Murder in the Latin Quarter (26 page)

“The thugs you hired to find Benoît’s report ended up killing him. And still didn’t find it.”

“I didn’t hire them. You’re naïve.”

“Benoît trusted my sister, an illegal, whose aunt came from his village, rather than you. Were you the enemy?”

“You’re guessing.”

Aimée thought hard . . . coming up blank. . . . She pulled out the papers she’d taken from Edouard’s fax machine and read them. One concerned Feed the Children. Father Privert’s organization.

“Benoît’s file concerns water, doesn’t it?” Aimée guessed.

From the look on Léonie’s face, her words had hit home.

“Father Privert believes polluted water causes more children’s deaths than hunger,” she said. “Hydrolis operates water-delivery systems and sewage-treatment plants. Potential projects worth millions are awaiting World Bank funding. You and the Trade Delegation must be getting a hefty cut. You hired thugs to murder Benoît before he could deliver the results of his inquiry to the World Bank. The circle of salt, slicing off Benoît’s ear . . . all done to divert suspicion to the tonton macoutes.”

“Salt’s for purification.” Léonie shook her head. “You’ve got it wrong.”

She’d wondered about that herself. But Léonie knew more than she’d let on. “Why don’t I believe you?” Aimée said.

“You’re resisting the spirit,” said Léonie, her voice matter-of-fact. “The force is working through me.”

What did she mean, Aimée wondered.

“Tonton macoutes peel the victim’s face off,” Léonie said, “to prevent the spirit from finding rest in the afterlife.” Her eyes pierced Aimée’s. “But you know that. I sense it. Ogoun protected Benoît. He still does.”

Aimée stepped back. Mireille’s words came back to her . . . her mother’s face . . . she had been unable to talk about it. Had the tonton macoutes done that to her mother?

Léonie’s gaze was somewhere else. Far away.

“I think I understand now,” Léonie said.

“Understand what?” Aimée asked?

“Jérôme Castaing emulates his father,” Léonie said. “When Duvalier, the doctor who helped cure yaws, the tropical dis-ease ravaging Haiti, a
noirist
—dark as night—who spoke
Kreyòl,
a man of the people, came to power, he was a good man. He gave us pride.”

What did this have to do with Hydrolis? Aimée shivered in the drafty vestibule.

“At first, we regarded Duvalier as a savior, like Toussaint l’Overture, the slave who freed our country from French rule. Later Duvalier changed. But that’s another story,” said Léonie. “His tonton macoutes resented the French. They ambushed Castaing, a geographer surveying the countryside, and tortured him. He lost an eye, but he lived; he was luckier than most. Duvalier interceded to save him. But Castaing figured Duvalier owed him more than that. He made the whole island pay.”

“Jérôme’s doing the same?”

“Jérôme’s in love.”

What did that mean?

“He’s weak,” Léonie continued.

“Weak men hire others to murder,” Aimée said.

“Not he. He’s a shrewd businessman. He took control of his father’s Port-au-Prince water plant in the eighties, and still exploits us because he owns our water. If he killed Benoît, he’d be the first one suspected. He’s not that inept, nor that brave. It’s someone else.”

“Who?”

Léonie closed her eyes, tired from talking. She leaned on her cane, then shouldered her purse. “Leave an old woman alone.”

“Look at this.” Aimée pulled the photos from her bag. The black-and-white dog-eared snapshot of her father and the one of Mireille as an infant.

She took a breath. “That’s my father.”

“Aaah, so that’s your sister,” Léonie said, a knowing look in her eye. “Fruit of her mother’s student days in Paris,
non? Les cocos,
we called them. After Duvalier cut student subsidies, the girls returned home. The population swelled in 1960.”

“Mireille was born in 1959. See?” She turned the photo over. “She’s an infant.”

“
Pfft,
what does it matter?”

Some kind of mistake? The date written wrong?

