Murder in the Bastille

Thursday Evening

IN THE HÔPITAL QUINZE-VINGTS waiting room, Aimée heard the evening sounds from Bastille and inhaled the Seine’s scent from the open window. She remembered seeing a teddy bear floating in the swollen Seine in the spring. After so much rain, the river had overflowed the quais. The image haunted her all day . . . had a child dropped it from a bridge, a spiteful older brother tossed it? Did wet tears soak a pillow and an anxious parent rush off to the Samaritaine Department store to replace it . . . as her father had tried?

When she was ten, her doudou, a ragged mouse named Émil, dropped from her bookbag into the Seine. Émil was the one thing left from her mother. The only thing her father hadn’t had the heart to throw away. Stained and threadbare, with missing whiskers, Émil had been the subject of her mother’s drawings and stories. The day he fell from Île St-Louis ranked as the second worst day in her life. The first was when her mother left and never came back.

Émil had fallen at twilight; the dusk, a rose-violet slash under the fingernail crescent of a moon. Her papa had told her the moon’s lit face always turns toward the sun. And to imagine Émil in the turquoise-green Mediterranean enjoying the sun-baked sand. She’d shaken her head stubbornly.

She’d begged her papa to call Captain Morvan, an old colleague and police diver, who’d checked with the Seine dredgers. After he’d reported no luck, she insisted they search the water-treatment plant beyond Bercy. But Émil must have floated away.

Then one day a package had arrived, covered with British stamps, official customs forms, and coarse brown twine. It was addressed to her. In it, she found a toffee-furred bear wearing rainboots, blue slicker, and luggage tag from Paddington station, London, on it, saying “Please take good care of this lost bear.”

After her father’s death, in his drawer, she’d found a yellowed receipt from an English department store for a stuffed bear for a Mademoiselle Leduc. And after all these years, her Paddington Bear still stayed on her bed.

Her dog Miles Davis and the stuffed Paddington Bear were the only men in her life. But wasn’t that how it turned out . . . a successful career and money, but a sour love life, or conversely, madly in love, business falling apart and broke?

Was it just her? Or the fact that bad boys were her downfall?

The last time she’d been happy had been with Yves, now a news bureau chief in Cairo. A problematic relationship at best. Then a few flings, all disasters.

Her tastes were simple. Someone who could make her laugh, had nice eyes, and had the same taste in champagne. Veuve Clicquot. And a bad boy side that made up for any other deficiency.

A nurse’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Dr. Lambert’s ready. I’ll help you to the MRI.”

Why was she thinking about men? It wasn’t as if she’d had a future with anyone before, and now the prospect seemed even more remote. Zero. She couldn’t see and didn’t know if she ever would.

“Nervous?”

“Me?” she said, hoping her voice didn’t crack with tension.

Chantal had taught her to endow someone with a face or a feature, to “give looks to voices.” She turned to the voice and nodded. The movement felt more natural, less odd than before.

“Ba wey,” said the young nurse for bien oui, with that hesitant Parisien drawl. Aimée felt her slowly expelled breath. “Can’t stand enclosed spaces myself, but Dr. Lambert will be staying with you. That’s quite unusual, you know.”

An eye surgeon and head of the department at the MRI? Didn’t they have technicians for that? But she was reassured. She wouldn’t mind having him explain what he saw or giving her the chance to ask questions.

A buzz of voices met them in the imaging department.

“Dr. Lambert, the cranial sac shows distension . . .”

“Here’s the case we’re going to study: female suffering severe blunt trauma to the head, partial asphyxiation, and subsequent vision blurring and loss.”

Great. She was to be his guinea pig for students. And he hadn’t even told her.

“You forgot the resulting concussion, Dr. Lambert,” she said.

Silence.

“So I did, Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “Anything else slip my mind, or does that about cover it?”

A snicker came from somewhere in the shuffling group she felt standing ahead of her.

“You’re the doctor,” she said. “I hope you explain everything. And the real prognosis.”

“This is the type of patient, doctors, that will be your rare curse and luck to treat,” he said, his voice serious. “Strong-willed and a fighter.”

What about smart?

