Murder in the Sentier

Monday Night

AIMÉE CAME TO IN THE parked ambulance outside Christian Figeac’s apartment.

“Treatment for smoke inhalation, burns on the palms,” a stocky blue-suited man with a crew cut was saying at her side.

She felt something hard over her mouth and looked about her. It took her a minute to realize she was in an ambulance, inhaling oxygen. Aimée watched as the bag filled, then collapsed, as if it were breathing lungfuls of air. She remembered doing this in an ambulance before, after her father’s death in the terrorist explosion.

She tore off the mask, then clutched at her throat, unable to inhale. The pompier slipped the mask back over her mouth and nose and mimed taking several deep breaths.

“Back with us?” he said, not unkindly. “Bet you never thought being a plumber would be hazardous, eh?”

She looked down. She still wore the Plomberie Delincourt uniform.

She pulled the mask aside. “I’m fine,” she gasped, still short of breath.

“Voilà, take it easy,” he said. “To dissipate the carbon monoxide, you need hi-flow oxygen.”

She let him slip the mask back on and greedily inhaled.

“That’s the way,” he said. He nodded encouragement until she’d inhaled the oxygen for a full five minutes.

“Ça va?”

She nodded and he took the mask off. Her head ached. The last thing she remembered was a whack on it from behind.

“Where’s the concierge?” she asked. The pompier, who wore a badge that read HERVE PICARD pointed across the van. The concierge, a butterfly bandage over his brow, waved at her. He chewed on a baguette sandwich.

“Hungry?”

Tightness gripped her chest, but she nodded.

“We had extras from the canteen,” the pompier said, handing her one wrapped in white waxy paper. “Just take it slow.”

“Merci,” she said. She was now able to breathe without much pain, and she was grateful for something to eat.

“We’ll watch you two tonight,” he said. “Just a precaution.”

“Not necessary,” she said, raising herself up on her elbow. Her shoulder tingled with pain and she winced. But it wasn’t dislocated. She knew the difference. It was her new tattoo, feeling as if it had been ripped raw. But she had no intention of spending the night in the hospital like the concierge. “What’s that?” she asked, looking at the graphite-colored box on the end of her finger.

“This pulsoximeter tells us your red blood cell levels,” he said, checking a ticker-tape type readout. “Your carboxy hemoglobin level was sixty-five percent. You were close to checking out. Permanently.”

Her breath caught in her throat.

“Just that apartment was affected,” he said.

“Only that apartment?” She sat up more slowly, rewrapped her sandwich, and stuck it in her jacket pocket.

Her chest tightened again.

But something bothered her more. She’d been hit from behind. A big welt on her head throbbed.

“Go slow,” Herve said. “You can claim workman’s comp and disability from your union. I’ll give you some forms. Patients always forget down the road.”

She didn’t want to disregard his advice; his warm blue eyes and wide smile were sincere. But she wanted to run inside the building and check to see if there was anything left.

“Merci. But I need my bag,” she said. “And I’ve got to get home.”

Hervé wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her arm, inserted a cold stethoscope against it, and pumped. “Can you tell me who you are, what day it is, where we are, and what happened?”

“Aimée Leduc, it’s Monday night in an ambulance in the Sentier, and I was trying to fix a plumbing problem inside the apartment.”

“A and O looks good,” he said. “Awake and orientée but the captain wanted to talk to you when you came round. See how you feel after that.”

She shrugged.

“Meanwhile, let’s get your address.”

Uh oh. If she admitted she was trying to gain entry to the apartment under false pretenses she’d be in trouble. Big trouble.

From outside, she heard raised voices. One was familiar. She recognized Christian Figeac.

“Of course, but I need to speak with the owner, he’s my friend.”

“Bien sûr, but let’s get the paperwork out of the way,” Hervé said with gentle insistence.

By the time Aimée made it out of the ambulance she’d accepted an ice pack for her head, given an address, signed a release form, and agreed to meet Hervé later for coffee. Too bad she had no intention of honoring that commitment.

Only when she reached the courtyard did she appreciate the irony. She’d have given anything to have found documents regarding her mother in the apartment, but doing so would have cost her life.

