Murder in Clichy

Wednesday Morning

RENÉ PASSED THE LINE of people buying newspapers and Métro passes at his corner tabac. A man stood reading a newspaper and smoking in the chill gray mid-morning.

“Bonjour,” René said as he opened the door of the shoe repair shop a few doors down from his apartment.

The new apprentice, whom René didn’t know, affixed taps to a pair of heels. Loud grinding noises filled the narrow shop crammed with shelves of arch supports and insoles, shoes to be worked on, shoes to be called for.

The young man switched off the grinding wheel. He wore a blue work coat with FRANCK embroidered on the pocket, that was marked with glue smears, over patched jeans. He looked down at René, took in his short stature.

The usual stare.

“Picking up for someone?” Franck asked, rubbing his hands on his pockets. His gaze hadn’t left René’s long trunk and short legs.

René pointed to the polished handmade Italian shoes on the shelf.

“Actually, that pair’s mine. What’s the damage?”

Franck lifted the shoes from the counter. “Nice! Eh, they fit you?”

“Should fit even better with the orthotics your boss put in.”

René’s hip dysplasia made arch adjustments necessary every other month. His hip ached more and more in the damp weather.

“I didn’t know . . . well, I mean . . .”

“That I wear regular shoes?” he said, taking a fifty franc note from his wallet and reaching up to set it on the counter. He buttoned his coat. “Even a cashmere coat.”

A cheap shot. He wanted to take it back as soon as he’d said it.

A sullen look crossed Franck’s face. “Guess you have to, so you feel big.”

René saw the worn jacket on the peg and Franck’s HLM— Habitation à Loyer Moderée—application for subsidized housing peeking from the pocket. He took the shoes.

“Merci,” he said and pocketed his change.

He left the shop, glad he hadn’t said the owner was an old friend who would have fired Franck on the spot for his comment. Everyone needed a job these days. He, too, after looking at Leduc’s finances.

Though he’d encouraged her at the outset, Aimée had jumped into the nun’s affair without thinking. As usual. Impulsive, intuitive! It didn’t pay the bills.

He paused on the cracked pavement to check his phone messages. The battery was dead. No time to charge his cell phone. As he turned back to buy a phone card at the tabac he noticed the man was still reading the newspaper. But he was holding Le Monde Diplomatique upside down.

After René bought a card and left, the man folded his paper. René watched the reflection in the store windows from the corner of his eye. Saw the man keeping a short distance between them. René kept walking. He glanced over his shoulder several times. The man kept in step a few paces behind. Afraid his short legs would give out before he got far, he thought of what Aimée would do, and hailed a taxi.

At the Métro station, he paid the driver, climbed out and ran down the steps. He changed at République, then again in the cavernous Châtelet station. By the time he left, using the Louvre-Rivoli exit, he felt sure no one was following him. Still, he sat in the café below their office and had a snifter of brandy. When he had calmed down, he paid and left a big tip.

On the rain-slicked pavement outside Leduc Detective, a smiling couple asked him directions to the Saint Eustache church. He pointed the way, then hit the digicode. Inside their building, the wire-frame birdcage of an elevator was out of service—out of service more often than in service. He faced a climb of three high floors on the dark, narrow spiral staircase to the office. He paused, wondering how the world would look from two feet higher up.

His hip ached and he dreaded a discussion with Aimée. Right now his cowardly side wanted some way out. He’d ignored the flutter he’d felt deep down the last time she’d hugged him. The hope that soared and flew away as he reminded himself that for her, it was platonic.

At the second flight of stairs, he paused. His leg throbbed and only a hot epsom salt bath would ease the bone-chill in his marrow.

“Monsieur Friant . . . Monsieur René Friant?” a man’s voice called from above.

“Oui.”

“There’s been an accident,” he said, footsteps clattered down the stairs. “Mademoiselle Leduc’s in Emergency.”

“Nom de Dieu! What happened?” His pulse raced. Something to do with her eyes? A car accident? He pumped his legs faster. Had she been trying to call him on his dead cell phone?

He never saw their faces as they blocked the light, only felt the net over his face and arms, hands pinning him down as he struggled.