Murder in Clichy

Friday Evening

THE JASMINE CANDLES, CARDAMOM scents, body heat, and smoke made Aimée want to sneeze. Perspiration dampened the sari she’d wrapped around her forehead, and her heels dipped precariously on the low, tilted platform. With any luck Jacky’s eyes would be centered on the crowd, not the stage.

The lead guitarist’s licks soared as he riffed and jumped around in the spotlight. She swayed in the shadows, the sari covering most of her face, aimed at “cool,” and kept her head down. By the third song, her ears hurt. So much for the rock star life.

At least her dark glasses dimmed the flashing strobe lights. She kept the beat, playing the same chords over and over on the keyboard, watching the drummer whose head never stopped moving.

“Shake.” The bassist threw her a tambourine. She beat it with one hand and with the other kept palming the three chords. As she watched the drummer, she darted looks at the crowd. The dance floor wavered, glittering with swirling dancers. A throbbing disco-ball descended, shooting rays of blue light.

Aimée’s hand at the keyboard was bathed in a blue glow, the hypnotic beat echoing through her body.

“Hey Bombay chérie!” someone yelled, another joined in and then the crowd. “Bom-bay chérie, Bom-bay chérie,” they chanted, stamping their feet. The skinhead caught the rhythm, chording along with the chant. The crescendo rose.

And then her eyes caught on Jacky edging close to the low stage. She panicked, slipped further back into the shadows. When she looked again, he’d become one with the pulsating crowd intent on dancing. And then the lights went out.

Candles sputtered. And for a moment, Aimée and the drummer kept the beat amid laughter, then there were shouts and confusion.

Someone pulled at her shoes and she kicked them off. Fear coursed through her. Her ankle was grabbed again, and she kicked harder. Jacky’s slicked-back pompadour caught the candlelight as the crowd surged toward the stage. She had to make her legs move, get away. She fumbled by the guitarist, dropped the tambourine, and dove offstage toward the pillows.

Tea sprayed and legs flew. A brass tray shot out from under her. She scrambled forward, intent on getting out before Jacky or the other guy, caught in a knot of people by the exit, saw where she’d landed. On her hands and knees, she crawled through mini-skirt clad women and somehow pushed her way to the door.

“Let me out!” she shouted up at the security guard.

“Wait your turn like—”

“I can’t breathe!”

He took one look at her perspiring face and shoulders convulsed with fear and unbolted it.

She dodged into a wet allée, the cobblestones slick beneath her. Women of a certain age stood in the street, then retreated to the doorways as men passed them by.

“Slow down, ma cocotte,” one of them said, “you won’t get business that way.”

Aimée pulled the sari above her knees and took off down Passage de Clichy. Then around the corner of the winding passage. A door opened to a dimly lit courtyard with leafless trees. She ran inside, panting, and paused by a sign that said PIANO RESTORATION SINCE 1921. A Schubert étude drifted through the air, soft and lingering.

At the side of the high glassed-in workshop, a green metal half-door was open and someone was lugging a box through it. She caught her breath as a white-haired man came into view.

“Monsieur, Monsieur!” she said. “I’m sorry to disturb you. May I join you?” she asked, and slid through the door without waiting for an answer. “I need to go out your back door.”

He put his finger over his lip. “Shhh, listen. But the Bechstein’s not ready. These things take time.” He gestured toward a black piano, the light catching the ebony wood. “You young people get so impatient!”

She closed the door behind her and scanned the interior of the workroom.

Inside the gaping piano, bronze-toned piano wires skewed in circles, a frill of confusion.

“Eh, doucement, take your time,” she said playing along, wanting to find an exit other than Passage de Clichy that would lead her to Timbuktu.

She rifled through her leather backpack, pulled out the alternative paper, and found Timbuktu’s address, then grabbed her Paris map, and scanned it. “Your shop’s other exit leads to Passage Lathuille, n’est-ce pas?”

The tinkling notes of Schubert wafted through the chill workroom. Lyrical, with pauses so deliberate it felt as if the music was working its way under water.

“Can you believe this piece was played on this piano?” His eyes were elsewhere as he stuck his black smudged hands in his blue workcoat pocket. “From a 1938 Prague recording. This piano! And I will repair it and craft that sound again.”

She edged past the workbench with its thin chisels, pliers, and tuning forks.

“It’s played from the soul,” she said. And it was.

“You hear it, too,” he nodded, running his hand over the mirrorlike black surface. “I’ll bend and shape the wood the same way, make the sounding boards to the same specifications. The strings and pins, hammers and keys: there will be no variation.”

“Monsieur, please, where’s the exit to passage Lathuille?”

“No time. None of you have time anymore.” He gave a snort of disgust. “Over there. Don’t slam the door on your way out.”

Aimée made her way through the darkened showroom, felt the sharp edges of pianos, and saw the dim EXIT sign. She unlocked the heavy metal and glass door and relocked it before shutting it. She slipped between the building into a walkway, remnant of a medieval lane, so narrow her shoulders scraped against the damp buildings.