Wearily, Léonie said, “My father took command of the Interior Ministry. But when Duvalier unleashed the tonton macoutes, who hated foreigners, they slaughtered the babies and their mothers. . . .”

Like Mireille’s mother. But somehow Mireille had escaped.

“She’s beautiful,” Léonie said. “Reminds me of a woman I knew. He liked that type.”

Aimée was lost. “What do you mean?”

“Castaing.”

“But didn’t you say. . . .”

“Castaing supervised the building of a water plant in the mid-sixties. After all, he knew the land and he proved useful to Duvalier. An unholy alliance, until Duvalier had no more use for him.”

Aimée rocked back on her heels. “There’s a point to this, I assume. But your father served in a corrupt government. Like Castaing, he used Haiti.”

“Sometimes the path ahead . . . well, it’s not always easy to choose.” She sighed. “We wanted to live.”

Every time she tried to pin Léonie down, the woman drifted somewhere else.

“The motive for Benoît’s murder was personal,” Aimée said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Léonie stared at Aimée’s bag. “Where did you get that?”

She was looking at the straw-colored burlap sachet hanging by a red string from her bag.

“This?” Aimée pulled it out. “It fell from Edouard’s pocket.”

Léonie’s outstretched hands shook. “Please, give it to me. That’s good juju.” Her voice cracked. “Powerful.
My
juju.”

Surprised, Aimée handed the pouch to Léonie, who kissed it and crossed herself.

“You’ve been sent. I understand,” Léonie said. “Not the police.
You
must find the killer.”

Aimée looked at her, nonplussed. Nothing she’d said so far had moved Léonie. But this bit of burlap did. “Then will you withdraw this proposal from consideration?”

“Find me Benoît’s file,” Léonie said, a sheen of perspiration on her brow. “Tell Edouard I need what he stole from me. All of it. I know how to help him now.”

Tension knotted at the base of Aimée’s spine. She wouldn’t give Léonie Benoît’s data without knowing its significance and why he had been killed.

”I don’t get it. If Benoît’s file contains information on Hydrolis, then. . . .” She hesitated, trying to piece this together.

“Now. I must have it before the meeting,” said Léonie.

“Meeting?” Aimée asked.

“There’s no time to explain.” Léonie’s hands trembled, her pallor highlighted in the eerie light cast by the illuminated tenant roster behind her.

This made even less sense to Aimée.

“No time to explain why you want Benoît’s file? Or what it signifies?” Aimée said. “You’re lying.”

Her phone rang.

About time. She hoped it was Serge with the information she’d asked him for. But before she could answer the phone, Léonie’s hands gripped hers. Ice-cold hands.

“
Non,
I am telling the truth. Trust me. The existence of Haiti is at stake.”

The door opened to a blast of wind-driven rain.

Aimée was thrown against the wall. Then her head struck the worn marble step. She felt no more.

Friday Afternoon

RENÉ LISTENED TO Aimée’s phone ring and ring. Why didn’t she answer? She often forgot to recharge its battery. His stitches ached with a dull throb, but thanks to the old woman healer his realigned hip felt close to normal. Amazing.

He waited for Aimée’s phone to shift to voicemail. She’d gone off half-cocked about a sister, wishing it to be true. Most people wanted to run away from their family. She ran headlong toward one, the way she did everything. Why couldn’t she understand the danger?

“Monsieur Friant, if you’re ready?” said Bertilet, the Aèrospa-tiale manager.

Behind Bertilet lay the glass window of his corner sky-scraper office in La Défense. Bertilet sat forward, expectant in his navy double-breasted suit, red tie, and light blue shirt. Standard attire for upper-tier bureacrats, René thought, like a uniform.

René turned off his phone.

“Of course, Monsieur Bertilet. Please refer to the first page, our description of services.”

René cleared his throat as he aligned the pages of Leduc’s computer security proposal, but he knew the pitch by heart. And Leduc Detective needed this computer security contract.

