Murder in the Rue De Paradis (12 page)

Tuesday Night

AIMÉE CLUTCHED THE creased Printemps shopping bag to her chest as she joined Langois on the quai. He stood by the metal arched bridge in a pool of yellow streetlight. The laughter of a couple, walking arm in arm, echoed from the opposite bank.

“Did you shop in the Commissariat?”

“These belong to Yves.”

Langois averted his deepset eyes. Scared, or apprehensive? She couldn’t tell.

“Tell me if there’s anything you recognize.”

“You lied to obtain that, didn’t you, Aimée?”

“Stretched the truth, more like it.” She stared at him. “But why does it bother you?”

“You’re dealing with big guys like Rouffillac. He used words like jurisdiction, evidence-tampering . . . he’s playing on his home field, he knows the rules.”

“Big guys like him don’t play by the rules, trust me. Don’t you want to know what happened to Yves?”

He nodded.

“Rouffillac’s more concerned with Metro bombings and terrorism. He didn’t know about Romeo, hadn’t even questioned anyone at Agence France-Presse. I’m not waiting until he catches up.”

A nagging suspicion deepened. Langois, someone so obvious . . . had he made up a story? Had he killed Yves?

“Or maybe there’s a reason you didn’t talk to him before?”

“My fault,” he said. “You’re going to blame me, right?” He gestured, his hands slicing the air. “But I only worked with Yves for three weeks. My first field assignment. Yves taught me the ropes. Told me to follow his lead and keep my mouth closed; I’d get better pictures that way.” Langois wiped his brow. “I should have urged him to coordinate with AFP instead of playing the lone wolf.” He expelled a long breath of air. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was in awe of him. And you’re right. I should have insisted.”

Guilty. But a little too late. He seemed like a kid who was in over his head.

She looked in the sack, took the plastic bag labeled “Morgue,” and opened it. There was a typed sheet listing clothing: a bloody yellow World Cup T-shirt, blood-spattered orange pants, boxers, scuffed Adidas had been forwarded to the lab at Brigade Criminelle. Other than that, it held his worn brown wallet and the cell phone recovered from the suspect Renaud Vorner, aka Romeo Void. Yves’s cell phone battery was dead. The ache of disappointment filled her.

“No briefcase, no laptop.”

“Yves used Internet cafés in cities to file his stories,” he said. “But most of the time we were in the countryside. In the devastated villages, they had no electricity, not even a generator.”

In the wallet, she found only an expired phone card. The rest of the contents, she figured, had been cleaned out by Romeo the junkie. Dumped in the garbage. Gone.

She stroked the wallet, then slid her hand inside again. Empty. Nothing else. What had she expected to find . . . the murderer’s name?

She put the wallet back inside the sack. She checked the bag itself, but found nothing else.

She pulled out the wallet again, searched each compartment, felt each seam and then felt a loose one behind the billfold compartment. She pried the fabric back and found a scrap of paper. With her fingernails, she pulled it out. A scrap torn from the lining of a La Perruche brown sugar-cube box. On one side of it were yellow and green parrots. She turned it over and in the streetlight saw writing in unfamiliar script with dots over the letters. Her heart skipped. She held it up to Langois.

“Recognize this language?”

Langois stared, then pointed to one of the words. “
Kadeski
, that’s Turkish for street. But the rest I don’t understand.”

A scrap of paper in Turkish in Yves’s wallet?

“What do you think it means, Langois?”

“I don’t know.” He drummed his hands on the bridge’s metal railings.

Battling tears, she said, “What haven’t you told me?”

“When I came out of the bathroom in the loft,” he said, “I overheard Yves talking about some network.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She thought of “the insidious network” Yves had circled in the newspaper.

“A vague mention of a network? It could mean anything. You know that. Besides, Aimée . . .” he said, drawing his words out, “. . . Yves wouldn’t want you to get involved.”

“Involved? A little late for that now.”

“That came out wrong, sorry,” he said. “I mean he cared for you; the last thing he’d want would be for you to be in danger.”

First René, now Langois!

“It’s a guy thing, right? Women can’t handle this.”

Langois shook his head. “You don’t need to prove you’re tough to me, Aimée.”

For a moment, she wondered if she was too hard on him.

