Murder in the Sentier

Monday Evening

AIMÉE WANTED to concentrate on finding the link between Figeac and her mother. Yet when she thought of Christian sitting in a Commissariat cell, she felt guilty.

At least she’d found out from Idrissa that Romain Figeac had made tapes. If she got Christian out he could help her find them.

The other address for Etienne Mabry, besides his apartment, was at the Bourse, the stock market. As she walked through the Sentier the whir of sewing machines escaped from windows above her. On the corner stood a Pakistani man. The jackets draped from his arm caught her eye. “La jaquette à la mode!” he propositioned all passersby. For a hundred francs she walked away with a linen shirt and jacket, their labels ripped out, probably designer seconds from the sweatshop above her. As a truck pulled up, the man swiftly folded the goods under his long coat and slinked around the corner.

A block away, she entered a deserted courtyard, set down her backpack, and got to work. She stood on the cobbles, reapplying her Chanel-red lipstick in a window. Looking in a tall truck’s side-view mirror, she reapplied mascara. She flattened her spiky hair with gel, then slid into the heels she carried, along with a new cryptography manual, calcium biscuits for Miles Davis, and black silk underwear crushed at the bottom of her bag.

One never knew.

Agence France-Presse loomed beyond the Bourse’s forest of columns. Good thing her Beretta rested in her office drawer, she thought, as she saw the metal sensors of the Greek temple-like Bourse, the former Hôtel Bronignart.

Nearby stood an artists’ squat, in a Haussmann-era building, the whole six floors covered with fluorescent graffiti. It was an unexpected bright spot in the middle of the financial district.

Aimée paused in the central enclosure of the Bourse. A speckled gray pigeon had flown inside. Disoriented, it pecked at the tommettes, the hexagonal red clay floor tiles. She knew how it felt, away from familiar ground and looking for crumbs.

Kind of like now.

Several men passed in formal evening attire. She wished she was wearing something more dressy than the crisp linen jacket over her jeans.

More business and efficiency exuded from the antenna-topped Agence France Presse opposite, she thought, than from the deserted wide marble corridors of the Bourse. Rounding a corner, she strode toward the trading hall.

“Trading has ended for the day, Mademoiselle,” said a plainclothes guard wearing a headset. His massive shoulders barred her way. “No unauthorized visitors. Do you have an appointment?”

“But of course,” she said, trying to scan the trader directory behind him for Mabry’s name. She had to make sure he was listed and where he could be found.

Before she could think of what to say next, the guard smiled broadly.

“Another convert baptized,” he said.

“Baptized?”

His massive hand pointed to the yellow-green splotch on her shoulder. Big and spreading.

“You must be special,” he winked. “Our winged friends don’t bestow this honor on everyone.”

Great. Just what I need, she thought. No way in and bird poop on my suit.

On his desk, a halogen lamp beam focused on the visitors’ log.

Too bad she hadn’t mastered reading upside down.

“Happen to have a tissue?”

He pulled a Wet Wipe from his desk.

“Try this.”

“Merci.” She spotted an Evian bottle on the floor. “Mind if I use a bit of this, too?”

“Be my guest,” he said with a gesture. Quickly, she rubbed at her linen jacket.

“He’s following me,” she said. “Look!”

As the guard turned, Aimée bent over the tenants’ register. She scanned the entries and found the name Etienne Mabry.

“Who?”

She grinned, pointing to the pigeon who’d waddled into view.

“If you don’t watch out, you’re next,” she said. “Please, tell Etienne Mabry I’m en route and I apologize for arriving late.”

SHE DIDN’T know what to expect upstairs. The oddly narrow marble staircase echoed to the click of her heels. But by the time she arrived she’d dug in her bag, looped a silk scarf around her neck, and attached chunky silver earrings.

The placard on the landing read, “Mabry—YI Burobourse reception, salle A ’2ième étage.”

The small room didn’t hold more than fifteeen people. All men. And as much ethnic variety as béchamel sauce. Fat binders and business prospectuses sat on the Directoire table. A few of the men, tanned and distinguished, could have stepped out of an Armani commercial.

“I’m looking for Monsieur Mabry,” she said to one with a flute of champagne in his hand. “Can you point him out to me?”

“Désolé, Mademoiselle,” he said.

But another man appeared at her elbow. Tanned, with graying hair, he leaned forward conspiratorially. “You and me both.”

