Murder in the Sentier

Tuesday Morning

BE RESPONSIBLE, SHE TOLD herself when she woke up. She had to act more responsibly. Not let this obsession take control.

She called Action-Réaction, got an answering machine, and left a message, using the name Marie, saying she’d like an appointment as soon as possible.

After walking Miles Davis on the quai, she dropped him at the groomer’s for a much-needed trim, then stopped at the charcuterie for his favorite steak tartare. By eleven, she’d finished tests on the Media 9 security fire wall and e-mailed them to René.

Time for her to visit the person who’d know more about Romain Figeac’s work than his own son—Alain Vigot, his editor.

Below her apartment’s marble staircase, she wheeled René’s battered Vespa over the old losange-patterned tiles. He’d loaned it to her since her moped had been stolen last year. Riding across deserted Pont Marie, a low glare reflecting from the Seine in the absence of pollution haze, she realized most Parisians had begun their annual vacations.

Over on the Left Bank, Aimée shoved the Vespa in the rack outside Tallimard Presse. Once a cloister, this medieval stone building with baroque and Empire additions still projected a meditative aura.

“Alain Vigot, please,” Aimée said to the middle-aged receptionist. “He’s in conference,” she replied after consulting an appointment book.

A yellow light spiraled from the turreted windows, softening the framed photos of Tallimard’s authors and illuminating the arched recesses in the thick wall. The small reception lobby teemed with couriers delivering packages and an exodus of secretaries going out for lunch.

“I’ll wait.”

The receptionist tilted her tortoiseshell-framed glasses down her nose. “Better make an appointment.”

“D’accord,” Aimée agreed. “This afternoon?”

“Nothing until … let’s see, after Milan …” She looked up. “Laure, this goes to Monsieur Vigot.”

A young woman wearing a gray miniskirt and tunic top thrust a file onto the receptionist’s desk and picked up a large envelope with “Alain Vigot, éditeur de fiction” written on it.

“Laure, when does Monsieur Vigot return from Milan?”

“Late September,” Laure said, turning toward the door, obviously in a hurry.

“Any way you could squeeze me in today?” Aimée handed Laure a business card.

“Monsieur Vigot’s in a lunch meeting.”

“Christian Figeac suggested I speak with him.”

“I’ll give him your card,” Laure said, her mouth pursed in a tight line.

“Merci, it’s important.”

“Like I said, I’ll pass it along.”

Not much of a guarantee, Aimée thought.

She left, then waited outside the Tallimard entrance until Laure emerged. Aimée followed her, at a distance, two blocks to Brasserie Lipp on Saint Germain des Près. Laure nodded to several publishing types, smoking and drinking at the sidewalk tables. The fashionable crowd, wanting to see and be seen, preened under the awning.

She was surprised when Laure continued several blocks down Saint Germain to a small covered passage, Cours du Commerce St. Andre, then turned left. Didn’t Alain Vigot lunch with the trendy world of French publishing?

Laure entered a small café in the middle of the glass-roofed passage next door to a crêperie stall. Aimée’s mouth watered at the smell of Nutella crêpes. Her favorite. She’d only had a brioche with her coffee this morning.

Aimée ducked into the tabac opposite, thumbed a copy of L’événement, and prepared for a long wait. The painted wood shop fronts showed the passage’s gentrification. But Laure emerged empty-handed only a few minutes later.

Aimée hesitated, then opened the café door. The door’s lace curtains swayed and the hanging bells tinkled. A few heads, all of them male, looked up from the zinc counter.

The clientele stood drinking, watching a motorcycle rally on television. The revving of engines and shouting voices of announcers, raised to a fevered pitch, filled the air.

Only one round table at the rear of the dark café was occupied. A man with thin graying hair and round, black-framed glasses sat at it, reading, oblivious to the noise. A white linen coat was draped over the back of his chair, his shirt was unbuttoned. Blue ink marks stained his shirt cuffs. He nursed a large bière and a copy of Le Figaro.

