Murder in Belleville (21 page)

It was easy after that to roll him down the stairs to midway in the path. At that point neither one of the them felt a thing and wouldn’t for a while. Aimee and Rene tugged them both behind the dark green bench, covering them over with vines.

“Sorry,” Rene grinned, moving the gravel aside with his shoe. “I had to improvise the first part.”

She looked up. “We’ve got new company.” Her heart raced. “Dede’s brought more gorillas.”

M
USTAFA HAMID WIPED AT
the spittle on his chin. But there was none. He must have closed his eyes. They burned, and his nose felt dry, his mouth parched. Thoughts blurred, and he felt so weak. So tired.

He slit the envelope. It took a long time, the white paper ripping and fighting him. And there it was, simple and irrevocable. The long thread back. The summons to his roots.

He’d be damned if he’d give in. The old fight blazed in him again. Human rights had to be fought for, otherwise we’re all animals!

Everything he’d spent his life working for—thirty years of it—would go down the
pissoir.

He stared at the messenger, whom he didn’t know.

“No deal,” he said, shaking his head.

D
EDE’S GAZE REACHED OVER
their heads as they shouldered the gym bags. Aimee spun around. Several men who could be Muktar’s relatives approached from both directions.

“Dede” she said. “Who set the car bomb?”

“Let’s talk at my place,” Dede said.

The
mecs
moved closer, their eyes locked on her and Rene as if they were rabbits. Rabbits caught between their crosshairs.

“Crowds make me nervous,” Rene said.

“Me too,” Aimee took his arm, edging out from the trellis toward the open grass. Three uniformed CRS, armed with machine guns slung over their chests, were visible through the grilled fence on rue des Couronnes.

Almost a shout away.

“Keep going, Rene.” She and Rene kept edging over the grass. Large signs proclaimed
PELOUSE INTERDITE
, but she didn’t care if she stepped on the grass.

The way the
mecs’
jacket pockets bulged bothered her.

She and Rene were out in the open; to their left was a wooden playground structure. If only they they could get the attention of the CRS.

“Put those bags down,” Dede said, his chest heaving. Several of his shirt buttons were undone, revealing gold chains.

“Dede, I asked you a question,” she said, ready to pull out her Beretta.

“Try to behave, eh?” Dede said, his teeth white and smiling. “Let’s work out the misunderstanding. Just hand those over. Let’s keep this civilized, eh.”

“Civilized?” she screamed. “Muktar called me nasty things in Arabic.”

The men Dede summoned had disappeared up the trellised steps. An unreadable look crossed his perspiring face.

“You little
sabpe!”
Dede said.

“Little?” she said. “I’m taller than you.”

“You’re dead,” Dede’said, his eyes vacant. “And you’ve dug a lot of graves next to yours,” he added before disappearing.

The CRS headed through the open gates toward the grass.

“Some trouble here?” asked one of the stout-legged CRS.

“Yes, officer,” she said. “Thank God you’re here.”

And she meant it. She wasn’t often happy to see the CRS.

B
ERNARD SPRAWLED AT HIS
desk, opening a new pill bottle, the phone on hold to the
interministeriel
hot line cradled in his neck. That evening heightened media attention had erupted into a free-for-all when film stars, a rock mogul, and a political observer from
L’ivenement
joined the hunger strikers. Channel France 2 demanded access for news coverage inside the church.

Meanwhile Guittard kept the ministry in limbo, back-pedaling on the arrest and roundup order but still not rescinding the eight-hour deadline.

His other phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Finally he picked it up.

“Directeur
Berge, can you speak to speculation as to whether Mustafa Hamid’s AFL links to the fundamentalists in Algiers will influence the power struggle with the Algerian military?” The reporter’s grating voice continued, not waiting for a response. “Being a pacifist, does Hamid eschew the military’s stance in Algiers?”

“Why are you asking me about Algeria?” Bernard asked in surprise. “We’re dealing with
sans-papiers,
an internal French immigration issue under
le code civil.
Defining who is a citizen and allowed to stay in France presents no forum for civil unrest in Algeria.”

He slammed the phone down. Who had started that rumor?

Bernard put his head down on his desk. How far could this go? Hamid’s reputation in all communities over the years was stellar. It could be said that he practiced what he preached more than anyone. He thought back to Hamid, remembering his remark about violence. Was Hamid a pawn? Could this affect Algerian politics?

Even if Bernard cared, what could he do about Algeria anymore? Deep inside, Bernard realized he’d given up long ago.

