Murder in Belleville

Friday Midday

BACK IN HER APARTMENT, Aimée’s cell phone trilled in her pocket. If it was Yves, she’d let him know how busy she’d been.

“Allô, oui?” she said, in what she hoped came off as hurried yet casual.

“Leduc,” Morbier said. “How about lunch?”

“Lunch?” she asked, spilling Miles Davis’s milk on her counter.

“Café Kouris,” Morbier said. She could hear klaxons beeping in the distance.

“Where’s that?”

“Near the market on boulevard de Belleville,” he said. “By the fromagerie and beside the plastic shoes.”

Why was he so friendly all of a sudden?

He hung up before she could ask him what time.

“RENÉ, ANY luck on the Fichier findings about Sylvie aka Eugénie?” she’d written on a Post-it, stuck it on the floppy disk with Sylvie’s bank discoveries, and left it in René’s mailbox. In his hallway mirror, she swiped Chanel red across her lips, brushed on mascara, and pinched her cheeks.

She took the Métro to meet Morbier. On the way she thought about Sylvie’s bank account, the expensive Prada shoes, and the Lake Biwa pearl. None of them seemed to fit with a lifestyle in a condemned building, the Maghrébins, the hand of Fat’ma, or Hamid’s group. But her instinct told her that they meshed. How and why were the questions.

Aimée blinked in the sunlight as she emerged from the Métro. The sun wavered, then retreated behind a steel gray cloud shrouding Belleville.

Friday, market day, found a densely packed strip of stands on the long pedestrian islands, stretching from Menilmontant through Couronnes to Belleville Métro. Fruit and vegetable sellers and poissoniers carrying fish from Marseilles and Brittany mingled with merchants selling children’s clothing, pocketknives, ornate Egyptian teapots, and hair ornaments.

The unmistakable squawking of chickens sounded in her ear. Aromas of fresh mint wafted. Hawkers cried “Viens! viens!” thrusting samples of glistening Spanish melons, a thimble of pistachios, or fifty-franc Piaget lookalikes at shoppers.

The humanity varied as much as the products, Aimée thought. Nearby was the home of the French Communist Party. She passed bas Belleville, once housing the prolétariat français—a working-class bastion—now home to crumbling serrurerie metal factories, partially bricked up. Their graffitied walls were surrounded by teenagers pushing strollers speaking a patois of Arabic and verlan.

A certain charm remained, and Aimée liked that. The charm of an old world, when life moved slower and residents had time for each other, spending most of their lives in the quartier. Narrow winding passages, cafés of former époques patinaed by grime, hidden courtyards, and overgrown gardens of small dilapidated villas tucked on the hillsides existed until the dreaded permis de démolir brought the wrecking ball. The steep staircases, joining one street to another, resembled those of Montmartre, their scrolled metal balustrades worn and chipped in places.

Ahead of her, Aimée marveled at how two piano movers carried a piano up five steep and narrow floors to an apartment hardly wider than two Citroëns nose to nose.

She wondered how Sylvie/Eugénie fit into the melange that swelled the boulevard: the Tunisian Jewish bakery where a line formed while old women who ran the nearby hammam conversed with one and all from their curbside café tables, the occasional roller blader weaving in and out of the crowd, the Asian men unloading garments from their sliding-door Renault vans, the Syrian butchers with their white coats stained bloody pink, the tall ebony Senegalese man in flowing white tunic, crocheted prayer hat, and blue jogging shoes with a sport bag filled with date branches, a well-coiffed French matron tugging a wheeled shopping cart, a short one-eyed Arabe man who hawked shopping bags hanging from his arms, and the watchful men in front of the Abou Bakr Mosque near the Métro.

By the time she reached that part of the boulevard, the vegetable stands were being dismantled and crates repacked. Honey drenched cigar-shaped pastries beckoned her from a Lebanese stall but she resisted. The stench of ordure rose from the cobbles.

Aimée heard the whine of Arabe music—the same tune from before. She shuddered: She’d heard it right before the explosion.

She scanned the corner. The trouble with car bombs was that they were impossible to see. She willed herself to relax; it wouldn’t make sense for an Arabe to bomb an Arabe quartier. For a moment she felt ashamed; she was thinking like a flic.

MORBIER SAT at a café table under a white awning where rue des Maronites met the boulevard. Parked motorscooters lined the curb.

