Murder in the Bastille

Thursday Late Afternoon

RENÉ PRESSED THE SECOND number he’d copied from the list on Josiane Dolet’s speed dial.

“Architecture Brault,” said a middle-aged male voice.

“I’m calling concerning Josiane Dolet,” he said.

A pause. “Who’s this?”

“I’m with Leduc Detective,” he said, glancing up from the courtyard at the gleaming limestone buildings on the steam-washed cobblestoned alley. One could eat off the pristine stonework façades. A decade earlier, many would have avoided the area. It had been a district of weed-filled cours and small dilapidated porcelain and bronze fixture factories. These stood next to former seventeenth century nunneries that had once held an army of nuns in cloistered convents, seats of wealth and power that had rivaled the king’s. “Please spare me a few moments,” said René. “I’m downstairs.”

A head appeared at a window. All René could see was a halo of copper hair.

“I’ve got a backlog of clients . . .”

“We should talk in person,” René said. “Your number was on Mademoiselle Dolet’s speed dial.”

“My firm deals with many people.”

“This concerns Josiane Dolet’s murder. I just thought we should have a chat before I talk with the flics.” René let the silence hang.

“Ten minutes. Between clients,” he said. “The code’s 43A6, second floor, first door on the right.”

René took off his jacket, undid his right cufflink, rolled up the sleeve of his pink tinged custom-made shirt, got on his tiptoes, and just managed to hit the digicode.

The door buzzed. He pushed it open and reassembled himself in the glassed-in foyer, which melded two old factories. An ingenious arched portico opened up to an azure glass-roofed courtyard. Ochre-stained pots of bamboo bordered a minimalist bleached-wood desk. The reception area lay empty.

René took the lift. The wet weather kicked his arthritis into an aching winter mode early. He’d cut back his martial arts practices at the dojo. Not details he would share with Aimée in her condition. Or ever.

A man with thinning copper hair, small black-framed glasses, and a pale complexion stood as René entered. Surprise painted his face for a moment. René was used to that, and to the customary downward glance at his long torso and short legs.

“René Friant, of Leduc Detective.”

“Brault, of Brault Architecture,” the man said, extending his hand. René saw no welcome in the pale, guarded face.

René approached the side of the desk and shook hands. His arms wouldn’t have reached across the desk.

“You understand, I have a few minutes only,” Brault said, his thin mouth working in his long face. Expensive mechanical pencil tops showed in the pocket of his shirt. He wore tailored black denim jeans, a charcoal gray shirt and jacket, blue socks, and black hiking boots. All Gaultier by their look.

“Please sit down,” Brault said. “I’m concerned, but I don’t know how it involves me.”

After one glance at the tall, olive Philippe Starck-designed chair, René preferred to stand. “Non, merci,” René said. “I’ll get to the point.”

Instead, René headed to the window, shaking his head. He stood silently, figuring his next move, hoping to throw Brault off guard. The office window opened onto the coppered roof connected to the glass skylight. Vestiges of a bas-relief on the wall and verdigris-patinaed rain spouts stood out against the gable walls. Beyond, he saw a niche with a worn stone figure where the building roof overhung the street. Probably St. Anne, the patron saint of carpenters, René figured.

“What’s this about?” Brault said, breaking the silence.

“Josiane was protecting you, wasn’t she?” René asked, taking a stab in the dark.

A pencil lead cracked.

“Go ahead, talk to me. I’m not a flic,” René said. “What you tell me . . .”

“Goes to your boss, right?” Brault interrupted. “That salope of an editor who wants corroboration from two sources before he prints a fanny-licking article that makes it to France-Soir by nightfall.”

René struggled to keep the surprise from his face. “We don’t have to play it like that,” René said.

“Josiane was a good journalist. I don’t know why she associated with the likes of you.”

“Me?” René wielded his short arms in mock defense. What the hell was going on here? Brault had jumped from coolness to white-heat without a warm-up. He wished Aimée were here. He needed clues on how to proceed. And his hip ached.

“She had to pay rent like the rest of us,” he said.

“Josiane?”

Merde . . . had she been wealthy . . . had he blown it?

“There’s a lot you didn’t know about her,” René said, hoping he could bluff this out. He regretted it immediately. How lame it sounded! Why couldn’t he have a script or a computer program to guide him?

“Look, I won’t involve the flics,” said René, “if you tell me what you and Josiane were working on.”

Brault’s stainless steel intercom buzzed. “Planning commission’s assembled and waiting in the conference room, Monsieur Brault.”

