Murder in the Sentier

Wednesday Afternoon

AIMÉE PUNCHED in René’s door code at the house on the rue de la Reynie. She mounted his creaking stairs, which smelled of wax polish and stepped softly, mindful of his neighbor’s sleep. He was a female impersonator who worked in Les Halles.

“Damn cyber squatters!” René greeted Aimée as she walked inside his apartment. His eyes raced up and down the screen almost as fast as his fingers did. “We registered click.mango.fr as a domain name before they did.”

“Going to boot them out?” she said.

He nodded, tugging his goatee. “It won’t be pretty.”

“Talking about squats,” she said, “we’re invited to the collectif Yabon d’Arts.” She wanted René to come and meet Christian.

René hit Save. His head turned.

“Looks like I got your attention. Now get dressed.”

ALIGHTING FROM René’s bullet gray Citroën, customized for his four-foot height, Aimée looked around. “Any fashionistas here?” she asked.

“You’ll fit right in,” René grinned, buttoning his black frock coat, then pointing to the artists’ squat. “Tomboys in lace are en vogue.”

She tucked her ruffled cuffs inside her leather biker jacket sleeves, pinched her cheeks for color, and tried for an appearance of sang-froid.

Before them, the Haussmann-era building stood out. Throbbing lime, violet, and silver graffiti mocked the staid financial district, home to the Bourse. Caricatures spread a floor high; filigreed iron balcony railings held signs emblazoned TURN EMPTY SPACE INTO ART and FIGHT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS—A NEW FORM OF TERRORISM TO THE ART WORLD.

“Talk about visual aggression!” René said. “The whole six floors are tagged.”

Aimée hid her smile. “This collectif even occupied space across from the Musée Picasso,” she said. “They claimed ‘free space for artists in Paris’ and baptized it Galerie Socapi, Picasso in verlan,” she said. “No one can afford ateliers today, like those Picasso and the Cubists found at the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre. They take over buildings abandoned by banks and insurance companies that have deserted Paris for the cheaper suburbs.”

René expelled a burst of air in disgust. “Arrogant artists.”

“You can tell them how you feel at dinner.”

This was the Paris Aimée had grown up in … grimy and full of caractère. Where stalls of white summer Montreuil peaches perfumed blackened stone facades, where concierges sat fanning themselves in the doorways, exchanging gossip while cats slunk around their legs. And everyone said Bonjour on the street. Where the tang of pissoirs and Gauloises hit her on the corner coming home from school, café patrons argued philosophie, and the only phones were the ones in the café that took jetons. Where individuals made statements. Statements that were heard.

She and René stepped over crunching brick to a hole punched in the flat end of the building. Above them, the flat pignon, the wall, sliced Parisian style, held peeling wallpaper and traces of chimney flues’s snaking to the roof. Alongside grinned a three-story Barbarella caricature.

Inside, the worn marble staircase crawled with razor-thin men and young blondes. DEMYSTIFY ART was spelled out in multicolored floor tiles.

Renée’s eyes widened. “Junkies and debutantes by the look of it,” he whispered in her ear.

“Like the old days,” she grinned, “when the Sorbonne was interesting.”

“You liked those parties,” René said.

“But you were the one who got lucky.” Aimée leaned forward and saw a smile struggle across René’s mouth.

A few golden boys, day traders from the Bourse, stood looking embarrassed, holding their briefcases, loosening their ties.

They saw the birdcage lift was stranded between floors. Aimée groaned. Why had she worn leopard-print high-heeled mules instead of her red high-tops?

René jerked his thumb upward. In the corners of the steps were syringes and dead pigeons. “I’m not hungry,” he said.

By the time they had trudged up to the third floor, the crowd had grown more eclectic. Room after room held paintings, metal sculptures, and installations. The thrum of an electric generator powered the dim lights and pounding techno-beat. From the cavernous hallway came the sizzling crackle of cooking and the aroma of garlic.

A group of skinny models, working proletariat, and aristos sat drinking wine together at a long candlelit table. Conversation buzzed amid the clink of wineglasses. A man in tight black denim pants and a black shirt appeared. A slit-eyed iguana was draped over his arm.

“We’re Etienne’s friends,” Aimée said, unable to pull her gaze from the candlelight flickering on the iguana’s iridescent scales.