Uniformed pompiers rushed past her with more hoses, dampening the smoldering walls. A group with hatchets followed. Christian Figeac stood talking with a man who took notes and wore jeans. Either a reporter or an insurance adjuster.

White-faced, with soot smudges on his cheeks and hands, Christian seemed shell-shocked. He wore the same silver synthetic leather jacket, his hair more stringy than before. She couldn’t tell if he recognized her. The man handed him a card.

“Arson?” Aimée asked, joining them.

“Mademoiselle, after investigation the arson squad will inform us,” the man said, snapping his notebook shut. “It’s not what we’d call a typical Sentier fire. Contact me tomorrow, Monsieur Figeac.”

And he was gone.

“You see,” Christian said, turning to her, his gaze hollow. “A curse.”

“Curse?”

“Like the ghosts,” he said.

Stark halogen searchlights set by the fire crew illumined the dripping building foyer. Pompiers ran back and forth, shouting directions and releasing hose pressure.

Ghosts didn’t set fires.

She took him by the elbow to a corner of the wet, dark courtyard. Black puddles reflected the crescent fingernail of a moon.

“Tell me one thing and the answer goes no further,” Aimée whispered, pulling him closer. “Did you set that fire?”

Christian Figeac’s expression didn’t change. “You think I need the money?”

She figured that was a rhetorical question and stayed quiet.

“Money … there’s a lot,” he said, as if talking to himself, twisting his hands together. His dry skin made a raspy sound. “Accounts I never knew about.”

It wouldn’t make sense to burn the place down for the insurance if he had money.

“What did he mean by the typical Sentier fire?”

“In the rag trade,” Christian said, “say the merchant can’t sell last season’s overstock, he has a fire and collects insurance, probably makes a profit, too.”

Of course, this was different. But who could have done it?

“Would Idrissa set the fire?”

“Idrissa? She’s afraid of the spirits, I told you.” He shook her off. Anger sparked in his large eyes.

“I met her,” Aimée said. “She admitted she had worked for your father. But she was hiding something.”

Christian Figeac, clad in his thin jacket, the sleeves damp, shivered in the scant moonlight. He must have come home from jail only to find his father’s apartment burning.

She felt sorry for him. After her mother left, Aimée’s father had done his best to make up for it. Her grandparents had, too. But had Romain Figeac done the same for Christian?

“I’ve got an extra couch,” she said. “You’re welcome to it.”

He blinked, shook his head as if coming to. “What kind of an outfit … a plumber?”

“I tried to break into your place and find that panel concealing the tapes,” she said. “Are there any more?”

“In the bank maybe,” he said.

“First thing tomorrow you need to get them. Listen, this is about your father. We need to talk.”

He followed her out of the courtyard.

They skirted the ambulance, passed the parked fire trucks. On rue Réaumur, she raised her arm to hail a taxi.

“No, we’ll take my car,” he said, pointing to an olive Jaguar XKE, dented, with scratched paint. A battered classic.

Christian Figeac sank into the leather ribbed seat, switched on the engine.

“What do we need to talk about?”

He seemed calmer. She hoped he could handle what she had to say. Late-night strollers crossed in front of them, pale and caught, like frightened deer, in the Jaguar’s headlights.

“Where to?” Christian asked.

“Ile St. Louis, Quai d’Anjou,” she said. “My apartment.”

He gunned the engine and shot toward Boulevard de Sébastopol.

She didn’t know how else to say it. “I’m sorry, but your father was shot with a large-caliber gun, not the one you said he’d used.”

“How do you know?” he asked, surprised.

“From the residue on the wall. It’s not consistent with …” She hesitated. “A .25 has a nice recoil but it’s not a blaster. I took a sample from the wall to the lab yesterday.” Good thing she’d followed her instinct since everything had now gone up in smoke. And it struck her. “You know, that’s what the murderer wanted … all the evidence gone.”

He slowed down. “Murderer … why?” he asked.

“You tell me,” she said. “Did your father have enemies, someone who didn’t …?”