“Tell me or I turn over my info,” René said. “I’m waiting.”

“What guarantee do I have you’ll conceal the fact that my number was on Josiane’s speed dial?”

Behind the small designer glasses, Brault’s eyes glared.

“We’re not the Brigade Criminelle,” René said, and winked. “One source works for me.” If that didn’t confuse Brault even more, he didn’t know what would. “There’s no benefit for me in involving the flics. I’ll erase your number.”

“Your boss knows, doesn’t he?” Brault glared.

Knows what? But René returned the glare in silence. And waited.

Brault snapped the mechanical pencil lead in and out, but it didn’t break. Just shot a little rain of pencil lead onto the Berber carpet.

“They hire flunkies to clear the tenants out,” Brault said. His tone was harsh and he spat the words out.

“Who does?”

“Mirador.”

“The big construction developer Mirador?”

Brault nodded.

“The Bastille Historic Preservation Society can’t compete with the palms greased by developers like Mirador. The Romanian spilled the beans one night after some 80 proof vodka. He plastered ceilings, did occasional jobs for us. There’s no reason to doubt him. The rue des Taillandiers project seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. That’s what I told Josiane. And that’s all.”

“What happened on rue des Taillandiers?”

“Forget the November to March ban on tenant evictions. Mirador evicts anytime.”

Brault’s words sounded like code to René. But not the kind of code he could decrypt.

“The Romanian?”

“Dragos.”

“Then Dragos can verify . . .”

“Don’t bother to check,” Brault interrupted. “He’s disappeared with the wind. That’s how they work. They hire transient Romanians, Serbs, or Russians.”

René nodded, hoping he didn’t look as clueless as he felt.

“Josiane wrote the article to put a spoke in Mirador’s wheel,” said Brault.

René’s ears perked up.

“Would it be big enough to stop Mirador from evicting illegally?”

Brault’s office door swung open. Two men in suits beckoned him. “The representative of the Bureau de la Construction’s here. We can’t hold up the meeting any longer.”

Brault strode out of his office, leaving René to see himself out, laboriously, with short steps. René’s mind spun. Whirled. He’d promised Aimée he’d call after interviewing Brault. But he couldn’t stop now; he had to find out about Mirador.

RENÉ LABORED several blocks to rue Basfroi, in the northern part of the Bastille. He headed to his friend Gaetan Larzan’s prop rental, where he knew he’d get information. Maybe even a decent glass of wine.

“Business good?” René asked.

“Terrible!” said Gaetan, brushing off his stained overalls, then slicking back his hair.

Always the same reply. Like his old uncle.

Gaetan, who stood near a tarnished knight in armor, returned to consulting a checklist, marking things off.

“These television crews, they’re more careless than monkeys,” he said. Beside him stood a garish green plastic palm tree, bent as though weeping on his shoulder. Ahead lay a hall full of coat racks: wood ones, bamboo, mahogany, metal, lucite, every size and shape imaginable. In a cavernous room strewn with clawfooted bathtubs, old screens, and mirrors propped against the wall, René saw a massive stuffed polar bear towering between low-slung chandeliers.

“Time for a glass?” Gaetan asked.

“Twist my arm and I might,” René said. Gaetan’s uncle and René’s mother had become friends when she’d foraged through the shop for props for her act.

“How’s your uncle?”

“Spry, as usual. He escaped from the home last week,” Gaetan nodded. “But his leg gave out. He didn’t get far.”

His uncle’s wooden leg, a souvenir from the Austerlitz battlefield hospital, intrigued René. After the war he’d refused a prosthetic, saying so many had died, he’d been lucky to get the stump, and he wouldn’t let anyone forget that. René felt empathy for him. “Makes a nice pair of salt and pepper shakers,” he’d heard some workers laugh behind their backs, “a tall cripple and a short one.”

At the secretary’s desk, littered with piles of yellow invoices under a stuffed hedgehog, Gaetan cleared a place for René. He reached back and pulled out a dusty, unlabeled bottle. In the pencil holder he found a corkscrew, then rinsed two long-stemmed wine glasses with bottled Evian, flicked the water into the waste bin, and poured.

“Château Margaux nineteen seventy-six?” René swirled the rich rust-red liquid, sniffing the cork.

“Close. You’re quite the connoisseur. Nineteen seventy-five was a vintage year.”

René wondered how Gaetan managed to get hold of such excellent wine. He wouldn’t mind a bottle.

Gaetan shrugged. “Fell off a truck in Marseilles,” he said.

