Murder in the Rue De Paradis (13 page)

She felt pity for this woman in her cocktail dress and worn house slippers. “May I help you home, Madame?”

The woman gave a short laugh. “No one gets out of here alive, why should I?” She handed Aimée the string of one of the balloons. Before Aimée could grab it, the balloon floated up, caught on an air current, and bobbed over the rooftops. Transfixed, Aimée watched it. And then it disappeared. Here one moment, gone the next. Gone. Like Yves. Leaving behind questions but no answers. The old woman’s footsteps faded into the darkness, leaving Aimée more alone than ever.

IN HER BEDROOM, Aimée searched her drawer and found the cords to several rechargers. The third one fit Yves’s phone and she plugged it in. She lay down on the duvet, too tired to undress. René’s caution to change her cell phone number was uppermost in her mind; yet if the Brigade had cloned it, as she suspected, she doubted if it was worth the effort.

Her open windows let in a breeze and night sounds: lapping waves hitting the stone bank bordering the river in the wake of a barge, the song of a lone nightingale in the distance.

She set Yves’s photo and the amulet on the duvet. She was bone-tired; her body craved sleep. But sleep eluded her.

She was alone, like the old woman, but she had no balloons.

She wondered for the millionth time why Yves had kept his secrets from her and why he had ended up in the morgue. He had been so full of promise, with his whole life before him. A life that could have been spent with her.

Together. A baby. . . .

Or maybe not.

Who knew if it would have worked out, but at least they could have tried. Her shoulders heaved thinking of his warm legs wrapped around hers, the way his tongue tickled her ears. She buried her head in the pillow.

But she couldn’t wallow in grief. It wouldn’t help Yves. Nothing could.

With shaking hands, she opened the file Langois had given her. Inside, she found several pages with red pencil marks and crossed-out words. The title read: Kurds Little Davids Hurling Stones Against Goliath-like Turkish Military, bylined Mas, Anatolia, Turkey by Yves Robert:

The Kurdish freedom fighter pointed to Mas on the map, the page whipping in the mountaintop winds. “My village, gone,” he said. Mas, one of 4,500 Kurdish villages, now just scattered stones or submerged by the floodwaters of the Anatolian dam, courtesy of the Turkish military. Few Kurds are left to tell, only an outlaw band of weary, hungry freedom fighters in the Anatolian mountains. Half the time they move, hiding deeper in the valleys, scaling ravines to avoid the scouts of Colonel Ehret, leader of the Turkish forces in charge of “resettling Kurds.” They are the few who haven’t managed to flee Turkey for Iraq. “We’re always on the move,” the leader says. The Kurds are a tribal mix of Sunni Muslims and adherents of the banned Alevi sect who trace their beliefs to the ancient Zoroastrians and Sufis. These wandering tribes from Turkey, Kurdistan, Iraq, and even Syria have been seeking a homeland since the twelfth century. They thrived during the Ottoman rule of Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres proposed by Allied powers after WWI was to provide an autonomous Kurdish region in Turkey. Then Atatürk gained power and united the disparate sects and Muslim groups, proclaiming Turkey a secular republic. There were to be no Kurds, no Alevis or Sunnis, anymore; all were Turks. Like France, in Monsieur Chirac’s words:
“We are not Algerian, Tongolaise, or Libanais, we are united as French.” “Turkey will never join the EU,” insists the freedom fighter, “as long as Kurds can stand up to the military and tell the world what’s happened here.” Yet world opinion has hedged its support for the Kurds and the radical iKK party after evidence surfaced of their brutal killings of fellow Kurds suspected of informing to the Turkish military. . . .

Yves’s article continued chronicling the destruction and struggles of the tribal Kurds. Yves balanced the piece by citing the Kurds’ often-violent retaliation. His draft ended with the fact that Ankara might finally be forced to deal with the Kurdish movement since a woman, a Kurd, had been elected to parliament. A small step, but a huge one for the previously un-represented Kurds.

