Murder in the Marais

Thursday Morning

THE SEINE FLOWED SILVER, chill mist hovered, and along the mossy-stoned quai Aimee walked, debating whether to call Hecht. No contact, he'd said. But as far as she was concerned, the rules had changed when she'd found Lili Stein dead.

She crossed the Pont Neuf with the still-lighted bateaux mouches gliding below as dawn crept over the Seine. Thick fog silhouetted Cafe Magritte under her office on rue du Louvre.

Inside, at the zinc counter, she dunked a buttery croissant in a steamy bowl of cafe au lait. The espresso machine rumbled like a jet at takeoff.

She'd accepted a simple job but the stakes had skyrocketed with this grisly murder. Morbier had treated her as a suspect and had her escorted home, whether to establish authority with his minions or-she didn't like to finish the thought. Nothing about this felt good. She shivered, remembering the look on Lili Stein's face.

Warm coffee vapors laced the windows overlooking the Louvre's western wing. She especially didn't want to lie to Morbier about some odd Nazi hunter who would deny knowing her.

Revived, she slipped twenty francs across the counter to Zazie, the owner's freckle-faced ten-year-old, who worked the cash register before school.

"Mind if I get ready for work?" she said, pulling out her battered makeup kit.

Four-foot-tall Zazie stared awestruck as Aimee applied red lipstick in the mirrorlike espresso machine, ran mascara through her lashes, and outlined her large eyes with kohl pencil. She smoothed her short brown spiky hair, pinched her pale cheeks for color, and winked at Zazie.

"Buy yourself a goûter after school." She wrapped Zazie's fist around her change.

"Merci, Aimee." Zazie grinned.

"Tell your papa l'Americaine wants to settle her tab later, d'accord?"

Zazie's brown eyes grew serious. "Why does Papa call you l'Americaine? You never wear cowboy boots."

Aimee struggled not to smile. "I keep them in my closet. Real snakeskin. My maman sent them from le Texas." She had the cowboy boots but she'd bought them herself at the Dallas airport.

Upstairs, lights glowed behind her frosted-glass office door.

"Soli Hecht left you a present," said her partner, Rene Friant, a handsome dwarf with green eyes and goatee. He wore a three-piece navy blue suit and tasseled loafers. Rene pumped the hydraulic lift handle of his custom orthopedic chair with his foot.

Curious, she picked up the thick manila envelope with her name scribbled on it.

Fifty thousand francs were inside along with a note.

Find her killer-tell no one. I don't trust the flics. I trust you.

Wads of franc notes tumbled out as she grabbed the desk edge to steady herself.

"He must like you!" Rene's eyes grew wide. "We'll convince the tax board to…"

She shook her head. "I can't…"

Rene pumped furiously until the seat aligned with his desk.

"Look at this." He thrust one of several threatening letters from the bank manager at her. "Our tax extension is up in the air, the bank is calling in our note. Now, the Eurocom accountant refuses to pay us the eight months of back payments we're owed, he's quibbling about a clause in the contract; it could take months." He struggled to adjust a knob on his seat. "Time you got out of the computer clouds, Aimee, and got back in the field."

"I don't do murder." She winced.

"You make it sound like there's a choice."

"INSPECTEUR MORBIER is expecting me," Aimee said to Madame Noiret, gritting her teeth at the Commissariat de Police reception desk. Not only did her jaws ache from the biting cold outside, she was dying for a smoke.

"Bonjour, Aimee, ca va?" Madame Noiret, the gray-haired clerk peered through reading glasses and smiled. "I'll let him know you're here."

"Ça va bien, merci, Madame."

She hated coming back to the Commissariat in Place Baudoyer; her father's memory stabbed her from every corner. There was the cold marble floor of his office where she'd done homework as a little girl when he worked late, later helping him clean out his desk when he joined Grandfather at Leduc Detective, then collecting his posthumous medal from the Commissaire.

Aimee's American mother had disappeared from her life one evening in 1968. She'd never returned from the Herald Tribune, where she worked as a stringer on the news desk. Her father had sent Aimee to boarding school during the week and on weekends he took her to the Luxembourg Gardens. On a bench under the row of plane trees by the puppet theater, she once asked him about her mother. His normally sympathetic eyes hardened. "We don't talk about her anymore." And they never had.

Three weeks without a cigarette and Aimee's tailored jeans pinched, so she paced instead of sitting. She'd always thought the crimes investigated by the Commissariat of Police in the Marais rarely matched the division's elegant accommodations. High-tech weapon sensors hid nestled in brass wall sconces of this Second Empire style nineteenth century mansion. Rose lead-paned windows funneled pink patterns across the marble walls. But the dead cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays, greasy crumbs, and stale sweaty fear made it smell like every other police station she'd been in.

This palatial building neighbored Napoleon's former barracks and the 4th arrondissement's Tresor public, the tax office on rue de la Verrerie. But Parisians called it flics et taxes, la double morte-cops and taxes, the double death.

She drifted over the scuffed parquet floor to read the bulletin board in the waiting area. A torn notice, dated eight months earlier, announced that Petanque leagues were forming and serious bowlers were encouraged to sign up early. Next to that, an Interpol poster of wanted criminals still included Carlos the Jackal's photo. Below that, a sign advertised a sublet in Montsouris, a "studio economique" for five thousand francs a month, cheap for the 14th arrondissement. She figured that meant a sixth-floor walk-up closet with a pull-chain squat toilet down the hall.

Aimee stood in front of the board, reknotting her silk scarf, knowing she'd got it right the first time. She hated lying to flics, especially Morbier.

Maybe she should convince Morbier she was thinking of converting to Judaism instead of telling him the truth about an old Nazi hunter who had made her fifty thousand francs richer, hiring her to deliver half a photo to a dead woman. Then hiring her to find her killer.

Madame Noiret pushed sliding glasses up her nose and pointed inside.

"Go ahead, Aimee, Inspecteur Morbier will see you."

She walked into the seventeen-foot-high-ceilinged room of the homicide division. Few desks were occupied. Morbier's was littered with a stack of well-thumbed files. A demitasse of espresso sat next to his flashing computer screen. His pudgy fifty-nine-year-old body leaned back in a dangerously tilted chair. He cradled the phone against his shoulder while one hand scratched his salt-and-pepper head and the other held a cigarette conspiratorially between his thumb and forefinger. As he hung up, she watched his nicotine-stained fingers with their short splayed nails, rifling in the cellophane-crumpled pack of Gauloises for another cigarette. High above the desks, a TV tuned to France 2 displayed continuous car wrecks, tanker accidents on the high seas, and train fatalities.