And despite the fear gnawing at her insides, she focused on his voice explaining the neurons, ganglia, arteries, veins, and whatnot causing the trouble. Or what seemed to.

“Notice the nice embolizing technique of Robards, the neurologist at hôpital Saint Antoine,” Dr. Lambert said. “He redirected the bloodflow and supported the blood vessel at the weakened site. Not in a textbook, but it makes good sense. Remember that.”

Aimée concentrated on Dr. Lambert’s words, but even with a few years of pre-med, she felt lost. Nevertheless, she could appreciate Lambert’s observations, his way of injecting guidance, of teaching them to think. Maybe if she’d had a professor like that in the école des médicins she’d have stayed. But then the dissection of corpses had gotten to her.

She took a deep breath as the gurney wheeled ahead. They wrapped sheets over her and slipped her into something that echoed. Drafts of air shot across her. And from all around the noise of the giant machine, as it powered up, enveloped her. As if she’d been shoved inside a wind tunnel.

From outside came the muted clacking of equipment, moving of knobs and other adjustments.

“Try these earplugs; it gets noisy,” said a loud voice. “Small space bother you?”

“A little.” She was terrified.

“Try to remain still.”

The nurse had given her small sponges, telling her to let out her tension by squeezing them. At least they kept her fingernails from digging into her palms.

THE STUDENTS had gone and Dr. Lambert stood near her. Elevator bells pinged down the hallway. The smell of the hospital laundry soap clung to his lab coat. She managed to sit up, then to stand.

“Got a clearer idea of the problem, Doctor?”

“Right now I’ve got a clearer picture of what’s not the problem,” he said. “The brain stem’s a complicated highway. But, to tell you the truth, the doctor who reads the MRIs won’t analyze the films and report until tomorrow.”

Great. Her knowledge had increased by zero.

“Let me reexamine your eyes. I want to check something,” he said. “Tell me if anything changes.”

She felt his hand on her chin, lifting it up. He must be tall. His fingers lifted the edge of her eyelid. Gently. A metallic clicking sounded by her nose.

Desperately she wanted to see. Anything. A blur, something. She tried.

Only darkness.

He pushed her hair off her forehead. His hands were warm.

“You want it straight?”

“Will I need a drink to hear this?”

“Are you always so . . .?”

“Feisty?” she interrupted. “Only when I’m scared, only when my life’s collapsing. Otherwise I’m easy.”

“Your life will change, it has to,” he said. Something moved on the linoleum, as if his feet shuffled. “But it doesn’t have to fall apart. Shall we have that drink?”

Now she was really scared.

“Fine, let’s hit an Orangina machine in the lobby,” she said. “My treat.”

She thought back to books she’d read about Helen Keller, all unkempt and wild with rage before she learned Braille, and that movie, Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn, blind and gorgeous in Givenchy, defeating killers. But she wasn’t like either of them.

It hit her like a load of bricks. Her vision loss was permanent. She didn’t need him to spell it out. She needed to find somewhere to fall apart, but not in front of him. Then somehow she’d manage to call René.

She realized how nice Dr. Lambert was. He’d cared enough to find her a place to stay. He’d tried. Above and beyond his duty. The poor guy must have a heavy schedule, case overload, and a wife and kids dying to see him after a long workday.

“Look, let’s make it some other time. You’ve got a life, probably a big day of surgery and appointments tomorrow,” she said, giving him a way out. “We can talk when the detailed MRI report comes in. Unless, of course, I wake up to a halo of miraculous light and can finally do my nails. Then I’m out of here.”

“You know that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile,” he said.

Had she smiled? She felt warmth spreading over her hand. From his.

“Let’s go,” he said. He placed her hand on his bended arm. “Amaze me with all the tricks Chantal’s taught you.”

Perform like a circus animal?

“What do you mean?” Dumbfounded, she stood paralyzed.

“Relax. You’re pretty uptight. Show me how you walk on rue Charenton to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau, for a start,” he said. “Or do you have stage fright?”

She didn’t want to go to a lighted, noisy bar full of people. Or to pass by the passage where she had been attacked. She wanted to crawl into a hole, curl up, and cry.

“Scared?”

“Me? Where’s that bar?” She strode ahead, pulling him along with her and prayed to God she didn’t run into a pillar or stone wall.