He sat smoking, fingers wrapped around a glass of vin rouge, his posture unnaturally erect due to the body brace. Normally his favorite pose was leaning back in a swivel chair at the commissariat, feet up on his cluttered desk and barking orders on the phone while chain-smoking. He still chain-smoked, and his socks were mismatched, but the suspenders were slack. He’d lost weight, she noticed. For once his wool pants stayed up on his belly without help. Sitting there he guarded his cigarette from the wind, cupping it in his palm like a street mec.

“What’s so important, Morbier?” she said, sitting down.

“Besides keeping me company?” he asked.

She eyed the carafe of wine and extra glass.

He poured her a glass, raised his, and said, “Salut.”

Gesturing toward the boulevard, he said, “I hate to think that this is what retirees do—take a walk, go to market, prepare the midday meal, visit the girlfriend, stop in the square for an aperitif. Next day, they do it all over again. The golden years!” His mouth turned down in disgust.

For a career flic like Morbier, this kind of leisure was like a slow death. Wasn’t he too old for le demon de midi—the midlife crisis?

“Forget about retiring,” she said. He’d recited this litany whenever he’d been injured or on leave and didn’t know what to do with himself.

“Morbier, soon as the brace comes off you’ll be back in the saddle.” She looked at her Tintin watch, which had stopped. “I’m curious about why you invited me to lunch.”

“All in good time,” he said, sipping his wine. “Since you’re here, notice that mec over there?”

She followed his arm and saw a short middle-aged man with mouse brown hair and prominent nose in a blue work coat. He stood in front of a tabac.

“You mean the man in the crowd,” she said. “The one I’d never notice or think twice about?”

He shrugged. “We call them Pierres, these market thieves. He’s been shadowing his mark for a good while now, weaving, ducking, and helping load the poor sucker’s van. Of course that was after he’d eyed the cashbox under the driver’s seat.”

“What are you going to do about it, Morbier?”

Morbier’s eyes lit up.

“Leduc, you’re going to go and whisper in the mec’s ear how my eyesight is perfect and it’s trained on him.”

She shrugged. “If it puts you in a good mood and makes you feel useful, it will be my plaisir” she said and stood. She knew this was Morbier’s form of manipulation—he’d make her “work” for any information he shared with her. It was just his way.

And she wanted to humor him. There was something unsettling about seeing him in the brace and alone with a carafe at the table.

A hoarse voice bellowed, “Get your burgundy onions!” and a crisp wind scattered leaves in a whirlwind dance. She had the sad thought that the only person Morbier cared about—Mouna—was gone now. And her father too …

She offered “Pierre” a cigarette. His eyes narrowed, but he accepted. She took him aside and gestured across the way toward Morbier, who winked and smiled. Aimée bent down and whispered in Pierre’s ear, trying not to laugh at the look of alarm spreading on his face. His eyes widened, then he tipped his beret to Morbier and disappeared around the corner.

“Pierre’s a quick learner,” she said to Morbier on her return.

“They usually are,” Morbier said, lighting a cigarette from a glowing butt in the Ricard ashtray.

She motioned to the waiter. “Un café, s’il vous plaît.”

“Red wine’s better for your heart,” he said, pouring himself another glass. “I’ve already bailed you out, Leduc.”

Her shoulders slumped. Was he just going to warn her off? Had she wasted her time?

“Look, Morbier—”

“Didn’t I?”

“And I appreciate that.” Without skipping a beat she kept talking. “You called me.”

There was a long pause.

“You want to know about the plastique,” he said. “So do I.”

She kept her surprise in check with an effort. How did Morbier know?

“That’s news to me, Morbier,” she said. “I stay away from the stuff. It gives me nightmares.”

Another pause.

“You, of all people,” she said, “should know that.”

“My vertebrae are out of whack, Leduc,” Morbier said finally. “Every single one.”

Disconcerted, she’d never heard him admit to a physical problem. Why was he ignoring what she said? He knew her fear of explosives. Had he gone soft, dragging her here on a ruse, needing some sympathy?

“I am sorry,” she said and meant it. “How can I help?”

“Help me catch a big fish,” he said.

Her eyes widened.

“Tiens, Leduc, you asked if you could help.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. Was he going to feed her a tidbit to whet her appetite, then warn her off again?

“Leduc, you’re sniffing around,” he said. “It’s not my business if a minister’s wife hired you—but if you want to nail the plastique source, lead me to it.”

She dropped her spoon, splashing a bit of coffee on the table. She was aware of the waiter wiping the table with a damp cloth and a muttered tsfc.

“Now I have your full attention, I see,” Morbier said.

A warning vibrated in her.

“My God, Morbier, I’m not undercover,” she said. “The fundamentalists are fanatics—why ask me?”

