Murder in the Sentier

Saturday Afternoon

INSIDE THE OIL-PUDDLED GARAGE in a Paris suburb, Stefan adjusted his hearing aid to listen to the radio. “Former seventies radical” had caught his attention as he bent over a Mercedes SL 320 engine. “Jutta Hald, just released today after a twenty-year prison term, was found murdered …”

Stefan went cold. He dropped his wrench and leaned against the engine hood. His jaw worked but nothing came out.

The radio report continued. A police inspector interviewed by the reporter described the homicide location and a woman running from the scene.

The sound faded. Buzzed. Stefan fiddled with his hearing aid. Scheisser … only a low buzz. His bad hearing was the reward of his life of crime.

And then the news bulletin ended.

Stefan glanced nervously at the mechanic working across the garage. But the man in the greasy jumpsuit hadn’t lifted his head from the engine hood he was working on.

Jutta Hald killed … on the day she got out of prison! Who was left who could have gotten to her?

Stefan straightened up. He recalled those days, back in 1972.

He saw the faces frozen with shock as his Red Army gang burst into the bank yelling, “Hands up, we’re relieving you of your capitalist gains…. Long live the PROLETARIAT!”

Forget the ideology. The power had thrilled him.

He’d hated the nightly meetings, typing communiqués and discussing manifestos on organized armed resistance and spreading the class struggle.

But robbing banks had been fun. It was all spoiled when they had decided to aim higher, when they’d become too greedy. Yet it was their mistake. The biggest one.

So for twenty years Stefan had been underground. His Red Army group scattered: Jutta imprisoned, Marcus and Ingrid shot in the head; Ulrike had strangled herself with bedsheets in her cell. Beate and Jules had vanished. Mercenaries in Angola, last he’d heard.

Now Jutta was dead.

He stared down at his callused grease-stained fingers. Lucky thing he’d been good at fixing engines.

“Alors!” said Anton, the barrel-chested owner, waving a socket wrench in his face. “Come back to earth, a carburetor’s waiting.”

Stefan nodded and leaned over the gleaming engine.

Anton kept him despite Stefan’s “dreamy fits,” as he called them. Because if Stefan knew one thing, it was Mercedes engines.

He’d repair a thrown rod and make it smooth as lambskin, get a grinding gearbox purring in no time. If Anton suspected shadows in his workman’s past, he ignored them. Ignored them in favor of the forty percent markup he made on Stefan’s installation of Bulgarian-made parts stamped MADE IN GERMANY.

“Fits like a woman’s stocking,” Anton said loudly. He shouted at Stefan as if he were half-witted, not just partly deaf.

Stefan slid in the fuel injector, the socket wrench ratcheting with a grating noise side to side. Suddenly, his co-worker’s air gun shot lug nuts onto the tires on the huge Mercedes truck opposite.

Like bullets.

Stefan jumped. He always did. He couldn’t help it.

“This little lady could use some oil, then voilà,” Anton said. “You know how to write the invoice, eh, Pascal?” His eyes narrowed.

Stefan nodded. He hated the name Pascal.

But he had to make do. Twenty years of making do, with his glasses, dyed hair, and the hearing aid. He’d lost a lot of his hearing in the explosion. His hair grayed naturally now and he didn’t need to retouch his sideburns and mustache every month.

Outside the garage, the boulangerie’s metal awning rolled down, slat by slat. In the square, Stefan saw the orange-red of the traffic light flicker in the twilight. Everyone was going home. Home to someone.

Stefan’s mind rewound as he put his tools away.

After the robbery and kidnapping, the gang had regrouped at their safe house in the woods.

But safe it wasn’t. Some maggot had informed on them.

Stefan had been in the back barn, repainting the car, when smoke, screams, and loud thuds reached him. The flics were firebombing the old farmhouse. He ran from the burning barn through the woods, as rippling gunfire tore the alder tree trunks behind him. He ran for miles without stopping, his body scratched and torn when he emerged.

He was panting and exhausted when he came out of the underbrush and crossed over the highway, running from the sirens.

A rusted-out Opel 127’s wheels were askew, its right front tire stuck in the ditch. Stefan helped the plaid-jacketed old hunter, who was grinding his wheels, to get out of the mud. He helped him push the car onto dry ground, then asked for a lift. Glad for the help, the hunter happily obliged and even shared his black bread and wurst.

Then the bulletin concerning the shoot-out had come over the radio. Stefan had never forgotten the hunter’s face when he realized Stefan’s identity. The man tried to hide his reaction but his shaking hands on the steering wheel gave him away. He pulled over onto an Autobahn emergency turnout and got out, saying he felt sick.

But in the rearview mirror, Stefan saw the old man stumble and run toward the Autobahn, waving his arms frantically for help. Terror-stricken and confused, he plunged headlong into oncoming traffic, speeding vans, and whizzing cars. His body was batted like a marble in a foosball game as vehicles tried to brake, screeching and swerving. Stefan grabbed the Opel’s wheel, pumped the accelerator, and took off. The last image he had was of the man’s body lying in the road like a rag doll as cars piled up.

Near Frankfurt, Stefan careened the car off the highway into rocky brush. But not before he took the old man’s wallet, scraped the serial numbers off the chassis, and buried the license plates under a pine tree. Then he hiked to the train station.

The police would think he’d escaped. Now he’d be on the run for the rest of his life even though his joining the Haader-Rofmein gang was only a fluke.

No. Face it. He’d joined to impress the long-haired girl who’d ignored him, chanting, “Death to imperialist tendencies” when he bought her a beer. He would have done anything for her. He’d ended up driving the getaway car on the fateful day.

Stefan shook the memories aside as he walked home.

Several years ago, he’d begun therapy in Poissy, not far from his village. Why not? Everyone had secrets. His weighed heavy. Especially the old hunter, who hadn’t had a proper funeral, and Beate and Ulrike. He still wished he’d helped them instead of running.

In 1989, he’d verged on confession—there were rumors of an amnesty. But the Wall came down. The Stasi files appeared. Nasty East German files, sure to convict him. He kept silent.

Now there was no hope of presidential pardon or amnesty. He came to the conclusion that Jutta was looking for the rest of the Laborde stash they’d stolen: the bonds, the paintings, and more.

She’d known where some of it was hidden. He’d have to get to it before her killer did.