Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Thursday Late Afternoon

THE CAFÉ WAS crowded and noisy; Aimée held Stella in her arms. A few hours ago, she’d visited a pediatrician, who, after examining Stella, had pronounced her healthy and fever free. For two hundred francs more, he’d prescribed antibiotics for Aimée and asked no questions as to why she needed to ward off the Seine’s microbes. She’d slept half the day, soaked in the tub at Martine’s, and borrowed a black velvet pantsuit and cap. Rested now, despite an undercurrent of anxiety, she tugged the little hat onto Stella’s head and scanned the other customers in the café.

A milk steamer hissed, competing with the conversations at the zinc counter. Delivery truck drivers in blue work smocks threw back espressos and bières, a pinstripe-suited Ministry type stood reading Le Monde, an office worker on a break in a pencil-thin skirt spoke on her cell phone, and a gray-haired, elaborately coiffed woman held a cigarette between her beringed fingers, Bon Marché shopping bag at her feet, and blew smoke rings in the air.

The man she was waiting for hadn’t arrived.

She sat back. This café-tabac, across from the Institut Océanique, was filled with locals. No one would look for them here.

The cell phone in her jacket pocket vibrated. With the phone crooked between her neck and shoulder, she laid Stella on the booth’s leather seat.

“Aimée, what happened to you last night?” René said with irritation. “I left you messages—”

“Sorry, René. I set off some fireworks, then took a swim,” she said. “It seemed better to lie low and call you when I—”

“That was you?”

“Let’s say it was an alter ego,” she said. “Has Saj found anything promising?”

“We used the dial-up system and accessed Vavin’s password and account.”

“Brilliant, René.”

“I said I would, Aimée,” René reminded her. “Now Saj is working from the PC’s hard drive backup. But I’m working on the Fontainebleau contract again. One more time. They’re ready to sign.”

He meant he had a “paying” job; she heard the implied criticism in his voice.

“The computer’s been put back in Vavin’s office,” René said.

She heard a pause at the other end.

“But my log-in using Vavin’s password will show up, Aimée. It’s just a matter of time until the techs at Alstrom discover the intrusion.”

“Right, but they can’t prove you did it,” she said. She had to reassure him and so she said the only thing she could think of.

“Of course not,” René said. “We ‘visited’ the travel agency next door and luckily their telephone was still connected so we used it to dial up.”

René constantly amazed her.

“Worst-case scenario, we’ll spin the break-in as ‘in the public interest,’” she said.

“You don’t mean that law whistle-blowers use, citing special journalistic privileges or whatever?”

“That’s only if we get caught, René,” she said. “And I’m about to meet a L’Express journalist.”

“Saj tunneled into some Ministry meeting minutes in Alstrom’s storage database. He’s not sure but—”

She heard the clicking of keys on the laptop under René’s fingers.

“We’re looking for what exactly?” he asked.

“A doctor’s report from La Hague. And pollution statistics. You know, like a second pair of books accountants keep. The real set.” She had an idea. “Ask Saj to find Alstrom’s file of independent contractors.”

“Tall order, Aimée. He’s slogging through their records and he says it’s a huge job.”

“What about checking Alstrom’s accounts payable? See if Halkyut’s on the list; no one works for free.”

“Halkyut?” René said louder. “The spies for hire?”

“One of Halkyut’s employees has been after Stella.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Aimée?”

“I made it hot for him,” she said.

In the literal sense, but she didn’t think it wise to give René the details. “He’s in La Santé right now. I’ll fill you in after I meet the journalist.”

She eyed the café-tabac lace-curtained door again. He was late. He had to show. And if he didn’t come? She pushed the thought away. If she’d read him right, he wanted to make his name, and a scoop like this would do it.

Something still bothered her.

“We have to find out what those marks I copied from under Stella’s arm mean.”

Nelie must have been desperate; she hadn’t taken the time to diaper Stella but she had scribbled letters and numbers on her skin. Yet she must have realized that the marks would rub off soon, or be washed off.

“What’s the big secret, Aimée?”

“No big secret, René,” she said. “Right now, those ink marks—the letters and numbers that were written on Stella—seem to be the key.”

“Deciphering an alphanumeric strand is a big headache.”

It could take an hour. Or twelve. Or forever.