“Who said anything about fundamentalists?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Call me psychic,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “But you’ve been out of kilter since your moped ride.”

She couldn’t meet Morbier’s eyes. Her heart beat quicker. He didn’t know everything—but he knew she was involved.

“Humor an old man, eh?” he said. “Think of it this way: You might feel better about the past if you deal with this.”

“Forget it,” she said, throwing ten francs on the table.

“Leduc, you want to find out who blew her up, right?” he asked, leaning forward. He didn’t wait for her answer. “This is how. My way. I know the players and the score in Belleville. You don’t. It’s that simple.”

She didn’t want to do this.

Morbier exhaled a stream of smoke over her head. Aimée winced at the tangy, acrid scent and wanted to suck one of the butts in the yellow ashtray. But she’d quit. Again.

“Everything’s set up,” he said. “We fed Samia information.”

“Samia?”

“Samia got involved with Zdanine, a plastique supplier, and he’s trouble,” Morbier said. “Zdanine is a tiny poisson. Martaud and I want the big shark.”

“Quit the riddles, Morbier, please,” she said.

“Zdanine deals in nasty things. Me, I don’t care,” he said. “Street vermin die, and new ones flood the sewer. My turf is the Marais. But I want the girl, Samia, protected.”

“Tell me more.”

“Samia’s young. Zdanine’s the father of her child,” Morbier said. “She made a mistake. She never needs to know I’m involved.”

Aimée stirred the clumps of brown sugar in her cup. “And why would they tell me about plastique?

“Leduc, you’re not a flic; they don’t know you,” he said. “That’s why you’re perfect.”

“Attends, Morbier,” Aimée said. “How am I going to bring up the topic of plastiqueV

He wiped his mouth, then smoothed his napkin on the table.

“But they might sell you some, Leduc,” he said.

Aimée paused in midsip; her eyes widened.

“Hold on, Morbier—”

Morbier eyed her closely. “But Samia’s young. Like I said, the young make mistakes.”

“You’ve picked the wrong person.”

His eyes narrowed under his bushy eyebrows. “And Martaud’s testy—you know the type. Wants the commissariat stripes and a coronary before he’s forty. I want Samia protected. If there’s any evidence left, make it disappear. Compris?”

Aimée’s antenna came to attention.

“What’s so special about Samia?”

“Forget the questions, Leduc,” he said. “If you want my help.”

Now she was intrigued. Curiosity overcame her fear. At least some of it. And Morbier was right; she needed to track down the plastique. Aimée sipped her coffee, concerned about the turn the conversation had taken.

“What about Zdanine?”

“Call him a procurer if you want to get technical, Leduc,” he said, blowing the air from his lower lip. “Tiens, this is Belleville, one works with the systeme. Zdanine’s claiming sanctuary in the church with the hunger strikers.”

Again the church and hunger strikers had come up. She hesitated.

“Call Samia. Tell her Khalil, Zdanine’s cousin, sent you,” Morbier said. “We know he’s a procurer who’s stuck in Algiers awaiting promised papers from his soon-to-be legal cousin.”

“How do you know this?”

“Never mind,” Morbier said, beckoning the waiter for l’addition. “But it’s true, and Khalil’s just as nasty. Martaud wants him bad.”

Her cell phone rang.

“A11ô,” she said.

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” Yves said.

She flushed and turned away from Morbier. “What’s that?”

“The appointment,” Yves said. “At Le Figaro.”

“Sorry, but we never reconfirmed,” she said, keeping the disappointment out of her voice.

She didn’t remember saying this, but she’d said a lot things the other night after the champagne. She’d even told him about the explosion and Anaïs. Is that all Yves wanted?

“But on my voice mail messages, which you don’t seem to have listened to,” Yves continued, “I indicated I had meetings in Marseilles.”

“Meetings?” Was he undercover or working on something Martine didn’t agree with—or both?

“I also mentioned how amazed I was by the way you changed the temperature, how you altered the color of things. And how I’d like more of that,” He paused. “That’s if I remember correctly.”

She cleared her throat. “I’ll have to check on that and get back to you,” she said, quickly gulping the rest of her coffee, aware of Morbier’s gaze.

“You do that,” Yves said. “I’ll be waiting.”

They hung up.

“You’re blushing,” Morbier said, cocking his eyebrows.

“I do that when I drink fast,” she said, rooting in her bag for a tip.

Morbier grinned and said nothing.

“Here’s Samia’s number. She lives above the hammam near the Couronnes Métro,” he said. “Pack your swimsuit, there’s a piscine adjoining the steam rooms.”

