Murder in Montmartre

Tuesday

AIMÉE STARED OVER THE melting, dirt-encrusted snowdrifts on the bank of the Seine, racked with worry and guilt. She’d pushed Laure, subjected her to critical stress. She would never forgive herself if the pressure of her questions had caused Laure permanent damage.

Laure’s disjointed words spun in her mind. Old story, old news, about her father’s corruption, she wanted to shout. Hadn’t she proved he wasn’t crooked? Yet a sliver of doubt remained. Had Laure some knowledge of a cover-up, something her father had gone along with? Ludovic . . . was he Ludovic Jubert? The one who’d been referred to by the Interpol agent in Clichy in connection with Aimée’s father’s death in the Place Vendôme? The gray-hued Seine, swirling by in eddies, provided no answers.

She had to set that aside, worry about it later, had to concentrate on Laure’s predicament. She had to see the lab report for herself; she needed more facts to go on. She pulled out the list she’d copied of the partygoers the police had questioned, hoping the man she’d seen with the backpack was on it.

OF THE twenty names, she managed to reach eighteen by phone. The first, who identified himself as in “advertising,” replied that he’d enjoyed the hors d’oeuvre table and the blonde he’d met. That was all he remembered. And it went downhill from there. A couple commented that with all the music they hadn’t been able to have much conversation with anyone else. Two of the models indicated they’d been on their cell phones much of the time confirming their next day’s bookings.

The catering-firm owner, a Monsieur Pivot, spoke for his staff. His caterers had slaved in a hot kitchen and hadn’t had a break until the police arrived. Pivot was sure of that—“They’d be in trouble otherwise.” The bossa nova quartet’s guitarist confirmed that they had played until eleven-thirty, just before the police arrived. She left messages for the two others she’d been unable to reach and hoped for a call back.

Just before noon, sick of the phone, she changed into a wool pinstripe trouser suit, the warmest outfit in her armoire, outlined her eyes in kohl, and slipped on her coat. She had recalled where she’d seen Conari’s name: on trucks all around Paris.

Half an hour later, she stood on avenue Junot at the Conari firm’s address on the upscale side of Montmartre at the crest of the northwest slope. She entered a remodeled artist’s atelier housing several architecture and construction firms. Conari’s offices occupied an entire floor; the firm was prosperous if the building and its location were anything to go by.

“No appointment?” said the receptionist, with a perfunctory smile. She had short curly brown hair and good teeth. So good Aimée figured her paycheck had gone into them. “I’m sorry, Monsieur Conari’s working on a deadline. It’s impossible.”

Aimée shifted in her high-heeled boots, wishing she’d worn her two-inch heels instead. “A homicide occurred in the apartment across from where he hosted a party last night. I have a few follow-up questions, routine, of course, that will take five minutes. Guaranteed. It’s necessary to the investigation.”

“But he’s too busy—”

“Just ask him. He’s been so cooperative already I hate to intrude, but I promise to take just five minutes of his time.”

The receptionist hesitated, picked up the phone. “Monsieur Conari, there’s a”—she glanced at Aimée’s card, flashed her teeth again—“a Mademoiselle Leduc of Leduc Detective who insists she needs to speak with you.”

The receptionist blinked. “Of course, Mademoiselle, go right in. Second door on the left.”

Aimée’s heels sank into the deep pile of the carpeted hallway whose walls were lined with abstract black-and-white paintings. She knocked on the door.

“Entréz.”

Floor-to-ceiling windows greeted her, a wall of glass giving a panoramic view of the rooftops below. What looked like several loft spaces had been combined into a large room with a cathedral-type glass ceiling that soared upward.

She focused on a middle-aged charcoal-haired man leaning over a drawing table, his shirtsleeves rolled up.

“Monsieur Félix Conari? I’m Aimée Leduc,” she said. “Pardon me for disturbing you.”

“Of course, no problem,” he said, concern in his voice. “Please sit down.”

He indicated a low-slung red leather chair that looked difficult to get out of.

“Non, merci, you’re busy and I’ll get to the point,” she said, pulling out the list of partygoers from her bag. “Can you describe what happened at your party last night?”

Félix Conari rubbed his chin. “Tiens, let me think, the quartet played, my guests seemed entertained, the caterers kept stocking the bar and refilling the hors d’oeuvres trays, I made sure of that,” he said, in a down-to-earth tone. “You see, the guests were clients, important to my firm. We were about to go in to dinner. Yes, that’s right, and then the commissaire came.”

“That’s all you remember, Monsieur Conari?”

He expelled air from his mouth, shrugged. “Oui. But let me call Yann, he was there last night.”

Conari hit an intercom button on his desk. She noted a Yann Marant on her list, one of the two she had not reached.

A moment later, a man in his thirties, wearing a rumpled black suit and Adidas track shoes, with long brown hair curling behind his ears, came in.

“My friend Yann Marant, a software engineer consulting with my firm,” Conari introduced him. “Mademoiselle Leduc’s a detective investigating the incident last night.”

Aimée noted the telltale calluses on the edge of Yann Marant’s palm. A systems analyst or programmer, she figured.

Yann smiled. A nice smile.

“Sorry to bother you, Monsieur Marant, but I understand you attended Monsieur Conari’s party,” Aimée said.