Her phrase was lost in a blare of honking klaxons. Christian floored the pedal. He cornered rue de Palestro. The Jaguar responded, roaring bulletlike down the narrow medieval street.

“But he left a suicide note,” Christian said. “How could he have been murdered?”

“Think back to when you found him. Tell me what you saw.”

Christian’s shoulders heaved. “It was dark, he was slumped over on the desk … like when he’d been drinking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But really he was killed.”

“Papa’s writing played the most important role in his life,” he said. “Everything else ranked below it.”

“You’re proving it yourself,” she said. “He wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

They sped through the empty Sentier streets. Dark buildings encrusted with grime illumined by globular street lamps peaked above them. Alleys and passages jutted like capillaries from a veinous hub, calcified by old coaching inns.

“Christian—if I may call you that—with a suicide, the gun stays there. The .25 wouldn’t …” She paused, trying to say it tactfully.

“I didn’t pay much attention but it was his,” he said. “The flics took it.”

“Check the coroner’s office, ask where it is,” she said. “The coroner’s making a report, they’ll open an inquiry.”

“Non,” he shouted. “Papa’s dead. I had enough of those reporters after Maman’s suicide. They printed those awful photos, the ones of her remains in the car. They’ll just hound me and want to rake up dirt.”

“It’s painful for you, I’m sorry,” she said. Of course, he was right and how sad. But, she thought grimly, it didn’t change the fact that his father had been murdered.

Aimée wished the bucket seat had a working seat belt. Christian Figeac seemed intent on crossing Paris in ten minutes.

“Why can’t the past leave me alone?” he said. He combed his hair back with his fingers, stubby and bitten to the quick.

“Don’t you see?” she said. “Someone murdered your father. Now they’re after you.”

He screeched his brakes on the quai before her apartment. They stopped with a jerk. “But I thought it was my fault.” He slumped over the wooden steering wheel, pounded the leather dashboard.

“Christian, why did you think it was your fault?”

“Below his standard, never reached his expectations … ,” he mumbled. Shadows curtained Christian Figeac’s face.

All his life he had been haunted by high-profile parents; a renowned father and mother and a string of public tragedies. Sad to think of the pain stamped on his psyche.

“You didn’t kill him. Someone else did,” she said. Then she told him how Jutta Hald had appeared in her life.

“That’s why I contacted you. Think again,” she said. “Maybe she came to your door?”

He shook his head.

Again, he combed his stringy hair behind his ears with his fingers. It was as if he’d numbed out, refusing to deal with what she said. Who would want to know his father had been murdered?

She hadn’t.

She got out of the car, slammed the dented door. But she stood on the cobblestones, unable to move her feet. She had to make him understand.

“What if it had been you in the apartment when it caught fire? You must realize you’re in danger. And I am, too. Someone knocked out your concierge and whacked me from behind.”

She turned and let him see the throbbing welt on her head in the quayside light.

Now he looked scared. And lost.

“What can I do?” He shook his head. “Even if you’re right, everything went up in smoke.”

True.

“You said he kept things at the bank or with his publisher,” she said. “Idrissa transcribed your father’s work. I need to talk with her again. Perhaps something can still be found.”

“Go ahead, she won’t talk to me.”

“What’s her number?”

“01 75 98 72 02.”

She pulled out the first thing that came to hand from her bag, a lip-liner pencil, and wrote it down on the back of her hand.

“You asked me to help you, remember?” she said. “If I were you, Christian, I’d be afraid.”

“Did I say I wasn’t?” he asked. “So, girl detective, you think you will find out who killed my father?”

She nodded. And she would find Jutta’s killer, too.

He wrote another check, thrust it through the window at her.

Surprised, she stared at him.

“Not enough?” he shouted, reaching over to add more zeros.

“Throwing money at me?” But René would shoot her if she didn’t take it.

She took it. Michel’s loan hadn’t covered it all.

A crow flew past, swooped, then perched on the quayside wall. His black silhouette was outlined against the lighted Seine.

“Let’s look at the things he kept in the bank,” she said. “My mother’s trail led me to your father.”

“Always your mother,” he said. “I hardly knew mine.”

“Neither did I. And mine was American, too.”