Comme d’habitude—as usual—René thought. Business must be booming, or else he was paid in wine.

“Didn’t I miss your party this year? . . . Here’s a late present. Don’t drink it all once. Happy birthday.” Gaetan pushed another bottle toward René.

“Salut.” They clinked glasses. The wine poured down his throat like raw silk, full-bodied yet light.

“Merci, Gaetan.”

Gaetan’s prop shop overlooked a narrow passage. Beyond lay a dirt lot, fenced in by jagged aluminum siding and stone building walls pockmarked by old, peeling wallpaper.

“Wasn’t there a ceramic factory here?” He remembered his mother buying a piece of faience, a flowered vase from the flawed seconds batch. It had sat in the kitchen hutch for years. He still had it.

“The patron died. No one to run it. Soon to be a parking lot,” Gaetan said, making a moue of disgust. “Developers!”

A pity, René thought. He went to the window. But he couldn’t read the construction sign which had been defaced by silver and green graffiti.

Gaetan would know about Mirador. He’d grown up in the quartier. “I hear Mirador’s hiring Romanians to kick people out of old buildings.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but I know nothing firsthand,” Gaetan said. He broke into a wide grin as he announced, “I’m getting married. Remember Giselle?”

The long-legged dancer who taught at the dance studio. “Of course, lucky man!”

“We’re moving to Tours.”

“Félicitations! But your business?”

“Pierre, my cousin, is the manager now, he’s more involved.”

“Where’s Pierre?”

“Hiking in the Pyrenées. He deserved a vacation.”

René’s brow furrowed. “I need information about the evictions.”

“Not your style . . . Aaaah, it’s one of your friends, non?”

So he told Gaetan what had happened; about Aimée and the story Josiane supposedly was working on. By the time he’d finished, darkness had descended over the tiled rooftops.

“René, I’d like to help, but I’m hardly here these days,” Gaetan said, looking away. “Not everything in life checks out.”

But René could tell Gaetan was withholding something.

“There’s a load of returns in the yard,” he said, standing up. He flicked on the switch, flooding the office with light. “You know your way around; stay as long as you like.”

Was he afraid?

“Look, I’m worried about Aimée. You must know someone who can help me.”

“Don’t take this detective stuff so seriously,” Gaetan said. ”Look, genius, your métier’s computers.”

“She’s blind, Gaetan,” he said, “and my job might go down the toilet with this picky Judiciare.”

Gaetan picked up a folder of invoices, tucked them under his arm. He avoided René’s eyes. “Desolé. Don’t forget your wine. I’ll send you a wedding invitation.”

“Here’s my cell phone number,” René said. “Pierre might know, or be able to give me someone who does.”

DEJECTED, RENÉ didn’t know which way to turn. Calling Mirador and asking them about evictions probably wouldn’t garner information. On his way back, René passed the fenced-in lot, but he still couldn’t read the graffiti-covered sign.

After some blocks, rounding a corner, he just missed running into an old woman. She wore a faded scarf knotted at her neck, and a sealskin coat that had flaked off in patches. She stood in front of the dark Gymnase Japy. Yellow pools of light from the just-lit streetlamps glistened on the wet brick walls. She was knocking on the tall wood door.

“I promised Maman to do better. Every time the teacher says fois in the dictée I will write it correctly,” she said, then repeated in a falsetto voice, slow and measured:

“Il était une fois une marchande de foie qui vendait du foie dans la ville de Foix. Elle se dit ma foi c’est pour la pre-mière fois que je vends du foie dans la ville de Foix.”

She uttered the passage again and again, faster and faster. René watched her, unsure of what to do. How could he help?

A blue uniform turned the corner. A young flic on his beat. “Bonsoir, Madame,” he said, taking in the situation. “The gym’s closed now.”

“But the tutor’s supposed to meet me. He’s waiting . . .”

“Not tonight, eh, it’s late. Let me accompany you.”

The old woman gave him a toothless smile. “Maman would like that.”

“Bon,” said the flic, taking her arm gently, “let’s take you home, it’s time for your supper, non?”

“But they won’t let me back in,” she said. “I tried.” She pointed her ragged glove at a bricked-up, soot-coated, eighteenth century hôtel particulier facing the square. A jewel in its heydey, René thought. Fronted by doric columns, with arabesques of rusted iron balcony railings and nymph-bordered plaster detail. A crane with a dirty black wrecking ball stood suspended over the building. Large placards across the door said “Villa Voltaire—Luxury Apartments Ready Soon.”