“Leduc Detective uses analytical and investigative techniques to identify, collect, examine, and preserve evidence or information that is stored or encoded on computers,” René said. “And, in your firm’s case, to provide evidence of either a specific or general activity.”

“I understand, Monsieur Friant. But in what way?” Bertilet asked.

René forced a smile. Yesterday he’d explained this to the committee, but it seemed that Monsieur Bertilet, the bureau chief, needed to hear it in person. Yet again.

“Our forensic techniques can be of value in a wide variety of situations, including simply retracing steps taken when data has been lost.”

“Give me some common scenarios,” Bertilet said.

“Employee Internet abuse,” René said. “Unauthorized dis-closure of corporate information and data. Industrial espionage. Damage assessment following an incident. Criminal fraud and deception cases.”

Bertilet tapped his pen on the desk. “How do you approach a computer forensic investigation?”

“It’s a detailed science,” René said. “But depending on the case, we secure the subject system, make a copy of the hard drive, and identify and recover all files, including those that have been deleted from the hard drive.”

René saw Bertilet’s eyes begin to glaze over. He’d better cut this short.

“Throughout the investigation, we stress that a full audit log of the firm’s activities will be maintained.”

René paused to let this sink in. “Monsieur Bertilet, I’ve painted with broad strokes. Before we take a case, we must know the details, the goal you have in mind. And then we tailor our work to establish or uncover the pertinent data.”

Bertilet nodded; a small sigh escaped his lips. He sat back in his swivel chair. Behind him was a panorama of highrises dotting La Défense.

“We have a data leak, Monsieur Friant,” he admitted.

After three days of meetings, now it came out. But René had expected it all along. Like a dog with a bone, he wanted to sink his teeth into this. And earn a nice check.

“I know Leduc Detective can help you, Monsieur,” he said.

“Monsieur Friant, give me a few minutes. I’d like to call in a colleague to hear more details of your proposal,” Bertilet said.

René smiled. “Of course, Monsieur.”

At long last he felt the time was ripe. One more presentation and the contract would be Leduc’s.

Relieved, he stepped into the hallway. Stainless steel, win-dowed, but soulless, overlooking the vista of the Paris skyline in the distance. He punched in Aimée’s number.

“Why didn’t you answer my calls, Aimée?”

Crackling came over the line. A scream. Scuffling.

“Aimée?” René froze.

He heard a church bell peal. Voices. “ . . . truck . . . imbe-cile . . . on rue Lacepede. . . .”

He was cut off. He hit the REDIAL key. Busy.

René’s hands trembled as he imagined the worst. An accident? Had they kidnapped her?

He was helpless. What could he do, stuck in a meeting? And then he did what he had insisted Aimée do from the beginning: he called Morbier.

Friday Afternoon

SWIRLS OF LIGHT danced and faded. The sweet acrid smell of cigar smoke drifted across Aimée’s consciousness. And then Léonie’s haggard face came back to her, the scream, the dull thuds, and the blow sending her across the vestibule.

What felt like cold hard stone lay beneath her. She opened her eyes and looked at the worm-eaten wood of a doorframe. And she realized she’d managed to drag herself into the stair-case leading down to the cellar.

Where was Léonie? She reached for her bag. It was gone.

And with it Benoît’s report!

When she leaned forward, her head reeled. Her damp clothes clung to her skin. She had to get help. She gripped the doorframe, pulled herself up, forcing herself to take deep breaths to get oxygen to her brain. Bit by bit her head cleared; the sparks of light faded from her vision. She heard low voices, the beeping sounds of a car backing up. Were they returning to torture her for information? To kill her?

She leaned against the wall as she made her way across the worn floor. The cigar-smoke smell was stronger now. She heard wood-scraping and grunting noises. Into her line of vision came the black-and-white diamond-shaped tiles of the floor and a hypodermic needle lying on it.

“Watch out for that corner. Careful!”