He lit the cigarette, cupping it as if there were a gale wind blowing through Homicide. He'd known her father since they'd been on the force together-but after the accident he'd kept his distance.

He gazed at her meaningfully as he gestured towards a chipped metal chair. "You know I had to put on a show, especially for the Brigade."

She figured that was probably the closest to an apology she'd get for his behavior at Lili Stein's apartment.

"I'm happy to furnish a statement, Morbier." She tried to keep the frost out of her voice. "The Temple E'manuel has retained my services."

"So the Temple hired you before she was killed?" Morbier nodded. "Just in case she got butchered?"

She shook her head, then sat on the edge of the metal chair.

"Humor me and explain."

Morbier could pass for an academic until he opened his mouth. Pure gutter French was what her father used to call it, but then most flics didn't have graduate degrees from the Sorbonne.

"It's not delicate to incriminate the dead, Morbier." She crossed her legs, hoping her tight jeans wouldn't cut off her circulation.

Now he looked interested. "You found her, Leduc. You are my première suspecte. Talk to me."

She hesitated.

"Trust me. I never prosecute dead people." He winked. "Nothing goes further than this desk."

And cows can fly. Mentally, she asked Lili Stein's forgiveness. "Please don't tell her son."

"I'll keep that under consideration."

"Do better than that, Morbier," she said. "The Temple doesn't want the family hurt. There were rumors about shoplifting."

Morbier snorted. "What's this?"

"You know how old people conveniently forget items in their pockets," she said. "The rabbi asked me to talk with her, convince her to bring the items back. On the quiet."

"What kinds of things?"

"Scarves from Monoprix, flashlights from Samaritaine. Nothing valuable." She tried not to squirm in the hard-backed chair.

Morbier consulted a file on his desk. "We found brass candlesticks, religious type."

Aimee shook her head. "She hid things. Like a child, then she forgot where." She stood up, stuck her hand in her pocket.

On her way to the Commissariat she'd come up with a logical reason for being in the area. The radio had reported large right-wing demonstrations all over the Marais protesting the European Summit.

"I'd followed her from Les Halles but I lost her at that demonstration. Neo-Nazis were all over. I figured she returned to her apartment so this evening I went there and then…"

At least the part she told him about how she found the body was true.

"Let me be sure I understand." Morbier inhaled deeply from a newly lit cigarette then blew smoke rings over Aimee's head. "You followed her in case she shoplifted, lost her in Les Halles at a fascist demonstration, then went to her apartment and found her carved Nazi-style?" His eyes narrowed. "Why were your fingerprints on the radio dials?"

She did her best to ignore his look.

"Mais bien sûr! Because I had to lower the volume. The killer turned the radio up to hide Lili's screams, then dropped used tissues on the floor after wiping off his or her fingerprints." Eagerly she pointed to the crime-scene photos covering his desk. "But that's an interesting point, Morbier!"

"What's that?"

"The perpetrator might be used to someone cleaning up after him-or herself."

"Or might be a slob."

She studied the swastika carved into Lili Stein's forehead in the photograph. It was then she noticed how this particular swastika slanted differently from the graffiti in the Metro. She grabbed a paper clip from his desk, rubbed it on her silk shirt, and then stuck it in her mouth. Chewing and moving it with her tongue helped her think.

In the photograph reddish discoloration under Lili Stein's ears continued along her neck. The thin line of congealed blood showed the ligature that had strangled her. Nothing explained her half-clenched fists except fear. Or anger.

"I'll corroborate your alibi after I check with your dwarf." Morbier plopped himself back into his chair, rubbing his jowl with one hand. "We make a deal, you and me…"

"Leave Rene out of it."

"Why should I?"

"You want to use me. No one in the Marais will talk to your flics."

She knew that ever since uniformed French police had rounded up Jews for the Nazis during the Occupation, no Jew trusted them. Morbier must have figured that if the Temple employed her they trusted her, even though she wasn't Jewish.

"Leduc, trust me."

She paused. Maybe she could trust him, maybe not. But didn't they say if you knew your enemy you were at least one step ahead?

"I'll agree to share information. Deal?"

He nodded. "D'accord."

"Give me the forensics?"

He snorted. "You did notice the ligature mark under her ears?"

"Of course. I am my father's daughter." She wanted to add, "And more."

Morbier winced at the mention of her father.

"That wasn't all I noticed, Morbier," she said grimly. "What about the lack of blood?"

"You wouldn't be suggesting that the homicide took place elsewhere and the victim was dragged?" he said.

"Since the swastika was carved after strangulation, not to mention her stockings were rolled down, her fingernails broken and her palm full of splinters, it would follow."

"That thought had occurred to me." He flicked his cigarette into the espresso cup. It sizzled and went thupt. Typical Gallic response, she thought. She noticed his mismatched socks: one blue, the other gray.

"The technicians have been combing the courtyard," he said. "If there's something there, they will find it."

"Time of death?" She riffled her hair, creating more spiky tufts.

He ignored her scarred hand as he usually did. "Say between three and seven last night. The autopsy may pinpoint the time closer."

She stood.

"Beyond sharing information, I'd appreciate your help in my investigation."

Now Morbier sounded like her father. He had actually asked for her help. Nicely. She almost sat back down.

"In other words if I don't, I'd be hindering it?"

"I didn't say that." He shook his head.

She started towards the door.

"Yet." He smiled.

"Remember why I got out of this field?"

"That happened five years ago," he said after a pause.

"I've quit this kind of work, I do corporate investigation," she said. "Why can't you ever look at my hand? If you don't answer me I won't consider working with you." She gripped the edge of his desk, her knuckles white.

His voice sounded tired. "Because if I look at that burn mark, everything comes back. I see your bloody…" He covered his eyes, shaking his head.

"You see Papa burning on the cobblestones, thrown by the blast against the pillar in Place Vendôme. Our surveillance van, a smoking rubble from the bomb. And me screaming, running in circles, waving my hand, still gripping the molten door handle."

She stopped. Several plainclothes types hurriedly put their heads back behind their computers. She recognized some of their faces.

"I'm sorry, Morbier." She nudged the base of his chair with her foot. "This doesn't usually happen. Nightmares generally take care of it."

"There's one remedy for shell shock," he said after a while. "Climb into the trenches again."

But he didn't know Soli Hecht had already thrown her back in.

