Murder in Belleville

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

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

But why?

Something bothered her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Philippe’s thug?”

She nodded, ruffling Miles Davis’s furry neck.

“He knows your car, René.”

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

“Can Miles Davis stay?”

“Bien sûr,” René said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When did you last see Eugénie?”

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

“Leaving?”

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

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

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

“Had you noticed any visitors?”

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

Aimée’s antenna went up.

“What kind of truck?”

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

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

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

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

“Do you remember the name?” she asked.

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

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

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

“In what way?”

“Bad limp,” Denet said.

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

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

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

She wished he’d answer her.

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

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

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

“Please look at the this, Monsieur Denet.”

He looked at the photo, then shook his head.

“Monsieur Denet? Isn’t that Eugénie?”

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

Aimée stood up.

Jules Denet sat unmoving, his head down.

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

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

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

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

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

“You keep it, Monsieur,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where’s Anaïs?”

Aimée heard splashes, then a thud. Silence.

“Ça va, Philippe?”

“Leave Anaïs out of this,” he said.

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

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

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

“Quit meddling.” Philippe slammed down the phone.

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

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

Silence.

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

Panic rippled through her. Was he hurt?

She pounded on the door.

No sound. No movement.

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

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

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

Or had he?

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

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

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

What did this mean?

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

No text. Just the faces.

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

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

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

ON THE fourth floor of the clinic, Aimée brushed Anaïs’s cheek with the back of her hand.

Anaïs’s eyes fluttered open.

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

“Sorry to disturb you.”

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

“How’s my Simone?”

Aimée started guiltily—she hadn’t checked.

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

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

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

Poor Anaïs.

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

Tears ran down Anaïs’s cheeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did Sylvie give you?”

“Some envelope,” Anaïs rubbed her eyes.

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

“Philippe has it.”

“Did you see the General?”

Anaïs shook her head.

“Did you hear a voice, a sound?”

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

“What smell?”

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

“Which smell, Anaïs?”

“I can’t remember,” she said. “Philippe says I should recover without worrying about Simone,” Anaïs shoulders slumped under her hospital jacket. “Martine’s taking Simone to the école ma’ternelle, but I want to take her to school and be with her. It’s safer for me here, he says, but I want to go home. He’s afraid, Aimée. But I don’t know why.”

“If someone is blackmailing him I’ve got part of the evidence,” she said, trying to get that through Anaïs’s skull. “You’re safe. He’ll come and get you tomorrow.”

“Licorice,” Anaïs said.

Aimée froze. Her mind went back to the military man chewing licorice at the circus.

“You smelled licorice in Sylvie’s apartment?”

But Anaïs’s eyes had closed. Little whistles of sleep escaped her lips.

As Aimée walked into the cold Paris night she wished she felt it was true that Anaïs was safe.