“He worked on exposés: political corruption, scandal, government ties with industry. You know that, he was an investigative journalist. But without his contact, he said he didn’t know who to avoid.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“From the way Yves acted, it was as if . . .” Langois paused.

She wanted to wrench the words from his mouth. “Go on.”

“He needed another piece, proof . . . but I’m guessing. The AFP meeting earlier tonight was to tell if the ducks lined up, that’s what he said.”

She folded the shopping bag, putting it inside hers. And then it stared her in the face.

“But I think the ducks have lined up,” she said, and looked at the paper in her fist.

She knew who would help her figure out how.

“Where can I drop you, Gerard?”

Tuesday Night

“PAUL, REMEMBER TI N T I N ’ S dog Snowy . . .” Nadira paused on page 18 of
Tintin and the Sceptre d’Otakar
. Paul’s little sleepy breaths answered her. He was asleep at last! His blond curls were half under the duvet; his arm clutched his
doudou
, a stuffed bear with a missing eye.

She stifled a yawn and switched off the lamp. The blue room was painted with murals of Babar. It was a huge room for one child. In the Tehran orphanage, thirty of them had slept on the floor in a room half this size.

On the landing, a seam of light came from under Madame Delbard’s bedroom door.

“Nadira?”

Caught, Nadira turned and smiled. Madame Delbard stood there, a robe over her cream peignoir, emitting the perfumed odor of La Prairie night cream. Madame spent more on face cream than she paid Nadira in six months. Yet it didn’t diminish Madame’s apparent age or the effects of butter and cream. Like all Western women, a soft, wasted life, Nadira thought, without prayer or purpose.

“
Oui,
Madame,” she said. “Paul just fell asleep.”

“You’re a jewel, Nadira,” she said.

Monsieur Delbard, she figured, hadn’t returned and Madame was waiting up for him. Like she did every night. Nadira’s eye fell on the empty open pill bottles on the dresser. And for a moment Nadira pitied this privileged woman with a straying husband.

Inside Madame’s high-ceilinged peach-walled room, the late news flickered on the
télé.

“Would you mind dropping my dress off at the dry cleaners tomorrow?” Madame said, a slight slur to her words.

“Oui, Madame.
” Nadira gave her a tight smile. On the
télé,
in the background, a uniformed CRS riot squad patrolled a Metro station.

Madame handed Nadira a blue dress on a hanger.
“Attendez s’il vous plait,
since you’re going, my black suit’s got a spot, too.” Madame turned toward her armoire.

“In other news,” the announcer said, “this afternoon Jalenka Malat, the first Kurdish member of Turkish parliament, visited a suburban infant
créche
serving Kurd asylum seekers.”

The muscles of Nadira’s neck tightened. Her target.

She saw a reddish-brown-haired short woman leaning over a crib. “Madame Malat, a Sorbonne graduate,” the announcer continued, “thanked the French government for the generous subsidies making this possible. . . .”

“Don’t forget Paul’s playdate tomorrow, Nadira,” Madame said, handing her another hanger.

“Pardon, Madame?”

“It’s on the calendar,” she said, slightly irritated.

Nadira summoned another smile. “But you’ve forgotten, Madame. Wednesday’s my day off.”

“
Desolée,
Nadira, I had to change it,” Madame Delbard said, unruffled. “Didn’t you notice? I wrote it in yesterday.”

Madame couldn’t change things when she pleased. Nadira’s mission depended on Wednesday being her free day. She clutched the hangers. “Madame, I’m sorry but I made a doctor’s appointment.”

For once Madame could ferry her son to a playdate herself.

“But you must reschedule it, Nadira,” she said, yawning. “Monsieur and I have an afternoon reception in Neuilly, followed by dinner.”

Nadira bit back her frustration. “Madame, my apppoint-ment—”

“Your days off are subject to change, Nadira. It’s in your contract. Sleep well.” Madame shut her door.

The cook could take Paul . . . then Nadira remembered, Wednesday was her day off too. She’d ask Carla from the playgroup, she’d done the same favor for her. But she recalled Carla saying they were leaving
en vacances
. Stymied, Nadira climbed the stairs to her small attic chamber.

She washed her feet in the small basin in her room, covered her head, and pulled out her prayer mat. Then she prayed to overcome her shortcomings, her apprehensiveness after seeing this woman on the
télé
. And then her mind cleared and the way unfolded to her. She’d take Paul. She’d use the stroller to hide the rifle. A perfect cover.