AIMÉE WALKED along the Seine, speculating about the photo fragments. The sunlight glittered feebly off the water and a fisherman's nearby bait bucket stank ripely of sardines.

She trudged over the grooves worn in the stone staircase to her dark, cold apartment, unable to get Lili Stein's corpse out of her mind.

She'd inherited the apartment on the Ile St. Louis from her grandfather. This seven-block island in the middle of the Seine rarely, if ever, had seen real estate change hands during the last century. Drafty, damp, and unheated, her seventeenth century hôtel particulier had been the mansion of the Duc de Guise. He'd been assassinated by Henri III at the royal chateau in Blois, but she'd forgotten why.

The ancient pearwood trees in the courtyard and the view from her window overlooking the Seine kept her there. Every winter, the bone-chilling cold and archaic plumbing almost drove her out. The year before, she'd pitched an army surplus tent around her bed that held the heat in nicely. She couldn't afford repairs or the monstrous inheritance taxes due if she sold her apartment.

Miles Davis licked her in greeting. In her tall-windowed kitchen, she turned on the faucet jutting out of the old blue-tiled backsplash. She washed her hands, letting the warm water run over them a long time.

Mechanically she opened her small 1950s refrigerator. A moldy round of Brie, a six-pack of yogurt, and a magnum of decent champagne that she would pop the cork on some day took up one shelf. Beneath a bunch of wilted spinach was a white-papered package of raw horse meat that she spooned into Miles's chipped bowl. He gobbled it up, wagging his tail as he ate. She chiseled the mold off the Brie and found a baguette, hard as a crowbar, in her pantry. She left it there and found some crackers. But when she sat down, she couldn't eat.

She put on two pairs of gloves, leather over angora. Downstairs in her apartment foyer, she pulled her mobylette from under the stairs, checked the oil, and hit the kick start. She headed over the Seine towards Gare de Lyon and her favorite piscine for swimming. Reuilly wasn't crowded at this time, its humid aqua blue phosphorescence splashed jellylike against the shiny white tiles.

"Bad girl." Dax, the lifeguard, waved his finger. "Didn't see you yesterday."

"I'll make up for it. Fifteen extra laps." She dove into the deep lap lane, her mind and body ready to become one with the heavy warm water. She loved the tingly sensations in her arms and legs until her body temperature stabilized with the water. She established her rhythm: stroke kick breathe kick, stroke kick breath kick, completing lap after lap.

Too bad she couldn't persuade Rene to join her. Heat helped ease the hip displacement common to dwarves. But, of course, he was self-concious about his appearance.

The steamy shower stalls stood empty except for the mildewed tile and soapy aroma. She padded into the changing room, wrapping her old beach towel with ST. CROIX in faded letters around her chest. From her locker she pulled out her cell phone and punched in Rene's number. Then she stopped. He wouldn't be back yet from the martial-arts dojo where he practiced. She punched in the number again. This time she left a message. Her cell phone trilled and she answered eagerly.

"Leduc, I checked that demonstration you mentioned passing in Les Halles," Morbier said. "The group's called Les Blancs Nationaux, infamous for harassment in the Marais."

She cringed.

"What if a member of Les Blancs Nationaux followed her home?" he said.

Guilt caused her to hesitate…what if there was some link?

"You still there?" he said.

"What do you want me to do about it?" she snapped.

"Jump-start your brain and help me. I need more than info sharing."

There was no way to put him off. Besides, it would be a logical place for her to start.

Abstractedly, she dressed and applied makeup. After she shuffled everything into her gym bag, she looked in the mirror. Her feet were rooted to the damp floor in fear. She realized her black wool trousers were inside out and the label hung outside her silk shirt. Mascara had run on her pale cheeks and given her panda eyes. Her thin lips were smudged with red.

She looked like a scared clown. She didn't want to investigate neo-Nazi punks. Or this old woman's murder. She wanted to keep the hovering ghosts at bay.

Thursday Morning

HARTMUTH STARED AT THE fluorescent dial of his Tag Heuer watch-5:45 A.M. Place des Vosges, swathed in mist, lay below him. A lone starling twittered from his balcony ledge, lost when its flock headed south, Hartmuth imagined. He sipped his cafe au lait in the gray light. The aroma of buttery croissants filled his room.

He felt overwhelmed by regrets-his guilt in loving Sarah and most of all for not saving her all those years ago. A knock on the adjoining door of his suite startled him. He pulled his flannel robe around himself, redirecting his thoughts.

"Guten tag, Ilse." Hartmuth smiled as she entered.

Ilse beamed, eyeing the work pile on the desk. With her snowy white hair and scrubbed cheeks, a gaggle of grandchildren should be trailing behind her begging for freshly baked mandelgebäck. Instead, she stood alone, her stout figure encased in a boxlike brown suit with matching support hose, pressing her palms together.

Almost as if in prayer, he thought.

"A milestone for our cause!" she said, her voice low with emotion. "I am proud, mein Herr, to be allowed to assist you."

Hartmuth averted his eyes. She bustled over to close the balcony doors.

"Has the diplomatic courier pouch arrived yet, Ilse?"

"Ja, mein Herr, and you have an early meeting." She held out a sheaf of faxes. "These came earlier."

"Thank you, Ilse, but"-he raised his arm to ward off the faxes-"coffee first."

Ilse did a double take. "What's that on your hand?"

Startled, Hartmuth looked at the rusty crescents of dried blood in his palm. The fluffy white duvet cover on his bed was streaked with brown stains, too. He knew he clenched his fists to combat his stutter. Had he done this in his sleep?

Ilse's eyes narrowed. She hesitated, as if making a decision, then thrust the blue leatherette pouch at him. "Diplomatic courier pouch, sir."

"Ja, call me before the meeting, Ilse."

"I'll organize the trade comparisons, sir," she said, and closed the door of the adjoining room behind her.

Hartmuth punched 6:03 A.M. into the keypad attached to the pouch handle and then his four-digit code. He waited for a series of beeps, then entered his alphanumeric access code. He paused, recalling a time when a courier's honor had been enough.

A hasp clicked open, revealing new addenda restricting immigration. He shook his head, remembering. These were like the old Vichy laws, only then it had been quotas for the Jews.

The treaty mandated that any immigrant without proper documentation would be incarcerated, without benefit of a trial. He knew France's crippling 12.8 percent unemployment rate, highest since the war, was the reason behind this. Even Germany's unemployment statistics had grown alarmingly since the Reunification.

The phone trilled insistently next to him, jolting him back to the present.

