Murder in the Sentier

Friday Morning

AIMÉE WOKE UP and made coffee. She’d cleaned up the spilled sugar in the kitchen last night. One of the blue tiles behind the faucet was loose. She’d have to caulk it later.

“Bonjour, Serge,” she said, when she reached him in his lab.

“Nice fragment of occipital bone with internal beveling from a bullet you had the other day,” he said.

Trust Serge to be gruesome, but that was the medical examiner in him.

“There’s a detective who wants to discuss the Figeac evidence,” he said.

Finally!

“In conjunction with Jutta’s murder, I hope,” she said.

“Officially, it’s the detective’s job to request it,” Serge said. “But I faxed him my findings concerning Jutta’s wound. An exact match on the beveling of bone. Now the ball’s in his court.”

“I’m calling to see a corpse, probably a Franck, if he’s been cleaned up. A man in pink underwear.”

A Franck was a male unidentified corpse; unidentified female corpses were Yvettes. On average they stayed in the morgue coolers sixteen months. Some were held for years. The staff was always eager for a possible identification.

She heard paper crumple. “The noir found in the Sentier last night?” Serge asked. “Does this have anything to do with Romain Figeac?”

“They’re linked but I don’t know how yet. For now, we need an ID, Serge, that’s all,” she said. “Otherwise he could lie unclaimed for a long time.”

Finally, he agreed.

René called as she was leaving. “Michel’s dress rehearsal starts in less than an hour but we’ve got a snag in the operating system. We need to get it up and running today.”

“Give me the address in the Palais Royal.”

“Enter on the Galerie de Beaujolais side. Number 38, near Colette’s former apartment.”

“Not too shabby,” she said, not adding that she had an appointment at the morgue first.

Riding her scooter down the quai, she phoned Christian.

No answer.

“LOOK AT it yourself,” Aimée said, passing the Baggie with the wallpaper sample and bone over the detective’s desk. “Romain Figeac’s .25 didn’t do that.”

Detective Tolbiac, a barrel-chested man in his forties, shook his head. A radio blared, advertising summer bargains, from across the square into the open Commissariat windows. “You say the son hired you to find ghosts. But you feel Romain Figeac was murdered? Isn’t it up to his son?”

“Why don’t you check with your report?” Aimée asked.

“If memory serves me right,” Tolbiac said, leaning back in his chair, “I recall a suicide note, the guy being blotto—his usual condition—then a cremation. Kind of a done deal.”

“Don’t you think the fragmentation of the occipital bone looks atypical for a .25?” Aimée asked. “Couldn’t you test it?”

“Well, first we’d need DNA for a match wouldn’t we? To see if this was Romain Figeac’s bone. You could have picked this fragment up in the garbage for all I know.”

Aimée stood up. Tolbiac made it sound as if everything was too much trouble.

“His son caused the hurry up,” Tolbiac said. “Let him come talk to me.”

Great. She’d put the lead to the murders of a terrorist and a writer on this detective’s plate but he wasn’t hungry. Obviously, no one would assist in finding the connection to her mother.

Outside the morgue, a tall ebony-skinned man in a green street-cleaner’s jumpsuit stood where she had expected to see Idrissa. Curious, she approached him.

“I’m Aimée Leduc.”

“Khalifa, I’m Ousmane Sada’s cousin,” he said, a pained expression on his long face. “Blood relation on his mother’s side. Why didn’t you call me?”

“Believe me, Monsieur Khalifa, if I’d known you existed I would have,” she said. “I’m sorry. Is Idrissa Diaffa coming?”

“Ousmane’s employer called me.”

“His employer, you mean from Club Exe?”

“Nessim Mamou, the clothing manufacturer, where he worked. Ousmane wanted to go home, you know,” Khalifa said. “To his village outside Dakar, to his fiancée.”

Nessim Mamou … Michel’s uncle?

Inside the red-brick Institut Medico-Legal building, Serge met them. “The autopsy’s just finished,” he said. They followed him down to the green-tiled basement. Aimée hated the formaldehyde smell and the reek of pine disinfectant. It reminded her of the time she’d had to come and identify her father’s remains after the explosion.