Tuesday Night

AIMÉE SHIFTED INTO neutral and scanned the sloping street of neo-Classical white stone façades which gave little clue to the elegant townhouses and courtyards behind them. In this upscale slice of the quartier, few saw what lay behind the arched wooden doors. “Nice quartier, Gerard. Which way?”

“Make a right, then pull into Number 58.”

She pulled into the courtyard of a Directoire style 18th-century
hôtel particulier
. The entryway was wide enough for a coach and horses. The Citroën made it with centimeters to spare.

“You didn’t tell me you’re a rich kid.”

“I wish,” Langois said. “Just a good friend of the owner’s son. His family gives tours and capitalized on the fact that Napoleon’s legation secretary lived here. Aristos have a lot of upkeep, you know. There’s a loose connection to Balzac and a printing press in the backyard. He was hopeless with money, but at least his mentor, Madame de Berny, turned it into a prosperous venture.”

Langois’s hand paused on the door handle.

“I believe Berto,” Langois said. “I doubt that he’d make that Turkish man up.”

She agreed. “But the hard part is how do I find him?”

It would be like looking for one pebble on the quai. She didn’t know where to turn. And then she grew aware of a stricken look on Langois’s face.

“What’s the matter?”

“I shouldn’t do this.” He reached in his bag and extracted a coffee-stained file folder. “If you breathe a word, I’ll get in trouble.”

She leaned forward, the steering wheel pressing against her ribs. “In trouble over what?”

“It’s Yves’s draft of his article on the Kurds,” he said. “We were supposed to work on it tonight. I needed his text for the accompanying photos.”

Her hand trembled. Small brown demitasse cup rings patterned the blue cover. Yves’s coffee rings.

“But why didn’t you tell me this before, Gerard?”

“By law, it belongs to Agence France-Presse. You know, intellectual property rights; they drill all that into us before we sign a contract.”

“No problem. May I read it?” She wanted to grab it out of his hands.

“It’s my only copy,” he said. “Can I trust you to return it tomorrow?”

For a type who followed the rules, Langois was taking a big chance on her.

“Of course.” She reached out and he handed her the much-thumbed file folder. “I appreciate your trust in me. I won’t let you down, Gerard.”

She gave him her number and wrote down his. “Call me if you think of anything.”

“Read Yves’s draft. It should give you the background. Like I said, he got tight with iKK radicals, the ones labeled by the Turkish military and everyone else as terrorists. But one night Yves argued that they were just what we’d term ‘activists’ here, protesting against a repressive regime.”

She nodded. Now she had something to go on. She’d have to study it later. As she drove out of the courtyard, Langois waved and closed the massive dark-green doors.

She gunned up the deserted rue d’Hauteville, tired and needing more Doliprane. Yet she couldn’t rest until she checked out that paper from Yves’s wallet. She knew only one person to ask: a passing acquaintance, but she had to try.

She turned back on rue de Paradis, made a left, then parked. By the time she pressed the concierge’s buzzer, chills racked her. She prayed he’d be up. She waited. In the dark street, a cat meowed from a doorway.

She heard the smaller door that was cut into the massive green entry creak open.

“
Oui
?” The Turkish concierge, Mehmet, to whom she’d spoken last night as he was sweeping the Microimages courtyard, stood there, worry beads clicking in his hand.

“Pardon, Monsieur, I consult with Michel at Microimages. You remember me?”

He blinked sleep-blurred eyes. “There’s a problem? Michel said nothing.”

“No problem. May I ask a favor?” She held up the sugar wrapper.

“I need my glasses . . . come inside.”

She edged over the lip of the door frame into the dark portico and followed him inside the concierge’s lodge.

On the wall, a framed black-and-white photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stood above a tattered, much-fingered map of the quartier and a calendar with a nearby butcher’s address.

“Forgive me; it’s late, but. . . .”

“Sit down, Mademoiselle,” he said, shuffling over to a single burner by the lace-curtained window overlooking the courtyard. The walls of brown wood patinaed by the years and the ’50s floral wallpaper had seen better days. From the adjoining small room, she heard what sounded like a Turkish video.

“Café?”

“
Non, merci
,” she said.