BY SOME odd quirk of fate, she’d been to the bar-tabac on the corner of rue Moreau. It was on the rainy night she’d parked in the Opéra parking lot and the attendant had showed her the shortcut through hôpital Quinze-Vingts. She’d stopped for a quick espresso, knowing she was late for the impromptu Populax meeting but figuring she’d need to key up with caffeine to match Vincent’s nervous energy.

She remembered the fifties-style bar, but not its name. Comfortable and utterly Parisian, like the one around the corner from her apartment. They still existed. Timeworn, with a stumpy, rounded counter. The soccer calendars with team schedules on the nicotine-burnished walls. The smudged, beveled mirror with the specials written in white over the Lavazza coffee machine, crowned by rows of cups. Upside-down liquor bottles anchored to the wall with silver stop-cocks that gave metered doses. The brown mosaic tile floor littered with sugar cube wrapping and cigarette butts, where one bumped elbows with neighbors. Not chic but centime-conscious.

“Later on they sing,” Dr. Lambert said, taking her elbow and guiding her onto a leather banquette. “Clothilde shuts the place at midnight, the accordion player hands out sheet music, and people stay until dawn.”

Clothilde. Where had she heard that name?

“The new generation craves a whiff of the past. To sing their grandparents’ songs, to dance the bourrée from the countryside in three quarter time.”

She knew the past could reassure. Or frighten.

“You know most people in Paris come from somewhere else,” he said. “What about you?”

“A Paris rat,” she said, leaving out the fact her mother was American. “And you?” she asked.

“Born in Chambery. The snowy Savoy.”

What did he look like? she wondered.

“But my grandparents . . .” she went on.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Auvergne?”

She nodded. “That’s easy.”

Paris was filled with Auvergnats. Between the wars and during the Depression, Auvergnats, nicknamed bougnats, had fled the mines and their bleak farms in the Massif Central, migrating in droves to Paris. The well-known tale: coal merchants, hoping to make their fortune in Paris, often ending up carrying coal on their backs. The more affluent opened bistros, accounting for the large number of Auvergnat-based menus one still saw. She remembered her grandmother telling her how in Cantal, the calcium carbonate-rich springs coated any object put under them with a shiny translucent layer. Like the pervasive bougnat influence in Paris.

Her senses had been pared to the essence. People, slapping eath other’s backs, and smoking, involved in discussions, as they were all over Paris tonight. Their energy hit her. And she felt curiously part of it.

“Pastis?”

She needed something strong.

“Double, please.” She shoved a fistful of francs at him.

While Dr. Lambert got drinks, she pulled out Josiane’s cell phone, found the number pad, and called René.

“Allô?”

Aimée heard klaxons and the revving of engines in the background.

“Ça va, René?”

“I’m stuck in the motorcycle rally in Bastille,” he said.

“But that’s on Friday nights.”

“Maybe you should let them know. Alors, traffic’s jammed,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Not far, buying my doctor a drink,” she said.

Pause.

“Aren’t there ethical considerations . . . doctor and patient, eh?”

“It’s after my MRI. He’s trying to break it gently to me,” she said.

“MRI?”

“Standard procedure. He’ll know more tomorrow.” She didn’t want to tell René she’d be blind forever. “Look, he feels sorry for me.” She felt the edge of the table, worn and sticky. “What did you find out?”

The revving of engines increased. She wished he’d shut his window.

“Aimée, get this. Romanians intimidate residents and old people, using strong-arm tactics to force them out. They don’t even try and evict them legally,” René said, his voice rising with excitement. “Seems a construction company moves in then and restores or demolishes the building. Josiane was working on a story about this.”

“Would that have got her murdered?”

“Makes more sense than that she was a victim of the Beast of Bastille,” said René.

René was good. A natural.

“Quite the detective, aren’t you? Tell me more.”

And he did. The architect Brault’s allegations, the roller-blading astrologer’s predictions, his friend Gaetan’s evasions, and the old woodwind maker’s information.

“Draz?” she asked. “This old man heard the name?”

“Seems Draz was a bon mec. The old flutemaker heard him beating someone to a pulp below his window,” René said. “I don’t imagine that’s something you forget.”