“What in the world?” asked a shrill voice. “A junkie’s shoot-ing up in our building!”

A woman in a floral print dress pointed to Aimée. To the side stood two men in overalls hefting a harpsichord up the broad staircase. One chewed a cigar.

“
Non,
Madame, I was attacked,” Aimée said, rubbing her head. “My bag was stolen.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” the woman snorted.

“Didn’t you see her, a well-dressed older woman?”

“Who?”

“She wore a white suit,” Aimée said. “Used a cane.”

“I’m calling the
flics.
” The woman glared at her.

“She got into a car,” said the man in overalls. The cigar bobbed in his mouth as he spoke. “Didn’t look too happy about it either.”

Aimée winced as she touched the bruise on her head, then dusted her jacket off.

Things fell into place as her mind cleared. “You mean she was forced into a car in that narrow street?”

“She was giving him hell, too,” he said.

“What’s this got to do with your trespassing in a private building?” said the woman.

“Anything else you remember?” Aimée asked and felt the bulge in her jacket pocket. Her phone, still there, thank God.

“Typical, eh, blocking my truck, those bourgeois who think they own the street!“

She didn’t appreciate the working-class chip on his shoulder. “What kind of car?”

“Posh. Dark windows, a black Mercedes,” he said.

“I’m getting the building supervisor, young woman!” The woman fumed, and her heels clattered up the stairs.

Aimée hit Morbier’s number. Busy. Then saw the phone number of the last caller. It had been René. But she hadn’t spoken to him. Or had the knock on her head affected her memory?

Worried, she tried René’s number.

“Aimée! Are you all right?”

“I’ll live. My head hurts.”

“What happened, Aimée?”

“Someone whacked me and sent me flying across the vestibule, that’s the last . . .
non,
I remember reaching for my phone but Léonie grabbed my hand.” Her heart sank. “They took her and my bag with Benoît’s file in it.”

“But you did answer,” he said. “I heard a scream, noises. You worried me!”

“I did?” She must have hit the ANSWER button without realizing it. “What exactly did you hear, René?”

“Enough to make me alert Morbier,” he said. “Where are you?”

“René, didn’t you hear anything else?”

“What if you’ve got a concussion?” he said. “After the attack you suffered in the Bastille, they warned that you could lose your vision again.”

That attack had resulted in her temporary blindness. She shoved that worry aside.

“Men’s voices or a name . . . did you catch anything?”

“It happened so fast.”

“Anything, René? Please think.”

A sigh that she knew was from frustration came over the phone.

“I heard a woman’s voice saying ‘Leave her,’ then a man’s.

‘Get her to Castaing,’” he said. “But I think they were inter-rupted. Someone else came in talking about a harpsichord.”

So Castaing was directing the thugs.

And Léonie had told Castaing’s thugs to leave Aimée. Now they—Castaing—had the file. This file everyone wanted. And she’d had it and lost it.

She would have to rely on Serge’s take on the contents she’d faxed over to him. At least Serge had a copy of the report.

“Do me a favor, René?”

“Now?” René said. “I’ve just finished the Aèrospatiale presentation. The chief’s almost hooked, he’s consulting with higher-ups. I may still be needed.”

This couldn’t wait. “So you’re on a break. Can’t you run a check on Hydrolis’s pending contracts with the World Bank?”

“Hack around to see what I can find out?” René said, disgust edging his voice. “Why don’t you leave this alone, Aimée?”

“I can’t, René! Please! They stole Benoît’s file.”

Her phone clicked.

“No doubt that’s Morbier,” René said. “Tell him the story, Aimée, like you should have from the beginning.”

And he hung up.

“Leduc, what’s happened?” Morbier’s voice was broken up by static.

“Léonie Obin, a Haitian trade delegate, has been abducted, Morbier.”

Looking at her Tintin watch, she realized that less than ten minutes could have elapsed since she’d been knocked out. “From rue de Lanneau. No more than ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“Eh?” The reception wavered in and out.

