Murder in Clichy

Wednesday Midnight

AIMÉE POUNDED ON HER godfather’s door. She saw Morbier’s sleepy-eyed surprise as she half-carried a stumbling Sophie across his doorway.

“Tiens, Leduc,” he said, pulling his flannel shirt around him, consulting his worn watch, and sniffing. “It’s late. Don’t bring your drunken friends here, eh . . . especially one who looks like trouble.”

“She needs babysitting and she’s not drunk.”

“Nice of you to extend my hospitality, but I don’t have room for guests. Like I said—”

“Round the clock until I discover who has kidnapped René.”

Startled, Morbier pushed his socialist newspaper aside, kicked his wool charentaise slippers away, and spread a blanket on his couch. She laid Sophie down, pulled off the wet, brown boots, and covered her.

Sophie, who’d passed out again in the taxi, blinked, barely conscious. Aimée poured her a glass of water and helped her to sit up and, painfully, drink it.

“Sophie, did you see who attacked you?”

“Where am I?” She rubbed her eyes, sniffed. “Smells like the warehouse.”

Morbier’s housekeeping skills left a lot to be desired, but a warehouse? Then Sophie stiffened.

“I was tied up, hung from. . . .” She stiffened. “You’re kidnapping me!”

“I found you and helped free you,” Aimée said. “This man’s my godfather, he’s a Commissaire de Police. Show her your badge, Morbier.”

“À vôtre service, mademoiselle, you’re safe here.” He winked, finding his wallet and opening it to show his ID.

“Poor Thadée.” Sophie burst into tears, her shoulders heaving.

“Listen to me, Sophie, someone on a motorcycle shot him, then came after me,” Aimée said, leaning closer. “I pulled him into the phone cabinet, where he died in my arms.”

“We were divorced,” Sophie said, wiping her blue eyes with her sleeve. “But we remained friends. I became his partner at the gallery. We were always better at that anyway.”

Sophie’s eyes were pools of hurt. Did she still love Thadée?

“Can you remember what happened?” Morbier asked.

Sophie blinked several times. “They took me to the morgue to see Thadée’s body this morning. It was horrible,” she said, her wide eyes filling with tears again. Her light brown hair was matted to her cheeks.

“Did you talk to him before he was shot, Sophie?”

“I only arrived from London this morning to prepare for the exhibition,” she said, rubbing her head.

“But you must have talked, non? ”

“He hadn’t even hung all the artwork for the show!”

“Sophie, did he speak about jade?”

She shook her head and winced. “The only time I saw him was in the morgue.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Tonight, after I checked the gallery for the shipment, I turned the light off in the bathroom. Someone grabbed me. Next thing I knew, I was hanging from the overhead water tank.”

“Shall I call a doctor? ”

“Give me a Doliprane, eh? Let me sleep.”

Aimée reached into her pocket for the aspirin packet she carried. “Here. Do you know who Thadée owed money to? Had he mentioned—?”

“Merde . . . aches like a. . . .” Sophie swallowed the pill, leaned back, her eyes closing. “Une catastrophe. The gallery exhibition’s supposed to be hung, but nothing. . . .”

“I think he wanted me to give you something. A check?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sophie said, pulling her stained silk blouse around her. “A check for what?”

“Do you know how he came into possession of . . . ?

Sophie yawned. “I don’t know what you’re going on about.” She curled up on her side and within a minute she was snoring.

Morbier shook his head. “I can’t take care of her, Leduc,” he said. “I work, remember. And this trouble’s not my business. My retirement’s around the corner.”

“You always say that,” she said. He was the busiest commis-saire on the verge of retirement she knew.

He shrugged and motioned her to a dark wood table by his window overlooking a dilapidated ironmonger’s courtyard in the Bastille district. The dark building’s corners were burnished by the moonlight.

“Marc’s staying with me this weekend,” Morbier said. “I don’t have room for her.”

His grandson Marc stayed with him more and more despite his Algerian grandparents’ frequent requests for visitation rights. They kept insisting Morbier’s choice of a Catholic boarding school was no proper education for a good Muslim.

She pulled out a bottle of vin du Vaucluse from her bag, shoved a dirty plate aside, and reached for wine glasses above his cracked porcelain sink.

She needed a drink. He looked like he needed one, too.

“Open this and I’ll tell you about it,” she said, giving him no choice.

“You know how long it takes to get old, Leduc?” he said, pulling out the cork and pouring. “Like this . . . pfft. Overnight. You wake up and . . .”

“Santé,” she said, clinking her glass against his.

She felt Morbier’s eyes on her. Studying her like the RG had.

“How do you know René’s been kidnapped, Leduc?”

She looked at her watch. “Morbier, it’s six hours since their phone call and I’m no closer to finding what they want.” She took a long sip, sat back on a wooden chair missing one of its three rungs, and told him what had happened.