“Good job, partner. Listen, someone stole my phone,” she said, wanting to downplay the attack. “Try my number, see who answers.”

She clicked off. René called right back.

“Your voice mail answers,” he said. “Your phone’s probably in the Seine with the fishes.”

She wasn’t so sure of that.

“I’m staying somewhere else tonight,” she said.

Another pause.

“With your doctor?”

How did René make that jump? Was her flicker of attraction to the doctor so obvious?

“An opera singer rents rooms . . .”

“What about the residence? You need care!”

She appreciated his concern. He was the only family she had besides Morbier, who was keeping to the margins of her life.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “Look, my door got carved up and I had a close encounter hanging from my window railing.”

“Someone attacked you in your room?”

So she told him.

Right now, she was so worried that she might not see again, that everything else faded in importance.

“Stay at my place.”

“René, the doctor wants me near the hospital, available for tests. He can’t schedule in advance, he calls me in when a space opens. But thanks for the offer.”

The air brakes of a late evening lumbering bus hissed in the background.

“Of course,” he said, his tone resigned. “You need to be close to the hospital. Lucky the attacker didn’t take your laptop.”

“He came for something else: Josiane’s phone. If he saw the laptop in the drawer he ignored it. My phone must have sat in full view on the bed but I’d put Josiane’s in my pajama jacket pocket after the nurse copied the numbers for me. I’d forgotten it was in there.”

She heard René’s intake of breath. “By now he will have discovered he’s got the wrong phone. You are in danger.”

“That’s why I moved. Only you, Dr. Lambert, my landlady, and Chantal know where I’m staying.”

“Good.”

“Listen, why don’t you make an appointment with Josiane’s editor?” she said. “Find out what she worked on, see if the editor will share her notes.”

“Tomorrow. I’m beat.”

He sounded more than tired.

“We know she lived near Marché d’Aligre.”

She pictured the streets leading to it, one of the few covered markets left in Paris. Her grandfather had bought pheasant there. She’d accompanied him, transfixed by the beady-eyed stuffed guinea fowl and the bright-plumed pheasants. Rabbits hung by their feet upside down. Under the glass and wire-framed roof, he’d buy Meaux mustard sealed in its crock with red wax, and containers with olive oil from Provence they decanted into small bottles.

The marché hosted a thriving outdoor produce trade and secondhand dealers, too. On the outer fringes, under the arcade of a 70s “monstrosity” (according to her grandfather), stood the curve of flats replacing Haussman era buildings, where street people spread blankets, hawking odds and ends. A marketplace since medieval times, the Marché d’Aligre was the only spot in Paris to continue the tradition unbroken.

Aimée tried to view the map in her mind. Had it made sense for Josiane to go through that passage where she was killed on her way home to rue de Cotte?

No, the passage lay several blocks in the opposite direction.

Then why would Josiane go there? But she knew why . . . the phone caller, the man had begged her to meet him.

She knew because she’d heard him.

Again she wondered if they had been having a lover’s quarrel.

“René, what if this involves jealousy?” she said. “Love problems. Plain and simple.”

“Since when is love plain and simple?”

He had a point.

She smelled Dr. Lambert’s Vetiver scent before his thigh brushed against hers in the booth.

“René, I’ll get back to you later,” she said and clicked off.

She felt her hands laced around a frosted cold glass.

“The new bartender recommended Fire and Ice. A speciality of the Antilles, where he’s from, too. He swears this will get anyone through a rough night.”

“So, doctor, what gets you through?”

“Call me Guy. If you keep calling me doctor, customers will descend on us to describe their illnesses.”

Laughter. Low and melodic. Nice.

“So what gets you through the night?” she asked again.

“Sunrise.”

What a cop out! She might as well head back to the opera singer’s and try banging her head on the wall. Maybe that would jiggle those neurons into action. It might even restore her sight.

She chugged the Fire and Ice, a mixture tasting of tomato and strawberry zinging with tabasco. Curiously wonderful.

“Look, I appreciate the drink . . .” she said, making as if to stand up. Hard in the cramped booth when she didn’t know which way to turn.