Yann nodded. “Do we need to identify someone in a lineup, a suspect? Is that why you’re here?”

He watched too much télé. “Not quite yet,” Aimée said.

“I want to help, but . . .” Marant shook his head. “I was preoccupied last night.”

“You know these software engineers.” Félix gave a small smile, slapping him on the back. “Code, numbers whirling in his mind all the time. It’s hieroglyphics to me, but I pull him back to earth from time to time.”

Aimée wondered if Marant was good. She and René used a consulting-systems analyst from time to time. They would need one if their proposals worked out, but since Marant had been hired by a successful outfit like Conari’s she doubted he’d be in their price range.

“The commissaire told us very little,” Yann said. “We’re in the dark as to what happened.”

Intelligence radiated from these men. They were not the type she could fob off with dumbed-down information.

“That’s standard procedure, Monsieur. In investigations like this, the officers must gather all the facts before any hypothesis can be made. That’s why I’m here, disturbing you,” she said and smiled. “Monsieur Marant, try to think back to last night, just before eleven o’clock. Did you hear a loud noise or notice anything happening outside the window?”

He shrugged. “I worked in Félix’s study. There are no windows. Then, Félix, your guest arrived, the musician? I lost track of time—”

“I take it the police questioned him,” Aimée said. “His name?”

Félix Conari’s hand clutched the slanted table’s edge. “He’s shy, that one, Lucien. A unique musician.”

Aimée scanned the names. “There’s no Lucien listed here. His last name?”

“Sarti. A Corsican DJ and musician. He mixes traditional polyphony and hip-hop.”

No Lucien Sarti. Aimée thought of the timing and the man watching at the gate. “Does he have black hair and was he wearing a black leather jacket and carrying a backpack?”

Félix grinned. “That describes many of my guests. But, yes, he is tall, rail thin, and has black curly hair.”

“How can I reach him?”

“Look, Mademoiselle, I don’t want to get him involved in this.”

“Of course not, but I need help, all the help I can get. I must speak with everyone. Can you give me his phone number?”

“Lucien’s a musician, a free spirit,” Conari said. “No phone. I contact him through a resto, Strago, and leave messages for him.”

She wrote that down. “You mentioned your guests were clients,” she said. “I’m curious as to how you know this musician, Lucien Sarti.”

“Call it a middle-aged man’s dream, but I’m planning to promote him,” he said, with a small smile. “I have some connections in the recording industry. Music’s close to my heart. But he disappeared before we actually signed the contract. Artists, you know!”

She wondered why this Lucien Sarti had disappeared before speaking to the police.

“Should Félix be concerned, Mademoiselle Leduc?” Yann asked. His ponytail poked out above his jacket collar. “I mean, has the quartier changed so much? Can I ask what happened?”

Marant asked a lot of questions. But then she would, too.

Félix nodded. “I’ve never seen such a police presence. This is Paris, not New York, where shootings are commonplace.”

Read the papers, she wanted to say. But they might prove more helpful if she told them something. Word traveled in the quartier so even these busy urban professionals would hear, sooner or later.

“We’re investigating a policeman’s murder on the roof of the building adjoining yours. The storm hasn’t helped,” she said. Two pairs of eyes watched her. “So anything that might come to your mind, a small detail—”

“You’re a private detective, you said. Aren’t the police in charge?”

Sharp. Didn’t miss a thing. “I’m investigating on behalf of a client,” she said. “Beyond that I can’t say.”

“Look, I want to be more helpful,” Yann said. “How can I reach you if I remember anything?”

Aimée hid her disappointment at their lack of information. “I appreciate your time, merci,” she said, handing them each her card.

STRAGO, ON the less fashionable and more working-class slope of Montmartre, was a storefront restaurant with a hammer and sickle on the old curling menu posted behind smudged glass. A handwritten sign in violet ink read FERMÉ. This side of the quartier hadn’t changed much since Doisneau’s black-and-white fifties photographs, she thought. Narrow cobbled streets wound up to the butte. The corner cafés and low buildings fronting rue Labat reminded Aimée of Edith Piaf’s sad song of the rue Labat streetwalker who had lost her man. But, then, weren’t they all sad?

Thoughts of Guy intruded. His scent, the way he ran his fingers through his hair. She pushed the sadness down; she had to find this musician.

At the vegetable shop under a green awning next door, Aimée asked the owner about Strago’s hours.

“They open when they feel like it,” he told her. “If you smell garlic, Anna’s cooking.”

She put a franc down and reached into the counter’s glass canister for several Carambars. She unwrapped the yellow waxed paper, glanced at the joke printed inside, and popped the caramel into her mouth. “Ever seen Lucien Sarti, black hair, black leather jacket, who gets messages there?” she went on.

He shrugged. “When the weather’s like this, I stay in the shop.”

She handed him her card. “If you do, call me. I’d like to speak with him, Monsieur.”

She wrote down Strago’s phone number and belted her leather coat against the cold. Snow clumps in the plane tree branches melted into dripping lines that ran down the bare trunks. Snow, the rare times it occurred in Paris, never lasted long. The rising heat from the buildings took care of that. Like it had taken care of any evidence that the snow on the roof might have held.

