Murder in the Rue De Paradis (24 page)

Thursday Afternoon

PANICKED, AIMÉE TRIED the third courtyard door. It opened. Now she found herself by a WC with the photo of Marlene Dietrich hanging on one door, Jean Gabin, for men, on the other.

She kept going and punched in René’s number.

“Don’t say my name, René . . . Do you see a short wiry mec with an attitude on the street?”

“Affirmative. With lots of his friends. And very close.”

“
Bon,
I think I’m in a café . . . look to the right of the building.”

“You’re in Café L’Escalier,” René said.

She knew the café; its wall was part of the foundation of the infamous Saint Lazare prison, torn down in 1940.

“I’ll meet you inside, Aimée.”

“Just don’t bring Rouffillac with you.”

She pulled on dark glasses from her bag and entered L’Escalier. Its recent incarnation as a café didn’t hide its former origins as a factory. An upper balcony ringed a deep well of dark red walls; the thick wedges of masonry and stone were the remains of the seventeenth-century prison which had itself originally been a convent, then a leper hospital and, subsequently, a prison for the condemned, notably the Marquis de Sade and the blind and deaf Abbesse of Montmartre guillotined for “conspiring” against the Republic. Folklore placed the Revolution’s beginning on July 13 in the prison courtyard with angry crowds who carried on to storm the nearby Bastille the next day. At the turn of the twentieth century, it had housed women. Among the inmates, in addition to prostitutes, had been Mata Hari.

On a blackboard, the chalked
prix fixe
special was
turbot à l’anglaise.
The tables were filled with lunch patrons. René patted down the bulge in his pocket at the entrance and joined her at the counter.

Aimée asked the ponytailed man behind the counter, “Do you have a rear exit?” He wiped his hands on his apron, scanning the scene outside the window.

“Why?”

“Here’s why,” she said, palming a hundred francs into his moist hand.

“
Bien sur!”
He grinned. “The service door.”

Thank God she’d gone to the ATM.

She nodded to René, and they followed him through the swinging doors into a narrow galley-style kitchen whose huge frying pans sputtered with shallots, butter, and browning filets of fish. The chef in a white hat ignored them, intent on raking the pan back and forth over the blue flame. Fragrant steam wafted up, but Aimée didn’t envy him in this narrow sauna of a kitchen.

The ponytailed man unlocked the rear metal door. It opened onto a weed-choked walled courtyard, which displayed remnants of limestone arches and dislodged stones. Sun beat down on the hot cobbles. She saw a small chipped statue of the Virgin Mary nestled in a niche of the peeling back façade among snaking pipes. They’d emerged into a remnant of the medieval cloister of Saint Lazare. From force of habit, Aimée made a small gesture, the sign of the cross.

“A lot of us do that,” he said, grinning. A gold tooth sparkled in his mouth. “The place gives a feeling. . . .” He shrugged. “The cook says he’s heard chanting at night. Swears it’s the nuns.”

What about the ghosts of the condemned female prisoners, she thought, recalling Aristide Bruant’s famous song in which a woman writes to her lover before her execution: “
Je me fait un sang qu’est d’un noir à Saint Lazare.
” My blood is now black with that of Saint Lazare.

Enough of the woo woo; they had to get out of here.

“Your boyfriend after you?” he asked.

“Like a hornet,” she said. She saw a rusted door in the wall.

The ponytailed man noticed her gaze and shook his head. “Locked. Go through the back courtyards, three of them, and then make a left.”

René glanced at Aimée.

“You know this escape route pretty well, don’t you?” René looked around uneasily. “Did you show this to anyone else today . . . a woman?”

The man grinned. “Only last month, Johnny Hallyday dropped in for a drink. Even at his age, the fans won’t leave him alone. He had to leave the same way.”

He led them to green garbage containers clustered around another door, rolled one away, and opened that door.

Aimée peeled off another hundred-franc bill and stuck it in his apron pocket.

“Keep this between us, eh?”

He winked.
“Merci.”

She and René followed the dark cool passage between the buildings to another courtyard. Lines of laundry hung between buildings, conversations drifted from windows, open in the heat. Then the winding space led them past another sagging building, and they found themselves in a courtyard in which clay crucible forms and rusted hollow metal glass-blowing rods leaned, abandoned, against the walls.