She thought hard. “Say Vavin discovered proof that Alstrom had falsified their reports and it’s hidden in this equation. What if he told this to Nelie . . .”

“And it got him killed?” René finished for her. “We went through this last night. Big stretch.”

Stella began to cry. Aimée put the baby over her shoulder and patted her back.

“How’s Stella?” René asked in a gruff tone that didn’t hide his concern.

“The doctor examined her; she’s fine,” she told him.

A dark-haired man entered the café, working his way past those in line buying telephone cards, and waved at her. Finally.

“The L’Express journalist’s here,” Aimée said, waving back. “I’ll get his fax number. When you find the reports, you can fax them, and if I play it right, he’ll nail them in print.”

“Play it right, Aimée,” René said and hung up.

Daniel Ristat, cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, edged through the line at the counter looking every bit the handsome Left Bank journalist and knowing it. More than one woman glanced up from her magazine and gave him the eye.

“Je m’excuse,” he said, setting his laptop on the table in front of Aimée. His snobbism evaporated when he saw Stella. He ground his cigarette out and waved the smoke away. “The baby, smoke . . . I’m sorry. She’s a beauty!”

He sat down, a smile in his eyes.

“What’s her name?”

“Stella, meet Daniel Ristat.”

He took Stella’s fingers in his big ones and gazed at her. Stella wrinkled her nose, curled her finger around his, and gave a halfhearted cry. Amazed, Aimée saw that Daniel Ristat’s face had changed. The trendy journalist was putty in her small hands. This little ravissante was a natural coquette, born to it.

“Martine never mentioned your child. I had no idea,” he said. Amid the noise of conversations, the télé above the counter with horse races blaring, the clatter of cups stacked on the espresso machine, he only had eyes for Stella. “You’re so lucky.”

Aimée winced.

“My wife and I can’t have children. We’re trying to adopt but the waiting list is two years long. Or longer.” He shrugged. “Famille d’accueil recommends we become foster parents to gain priority.”

Despite his male-model looks and air, something about him told her he’d make a wonderful papa.

Should she tell him the truth to gain his sympathy? But the truth wasn’t hers to tell.

“I’m just taking care of her.”

“Vraiment?” He studied her. “You seem so natural, the way you hold her. Like her mother. I don’t know that much about babies . . .”

She blinked. “Shall we get to work?”

For a moment he directed a laserlike stare at her that went right to the bone. Her heart raced. Was it so obvious she was head over stilettos with this thing that weighed no more than three kilos?

“Here are some of my notes,” he said, businesslike, pulling out a folder. “Background on Alstrom’s corporate structure, the North Sea territorial water disputes, environmental impact statement, and some very subdued eco groups’ responses, which I found surprising.”

She skimmed the several pages of notes. Went back and reread the first page. “Here you note Alstrom’s funding its drilling project with a Ministry loan?”

Daniel Ristat nodded.

“Would you say they’re in financial trouble?”

“Their last drill didn’t recoup their investment, and then unsafe platform construction resulted in the deaths of several workers, for which they were liable. Not to mention the bad press engendered by ecomilitants’ campaigns.”

She put Stella over her shoulder again, patted her back, and was rewarded by a loud resounding burp. She hoped no spit-up had been deposited on Martine’s black velvet jacket.

“In essence, the proposed agreement with the Ministry means they scratch each other’s backs,” he said. “The Ministry gains new revenue sources, higher employment, increased industrial production: it all looks good on their reports. And Alstrom snags a secure base in the North Sea from which to expand. All funded by the government. Everyone wins.”

Except the marine life and the coasts of several countries, she thought.

“Not according to your other notes here on environmental impact studies,” she said.

He flashed a smile at the waiter, who’d appeared with a tray in one hand, rubbing his hand on a white apron with the other.

“Une noisette, s’il vous plaît,” he said to the waiter.

So trendy journalists drank macchiatos now.

“My information comes from a reliable source,” he said.

“Deep inside. He must remain unnamed. I can’t use this information or it will point to him as the Ministry leak. He told me Alstrom’s last spill rendered parts of the North and Baltic seas toxic to fish. And then there’s Alstrom’s deliberate misinformation campaign: deny, dupe, and delay. Dupe the public into thinking it’s an environmentally and socially responsible corporation. Have you heard yet of ‘dead zones?’”