She rooted in her worn Vuitton wallet. Found it. The card with Jubert’s name that Pleyet from Interpol had given her when she’d dealt with him in the Clichy district. Her thoughts jumped to Laure’s ramblings. For two months she’d searched for Jubert, the one link she’d found to her father’s death in the Place Vendôme bombing. But he hadn’t been at the address listed, or in the Ministry. It was as if the man had never existed.

Was Jubert the “Ludovic” Laure had mentioned? Was there another Ludovic in her father’s past, a past of whispers, secrets, and shadows she’d only caught hints of. Morbier would know. She pulled out her cell phone.

“Oui,” Morbier answered.

“May I buy you a late lunch?”

“You want to thank me?”

For what? she almost said, before she remembered he’d gotten her released from the Commissariat. She paused, looking down at the oily rainbow-slicked swirls reflecting the sky in a pewter puddle. A January sky.

“Or make it up to me for your atrocious manners, ruining Ouvrier’s party and landing me in hot water with La Proc,” he was saying.

“She’s got it in for you, anyway,” Aimée said. “But how—?

A diesel bus rumbled past her, drowning Morbier’s response. Aimée felt for her gloves in her pocket.

“Le Rendez-vous des Chauffeurs in half an hour?” Morbier asked.

A taxi-driver haunt, with good food. That should sweeten the questions she had to ask.

MIRRORS LINED the walls, yellow-and-white-checked cloths covered the twelve tables in the resto, an aluminum meat slicer rested on the counter. The last diners finished a late lunch with a cheese course. Morbier sat on the camel-colored leather banquette, split and taped in places, worn by the repose of generations of taxi drivers. He was reading a newspaper.

“Nice choice, Morbier,” she said, sitting down and hanging her bag on the back of her wooden chair. The hot, close air felt welcome after the brisk chill outside. Framed posters of the Montmartre vineyard vendanges hung above the mirrors. Background jazz played low on a radio as the owner wiped down the aging red formica counter through which patches of the original zinc were visible.

“Combines all facets of the Montmartre spirit: rustic, bohemian, and bon vivant,” he said, setting down his paper. “But you’re buying me lunch. What’s your real reason?”

“René said you were a romantic,” she said, pouring from the pichet of rosé, already on the table, into his wineglass. “And to thank you.”

“If I didn’t know you better,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together, “I’d believe it, Leduc.”

“Believe that Laure’s in the Hôtel Dieu in intensive care,” she said, spreading the napkin on her lap.

Morbier shook his head.

Should she tell him the rest?

“Laure heard men’s voices from the roof,” she said. “Speaking another language.”

“You interrogated her, Leduc?”

“There’s so little to go on, I had to ask questions,” she said. “But I made her worse.”

“Blaming yourself won’t make her better. Look, we do it all the time.”

“After I saw the police dossier at her lawyer’s, nothing else looks good either.”

She poured herself a glass of rosé.

Morbier touched the rim of his glass to hers. “À la santé. Clearing her is the lawyer’s job, Leduc. Not yours.”

He caught the owner’s attention and pointed to the blackboard with the prix fixe menu chalked on it. “Two of those, s’il vous plaît.”

“Of course, Commissaire,” the man said, heading to the kitchen behind the small Dutch door, whose top half was open. From inside Aimée could hear chopping noises and the hiss of frying oil.

“You’re a regular here, I see.”

He gave a small smile, the jowly cheeks and bags under his eyes making him look more tired than ever.

“There’s nothing more you can do, Leduc,” he said, taking the rolled paper napkin and tucking the corner into his collar.

Aimée leaned forward. “Morbier, she didn’t kill her partner. The techs made a mistake with respect to the gunshot residue. The lab report’s not even prepared yet!”

“That’s for the police to investigate.”

“See what you can find out,” she said. “When the report’s filed, tell me.”

“You know I don’t have access to those investigations.”

Didn’t he?

She looked down, summoning her courage.

“At the hospital, Laure rambled a bit, obsessing about the past. She mentioned a report about Papa, hinting at some cover-up.”

Morbier choked on his wine. Wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“Do you know anything about it, Morbier?”

“Live in the present, Leduc.”

But in the brief unguarded look she’d seen on Morbier’s face, she sensed he knew something.

“Does it have to do with when Papa and Georges were partners?”

“Laure’s father?”

She nodded, took a piece of bread from the basket, tore off the crust, and chewed it.

“You were Papa’s first partner, weren’t you? What can you tell me about Georges?”

“Beats me.”

“Your memory going, Morbier?” She leaned forward and brushed the crumbs aside.

“That and everything else. My retirement’s around the corner.”

For a man approaching retirement, he kept a tight schedule, working at the Commissariat and part-time at Brigade Criminelle as well. He’d never confided in her about his assignments.

“You know how Laure put her father on a pedestal. Help me understand what she meant by a report, some cover-up involving my father. There is some secret that’s worrying her.”

The owner set down two plates of fisherman’s salad—potato and white fish and a sliced saucisson sec that she’d seen him unhook from its hanging place above the counter.

“That’s in the past,” he said. “Leave it alone.”

There was something.

He cut the sausage into small pieces with his knife.

“Aaah, the owner’s mother cures these herself,” he said.

“Tell me, Morbier.”

