Murder in the Latin Quarter (17 page)

“High-powered rifles with night-vision sights and a vodou ritual, the chicken. . . .” She shook her head. “I need to under-stand what it means. Can you reach Loussant?”

“He doesn’t have a phone. I told you.”

Great. The traffickers who were going to elaborate lengths to trap Mireille might have murdered Benoît. But that made little sense unless the set up had been staged as a warning to Mireille. A complicated warning. Too complicated. And to warn her of what? Mireille had been convinced that whoever was following her was after Benoît’s file.

“Go home and take care of yourself, Aimée.”

Guilt washed over her. “You’ve suffered trauma to your chest. I’ll drive you home, René, then. . . .”

René raised his eyebrow. “Then what?”

“Play it by ear.” She shrugged. “Find a Haitian resto or bar where students hung out. Ask questions. Shoot arrows in the dark, see if one strikes home.”

“Another wild goose chase?” René’s voice lowered. “Look, you haven’t heard the last from Mireille. She’s desperate, she’ll find you. Tomorrow there’s the contractor to deal with at the office. I’m at La D
é
fense. You have to concentrate on work.”

True.

“Have you seen the office, René? It’s knee-deep in plaster. You can’t hear yourself think for the sound of drills.”

“Work at home.”

“Good idea.”

Her exhausted body cried out for sleep. The twenty-four-hour kind. But if she didn’t attempt to find out what lay behind this . . . she wouldn’t sleep a wink anyway.

“First I’ll take you home. Then I’ll take a taxi.”

René didn’t argue, just opened the car door and slumped back against the seat.

She pulled into his underground garage on rue de la Reynie. “There’s something you’re not telling me, René.”

In the dark garage, she felt his warm hand on hers. “You’re obsessed with Mireille.” He paused. “But it’s been almost two years since Yves was murdered, and we never talk about it.”

She twisted the copper puzzle ring on her third finger, the ring Yves had given her the night before his murder. Yves, her fiance for a brief night, had been an investigative journalist. She’d tried to get over his death. Did René think she was try-ing to avoid her grief for Yves by distracting herself with Mireille? She didn’t want to talk about it.

“What’s to say?”

“So, no ‘bad boys’ in sight?”

Edouard? Attractive, but she didn’t trust him.

“Not a one, partner,” she said. “For now, that’s fine. I burden you enough with my nonexistent love life. You’re sweet, René.” She leaned across the seat and bent to kiss his cheek.

He felt rigid.

“You all right, René? Let me help you upstairs and get you settled in. I noticed you limping.”

“That’s all you noticed?”

She could feel the atmosphere change. She’d said the wrong thing.

“Of course not,” she said. “Your idea about that startup, get-ting in on the ground floor, is brilliant.”

“I’ve heard things . . . a boom,” R
é
ne said, “but if it’s got no foundation. . . .”

Second thoughts? He’d seemed so excited the other night. She’d felt cautious, for once more careful than René, wary of the dot.com bubble hype.

“Let’s explore it,” she said. “Anyway, we’ll talk tomorrow.”

An odd look shone in his eyes. Then he opened the door. Slammed it.

What had she done wrong now?

“René?” She ran after him to the elevator.

He turned. Worry replaced the anger in his tone. “Forget this so-called sister, Aimée.”

“Mirielle? I can’t . . . she’s . . . I think she’s really my sister.”

“And that proves what?”

“A family. The only one I have.”

“Right. And now you’re in danger, too. Don’t you see?”

“I’ll handle it, René.”

“If you’re out of commission, how can you help her? Or our business?”

“It was selfish of me to put you in danger. Forgive me.”

“Like it’s the first time, Aimée?” He shook his head. “Talk to Morbier. If you don’t trust him, well, you know other
flics,
right?”

She nodded. But it had gone beyond that. The help she needed had to come from the other side. “You’re right, René,” is what she said.

