. Sweating, nerves frayed, he battled through the laughing crowds and street musicians clogging the humid streets of Pigalle. It took forever to reach the guitar store on rue Victor Massé.

Rigaud, the long-haired guitarist who let him sleep in his
garçonnière
, bachelor pad, above the shop, gestured to the
télé
screen behind the cash register. “Sick, I tell you, sick. Can you believe this happened just a few streets away? During Fête de la Musique?”

Zacharié tensed. Had the Corsican escaped, the
flics
discovered his friends’ bodies …?

“And right after the
fromager
’s daughter was murdered by the rapist,” Rigaud went on, tuning his guitar. “What’s the world coming to, I ask you? Shooting a pregnant woman!”

Intent, Zacharié stepped past the Fender amplifiers and closer to the screen to process what he was seeing on the
télé:
the yellow crime-scene tape on the cobbled street, the flashing red lights. It couldn’t be, it would be too much of a coincidence … Damn. Had she been shot? Had Jules gotten to her first?

A
IMÉ
E WOKE UP
to the rustle of fabric as the curtains parted. A honey-complected boy with hazel eyes took her hand.