He sighed. “There’s no secret. We all graduated from the academy together. You know that.” He took a bite, then washed it down with rosé. “Then, like now, we worked in fours, two pairs. Beat the cobblestones together—”

“You, Georges, Papa, and who?” she interrupted.

Morbier set down his knife, rubbed his finger over his thumb, and looked at Aimée, an unreadable expression on his face.

She pulled out the old card. “Was it this man, Ludovic Jubert? A few months ago, an Interpol agent told me Jubert knew about the surveillance we did in Place Vendôme. If so, I want to talk to him.”

He scratched a wooden kitchen match on the table leg and lit a Montecristo cigarillo. He took several deep puffs and leaned back, silent.

“Where is Jubert?” she asked.

“How do I know?”

“But you can find out.”

The owner stood by the table and asked. “The sausage, it’s not good?”

“Lost my appetite, Philippe,” Morbier said. “Bring us an espresso and the check, please.”

She wouldn’t let Morbier off so easily. Plumes of acrid smoke rose from his cigarillo. She tried not to inhale them. Yesterday she’d thrown away the pack of Gauloises she’d hidden from Guy.

“Would you find him for me?” She took another sip of wine, thinking. “When you and Papa worked in the Marais together, where was Georges?”

“Kicked upstairs. Driven, he was.”

“And Jubert?”

Pause. “Retired now, most likely.”

“Retired? Then what did Laure mean?” She took a deep breath.

“She’s injured, isn’t she? Making no sense. Listen, I’ll say it again, I live in the here and now. So should you.” He ground out his cigarillo. “And some more words of advice.”

Morbier was good at that.

“Let Laure’s lawyer handle the matter. Don’t step on the investigators’ toes. They don’t like it.”

“How can I find Ludovic Jubert?” Aimée repeated.

Morbier stood and took his scarf and overcoat from the rack. He picked up the espresso cup, drank from it, and threw some francs on the tablecloth. “Tried the phone book?”

He took a step toward the door.

She reached for Morbier’s hand and gripped his thick fingers with their nicotine-stained, ridged nails. He tried to pull his hand away but she held tight.

“Morbier, there’s a saying ‘To continue a journey one must put the ghosts to rest.’”

A faraway look came into Morbier’s eyes. “That’s a hard order to fill, Leduc,” he said, in a voice so low she almost didn’t catch it. “One can spend a lifetime trying.”

He wrapped his muffler around his neck and was gone. A cold draft of air hit her as the door slammed. His newspaper had fallen to the floor. She picked it up, glancing at it while pulling out her wallet. Morbier’s distinctive slanted handwriting caught her eye. “The Corsican arms investigation report six years ago that traced links to the Paris Préfecture, which caused furor in the Ministry of Interior, has resurfaced. Spokesmen for the Ministry decline comment,” she read. He’d written the letters JC beside the article, in the margin, heavily underlined.

“He’s like that these days,” the owner said, bringing her change and retying the apron around his waist. He shot Aimée a knowing look. “You should try to make him happy, Mademoiselle.”

J C . . . JEAN-CLAUDE . . . Jean-Claude Leduc, her father? Or was she reading too much into Morbier’s doodles? Six years ago he’d run Leduc Detective while she was in her first year of medical school, helping him out occasionally. Then, on a weekend surveillance at the Place Vendôme, there had been an explo- sion and her father had been killed. She still didn’t know who to blame but she had to keep trying to find out who as responsible, even if putting the ghosts to rest, as Morbier said, was hard to do. She folded the newspaper and put it in her bag.

She caught the bus on Boulevard Magenta, trying the Hôtel Dieu twice on her cell phone to inquire as to Laure’s condition. Both times a message machine answered. Frustrated, she could only leave her number.

From the bus window, she saw the St. Vincent de Paul’s vans parked where they were setting up the soup kitchen near Gare de l’Est. A line of men was already forming for the evening handout.

She’d been lucky that food had always been on the table. It had not been easy for her father, she imagined. She remembered her excitement and the wonder in Laure’s eyes as their fathers cooked crêpes for them for La Chandeleur, the feast of Candlemas on February second. This coming weekend. They’d observed the tradition of flipping crêpes with a coin in hand to make one’s wish come true. She’d wished for her mother to come back. Georges had been the only one to flip without breaking the crêpe.

On the bus sat an old man with his dog in a basket; a teenager wearing headphones and nodding to his own beat; a silk-scarfed woman reading Balzac, rubbing shoulders with a cornrowed mother, her coat covering a bright, flowing African boubou, a stroller at her side. Faces of Montmartre from the other side of the hill, away from the tourists and Sacré Coeur, where affordable apartments adjoined the African Goutte d’Or quartier.

Her thoughts turned to Jacques’s ex-wife, Nathalie. She dreaded an interview with the woman who’d already filed a lawsuit against Laure. But it was all she had left to go on.

AIMÉE STOOD in front of Nathalie Gagnard’s work address, 22 rue de Douai, a Second Empire mansion. The building stood on the corner of the rue Duperré, a street of white stone buildings with shuttered windows and balconies bordered by black iron grilles. A one-way street, lined with parked motor scooters and a car with an AUTO-ÉCOLE sign on top. Across from her in a nearby café’s window, a leftover lumpy St. Nicolas figure still lugged presents. A mobile phone store and several immobiliers, real estate agents, indicated this was an upscale slice of the quartier below Place Pigalle.