* * *

WERE MEN WATCHING her apartment? She was tired, her nerves were frayed. She didn’t want to find out. She reached Madame Cachou, her concierge, on her cellphone. Despite the late hour, Madame agreed to mind Miles Davis, who loved her.

After a ten-minute walk, Aim
é
e rounded the block onto rue du Louvre. The corner café’s windows were dark. A couple holding hands were walking to the corner; otherwise the street lay deserted. No watchers in sight. A light shone from the office window below that of Leduc Detective.

She kept to the shadows. Inside her building, she mounted two flights of the narrow staircase in the dark. From the landing, she could hear the muted sound of classical radio, a France-Inter symphony concert, the real estate broker’s usual choice at this time of night. The only other occupant, on the floor below her, who worked late. She took off her heels and padded upstairs barefoot. The dim single bulb barely revealed the hall’s scuffed woodwork. A smell of floor wax lingered in the air.

Leduc Detective’s frosted glass door was dark, the landing deserted. She clasped her Swiss Army Knife in one hand, her office keys in the other. Silence, apart from the last strains of the Haydn concerto below.

She unlocked the door and shuddered when the bolt made a noise. Then she stuck her knife out. Fine plaster dust, visible in the light from the window, carpeted the floor. Like a moonscape, plastic sheets covered the desks and furniture.

The room was empty.

Her shoulders sagged in relief. Lathe and plaster poked from the opening cut in the wall. Cloutier’s tools littered the parquet floor.

She wedged the top of the Louis Quinze chair under the door handle and stacked phone books on the seat. She’d make it difficult for anyone to break in; and if they did, she’d be ready.

From the coat rack she took her shearling suede coat, bought in the market in Istanbul. Tired, she pulled off the plastic covering the recamier, set her shoes beneath it and her knife within easy reach under the cushion. She pulled the coat over her and rolled up her jacket for a pillow.

But, too on edge to sleep, she grew aware of a thumping sound. Wide awake now, she grabbed her knife. Her gaze swept the dark outlines of her desk, the fax machine covered by plastic. No one. The chair stood firmly braced against the door.

She sniffed, finding only the smell of decay and old wood from the open wall. The hint of sewer gas. She tiptoed bare-foot to the radiator as the sounds got louder. Faster. Listening, she backed up against the marble fireplace. Rue du Louvre’s globed streetlights were reflected as hazy pinpoints in the tarnished beveled mirror. There was an invitation to a
vernissage,
a painter friend’s gallery opening, wedged in the frame. From last summer.

She heard a muted shout, what sounded like cries, and then the rhythmic thumps ceased, followed by a woman’s throaty laugh. No wonder, she thought, and she stepped back. The realtor below had a new paramour. He went through new secretaries with regularity.

She stared at her father’s photo on the shelf; even in the dim light, she could make out his crooked, tired smile. It was a mask, she realized; the past and his secrets had gone with his ashes to the marble drawer in the Père Lachaise mausoleum. Why hadn’t he told her she had a sister? Had he been ashamed? Or was he ignorant of Mireille’s existence? She’d never know.

Weary, she turned back toward the recamier. The fax- machine light glowed like a beacon under its plastic cover. Transmission received.

She lifted the plastic and took the sheet of paper from the machine. She turned on her penlight and read it. There was no header. Only three words: WHERE IS SHE?

She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote: WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHO ARE YOU? She entered the transmission number at the top of the fax, slotted the sheet of paper into the machine, and hit SEND.

The fax machine grumbled to life, the paper fed through, and she waited. A moment later it came out.

The digital message read: “No response at this transmission number.”

She ran to the window, staring onto rue du Louvre. It was deserted, apart from parked cars. The Louvre’s
Cour Carré
was a faint outline in the distance. There was not even a taxi, nor a stray cat.

Whoever may have been watching her office had melted into the shadows. Or were they on their way up? Her spine stiffened.

She had to find a place that was off the radar. Not a hotel. A place where she’d be invisible: hostels, student squats, the Latin Quarter.