"Grussen Sie, Hartmuth," came the unmistakable grating voice from Bonn. "The prime minister wishes to thank you for excellent work so far."

So far?

Mentally snapping to attention, Hartmuth replied, "Thank you sir, I feel prepared."

He wasn't prepared for what came next, however. "He is also appointing you senior trade advisor. Hearty congratulations!"

Stunned, Hartmuth remained silent.

"After you sign the treaty, Hartmuth," the voice continued, "the French trade minister will expect you to stay and lead the tariff delegation."

More surprise. Fear jolted up his spine.

"But, sir, this is beyond my scope. My ministry only analyzes reports from participating countries." He scrambled to make sense of this. "Wouldn't you call this posting to the European Union more of a figurehead position?"

The voice ignored his question. "Sunday at the Place de la Concorde, all the European Union delegates will attend the trade summit opening. In the tariff negotiations you will propel the new addenda towards a consensus. By that, we mean a unanimous approval. A masterful double stroke, wouldn't you agree?"

Hartmuth began, "I don't understand. Surely for an internal advisory post, this seems…"

The voice interrupted.

"You will sign the treaty, Hartmuth. We will be watching. Unter den Linden."

The voice cut off. Hartmuth's hand shook as he replaced the receiver.

Unter den Linden. Circa 1943, when Nazi generals realized Hitler was losing the war, the SS had organized into a political group, code word "Werewolf," to continue the thousand-year Reich. When they'd helped him escape death in a Siberian POW camp in 1946, these same generals had bestowed a new identity on him-that of Hartmuth Griffe, a blameless Wehrmacht foot soldier fallen at Stalingrad with no Gestapo or SS connections. This identity gave Hartmuth a clean bill of social health acceptable to the occupying Allied forces, a common though secret practice used to launder Nazi pasts. These "clean" pasts had to be real, so they were plucked from the dead. With typical Werewolf efficiency, names were chosen closest to the person's own so they would be comfortable using them and less prone to mistakes. How could the dead contest? But if, by chance, someone survived or a family member questioned, there were more mountains of dead to choose from. Besides, who would check?

The Werewolves demanded repayment, which translated to a lifetime commitment. Ilse was here to guarantee it.

He felt trapped, suffocated. He quickly pulled on his double-breasted suit from the day before, smoothing out the wrinkles, and strode into the adjoining suite. Ilse looked up in surprise from her laptop.

"I'll return for the meeting," he said, escaping before she could reply.

He had to get out. Clear out the memories. Breaking into a cold sweat, he almost flew down the hallway.

He turned the corner, abruptly bouncing into a stocky black-suited figure ahead of him.

"Ça va, Monsieur Griffe? So wonderful you are here," said Henri Quimper, rosy-cheeked and smiling.

Too late to escape. Henri Quimper, Hartmuth's Belgian trade counterpart, embraced and kissed him on both cheeks. He nudged Hartmuth conspiratorially. "The French think they can put one over on us, eh?"

Hartmuth, his brow beading with sweat, nodded uneasily. He had no idea what Quimper meant.

Heralded by prodigious clouds of cigar smoke, a group of delegates walked towards them down the hall.

Cazaux, the French trade minister and probable appointee for the prime minister, strode among them. He beamed, seeing Quimper and Hartmuth together.

"Ah, Monsieur Griffe, bienvenu!" he said, greeting Hartmuth warmly and gripping his shoulder. His cheeks were mapped by spidery purple veins. "Spare me a few words? All these meetings…" Cazaux shrugged, smiling.

Hartmuth had forgotten how Frenchmen punctuated their sentences by throwing their arms in the air. The muscles in Cazaux's ropy neck twitched when he spoke.

Hartmuth nodded. He knew the election was to take place the next week, and Cazaux's party was heavily invested in the trade issue. Hartmuth's job would be to bolster Cazaux by signing the trade agreement. The Werewolves had ordered it. Unter den Linden.

Cazaux and Hartmuth moved to an alcove overlooking the limestone courtyard.

"I'm concerned," Cazaux said. "This new addendum, these exclusionary quotas-frankly, I'm worried about what might happen."

"Minister Cazaux, I'm not sure of your meaning," Hartmuth replied cautiously.

"You know and I know parts of this treaty carry things a bit far," Cazaux said. "I'll speak for myself. The quotas border on fascism."

Mentally, Hartmuth agreed. After being in diplomatic circles for so many years, however, he knew enough to keep his real feeling to himself. "After a thorough review I'll have a better understanding," he said.

"I feel our thinking is probably very close on this," Cazaux said, lowering his voice. "A dilemma for me because my government prefers to maintain the status quo, reduce unemployment, and pacify les conservatives. This treaty is the only way we can pass economic benefits on throughout Europe, standardize trade, and get uniform guidelines."

"I understand," Hartmuth said, not eager for Cazaux's added pressure. No more needed to be said.

The two men rejoined Quimper and the other delegates in the hall. More kissing and jovial greetings were exchanged. Hartmuth excused himself as soon as it was diplomatically possible and escaped down the staircase. He paused on the marble landing, a floor below, and leaned against an antique tapestry, a forested scene with a naked wood nymph stuffing grapes into her mouth, juice dribbling down her chin.

As he stood there, alone between floors, Sarah's face appeared to him in a vision, her incredibly blue eyes laughing. What he wouldn't give to change the past!

But he was just a lonely old man full of regrets he'd tried to leave behind with the war. I'm pathetic, he thought, and waited for the ache in his heart to subside to a dull throb.

Thursday Afternoon

A PUNGENT SMELL OF cabbage borscht clung to the hallway of 64 rue des Rosiers. Abraham Stein answered Aimee's knock, his faded maroon yarmulke nestled among his gray streaked black curls, a purple scarf riding his thin shoulders. She wanted to turn away, ashamed to intrude upon his grief.

"What do you want?" he said.

Aimee twisted her hair, still damp from swimming, behind her ears.

"Monsieur Stein, I need to talk with you about your mother," she said.

"This isn't the time." He turned to close the door.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me but murder is never convenient," she said, wedging behind him, afraid he'd shut the door in her face.

"We're sitting shiva."

Her blank look and foot inside the door forced him to explain.

"A ritual mourning. Shiva helps acknowledge our suffering while we pray for the dead."

"Please excuse me, this will only take a few minutes of your time," she said. "Then I promise I'll go."