Aimée skirted an open hole in the pavement, blocked off by plastic orange webbing, revealing the sediment and rock below. It brought back her geology teacher’s rhapsodies describing the nuanced aroma of schist, the gypsum and stone layered under the streets. To Aimée, limestone or shale, it all smelled the same. This quartier had been built over an ancient lepers’ cemetery, he’d told them. She doubted the residents would be happy to know what lay moldering underneath their feet.

Fluttering cloth banners across the front of the building advertised espace, space available for events. She entered the foyer, reached by a marble staircase beneath a hexagonal wooden fretwork of inlaid lights. Somehow she’d have to get Nathalie Gagnard to talk.

Gilt chairs were turned upside down on tables in the high-ceilinged salon. Aimée almost tripped over a waiter sitting on the parquet floor, his eyes closed, rubbing his stockinged feet. As she neared the reception desk, she saw a gaunt-faced woman in her midthirties, with black wispy hair and gold hoop earrings, wearing a white shirt, black skirt, and sensible low heels, stacking brochures on the zinc bar.

“Bonjour, we do private receptions, wedding parties.” The woman smiled, coughed, and covered her mouth. Her voice was low and grating, a smoker’s voice. “Here’s a brochure. Perhaps you’re interested in having an event?”

Aimée returned the smile and pulled out her card.

“I’d like to speak with Nathalie Gagnard,” she said before the woman could launch further into her sales pitch.

The woman’s eyes narrowed, taking in Aimée’s navy pinstriped trouser suit, pointed boots, and leather backpack.

“Regarding?” Her charm evaporated.

“A police matter. Does she work . . . ?”

“You’re investigating my ex-husband’s murder?” The woman’s grip on Aimée’s card tightened.

Aimée inhaled, determined to try a tactful approach, a skill René often told her she needed to practice.

“So you’re Madame Gagnard?” Aimée said. “Please spare me a few moments to clear up some points in the investigation.”

“About time.” Nathalie Gagnard looked at her watch. She straightened the brochures. “I’m done. Take a seat over there,” she said, her voice clipped as she pointed to a smaller room lined with carved wood boiserie.

Aimée heard Nathalie give instructions to the waiter concerning wineglasses. Sculpted cherubs and a frieze beneath a ceiling mural surrounded her in an eclectic mixture. Stone sculptured caryatids of women held up the ceiling; gold and painted glass panels framed the outer salon. It was a nineteenth-century potpourri.

The thick expensive brochure proclaimed that here Bizet composed his opera Carmen, and his wife held salons attended by Proust and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a neighbor across the street. Later, Aimée read, the mansion had become a working-class bouillon canteen; later still, a bordello, until they were outlawed; and most recently, a post office.

“Cornered the bitch, have you?” Nathalie said, sitting down, pulling out a gold-filter-tipped cigarette, and flicking the flame of a plastic lighter.

More than hostile, she was vindictive.

Nathalie took a deep drag, then exhaled a plume of smoke and leaned forward in her chair. “I swear, she went after Jacques like a cat in heat the minute he was nice to her. Can you imagine? Jacques would give the shirt off his back to help someone.”

Even if the shirt belonged to someone else, Aimée wondered? From what she’d gathered, Jacques could make an omelet without eggs, a real débrouillard—what some people called a wheeler-dealer.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“That harelip, the whiner,” Nathalie said, tapping her ash into a white porcelain ashtray.

Cruel, too. But much as she’d like to slap the woman, it wouldn’t help her.

“You’re referring to Laure Rousseau?” she said, determined to keep her emotions in check and probe deeper into Jacques’s life.

“The murderer. So jealous . . .”

Rolling a boulder uphill would be easier than talking to Nathalie.

“Help me to understand this,” Aimée said, curious about the Gagnard woman’s delusions. “According to the file, their professional relationship worked well. Why do you suspect her?”

“Who else? Despite her, Jacques and I were getting back together.” Nathalie’s shoulders heaved and she covered her eyes, sobbing. The smoke spiraled into Aimée’s face.

Surprised, Aimée ground out the cigarette, pulled out a tissue, and passed it to Nathalie.

“She’ll pay, the bitch,” Nathalie interrupted, blotting the tears on her cheeks.

“From what I gather,” Aimée said, reining herself in with effort, “your divorce was finalized a few months ago.”

“Where’s justice, that’s what I want to know.”

“Justice. That’s what we want,” Aimée agreed. “But we have to dig, find the evidence, put the pieces together, and nail the perpetrator. Procedure dictates questioning and investigating every aspect to get a complete picture. Going to the newspaper doesn’t further your cause, Nathalie, does it?”

“At least it gets attention.” Nathalie reblotted her eyes, careful not to smudge her mascara. Suspicious now, she asked, “Who do you work for?”

“Nathalie, what if there’s an accomplice? Others may be involved.”

Nathalie stuffed the tissue into her purse. “I asked who you worked for.”

“I’m investigating on Maître Delambre’s behalf,” Aimée said. She figured Nathalie wouldn’t know which side he represented. At least not yet. She pulled out her cryptography notebook. Pretended to consult it, flipped through some pages, then stared at Nathalie’s face, disappointed at the firm set of her mouth.