The sooner the better.

She threw disks and download programs, along with a pair of stockings and red-soled Louboutin heels, inside a bag. She’d emptied the armoire to protect her clothes from construction dust. But on a hanger, sheathed in the dry cleaner’s plastic, she found a vintage beaded Schiaparelli jacket. For now, that would do. The old station clock read 11:45 P.M., so the Metro was still running.

She slipped on her metallic-bronze ballet slippers, shouldered the laptop and her bag. Outside on the landing, she paused and listened. Quiet, except for the scurrying of mice and the gush of a water pipe somewhere. At the ground level, she opened the cellar door and descended past the garbage bins to the cellar. She ran over the beaten-earth floor to the rear exit leading to rue Bailleul, ascended a series of stone steps, then scanned the pavement. No one.

In the moonlight, she hurried through the back streets to catch the last Metro.

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY carved wooden door of the Collège des Irlandais clicked open. Aimée stepped into the dark hush of a stone-flagged
porte cochère.
The college had once been an Irish seminary where Napoleon’s brother spent his student days, later a military hospital during the Franco-Prussian war, and, following the Libèration in 1944, a shelter for dis-placed persons. Now little remained of its past except the ornate woodwork and the whispers of ghosts. It now functioned as the Irish Cultural Center and visiting artist’s residence.

Aimée followed a flashlight beam to the woman holding it. She wore gold mules and a checked wool coat over her night-gown. A blue hairnet framed thin plucked eyebrows and a lined face that Aimée could see had been beautiful.

“Albertine?
Merci.
I feel lucky you had a room.”

“You should,” Albertine said and coughed. A smoker’s cough. “Last one. If it weren’t for your father, may he rest in peace. . . .” She made the sign of the cross. “He got me the job . . . well . . . otherwise, we’d both be on the street. This way.”

Aimée followed her through the tall glass doors, up a worn stone staircase with a balustrade of sculpted iron, for several flights. Albertine showed her into a white-walled room with a high sloping ceiling containing a white bed with a metal frame. Spartan, silent, a phone jack and modern outlets. Perfect.

“Showers and facilities on the third floor. Five francs. Meals, you’re on your own.”

Before Aimée could thank her again, Albertine disappeared.

Aimée took the surge protector strip from her bag and plugged it in, then attached the wire to the phone jack for a dial-up Internet connection. She plugged in the mobile printer/fax and her phone to recharge it. The view from the window set into the mansard roof was of a gravel-covered U-shaped courtyard.

She kicked off her ballet slippers and collapsed onto the crisp white duvet. She inhaled the fresh laundry scent and booted up her laptop. Was she safe? For a while, maybe.

She struggled to keep her eyes open. A second fax came in, but her eyes had already closed. It read: NAUGHTY GIRL YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE.

Thursday Afternoon

AIMÉE AWOKE TO pounding on the door. She bolted upright, still dressed, her laptop on the pillow. Sunlight streamed in, warming her toes. Disoriented, she wondered where she was for a moment.

A machine roared. She heard banging on the wall. She saw the last fax still in the machine. Fear galvanized her, and she looked around for an object to defend herself with. Not even a chair or a lamp. She unplugged the surge protector and rooted in her bag. Armed with the surge protector in one hand, her Swiss Army knife in her other, she rushed to the door as the knob turned.

She’d been so tired, she’d forgotten to lock the door!

A small woman in a babushka and a blue smock walked in with her arms full.

“Housekeeping.” She screamed and dropped the sheets.

“
Désolée,
I thought. . . .” Aimée put the knife down. “For-give me, I didn’t mean. . . .”

The women backed out, still screaming.

Aimée caught up to her in the hallway and held her by the arm. “Nightmares. I’m sorry.”

The woman looked unsure. “But it’s afternoon,” she said.

Aimée checked her Tintin watch. Two P.M. She’d slept for hours.

“You’re right,” she said. “Let me help you with those sheets.”