Tempted for a moment, she paused. She hadn’t swum her regular lap quotas for several days.

Morbier nodded. “Like I said, little fish lead to big fish.”

“I don’t have time for swimming, Morbier,” she said. “Or to chase the Paris periphery for pond scum.”

What was she doing at a café with Morbier wasting her time? She pushed back her chair, scraping the sidewalk, and tossed her phone into her Hermes bag.

“Don’t go rushing off, Leduc,” Morbier said, wagging his nicotine-stained finger at her. “Last time you did that you had more broken bones than usual, remember?”

She flinched, fingering her throat at the memory of the rooftop in the Marais. The concussion, the lacerations needle-like over her skin …

A glass was knocked to the floor at the next table, jerking her back to the present.

“Think of it this way, Leduc,” Morbier said, lighting another cigarette from the smoldering butt in the ashtray. “If you trace the plastique to the source, you might nab the mistress’s killer.” He shrugged. “Get some shitheads off the street. The murderer could be, as de Gaulle said, ‘Chier dans son propre lit,’ shitting in one’s own bed. Criminals often do. A common mistake.”

“I think de Gaulle was referring to the Algerian crisis in that instance, but you’ve got a point,” she said, a smile fighting its way over her mouth. “But like Papa used to say, things don’t always seem as they appear or he would have been out of business.”

“Keep an eye on Samia, that’s all,” he said. “Samia grew up in the housing projects with gangs, Rai’ music and tattooed bleakness. But trouble, like Zdanine, tends to follow. Far as I’m concerned, Zdanine is scum, but he’s connected.”

“D’accord, I’ll call and meet her,” she said, “but I’ve got to change.”

“Make sure,” he said, wagging his finger, “you dress appropriately.”

She walked toward the Metto. On the corner the outdoor tables at Chez Mireille Bistrot were full. The hcdah boucherie Islamique held a steady stream of shoppers. Petulant whines of tired toddlers in their strollers, and the rumble of the Métro below greeted her accompanied by fumes from the 95 bus, direction Austerlitz. She wondered how Sylvie could have hidden in this dense quartier, where a woman would be noticed. Especially a good-looking woman. She shouldered her bag for the Metto ride to René’s.

Aimée paused at the stairs of the Couronnes Métro. She felt someone’s eyes sizing her up. The bearded men wearing chechias and flowing white habayas stared at her from the Abou Bakr Mosque entrance. Her shoulders tensed. Les barbes—the Islamic fundamentalists she’d read about. Their staring disturbed her, rattling in her brain all the way to René’s.

RENÉ’S HAUSSMANN-ERA building fronted rue de la Reynie—a tree-lined strip Aimée regarded as a minioasis from the nearby Les Halles, with its cheesy clothing shops, discount CD stores, and young crowd. His apartment overlooked a quiet, geranium-lined walkway wedged between buildings.

René’s parking space was the same size as his studio apartment. But it certainly had more room, she thought, considering René’s obsession with the latest computer equipment.

Computers and monitors, raised a cushion’s height from the carpeted floor, lined two walls. Books covered another wall. His window looked onto a hulking gray building, draped and scaffolded for renovation. From the stereo a voice rasped, “Serves you right to suffer” accompanied by a guitar riff filling the room.

“James Lee ‘ooker,” René grinned. “Les blues.”

Aimée smiled. Last time René’s infatuation had been Django Reinhardt.

Two futons were piled in the corner. A poster showing the 417 types of French cheeses hung on the wall of his cockpit-size kitchen. Bodybuilding weights sat on the low counter specially designed for René’s height.

Miles Davis sniffed her with his wet nose from his pillow beside René.

“So far, looking for Sylvie I’ve hit the Fichier firewall,” René said. “But this new software should help.” He pointed to several zip disks, stacked between the monitor screens filled with encrypted algorithms.

“You’re a genius,” she said.

He nodded, his eyes bright as his fingers danced over the keyboard. “Tell me that after I crack the code.”

He was in his métier. No one she knew came close to his expertise.

“What about the Swiss electronic switch on the explosive?” she asked.

“Curious, that one,” René said, hitting Save. He stood up and stretched. He wore a grey tracksuit, the top fitting his long torso but the pants shortened. “Seems that circuit board hooked up to a relay—you know the kind in the movies where the mecs set the device to explode in ten minutes? Meanwhile they’ve driven five miles away and have an alibi.”

She made a face, pursed her Chanel-red lips. That would complicate things.

