Murder in the Sentier

Wednesday Afternoon

STEFAN UNSCREWED THE license plates of an old Renault parked near the cemetery. Once burgundy colored, the car now looked like a faded wine stain. He’d chosen Paris district plates ending in 75, figuring he’d fade into the scuffed woodwork of a teeming quartier like the Sentier. Blend in with the blue-collar crowd, the immigrants and the traffic of the sex and garment trades.

He’d worry about sending money to his old maman later. Poor Maman with her bad leg. He told himself to remain invisible, like he always did. Not to panic. First things first.

He drove with caution through Place de Clichy, past Café Wepler’s outdoor tables. Jules, he remembered, had delighted in playing the tour guide. He’d pointed out to Stefan that in the thirties Henry Miller had nursed an espresso there for hours and during the Occupation it had been a Kantine and Soldatenheim for the Wehrmacht.

He followed the bus route past Gare Saint-Lazare, down the once grand Boulevard Haussmann, built on the old ramparts of Paris, behind the gold dome of the Opera Garnier toward the Sentier. Stefan parked on rue de Clery, behind a wide blue van with broken rear lights.

He loosened his raincoat, feeling conspicuous. So many wore only tank tops in this heat. The one-way street was crammed with parked cars packed tighter than herrings in a barrel. A delicious coolness came from the leaning stone buildings that lined the sloping street.

He passed the ancien Hôtel de Noisy, elegant despite cheap wholesale clothing stores taking up the ground floor. His goal, the building on rue de Clery, was almost the same as Stefan remembered it, except for the blackened windows and smoky smell. He wondered what had happened. Stefan walked past.

He waited until dusk painted the tops of the stone buildings. Until early evening shoppers returned, climbing the narrow Sentier stairways. Until he smelled garlic frying in olive oil emanating from open windows and heard the clatter of plates at dinner tables.

Snatches of Hebrew came from the storefront on rue d’Aboukir as a man in a yarmulke carried out the trash. On the narrow street the putes clustered in the doorways, just as he remembered. Only now they carried cell phones and more were of African and Arab origin. Still the rag and shag trade carried on much the same as before.

Stefan stood until the street lamps furred with a dense glow, then he shoved open the tall dark green door of Romain Figeac’s building. In the cobbled courtyard, dark shapes contoured the walls. The glass-paned door to the main staircase stood ajar. By the time he reached the third floor, the burnt smell alerted him. Blackened wood and yellow tape forbade him to cross the charred entrance of Figeac’s apartment.

Too late … why was he always too late?

Whether because twenty years of being on the lam made him more aware or it had become second nature at the hint of danger, Stefan’s hair rose on the back of his neck, his nerves tingled. The metallic sound, like the snick of a cartridge being loaded, echoed off the the stone.

Or he could have sworn it did.

He knew he had to run. And run he did. Without looking back or pausing to see if his instincts were right.

If he had, he would have heard the bullet whiz. Seen a large hole blown in the plaster where he’d just stood, bleeding chunks of grit and mortar over the parquet.