“Alors,” said the flic, “they’ve moved you someplace, non?”

The old woman shook her head. “I want to go home.”

“We’ll just go find out now.”

The flic noticed René. “Do you know Madame?”

Before René could shake his head, a second floor window opened and an old man leaned out, a pipe in the side of his mouth. “Madame Sarnac’s lived in the quartier all her life,” he said. “Right there.” He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed at the hôtel particulier.

“Can you help, monsieur?” the flic asked, his tone polite. “She’s confused.”

“That was where she lived. She worked in the magasin below,” he said. “She went to school here. So did I.”

“But where does she stay now? I don’t want to bring her to the Commissariat.”

“It’s sick, throwing old people out. Armée du Salut sheltered some and the Maison des Femmes, too. But just the ones who had no families to take them,” he said. “She’s here everyday, doesn’t know what else to do. Me, I took action. It was I who got them to put up that plaque.”

He pointed to the plaque on Gymnase Japy that was just visible in the fading daylight. René could only read the last part. It was signed the ASEJD: Association en souvenir des enfants juifs déportés du XI.

The flic walked away, escorting the old woman, and the man shut his window. But now René knew who to ask about Mirador.

Looking around, René observed BANQUE HERVET lettered in silver, a small beauty salon and dimly lit brasserie. Beyond was a fire-gutted building—scorched black stone and broken windows— overlooking the gym opposite the center of the square.

He turned and stood under the rippled glass awning held by curlicues and spokes of wrought iron. A chipped and faded hotel sign was wedged inside an iron circle. The bubbled glass of the door was covered by a metal grillework pattern of flower bouquets and palmettes. He pushed the buzzer.

The door opened to display a diamond-patterned black-and-white tile foyer. The tiles were cracked and worn but the period staircase of white marble and swirls of scrolled ironwork retained its grandeur.

René climbed. His short legs pumped up the wide stairs. The ache in his hip increased. Tired, he’d resolved to make it the last interview of the day. On the second floor landing, he knocked on the door.

“Oui?”

René’s eyes lifted to the old man’s face, wreaths of smoke coming from his lit pipe. His white hair curled around his ears and down over the collar of a gray wool cardigan. He wore Moroccan leather slippers with turned-up toes and kept one hand in his pocket.

“I’m with Leduc Detective,” René said, flashing Aimée’s detective badge quickly.

“I don’t talk to strangers,” the man said, peering down at René.

“Neither do I,” René said, “but you saw me with Madame Sarnac, didn’t you? I want to help her.”

“A detective, eh? I didn’t know they made them so small.”

René flinched. He’d sat behind the keyboard too long. He’d forgotten it was always like this.

“You seemed the helpful type,” René said. “Guess not. I won’t stay up nights worrying when it happens to you. Being evicted, I mean.”

The old man leaned over and peered closer at René. “Who did you say you work for?”

“Leduc Detective. I’m investigating the reporter’s murder.”

“The landing’s drafty, come in,” he said, tugging at René’s shoulder. “Vite.”

Surprised at his change in attitude and the swift tug at his shoulder, René followed him inside. The scent of sweetish cherry-laced pipe tobacco filled the air.

The old man’s apartment, high-ceilinged and surprisingly tidy, faced the square on two sides.

“Let me introduce myself: Yann Rémouze,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “I didn’t want to talk out there . . . the walls have ears. Please sit down.”

René used a low ottoman to heave himself up onto a comfortable chintz armchair. He’d promised to call Aimée but it would be better to have some information to give her when he did.

“Bet you see a lot from your windows,” said René.

“I hear a lot, too.” Yann remained standing, surveying René.

René noticed a collection of flutes and woodwinds on a shelf ringing the wall. “You’re a musician?”

“Once I had an instrument shop; I made flutes,” he said. “Now I do repairs for a few old clients.”

An antique silver flute gleamed on the shelf.

Yann followed René’s gaze. “That belonged to a man who created color. That’s what a virtuoso flutist does. Plays with a simplicity that’s vivid.”

This old man lived in his memories, but René didn’t share them.

“Monsieur Rémouze, what happened to Madame Sarnac and those in her building?”

“Should I trust you?”

“Why not? You’ve already let me into your apartment.”

“Good point.” Rémouze sank into the chair beside René. His eyelids were heavy, tired. “Last week, the démolition signs went up and the trucks came. But the place had been emptied the week before that. I heard them in the middle of the night.”