He put his scarf over his head and led her into the dark-paneled living room. An open prayer book rested on the polished pine sideboard. The dining-room mirror was swathed in black cloth. Lit tapers sputtered in pools of wax, giving off only a faint light. Women clad in black, moaning, rocked back and forth on sticklike chairs and orange crates.

She kept her head down. She didn't want to breathe the old, sad smell of these people.

A young rabbi, his ill-fitting jacket hanging off him, greeted her in a jumble of Hebrew and French as they passed him. She wanted to flee this apartment, so dark and heavy with grief.

She overheard French rap from a radio in a back room, where sulky teenagers congregated by an open door.

The crime-scene tape was gone but the insistent noise of the leaky faucet in the dingy bathroom and aura of death remained. She'd always see the scuffed black shoe with the worn heel and the vacant white face carved by that swastika. An odd, tilted swastika with rounded edges.

The crime-scene technicians had left neat stacks of Lili Stein's personal items on the rolltop desk. The bloated angelfish and tank were gone. A knitting basket full of thick needles and multicolored yarn spilled out across the hand-crocheted bedspread. Issues of the Hebrew Times were piled in the corner and beside the bed.

"Yours?" She picked up a folded section. The paper crinkled and a color supplement fell out.

"Maman ignored French newspapers," he said. "Refused to own a television. Her only extravagance was a subscription to the Hebrew newspaper from Tel Aviv."

The boards on the window facing the cobbled courtyard were gone. Ribbons of yellow crime-scene tape crisscrossed the view of the drab light well below.

"Why did your mother board up the window?"

He shrugged. "She always said the noise bothered her and she wanted privacy."

Aimee pulled a wicker chair, the only chair in the room, towards the window. The uneven chair legs wobbled, one didn't touch the floor. She indicated he should sit on the bed.

"Monsieur Stein, let's…"

He interrupted. "What were you doing in this room?"

She wanted to tell him the truth, tell him how cornered and confused she felt. After the explosion, when her father's charred remains had been carted away, she had lain in the hospital. No one had talked to her, explained their investigation. Some young flic had questioned her during burn treatment as if she'd been the perpetrator.

Mentally, she made a sign of the cross, again begging for the dead woman's forgiveness.

"Frankly, this is classified but, Monsieur, I think you deserve to know," she said.

"Eh?" But he sat down on the bed.

"Your mother was the focus of a police operation mounted to obtain evidence against right-wing groups like Les Blancs Nationaux."

Abraham Stein's eyes widened.

How could she lie to this poor man?

But she didn't know any other way.

Not only Leduc Detective's depleted bank account and overdue taxes forced her to take this case. Part of her had to prove she could still be a detective: flics or not, justice would be done her way, administered in a way victims' families rarely saw. The other part was her father's honor.

Abraham cleared his throat, "She was cooperating with the flics? Doesn't make sense. Maman avoided anything to do with the war, politics, or police."

"Rare though female detectives are in Paris, Monsieur, I'm one of them. I am going to find out who killed your mother."

He shook his head. She pulled out her PI license with the less than flattering photo on it. He examined it quickly.

Aimee ran a hand over the worn rolltop desk, trying to get the feel of Lili Stein. Yellowed account books were shelved inside.

"Why would a private investigator care?" he asked.

"I lost my father to terrorists, Monsieur. We worked with the Brigade Criminelle, as part of surveillance, until the plastic explosive taped under our van incinerated my father." She leaned forward. "What eats at me still is how his murderers disappeared. The case closed. No one acknowledges the victims' families…I know this and I want to help you."

He looked away. From down the hall came the muted moaning of the old women. Medieval and dark, this apartment echoed with grief. Ghosts emanated from the walls. Centuries of birth, love, betrayal, and death had soaked into them.

"Tell me about your mother."

His face softened. Perhaps the sincerity in her tone or the isolation Abraham Stein felt caused him to open up.

"Maman was always busy knitting or crocheting. Never still." He spread his arms around the room, every surface covered by lace doilies. "If she wasn't in the shop below, she'd be by the radio knitting."

Dampness seeped into this unheated room. "Can you tell me why someone would kill her this way?"

Deep worry lines etched his brow. "I haven't thought about this in years but once Maman told me 'Never forgive or forget.'"

Aimee nodded. "Can you explain?"

He unwound the scarf from his shoulders. "I was a child but I remember one day she picked me up after school. For some reason we took the wrong bus, ending up near Odeon on the busy rue Raspail. Maman looked sadder than I'd ever seen her. I asked her why. She pointed to the rundown, boarded-up Hôtel Lutetia opposite. 'This is where I waited every day after school to find my family,' Maman said. She pulled the crocheting from her little flowered basket in her shopping bag, like she always did. The rhythmic hook, pause, loop of the white thread wound by her silver crochet needle always hypnotized me."

He paused, "Now Hôtel Lutetia is a four-star hotel, but then it was the terminus for trucks bringing camp survivors. Maman said she held up signs and photos, running from stretcher to stretcher, asking if someone had seen her family. Person to person, by word of mouth, maybe a chance encounter or remembrance…maybe someone would recall. One man remembered seeing her sister, my aunt, stumble off the train at Auschwitz. That was all."

Abraham's eyes fluttered but he continued. "A year after Liberation, she found my grand-père, almost unrecognizable. I remember him as a quiet man who jumped at little noises. She told me she'd never forget those who took her family. 'Cheri,' she told me, 'I can't let them be forgotten. You must remember.'"

Aimee figured little had changed in this dim room with its musty old-lady smell since then. She pulled her gloves back on to ward off the chill. "Why didn't the Gestapo take your mother, Monsieur Stein?"

"Even they made mistakes with their famous lists. Several survivors I know were in the park or at a piano lesson when their families were taken. Maman said she came home from school but the satchels, filled with clothing and necessities in the hallway, were gone. Hers, too. That's how she knew."

"Knew what?"

"That her parents had saved her."

Aimee remembered her own mother's note taped to their front door: "Gone for a few days-Stay with Sophie next door until daddy comes home." She'd never returned. But how awful to come home from school and find your whole family gone!

"Your mother stayed here, a young girl by herself?"

He nodded. "For a while with the concierge's help. She never talked about the rest of the war."

Aimee hesitated, then pulled out the photo image she'd deciphered for Soli Hecht. "Do you recognize this?"

He stared intently. After a moment, he shoved a pile of invoices aside to reveal a group of faded old photos on the wood-paneled wall. There was a blank spot.

He shook his head. "There was a photo here. Similar, but no Nazis. Maman hated Nazis. Never touched anything German."