She shook her head.

“Algae die from pollutants, and in the process of decomposition they consume oxygen. The depletion of oxygen leaves an oxygenless dead zone on the ocean floor, the effect of which spirals up through the chain of marine life.”

She thought of what Krzysztof had told her. “I was informed that the supposedly abandoned North Sea oil-rig platforms were being used for dump sites. This could be corroboration.”

“But where’s the direct proof?” Daniel said. “Everyone in power wants this agreement to go through. You know it’s almost a done deal. So even though I’d like to, I can’t help you.”

Desperation surged through her. “I’m sure there are more reports that were suppressed. MondeFocus’s protest was sabotaged. Will you expose Alstrom if I get you proof? If I get you minutes of their corporate meetings, will you blow it wide open?”

His eyebrow raised. “Like you blew a hole in the Seine?”

“Moi?”

Why didn’t anyone blame Gabriel Leclerc?

“I read the papers.” He grinned, opening his laptop. “Martine filled me in, too. I was counting on a dramatic interview at your hospital bedside. Instead I have a tête-à-tête with two lovely ladies. Charmante.”

“I need your help,” she said. “The agreement’s about to be signed.”

He shook his head.

“Like I said, I need evidence: reports, meeting notes,” he said. “No one takes shots at an oil company or the Ministry without incontrovertible evidence.”

A young Turk? He didn’t need convincing, just proof.

“Give me your fax number.”

He handed her his card, slipped some francs onto the table.

“Expect the proof this afternoon or tonight at the latest,” she said.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He looked amused. “But Martine said you meant business.”

Aimée nodded. “My best friend should know.”

Now he’d turned the charm back on.

“She smiled.” He nudged Aimée. “Did you see? Stella smiled at me.”

“It’s gas.”

OUT ON THE STREET she put Daniel Ristat’s fax number in her pocket.

“À bientôt, mes princesses.” He winked and ran down the Metro steps.

Shadows burnished the shop windows, passersby hurried along the street. The last rays of light illumined cottony puffs of clouds framed by the sloping tiled rooftops. The incandescent clouds were tinged with yellow, as though lit from within, reminiscent of a Monet sky.

Aimée wrapped Stella tighter in the blanket that enfolded the baby in the carrier on her chest. She was about to hail a taxi for Leduc Detective when she realized that she was standing in front of the blue awning of Jacadi, the upscale baby store. The window display had a christening theme featuring a delicate christening gown trimmed with lace, surrounded by white sugar-coated almonds—de rigueur for a bourgeois baptism—that had been sprinkled among a phalanx of stuffed animals.

The shop door opened to reveal a young woman wheeling twins in a double stroller. The clerk, a middle-aged woman with her hair in a chignon and appraising eyes, held the door for her. Stella stuck out her little fists and Aimée could have sworn that she was pointing in the direction of a pink terrycloth onesie in the side window.

“Looks like your daughter knows what she wants,” the clerk said.

Newborns couldn’t focus farther than a meter, according to the baby manual. Aimée stroked Stella’s velvety ear. And in the next moment, she found herself standing inside the store, which was filled with every kind of infant clothing possible.

“You were born with fashion sense, too, Stella,” she whispered.

SHE LEFT THE shop hoping Stella would wear the expensive onesie longer than it took her to sneeze. Stella seemed to grow a size a day. Horns honked from cars jammed in the rond-point evening traffic. The taxi stand lay just ahead.

“Aimée?”

Startled, she turned at the corner, bag in hand, Stella strapped on her chest, to stare into the face of Yves, her former boyfriend. In a pinstripe suit and long hair, he was more of a hunk than ever. She felt her face flush. A stream of passersby parted around them, as if they were rocks in the middle of a current, then flowed together again at the zebra crosswalk.

“You’ve been busy,” Yves said.

She couldn’t tell if the expression in his eyes was hurt, wonder, or both.

He leaned down and brushed her cheek with his lips, inhaling her scent. “You still wear Chanel No. 5.”

“And you’re still in Cairo.” More of a question than a statement.

“I’m bureau chief now.” He gave a wistful sigh. “You’re radiant, Aimée. Motherhood becomes you.”