“Now I know how an aging celebrity feels,” René said, grimacing as he stepped over a pothole.

“Over there, René.” Aimée pointed to a double door on the left labeled Cristallerie. They entered and stood in a narrow hallway. At the other end, half obscured by a drape of red velvet curtain, lay long tables set with china and crystal goblets. A well-dressed crowd was listening to a speech. An immense crystal chandelier dripped refracted pinpoints of light dominating the frescoed banquet room.

“We thank you, Cristallerie Baccarat stockholders. . . .” a man’s amplified voice droned.

Stunned, Aimée realized they’d crashed Baccarat Crystal’s stockholders’ luncheon. And she was wearing a jean jacket. She looked around, saw no other exit.

“Let’s go, keep to the walls.”

“Second nature to you, Aimée, but not my thing.”

“Got any other ideas, René?”

They were trapped, like geese in a pen.

“Act like you belong. Head to the cloakroom.” She pulled his sleeve. “And keep moving.”

Frock-coated waiters poured champagne into gleaming stemmed goblets. Aimée kept close to the ornate walls, dodged servers with platters, and kept her gaze straight ahead. A few ministerial types in pinstriped suits, blue shirts, and red ties looked up from their Limoges plates. The speaker, standing at the head of the first table, raised his goblet.

“A toast to our recent resounding success, to Baccarat’s best-ever quarterly earnings report! And to you, our shareholders.”

Nice profits, if they could afford to toast with champagne and sponsor a function for a hundred or so.

She padded over the plush Aubusson carpet to the cloakroom, which turned out to be a parlor furnished with Louis XIV chairs and what looked like Corot landscapes on the walls. “We’re almost there, René.”

She threw him a glance, then turned back. A massive mountain of a man in a black suit blocked her path.

“This way, please,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“If you make a scene, I will be forced to escort you out with force.”

Nothing for it but to comply. High level security, if the suit was anything to go by. Ex-legionnaire, by his physique.

In the vaulted foyer, the guard stood framed against floor-to-ceiling glass vitrines showcasing a collection of Baccarat crystal: acid-etched neo-classical vases, nineteenth-century fluted perfume flacons, branches of a chandelier with faceted pendant crystal drops catching the light.

She had to come up with a plan. And fast.

“You’re a Sarko Security employee,
non?
” she asked.

The guard’s lips were immobile in his expressionless face. But he didn’t deny it. She went with her hunch.

“You should know better, Monsieur.”

“Show me your ID,” he said, eyeing René. “I’ve called for backup experienced with gatecrashers like you.”

“Shhh,” a server said, peeking around the corner.

The guard gestured them farther away, toward a section devoted to the 1878 Exhibition with sepia photos documenting candelabra commissioned for maharajahs and delivered on elephants, and chandeliers hung in glittering Constantinople palaces, as well as a display of engraved certificates from Tsar Nicholas II.

She flashed her PI license, thought quickly, remembered the card Nohant had showed her.

“This goes into my report. Monsieur Belfont in the rue de Saintonge office will be informed.” She pulled a notebook out of her bag, flipped it open, made a checkmark in it with her eye pencil, the closest thing at hand.

He blinked.

“We entered through the rear courtyard,” she said, assuming a businesslike tone. “That shows a major lapse in security. I’ve noted that there was no guard stationed there. We’re an independent contractor hired by Sarko to investigate for lapses in security such as this.” She tapped her heel. “Given the prevalence of Metro bombings, and with several members of the ministry in attendance, this security oversight’s inexcusable.”

“But we did a thorough sweep before the banquet,” he said, his tone defensive now.

Good.

“Not enough, Monsieur, as we’ve found out.” She whipped out her cell phone. “Monsieur Belfont and your superior will see this in our report. My colleague here specializes in coun-terterrorist tactics, and your failure’s duly noted. He’ll require you to attend a security seminar,
de rigueur
to prevent further incidents like this.”

She nudged René, who closed his mouth and nodded.
“Exactemente,
Monsieur.”

“
Mais
. . .” His voice wavered. “It’s not only me; what about the other staff?”