Abraham jiggled the bottom desk drawer open. Inside were several empty envelopes addressed to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, the Contemporary Jewish Center, at 17 rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, 75004 Paris.

"She donated to their Holocaust fund." He stood up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "I can't think of anything else." He shook his head. "I don't believe the past has anything to do with this."

More than ever, Aimee wanted to tell him about Soli Hecht. However, the last thing she wanted was to put Abraham in any danger.

He threw up his hands. "I can't believe she would have gotten involved in some operation. But she did mention recently she had been seeing ghosts."

"The antiterrorist squad…"

He interrupted her. "I don't want trouble, I live here," he said. "What about the present…the massacres in Serbia? I'm sick of the past, it's over. Nothing will bring her back."

She felt his denial was to avoid pain. Something she had tried to do with her own father's death.

Outside in the light well, a black crow, shiny as licorice, cawed incessantly. She stroked the crocheted bedspread, brushing against the knitting basket, and stopped. A scrap of paper in bold, angular handwriting was stuck in the variegated wool.

"What's this?"

He shrugged.

She carefully spread the wrinkled paper. On it, colors were listed in a row with check marks next to them:

navy blue ivory

dark green

Scribbled on the side were the names. Soli H, Sarah,

She stopped. Soli Hecht? That name triggered questions about the encrypted photo. More important, she wondered what the photo would have told Lili Stein.

Arrows from the names went off the torn page. She hesitated whether to tell Abraham Stein about Hecht. "Recognize these names?"

Abraham looked puzzled. "I don't know, maybe members of the synagogue."

Before he could say more, there was a faint knock on the open door. She looked up to see a white-haired woman apologetically beckoning to him.

"I'm sorry"-she motioned helplessly with gnarled hands-"but Sinta wants you. More visitors have come."

Abraham nodded. "Thank you, Rachel." He turned to Aimee. "This is Rachel Blum, Maman's friend. Why don't you speak with her while I go to my wife." He left to meet the visitors.

Rachel's hair was stretched tightly back in a bun. Her black dress had a faint odor of lavender mixed with mothballs. She sank down onto the bed, her slightly stooped frame still bent. Sliding off her shoe and rubbing her foot, she sighed. "Bunions! Doctor wants to fix them, but no thank you, no knife for me, I told him. They've carried me this far, they'll carry me the rest of the way."

Aimee nodded sympathetically.

"Lili had no time for fools-I'm like that myself. I lived in Narbonne until my sister passed away last year. Then I decided to come back to the Marais."

"How long had you known her?" Aimee ventured.

Rachel squinted in thought. "Too long."

"Rachel, do you recognize this snapshot?" Aimee asked, passing it to her.

"My glasses, where are they? Can't see without them." Rachel scrabbled down around her neck. "Must be at home."

Aimee reached for a pair of readers from the top of Lili's desk.

Rachel grunted, "That's better." She squinted through Lili's reading glasses. "Hmm, what's this?"

"Anything look familiar, Rachel?"

A wistful look came over her. "The Square Georges-Cain. A lifetime ago." She sighed, then indicated some figures near a tree. "Our school uniform. See the smocks," and she pointed to a girl turned away from the camera.

Rachel seemed grateful to be resting her feet and exercising her mouth. She was vigorously rubbing her other foot now.

"Did you and Lili go to school together during the war?"

Something shuttered behind Rachel's eyes and she turned away. Aimee knew that look, a deliberately vacant stare that came into old people's eyes when the war was mentioned. Rachel shrugged and didn't answer.

Aimee sat down on the bed next to her and smiled. "Were you in class together?"

"Lili was younger than me. I didn't have much to do with her."

"Didn't you know her parents?"

"I'm only half Jewish," Rachel said. "Am I supposed to know everybody? A lot of people disappeared."

Why had Rachel become defensive?

A tingle went up her spine, the same tingling she'd felt when she'd made that promise to Hecht. She edged closer to the old woman and lowered her voice confidentially.

"Rachel, she looked up to you, didn't she?"

Rachel looked surprised but not displeased. "I'm not sure…"

She kept going. "Have I embarrassed you, Rachel? You know how schoolgirls idolize older girls!"

Rachel shook her head slightly and paused. "I vaguely remember her father. He came back after the war."

Aimee noticed that Rachel's gaze was focused on the window crisscrossed with crime-scene tape. So there was something, Aimee thought, her heart starting to pound.

"Why did Lili board up the window, Rachel?"

A stony look came over Rachel's face. "The winter of 1943 was cold. No one had coal for heat."

"Lili boarded up the window for warmth?" Aimee said. "But she wasn't here during the whole war, was she?"

"Water froze in the pipes," Rachel said woodenly.

Aimee prayed for patience. "Wasn't it hard for Lili here after her parents were taken?"

"We chipped ice off the fountains. Boiled it for cooking and washing," Rachel continued.

"What about Lili?"

"She stayed with the concierge. Downstairs when…" Rachel stopped and covered her mouth.

Aimee leaned forward and gripped Rachel's arm.

"Go ahead, Rachel, what were you about to say?"

Aimee was surprised to see fear in Rachel's eyes.

"Why are you afraid?"

Rachel nodded and spoke slowly. "You think I'm just a silly old woman."

"No, Rachel. Not at all." Aimee reached for her hand and held it.

Finally, Rachel spoke. "They found the body."

"A body? Who?" Aimee asked. Startled, she leaned forward. Why hadn't Abraham Stein mentioned this to her?

"Down in the light well." Rachel twisted her neck as far as her bent back would allow.

"Whose body?"

"This window looked right out on it."

"Yes, Rachel, but who was it?"

"Things happened in 1943," she said.

Aimee gritted her teeth and nodded. "I know it must be difficult to talk about the Occupation. Especially to my generation, but I want to understand. Let me try."

Rachel turned to her, her eyes boring into Aimee's. "You'll never understand. You can't."

Aimee put her arm around the thin stooped woman. "Talk to me, Rachel. What did Lili see?"

"We had to survive. We did what we had to do." Rachel's stale breath hit Aimee's face. "She told me once that she saw the murder."

"A murder that happened in the light well?" Aimee said, keeping her excitement in check. "So that's why she boarded up the window?"

Rachel nodded.

Aimee willed her face muscles to be still and kept her arm around Rachel's shoulder.

"That's all she said, wouldn't talk about it after that," Rachel said finally. "There's not many people around who'd remember, there were so many deportations."

"Was it the Nazis?" Aimee said.