At the end, she turned left into cobbled passage Lathuille. Along the graffitied walls by the tobacco brown, 1930s-style hôtel de passe that rented rooms by the hour, she saw the silver and green fluorescent spray-painted sign TIMBUKTU on an old storefront.

So this was what the band member had meant by “Timbuktu.”

No one stood outside. Deserted? But as she got closer, she heard the thrum of a generator. Some kind of squat, or place for band practice?

She knocked several times. Tapped her feet on the wet cobbles. At last the door opened. The person standing there had his face hidden in shadow.

“We’re closed,” said a man in a low voice.

Closed? It didn’t look like they’d ever been opened.

“I’m looking for Mado,” she said.

From inside came the acrid smell of kerosene lamps and low flickers of light.

“Who are you?”

Aimée realized the sari still hung, bedraggled, from her shoulders and she still wore dark glasses. If she told the truth, she doubted if he would let her in.

“Mado’s sister, Sophie,” she said.

“Liar.” He shut the door before she could stick her foot inside.

Bad choice. She should have said something else.

She huddled close to the stone wall. A cat slunk by her feet. Moments later, the blue lights of a police car were reflected in the puddles veining avenue de Clichy, as it flashed past. She pounded on the door.

Several minutes later the door opened a crack to reveal Mado’s silhouette framed by her rhinestone tank top dress.

“I have something of yours,” Aimée said, “let me in.”

Mado opened the door a crack wider.

Aimée edged in beside her, unwound the sari, and put it in Mado’s arms. “Your band’s upset you didn’t show up, but I helped them out.”

“Quoi?” Mado’s mouth opened in a violet circle of surprise.

“We have to talk,” she said. “People are chasing me and I must reach Sophie. I have to contact her in London.”

Mado’s eyes widened. “But she’s here. How did you find this place?”

Aimée bit back her surprise. “Show me.”

Mado gestured toward a room with a wooden counter. Shelves, left from an old pharmacie, labeled with Latin pharmacological names, reached the ceiling. Mado’s rhinestone- trimmed dress glittered in the dim light, the floor creaked, and dank smells came from the corners. Sophie sat crosslegged on the counter, an army-green blanket over her shoulders, murmuring into a phone.

If she was surprised to see Aimée, she didn’t show it. There were dark circles under her smudged, mascaraed eyes. Her blunt-cut brown hair hit the edge of the army blanket.

“The gallery’s line of credit’s used up,” Sophie said, snapping her phone shut. “The bank’s recording says we’ve borrowed beyond our means. Why didn’t Thadée tell me?” She shook her head. “I can’t even pay the customs duty we owe in England. The show’s gone bust!”

“Thadée needed money, Sophie. That’s why he tried to sell the jade to the nun,” Aimée said. She pulled out the fifty thousand franc check. “This belongs to you.”

“Me?”

“For the gallery, or whatever you need it for,” she said. “But I have to find the jade.”

“As I told you, I’ve never heard of this jade. And I can’t take this check.”

Aimée pressed it into her hand.

“He meant it for you.”

For the first time Aimée saw a lost look in Sophie’s face.

“Good for nothing,” Mado said, her voice low. “Thadée never changed.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Sophie snapped.

Aimée saw the jawline the two sisters shared and sensed their rivalry, stemming from childhood, almost palpable in the chill air of the old pharmacie.

“Sophie, I think he stole the jade; he needed money. At least, it makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense is where he got it and who has it now.”

“A mess. I didn’t go back to London,” Sophie said. “I’m trying to work out a deal with the British gallery. If only he had told me! But he had heart. He tried to help people; he never wanted me to worry.”

“Didn’t he talk about some big deal?”

“For the past two months I’ve been flying back and forth, letting him run the show here. In London, the lorry drivers went on strike; we couldn’t even get the wood for shipping crates.” Sophie buried her face in her hands. Sobbed. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Aimée stroked Sophie’s hand, comfortingly. Waited until she calmed down. “What about his connections with old families, old collectors?” Aimée prodded. Couldn’t Sophie remember some connection?

Sophie shook her head.

Aimée wished she had a drink, and one to give to Sophie. She pulled on her jacket but it was made for the runway, not a frigid, unheated turn-of-the-century pharmacie.

“But he was murdered and it has to do with the jade,” she said. “What about Asian art collectors or the Musée Cernuschi?”

Sophie shrugged.

She hated to keep prodding Sophie but if she didn’t, her chance of finding a link to the jade disappeared.

“Sophie, how would he have had access to a jade collection looted years ago from Indochina?”

“I don’t know. We’d grown apart; we only spoke about business the last two months.”

“Did Thadée let old veterans stay in that back building?”

“How do I know?” she said. “I never went there.”

Aimée had to take another tack.

“Think, please. What did Blondel want from him?”