Serge signed in at the desk and took them to the waiting room, furnished with a Naugahyde couch and orange plastic chairs. A rectangular window was covered with plastic shower curtains.

“I’ll bring the body to the window.”

When the curtains parted, Serge knocked on the glass.

Khalifa went to the window. He was so tall he had to stoop to see. He nodded his head. “I never thought I’d see him like this.”

Aimée looked. Ousmane Sada’s eyes were closed, thank God, but the first of a series of black thread stitches was visible in his sternum.

The curtains closed. Serge joined them in a few minutes with a plastic bag. “Please sign here that you identify him and down here for his personal effects.”

Khalifa opened the bag. The bloodstained pink bra and garter belt spilled over the Naugahyde couch. His eyes widened. “What kind of mistake is this?”

But Aimée’s eyes fastened on the bit of beaded yellow feather fluff stuck in the dried blood on the pink elastic.

“It’s a talisman, isn’t it?” She pointed. “What does it mean?”

“Mumbo jumbo superstition,” he said in a disgusted tone. “I don’t believe in that stuff, but he did. Ousmane liked women, not to dress like a woman … I don’t understand.”

“Monsieur, the autopsy shows he suffered from virulent tuberculosis,” Serge said, consulting the autopsy report.

Khalifa nodded. “He was a presser in a garment factory. They get this disease.”

“He was very sick. Lung disease from long exposure to machine dust or the toxic gas from the flat irons and pressing machines. I’ve seen this too often in the Sentier. Without treatment he wouldn’t have lasted. I know that’s not any consolation but …”

“Why did someone kill him?”

Serge’s cheeks reddened. “I’m sorry.”

Outside in Place Mazas where the Metro rumbled by, Aimée pulled Khalifa aside. “I think Idrissa was the target. She’s gone into hiding, maybe they wanted Ousmane to tell them her whereabouts.”

Khalifa’s eyes sparked with anger. “None of this makes sense.”

“I’ll help you,” said Aimée, handing him her card. “I’m a detective. First, I have to find Idrissa.”

“No one will talk to you. You ask too many questions.”

Of course, to them she was an outsider, a white woman barging into private places, bringing attention to those who preferred to stay hidden in the Sentier woodwork. Especially the sans-papiers who hid from authorities.

“So help me, Khalifa,” she said. “Romain Figeac, the man Idrissa worked for, was killed. And now Ousmane.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Like it says on my card, I’m a detective,” she said. Not adding that she thought Idrissa had information about her mother but didn’t realize it.

Khalifa shook his head. “My cousin’s shamed by such a death.” He put his head down. “Ousmane’s supposed to be under my wing, my uncle won’t understand a killing like this.”

Who would understand?

“I’m so sorry.”

“He’s dead.” Khalifa started to walk away. “What does it matter?”

“Idrissa’s next,” Aimée said. “I want to warn her, that’s all. Please take my number.”

She thrust a card into his large work-worn hand. “I don’t turn people in.”

With long strides Khalifa walked away over the cobblestones.

Her cell phone vibrated on her hip.

“Allô?”

“Meet me on my lunch hour,” said Léo Frot in his distinctive nasal tone. “Show your carte d’identité at 36, Quai des Orfèvres. They’ll let you in. Then you know where to go.”

AIMÉE PARKED the scooter in one of the dark stone passages behind the Palais Royal. Once home to kings, the Palais Royal was an arcade-lined square laid out by the duke of Chartres, now housing cafés, shops, apartments, and the Comédie-Française.

Aimée crossed the gravel, crunching past the beds of blue delphiniums bordering the long oasis of a garden. Under the double rows of plane trees providing leafy shade, children napped in strollers while mothers spoke on cell phones or read.

The water spray from the fountain beaded a fine mist on her arm. Refreshing and cool. And then she saw the sandbox past the trees. Just as she remembered it. And the pain welled up.

She pulled out the creased ad Jutta had given her, stared at it. But her mother wasn’t a smiling bon chic bon genre type in pearls with a sweater knotted around her shoulders. She’d been a terrorist, linked to the bombing that killed her father, a druggie on the run with another man, in Africa. Or she was dead.