“The report indicates your former husband saw other women,” Aimée said, thinking of Laure’s comment about a girlfriend. A new tactic might loosen her lips. “We believe he was meeting an informer that night. A woman.”

“You don’t understand. Jacques respected women,” Nathalie said, as though stating a simple fact. “He treated them well. But she took it the other way.”

“I’m curious, looking at the logic of that evening,” Aimée said, hoping her voice sounded reasonable. “From the suspect’s viewpoint, it wouldn’t make much sense to murder Jacques since everyone saw them leave the café together!”

Nathalie’s eyes hardened into slits. “Do your job. Nail her.”

“Was Jacques under pressure? Bills? The job? Did he mention people he owed money to?”

Nathalie stood. “I have an appointment.”

“Nathalie, La Proc demands proof. Facts. When did you last see Jacques?”

“I set a place for him at dinner on the eve of Noël but at the last minute he had to work.” Her brow creased as she combed her memory.

“That was a few weeks ago. Nothing more recent?”

Nathalie shook her head, hurt pooling in her eyes.

For a moment, Aimée pitied her. Guy had bought a Christmas tree and together they’d strung the lights on the tree and on Miles Davis, too, finally falling asleep in each other’s arms at dawn.

Snap out of it, she told herself. Get down to business. Think. Did Jacques have mistresses whom he supported? Was he trying to maintain a lifestyle beyond his reach? She’d seen it happen to her father’s colleagues.

“Jacques was making monthly car payments according to the report,” Aimée said. She remembered seeing the tow truck hooking the Citroën. “What happened to his car?”

“I can’t make the payments,” Nathalie said. “I’ve returned it.”

“Did you divorce him because of his spending?”

Nathalie leaned forward. “Just between you and me, things were tight. We divorced and declared bankruptcy to save our assets, but we were still together. How plain must I make it? The woman killed him out of jealousy. But she won’t get away with it, I won’t let her.”

Aimée felt sorry for Nathalie, desperate to revenge her unhappiness somehow. But her accusations damaged Laure, who was surely innocent.

“The Brigade Criminelle will investigate and find the criminal.”

“Wake up,” Nathalie said, rising and pushing back in her chair so that it scraped on the wood floor. “The old-boy network didn’t want her father’s name dragged in the mud. But no one will cover up for her.”

“Yet, Jacques took her as a partner—”

“Like I said,” Nathalie interrupted, “he liked to help people.”

Something struck Aimée as wrong.

“I’m late.” Nathalie looped a tangerine kerchief around her neck, reached for her coat, and walked out of the building.

Aimée followed her to the low-slung Renault Mégane with the AUTO-ÉCOLE plastic box on top parked outside. Wind whipped down the street, bringing the smell of wet, sodden leaves.

“You own a driving school?”

“We only kept this,” Nathalie said, unlocking the door. Her sigh indicated she’d known a better life. “Before the divorce we had a fleet of six cars, eh. I’m not the type to sit at home so I was involved in the business.”

So the divorce had saved what was left of their business. Again she wondered if Jacques had grown too accustomed to the finer things. Flics often moonlighted, doing security to supplement their salary.

“Did Jacques work security?”

Nathalie’s mouth formed a moue of distaste. “Consultant,” she said. “He did consulting.”

The rain-swept pavement mirrored the dull gray clouds. The number seventy-four bus shot out diesel exhaust as it gunned by.

“With his skills, of course,” Aimée said. So both of them had held two jobs, working hard. Yet Nathalie had stiffened when she’d asked about Jacques’s past.

Nathalie opened the car door.

“I need to verify this,” Aimée said. “Can you remember the company for whom or the location where he consulted?”

“He knew Montmartre, he had contacts here. Sometimes he took private jobs, you know, for VIPs.”

“Who could I talk to who might know about this sideline?”

“I didn’t get involved.”

Why wouldn’t this woman talk?

“Try to remember, Nathalie. A name?”

“Look, she murdered Jacques, how does it matter?”

“Everything’s important,” Aimée said, trying to appeal to the woman’s pride. “Let me stress that if all the facts don’t come to light now, they could be used later to prevent a conviction, to let the killer go free. As a flic’s wife, you know that.”

Nathalie blinked, threw her purse in the passenger seat. “He talked about Zette sometimes, an old boxer who runs a bar. On rue Houdon.”

CLUB CHEVALIER , the bar on rue Houdon, had seen better days. And they had passed several decades ago, Aimée figured. The dark bar was lined with plastic-covered banquettes and decorative columns, their plaster bases now heavily gouged. A large woman with blonde hair, a pink apron around her girth, vacuumed the matching once-pink carpet. What VIPs did they serve here, Aimée wondered?

“Pardon, Madame, may I speak with Zette?”

“Eh, we’re not open.”

“Is Zette here?”

The woman sighed and switched off the vacuum. An artificial-stone water fountain gurgled in the corner, green fungi grew on the lip of the shell-like basin. Several game machines blinked red and blue in the corner, the kind that used to have slots but now were computerized. A radio blared out the results of the horse races from somewhere in the back.

“Who wants to know?” the woman said, her hand on her hip.

Aimée grinned. “Jacques’s friend sent me.”

“Not that business again?”

Have the police been here, too, Aimée wondered. “I need to talk with him.”