She checked to see if someone else was expected. But there was only one setting, a basket of bread, and a very full ashtray.

It seemed he had his own version of a lunch meeting.

“Monsieur Vigot?” she asked.

His eyes, behind his owl-like glasses, looked small and tired.

“Oui.” He gave a curt nod. “And you are?”

“Aimée Leduc. Pardon me for disturbing your lunch.”

He said nothing.

“May I take a few minutes of your time?”

“Concerning?” He looked up, leaned back, and crossed his legs.

“Romain Figeac.”

“No interviews about Monsieur Figeac,” Vigot said. “I’ve made that clear….”

“That’s understood. I’m a detective,” she said. “Christian Figeac hired me.”

Now maybe Vigot would listen to her.

“Why?” he asked, reaching for his glass. He eyed her more closely this time.

“Could I sit down, please?” she asked with a big smile. “Maybe you can help me, I can’t figure Christian out.”

Amusement crossed Vigot’s face. “Have a bière brûlée with me. I guarantee it will help.” He waved to the waiter, who had a mobile charge machine stuck in his waistband. “Encore … deuxbières bière brûlées.”

The waiter nodded.

Aimée sat down. She moved the mustard pot and bread basket to the side. She didn’t like the way Vigot’s eyes swept up her legs.

Almost immediately, the glasses of bière flambéed with gin arrived. Little of the alcohol had burned off.

“Salut,” Vigot said, clicking glasses.

Fruity fumes and acidic hops tore down her throat. If drinks could signal a color, she figured this would flash fuchsia.

“Christian still raving about ghosts?” Vigot asked.

Aimée watched him as she sipped. He seemed relaxed, his eyes calm. Not glazed. Like she would be if she kept drinking this stuff.

“Monsieur Vigot, what was Romain Figeac working on when he died?”

Alain Vigot’s white puffy hands remained steady on his glass. “Christian still got that on his mind?”

“Actually, Monsieur,” she said, “it’s personal.”

If Vigot was surprised, he didn’t show it.

“You knew him a long time, didn’t you?”

“Forty years of friendship, a working relationship,” Vigot said, taking a long sip. “From the rocky to the sublime.”

Aimée traced the condensation on her glass with her finger.

“Figeac’s prose was velvet smooth, like a baby’s cheek, but his mind was more barbed than a hacksaw. In literature that’s called the hallmark of a civilized mind.”

“And what about at the end?”

“Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you but he hadn’t written in years. Dried up.”

She didn’t believe him or like his condescending manner. Voices rose from the bar. A close smoky haze reigned over the tables.

“Christian said he was writing again,” she said. “Furiously, as if possessed.”

Vigot shook his head. “All I saw was a scared old man.” He sighed. “I should have paid attention, seen it sooner.”

“But you were his friend.”

“A good friend!” Vigot’s eyes sparked. “I carried him for years.” His brow creased. “Compiled the anthologies, reissued works to keep his name alive. That American pute … she killed him.”

Did he mean Christian’s mother, the actress?

“But she committed suicide ten years ago,” Aimée said.

“He never got over her,” he said. “Never wrote the same. Something had died.”

Aimée wished she was outside instead of in this dark masculine sports bar with this sad-looking man.

“Why don’t you lunch at Brasserie Lipp?”

He grinned. “With all the literary sophisticates?” He surveyed her legs again, took another swig, and finished the glass. “Romain and I had an inside table; we lunched there for years. It bothers me to go there.”

He nodded to the waiter again and pointed to his glass.

He turned to her with a restrained smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me …”

“But I haven’t gotten to why I came here,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Figeac’s apartment burned down last night,” she said.

Vigot’s eyes narrowed. “Is Christian all right?”

She nodded. “I’m sure that among the other left-wing radicals he befriended, Romain Figeac knew my mother. That’s my personal interest. I want to find her, or at least find out about her.”

“Don’t tell me the old radical chic’s back in style?

