Murder in Clichy (27 page)

“May I keep the autopsy report?” she asked.

Aimée nodded, wondering if it would wind up on the shelf next to Bernadette of Lourdes. She thanked Madame Daudet and left. But now she’d learned of the old men’s connection to Thadée and where Gassot lived.

Outside on the street, she ducked into a doorway and checked her cell phone. Two messages.

The first was from Pleyet, finally returning her call.

“We need to talk,” he said. “Call me back.”

She’d call him
after
she found Gassot. If she worked it right, she’d have information to barter with Pleyet.

The next was from Martine.

“
Allô,
Martine. How’s Sophie?”

She heard Martine inhale on her cigarette.

“Safe in her room. The valium helped,” Martine said. Her husky voice rose. “Interesting news, Aimée,” she said. “The Brits dropped out of the oil rights bidding. And seems the Chinese have transported impressive drilling rigs to the bay off Dingfang, on Hainan Island. They’re raising territorial issues. But right now it looks like Olf and the Chinese are neck in neck.”

“Great, keep going, Martine.”

“There’s a rumor of fat ‘commissions’ for the inside track to the oil rights. I’m still on it.”

AIMÉE ENTERED the narrow corridor of Gassot’s hotel, her shoulders brushing against the peeling, fawn-colored walls. A single bulb lit the hall. But she imagined that the pensioners who lived here appreciated it. Better than a cardboard box over their heads in an abandoned lot.

The smell of grease from a nearby kitchen hovered. Chirping came from the reception booth, a particle board structure, under a Art Deco sign advising NO EVENING VISI-TORS ALLOWED AFTER DARK. FULL AND DEMI-PENSION WITH CAFÉ MEALS AVAILABLE.

Judging by the grease smell, she doubted the inhabitants chose full pension if they could afford to dine elsewhere. A tall man wearing a raincoat and holding a watering can stood in the doorway leading to a concrete rear yard.

“Looking for someone?” he asked, in a hoarse voice, the guttural roll of consonants betraying his Russian origin. His eyes took in her legs and he grinned. “I’m available.”

A stab at Slavic humor?

She gave him a big smile.

“Which room is Monsieur Gassot’s?”

“Eh? What’s that?” he said, blocking the doorframe in a swift movement.

“You heard me,” she said, keeping the smile on her face.

“Which room does he stay in, Monsieur?”

“Spell that name for me, eh. My hearing’s gone. Everything else works fine.”

She reached for the cell phone in her pocket. As he set down the watering can, she punched in the hotel’s number. Seconds later the phone rang in the small reception area.

He glanced at the phone, his eyes unsure.

“Go ahead, I’ll wait,” she said, still keeping the smile on her face with effort.

“Please sit. Wait over there,” he said, entering the reception cubicle to answer the telephone.

Fat chance. She ran past him and into the back yard, skidding on the wet concrete in time to see a white-haired man slipping into a dilapidated lean-to shed. Rabbit hutches covered with wire-mesh lined the old wall, celery stalks peeking through the holes. She slammed the hotel door shut with her booted heel, found her Swiss Army knife, and wedged it between the door jamb and door handle. The Russian gorilla would have to kick the door down to open it. She had no intention of losing Gassot now.

“Monsieur Gassot, I’m not a
flic
,” she called. “I know you’ve been avoiding me. You were an engineer at Dien Bien Phu. I read your article about the looting of the Emperor’s tomb.”

The shed door scraped open. A knife blade glinted.

All she had in her bag was a can of pepper spray and Chanel No. 5.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She had to get him to listen to her. “Aimée Leduc. Your friend Albert was murdered. You could be next.”

What if he’d been responsible? But whatever he’d done she needed to gain his confidence. Convince him to talk to her.

He edged out of the shed. Even under the 1960s-era gray twill raincoat she saw his well-built frame and muscular arms. And his limp.

“What’s that to you?”

“I was hired by a Cao Dai nun to find a set of jade astrological figures. Let me do my job. Talk to me.”

The Russian kicked at the door.

“Call this
mec
off,” she said. “Or I’ll treat him to pepper spray.”

“Where’s your gun?” Gassot asked.

She shook her head. The gutter dripped. Big splats of water landed on her boots. “I’m a private detective. No gun.”