“However, reading the report,” René said, packing his practice bag for the dojo, “that doesn’t seem to fit. Seems they activated it from nearby, like you suggested, from the ‘fake’ SAMU van.”

She picked up Miles Davis. But her edgy feeling remained.

“Can you watch him some more?”

René’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up?”

She told him about Morbier’s lead.

“Call me if you need backup,” he said. “I’ve got another bag of shank bones in the fridge,” he said as she made for the door. “You’re welcome to hit the dojo with me.”

“Next time.”

“Be careful,” René said, giving her a meaningful look.

AIMÉE HAILED a taxi at the roundabout that dropped her at her rue du Louvre office. By that time she’d arranged a rendezvous with Samia within the hour.

Inside her once elegant nineteenth-century office building, with the ancient dark green water spigot in the foyer, she was tempted to take the birdcage elevator. But the tightness in her leather trousers told her no. She hiked the three steep flights. On the landing opposite the smoky bevel-edged mirror, she unlocked her door.

She hurried past her desk, stacked with Paris pages jaunes and manuals on secure cryptosystems, to the back storage room. She never missed leaving criminal work, but the old regret hit her. To play it safe, she pulled on her bullet-proof vest, made especially thin, the spy-store clerk had told her, for those “special occasions.”

She rifled past hangers containing a blue rubber-strapped fishmonger’s apron, the traffic jacket with SUBURBAINE stencilled on back, her lab coat embroidered with “Leduc” from her premed year at Universite René Descartes, and an acid green sequined feather-boa affair from a defunct sex club in Pigalle.

After some deliberation and flirting with the boa, she chose a black leather jumpsuit, a relic of a friend’s drug-dealing days. The leather unitard, composed of zippered pockets and quilted patches, fit skintight. She struggled into the legs and zipped it over her black lace bra. A zebra-striped foulard draped around her neck completed her ensemble.

After applying makeup she stepped into slingback black heels. She threw her red high tops into her bag in case she had to deal with more slick cobbles. Quickly she painted her nails so they could dry in the taxi.

Forty minutes later she’d emerged from rue du Louvre, hailed a taxi, and arrived at Samia’s.

The hammam’piscine turned out to be a bland, renovated eighteenth-century building with popcorn stucco facing the street. She handed the driver a hundred-franc bill and told him to keep the change, grinning at his comment on how well her business must be doing.

If only he knew.

She gave a small smile, bidding him adieu when he began offering to drop clients her way.

By the time she entered the courtyard of the hamman-piscine, she’d taken Morbier’s suggestion to heart. Right now Samia was her entree to the plastique and the Maghrébins, her only source other than Gaston in Café Tlemcen. Slim at best, but a start, she reminded herself. And more of a lead than she’d had a bit earlier when her only view had been seeing les barbes in front of the mosque.

A tatouage parlor stood next to a shop with dusty windows and a faded red sign with BOUCHERIE-VOLAILLE still visible. Besides the hammam-piscine in the cow, they were the only other occupants. There was something appealing about the quiet air of neglect, she thought. As if the buildings held together almost from force of habit.

Inside the unrenovated interior, the walls were covered with rainbow-colored graffiti of Nique le flic—screw the cops. Colored handprints were imprinted over doorways, in the Muslim style, to guard dwellings. A narrow winding staircase, the steps grooved and worn, mounted upward. She wondered what it would be like to live here. Or to grow up looking at this graffiti every day.

Samia Fouaz lived above the tiled rex de chaussée, on the first floor. A stroller, string shopping bag, and a shiny four-wheeled cart filled the landing. Once polished and exquisite, Aimée-imagined.

After several bouts of knocking, the door opened to a curvaceous figure in a peach lace teddy unself-consciously scratching her rear. Samia’s light-honey-colored face was puffy, her eyes bleary, and she yawned loudly.

“Sorry to disturb you, Samia—”

“Pas de problème,” Samia said, eying her up and down.

Samia took a breath, pursed her mouth, then seemed to come to a decision. “Let’s make this quick.”

Nonplussed, Aimée recovered quickly. “Sounds good,” she said, aiming for casual.

Inside, trying to bury her nervousness, Aimée followed Samia’s sashaying down the yellowed hallway, its walls littered with calendars from local Arabic butchers on boulevard Menilmontant. Samia’s scent, a mixture of musk oil, sweat, and something by Nina Ricci, trailed in her wake.

Raï music pounded from a room in the rear. At the far end of the apartment Aimée saw violet gauze billowing from the ceiling, bordered by curtains embroidered with tiny mirrors.