“But it’s ready. No trouble, a custom for greeting guests, please.” He set down a small cup of steaming thick Turkish coffee, spoon on the side. He gestured, opening his arms wide. “My home, it’s your home . . .
chez vous
.”

“Very kind of you. I’m hoping you can help me. I didn’t know who else to ask.”

“
Parfait.
” He smiled and several gold teeth showed. “I know many things. Things I don’t know, I find out. I’m a good concierge. Ask Michel, he trust me.”

She nodded not sure of what he meant, and sipped the sweet coffee, which was so strong she thought she might grow the proverbial chest hairs. Grounds caught in her teeth. If she drank any more, she’d stay awake half the night. Dimpled lemons and oozing amber dates sat in a bowl on the small table.

“Fifteen years in the quartier,
oui
, you come to right person. First I worked in the sewing factory, then my own sewing-machine business.”

“This paper, Monsieur—”

“Now I’m a concierge
.
” He beamed, gesturing toward a well-used Pfaff sewing machine in the corner. He leaned forward, as if to speak in confidence. “But I contract to set zippers for a couture house. A sideline.”

The coffee made him voluble; she had to work to get a word in edgewise.

She smiled. “Could you translate this for me?”

The smile still on his face, he moved his hands around the table, located his glasses, and put them on. “Let me see. Parrots?”

“The other side.”

He stared at the sugar wrapper, his smile fading. “Mademoiselle, where you find this?”

If he knew the quartier, as he boasted, he would have heard. A chance he’d know the little Turk. . . .

“Why?”

“Important you tell me, Mademoiselle.”

He pushed his glasses up on his wavy black hair. “Not only you in danger.”

She clutched the glass. “What do you mean?”

He crumpled up the scrap, took a kitchen match, and was about to light it.

“
Non.
Tell me—”

“You’re a nice lady. I take your work to Michel.” He lit the match. “This not your business.”

“Wait.” She grabbed his hand, blew out the match. “It’s the only evidence. You can’t burn it. Please, you have to explain.”

“Bad people. Kurds.”

“The Kurds may be bad . . . but. . . .”

“I live here a long time; I’m not your usual narrow-minded Turk. I know good Kurds.”

What in the world did he mean? She felt stupid, handicapped by language and a culture she didn’t understand.

“Please. . . .”

He smoothed the paper out. Readjusted his glasses. “One time I read this. Then destroy.” He pointed a grease-rimmed fingernail at the letters. “Not in Kurdish language, the government ban Kurdish in schools and on the
télé
. This says ‘Institut Kurd, 9 rue Lafayette, Jelenka Malat, Wednesday 4:00 p.m.”

He stopped.

“That’s nearby. Who’s she?”

“Woman elected to Turkish parliament. A Kurd, the first.”

“What else does it say?”

His finger picked up his worry beads and he stared at her.

“Give you more danger.”

“Me?”

She wasn’t in danger. Not yet. Then she remembered the second message from Yves’s phone. The one without words.

“It say
hedef suíkast
.”

“What does that mean?”

“Target assassinate.”

Her shoulders tensed. “You mean this Jalenka’s a target . . . of who?”

He leaned forward, whispered. “Kurds always targets. Even in Paris.”

“Targets of who?”

He looked away.

And Yves had had this in his wallet. “So she’s in danger of assassination?”

He rubbed his eyes. “You, too.”

If they had killed Yves . . . Aimée willed her fear down. “You remember the man who met me here last night?” she said, gesturing to the courtyard.

“Your boyfriend?”

She nodded. “I found this in his wallet.”

His eyes widened. “So he know Turkish? But he didn’t talk to me.”

“They found him at dawn on rue de Paradis, his throat slit.”

“Mademoiselle, I’m very sorry,” he said, his eyes narrowing in understanding. “Better you forget this.”

But she couldn’t. He knew something, she could see it in his red-rimmed eyes. The silence was broken by a scratch of nails on the wooden door. He stood, opened the door, and a gray tabby, topaz eyes glittering, entered. The cat padded by her on his way toward the stove, his fur rubbing her bare legs.

“You saw, didn’t you?”

“I saw nothing.” He clutched his worry beads.

“But you heard about the murder. You know everything that happens in the quartier you said.”

He fingered his worry beads, clicking them faster now. “I say that?”