This woman was a target. From what she’d found in Yves’s wallet, if Mehmet the concierge had translated it right, she was going to be assassinated.

Right now Aimée was just guessing. Yet her conscience wouldn’t let her ignore her guess.

She owed it to Yves.

Bordereau, a contact in the DST—
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire
—the elite intelligence unit, manned the night desk. She hated dealing with the DST; they traced calls in seconds. But reluctantly, she punched in his number.

“Unit 22,” answered a voice on the first ring. Clipped and businesslike.

“Bordereau, please.”

“Unavailable.”

She hesitated. He was the only one she trusted.

“You have a message?”

“For Bordereau only.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it.”

Right now she had no choice.

“Tell Bordereau, Aimée’s got him a present.”

Less than thirty seconds had passed. She hung up. Bordereau knew how to reach her. Her cell phone rang two minutes later. He usually called back sooner.

“
Allô
?”

“You’ve got a present for me, Aimée?” Bordereau asked, a wavering echo-like quality to his voice.

“A little one.”

“I always like your presents.” She heard a slight delay. “But we’re away for diving exercises so I can’t receive this one in person.”

A champion swimmer, no doubt he was performing some amphibious exercise somewhere in the Indian Ocean or Celebes Islands and was using a satellite phone.

“You’re calling on Telsat?”

“You string the beads, Aimée.” She heard a sharp intake of breath. “Damn sharp coral. Give me a verbal.”

“Jalenka Malat, the first woman Kurd in the Turkish parliament.”

Silence except for a wavering static relay click.

“That’s it?”

“It’s significant, Bordereau.”

“Not if I don’t know the context. Give me details.”

As she did so, she realized how far-fetched it sounded. What else did she have beside the sugar wrapper? But she related Mehmet’s translation and Yves’s article.

“And from
that,
you surmise an assassination attempt?” Bordereau said.

“Yves is . . . was an investigative journalist writing exposés of the Turkish military regime’s repression of the Kurds. A Turkish member of parliament may be a target on French soil. I’d think that would be more than embarrassing to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“Not my arena now,” he said.

“You’ve been kicked upstairs?

“Let’s just say I’m operational in another way.”

She drew a breath. Her one trusted contact in the DST was out of day-to-day operations.

“But you’ll pass this on?”

“It doesn’t even amount to a rumor, Aimée. Every branch’s stretched tight now with three quarters of our forces patrolling the Metro. You know they’re concentrating on the GIA . . . especially after Marseilles.”

She’d seen the front-page headlines of
Le Monde
. AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 322 SHOT DOWN OUTSIDE MARSEILLES.

But Yves might have died for this information. She couldn’t let go. “At least pass the info down the pipe to Rouffillac in the Brigade. He’s not my biggest fan.”

Bordereau owed her big-time for information she’d given him on a bomb plot in Montmartre. There was a pause filled with mounting static.

“No promises, but I’ll try—”

“Sharks hungry this time of year, Bordereau?” The rest of her words were cut off.

The Doliprane took effect, her lids lowered, but her thoughts whirled. Like nagging bits of grit in the corner of her mind . . . A phrase, “Couldn’t penetrate the world behind the veil” came from somewhere, but she couldn’t place it. Yet she’d glimpsed the flash of red and whiff of perfume beneath the chador worn by the little girl’s sister, a modernity that surprised her. Did these women dress fashionably at home but cover themselves out on the street according to custom . . . or had she worn a chador to hide an outfit for a later date? She wished Miles Davis were here, but tonight he slept off the effects of his minor surgery at the vet’s. His least favorite visit. She couldn’t sleep.