Too bad it sat in the hall drawer of her apartment.

Gassot stood, rain glistening in his white hair, holding the knife with an unreadable expression.

“Why was Daudet killed? Why are they after you?” she asked.

And by his eyes, she knew she’d said the wrong thing. She’d lost him.

“I’ve lived this long, so you should know I’m not stupid enough to fall for your approach. I know you were hired to avenge the past.”

“Avenge? Wait a minute, you’re confusing me with someone else.”

Gassot’s mouth twisted. “It was a mistake. We never meant to do it.”

Do what? She had to reel Gassot in. Get him to trust her. She remembered what Linh had said.

“War’s a series of mistakes,” she said. “But you couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty years old. What did you know? The important thing was you saved a Vietnamese man’s life. The life of this nun’s father.”

“What nun?”

“A Cao Dai nun named Linh asked me to bring her the jade figures.”

“She wasn’t a nun then.” Gassot flexed his knuckles but he still held the knife. “Not when we fought at Dien Bien Phu.”

“His grandchildren are in need of the jade hoard. One’s in a Vietnamese prison for protesting the régime and his sister’s this nun who is petitioning the International Court of Justice to bring about his release,” she said, embellishing. “And you were in the Sixth Battalion, one of the men who looted the jade treasure after the battle.”

Gassot’s mouth trembled.

Aimée lifted the absinthe-green disk into the dull gray light. It glowed.

“Didn’t you find this?”

Gassot’s mouth trembled. He stepped closer and let out a deep breath. “And a lot more. We were surveying, digging trenches, but we hit an old ammunition box. There were twelve figures inside. The next day they were gone.”

She’d been right. She placed the jade disk on the rabbit hutch ledge, staying far away from Gassot’s knife.

“There’s another, isn’t there? It’s called the Dragon. The most sacred.”

Gassot turned over the small jade disk in his hands, then punched the rabbit hutch, his shoulders beaded with rain.

“You have it, don’t you?” she said. “And the dragon makes the set complete.”

“By rights they’re
all
ours. But I never saw them again.”

“A museum director put the figures up for auction here in Paris a month ago,” she told him. “Then they were withdrawn. He was murdered in the men’s bathroom of Parc Monceau. You know that, Gassot, don’t you?”

Silence. She saw defiance in his eyes.

“If the jade is stolen from its true owner, bad luck follows the thief,” he said.

“So you killed Thadée, then Albert, because he wanted a bigger share. Demanded it.” She was guessing. “Did you arrange to meet Dinard and murder him, too?”

Gassot shook his head. “Think what you want.” He turned the jade piece in his hand again.

“You’re not the only ones who want the jade,” Aimée said. “Albert’s wife said you and the others concocted some scheme.”

“But the rumor. . . .” Gassot hesitated.

Had she put it together wrong?

“Go ahead, Gassot. What rumor?”

“The man I saved told me the de Lussignys had stolen the jade. I never saw him again, so I couldn’t question him further. Albert insisted Thadée knew something, but he couldn’t get it out of him.”

The door splintered and the Russian stood there. And so did Blondel.

The spillover from the broken rain gutter beat a pattern on Aimée’s boots. She wished she had René for backup. Though she’d found Gassot, she had walked into the eye of the dragon.

“Time for that talk, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Blondel said. His zipperlike mouth and dull, flat gaze bothered her, but not as much as his clenched fists.

“About your dope running in Clichy?” She had to deflect him, get out of here. But how? Keep talking. “So you pay off someone in the Commissariat. I’m not interested.”

“You weren’t nice to Jacky; he remembers that,” Blondel said, motioning to someone behind him. “But I’m on someone else’s franc.”

He worked for someone else? She glanced at Gassot.

“Thadée owed you money,” she said, “Why kill him, and Albert? Whose side are you on, Gassot?”

“My own.”

“Meaning you double-crossed these
mecs,
and they’re after you?”

“Something like that,” Blondel said.

“I never did business with you, Blondel!
”
Gassot said.

“But your comrade did. And look what happened to him.”

“
Albert? He talked too much but he’d never deal with the likes of you,” Gassot said, a quiver in his voice.

“Think again,” said Regnier, stepping into the doorframe. His riveting black eyes locked onto hers.