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing that hasn’t happened time and again. Only this time instead of flics rounding up the juifs for the Gymnase and deportation or Apaches collecting interest on an overdue loan, it was Romanians hustling them out at three in the morning.”

“Mirador hired them?” René kept his tone even.

The old man nodded. “Let’s put it this way. Not long ago, a man on the fifth floor was offered a cheque to vacate the apartment he’s lived in for forty years. He refused, his neighbors got similar offers and refused too. Everyone was incensed. Suddenly, returning from Marché d’Aligre where he shops every day, he was attacked. Broken bones and bruises, then his heart gave out in L’hôpital Saint Antoine. Now lots of old people are awakened in the middle of the night, told they’re lucky not to get their hips broken. Now they don’t even get an offer of a cheque. They fold like a deck of cards. Intimidated.”

That agreed with what Brault, the architect, had told him.

“But why hasn’t someone gone to the authorities?”

Yann rolled his eyes. He lit a match, stuck the burning tip in the pipe bowl, and puffed in a steady rhythm.

“Think about the complaint system, the forms one has to fill out . . . no one’s stupid enough to identify himself. And for the rest, pockets are lined to look the other way.”

“Give me names,” said René. “Then I can do something.”

“No one will point a finger,” he said, “so it’s all hearsay. One of the flics said the old people are haunted by phantoms from the past. Poetic, probably true, but a nice excuse for inaction.”

“What do you mean, phantoms?” Was the old man going to ramble now? René wished Aimée was listening, instead of him. She had a better take on criminals than he did. She heard old men and women talk and put their stories together. She could find the thread. For such a restless person, she had a fund of intuition.

“Past indiscretions, like informing the Milice,” he said. “Ignoring black shirt thugs looting apartments of the deportees.”

“That’s long ago,” René interrupted. “What does it have to do with now?”

The old man puffed several times then looked up. His eyes were wide and full of an almost palpable sadness.

“What doesn’t it have to do with now? The past informs the present. Memory makes the map we carry, no matter how hard we try to erase it.”

True. René still didn’t see how it related. Paris had legions of the old, sitting on park benches or at kitchen tables telling stories of the war to grandchildren or others hostage to politeness.

“Some talk about it,” Yann said. “Many remain silent.”

René had enough problems without going back to what happened during the war. Leave that to those whose memories stretched that far.

“Can you read it, the plaque?” Yann beckoned René to the window.

To the memory of the more than 600 children, women and men of the 11ième arrondissement, assembled here and then interned in Loiret camp before being deported to Auschwitz. . . .

“Do you know how long it took our association to erect the plaque for our classmates?”

René shook his head.

“Simon was my friend; he lived down the hall,” Yann said. “Big family. Poor, but Simon had a beautiful steelie marble, topaz cat’s eye. Superb. He let me borrow it one day, his treasure, but he was like that. Generous. And I didn’t give it back. He asked me again and I stalled. Kept saying I’d forgotten it. And then one night we heard noises down the hall.”

Yann looked at René, his eyes clouded. But René felt he wasn’t seeing him. Just the past.

“Those noises. The ones making you hide your head under the covers, the frantic whispers of Maman telling me not to look out the window. And they were gone. Never came back. The apartment taken over by someone else, their belongings too.”

“So this is how you return the marble to Simon?”

A bittersweet smile crossed the man’s face. “Fifty years too late.”

True, there was no escaping the past, but René wanted to pull the focus back to the evictions and Josiane Dolet.

“Look, I can’t find out about the thugs unless I know where to look.”

“After they do their job, they don’t stick around for coffee,” he said. “Big mecs, bodybuilders, East European by the look of their clothes.”

“How’s that?”

“Hard to say, but a lot of them wear those track suits, the cheap designer copies with words misspelled.”

René knew the knockoffs sold at street markets. A Tommy Hilfiger with an F missing. Romanian chic.

“One wore a ponytail,” he said, “stringy hair. You know the type.”

“What else?”

“One night I heard this runt below my window calling out. ‘Draz,’ ” he said.

“Draz?”

“That’s all I understood. Then this gorilla, this Draz with the ponytail, beat him into pulp against the wall.”

René said, “Here’s my card.” He knew Aimée handed hers out all the time. It looked professional. And ran up a high printing bill. “Please call if you remember anything else.”

By the time René reached his car, the line for the outdoor soup kitchen, part of a network organized by Coluche the comedian, snaked up boulevard Beaumarchais. He knew authorities left a Métro station open when severe cold hit. A well-kept secret among the clochards and junkies. He hoped Madame Sarnac wouldn’t end up there.