And for the millionth time Aimée asked herself why. But all she knew was that in her bones, she felt her mother was alive. And she had to find her.

Entering the exclusive wing of apartments, she mounted the massive oak staircase surmounted by a balustrade of Doric columns. At number 38, a harried Michel opened a beveled-glasspaned door, a crystal chandelier in evidence behind it.

“Nom de Dieu, at last!” He scurried ahead down the herringbone-patterned wood floor, a pincushion tied on his wrist. “The laptop program has glitches, the musician’s late, and the model’s gained two pounds.”

“Don’t worry, Michel,” she said with a small smile, “things will work out.”

Aimée wished her apartment looked like this one. And with the expenditure of several million francs it could. Her seventeenth-century apartment had good bones with high ceilings, airy salons and parlors, and period detail. But all were original and had not been repainted since the last century. Or maybe the one before, she could never remember.

She stepped into a white-and-gilt-paneled salon with woodwork moldings, pilasters and carved garlands, and a large, veined-marble fireplace. Delicate gilt chairs were lined up in rows.

A partially made-up model in jeans, with her hair in rollers, slinked toward her, runway style. All bony hips and hollow cheekbones. The other designer, a man in black Goth attire with black fingernails and lipstick and white makeup, crawled on the parquet floor, sticking down tape demarcating the model’s route.

Murals and painted coffered ceilings decorated the adjoining eighteenth-century-style salon. The enfilade suite of rooms were done up in a mix of styles evoking different periods. Breathtaking and luxurious.

The music room, hung with green silk damask, doubled as the dressing room. Outfits hung from aluminum racks like dead puppets with numbers pinned on them.

René stood in a reception room paneled with carved arabesques adjusting a silver titanium laptop strapped to a woman’s chest. Above him hung an ornate Venetian glass chandelier. Chinoiserie vases and antique busts stood in niches in the walls. He nodded to Aimée, indicating the laptops on a circular Louis XV-style sofa, nicknamed l’indiscret for obvious reasons.

“I’ve read the system and application logs.” He shrugged. “So far, so good. But …”

She looked at the last line of code on the screen and saw suspicious hash marks. “Voilà, there’s the little bugger now.” She perched cross-legged on the sofa and got to work on the program. In the adjoining onyx-and-tile bathroom, models stood applying makeup.

Michel, clutching scissors, with a tape measure streaming from his pocket, poked his head around a pillar.

Aimée hit Save and gave a thumbs-up. “Got rid of the last naughty script-kiddie tracks.”

“It’s a go,” René said. “The network’s established so each client’s order and measurements feed into your database.”

A flurry of activity erupted among the models.

“Show time! It’s haute couture contre couture,” the Goth designer said, pronouncing it “ot cootur contra cootur.”

“But isn’t this a dress rehearsal?”

“An hour ago,” René said. She heard the disapproval in his voice. “You missed it.”

She’d been at the morgue identifying Idrissa’s kora player and receiving the brunt of his cousin’s anger and suspicion. But her reaction would have been the same.

Better to let René vent. She edged toward the salon, past the models stepping into dresses and sliding on shoes.

“Aimée, help me.” Michel grabbed her arm, his white eye-lashes fluttering. “I’m desperate.”

“But your system is up and running.”

“Not that. My model Annika passed out,” he said, pushing Aimée into the onyx-and-tile bathroom.

With those hollow cheekbones, Annika had looked about to cave in.

“How can I help?”

“Raise your arms.” He began lifting off her white T-shirt.

“Michel, what are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about your weight, that’s easy to disguise,” he said with a mouthful of pins. At least that’s what she thought he said. “Step out of your skirt, into this.”

“Don’t get ideas,” she said, startled. She hadn’t shaved her legs in two weeks!

“See, I drape the fabric, pin a dart here.”

Sharp jabs poked her skin. “I’m a computer geek, not a model.”

“You’re a model now,” René said, handing her a palette of pressed shadows and blushes. “Hair and makeup is new to me, too!”