By the time Rena—as she insisted Aimée call her—changed the sheets Aimée hadn’t slept in and, in broken French, imparted a traditional Latvian cure for nightmares—a grated ginger bath—Aimée had figured out a plan and called Martine.

Her work could wait till later.

AIMÉE ENTERED THE arched portal of the hamman that stood opposite the mosque. She followed a woman holding an armful of towels through the swinging double doors.

“
Le gommage?
The works?” said a disembodied voice. Aimée saw the flash of a gold chain around a woman’s neck through the vapor tinged by eucalyptus. She’d arranged to meet Martine so she could get information and a change of clothes. But as Martine hadn’t shown up yet, she might as well get the dirt off first.

The door behind her swung open. Voices rose over the clat-ter of tea cups, the rest lost as the door pinged shut.

“Loofah scrub, steam, hot soak. Seventy-five francs.”

Aimée paid.

“Cabin 14.”

She stripped, pulled a thick white towel around her middle, then joined the figures misted in steam in the tiled bath area. Her gaze couldn’t penetrate the rising vapors.

“Next!”

Aimée felt an arm grip hers, then the hard slap of slippery marble as she was deposited on a slab. She winced as the Turkish woman’s loofah raked over her body, gritting her teeth at the
gommage,
a full-body exfoliation. Strong hands lathered her back with black soap, and the loofah process was repeated. Then repeated again. She closed her eyes in the veil of steam, sweat pouring off her. Already she’d lost several layers of her skin, scrubbed raw in the soapy, warm water.

“Done.” The woman grunted, her black hair matted on her forehead.

The next victim, a perspiring fiftyish matron, took her place on the Turkish woman’s slab. Murmurs came from the women amidst the slaps of the masseuse and splashes of water.

“Plunge time.” A girl wearing rubber flipflops guided her through the steam over the slick floor. Aimée felt like a shriveled whale. “Take a step, then a big breath.”

Sweat dripped from the corners of her eyes. She held her breath as she plunged into the blue-tiled ice-cold bath. Every pore came alive. It was like the chill of salt water in the aqua-blue depths of the sea. She emerged sputtering, breathless.

“Showoff,” said Martine, who was sprawled on the slick marble step.

“Coward. You should try it.” Steam emanated from Aimée’s body. She grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her head like a turban, and joined Martine. She noted Martine’s flushed face and furrowed brow. A bad feeling hit Aimée in the gut. Had something happened to Martine? She breathed in the steam and coughed. “What’s wrong, Martine?”

“Gilles’s ex-wife moved back from Buenos Aires.” Martine leaned back, a towel wrapped around her middle, her hair en-folded in a turban. “She’s made an offer on an apartment down-stairs from us. Can you imagine?” Martine expelled a breath in disgust, not waiting for Aimée’s reply. “And don’t get me started on her newest craze for Scientology.”

Aimée wiped her forehead. Comparing notes was their tradition in the hamman; they’d been doing so since they were fourteen. But she didn’t have time for it now.

“Martine, what did you find out?”

“But you’re glowing,” her friend said.

Nonplussed, Aimée wiped the sweat from her eyes. Her skin felt as soft as a newborn baby’s.

Martine surveyed her under moisture-beaded eyelashes. “Anyone I know?”

“Blame it on the loofah.”

A shrug of Martine’s red lobster-like shoulders. “Find a bad boy. A fling will enhance your vitality,
joie de vivre.
”

“Never mind my affairs. Last night Mireille was almost shot, and she’s disappeared again.”

Martine’s face wavered in the rising vapor. Aimée heard the masseuse’s slaps and water splashing. “How do you know she’s your sister?”

Aimée picked at the thick towel. “I saw her photo of Papa.”

“That’s it? She wants something, Aimée,” Martine opined.

“Don’t you have something to tell me?” Aimée asked.

Martine splashed cold water on her neck. “You won’t like it, Aimée.”

She didn’t like this much already.