Tears welled in Sophie’s eyes again. “Not dope. He quit cold turkey. Went through hell, did it himself. I was proud of him.”

“You make him sound like a saint, Sophie,” Mado said, disgust in her voice. “He owed everyone. Past bills in Clichy don’t go away until they’re paid.” Mado paused. “Non, you talk like he was a martyr to dope!”

“What do you know? The craving, it’s a sickness,” Sophie said.

Aimée heard the sadness and something more in Sophie’s tone. An echo of real experience. She sensed a subtle change in the two sisters. As if they’d exchanged roles, Sophie with her conservative exterior, more forgiving than Mado with her wild outfit and narrow mind.

“He promised everything would work out.”

Frustrated, Aimée leaned close to Sophie, putting an arm around her shoulder. She tried not to wince as the stitches in that arm smarted. “Don’t you want to find the killers, bring them to justice? I do.”

“But you were the target, non?”

“I thought so too, but we both could have been set up.” That thought had kept Aimée up at night. “And then you were attacked. It could make some kind of sense if Thadée owed money.” She thought of what Pleyet said about owing “big sharks.” “He gave me the jade to give to a Cao Dai nun, but it was stolen from me. Stolen by someone who knew he’d had it. How will we know who unless you think hard? Tell me whom he dealt with.”

“Thadée had pretensions. Ever since his second wife, the one from the chic family,” Mado said. “You didn’t mention Pascale, the rich one who wised up and moved to Bordeaux.”

“I don’t want to talk about—” Sophie said.

“Of course not,” Mado said, “But at one time, Pascale de Lussigny was your best friend!”

Aimée knew Sophie swung a good punch from experience and shoved Mado to one side, just in case. But the name registered. So Thadée had had a connection to the de Lussigny’s. Was it the branch related to Julien de Lussigny, who wanted her to spy on PetroVietnam?

“What’s their address?”

“That big mansion overlooking Parc Monceau.”

That narrowed it some.

“There’s a lot of those. Which one?”

“Gold filigreed gates, by the museum.”

“Musée Cernuschi?”

Mado nodded.

“We’ll find it.” Aimée punched in the taxi request number on her speed dial. “First we’re taking you to a safe place. You can stay with my friend.”

“Not that old flic. . . .”

“In the 16th near the Bois de Boulogne,” she said. “More your style. This time you’ll remain there for your own good.” Even if she had to chain her up.

MARTINE, AIMÉE’S best friend since the lycée, answered the tall apartment door wearing a Tintin costume, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her orange wig was askew.

“We’re having a party for Gilles’s children,” she said, her voice husky as she looked them over. “I’ve got an extra costume.”

“Don’t worry,” Aimée said, “we’ll set her up in a back room and lock the door.”

“Don’t tell me.” Martine raised her hands. “I don’t want to know.”

In the gilt-edged white hallway, Aimée heard murmurs of conversation and laughter. Several dinosaur-costumed children ran into the dining room.

“Nom de Dieu, we haven’t eaten yet and it’s midnight . . . lots of hungry natives,” Martine said, ushering them to the back of the long apartment. “Great dress,” she told Mado. She opened the door to a suite of rooms with Louis XV furniture.

“Things going smoothly with Guy, Aimée?” Martine asked.

Aimée shook her head. She avoided Martine’s gaze.

“What did you do now?” Martine asked, lifting Aimée’s chin and looking in her eyes.

“Something stupid. Now he’s with a blonde.”

“And he seemed to be such a good catch! But I guess he’s not your bad boy type.” Martine exhaled a puff of smoke. “Bon, this will work, I’ve done it myself. Set off the fire alarm and you’ll meet big, strong men who can cook.”

Aimée grinned. “You seem happy now.”

“All men come with baggage.” Martine shrugged. “I like Gilles despite the nagging ex-wife and his kids every other week. I’m getting used to living in the eye of the storm.”

Aimée noticed the tired happiness in Martine’s eyes. And her pointed look at Aimée’s torn fishnet stockings. “How about another pair? I’ve got purple.”

“Merci, Martine.”

AIMÉE SAT Sophie down. Pinpricks of car lights snaked through the Bois de Boulogne outside the window.

“Please stay here. It’s not safe for you anywhere else right now.”

“Look, Aimée, forgive me for the way I’ve acted,” Sophie said, “but I can’t keep this check.”

“Thadée meant it for you.”

“I can’t help you much,” Sophie said, hesitating, “but maybe there’s something in the computer records.” She sank deeper on the low ottoman. “Instead of hindering you, I should try to help. My computer password’s 2297jil,” she said. “The safe’s behind a Jean Basquiat charcoal in the office.”

Of course. And the first place anyone would look.

“I’ll have to bury Thadée. Someone has to.”

Sophie still loved him, that much was obvious.

“Let me find out about the arrangements. But don’t move from here,” Aimée said, not wanting to add that she’d join him if the men who were after her found her this time.