He’d said good-bye from the crowded ship’s deck. He remembered the smoke from the burning medina, the stench from the hanging bodies rotting in the sun on the Esplanade, and the port shaking from the oil-storage-tank explosions. He’d clutched his slain father’s watch and held his mother’s hand as the sun died over the port of Algiers.

O
N THE FLOOR OF
Rene’s studio, Aimee and Rene emptied the gym bag. A Prada purse, sleek and black tumbled out. The perfect match to the Prada shoes she’d found in Eugenie’s trash. Not many could afford to throw away Prada shoes with a broken heel.

“ST196” said the cover of a folder. She opened it. Black-and-white photos were stapled together. Shots of dark-skinned Algerian men, in front of a concrete background. Numbers attached by safety pins to their shirts.

But why?

Something bothered her.

“Doesn’t this all seem strange to you?”

“In what way?” Rene asked, as he sliced a large, crusty slab of baguette stuffed with tapenade, slivers of smoked salmon, goat cheese, and ruby tomatoes. He handed one half to Aimee.

“Why keep it in that dump I escaped from?” she said, taking a bite. “Why didn’t the boss have it? Why threaten me at the circus?”

“They deal in explosives,” Rend said. “Suppose they’re in at the deep end—not used to blackmailing ministers or their mistresses. Let’s say it’s not Dede’s specialty.”

That made sense. She ate looking out his window onto dimly lit rue de la Reynie, which narrowed into a passage to Place Michelet. A man’s shaved head, like a thumb, caught the light.

“But I know what you mean,” Rene said, wiping mustard from his goatee.

She kept watching the figure. When the headlamp from a passing motor scooter illuminated his face she recognized Claude, Philippe’s goon.

She rolled the fat sandwich in nearby computer paper, stuck it in her pocket, and gathered the photos.

“Hate to eat and run but…” she said, buttoning up her black three-quarter-length leather coat. “I’m going to give this to Philippe. See if this will loosen someone’s grip on his nuts.”

“Succinctly put,” Rene said. “Meanwhile?”

“I’d like to leave gracefully,” she grinned, “without any fanfare from that bald
mec
Claude, who’s watching the apartment.”

“Philippe’s thug?”

She nodded, ruffling Miles Davis’s furry neck.

“He knows your car, Rene.”

Rene tossed her a set of keys to his old motor scooter. “Take the underground passage from the basement to my garage.”

“Can Miles Davis stay?”

“Bien sur,”
Rene said.

“Mind your manners, furball,” she said, slipping the keys into her pocket.

S
HE DROVE
Rene’s Vespa, an apple green remnant of his Sorbonne days. Passing the curled metal lanterns in Place des Vosges, she saw Claude following her in a small van, his lights visible in her wobbling side view mirror.

Why hadn’t Martine spoken to Philippe and gotten Claude off her tail? She gunned up boulevard Richard Lenoir wondering how to get rid of Claude. Where had he been when they’d been cornered by Dede in Pare de Belleville?

She stayed close behind the green bus traveling up the boulevard. Claude kept a discreet distance, but she realized he was pacing his truck. He probably thought she didn’t notice him, the
stupidel
Well she’d make that work to her advantage.

Continuing up boulevard Richard Lenoir, she maintained an unhurried pace until rue Oberkampf, where she jumped the curb. There she zoomed down the wide pedestrian way, which had been paved over Canal Saint Martin. Claude couldn’t follow her there, but he could see her until she turned left into rue Crussol, zipping into the warren of narrow streets she remembered behind the Cirque d’Hiver. Streets fronting the
cirque
headed to Republique or Bastille. She chewed the sandwich, crumbs sprinkling her legs, as she waited in a darkened doorway. Cafe des Artistes lay dark—Inds had closed. She saw the truck’s taillights heading toward R^publique. Feeling it was safe, she shot back over the boulevard to Belleville.

“M
AIS
,
I didn’t call the SAMU,” Jules Denet said, ten minutes later. “I called the
flics.”

Aimee wanted to be sure her and Rene’s theory of two SAMU vans fit. It did.

And make sure Denet recognized Sylvie in the morphed photo. She didn’t want to show up at Philippe’s and have made a huge blunder.

Jules Denet poured herbal tisane into Aimee’s cup, a steaming gingery concoction. Blanca perched on the back of his chair, pecking her feathers, bits of plumage wafting onto the floor.

“When did you last see Eugenie?”