She stood up, shimmied out of her dress, and belted her father’s old flannel bathrobe around herself. In the dark kitchen, crisscrossed by rays of light from the streetlamps on the quai below, she squeezed a lemon and poured the juice and pulp into a glass of water. Mid-sip, it hit her where she’d seen women behind the veil. The Cahiers de Cinema Club last week, of course. At the screening of the classic 1960s film
Battle of Algiers
. Late from work, she’d missed the beginning, caught the last half. Now she remembered. The scene of apprehensive Algerian women applying makeup and donning short skirts, passing the Casbah checkpoint and flirting with occupying French soldiers while bombs were hidden in their breadbaskets. The youngest one entered a café in the European quartier, slipping her basket under the stool. On her way back, she put on her chador and re-entered the Casbah, joining the other women. Anonymous.

She ran back to her room, scrambled on her desk for the film brochure, found it. Under a brief synopsis of the film, she read the accompanying notes excerpted from a Muslim woman’s short story.

“Why do we conceal? They never understand . . . we stay behind the veil, the wall, that is our way. A secret, a private truth is no longer private if it goes past these borders. A dropped word, our ancestors knew, becomes a newspaper headline, broadcast to one and all, for if one person hears it, down the road, a trickle here, there, it’s public knowledge. Like the growing mint by the fountain in the courtyard compound, it flourishes protected from the wind. Words do not trail on the hem of a chador in the dust of the market street.”

Poetic, haunting, and secretive, this glimpse behind the veil. How could she penetrate this world?

She lay down, set her alarm, worried that she’d missed something important staring her in the face. The next thing she knew, her cell phone rang. She must have closed her eyes. The red digital clock beside her bedside said 4:57.

Her mind cleared and she grabbed her cell phone. But the ringing came from Yves’s phone, which was re-charging on her secretaire. Startled, she reached over and picked it up.

“Allô?”

Silence.

“Who’s this?”

“I’m Yves’s friend,” Aimée said, trying to gain trust, to get someone to speak. “You can talk.”

A passing barge cast blue oblongs of light over the carved woodwork ceiling. She waited, fingering the phone cord. The caller must have something to say, something vital, important.

“Please, it’s safe; talk to me.”

She’d given Mehmet her number; why hadn’t he called her on her own phone?

“Allô?
”

The phone clicked off.

And the realization dawned as she shivered with fear. Someone had heard her voice and now knew she had Yves’s phone. Her hand tightened on the phone in dread, wondering if it had been his killer.

Wednesday Morning

VATEL PULLED THE baseball cap low over his eyes. A rose-violet hue spread in the sun-deepening sky. The narrow street lay quiet and expectant, as if the sleeping populace held its breath.

Vatel’s feet crunched on the pavement. His eyes caught the beige grains, the fine Saharan sand borne by the African scirocco dusting the cars and street. He’d only seen it happen here once before. An omen. But of what, he didn’t know.

At rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, he checked his watch, waiting across the street from No. 83. Inside, he knew the three-deep courtyard building held a small mosque. The dark green doors parted, revealing men bent in prostration on prayer mats, overflowing the cobbled space and narrow foyer, under mailboxes with names in Chinese, Tamil, and Turkish.

He knew the prayers. In his village, the Alevis had been forced to worship at the mosque. Otherwise the Turkish mayor would withold the Kurdish schoolteacher’s salary. Mehmet appeared: grizzled black hair, suit jacket over a sweater-vest in the heat. In a sea of Turkish men scurrying off to work, Vatel caught Mehmet’s gaze. Mehmet shot him a look and nodded. But instead of nodding back, Vatel lifted his chin slightly and kept on walking.

Vatel passed the crowded café, the preserve of smoking men drinking tiny cups of coffee. No women. Like back home. He paused in the doorway of a small shop crammed with telephone cabinets for overseas calls, to make sure Mehmet followed. Then he moved at a fast clip through Passage Prado, rundown art-deco steel-and-glass ceiling overhead, lined with small clothing shops.

Vatel pushed down his fear of recognition and kept several feet ahead. Just before the looming arch of Porte Saint-Martin, he turned into a narrow street and looked back. No Mehmet.

He panicked. And then the black grizzled hair came into view.

“
Ssss
,” hissed Vatel. He’d reached the Second-Empire Theatre de la Renaissance, named by Victor Hugo for then-popular opera-comique performances. He knew the stagehand kept the side stage door open in the morning for deliveries. He stepped into the doorway and beckoned to Mehmet.