“Welcome, I’m Hubert,” he said, planting bisous on both her cheeks and René’s. “Ça va?” Hubert’s thin shoulders twitched.

She hoped he was keeping time with the music and not in need of a fix.

She dropped her scarf and bent to pick it up. Her shirt rode up, revealing the lizard design on her back.

“Nice tattoo! Nico?” Hubert asked.

Aimée nodded, and saw René’s mouth drop open.

“Take that place, just in time,” he said, sweeping them forward to a bench. She had the feeling she’d risen several notches in Hubert’s estimation.

A man with thick black hair wearing a corduroy jacket with leather-patched elbows made space for them. He gestured, his mouth full, toward a wineglass and poured from a carafe of red wine. He raised his glass. “Salut, mes amis,” he managed, then attacked a salade frisée pomaded with glistening avocado vinaigrette.

Etienne appeared in the doorway. He wore a skinny black T-shirt and frayed jeans, and swiped his shock of reddish brown hair across his forehead. In nonwork clothes, he looked more like Aimée’s bad-boy type. She didn’t see Christian.

“Bonsoir,” she said as Etienne joined them. “Meet René, my partner.”

“A pleasure.” He shook René’s hand. Then hers. His long fingers enveloped hers with soft, warm pressure, his lips forming a smile.

That wonderful smile. Her fingers retained his warmth after he let go.

Most likely Etienne enjoyed a steady income and visited his parents in the countryside on major holidays and weekends.

But he didn’t look boring now.

Opposite, their dinner partner was arguing with the woman seated next to him. “Five thousand francs … do I look loaded, Madame? Ask me when I win Thursday night at keno.”

“Didn’t Christian come with you?” Aimée asked.

Etienne shrugged. “I hoped he’d be here, waiting.” He sat next to Aimée. “He’s notorious for being late.”

She was aware of Etienne’s vaguely citrus scent, his long lashes, his muscular arms.

“I’m worried,” she said. “Christian’s been through so much.

Did he stay with you last night?”

Etienne shook his head. “Never showed up. I’m worried, too. He’s in financial trouble.”

“Financial trouble?”

René reached for a carafe and poured a glass for Etienne.

“Merci,” Etienne said. “Frankly, it’s beyond my scope. I just manage investments. But the back taxes and liens on his father’s estate have mounted up. It’s horrific.”

Strange, Aimée thought. Christian told her there was money. Lots of it.

“Maybe he is being held at the Commissariat again?” René asked.

“Doubtful, but he’s got to furnish them statements by Monday.” As Etienne turned his wine goblet, licks of candlelight danced over its surface. “I’m concerned. His father must have kept records. Christian was supposed to meet me at the bank. Then he called, said for me to meet him here.”

She was about to say Christian had pulled the same thing on them. She looked over at René. But René’s eyes were on the women dancing in the hallway. Their shadows, distorted on the water-stained wall, twitched and jumped to the techno music.

“Didn’t the Figeacs have an accountant?” She felt the pressure of Etienne’s leg, not unwelcome, as more people joined them at the table.

“Excuse me,” René said, getting up. He winked at Aimée and nodded toward the hallway.

“Our transactions were simple,” Etienne said. “He wrote checks.”

“But Christian called you his financial advisor.” Had this been one of Christian’s big ideas, as Idrissa termed them?

“A loose phrase.” Etienne’s smoke gray eyes probed hers, as if plumbing her psyche. Few men she’d met were so direct. It felt disturbing but nice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what he told you.”

“Where could he be?”

Etienne looked down. “With Christian, well … it’s typical. He makes plans and doesn’t show up.”

Then her phone rang.

“Allô?” But the music swallowed the response.

It was impossible to hear. She checked the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. Then it hit her.

“Pardonnez-moi, I have to take this call,” she said, tearing herself away from Etienne.

In the next room, Hubert was holding court near large cubes of pastel Plexiglas. She hit the call-back button and got a gruff “Oui!”

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“What is this? Marie called. Georges here.”

A call from Action-Réaction … finally!

“What do you want?” Georges didn’t wait for her reply. “We’re leaving for Strasbourg tonight.”

“I have to speak with you,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes. I’m on my way.”

Either Christian was a flake or in trouble. Right now she couldn’t solve that. Back at the table, René’s vacant place had been taken up by newcomers.