Samia gestured to a chrome metal stool fronting a counter. A galley-style kitchen lay behind that, small, scrubbed, and spotless. On an upper shelf sat a glazed earthenware dish covered with a pointed lid, a tajine. Above that stood a qettara, a copper still for distilling rose- and orange-blossom water. Aromatics with rosewater, Aimée knew, drove away the dj’inn, protected against the evil eye, and attracted good spirits. Aimée hoped the good spirits were with her—she needed all the help she could get.

Against the gray linoleum, Aimée noticed Samia’s bare feet hennaed with intricate swirling patterns.

Aimée wondered about Samia’s connection to Morbier. Samia looked young and tired, like a housewife who’d tarted up for a husband with little result. She gestured again for Aimée to sit down.

“Tea?” She smiled, her face opening up like a flower.

“Merci,” Aimée said, accepting the de rigeur small glass of steaming mint tea, sweet and fragrant. Acustom, she knew, observed even among enemies at the Mideast peace talks.

The fading afternoon sun shone into an open window overlooking the courtyard. Several women, their Arabic conversation echoing off the stone walls, entered the hammam door below.

“You mentioned Khalil when you called,” Samia said. She looked even younger in the kitchen’s light.

“True. And Eugénie, part of Khalil’s—”

“Tell him this for me,” Samia interrupted, turning and pounding her fist into her palm. Her gold bracelets jangled. “Zdanine’s doing all he can, eh? Compris?”

Surprised at Samia’s change of manner, Aimée stopped short, her mind racing. She hoped Samia couldn’t check with Khalil about her. Why had she accepted Morbier’s story that he’d “fed Samia information?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Aimée barely kept her voice steady.

“Last month was the last time,” Samia said, determined. “No more. Lay off!”

For a vulnerable-looking thing she packed a punch, Aimée thought. Her friendly demeanor had vanished.

“Tiens, Samia,” she said, trying what she hoped was a winning grin. “I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot me.”

Samia expelled a whoof! of air in disgust. She talked tough for eighteen, Aimée thought, or however old she was.

“Khalil isn’t patient,” Aimée said, improvising as she went along. “Poor mec, he’s stuck in Algiers.”

She had to persuade Samia to talk, pass on her plastique connection.

“Not my concern,” Samia said, a petulant edge to her voice. But her quick anger had deflated. “You tell Khalil to deal with me himself,” she said. “I’ll get word to Zdanine.”

“Khalil said to tell you I speak for him.”

Samia half smiled, showing the edges of little white teeth. One of them was gold-capped and caught the light. “I mean no disrespect to a fellow sister, bien stir, but business is business,” she said. “And time for me to get dressed.” She was about to usher Aimée to the door.

I’m blowing this, Aimée thought. Time to forget subtlety when the opportunity is walking out the door. “Samia, let me speak for Khalil and you for Zdanine,” she said. “I need to arrange more plastique. Eugénie was supposed to help.”

Samia’s eyes widened; her round shoulders tensed. “I don’t like this.”

“Who does?” Aimée made her tone businesslike and shrugged. “The last delivery man blew himself to Mecca before his ticket was punched.”

“That’s history. Zdanine was only a distributor,” Samia said, shifting from one bare foot to the other as she scratched a calf with the opposite big toe. “He’s washed his hands of it now,” she said, her eyes level as she sipped tea. “Where it goes and to whom…” She let that hang in the musk-scented air of her kitchen.

“From what I hear,” Aimée said, leaning closer, “this is the beginning.”

Samia shook her head. “My clients are waiting. I’ve got to go-”

Aimée wondered what kind of clients.

She lowered her voice to a whisper and brushed her arm against Samia’s. “Wholesale,” she said, nodding her head. “Khalil understands profit margins. Do you?”

Samia’s gaze wavered.

“Wholesale,” Aimée said, growing more confident at Samia’s reaction. She drew out the word to underscore the importance. “No dropoffs. No francs and centimes. Just thousand-franc notes and bank accounts. Big ones. That’s wholesale.”

“Zdanine deals with this, not me,” Samia said, but her dark brows wrinkled—unsure.

“Sounds like you’re not equipped to handle orders,” Aimée said, pulling back, glancing again at her watch. “Khalil misinformed me. Forget I came. I’ll outsource this.”

Aimée shouldered her bag and stood up. She’d put the offer out there, sweetened it, and waited expectantly.

Samia’s full lips tightened.

“Outsource?” she said, pronouncing the word slowly.

“Khalil prefers to work with family, of course. However, it looks like I’ve no choice,” Aimée said and sighed. “Other roads lead to phstique. He assumed Zdanine’s linked to the supplier.”