She glanced at her phone. “Of course. Now if you’ll excuse us?”

“Wait . . . you can’t just go—”

But Aimée spoke into her phone, hoping he couldn’t hear the dial tone. “Monsieur, we’ve just discovered security flaws at the Cristallerie Baccarat function . . .
oui,
I’m
en route.
”

Perspiration shone on the guard’s upper lip.

“Assemble all the guards for a meeting in fifteen minutes.” she said. “Be discreet, of course. Meanwhile, post a man on the back door.”

She strode out of the building, René behind her, praying they’d get past the pillars and around the corner before the guard reached his boss on the phone.

They emerged on rue de Paradis. She shuddered, realizing that they were standing not a block away from where Yves had been murdered. No time to dwell on that now. She threaded past cars on the narrow street, hailed a taxi, jumped inside and edged over, making room for René.

“Where to?” the taxi driver asked at the corner of rue d’Hauteville. She looked back; there were no police behind them. She’d already written off her bike, now riddled with bullets.

“Just keep driving,” René said, his fingers tapping the window. “Better yet, my car’s near Gare du Nord. Drop us there.”

“Rouffillac didn’t sound concerned about Jalenka, René,” she said. “What do you think he meant when he said the situation’s taken care of?”

René wiped his brow with his monogrammed handkerchief. “Why, he meant they would guard her hotel! He was sending the DST there. I overheard him.”

“You mean they weren’t there already?” she asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know.”

“Never mind. What hotel?”

“Abotel Windsor on rue Gabriel Laumain. What’s the difference?”

“But that’s two blocks away! Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“First she’d want to take care of me and then. . . .” Aimée tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Rue Gabriel Laumain.”

“I know the hotel, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I drop clients there all the time.”

“But the big question is this,” she told him. “Do you know the service entrance?”

“And if I do?” he asked, swerving and making a U-turn. A horn blared and a driver shook his hand from a car window.

She held the hundred-franc note up to flutter in the breeze. In the rear-view mirror, she saw his thick eyebrows lower as he calculated the size of her purse.

“And if I got you into the laundry receiving station?”

“How would you do that?”

He shrugged. “Pays to have friends, doesn’t it?”

She ended up forking over more for a two-block ride than she would have paid for a trip across the Seine and back. But they were mounting the hotel’s narrow back stairs without interference five minutes later.

“Where are we going?” René asked. “We don’t know her room number. It’s crazy. The DST’s got this under control, Aimée.”

She halted on the third floor, where they were met by a reeking chemical smell. Her throat burned.

“What’s that?” René said catching his breath and coughing.

“It’s not good.” She pointed to the jumpsuited DST man sprawled on the carpet by the elevator. “Open some windows, quick.”

She covered her mouth, jimmied open the hall window, inhaled huge gulps of fresh air, then ran down the hall.

“Look, Aimée.” His handkerchief over his face, René held up one of several plastic liter containers that were lying on the carpet. He choked as he read the label. “Contains trichloroethyl-ene. Breathing in TCE fumes may cause headaches, dizziness, confusion . . . higher amounts . . . unconsciousness, death . . .” the rest was lost in his fit of coughing.

She stuck her head out the window and gulped more air. “. . . downstairs,” René said, “getting help.”

She turned to see René’s head disappearing down the stairs.

Yet she couldn’t retreat. She had to find Jalenka. But where the hell was she?

She had to be on this floor . . . and then Aimée noticed deep tracks furrowed in the wet carpet. Tracks ending at the door to Room 312. She tried the doorknob. Locked.

With no time to waste, every breath burning her lungs, she pulled out the Beretta with the silencer. She steadied her shaking hands, shot the lock, and shouldered the door open.

Inside the salon of the hotel suite, she walked into a brocaded chaise longue. Beside it, a grouping of period chairs were empty. She closed the door behind her and took a deep breath. No fumes in here. Nor noise, except for piped-in ’80s dance music from a built-in wall speaker. She kept going, tiptoeing into a smaller dim room with drawn red
toile de jouy
print curtains. A lamp illuminated an ormolu-trimmed desk, a pair of black heels in an open shoe box, and the large walnut-carved armoire on her right.