Christian looked away. He flipped the key in the ignition and the engine sputtered to life. “I’ll stay with Etienne,” he said abruptly. “Meet me tomorrow at two at the Credit Industriel et Commercial in Place des Victoires.” And with that he roared off down the darkened quai.

Surprised by his continual changes of mood, she climbed up the stairs. Miles Davis sniffed her with his wet nose as she entered the apartment. She pulled out the half-eaten baguette sandwich Hervé the fireman had given her and set it in his bowl on the kitchen floor. Then she stumbled down the hallway to her bedroom and collapsed on her feather duvet.

Hours later, she woke up, her face wet, still in her sooty plumber’s uniform. Her thirties Bakelite bedside clock showed green fizzy numbers. She rubbed her eyes.

3:04 A.M.

She remembered. Everything had gone up in smoke.

And she realized she’d been crying in her sleep, something she hadn’t done in years. Her pillow was damp with tears.

Fragments of an old dream came back to her … running, trying to hand her mother something. Playing catch-up as always. But her mother was so far ahead … so distant. Aimée could only see her sleeve flapping in the wind. And then she was gone.

Why had her mother left them?

But she knew the answer. Deep down she knew she’d been a burden. She remembered her mother’s irritated glances. How she had stuck her paintbrush in the jam jar of cloudy turpentine, annoyed by the annual teacher conference. “Amy, such institutional parrots, they don’t teach you creative expression!”

Aimée had felt confused. Did that mean she was boring and slow or that her teacher was? Or both? She only knew she didn’t measure up to what her mother wanted. Just the way Christian felt.

Her strict teacher was fair despite her funny little chignon and severe curvature of the spine. “Scoliosis,” her father had called it, her mother adding, “Never stare at others’ deformities. Focus on the eyes.”

The pain seared her as always. No differently than when she was eight years old. She undid the pants and shirt, kicked them onto the floor, and curled up in one of her father’s old shirts. Soft and worn.

She stared up at the milky chandelier, many of its icicle drops missing, that hung from the plasterwork oval-inlaid ceiling. An occasional glint of light from the passing night barges was reflected in the crystals. Beside her, Miles Davis stirred in his sleep and nuzzled her. A cool breeze scented of the Seine drifted in through her open window.

No way could she fall asleep. Only one remedy for that.

She sat up in bed, pulled her laptop over, and went online. She searched deeper than she had the other night, finding more sites about the Haader-Rofmein gang. They’d existed until 1992, when some of the first-generation members had given themselves up. There was even a punk rock band named after Haader-Rofmein, noted for its song “Grandpa Was a Nazi, Papa Was a Commie, Oh My!”

Since Germany had undergone denazification and the integration of a communist state in less than two generations, the Haader-Rofmein background and identity had complex implications.

She realized the terrorists symbolized another era in which youths rebelled against postwar conformity, abhorring their government, which was filled with former Nazis, and the industrialists and financiers who had been members of the Wehrmacht. They took violent political action. They wanted to overthrow what the Allies had created: a Germany divided between communism and strident capitalism.

She found the old Interpol WANTED posters. So many fugitives had been on the run across Europe.

Haader-Rofmein had kidnapped a wealthy French industrialist, Paul Laborde, near the German border. He’d died from injuries suffered during a shoot-out. After that, the gang members escaped or were imprisoned.

She scrutinized the photos: radicals caught in a bank heist by the security camera, bombed-out houses, BMWs riddled with bullet holes spun out on the Autobahn, figures in dark glasses with their hands up being frisked by police, the blood-smeared cells of Kernheim prison where emaciated RAD leaders lay dead on the concrete, eyes open.

No one resembled her mother. She was flooded with relief.

She found Action-Réaction, which proclaimed itself the French counterpart of the German struggle.

Apart from slogans inciting members to Eat the state and Join class warfare, Action-Réaction boasted its revolutionary ideas were in line with the 1789 French Revolution, blended with strains of Maoism and anarchism.

She searched for its headquarters or an address. Aside from an article on sweatshop worker rights in the Sentier and the listing of an address for an information office at 7, rue Beauregard, there was nothing. She finally fell asleep.