Samia’s eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t tell me about business.”

“Just remember we came to you first,” Aimée said. “Later on, don’t say Khalil didn’t offer his family a fat slice of the tart.” Aimée studied her nails, trying to remember graffiti slogans on the Belleville Métro. “Like he says, ‘Brothers of the bled ‘countryside’ should unite!’”

Samia snorted. “Bled!? The closest we’ve been to the countryside was when the colonials massacred those who couldn’t emigrate as servants. Khalil went back for his ‘roots,’ and now he can’t wait to get out.”

She had a point, Aimée thought.

“Am I too blanc for you, Samia, is that it?” Aimée asked.

Samia didn’t answer.

Frustrated, she didn’t know how to get information from Samia. So far she’d gotten zip. Aimée looked around, thinking furiously. She felt as if she’d gone north instead of south.

She ran her fingers over a small CD player on the counter, and noticed the big-screen TV in the next room. A red-bordered overdue France Telecom bill lay on the windowsill. Now she had an idea.

“You’ve got a nice life, Samia. Quite a class act.” Aimée strolled toward an open pantry lined with pate\ Turkish halvah, and Iranian caviar. “Better life than most. I’m a working girl. Hundred-franc uprights were all I knew, and burned-out cars were my place of business until I met Khalil. He became my patron, taught me things, showed me how to bleed the Johns and make more than my rent.” She looked meaningfully at Samia. “I’ll do anything the mec asks.”

Samia looked away. Maybe the affluence was hard to maintain. Aimée saw a framed photo of an almond-eyed boy with a serious expression, the honey patina of his skin like Samia’s. He wore the short pants of a Catholic-school uniform, a bookbag slung over his shoulder.

“He’s gorgeous,” Aimée said, and meant it. “Your son?”

Samia nodded, her eyes lighting up. “Marc after Marcus Aurelius,” she said, a winsome expression crossing her face.

“Catholic school?”

“He’s baptized,” Samia said, a hint of pride in her voice.

“Must cost,” Aimée said, rubbing her fingers together.

Samia stiffened and turned away. “Zdanine helps us; he furnished the flat.”

“But he can’t help you now, can he?” she said, not waiting for an answer. “He’s stuck in the church.”

She saw the struggle in Samia’s eyes.

Aimée knew she’d reached her when she’d talked about her little boy. And she knew Samia had money trouble.

“Look, if you’re not interested, at least help me connect with Eugénie,” Aimée said.

Samia’s blank look answered her.

“You’ve got to go, haven’t you?” Samia said, her veiled politeness strained. “I’m late.”

Aimée tore a paper sheet from her datebook and wrote her cell phone number down. “Think about what I’ve said. Call me in a few hours.”

Disappointed that Samia hadn’t taken the bait outright, Aimée went down the worn stairs, past the hammam, and onto the street. She hoped when Samia got desperate she’d call.

“HOW MUCH?” Aimée asked the man with the armful of watches on rue de Belleville.

“Fifty francs,” he said, brandishing his arm close to her nose. He jiggled a phosphorescent tangerine plastic band with a yellow happy face off his wrist.

“Not my style,” she said.

Her cell phone rang.

“Didn’t we have a meeting?” René asked.

She thrust fifty francs into the man’s palm, grabbed the watch, laced up her hightops, and took off running.

By the time Aimée returned to the office she’d convinced herself she’d find Sylvie’s killers through the Maghrébin network. However, at this rate it could take a year.

René looked up from his book, his large green eyes hooded. She didn’t like it.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, looking her up and down. “You’re supplementing our income?”

“Didn’t we get the EDF contract?” she said, sitting down heavily.

“Like I said, the nervous little manager liked us,” René said, leaning back in his orthopedic chair. “But the big EDF guy in the sky doesn’t want to ‘piecemeal’ the security system, or so they say. He’s got a point. The Seattle firm offered a bid on comprehensive services. Impressive.”

Aimée stood up, fire in her eyes. “So can we.”

“Already have,” René winked. “I roughed a basic package together,” he said, pulling out a thick folder. “A draft, of course. But I thought we might want to throw in something special. A little extra.”

“Exactly. Some pièce de résistance,” she said, tossing her leather jacket on the coatrack. She scratched her head, then opened their office window overlooking the Louvre. The knock of diesel engines and the occasional cry of a street vendor competed with the roar of Paris buses.

“Let’s get to work, partner,” she said, unsnapping the studs on her sleeves.