Mehmet joined him inside the narrow musty-carpeted corridor stacked with chairs. Vatel pointed to a room with a sign, “Wardrobe.” Inside, on wheeled racks covered by clear plastic, hung costumes, period pieces by the look of them.

“How did you find this place?” Mehmet asked, looking around.

“More important, Mehmet,” Vatel said, “how can I find the Yellow Crescent before they find me?”

“You?” Mehmet’s protuberant eyes popped.

“The
mec
who was slit on rue de Paradis? He had their signature. . . .”

“Signature? He wasn’t a Turk, or even a Kurd!”

Vatel froze. He remembered the dark hair, dark complexion . . . and the knife curl of flesh slashed under the ear just like on the bodies in his village. The Yellow Crescent’s signature to send a message to the Kurdish Rebels.

“The
mec
was a French journalist.” Mehmet clicked his worry beads, shaking his head.

No wonder the Brigade was investigating.

Vatel cast a nervous look at the costumes.

“Why so curious?”

Vatel heard suspicion in Mehmet’s voice.

“I work across the street, remember? The Brigade’s been asking questions.”

“So has the journalist’s big-eyed girlfriend.”

More complications.

Cold filled his insides. Mehmet kept his ear to the ground in the quartier. This grew more complicated, more twisted all the time. Had he figured wrong?

Even for the Yellow Crescent, this move struck him as bold. Arrogant. Though he knew the authorities, much less this woman, couldn’t begin to penetrate their web.

“Eyes watch everywhere,” Mehmet said. “But this feels wrong for the Yellow Crescent.”

The
flics
avoided internal rivalries in the closed Turkish community; but with a murdered journalist. . . . No wonder this Florand wanted him to inform.

“What’s the word on the street?”

“The dead junkie, you know the types from the Canal? He got nabbed with the journalist’s wallet.”

Probably one of the two-way hustlers he’d seen in the doorway on rue de Paradis.

“So far, they put it down to robbery.”

Vatel doubted it.

“It’s more,” Vatel said. “You know that.”

Mehmet clicked his worry beads faster. “I know nothing.”

“Yet last week in the café, you insisted that the Yellow Crescent had posted that article in the laundromat.”

Mehmet shook his head. “Yellow Crescent, the Turkish military . . . ? They’d never dare kill a journalist. You must talk to the wise one.”

“He’s not back.”

Mehmet nodded. “He returns tonight or tomorrow.”

Vatel marshaled his thoughts, trying to figure out what was bothering him.

“Count me out,” Mehmet said. “I know nothing. I can’t get involved.”

But Vatel had to give some morsel to Florand. Mehmet had been a concierge in the quartier for years; he knew everyone, and everyone knew him.

“What did you leave out, Mehmet?” Vatel advanced closer, hemmed in by costumes. The walls were lined with waistcoats on hangers and knee-high boots lined up like soldiers.

“Finding a scrap of paper in the wallet . . . who knows what it really means, eh?” Mehmet averted his eyes, shrugged. “It’s just a sugar wrapper.”

“I’m waiting.”

“For what? I told you. . . .”

Vatel visualized rue de Paradis: the breaking dawn, the ceramic tiled doorway, the hustlers down the street, the black chador, the street cleaner dropping his broom, and the figure. . . .

“Who else saw, Mehmet?”

“The blubbering mouse from Istanbul.” Mehmet sighed. “He cleans the trains at Gare du Nord.”

“His name?”

Mehmet shrugged. “I told you,
fare.”

“Mouse?”

The sound of footsteps and whistling came from the hall. An old Georges Brassens tune. Mehmet leaned closer, lowered his voice, and lapsed into Turkish.
“Ufak bir fare gibi,
little like a mouse.”

“There’s more, I can tell.”

“Jalenka Malat’s the target,” Mehmet said, looking at his feet. “Tonight.”