She looked up, surprised to be at the receiving end of a major charm offensive. She didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t hard on the eyes. At all. She’d had an affair with an older man in her neighborhood who walked his dog when she did. An aristo with old money and de la before his last name. He’d offered her a life of luxe, calme, et volupte … but she’d refused. She was her own mistress. No one else’s.

“Let me know when you find him.”

“And why should I?”

“I’m his uncle,” he said. “Jean Buisson.”

“Aimée Leduc,” she said. As she turned, he clasped her elbow. “But if we don’t find him, come to the reception with me.” He nodded toward the room opposite, where tuxedoed men clustered in the doorway.

“Why should I do that?”

“The champagne’s better!”

She smiled. He had a point.

Aimée slipped past the throng of men in black suits. She questioned several, getting quizzical looks in response. Above her hung a fin de siécle chandelier, its crystal swags catching the light. Had Christian gotten word to Mabry somehow? Had he already gone to retrieve Christian from the hands of the police?

Better move on, she thought. Try the champagne, then disappear.

As she left the salon and walked down the hallway, she noticed a door to another room and peeked inside. A group of teenagers, mostly girls with a mélange of skin tones, perched by a computer terminal. A slim man in his early thirties leaned over it, pointing to items on the screen.

“Monsieur Mabry, the shares in networking and opticals indicate high risks,” said a girl. Her light chocolate skin was like Idrissa’s, Aimée thought.

“Mademoiselle Scalbert, can you support your view?” he said. “I think you’re on the right track but tell us why.”

Aimée slipped inside just as he looked up.

Mabry pulled his longish red-brown hair behind his ears. The man was a hunk, no getting around it; all six feet of him, in his pinstriped suit.

“Lost your way, Mademoiselle?” he asked, his voice dense as crème fraîche. His large, smoke-colored eyes crinkled in amusement, then his lips curled in a smile.

He had a wonderful smile.

It reminded her of Yves, her former boyfriend, a Middle East correspondent. Etienne Mabry’s lips curled the same way.

She and Yves had an on-again, off-again relationship, a disaster that had ended the year before on a corner in the old part of Cairo, sun-baked pyramids and buzzing flies for a backdrop.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, wishing she could fuse with a nearby pillar and just watch him. “I’ll wait until you’re finished.”

Etienne Mabry glanced at his watch and shook his head.

“We’re running into overtime again,” he said. “At our next Young Investors’ meeting, we’ll tackle Mademoiselle Scalbert’s argument as to what constitutes excessive risk and what’s smart.”

The Young Investors gathered their things. Some cast long looks at Aimée as they left. Mabry spoke to a student and then pulled on his jacket. “How can I help you?” he said, as he reached the door.

“Aimée Leduc,” she said, handing him her card. “Your uncle’s looking for you, too.”

He set down his worn brown leather briefcase. “Leduc Detective?” he asked, reading her card. “Is there some problem?”

“Christian Figeac’s been taken in for questioning,” she said. “He wants you to bail him out.”

Etienne Mabry’s brow creased with concern. “Not again.”

So this wouldn’t be the first time Mabry had rescued Christian from jail.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for some time,” she said.

He patted the breast pocket of his fine-checked blue shirt. He even wore a red tie de rigueur for a businessman. “My fault … I forgot my phone. So sorry to make you come here to find me! I sponsor the Young Investors from the local lycée, the high school where my partner and I volunteer.”

To her relief she realized he wasn’t her bad-boy type.

“What happened to Christian?” he asked.

“The flics took him to the Commissariat,” Aimée said. “Something to do with the Crédit Bank.”

Etienne Mabry looked puzzled.

“Which Commissariat?” he asked, turning to lock the door.

“Nearby, the SPQ^* on rue d’Amboise,” she said. “I’m sure this isn’t news to you but he seems to have …” She paused on the stairs.

Mabry watched her intently, waiting. He didn’t help her finish her sentence. He guided her downstairs with his warm hand under her elbow, and she detected a faint smell of citrus in his cologne.

“… substance abuse problems,” she finished.

“Chronic ones,” Mabry said, his brow still furrowed, as they arrived outside. “Why are you involved, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Something in the past involving his father and my mother.”

She winced. Had she said that out loud?

“Crédit Industriel et Commercial, you said?”

She nodded.

“Odd, both Figeacs banked with Barclays.”

He pulled out a helmet and mounted the black-and-chrome Harley-Davidson parked on the cobblestones in front of them.

Maybe there was some bad boy in him after all.