She described the Mercedes. “I think they’re headed to Jérôme Castaing’s firm, Hydrolis, on Square Paul Painlevé across from the Cluny Museum.”

“What. . . .” Morbier’s voice cut out.

“Did you get that? Please hurry, Morbier.”

“Then you’re all right, Leduc?” Concern suffused his voice.

It took her off guard. Since when had Morbier worried about her?

“Besides bruises, feeling shaky, and an aching head? Sure.”

“Your partner was worried. He heard screaming.”

“They stole my bag. Benoît’s report was inside. You’ve got to recover it, Morbier.”

A long sigh came over the phone. “What’s that got to do with Mireille?”

She shifted in her damp heels, hating to lie to him.

“They murdered Benoît for this file, Morbier,” she said. “If you go right now, you can recover it and Léonie Obin—”

“So you’re making good on our deal?” he interrupted.

“Deal?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot, Leduc,” Morbier said. “I’m ready to do my part, to inquire on Mireille’s behalf to Immigration.”

He still thought she’d turn in Mireille. He’d better think again.

“Listen, Morbier—”

But he’d hung up.

“You’re trespassing. Get out.” The woman had returned with the building guard. Meanwhile, the harpsichord movers sat on the steps, watching and smoking.

“This is a private residence. We can’t have junkies nodding off here.”

Aimée edged her way out. But not before she caught the movers’ gaze up her legs.

She needed a Doliprane for her head and to take it easy. Guy, her eye surgeon and former lover, had warned that another knock on the head could result in permanent optic nerve damage.

“Take your filthy disgusting drugs with you!”

The woman kicked the syringe out onto the cobbles at Aimée’s feet. Talk about anger. But the woman obviously knew that diseases could be borne by needles and hadn’t touched it.

Aimée bent down to inspect the clear liquid of a predrawn dosage in the syringe. An orange plastic cap topped the needle. “Study A” and “X011” were typed on the plastic label, which also said ALDOR in tiny print. Aldor was a large pharmaceutical firm.

Was Léonie a junkie? Or had the
mecs
drugged her before kidnapping her?

Using her scarf, Aimée picked it up and, with her finger-nails, peeled off the label. No way would she carry a syringe in her pocket. She wrapped the syringe in an old flyer and debated how to discard it safely. She stuck it in the nearby clear green-tinged plastic garbage bag, labeled VIGILANCE PROPRETÉ, which had been used by the City instead of bins after the 1995 bombings.

Now she had no bag, no cash, no keys, no makeup. Only wet clothes and her cell phone.

VINCENT LOOKED UP from polishing glasses at the bar counter of the Piano Vache.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, grinning. “You’ve given up on pigs and porcine experts.”

If only she could.

He set the glass down. “Aimée, you’re shivering,” he ex-claimed. “And you don’t look too good.”

“How about a drink, Vincent?” she said. “And a little help.”

Twenty minutes later, after a double espresso, a full-strength Doliprane pain reliever, a hundred-franc loan from Vincent, and a change of clothes borrowed from the evening waitress, who kept a set under the counter, Aimée stepped out into rue Laplace. The ache in her head had subsided. Her hand was cupped to her phone. If only the waitress’s borrowed jeans hadn’t been so tight that they cut off the circulation in her thighs.

“Serge, what do you mean your assistant shredded my fax?”

Serge, her pathologist friend at the Institut Medico Legal, cleared his throat as Aimée listened. She clutched the plastic Printemps shopping bag holding her wet clothes, wishing she didn’t look like a hooker from the
banlieues
. Sequins and gold braid studded the midriff-hugging jacket; underneath that, she wore a tight hot-pink tank top, and she’d tied a paisley scarf around her hair. She’d forgone the leather belt emblazoned with
“Cherie.”
At least the outfit was dry. And the men who had attacked her and knocked her out wouldn’t recognize her.