He rubbed his unshaved jaw, making a scratchy sound. “Must have been that afternoon—she was hauling trash into the courtyard. Said she was leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“The
permis de demolir
was to be posted.” Denet offered Blanca an apple slice. Blanca nibbled the white bit, ignoring the green skin. “The building’s about to be torn down. Poor Eugenie, she seemed excited.”

“How’s that, Monsieur Denet?” Aimee said, sipping her tea.

“Things had changed, that’s all she said.”

“Had you noticed any visitors?”

“You asked me already,” he said, stroking Blanca’s head. “But there was a truck parked out front a day or so before.”

Aimee’s antenna went up.

“What kind of truck?”

“Blue, maybe gray. No,” Denet shook his head. “Brown.”

Frustrated, she gripped the underside of his chrome table, then breathed deeply.

“Any specific reason, Monsieur Denet, that you remembered this truck, a delivery service, a company name, or some kind of logo, perhaps?” Her smile was thin.

“Wings by the letters,” he returned her smile. “That’s it.”

“Do you remember the name?” she asked.

“Like Euro-Photo,” he said. “But I’m not sure. Eugenie knew the young man.”

“How do you know, Monsieur Denet?” she asked.

“He carried things back and forth,” he said. “Seemed funny to be a moving man, I thought.”

“In what way?”

“Bad limp,” Denet said.

Aimee’s mind went back to helpful Gaston. A cold fear coursed through her. Had Gaston led her off track the whole time, sent her to a car bombing, then fed her useless information?

“An older man with a limp, Monsieur Denet?”

Blanca pecked at corn kernels on the coffee table. Denet seemed lost in thought.

She wished he’d answer her.

“Young like you,” Denet said. “Dark skin. Funny hair, like yours.”

Aimee smiled, relieved, partly because she hated to think herself such a bad judge of character, but also because she liked Gaston.

She filed his information and got on with her purpose in visiting Denet. She pulled out the digital composite Rene had made, setting it by his teapot.

“Please look at the this, Monsieur Denet.”

He looked at the photo, then shook his head.

“Monsieur Denet? Isn’t that Eugenie?”

“Leave me alone!” He shook his head violently.

Aimee stood up.

Jules Denet sat unmoving, his head down.

“I’ll see myself out, Monsieur,” Aimee said.

She slung her leather coat over her arm. The only sound was the dance of Blanca’s talons on the glass-topped table.

“Yellow roses. I’d like to send roses,” Denet said, his eyes welling with tears.

“That’s Eugenie, isn’t it?” she said, sitting down.

He nodded. “Could I make a copy of the photo? I’ll be sure to give it back,” he said, his voice low.

“You keep it, Monsieur,” she said.

Blanca had gone to his shoulder and he stroked her absent-mindedly. “Eugenie loved yellow roses. They were her favorite.”

“I’ll make sure there’s a dozen,” she said. “You have my word, Monsieur Denet.”

Even if I have to pick them myself from the garden at 78 rue du Guignier, she thought as she let herself out and walked to rue Jean Moinon. She remembered those yellow roses. Those had to be Sylvie’s roses in Sylvie’s house.

“P
HILIPPE
,”
SHE
said, leaning down and speaking into her cell phone outside Denet’s door. “We need to talk.”

“What the hell have you done?” he said, his speech slurred.

Taken aback, Aimee paused outside Denet’s apartment. She stood in his doorway, keeping alert to movement on rue de Men-ilmontant. Her eyes scanned for Claude.

“Where’s Anais?”

Aimee heard splashes, then a thud. Silence.

“Ca va,
Philippe?”

“Leave Anais out of this,” he said.

“Wasn’t Sylvie protecting you?” Aimee said.

“Let me h-h-handle this,” Philippe interrupted. “You’re trouble—complicating things!”

“Alors,
you might be in trouble,” Aimee said, raising her voice.” ‘ST196’—do you understand?”

“Quit meddling.” Philippe slammed down the phone.

She had to make him understand. And find out why Sylvie had another persona. Grabbing a wool
foulard
in her bag, she wrapped it around her neck and drove to his house.

By the time she reached Villa Georgina, the de Froissart home lay in darkness. She went up to the side door and knocked.

Silence.

Old metal-framed windows looked onto the garden. A dim light shone from over the blue Aga stove in the kitchen. Peering through the bubbled-glass window, she saw Philippe half-sprawled across the pine kitchen table. Distorted, motionless.

Panic rippled through her. Was he hurt?

She pounded on the door.

No sound. No movement.