Aimée stifled a gasp. Why hadn’t she put that together? But the truth, as Oscar Wilde had said, was rarely pure and never simple.

“You work for Olf don’t you, Regnier?” she asked. “You hired Blondel to do your dirty work.”

His eyes never left her face. A small smile painted his thin lips. “Took you awhile, didn’t it?”

“You killed Thadée, Albert, and Dinard. And kidnapped René, to force me into—”

“A little too late for those observations, isn’t it?” Regnier interrupted. “But you two make a nice couple. Now we’re going to get the jade.”

“Why? To get back at the Ministry and the RG?”

He shrugged. “You know what the RG’s like. Thanks to them I wear a hearing aid,” he said. “Once I fell for their line about honor and service. But I came to my senses, and now I work for the highest bidder.”

Did he expect sympathy from her? She remembered Martine’s comments on how close Olf and the Chinese were in the bidding for oil rights. Now it made sense.

“Interpol’s infiltrated your group,” she said. “That should screw up Olf’s plan to use the jade to get an edge on the Tonkin Gulf oil rights.”

Regnier’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” His phone beeped and he turned away to answer it.

“Pleyet’s with Interpol,” Aimée said.

Would that knock him off balance, at least for a moment? But he’d disappeared.

She looked for another door, another way out. High walls dripping with rain and the rabbit hutches hemmed them in. She was trapped in this postage-stamp-sized concrete yard. How had Regnier managed to vanish so quickly? Well, it was one less to face.

Could she take on these
mecs
? Her pepper spray would disable one. Maybe. Gassot had the knife but she didn’t like the bulge in Blondel’s coat pocket. And would Gassot back her up?

She pepper-sprayed the Russian, who yelled and put his arms up to his face. Gassot, lunging with his knife, tripped against the rabbit hutches, sending them crashing to the ground. She got Blondel with her Chanel No. 5 purse-size atomizer.

She raced past them, aiming for the street. Scrambled down the corridor. She heard Gassot panting right behind her. And for a moment, she thought they’d make it.

A stinging blow from Jacky threw her into the reception booth. Hands tightened around her neck.

“Shall I take care of you now or wait until you tell me what I want to know?” Regnier said, sticking his blunt-nosed Mauser in her ribs. “You choose.”

Aimée froze.

Gassot, careening from a punch, was held spreadeagled against the wall. Frightened rabbits skittered over their feet. Gassot’s knife fell, clattering on the cracked tile.

“Outnumbered and outgunned, I’d say,” Regnier said.

“
Stupide
. No escape route,” Gassot said, his breath heaving. “One should always have a way out.”

“So let’s talk,” Aimée said, trying to think fast. “You’ve got it all wrong, there’s—”

“We will talk, and you’ll give me the jade,” Regnier said, watching her lips. “But not here.”

A plumbing van waited on the curb, a yellow sign PLOMBERIE 24/24 painted on the side panels.

“And you looked like a nice girl,” said the Russian rubbing his red eyes as he shoved Aimée and Gassot down the hall. “Nice legs, that waif-look, half-wild and free. I like.”

“You’re not my type.”

“You never know until you try,” he said, feeling her up under her sweater.

“Later, Sergei,” Blondel said, opening the back doors.

“Keep your hands off! Help!” She screamed and kicked, hoping someone on the street would hear them. But then Jacky blocked the view in the three seconds it took to bundle her and Gassot into the van.

She and Gassot were thrown onto the van floor, the door locked. The engine gunned and the van took off, throwing them against the metal racks of supplies. No side windows. Just a small back window.

Jumbled thoughts came to her. Linh’s father had known about the jade! What a world class liar Julien de Lussigny was, acting as if he’d never heard of the jade! He’d said his father would turn in his grave if he knew of its existance. Liar! When his godfather Dinard had put it up for auction, De Lussigny had probably helped him.

The van swerved and she rammed into the wall.

“Gassot, you ok?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Think!” she said.

But he shook his head, defeated.

Maybe not this time.

She scanned the dim interior of the van. The divider between the driver’s compartment and the rear of the van, where a window had been, was blocked by a metal panel now. Had Blondel used this van to kidnap René? She didn’t think they were going far, otherwise they’d have tied them and taped them up. A whiff of pepper spray wafted from the front so she knew the Russian was up there. Jacky? Where were Regnier and Blondel?