"All I know is Lili's concierge was murdered." Rachel shook her head. "It's not something people talk about." Her eyes were far away.

"What do you mean, Rachel?"

"Only Felix Javel, the cobbler, he'd remember the bloody footsteps…" She trailed off, lost in thought. "Past is past. I don't want to talk anymore."

Sinta, Abraham's wife, clomped into the room. "Listen, Mademoiselle Detective-" She planted her feet apart as if supporting her wide hips and repinned her thick black hair with tortoiseshell combs. Loud beeping interrupted from the folds of her faded apron. "Alors!" she muttered, pulling a Nintendo Game Boy out of her pocket. She clicked several buttons then slid it back inside her apron.

"Neo-Nazi salopes!" Her voice rang curiously melodic, with a strong Israeli accent. "Day and night, they harass us in the shop," she continued matter-of-factly. "Lili always yelled at them to go away. Told me she wasn't afraid of them, but I guess she should have been."

"A gang? What did they look like?" Aimee asked. The damp cold permeated her wool jacket. Why couldn't they turn the heat on?

"Never paid much attention," Sinta shrugged. "I baked in the back kitchen and she handled the customers."

"Your husband mentioned that she'd been seeing ghosts," Aimee said.

"Yes, old people do that." Sinta rolled her eyes at Rachel, who nodded knowingly.

"I don't speak ill of the dead, she was my mother-in-law. We lived under the same roof for thirteen years," Sinta said. "But she could be difficult. Lately she'd taken to seeing shadows everywhere-in her closet, out the window, on the street. Ghosts."

"Shadows?"

Sinta had turned away, as if dismissing her. Aimee stood up and grasped Sinta's elbow, forcing the woman to turn and face her directly.

"What do you mean by that?" Aimee asked.

Reluctantly, Sinta spoke. "Talking about the past, seeing ghosts around the corner." She shook her head and sighed. "Imagining some collaborator had come back to haunt her." Sinta cocked her head and rested her hands on her hips. "She grew so agitated the other day that I finally said, 'Show me this ghost,' so we walked to rue des Francs Bourgeois and up rue de Sevigne to that park with Roman ruins. We sat there for a long time, quietly. Then she seemed calm and said, 'It comes full circle in the end, always does,' and that was that. No more mention of ghosts."

"Collaborators?" Aimee said, surprised.

Sinta repinned a lock of hair that wouldn't behave. "Yes, all that old talk."

"Why wouldn't you believe her?" Aimee said.

"Up and down rue des Rosiers, Les Blancs Nationaux spray graffiti and smash windows. Seems obvious."

This was the second time she had heard Les Blancs Nationaux mentioned.

Sinta paused and looked around the room. Rachel's eyes had closed, low snores rattling from her open mouth.

"Lately, Lili had become very paranoid." Sinta lowered her voice. "Between you and me, she didn't have many friends. Poor Rachel put up with her, the others wouldn't. Go investigate that trash, that's where you should be looking." Sinta sighed. "I don't have time for the past anymore."

Sinta opened Lili's cracked wooden wardrobe and a strong whiff of cedar came out. Sinta shoved some black skirts together and moved aside a pair of freshly heeled shoes, a repair tag hanging off them. "Too bad. She had just picked these up from the cobbler's." Sinta shook her head. "All this goes to the synagogue sale benefiting Jews in Serbia."

"What's the hurry, Sinta?"

"Time to clean things out," Sinta said with determination. "No more living in the past."

As Sinta reached in the back, Aimee noticed a coat half-covered in yellowed paper with an old cleaning tag labeled MADAME L. STEIN pinned to it. The cut and drape spoke couture, but the combed wool with nubby black tufts resembled a postwar concoction of available materials.

"That's beautiful," she said.

Sinta grabbed it from the wardrobe and threw it in the pile.

Aimee stared into Sinta's eyes as she lifted the coat up. "Maybe you should keep this."

"Why?"

Aimee looked at it wistfully. Her mother had worn a coat like this. "Don't you feel this coat was from a happier time in her life?"

Rachel snorted awake. Her eyes brightened, seeing what Aimee held. "Ah, the new look from Dior…1948! Lili sewed a coat for me like this one. Mine had bows down the back seam."

"Schmates! Rags! Everything goes to the synagogue; Serbian refugees will use the cloth. Make it functional and useful, not just a moth-eaten memory."

Aimee felt something intensely personal from Lili Stein emanated from that coat. "Instead, let me keep the coat and I will donate money to the synagogue fund. In honor of my mother. I didn't know her either."

Sinta stood back. "I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?" Her black eyes glittered. "Grieving for a mother you didn't know?" She planted herself close to Aimee. "My sympathy market is closed. I had a mother born in Treblinka. As far as I'm concerned, mentally she never left. Couldn't leave the past. Kept scratching for lice and begging for food even on the kibbutz in 1973…" She stopped as Abraham came in.

He glared at Sinta.

"That's enough." He picked up the coat and handed it to Aimee. "Maman hadn't worn it in years. Take it."

"Thank you, Monsieur Stein," she said. She picked some piled Hebrew newspapers from the corner and wrapped the coat in them.

Down the hallway, she heard Sinta's raised voice, which she knew was meant to be heard. "She doesn't look like a detective…why did you take that shiksa's side, Abraham?"

Sinta's words in her ears, Aimee retraced her steps down the stairs. Out in the courtyard, garbage bins blocked the light well. She pushed them to the side, trying to ignore the rotten vegetable smell. Inside the circular space, a patch of weak light shone. Lili's boarded-up window had looked right down to where she stood.

Mentally, she filed away Rachel's comment about the bloody footsteps to check out later. Right now, it was time to pay Les Blancs Nationaux a visit.

Thursday Evening

"TOTAL SHUTDOWN," MINISTER CAZAUX said under his breath. "The left Confederation Francaise du Travail, the trade unions, promise stoppages across the board if the trade treaty passes." He shrugged. "On the other hand, the rightists lead the popular vote."

Hartmuth had learned techniques for controlling his stutter; clenching his fists was one of them. He was using it now.

"A work shutdown is a socialist tradition here," Hartmuth said, keeping his hands in his pockets. He knew who wielded real power. Parliament belonged to the right, not the CFDT. "It's purely a statement, and then it's over."

"This is true," Cazaux nodded. "But there will be lots of unpleasantness first."