“As Figeac’s friend and editor, you were close to him,” she said. “Years ago he was involved with Action-Réaction, wasn’t he?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Where are the tapes and boxes containing his work?”

Vigot recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “They’re none of your business.”

“Everything belongs to Christian Figeac as literary executor,” she said.

“Leave him out of it.”

“You’re not very helpful.” She shook her head.

“It’s for his own good,” said Vigot.

“My mother’s name was Sydney Leduc. She was an American.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to mean something to me.”

“I won’t leave until you explain this.” She took the sheet of paper she’d filched from Figeac’s desk on her first unofficial visit to the atelier, the sheet that had been tucked under the typewriter, with the Tallimard logo, Alain Vigot’s name at the top, the typographical symbols, and agit888 written on it and placed it in front of him.

Vigot studied her. He seemed to weigh his options. “I don’t know much. There was an American who spoke excellent French and German, I don’t remember her name,” he said. “She helped Jean-Paul Sartre interview Haader in prison because he spoke no French.”

Aimée sat back. Her breath was short. “The translator may have been my mother!”

“I’m not sure.” Vigot shrugged. “Some of them used code names. But she was at Romain’s apartment one day. Romain wanted to publish Sartre’s interview in a left-wing magazine he was starting. But nothing came of the magazine, it never got off the ground.”

“Tell me more about this American.” She leaned closer to him.

“You’re asking me about an afternoon more than twenty years ago with a woman whom I remember vaguely.” He moved away.

“But you remembered she was an American.” She gave him space, afraid of looking too desperate.

“The reason I remembered that much is that right afterward Ulrike Rofmein helped Haader escape from prison. They weren’t caught until years later.” He’d relaxed again.

“Why did Figeac write the words agit888?”

Vigot shook his head. “That’s all I know. Romain always said if he’d published the article the magazine would have taken off.”

“What happened to the article?”

“Sartre published it. That took courage, given the climate then. He looked like a toad, did you know that? Don’t think me cruel, Sartre said it himself,” Vigot said. “Just leave Christian alone, he’s had a rough time.” He gestured to the waiter for another drink and stood up. “I’m going to the rest room. When I return, you’ll be gone, won’t you?”

His gait was unsteady as he moved past the table. He turned and looked at her, his eyes unfocused and very tired. “Leave me alone. I like to get drunk in peace.”

SHE LEFT the café to the chorus of invitations to join the men at the bar for more bière brulée. What did it mean if her mother had helped translate an interview with Haader? But she felt there was more to what Vigot had said. And that there were boxes of Figeac’s work unaccounted for.

Still at sea, she hurried along Boulevard Saint Germain. Back at Tallimard, she hit the kickstart on the scooter and gunned the engine. She’d counted on Vigot enlightening her as to how Figeac was connected to her mother.

But she thought he knew more than he was telling.

She called René on her cell phone.

“Allô?” She heard René’s fingers striking keys on the keyboard in the background. Then an insistent low buzz.

“Etienne Mabry wants you to call him.”

A brief frisson of excitement hit her, then faded. Of course, it must concern Christian Figeac.

Aimée held the phone between her ear and neck as she rode across Pont Royal. The Seine breeze whipped up her skirt, scattered the perched pigeons from the large letter N incised on the bridge by Napoleon’s orders.

“He needs your help with”—low static, clicks—“before we go.”

Something sounded odd. The phone line was tapped.

“Hold on, René, I’ll be there soon.” She hung up. The office was five minutes away but she didn’t want to tell him and the others who were listening that she was meeting Christian at the bank. She stuck her phone in her pocket.

She sped along the Quai des Tuileries, turned left under the Louvre’s arcade, and veered by the Carousel roundabout past the Pyramide.

It bothered her that their phone line was tapped. A lot.

She squeezed her brakes before the Number 39 bus threaded the narrow grime-blackened arches to cross rue de Rivoli, almost flattening her against the Louvre’s portal. She inhaled a big breath of exhaust.