The woman shouted, “Zette!”

No answer. Just the excited voice announcing the race winners: “Fleur-de-Lys by a head, Tricolor a close second, and Sarabande makes it third!”

Aimée heard the clink of a glass and someone slapping papers down.

“Zette!”

“Leave me in peace, woman!”

“Someone to see you,” the woman said.

Aimée heard a muttered “Merde.”

A balding gray-haired man poked his head around the door in the back of the small bar. He had several gold teeth, a crooked nose, and a white scar splitting his right eyebrow, giving him a perpetually questioning look.

“Will talking to you make me happy, Mademoiselle?”

“How about a drink and we’ll find out.”

“Aaah, such possibilities!” He scratched his neck, gave her the once-over, and raised his other eyebrow. “But I can smell a flic from way off,” he said, with a wide smile. “Have your boss call me. I deal with the commissaire. Show me some respect, eh, Mademoiselle.”

Respect? Who gained respect that way? The woman, a bored look on her face, pulled the vacuum cleaner into the back.

“I’m not a flic, but my father was.”

“So you say. Where?”

“Commissariat in the fourth arrondissement before he joined my grandfather at the detective agency that I run now.”

“Aaah, so you know Ouvrier?”

He was testing her.

“I went to his retirement party last night, around the corner.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I didn’t see you.”

“The tail end,” Aimée said, edging toward the bar. “I’d never seen him out of uniform but he looked sharp in a pinstripe suit, eh?”

“That’s a fact,” he said. “I left early, had to man the bar here. Knowing Ouvrier, next time he wears it will be his funeral.”

Pause. From the silence, she figured Zette hadn’t heard about what had happened to Jacques.

“Mademoiselle, I didn’t catch your name, or your father’s,” Zette said.

Not only careful and street-wise, he’d let her know he was well connected at the Commissariat. As a smart club owner should be, but it bothered her.

“Jean-Claude Leduc,” she said. “Aimée Leduc, here’s my card.”

She set it on the wet, glass-ringed counter.

He turned her card over in his hand. “A woman PI?”

She nodded. “Computer security.”

Had he known her father? “Does the name Leduc sound familiar?”

“I know a lot of people. So tell me what you really want to talk about.”

Aimée realized she’d passed muster, set twenty francs on the none-too-clean counter, and smiled. “Bet you’re thirsty.”

Wine would make this dance with Zette more palatable. Or so she hoped.

“I’ve got a nice little Corsican red that sings in the gullet.” He reached for an unmarked bottle and two wineglasses and set them in front of her. “It’s never too early for me.”

She noticed his loaf of a body, a bit gone to fat, but biceps bulged under the tight red soccer shirt. He must work out. An old prizefighter with the scars to prove it.

“Young ladies don’t visit me much anymore,” he said, pouring the garnet red liquid.

Zette’s attempt at charm? She took a sip. Plump, fruity, and smooth on the way down. Not bad.

On the bar wall hung a framed newspaper sport section headlined ZETTE KO’S TERRANCE THE MAD MOROCCAN.

“So you’re that Zette? My father went to your matches at the Hippodrome.”

She stretched the truth. He’d won complimentary championship tickets from the Commissariat once. A worn-around-the-edges retired prizefighter might soak up the flattery.

Zette shrugged as though used to this.

“Boxing gave you a good living, eh?”

“All this.” He took a long sip and gestured around the bar.

“And a VIP security service with Jacques Gagnard, non?”

“You’ve got it wrong,” Zette said without skipping a beat and drained his glass. Poured another and topped up hers. She took another swig.

“How’s that, Zette?” she said. “You worked with Jacques, didn’t you?”

“So that’s who you want to talk about,” he said, staring at her. “Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?”

She hesitated to give him the bad news. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry, what do you mean?”

She paused, her index finger tracing the rim of the glass. “He was shot and killed on a rooftop. On the next street.”

Zette’s fists balled. He shook his head. “But I saw him last night! Nom de Dieu, he was at the bar, I bought him a drink, we talked—”

“Everyone did. We’re all shocked. He was off duty, too, when it happened.”

Zette’s face clouded with sadness and he poured more wine. Was there more behind that look?

“To Jacques, a good mec.”

They raised their glasses.

“Who found him?”

“That’s the thing, Zette; I did.”

Zette made the sign of the cross with his big knuckled hands. “I still can’t believe it.”

“What did Jacques talk about, do you remember?” Aimée asked. “Was he nervous, was he acting any way unusual?”

Zette rubbed his jaw. “How did you get my name?”

She controlled her frustration. “Nathalie, his ex-wife, said he worked for you.”

“Work? More like he did me a favor from time to time. My VIPs like protection.”

What celebrities called Club Chevalier their hangout?

“By VIPs, you mean who?”

“Tino Rossi sat on the stool you’re sitting on,” he said, with a proud look on his mug.

Tino Rossi, a Corsican singer popular with the over-sixty crowd? She tried to look impressed. “Wasn’t he before Jacques’s time?”

“My guests want to keep a low profile, they want discretion,” he said. “They like to sample Montmartre without their goons, and to be escorted by a local.”

An escort service? She looked around the club, saw the frayed postcards of Ajaccio on the smudged mirror. Of course, this was a Corsican bar, why hadn’t she picked up on that? Instead of Jacques squiring provincial businessmen to the hooker clubs, could it have been Corsican gang leaders who wanted protection without their “goons”?

