Murder in Clichy

Late Afternoon Tuesday

IN THE APARTMENT, NADÈGE pulled her bag from under the bed. The duvet stank of cat piss; feathers floated in the last of the November light slanting through the tall window. Techno pounded on the Radio Liberté station.

She had to make her legs move or her uncle Thadée would find her like this, hollow-eyed and shaking. Waiting for the next pipe of life. He’d throw her out, like her father had.

She’d slipped. Again.

Her little Michel, only five years old, needed milk money. But she needed money more. Well, Grand-mère would take care of him. Bien sûr. Grand-mère always did.

The phone chirped. Merde! She hunted under the piled Le Parisien newspapers, around overflowing yellow ashtrays with RICARD printed on them, beneath the leather jacket on the soft wood floor. Where was it?

She wound her thick silky black hair in a knot and held it in place with a tortoise-shell comb.

“Allô?” she said finally when she had retrieved the phone.

“Where’s Thadée?” asked a deep voice.

“Playing pool at Académie de Billard,” she said. More likely, buying smokes at the café-tabac, she thought, wishing she had one herself. He was supposed to meet her here. Why hadn’t he come? He’d left his jacket.

“Then I’m the Queen of Hungary,” said the voice.

“Very funny,” she said.

“Tell Thadée I’m waiting.”

“Maybe I will,” she said, throwing her makeup into her bag, scrabbling into her shoes and her shearling parka. “Maybe I won’t. Tell me what you want.”

“No candy then. Kiss those bonbons goodbye.”

“Wait a minute, Thadée’s straight . . . what’s . . . ?”

He’d hung up. Arrogant salaud! She had other sources. But she didn’t want Thadée to know about them. If he found out, he wouldn’t let her stay here again.

Monsieur Know-it-all! the Bonbon King . . . what did he know? Not much unless Thadée had confided in him. Thadée had gone to clinch the deal. The deal, he’d told her, that would settle his debts, hers, and more.

Taking the two hundred francs she found in Thadée’s jacket pocket, she slipped down the winding back stairs. Passed through the gate to the cobbled courtyard with its decaying vegetable dampness and rotten wood molding smells, a repository for vats of used cooking oil re-sold to cheaper restos. A Romanian flophouse, doubling as a sweatshop in the day, faced onto it.

As Nadège exited onto rue Truffaut she saw a motorcycle take off, spraying gray splinters of ice and wetness. Her eyes rested for an instant on a stroller with a crying infant, an old woman huddled on the pavement, and then on Thadée’s body sprawled against the phone cabinet. Gasping, she edged toward the crowd. She tugged the red silk cord around her neck feeling for her lucky piece. Saw the blood, the flics, medics, and one of the Bonbon King’s henchman edging into the throng. She ducked before he could see her. Her hands shook. It didn’t make sense, this wasn’t supposed to happen!

Could she help Thadée? But she knew he was beyond help.

She backed up, shaking uncontrollably. Where could she go? And what about Thadée’s stash that he said would clinch the deal?

She ran back to the courtyard, her heels echoing on the soot-blackened stone. In the rear, behind an old staircase, she loosened a stone and felt behind it for the hollow in which Thadée had once hidden dope: only bits of brick and old paper wrappers. Dirt got under her fingernails. Then she felt something cold. Metallic. She scraped it out. An old-fashioned key. But to what? Sirens wailed. She dropped it into her vintage Versace bag and ran.