“There’s something you should read,” Martine said. “Let’s have tea, and you can look at it then.”

After showering, Aimée slipped into the tailored black agnés b. dress Martine had brought her.

“Keep it,” Martine said. “Every time I quit smoking, it no longer fits.”

In the hammam’s tea room they sat at a brass tray table. Behind them were washed walls, turquoise and gold pat-terned tiles, and Moorish arched windows. A sparrow flew in through the slit of a window and perched on the hanging brass lamp.

Martine bit into a crescent-shaped sugar-coated Moroccan pastry, then reached for the hookah. Aimée tried to ignore the thick tobacco smell and wished she didn’t want a drag so much.

“Think of Chanel No. 5. It leaves an impression, hugs the body, yet a hint of mystery remains.”

Aimée sipped from the little gold-scrolled glass of mint tea. “I suppose you mean something by that, Martine?”

“According to my connection, Professeur Azacca Benoît consulted for both the World Bank and IMF.”

Aimée had known about the World Bank, but not the International Monetary Fund. “In what way?”

“There’s a program of microbusiness seed grants for Haitian animal husbandry: that is, pigs, goats, chicken farms; you know, ‘building an infrastructure.’” Martine set an
Economist
article dated earlier in the year on the brass tray table. “Here’s the kicker. Read this.”

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) faced tough questions about their lending policies during annual meetings in Prague in early December.

Critics are asking how the IMF could allow tens of mil-lions of dollars loaned to Russia to disappear, and why the World Bank continues to issue loans in countries where corruption is rampant. U.S. authorities are investigating allegations that IMF loans to Russia were illegally funneled through the Bank of New York as part of a US $7 billion money-laundering scandal.

France, meanwhile, is studying an internal World Bank report alleging that over 20 percent of funds for projects in Haiti had been lost to “some leakage”—that is, siphoned off by corrupt officials.

A criticism leveled against both institutions is that they are disbursing credits without appropriate loan conditions or monitoring programs to ensure that the money goes to the intended recipients.

Earlier this year, finance ministers from a group of lead-ing industrial nations welcomed steps already taken by the IMF to foster improved accounting standards and compliance with legal codes in emerging markets.

“You’re implying that Benoît’s part of this corruption. How was he involved? Was he murdered in an attempt to cover up this ‘leakage’?”

Martine took a drag from the hookah and expelled a plume of smoke. “Hydrolis is the largest firm dealing with Haiti. As a matter of fact, it’s the only foreign firm still active during the upheavals.

“I didn’t have time to check much,” she continued. “But I did learn that the Hydrolis founder, Castaing Père, was an
ancien
regime type.”

“I’ve met his son, Jérôme.”

“Lucky you.” Martine took another drag from the hookah. “If he’s anything like his papa, he’s got mistresses and mulatto children all over. The tonton macoutes gouged out the father’s left eye. He made repayment in kind in several villages rumored to be harboring tonton macoutes.”

An alarm rang in Aimée’s head. “Benoît’s ear was severed,” she said.

“You see a connection?” Martine asked.

“Say Jérôme’s skimming aid funds and Benoît got wind of it.”

“Why chop off his ear?”

“I don’t know.”

“More important, Aimée, what’s Mireille got to do with it?”

“Benoît trusted her with his work, a report in a file.”

“Yet you’ve never seen it, right?” Martine lifted her eyebrows.

“Jérôme Castaing is a big contributor to Father Privert’s foundation. It runs a Feed the Children program in Haiti,” Aimée said. “Are you suggesting it’s a front, just so he appears philanthropic? I could believe it. He left a sour taste in my mouth. Too nervous by far.”

Martine expelled a stream of smoke and shook her head. “But Father Privert’s regarded as a saint there.”

“I didn’t get anywhere with him or Josephe, the political activist who runs his shelter,” Aimée said. “If they knew Mireille, they didn’t let on.”

