Murder in the Bastille

Friday Afternoon

BELLAN CROSSED THE HOTEL courtyard, whose dark stone walls were covered by ivy and climbing roses, to find the room listed as Iliescu’s residence. He followed the hotel clerk, a short squat woman who walked with a cane. If Iliescu sold bad Ecstasy, Bellan wanted to find the drug before anyone else did. And confiscate it.

Lemon trees in old washtubs tilted on the cobbles. Bellan’s interest grew as the woman, who leaned heavily on her cane, climbed the winding metal back staircase. There was a certain rundown charm about the place. Reaching the third floor, the woman turned the room key and a door creaked open.

“Iliescu’s room,” she said, stepping inside. She looked around, then beckoned Bellan to enter.

Bellan’s nose crinkled at the room’s stale smell. It had been closed up for a long time. The only personal touch was the pile of dirty sweatsuits on the floor.

“My uncle rented rooms by the month on this floor until the sixties, the rest were . . .” she cleared her throat, “on a more temporary basis.”

A brothel before they’d been outlawed in 1948? Now a rent-by-the-hour prostitute’s hotel? No questions asked, Bellan figured. So it would feel safe and convenient for a dope dealer like Iliescu.

The tall, half-shuttered windows faced south to the narrow street. A maze of alleys really. Shafts of sunlight slanted across the wooden floor, dust motes dancing in their light.

In the afternoon sun, it was apparent that the march of time had dulled the glint of period wall sconces. The pre-war floral wallpaper was smudged and worn; the heavy-legged writing desk and the metal runged bed hadn’t been changed since the forties, Bellan figured. He felt as if he’d stepped into a time warp.

The hotel clerk’s eyes narrowed. “My tante Cecile lived here until last spring,” she said. She buttoned her mohair sweater vest, worn despite the heat, and wiped her nose with a tissue. “Tante slipped on the icy street during an early thaw. God took her in her eighty-third year. She managed the hotel until the day she died.”

No wonder it had an old lady smell. Hard to get rid of after all those years.

“Sorry to hear that, but I need to look around,” he said, flashing his badge.

The woman shook her head. “What’s the quartier coming to these days? Full of crime and overpriced boutiques! My grandfather moved here because it was cheap; he carted his own charcoal and drew water from the well. They’ve cemented it over now.”

“When did Iliescu rent the room, madame?”

“Yesterday, but he left almost at once.”

She seemed awfully knowledgeable. Most non-star hotels made a point of not knowing their tenants’ movements or whereabouts.

“How do you know that, madame?”

She stood back, her hands on her ample hips. “I was cleaning the filth out, wasn’t I?” she jerked her cane toward the room across the hall. Halfway ajar, the door showed a scene of upside-down chairs and general upheaval. “A pigsty. Must be what they’re used to where they come from, some Slavic way of living. Not in Paris, I told them, and kicked them out.”

“Did Iliescu have any visitors?”

She nodded. “Nobody I saw.”

Loud buzzing came from the courtyard.

“That’s the Reception buzzer. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a hotel to run,” she said, heading out the door. “Lowlifes, all of them.”

Disappointed, Bellan searched the room.

All he found were several bodybuilder-type magazines. He searched the desk, cracks in the wall, the floors for any loose floorboards. In the back of the armoire, he found a yellowed and tattered old programme from the Balajo, the club on rue du Lappe. It bore a photo of Edith Piaf and Jo Privat, the well-known accordionist.

But no drugs.

He raised the window sash. From across the way, a piano étude trilled, the notes rising and falling over the passage.

What was he missing?

And then he saw it.

“21, Port de Plaisance, 16:00” written in pen on the window’s wooden frame. He recognized the odd curlicues of the numbers. Like Iliescu’s writing on his palm.

The same funny curlicues.

Bellan copied the address. Wasn’t that the dock where pleasure boats moored in the Bastille?