“Next time, Aimée, alert me that you’re faxing something,” Serge said. “Don’t just spring it on me. Since Diana’s death, people have broken in to steal info. We shred all faxes now. It’s policy.”

She wanted to kick something. Shredded! Her fault for not checking earlier. She’d counted on Serge!

“I did call! Left you a voicemail. I guess you didn’t get it.

“But,” she continued, “of course you read the pages before they were shredded,
non?
I’m en route to the morgue; you can tell me what they mean when I get there.”

“I’m sorry
,
Aimée,” Serge said. “I need to finish some pathology findings before I pick the twins up from school. They have come down with raging ear infections.”

Again? His energetic preschool boys had more illnesses than any other children she knew. But then all her friends were single.

She needed to calm down, to control her frustration. She’d get nowhere by annoying him. If Morbier didn’t nab the thugs with Benoît’s file at Castaing’s office, she had a big fat nothing. They could have destroyed it already. And the only copy had been shredded at the morgue.

“Serge,” she said, “I know you’re busy. But you must have read it first. Did any of it make sense to you?”

“I’m leaving in ten minutes.”

Her heart sank.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t read it?”

“Refresh my memory, eh? I get so many faxes,” he said.

“Three pages on graph paper filled with equations,” she said, “chemical formulas, statistics. No cover letter.”

“Wait a minute: let me ask my assistant.” Serge spoke to someone in the background.

Aimée was near the crowded bus stop on tree-lined Boulevard Saint Michel when she realized she had no change for the bus. An autumnal orange light spilled over the mansard roofs, making them glint like firebursts. Orange and red fallen leaves crack-led under her feet in the lengthening shadows. The evenings were getting dark earlier now as the equinox approached.

“There were formulas for mercury and lead compounds,” Serge said. “That’s what my assistant remembers. He says it piqued his curiosity.”

What came to mind was a World Health bulletin about toxicity in sardines in the North Sea. “Were they at toxic levels?”

“Depends on the solution,” Serge said. “But add mercury and lead to almost anything, and it becomes toxic.”

“Could it be due to old lead pipes, like water pipes?”

“The origin, you mean?”

She didn’t know what she meant.

“Sure.”

“Beats me,” he said.

Great. She heard a phone ringing. “Hold on,” Serge said.

“What’s that, Serge?”

The Number 96 bus rolled up with brakes hissing. The crowd surged forward. And she grew aware of a hand feeling her up inside the waitress’s short jacket. She slapped the hand, shooting a dirty look at the surprised offender, a middle-aged man with mouse-brown hair.

She left the bus line.

A wave of nausea rose from her stomach, then subsided. The bruise on her temple ached. She didn’t need a minor concussion right now; she needed more Doliprane.

“The team’s waiting, Serge,” a voice said in the background.

“Got to go, Aimée,” he said.

“One more thing. Does Aldor X011 mean anything to you?”

Pause. “Look, Aimée, if you’re . . . you’re. . . .”

He sounded nervous. And not much made Serge nervous, apart from his mother-in-law.

“I’ve helped you before, but . . . infection, the twins. . . . Not my field. I know a doctor who runs a good clinic.”

“What’s the matter, Serge?” She wished he’d just say it.

“If your client is infected, you must take precautions.”

Her stomach knotted.

“What’s X011, Serge?”

“Not many know about this experimental cocktail.”

She doubted that Serge meant a drink.

“The woman’s not my client, Serge.”

He took a breath. “Good. In the studies so far, it’s the only retroviral mixture that’s effective in the last stages of AIDS.”

Léonie’s hollow cheeks, her makeup, her fatigue!

She wondered if she’d read Léonie all wrong, as Edouard had. That curious sachet, her juju. She’d wanted Aimée to find Benoît’s killer, she’d told the
mecs
not to take her. Even though she was ill, she had pinned her hopes on Aimée. Tears came unbidden, dampening her eyes.