Morbier shook his head. “A hollow threat.”

How could he say that? “Didn’t you hear about the shooting in the 17th?”

“Not my quartier, you know that.” Morbier rolled his eyes.

“Morbier, what should I do?”

“Why ask me? Leave it to the professionals, Leduc.”

“And what are you? It stinks, Morbier.” She hid her trembling hands under the table. “I’m scared,” she said, hating to admit it.

Morbier looked away. He never liked dealing with emotions.

“Call the RG man, Regnier,” he said. “Tell him. He seemed to like you so much.”

“Like me?” She shook her head. “Regnier wants the jade. René’s life wouldn’t matter.”

“Do you have a choice? Can you come up with the jade?”

“I don’t trust Regnier and the RG as far as I can spit. They were responsible for papa. . . .The ministry never acknowledged our involvement or their responsibility. Papa had a dishonorable record until I made them clean it up. And it took two years. They still won’t acknowledge it was their mission. You think I’d believe them?”

No flowers at the funeral, but a bill for her father’s autopsy.

“Leduc, you don’t do that kind of work anymore, remember? If anything happened to René, could you live with that?”

His words stung. She’d never forgive herself if René was hurt.

But what he really meant was that she wasn’t up to it. The damage to her optic nerve made her useless. A liability.

“I worked all through my hospital stay,” she said. “I don’t intend to stop now. The medication and meditation control it.”

At least she hoped so.

“Hostage negotiation’s a fine art,” he said. “How did they find you, and trace René?”

“They must have followed me,” she said.

Weariness had settled in her cold, damp legs. She noticed Morbier’s thinning salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper now. When he was tired, his jowls sagged, reminding her of a basset hound.

Morbier poured them each another glass.

“What if you were the target, Leduc? Victim of a setup?”

Her chest tightened. “I wondered about that, too,” she said. “But why, Morbier? Then there’s the flic I saw with the RG. He was involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance.”

Morbier raised his hands to ward off her words. “Not this again. Get a life, Leduc.”

“When the secret service or their lackeys are involved, everything stinks.”

Morbier pulled out a box of cigarillos and another of wooden kitchen matches from near his black phone. A relic, with a rotary dial. He scratched one of the matches and lit up a Montecristo.

“I thought you quit,” she said.

“These little cigarillos from Havana?” he said, tossing the empty yellow box into the trash. “They don’t count.”

Like hell they didn’t. And what she wouldn’t give for one right now! She leaned over the table wishing she didn’t want a puff so much. Wasn’t that stop smoking patch working anymore? She rolled down her jeans waist. Merde! The patch was gone. She pulled out one from her bag, unpeeled it, and stuck it on her hip.

“Like one, Morbier?”

“After I finish this coffin nail,” he said, taking a deep drag.

“Plant a word, I need to see the file on Thadée Baret. The kidnapper said forty-eight hours, Morbier,” she said. “Look into it, please.”

Morbier shook his head.

”After all, what’s a godfather with an ear at Brigade Criminelle for?”

“That’s rich, Leduc. I’m only there one day a week,” he said, rubbing his jaw.

“It’s for René. Morbier, please,” she said. “I swear I won’t ask for any more help.”

“You’ll deal with the RG?”

She looked down. Noticed the peeling brown linoleum, his thin ankles and worn brown wool slippers, like those her grandfather used to wear.

“Consider it,” Morbier said. “Otherwise I won’t stick my neck out. And I’m not even promising that. Lots of the old boys have retired.”

She nodded.

“How do I know you mean it, Leduc?”

“You want a pinky promise?” she said, remembering when she was ten years old and making a pinky promise put the world in order. Too bad it didn’t do that anymore.

“What about her?” Morbier gestured to the sleeping Sophie.

“Just one night.”

She held up the jade disk. It glowed with a pear-hued translucence in the dim light of Morbier’s galley kitchen.

“And what’s that supposed to mean, Leduc?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m going to find out. Meanwhile, I’ll sleep on your floor and monitor Sophie to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion.”

Morbier went to bed. She tucked the blanket around Sophie’s shoulders and tried René’s number again. Three rings and then a click.

“Allô . . . allô?”

She heard breathing. Her pulse raced.

“René!”

“The dwarf’s tied up at the moment. . . .” She heard snickering.

“Please meet me. I have what. . . .”

In the background, she heard scuffling. The sounds of splintering wood.

“Not now,” a voice said.

Then a cry. René’s cry. And the line went dead.

Nervous, she tried Léo.

“Allô, Léo?” she said. “Could you locate it?”

“In five seconds?” Léo said, her voice sleepy. “The Northeastern sector antenna responded; he’s in Paris. Keep him on longer next time.”

“Merci,” Aimée said, pacing the worn wood floor.