She felt a tug on her elbow and decided to stay put. She wouldn’t have known what direction to go anyway.

“Blame it on a school trip to England,” said Guy. “We saw dawn rise through the pillars at Stonehenge. And it changed my life.”

He sounded serious.

“I was fifteen,” he said. “Since then I’ve photographed hundreds of sunrises all over the world. After an eclipse comes the best sunrise. Incredible.”

And she knew what he meant. She loved sunrises herself. Watched them from her window lighting up the Seine with a luminous glow. The quiet time before the city burst alive. Like a still breath before a large exhalation, feeling as if she were the only person on the planet.

Yet, she’d imagined him otherwise; a life filled with surgery, consultations and patients. “How do you find the time?”

“The baker loves me. We share a coffee. He’s the only other one awake at dawn on my street except for the newspaper truck. Or once in a while, kids coming home from rave parties.”

“What was sunrise like this morning? Describe the colors.”

Pause.

He attempted to change the subject. “I live behind an old hardware store, famous for doorknobs. It’s been there since 1862, has more than 130 kinds. They specialize in Louis XIII style.”

Why was he avoiding her question?

“Did you miss the sunrise this morning?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy,” he said, his voice hesitant, “talking to you about this . . .”

“Please, tell me about the colors,” she asked again. If she couldn’t see the sunrise, she’d like to hear about it. Visualize it.

“As I said . . .”

“But I want you to,” she said. “Then I can see it in my mind. I miss seeing the sunrise.”

“So you like them, too.”

A pause.

Had she made points with her doctor? He grew more human all the time.

A band of pewter fog covered the Pont Neuf,” he said. ““Peach lightened up the horizon, spreading and reaching for the blue.”

“What kind of blue?” she asked.

“Innocent. Baby blue. The stars and streetlights twinkled until the bands of color became one brightness.”

She wished she could see him; the shape of his eyes, how his mouth moved, if his cheekbones slanted, and how light glinted in his hair.

“It’s not something I broadcast,” he told her. “Some might say I seem obsessed.”

“Having a passion isn’t necessarily obsession. I’m just wondering what you look like.”

That must be the Fire and Ice talking.

“Chantal’s a bad teacher if she hasn’t . . .”

“But she has,” she said, interrupting him as she passed her fingers over his face. Tentatively, she traced his chinline, felt the stubble and the soft border of his lips. His mouth. It would be rosy and he’d have straight white teeth. Her fingers traveled his earlobes, then his long fringed eyelashes that never seemed to end. Black or dark brown hair? Maybe tobacco red? She felt his forehead, smooth and . . . she stopped. Down girl . . . try and control yourself.

“Like this,” he said, taking her other hand, sliding it, with his, along her eyebrows and framing her eyes.

“I’ll leave it to the professional,” she said, enjoying this. Now if he could only give a massage.

The next table had gone quiet.

“Encore?” asked a voice near them.

“Feel like that pastis?”

“You buying?”

“Two double pastis, merci,” he ordered.

After the drinks landed on the table, she felt proud as she hooked her pinky over the glass’s edge to gauge just the right amount of water to pour into the milky pastis. The anise aroma hit her along with the buzzing conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the smoky atmosphere. Comfortable and familiar, even though she couldn’t see. The feeling that things could be worse crept into her mind. After all, there was a man at the table.

Not her man. Not her table. But it was a start.

Arm-in-arm they walked to Madame Danoux’s. She heard the hushed sound of the cars passing over the cobbled street. It must have rained while they were in the café. The car tires sounded different.

“Not many people appreciate sunrise,” he said, his tone low in the damp street. “They’d rather sleep.”

“My father pulled the all-night shift. When I was little, the only time we’d have to talk was before I left for school,” she said. “Sunrise was the best time of the day for me.” She remembered his worn bathrobe, tired face, and grin as he poured her steamed milk and chocolate. His thick, unread work files on the table by her bookbag. She shook off the memory.

“What’s on this street, Guy?”

“Café, fabric store for decorators, the offices of the La Rochelle Film Festival, and of Médecins san frontières,” he said, pausing.

Was there something else he wanted to say?