“Do this and you save my life,” Michel said. “My uncle predicts a failure. This is my chance to show them a Sentier titi can do a couture show. For years the fabric dealers have laughed at me, called me a freak, a dreamer, saying, ‘No one ever goes from wholesale to couture!’”

She couldn’t disappoint him.

“What do I do?”

“Attitude,” Michel said, as he pinned and sewed the fabric. “Show attitude.” Akiva, Michel’s cousin, had appeared and was on his knees hemming the silk.

“And don’t breathe.”

“Don’t breathe?”

“No deep breaths. The stitching’s temporary.”

So she was being sewn into a dress like Marilyn Monroe. Michel, his cap back on his head, white eyebrows lowered in concentration, stitched her into a symphony of gray: a gunmetal butter-smooth leather bustier with billowing strips of charcoal silk as a skirt. He completed the ensemble with crocodile pumps and thick strands of Tahitian black seed pearls around her neck. The effect, an avant-garde blend of classic and streetwise, was stunning.

“Follow the Goth model,” he said. He gestured toward an alabaster-skinned woman with huge black-ringed eyes and lips, who was wearing a spiderweb confection of a gown. “Do what she does.”

’arry, his other assistant, had two big makeup brushes in his hands and was powdering her face, hollowing her eyes with charcoal shadow.

“My hair?”

René stood on a spindly-legged chair and scattered silver sparkles over her hair. “Now comb it through with your hands…. Perfect, the windswept lunar look!”

Voices and the sound of opening and closing doors came from the other room.

“The musician, I hope.” Michel rushed off.

“How many outfits do I wear?”

“We’re hoping Annika comes to and we can give her fluids,” Akiva grinned. “Then she can finish the show.”

Another model ran in, stripped off her raincoat, and stepped into a waiting dress. “Sorry, I’ve done three shows today, I came from Zaza’s as fast as I could.”

At least there were three of them to model for Michel now and the other models’ clothes had been designed for them.

The clients had begun to arrive. Aimée took a few steps and tried not to breathe deeply. She saw how easily she could pass out. Akiva led her to the curtained door.

“Thrust your hips forward, keep your knees together, stare straight ahead. Whatever you do, don’t smile!”

“Go ahead of me, I trip easy,” Aimée said to the pigtailed rollerblader with the laptop strapped on, who sucked a lollipop. This eclectic show was definitely couture contra couture.

“Remember, don’t smile,” said Akiva. “Pout!”

Michel planted a kiss on her cheek, then shoved her beyond the velvet curtain into a glaring spotlight. For a moment, she was blinded by the hot light. Strains of griot music came from her left. She took a step and tottered on the four-inch crocodile pumps. Gritting her teeth and trying to pout, she righted herself, slanted her hips, and prayed her knees weren’t knocking together.

The small gold chairs had filled with a variety of people. Flashbulbs were forbidden, but several men in the front row had sketch pads. The majority of the women were bon chic bon genre types who, in their designer suits, looked like they could afford couture. A few older women wore Yves Saint Laurent but the majority were under forty and their eyes lit up. Like jaded predators at a feast, they were always looking for what was fresh and unique. A ripple of applause greeted the Goth model.

When Aimée reached the first row of chairs, the rollerblader swooped beside her. The rollerblader made her way among them, pointing to the dress numbers on her laptop. The audience laughed and applauded loudly.

Aimée kept following the Goth model. Walking like a slant-board hurt her thighs. And she had to pee. Damn it, why hadn’t she gone before?

Loud applause greeted them.

The hot light followed her. She hoped she wasn’t sweating in the silk. That’s when she realized the heavy curtains draped the windows that overlooked the Palais Royal garden. And heard the familiar sounds of a kora accompanying a plaintive song, a mixture of French and Wolof. Like a sad love song.

Somehow it all worked: the luxurious rooms, the mix of outrageous and ultrafeminine, and the weaving rollerblader with the high-tech ordering system.

The audience appeared transfixed. And then Aimée saw the honey-colored face of the musician behind the dried palm screen, reflected in the tall mirror.

Idrissa.