“Political activists!” Martine said. “Call them bleeding-heart liberals who are taken in by the ‘big talk’ programs for Haiti.”

She remembered the worry on Father Privert’s face as Josephe was printing the newsletter.

“Find anything out about this Edouard?”

“I’m checking,” said Martine. “Still, my contact says due to Benoît’s consultancy, another nail has been hammered in the World Bank’s credulity coffin. The World Bank provides loans for programs requiring the borrower country to use private for-eign companies exclusively to manage basic systems.”

“But the article I found stated that Hydrolis already operates the water sewage treatment in Port-au-Prince,” Aimée said.

“Yes, but think of the rest of Haiti,” Martine said. “Aristide fought the World Bank’s privatization requirements, but he’s been deposed. Gone. Figure it this way: if Castaing’s angling to run Haiti’s entire water system, he needs the World Bank. His father wanted to privatize the water system, but never could under Duvalier. Then his company moved into Santo Domingo, then expanded to other places in the Caribbean. Global capitalization and global profiteering; but it’s almost impossible to prove.”

Aimée thought for a moment. “Say Benoît’s murder was staged as some vodou ceremony. Mireille had appeared, and Benoît helped her and trusted her. So the murderer shifted his plan to finger her for the killing. I smell a frameup, Martine.”

“You don’t know that, Aimée. Neither do I.”

“But you’re still connected to that young journalist at
Le Monde,
right? The one dying to carve his name in the investigative journalists’ Hall of Fame?”

“Stop right there, Aimée. A story needs facts, corroboration.” Martine signaled for the bill. “Not rumors. And rumors, albeit from well-placed sources, are all that I’ve heard.”

Aimée had to make Martine understand.

The server appeared with a teapot. Martine waved him away.

“Last night we interrupted a mock vodou ritual aimed at Mireille. Complete with high-powered night-sensor rifles.”

“I’ve already stuck my neck out, Aimée, and asked too many sensitive questions. No more,” Martine said. And then she looked up over the cloud of hookah smoke. “What do you mean, a vodou rite with high-powered night-sensor rifles?”

“Exactly, Martine.”

“Be careful, Aimée.”

“Mireille has Benoît’s file containing his report. And the murderer knows that.”

“Maybe you suspect Castaing,” Martine said. “But I doubt he’d be that stupid.”

“Perhaps he’s desperate. If the contents of this file jeopard-ize his proposal for the World Bank funds—”

“Big
if,
Aimée,” Martine interrupted. She leaned forward. “Look, it’s touching that you want to help Mireille.”

“She’s my sister, Martine.”

The photos, Mireille’s memories, and the card her mother had never sent seemed to substantiate her claim. Martine had several sisters, which fact Aimée envied in secret despite their continual saga of sibling rivalries that never altered their closeness.

“At least it looks like it’s true . . . that’s what she believes.”

“And her proof?”

“Her mother wrote to Papa, there’s a photo of them together. . . .”

“A half-sister who’s a homicide suspect!” Martine said. “You’ve done all you can, Aimée. They’ll implicate you next. Morbier implied as much, didn’t he?”

But she couldn’t simply abandon Mireille.

Wouldn’t.

“DNA.” Martine said. “Take a simple to test to find out if she’s your sister.”

“What?”

Martine glanced at her cell phone. “My appointment. I’ve got to go.” She stood up. “Get a sample of her DNA.”

“Easier said than done. She’s in hiding, terrified.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s terrified,” Martine said.

Aimée bit her lip.

“
Tiens,
I didn’t mean it like that.” Martine put her hand on Aimée’s arm. “I just want to protect you, Aimée.”

Protect her? But that angle of Mireille’s chin, that look . . . like her father’s. Of course Mireille had to be her sister.

“It’s best to know the truth, even if it hurts.”

The truth. An elusive thing at best. Her father had never revealed Mireille’s existence; she had a mother whose name her father had refused to mention after she’d left, as if she had never existed. Her life was entangled by the cobwebs of the unspoken past.