Murder in Clichy

Saturday

HIDDEN DEEP IN THE armoire, Nadège heard the faint beep of a cell phone. The kicking stopped.

Mumbled words, then footsteps descending the stairs and the start of a car engine below. She crawled out of the armoire. Water . . . so thirsty. She had to find water for her parched throat. Weak afternoon sun slanted across the floorboards.

How long had she been out? All she remembered was the old grande dame’s long kid gloves. Then a smoothness like she’d felt at the rehab clinic when she’d been given sedatives for several days. Part of a cure that had almost worked.

What had Thadée told her? A child condemns one to live?

She steadied herself and, despite the tremors, made it to the window. A car backfired on the street. The men’s words echoed in her mind. Find the kid. Michel. Her child. In danger.

Her eyes watered as she held the handrail, making her way down, careful to avoid the rain water pooled on the steps. On Avenue de Clichy, she found a taxi. When the taxi pulled up to her father’s, she asked him to wait and made her way inside, shaking. No one was there except stooped, old Ngoc, the last butler her grand-père had brought from Indochina. She knew her father was embarrassed by the colonial flavor that still pervaded the house. Perhaps it would not for much longer.

“Ngoc, lend me twenty francs, would you?” she said.

“Désolé, Mademoiselle,” he shook his bald head. A wisp of a gray beard was tucked into his cardigan, a castoff of her grand-père’s. “I’m not supposed to give you money.”

“For the taxi, Ngoc,” she said.

Ngoc crinkled his eyes.

“Tran, Tran!” he called.

To her surprise, she saw Tran, their retired gardener, appear.

“Let me help, Mademoiselle,” Tran said, and pulled a bill from his pocket.

“I hope you’re a good girl, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Not getting into bad ways, again.”

“The best I’ve been in a long time, Tran,” she said, her heart beating fast. Her body had cleared the knockout drug and something had lifted inside her. Michel’s life was at stake. That was more important than anything.

But she had to find a sedative to tone down her craving. Like in rehab. She slipped into the bathroom, searched the drawers. Found the clonadine and valium her father had wangled from her last rehab, and paid the doctor for privately. It would ease the chills and pressure; it couldn’t make her feel any worse. She needed help to function through withdrawal.

Inside her grandmother’s room, she called for grand-mère and Michel but there was just the burnt toast smell of incense, its thick powdered ash on the red lacquer altar beside the five fruit offerings for good fortune. She stumbled over one of the toys scattered on the floor. Horror hit the pit of her stomach.

“Ngoc, where are Michel and grand-mère?” she called.

Tran appeared and took off his cap. Why was he in the house now? Something felt wrong.

“She’s upset with him; he’s worried,” Tran said. “Your grand-mère won’t talk to Ngoc.”

Her grand-mère ruled the back wing. Poor Ngoc. Over the years Ngoc had been her ally. But he forgot things. Little things. There was always a commotion in the back wing when her grand-mère discovered Ngoc’s forgetfulness.

“Grand-mère upsets easily, Tran,” she said. “Then it’s over.”

Ngoc appeared next to Tran, leaning on the door for support.

“I can’t remember where I put the chest for Madame Nguyen, and she refuses to speak with me until I find it. But—”

“Perhaps they’re at school, Ngoc?” she suggested.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “Now I remember!” He grinned. “At the science museum in La Villette. Some school trip.”

Nadège breathed a sigh of relief. They would be safe with so many others. She called her grand-mère’s cell phone. No answer, just a message in Chinese. She told her, “Take Michel to the country house in Fontainebleau. Don’t come back here.”

She went back into her grandmother’s bedroom and lit a handful of incense, and propped it in the blue and white porcelain holder on the shrine. She bowed her head three times as she had been taught. Prayed, “Keep my baby safe, keep my baby safe, keep my baby safe.”

She reached for the thin red cord around her neck. Gone. Of course, and her luck with it, courtesy of the old grande dame. Then she felt something tangled in her purple braid. She combed through her long hair with her fingers. Her lucky red cord with the jade disk came back between her fingers. Maybe the gods would answer her prayers after all.

She had to think. But her mind had slowed. A wave of nausea rose and subsided. Thadée wouldn’t have left something valuable in that building, where anyone could get at it.

She sniffled, rubbed her running nose with her sleeve. Think.

Thadée must have kept his stash here. Her stomach cramped and then it subsided. Right under everyone’s nose. He’d told her it was big and would take care of everything. The key. She remembered her old grandfather’s dressing room. She’d seen Thadée there once.

She stumbled to the other wing, her heels clacking on the marble, and into her grandfather’s rooms. They were still cluttered with his things, as if he’d left for a moment, not an eternity. His white helmet was still on his desk, the overhead ceiling fan and white mosquito net still hung over the canopied bed. He’d sworn he couldn’t sleep without it, even here in Paris.

She opened the changing room door. It was windowless and dark. A wave of sleepiness came over her. She ran her hand along the wall, found the light switch, and hit it. The suits and overcoats were flooded with brittle white light. An old-man smell and the sight of medals imprisoned in dusty, glass shadow-boxes greeted her. His ties, belts, and slacks hung in straight lines. In the corner, she saw his steamship chest plastered with an old label: HÔTEL MAJESTIC, SAIGON. It lay open. Empty. She grabbed for the closet rail, fighting her fatigue, and fell.