They stood under the chandeliers in the partially refurbished eighteenth-century Salle des Fêtes in the Élysee Palace. In the reception line, Hartmuth had noticed uneasily how Cazaux assessed him with laserlike intensity. He could all but hear the gears shift in Cazaux's brain amid the clink of cutlery and low buzz of conversation. Like an astute diplomat. Like Hartmuth himself.

Tall windows overlooked the Élysee's neglected back garden. Ahead in the Salon des Ambassadeurs, which was closed for renovations, the ornate ceiling sagged alarmingly. He had been surprised to see the palace, a national symbol, in such disrepair. In Germany, it wouldn't be allowed. But he'd never understood the French and doubted he'd understand them any better now.

Across from him he noted Ilse, in beige polyester, chatting amiably with Quimper's wife, in tailored Versace.

The red and white wine flowed freely. He picked at his food and tasted almost nothing.

He pretended this ornate banquet room was in Hamburg, not Paris. He pretended he was safe. But being in the Marais made it harder to shut the memories out. Sunday, too, he would pretend at the opening of the trade summit, the symbolic gesture ordered by Bonn to weave harmony. Unter den Linden.

Cheese and fruit were served on an ice sculpture in the shape of La Marianne, the French Republic symbol, while the orchestra played "La Marseillaise." Cazaux slid in next to him, his cheeks flushed. Television makeup couldn't quite hide his uneven complexion. He offered a flute of champagne to Hartmuth.

"I must do lip service to pacify the conservatives, it's the only way," Cazaux said.

Hartmuth held back. "Essentially, these provisions validate concentration camps for immigrants. We need to rework and rethink…"

"More riots will erupt if this treaty doesn't pass. But that's only the beginning…" A loud buzzing of voices caught Cazaux's attention and he stopped. He turned to the crowd and smiled. "Let us toast a harmonious working relationship."

Hartmuth raised his glass, which sparkled in the light from the drooping chandelier. The photographer caught them lifting their tulip-shaped champagne glasses to each other in a toast.

Hartmuth was about to lunge at the photographer when the flash went off again. Quimper's tipsy wife appeared, giggling, and wrapped her arms around them both. After that, everything was a blur of congratulations and backslapping.

As a trade advisor, he shaped policy, wielded power, but remained in the shadows, out of the public eye. He had never allowed his face to appear in newspapers. Never.

Would anyone be alive today who remembered him? Hadn't the Auschwitz-bound convoys taken care of them? Of course, the surgery on his burned face after Stalingrad changed his appearance. Nevertheless he was worried the rest of the evening.

Later that night he got up and went to his window. He couldn't sleep. Everything about Sarah that had been dead and buried for so many years bobbed to the surface.

As he stared out to the Place des Vosges, hazy globes of light shone through the tree branches, illuminating the metal grill fence and spurting water fountains. Every impulse told him to give in to what he really wanted to do. Their meeting place was so close. When he closed his eyes he saw it again. Hidden under some branches like it had been in 1942, when she'd shown it to him. When Sarah had been there, slipping inside, beckoning him with her almond-shaped eyes.

Only time for a brief goodbye before his troop was shipped to Stalingrad in 1943. Stuck in a POW camp in Siberia for two years, he'd gone snow-blind and whimpered from frostbite. Until the Werewolves helped him escape, giving him a new identity and part of a new face.

They'd used him to sabotage and infiltrate the allies. With their help, he'd prospered in the new Germany. He had slowly been eased into more powerful and influential positions in the Bonn government. Bonn was peppered with others like him. Hartmuth had never cared much either way. He was alive, but he'd lost what he really wanted. Sarah.

If the French detectives he'd hired through diplomatic channels hadn't been able to find her in the 1950s, how could she be here now? Probably shot dead in a field as a collaborator, they'd said, or had her head shaved and been sent to a work camp in Poland to die.

Inside his briefcase he released a hidden spring. Gingerly, he took out a thick envelope. Dog-eared and yellowed with age, this was all that was left of Sarah, except for the ache that hadn't gone away. He spilled the contents onto the hotel desk and began to methodically sort through his memories.

After seven months of dogged work, the Parisian detective agency had found only these few musty-smelling documents. But he always carried the torn photo, a faded sepia print of just half her face, ripped from her family dossier, when his superior's head was turned. The detectives' report had stated that prisoners didn't last long in Polish work camps. What wouldn't he do for even the chance to visit her grave? Hartmuth sighed. His little Jewess had made him a man and she'd only been fourteen.

He couldn't stand it any longer. He had to go and see. Why not? Maybe it would put some of the devils and ghosts to rest. As he left the lobby he politely informed the night porter that he'd keep his key. After all, he was just taking a walk around the square. He patted his stomach and the night porter smiled and nodded knowingly.

She wouldn't be there, of course, he kept telling himself; this all happened fifty years ago. He wondered at time's passing, as his footsteps echoed down the narrow rue des Francs Bourgeois.

The only other people out were a laughing, entangled couple who stopped to embrace every few meters until they reached their door and disappeared inside. He followed rue des Francs Bourgeois until he found the building he recognized as the old Kommandantur where he'd worked.

Now it was the Marais post office. He turned right into the dark cobbled alleyway he remembered all too well.

Much of the Marais was honeycombed with medieval passageways and cramped courtyards like this, damp and smelling of the sewer. He stopped and listened, but there was no one behind him. The occasional dull glow behind a drawn curtain was the only light beside the street lamp.

Hartmuth looked up but there were no watchful eyes as in the past, just the carved marble salamander above the courtyard entrance. His stomach constricted in an even tighter knot.

He remembered the salamander very well and the family that had lived behind it. The French police he supervised had hurried them along, yellow stars sewn on their coats, while they protested that there was some mistake. The roundup had happened in the daytime, while she'd been at school. But the neighbors had seen everything as they hid behind the closed windows. He'd known they would be watching. The van had been parked right where he was standing under the arcade off the rue du Parc Royal with the marble salamander sculpted into it, bearing Francois the First's royal arms.

The buildings now held boutiques and trendy shoe shops instead of kosher delicatessens and garment sweatshops. Where the street joined the crooked medieval alley to the rue de Payenne, Hartmuth took as deep a breath as he could. He walked slowly and softly and he was eighteen again. He begged God that she would be there, even though he knew she couldn't be. She wasn't.

The Square Georges-Cain was still there, the archaeological graveyard of Paris. Roman columns stood randomly, sculpted stone rosettes lay on the ground, and marble figures leaned against the walls. But he wasn't eighteen and he wasn't going to meet his lover, Sarah, hiding in the catacombs. He sat down and cried.