“There’s a uniform manufacturer, a public relations agency . . . it’s written in Chinese but it looks like a wholesale accessory shop. In the courtyard there’s an organ grinder’s supplier. He’s the only one who still makes the music rolls.”

She recalled something: the sheets of music from Clothilde’s café . . . and the sheet of music René found in the garbage at Mathieu’s. Did they connect? But she’d think about that later. At the door, she reached for his hand, not knowing where to plant the customary bisous on his cheeks.

“I didn’t learn much about the MRI,” she said. “But I enjoyed myself. Merci.”

“That’s the point,” he said. “Chantal and the others frequent the bar we went to. The owner was a madame way back when, a ‘character,’ as people say.”

“A colleague of Mimi’s?”

He laughed. “That’s the rumor. People watch out for each other here. The quartier takes care of the non-sighted.”

Her heart chilled. “Not well enough. I was attacked in the passage and Josiane was killed.”

“But the serial killer’s . . .”

“It wasn’t him. It was someone who knew Josiane.”

“Let’s concentrate on the present,” he said.

And then she felt his fingers on her lips. Then his lips on hers. Warm and searching.

And she was 16 again . . . late kisses in a hallway at night, stolen and wonderful. Something mysterious revealed for the first time.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he said.

What did he see in her?

The door opened. “Dr. Lambert . . . is that you?” Madame Danoux’s distinctive contralto filled the hall.

By the time Aimée got to bed, her tiredness had evaporated, leaving a brittle restlessness. Didn’t patients fall for their doctors all the time? What a cliché.

Again, she wondered what had appealed to him? She was blind. Had it been pity . . . a mercy gesture?

Yet, he hadn’t said he was married or involved. She hadn’t felt a ring on any of his fingers.

And what good would she be to a man? How could it go anywhere? Did she want it to go anywhere?

Stop.

But he knew how to kiss. If she didn’t quit this, she’d be fantasizing about him all night. Forget counting sheep. She had to switch gears, distract herself, but she couldn’t call René, it was too late.

She felt for the laptop, trying to ignore the mustiness and mothball scent emanating from the corner armoire, wishing Miles Davis, her puppy, was curled at her feet. As usual.

But thank God, he was with René’s neighbor in Les Halles. He needed care and she couldn’t provide it. Maybe they could enroll in the guide dog course together.

After booting up the laptop, she created a file, titled it Chanson and typed in what bothered her. A big list in no particular order. And as she typed, the voice repeated the words. After five minutes she played the list back.

Over and over.

Then she arranged them in order of importance. Blindness, Vincent’s obstinate refusal to furnish the hard drive, and Mirador with Draz, the scum, rated as the top three.

And René. She worried about his health, what he’d found out, and what he might miss. She often missed things, only to notice them later. Or details might hit her as she walked away or in the middle of the night.

Like now.

This was the kind of thought process she’d learned from her father and grandfather, growing up in a household of policemen. Not to mention the smoky Pelote nights with half the Commissariat playing cards around the kitchen table. The talk. The nuances, the glances, the tipoffs. The way they treated their indicateurs. Every flic nourished informers. Had to. By osmosis, she’d absorbed what to be aware of, what to suspect, and how to tell when something was being withheld.

Fat lot of good that did her now. She wasn’t in the field. She had to depend on René. And part of her worried about people’s cruelty to him because of his stature.

She wanted to tear her short, spiky hair out, but not seeing the result would ruin the pleasure. All she could do, besides stew, would be to put her fingers to work. She felt around, made sure the modem wires hooked into the phone line.

She couldn’t do much about her blindness. But she could find out if Mirador had a website and garner info from it. René would get the scoop from Josiane’s editor, but in case it might help . . . she’d call in the morning and butter up whoever hired the casual labor . . . assuming she got that far.

“Bienvenue à Mirador,” came a slick media-trained voice at the website. She found the fiscal and corporate structure, how they complied with building codes governing construction.

She hoped René had reached everyone on Josiane’s speed dial. . . . Had the killer’s number been listed? Was that why he wanted the phone? Or did he think the last call could be traced? That thought jarred her.

Of course, if she planned to murder someone she wouldn‘t be that stupid. And she didn’t think he was. But the attack on her, the similarity to the Beast of the Bastille’s method bothered her. In its very similarity, it seemed too planned to resemble the serial killer.