She tried all the windows. Finally the farthest metal-framed one jiggled. Grabbing a long twig in the garden, she inserted it and shoved it up again and again until she felt the hasp flip. The window scratched open.

She hitched her coat up, climbed in, and sniffed. Whiskey lay in an amber puddle on the floor. Philippe snored loudly, dead drunk. Relieved, she shook him several times, he sputtered and drooled. His graying hair was matted and plastered on one side of his head.

Philippe had passed out. Frustrated, she wanted to pound him in the head—he’d triggered this whole mess because he couldn’t keep his pants zipped.

Or had he?

With Philippe passed out, only Anais could tell her—and An-a’is had disappeared.

Aimee searched the kitchen, the phone table in the hallway, Philippe’s mahogany-walled study, and every drawer in his desk. Nothing to indicate where Anais could be. She looked under the piled folders on his desk, through ministry directives and business prospectuses.

And then she saw “ST196” labeled on the outside of a brown envelope. Inside were hundreds of small black-and-white photos. Algerian men with number cards safety-pinned to their shirts. Just like the ones in the gym bag.

What did this mean?

She looked closer. Some cards were pinned directly to the skin on their chest. But what got her were the mostly expressionless faces, interspersed by the ones with fear shining from their eyes. Unnerving.

No text. Just the faces.

On the back flap, she saw something written in pencil. Smudged. “Youssef,” and a number. Again the same name and phone number.

She went back to the kitchen table where Philippe still snored, dead to the world. Aimee opened the stainless-steel fridge and helped herself to a fresh Badoit. She sucked the bubbly mineral water, then rifled through Philippe’s pockets. Stuck in his pants pocket was a receipt from Centre Hepitalisation d’urgence en psychiatrie Esquiro for Madame Sitbon. Of course, that had to be Anais. Sitbon was Anais’s maiden name!

Aimee recognized the hospital, noted for its
centre de crise,
not far from Pere Lachaise on rue Roquette. She chugged more Badoit. Then she propped her card with a scribbled “Call me” near Philippe’s curled hand and left.

O
N THE
fourth floor of the clinic, Aimee brushed Anais’s cheek with the back of her hand.

Anais’s eyes fluttered open.

“It’s so good to see a familiar face,” Anais said, smiling weakly at Aimee.

“Sorry to disturb you.”

The private room overlooked the manicured trees on Square de la Roquette. Beside the hospital bed, a monitor beeped, slow and steady.

“How’s my Simone?”

Aimee started guiltily—she hadn’t checked.

“
Bien
, but missing you,” she lied. “Look at these.”

She held another photo Rene had morphed together—of Sylvie with the red wig.

“Sylvie wore wigs,” Anais said. “Some men like that. Philippe did.”

Poor Anais.

“There’s more to it than that. I’m sorry,” Aimee said, controlling her excitement. “But I found some odd photos.”

Tears ran down Anais’s cheeks.

“What’s the matter?” Aimee said. She couldn’t understand why Anais wasn’t interested.

“Philippe’s changed. He’s dead inside.”

“He’s trying to forget,” Aimee shook her head. “Tiens, if he were dead inside he wouldn’t be drinking himself into a stupor.”

“Nothing will be over until the killer…,” Anais’s chest heaved, then the tears spilled down her pale cheeks, “until you catch them. If Sylvie pretended to be someone else, you’ve got to find out why—what’s the reason. Nothing will be over until then. I hired you to find out who murdered Sylvie.”

Aimee sighed. “Look, Anais, I’m doing my best, but you and Philippe haven’t helped me. I’ve been working in the dark. If you knew about the photos, why didn’t you tell me? It’s like you gave me half a deck and want me to play cards!”

“The General,” Anais said, rubbing her wet cheeks.

Aimee’s hand tightened on the bed’s railing and she leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“I remembered … someone saying “general,” maybe it was Sylvie … but then the explosion.”

What did that mean? “Did Sylvie say this upstairs in the apartment?”

Anais nodded. “Sylvie said terrible things happened in Algeria. Philippe knew about them.”

Did it have to do with those photos? she wondered.

“What did Sylvie give you?”

“Some envelope,” Anais rubbed her eyes.

“The envelope with ‘ST196’ written on it?”

“Philippe has it.”

“Did you see the General?”

Anais shook her head.

“Did you hear a voice, a sound?”

“The smell,” Anais squinted, as if trying to remember could force it to come back.

“What smell?”

“I feel so stupid,” Anais said. “My brain’s so mixed up.”