AIMÉE WAS puzzled. As she walked toward her office, she tried to make sense of Mabry’s comment about Christian’s bank account.

She wondered why Romain Figeac lived in the Sentier amid garment sweatshops, fabric wholesalers, and working girls: the rag and shag trade. It wasn’t fashionable or arty like the Left Bank, though she vaguely remembered that Balzac had set dramas in the Sentier and Zola had been born there. Had Romain Figeac been an antihero, opposed to the literary establishment?

^*Service de Police du Quartier

She leaned against a column and pulled out her cell phone. She punched in the private number for Martine, her friend from the lycée and current editor at Madame Figaro, the watered-down right-wing women’s magazine.

“Allô, cheri?” breathed Martine after the first ring.

“Not even close,” said Aimée. “Should I call back?”

“Just wishful thinking, Aimée,” Martine said. “Jérôme’s taken his kid en vacances. Just because I moved in with him doesn’t mean I go on holidays en famille.”

Aimée hadn’t been too surprised when, after almost a year helming the right-wing daily Le Figaro, Martine had jumped to the women’s magazine. And she’d moved in with Jérôme, the publicity director, a divorce with a child. Joint custody was something Jérôme’s ex pursued with vigor, insisting on shared vacations. Martine walked on shards of glass until they returned. A boyfriend vacationing with his ex would bother Aimée, too.

“Mind if I pick your brain?”

“Do you ever do anything else?” said Martine, her voice husky. “Just take me to Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant, then I’ll be putty in your hands.”

That would cost next month’s rent. Martine sounded bored, and edgy.

“Madame Figaro having problems?”

“The Madame and I might soon agree to disagree,” Martine said. “Tiens, don’t get me started. What do you need?”

“A lot of things. Info on the connections between Haader-Rofmein and Action-Réaction gangs.”

“Time traveling? Blast from the past?”

“My mother. Kind of like that.”

“Let me look.” Aimée heard tapping as Martine’s long nails sped over the keyboard. The phone line clicked. “Hold on,” she said.

“Any man in your life?” Martine asked, sighing as she returned. “But then you’re different from me. I’d be crawling the ceiling.”

“Well, I met this suit,” Aimée said hesitantly. “A golden boy from the Bourse, but I doubt he’s interested in me.” She felt too embarrassed to even mention that his uncle was also a possibility.

“Aren’t you, what do they call it … evolved?” Martine breathed into the phone. “Call him.”

“Seems too ‘nice,’ but he has got a Harley.”

“Impressive,” Martine said. “You know capitalists have some good points.”

“We met under adverse conditions,” Aimée said.

“Doesn’t matter … you met!”

Another click on the line.

“It’s Jérôme, I have to get off,” Martine said. “About your mother, I’ll dig around.”

AIMÉE’S CELL phone rang.

“Allô?” “Christian Figeac called,” René said. “His financial advisor sprang him from the Commissariat. He felt contrite, says his father used to keep tapes in some panel.”

“Panel … where?”

Why hadn’t Christian mentioned this before?

Irritated, she paused in front of a busy tabac, taking in the late afternoon paper’s headlines: WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION PROTEST and TERRORIST THREATS OF POISON GAS with photos of demonstrators being hauled away from the Palais des Congrès. When she saw the photo of a man captioned “Spokesman for Action-Réaction,” she slipped four francs into the vendor’s hand and folded it under her arm.

“The tapes are behind the desk in his father’s study. But he’s gone, he’ll return later,” René was saying. “He said he’d forgotten about them since his father kept most things at the bank or with his publisher.”

These tapes might contain information about her mother … why hadn’t Christian remembered sooner?

“I’ll stop at Romain Figeac’s, then come to the office.”

“I’m driving to Media 9,” he said. “A negotiation question and since you weren’t there …”

She heard the complaint in his voice.

“Hold out for the exclusives,” she interrupted. “We wouldn’t want to design and implement a security system with our blood, sweat, and tears, only to see them hire a cheap-upkeep server to continue our work … and watch it crash.”

“True,” René said. “But I could use some help.”

“Bien sûr, don’t worry, I’ll tackle my desk soon,” she said. “But be careful, René, not like last time with Euroworld, eh? We’ve learned our lesson.”

SHE NEEDED to get into Christian Figeac’s atelier and she didn’t want to wait for him.

In her apartment, she opened the worm-holed armoire and pulled out her kit. She’d find the hiding place for the tapes without anyone’s being the wiser. It was her father’s favorite tactic. She hoped Christian wouldn’t mind.