“I see. You’re Corsican, Zette?”

He flashed his gold teeth. “At one time we ran the quartier. The golden days. Pepé le grand was rubbed out right in front of my place, and Ange Testo ran the big brasserie on Place Pigalle. It was a wehrmachetspeiselokal, German soldiers’ canteen, during the war. Those bathrooms were a mess, all graffitied with swastikas, things you don’t want to know. In the end Ange just wallpapered it over.” He shrugged. “We Corse had a code of honor, still do. But now, I’m the only one left.”

She nodded and drank her wine. Code of honor? More like the code of silence. Talk and one talked no more.

She envisioned the postwar days of zazous wearing big zoot suits and flashing money, the jazz clubs and strip bars, when the Moulin Rouge was considered high class.

“Zette, tell me about the last job Jacques did for you.”

“Like I said, now and then he did favors for me.”

“Bon. What favor did he do for you?”

“Like I said, some escorting.”

Getting a Corsican to talk was hard work.

A broad-shouldered young man wearing a leather jacket, wool cap low over his forehead, and jangling what sounded like coins in his pocket, entered. Zette glanced up. Instead of telling him the bar was closed, as Aimée expected, he nodded at the young man who’d gone over to a game machine. If she hadn’t been studying Zette in the mirror behind the bar she would have missed what came next. The flick of his wrist under the counter, the slight whirring sound, and the brighter red glare of the game machine reflected in the mirror.

And then she knew! It was a fixed machine, regulated by a switch under the counter! Pigalle and Montmartre bars had once been notorious for them. Placed among the legitimate game machines, one, resembling all the others, would be rigged. Inside was a device, a Sicilian specialty. The owner kept a tab of wins and losses and paid out or collected. If the player didn’t honor his tab, he never played the machines in Montmartre, or anywhere, again.

“Look, Mademoiselle, I’m busy. Time for me to open up. Jacques, rest his soul, hadn’t done a favor for me in months.”

He wanted her to leave so he could carry on with his crooked machine unobserved.

She gave him a look, understanding in her eyes. “But I want to find Jacques’s killer. If you’re his friend, you’d want to help me.”

“Mademoiselle, stick to your own concerns.”

She resented the brush-off. “I’m not interested in your business here. The rigged machines.” She gave a pointed look at his hands resting on the glass-ringed counter. A look to say she held something over him now. Or was he protected by the police, as he’d implied? Did they let him operate in return for information? Did he inform? That could be messy. But she didn’t care. There had to be something beneath the surface here. And it might have gotten Jacques murdered and backfired on Laure.

She tried a hunch. “Jacques owed money, didn’t he? To you, and he had to work it off. Repay you with your favors to your clients.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zette said. He took the wine bottle, set it back on the shelf, put the wineglasses in the sink, and grabbed a towel.

“I think you do,” she said. She paused. The pings of the game machine filled the empty bar. Rows of cherries and bananas whirled behind the young man’s shoulder. “And who might have wanted him dead.”

“That’s a big leap,” Zette said, his voice even. Unconcerned. “And here I thought you were being friendly, buying me a drink.”

He must be protected. Well protected. Maybe he paid off the Commissariat big time for his crooked machines. She gripped her bag. A new thought occurred to her. Had he been paying off Jacques?

“Help me here, Zette,” she said, in a conciliatory voice. “Why do you think Jacques was killed?”

“I have no idea.”

He swiped the towel across the counter, rubbing the water rings into blurred spots on the zinc. Try some cleanser, she wanted to say.

Instead she leaned forward, planting her elbows on the counter. “Your turf’s Montmartre. Don’t tell me ideas aren’t going through your mind about who had a reason to off Jacques. Wasn’t this his beat, his turf, too?”

Several men walked in through the door. Some wore windbreakers or tracksuits. Dark, hollow eyed, the kind of men who hung around Pigalle Metro station, picking up odd jobs, helping movers or unloading trucks. Not legal, but better than begging. Some did that, too. A sinking feeling came over her as she realized that all the money they earned ended up in Zette’s machines.

Annoyance shone in Zette’s eyes. Good. If she badgered him enough he’d give her something to get her to leave.

She put her bag on the counter, careful to avoid the wet spots, to show Zette she wouldn’t budge until he talked. “Who might have killed him, Zette?”

He didn’t like that, she could tell. Silently, he glanced at his watch, then looked out the fogged-up window.

“I’ve got time for a nice long conversation,” she said. “I can wait.”

Zette leaned forward. “You’ve heard of the vendetta?” he said, his voice lowered.

Surprised, Aimée nodded.

“Vendetta?” she repeated, in a loud voice.

That bothered Zette and she felt the eyes of the men on her back. “Jacques wasn’t Corsican—”

“His mother was. That’s why I helped him. Now, if you don’t mind, Mademoiselle, I’ll escort you to the door.”

OUT IN windswept Place Pigalle, she stared at the dry fountain. All but the Saint Sulpice and Jardin du Luxembourg fountains were kept dry in winter to avoid freezing. Gambling, a vendetta? She knew a large percentage of the police force was Corsican. Still in the dark but full of new questions, she headed to the Metro.