“René ran into his friend,” Etienne said. “He said you’d understand.”

Aimée felt awkward. Had he left on purpose so that she could be alone with Etienne? The music’s pitch and the DJ’s voice escalated so it was hard to hear.

“Désolée, but I’ve got to go. Something just came up,” she said.

Etienne glanced at his watch. “I was hoping we could go somewhere together.”

Torn, she figured Christian would come late or not show. Martine would call her nuts to leave but she had to meet this Georges and find out about her mother.

“It’s business, je le regrette,” she said.

Surprise crossed Etienne’s face. This didn’t happen to him often, she figured. Few women would walk away from him. Not if they were smart. Wrong place, wrong time.

“Why don’t we meet later?” he asked. “At Rouge. I’ll bring Christian if he shows up.”

Did he think she was playing hard to get?

“Sounds good,” she said, trying to sound casual.

“How will I reach you?”

She pulled out her lip liner and wrote her cell phone number on his arm.

“A bientôt.” Etienne pulled her close and gave her a bisou. His warm breath seared her cheek. She almost sat back down.

Instead, she made her way through the packed crowd dancing in the hallway. Keep going, she told herself; she had no time for Etienne. No sign of René. Out on rue Feydeau she saw his car. Maybe he’d gotten lucky with one of the women.

Hurrying through the quiet Sentier streets, she reached Action-Réaction ten minutes later. The building on rue Beauregard, a squat survivor from the sixteenth century, had suffered a face-lift in the fifties. Unsuccessful by the look of it. Rusted neon signs advertised TEXTILE VASSEUR on the wall behind it. On both sides, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings leaned over it, their clay chimney pots askew on their slanted roofs.

At the corner, several Pakistani men stood gambling on cardboard boxes. Beyond them, Aimée heard the gurgle of the drains as fresh water washed the gutters. Garbage containers, tall and green, peculiar to the Sentier, lined the street entrance.

In the courtyard, a man pushed a wire clothes rack, full of swinging wool- and fur-collared jackets, jiggling over the cobbled way. An office window stenciled with EAT THE STATE fronted the grime-blackened courtyard facing a wall of bricked-up windows.

A chill penetrated the dark courtyard recesses. She knocked on the door that read AR in faded letters.

Aimée expected to find a lair of old radicals or a seething den of subversives mobilizing for the World Trade demonstrations in Place de la Concorde.

But she had to knock several times on the thick wooden door. Only the narrow crescent of the July moon illumined the dark courtyard. Finally, the door scraped open. A man with graying corkscrew curls tight to his head and a broken nose peered out.

“Georges?” she asked.

“We’re in a hurry, entrez,” he said, looking around behind her.

She stepped inside Action-Réaction’s squalid office. Posters and old Maoist leaflets covered the ceiling and walls like wallpaper. A sagging sofa was draped with threadbare African cloth, Che Guevara’s image smiled from behind the single pasteboard desk. The only concession to the present was a shiny new fax machine.

A damp mildew smell came from the corners. Typical in these buildings, the rot and mold of centuries. But Che stayed forever the gorgeous revolutionary martyred in Bolivia, while the movement declined. Chunks of plaster were missing, revealing laths, and a fine powdery sprinkle covered the floor.

Some men were passing around a bottle of Pernod, the licorice liquor.

“Look, I’m sorry, maybe you can help me. I need to ask you about …”

Georges did a double take. “Don’t I know you?” He took a long, hard look at Aimée.

“I can’t believe it!” he said, moving closer to her. “Frédo, look. Look!”

A thin man with paper white hair turned to look at her. “Nom de Dieu,” he said.

In the glare of a naked bulb, she saw furled banners piled against the dank wall. She felt Georges’s face close to hers. Saw his bruised purple-red nose.

“You look so much like her … the resemblance is amazing!”

A cold shiver ran through Aimée.

“What do you mean?”

Frédo joined them. “You’re her daughter, non?”

“Who?” Her hand shook, she couldn’t help it.

“Tiens! You’re Sydney’s daughter!” Surprised, she noticed that their looks were welcoming instead of accusing. Finally, she’d found a connection to her mother. A positive one!

“Amazing!” Frédo stood, beaming at her. “That look. So innocent and wild … you have it. But of course, I should know, eh? We were intimate.”