She hung up her linen jacket and put on a blue service jacket and a cap with L’eau de France’s logo of the Seine snaking across it. She struggled into the blue twill pants. Maybe she should try Morbier’s pills. Every time she quit smoking she felt it in her hips!

“OUI?” ANSWERED a reedlike man wearing an apron double-tied around his waist who stood at the concierge’s door. A burnt vanilla aroma wafted from the interior.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur, sorry to interrupt your dinner,” she said, setting down her tool bag. She handed him a card reading PLOMBERIE DELINCOURT 24/7 SERVICE.

From inside his hallway a television blared Questions pour un Champion, the quiz show on France3.

“Monsieur Figeac called about a blockage. He’s concerned about a compliance complaint.” She gave him a big smile, pushed the cap to the back of her head, and pulled a clipboard from her bag. “Tiens, he’s not home.”

“You’re the second one tonight.”

“Eh, do you mean the cleaners?”

“People coming and going like this is the Gare de Lyon!” The man untied his apron. He stared at her clipboard as if it were dirty. “Come tomorrow morning.”

“Sorry, Monsieur,” she said, “but if you could unlock the apartment, I can lock up after.”

Irritation clouded the man’s face.

Aimée shrugged. “Just doing my job, Monsieur. Don’t mind me, eh, a quick plumbing adjustment, then I’ll be gone.”

All she wanted was to get into Romain Figeac’s writing room and search the back wall panels for the tapes. Why hadn’t she noticed before?

She wished he’d hurry up.

He stood, not budging.

From the hall the pitch of the contestants’ shouts mounted to a frenzy. The concierge was torn between the finale of his game show and escorting her upstairs.

“Make it quick,” he said, glancing at his watch.

He wouldn’t let her forget it, she could tell.

“Is something cooking on the stove?”

He reached for a big key ring. “I burned the sugar instead of caramelizing it.” He shook his head. “A catastrophe with crème brûlée!”

Aimée hefted her plomberie bag and followed him into the hallway to the staircase for the Figeac apartment. The concierge hit the light switch.

And then she saw the black smoke pouring down.

“Call the pompiers.”

He stood paralyzed.

“Hurry—there’s a fire!” she said, keeping the panic from her voice with effort. “Give me the keys. Vite, get help!”

He clattered over the parquet to his flat.

She climbed to the next floor, then crouched down in the hallway. From her bag, she pulled out her scarf, sprayed it with Evian aerosol, and, covering her nose and mouth, knotted it at the back of her head.

Praying it wasn’t too late to find the panels, she unlocked the door to the Figeacs’ apartment and crawled inside. But she didn’t get far.

An inferno of heat, flames, and smoke enveloped her, fast and furious, blinding her, as searing pain shot through her hands.

She jerked back, her foot caught on a burning chair, and she stumbled. Embers fell from the burning ceiling, showering her clothing. Her work shirt ignited. Flames licked her ears, singed her hair. Ripping her shirt off, she grabbed her plomberie bag and rolled on the floor, smothering the flames.

She had to get out. Crawling forward, she reached the door, struggled to her feet, turned, then heaved herself backward. Hard.

She landed in the hallway, her shoulder ramming the grillwork. No time to deal with it. Heat and smoke choked her.

She crawled, trying to ignore her burns, through scorching heat. Red-orange flames leaped, dense black smoke poured across the foyer. Her lungs hurt but she took as deep a breath as she could. She had to get out of the building.

Coughing, eyes smarting, blindly she made her way down the stairs, bumping into the concierge, who was crumpled against the banister.

Startled, she grabbed him. Had he been attacked? Quickly, she scanned the stairs but couldn’t see anything through the smoke.

She sat him up, bracing her wrists under his shoulder. Good thing he was thin. Her lungs burned. She had to pause on the cracked marble stairs to breathe even though each inhalation hurt. She heard the sound of glass popping and shattering as yellow-white flames shot from the windows.

Arson, she thought, as her mind grew foggy. Someone had set the apartment on fire … Christian Figeac? No, she reasoned. He’d make more if he sold the place.

Beside her, the concierge stirred. Aimée heard sirens outside. Who’d called the pompiers? The concierge? She heard hatchets chopping, saw the streams of water arcing against night darkness, and felt the spray mist from the window cover her. Then a sharp blow struck her on the head.

And then, darkness.