After an hour they’d redone their network vulnerability scan and thrown in maintenance too. A realistic offer. And at lower than what they figured the other firm would bid. She felt good, at last, to work on something concrete. Aimée took a deep breath and faxed their offer to the EDF.

Her cell phone rang.

She prayed that Samia was on the other end.

“Allô?”

“Philippe denies e-e-everything,” Anaïs said, her voice thick and slurred.

Relieved finally to hear from Anaïs, she was startled at her tone.

“He won’t s-s-speak of her.”

“I’ve been worried, trying to reach you,” she said, terrified by the way Anaïs sounded. She grabbed a piece of paper. “Let me come and get you. Where are you?”

“Somewhere,” she said, her voice slipping away. “Martine and the housekeeper take Simone to preschool. But s-S’Something’s wrong. S-s-sent you a cheque. Philippe’s afraid. I didn’t tell you—S-Sylvie gave me the envelope—”

“I need to talk with you, Anaïs,” she said. “Where is that envelope—?”

But Anaïs hung up before Aimée could finish. Worried, she called Philippe. No one answered at the de Froissarts.’ She tried the ministry. Philippe’s cordial secretary had no idea where Madame de Froissart could be reached but again promised Aimée she’d see that the minister got her message.

Fat chance. She’d begun to feel the only way to bag Philippe would be to grab a rifle and haunt the ministry.

She searched the mail on her desk and slit open a letter addressed to her. She waved Anaïs’s check in the air.

“Our account’s ten thousand francs richer,” she said.

René blinked.

“Anaïs?”

She nodded. “Let’s eat while I fill you in on the latest.”

They ordered sushi from the new Japanese restaurant below their office, putting it under business expense.

Over a spider crab roll and saba marinated mackerel Aimée told René about Morbier’s agenda and Samia, who baptized her son and wanted him to be French, while his father, a pimp and explosives conduit, claimed sanctuary in the church.

“What about the Fichier in Nantes?” she asked. “Sylvie must have another address.”

“So far no luck, but I’ll keep trying,” René nodded. “My friend loaned me a new identity morphing software,” René said, rubbing his stubby hands together. “For now why don’t I try it out on Sylvie?”

“Be my guest,” Aimée said, putting down her chopsticks. “What does it do?”

“A slight hitch remains,” he said. “We need a photo.”

“I think I can do something about that,” Aimée said. She logged onto her computer, accessing the bank account with Sylvie’s password, beur. She dug around for documentation used to establish the Crédit Lyonnais bank account. After ten minutes she got excited when she pulled up Eugénie’s carte rationale d’identité photo.

“Look, René,” she said, printing the image.

For the first time she got a good look at the woman, not just her dismembered limbs.

“Parfait!” René said. “Knockout!”

“She’s good looking, striking—” She was about to add that no one, attractive or not, deserved to be torn apart by a bomb.

“Knockout’s a new program. An image-masking software,” he said, “which works for anything involved in digitally enhanced images.”

“Meaning?”

“Watch this,” he said, his eyes bright with anticipation.

Aimée slipped Sylvie’s photo onto the scanner.

At his terminal René drew selection lines defining the inner and outer boundaries of Sylvie’s face. Knockout outputted the processed foreground—the object with colors removed—and a grayscale alpha channel that preserved the transparency of the original.

“Short red hair?”

“Like mine,” she said, remembering the wig. “Make it a bit more shaggy in the back.”

He played around, then printed the image out. A seamless fit.

“You’re a wizard, René!”

“Try jogging people’s memory with that,” he said. “You know, for the right price the Maghrébin network performs similar functions. A gold Eurocard, driver’s license, even a Securiti socicde number.”

“Merci,” she said, again surprised by Renéws depth of underworld knowledge. “I need to find out where this Duplo plastique comes from.” She pecked René on both cheeks. “Time to get busy.”

“Where are you going?” His green eyes widened.

“To jog Philippe’s memory,” she said. “Get his thoughts.”

Before she’d unzipped her leather jumpsuit, her cell phone rang again.

“Oui.” She caught herself before she blurted, “Leduc Detective.”

“I’m waiting for you,” Samia said.

She’d expected Anaïs but recovered quickly, “Samia, you’ve reconsidered?”

“There’s someone you need to meet.” Samia’s voice sounded strained, tight. “Hurry up.”

“What about Eugénie?”

“He knows,” she said. “I’m at the hammam. Can you meet me in fifteen?”

“I’m on the way,” she said, reaching for her jacket and tucking the Beretta in her pocket.

This could be the break she was looking for.