Disturbing. This was someone with access to inside knowledge. Fear danced up her spine.

Draz, the Romanian, might have prior convictions. A long shot. She didn’t even know his last name. Or if he was in the country legally. But checking on the off chance that he had a prior record would save a lot of time if he did. Her father always said “follow your nose.”

What he left out, but adhered to faithfully, was procedure. She’d grown up intimately acquainted with investigative procedure, having done her homework, and lost several baby teeth, on the Commissariat marble floor. Following procedure, if nothing else, eliminated unnecessary legwork—now at a premium, since there was only so much René could do on his own.

She found the cell phone, hit the number of Le Drugstore . . . once the sole all night pharmacy and café in Paris. The worn 70s decor, pricey service, and the location on the Champs-Elysées deterred her visiting. Not to mention the suburban backwash attracted by the seedy glitter.

“Martin, please.”

“You are . . .?

“Aimée Leduc, Jean-Claude’s daughter.”

Pause. He must be checking.

“Call back in three minutes.”

“D’accord, merci.”

Standard operating procedure for contacting Martin, her father’s old informant. At least he was still alive and he seemed to be in operation.

After one A.M., despite rain, sickness, or citywide strikes, Martin held court at a back table. He sat near the rear exit, where he could easily slip away.

The phone cabinet, down the tiled stairs branching left from the restrooms, functioned as his communication center. No cell phone, but he brokered information, traded it like a commodities broker. If he didn’t know, he’d find out. Not always a lot, but quality. And worth every franc.

He owed Aimée’s father for saving his skin at least twice. And being of the old school, that counted. Certain ethics prevailed and debts transferred, like a legacy, to offspring. Aimée knew she could count on Martin for something.

She counted to 180 then called the number for the phone cabinet.

“Bonsoir, Martin.”

“Aaah, ma petite mademoiselle!” his voice boomed, gritty like gravel on an unpaved road. ”Such a long time. Ça va?”

She imagined his oversized tortoiseshell glasses, his gray wavy hair combed back, prominent nose, and dancing eyes. A charmer in his own roguish way. Her father always said Martin could have been a first class ship’s cruise director if he’d only trod the straight and narrow.

The last time she’d seen Martin was the day before the bombing in Place Vendôme that had killed her father. He’d furnished information about a gang in the eighth arrondisse-ment. Unrelated. But countless nights, when she’d woken up, she’d wondered if it really was.

The department hadn’t sent flowers when her father died, but Martin had. A bouquet of yellow jonquils. And a donation to the war widows, her father’s favorite charity. Crime created strange partnerships.

“And your dog, smarter than ever?”

The pang of missing Miles Davis hit her.

“Smarter than me, Martin,” she said.

“You need an appointment?”

That was his term.

“Not the usual way, Martin,” she said. “It’s urgent. Thugs evicting tenants in the Eleventh, a Romanian named Draz.”

“You know how I operate.”

He required a personal visit to impart information. He used the phone as a tool, brief and to the point.

“The murdered reporter, Josiane Dolet, what’s the word on her?” she said.

“I want to help you but . . .”

“No disrespect Martin, but I can’t come to meet you,” she said. “Logistics problems.” She didn’t want to admit her blindness. Never show a vulnerable side to a thief; it came back to haunt you.

“These days I’ve cut back,” he said.

She doubted that.

“It’s not like before,” Martin said. “The new gangs, new ways of operating . . .”

Paris had plenty of crime to go around.

“You’re the best, Martin,” she said. “Who else knew the Hsieh Tong sliced the bookie in the Thirteenth but you?”

Few penetrated the Asian underworld around Place d’Italie, but Martin had his sources. Even the flics used him there. Stroke his feathers enough and he should fly.

A low throat-clearing came over the phone. He slept all day but must smoke two packs a night. She’d never seen him without a lit cigarette between his fingers or burning in a nearby ashtray.

The thought made her wish for that Gauloise she’d shared with Mimi.

“Quality’s important, Martin, that’s why I’ve come to you.”

She heard a low chuckle. “Not that I owe you?”

“Life’s a flowing river, currents combine,” she said.