“What time do you let your cat out in the morning?”

He blinked, caught unaware. “When the newspaper truck comes.”

“Seven o’clock or so?”

He nodded, glad to change the subject. “Seven fifteen. I take the newspapers, let the cat on the street, then sort them into the mailboxes.”

“Then you remember a little man running out of Cité Paradis this morning. A Turk who works at Gare de l’Est or Gare du Nord.”

The man’s eyes widened in terror. “I never say that.”

“He must have passed right by here . . . by the foyer door.” She took a chance. “Did he ask to hide here until the
flics
left?”

The man shook his head, his lips quivering.

“Of course, you heard the sirens, saw the patrol cars,” she continued. “A fellow Turk and he asked for help. You saw he’d been crying, was in some kind of trouble. Why not help? You felt sorry for him and you hid him here.”

“I didn’t hide him,” he said, his voice raised. “I lose my job.”

“So you told him to run the other way. You know the passages between the buildings like the palm of your hand. You told him to take a shortcut to the other street—”

“You want me lose my job? My family go hungry . . . sit in jail cell in Istanbul?”

So that was it? He was afraid, and it wasn’t of the
flics.

“It’s to do with the Turkish Member of Parliament. And you’re witholding information. Information about an assassination attempt.”

“They take my
carte de séjour
, deport me.”

Perspiration dampened her brow. “You want this on your conscience . . . an assassination you could stop?” She rooted in her purse, pulled out the amulet, and put it in his palm.

Recognition shone in his eyes. “Where you get this?”

“A Sufi gave it to Yves, for me. A betrothal symbol . . . But . . .” She shrugged, blinked away the tears in the corners of her eyes. “Yves was an investigative reporter.” She took a guess. “This man was his contact.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Maybe I don’t.” She took the amulet back, pulled out her cell phone. “Then you can explain to the
flics
. Right now.”

He clicked the worry beads faster, his mouth pursed.

“Or I will,” she said. “Up to you. But if you tell me, we can keep it between ourselves.”

He swallowed hard. He scanned the room, then stood and went to the door. He looked outside, then returned and sat.

“You promise?”

“You have my word.”

“The newspaper truck,” he said, so softly she almost didn’t hear it.

“You mean he hopped on the truck and got away?”

“The truck driver’s my friend.” He stood, setting her cup in the small sink. “I don’t know any more.” Arab hospitality forbade him to ask a guest to leave, but she knew he wanted her to.

She rose, too, and pushed in her chair. “But you can find out, you said so yourself. Things you don’t know in the quartier, you can find out. Michel trusts you. Please, find the little man.” She pulled out her card. “Tell him to call me. I’ll be waiting.”

AIMÉE ’ SHEELS , CLICKING on the cobblestones, echoed off the buildings as she walked back to the car. The strains of a cello drifted on the night air. She recognized a sonata by Haydn. And then a bulbous shadow loomed on the wall ahead. It was disembodied, as though it was floating. The hairs on her neck rose. She clutched the car keys in her hand, the tips pointing out between her fingers. The cello notes soared as footsteps beat a staccato rhythm ahead.

She’d been stupid to shrug off the concierge’s insistence that she was in danger. The cello’s notes drifted and lingered. She’d almost made it to René’s Citroën when someone rounded the corner. She turned and thrust her fist out.

But it was an old woman, clutching a bunch of red balloons, a trace of wine on her breath. Rouged cheeks, rhinestone earrings, and diamonté paste brooch on her off-the-shoulder ’50s–era turquoise cocktail dress. “It’s my birthday, Mademoiselle,” she said, giving Aimée a cockeyed, semi-lucid glance.

“
Felicitations,
” Aimée said with a pang of sadness as she noted the old woman’s scuffed house slippers.

“Join me,” the woman said, a glint in her eye. She held out a bottle, handing it to Aimée. “Not a Pouilly Foussé, but a good year.”

“A bit late for me, Madame.”

“Think you’re too good to celebrate with me? You with your chic outfit and firm skin?” She tottered toward the car, her tone turning belligerent. “Me, too, I was young once. Had them all on a string, one would take me to dinner, another to a
boîte de nuit
. Better make the most of it.” She leaned forward, tottering. “I’ll tell you a secret, there’s only one way we leave the planet. Alone. And you, chic one, are alone,
hein!
”