“You’re so like your father, bless him,” Martin said.

“It’s been five years, Martin,” she said.

She remembered the explosion, searing heat, and crawling on the bloody cobblestones. The charred limbs of her father, his shattered reading glasses somehow forgotten in her pocket. And the emptiness that followed.

“We were set up, Martin.” As always she wondered why. “You know that, don’t you?”

Pause.

“Don’t you work on computers now?” he said. “Gangs in the Eleventh seem too low-rent for you.”

“Evictions, they’re rent-a-thug style,” she said. “East European bodybuilder types. But they must stick their thumbs in other tartes. See what you can dig up. I’ll call you later.”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “It takes time. I’m an old man, remember?”

She hoped Martin could deliver. Time passed, and she knew, to solve a homicide, new information couldn’t come soon enough.

She punched in several numbers and finally connected with the central office at the Quai des Orfèvres.

“I’m Commisaire Vrai’s adjutant,” she said, “requesting a search on an East European, goes by the name Draz. No surname known. I’ll wait.”

She knew they’d find Vrai was on leave if they checked. They did. Good.

“No luck with your computer?” the voice asked.

“We want to cast the net wide.”

“Searching Draz.” Whirring came from the background. “Nothing.”

“Try entries with D.”

Aimée heard a yawn.

“Twenty-three entries. But there might be more; not all the files have been made available online.”

“Meaning they’re sitting in the Commissariat files?”

“Or moldering away in the Frigo.”

“Any ‘D’s’ in the Eleventh?”

“Right now the only person detained in the past six months with a D is a Dicelle . . . transvestite trafficking in amyl nitrate. Sentenced.”

“Thanks for checking.”

She sat back. The clock ticked. Too bad she couldn’t see what time it was. Why hadn’t she asked Chantal for one of those talking clocks?

The lack of police interest in the attack on her bothered her. But as Morbier implied, if the Préfet wanted things nice and tidy to close the Beast of Bastille case, there stood little chance they’d exert themselves.

Would Morbier help? He was edging toward the finish line of retirement, too. These days he seemed more withdrawn than ever. And Loïc Bellan detested her.

If only she could interface with Europol. She needed a last name. Had to have it. Tomorrow, she’d get René to lean on the architect . . . he might know more.

Meanwhile, she checked in with the answering machine at Leduc Detective. It felt like not just a few days but forever since she’d been there. She accessed and listened to the voice mail. A query for security work referred by a current satisfied client. Nice.

Then another message. No voice. The machine clicked off.

She felt uneasy. Even though she’d canceled her phone service right after her cell phone had been stolen, the attacker had time to find her addresses, home and business.

The third message, her connection from la Proc’s office, bothered her in a different way.

“The Incandescent hearing’s scheduled for Monday afternoon at sixteen hundred hours at the Palais de Justice. If your client’s not there, his firm goes on the docket for issuance of a subpoena.”

Merde!

And then she fell asleep. She dreamt in color. Blood-red and tamarind-hued leaves spiraled down from the autumn trees in Place Trousseau. Children kicked the leaves, scattering them in a red-orange whirl, then ran to the quivering gloss-green see-saw. The crooked fingernail of a moon, its out- line burnished in blue, swayed to accordion strains. The “piano of the poor,” her grandmother had called it, as she slipped the worn straps around her shoulders.

The colors pulsed and throbbed; she’d never witnessed anything as beautiful. It grew larger than life, surreal and wonderful. And she didn’t want it to end.

But it did. The colors faded. Disappeared.

Waves of sadness hit her as she woke up.

Then she’d dozed off again, curled around the laptop, with the cursor flashing on Populax’s logo. Better get back to work, she thought, rubbing her eyes and wondering what the bright thing was on her toe. A patch of sunlight surrounded by gray fog.

Her heart leapt. She could see!

She squinted, tried to focus. And the image slowly evaporated into more fog. A fog that shifted and moved.

She wanted to shout and dance. Her sight had returned. A little, a very tiny bit, but she’d seen her toe! It was only when she struggled into her T-strap high-heels that she realized the fog, now a dense charcoal color, remained.

Depression descended over her. Would her eyesight ever come back?