Words caught in her throat. She remembered the little mole behind his ear, how he hummed Coltrane’s ballad “Crescent” when he cooked, the way his legs had wrapped around her under her duvet.

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

She stared at him, found her tongue. “Stella. Her name’s Stella.”

“Aaah, you always had a thing for the stars.”

And you, she almost said.

“Remember this?” She felt around in her bag, found the lucky Egyptian coin, the one he’d given her on a street corner in Cairo when they’d said good-bye.

A beeping came from her phone, indicating a message. Yves stared at the coin, then at her phone. “Don’t you think you should check that?”

She hit the voice-mail button and listened. One message. Jean Caplan’s voice. “Hélène wants to talk to you about the girl. She knows you somehow. The side door code is 78C65, Come to the back of the store. She’ll be waiting.” And then the loud buzz of a hang up.

“Have to get home, eh? Your man’s waiting,” Yves suggested, watching her.

Claude. But she wasn’t sure he was her man. She’d put Stella first last night and he’d given his freedom priority over her.

“Non, it’s . . . it’s business,” she said. She wanted to explain, tell him everything, even on this busy street.

“Of course, you’d never stop working,” he said. “But I always thought if I gave you enough babies, well, you’d slow down.”

“You did?”

He pressed something into her hand. Another shining bronze coin covered in Arabic writing. “One can never have too much luck, Aimée.”

His cell phone rang but he ignored it. His warm hands held hers, not loosening their grasp.

“Got to go,” he said. “Another meeting. I fly back tonight.”

“Look, Yves, I—”

He put his finger over her lips. “Don’t tell me how happy you are, or that you’ve found the right one at last. It’s wonderful; I’m happy for you. And quit batting those big eyes at me, Aimée. I understand.”

But he didn’t.

“If your daughter’s anything like you . . . whoa.” He stroked Stella’s head, kissed Aimée long and lingeringly on the mouth. “You know, we’ve got to stop saying good-bye on street corners.”

Then he was gone. People hurried past her, their shoulders hitting hers as the shadows deepened. And she felt more alone than ever.

As she got out of the taxi at Jean Caplan’s brocante, she was astounded by the driver’s opening the door for her even before she produced her usual big tip. She stood in front of the shop for a moment with the baby bag over her shoulder, Stella strapped in the carrier and holding a bouquet of yellow daffodils for Hélène.

“Hélène knows you somehow,” Caplan had said. Like Nelie knew her “somehow?” Caplan had realized, seen the truth in Aimée words and convinced Hélène to talk to her. For the first time Aimée sensed she’d get answers.

She figured Hélène witnessed Orla’s killing. Then either Hélène acted in self-defense or she’d gone after the attacker. Perhaps Hélène had helped Nelie, and it was she who had written that note to Aimee. If Hélène knew where Nelie was hiding, she’d lead Aimée there.

On the pavement, a man in a blue work coat grunted as he carried a tall sheet of glass in a frame on his back. He winked at Aimée, paused, and wiped his brow with his free hand. A vitrier—a glass man—who hawked his services on the streets. One of the few who still made the rounds with their distinctive high-pitched cry “Vi-tr-ier.” A fragment of the disappearing old Paris.

Dark green metal shutters covered the front of Caplan’s shop. A dim light shone through the crack between the door shade and the glass. He’d said to use the side door; she tapped in the digicode number.

Inside, she followed the narrow brown scuffed hall to the courtyard onto which Jean Caplan’s kitchen faced. Standing by the sealed-up well she saw lights in the galley kitchen, heard what sounded like the télé blaring news.

“Time we meet Hélène,” she said. Stella answered with a wail.

She knocked, opened the unlocked door, and entered.

“Monsieur Caplan? Hélène?”

She patted Stella’s back as she edged past the hanging beaded curtains that separated the kitchen from the shop. The once exquisite chandelier, with missing crystal drops, provided the only light. Scattered piles of yellowed newspapers cluttered the floor. Stairs to the right and dark heavy curtains in front of her partitioned off what appeared to be rooms in the back.

Two half-empty demitasse cups and a blue sugar bowl with tongs sat on the small table. Were Jean and Hélène upstairs? Or in the back storeroom? Stella’s cries mixed with the evening news announcer’s words. She turned down the volume on the télé, wishing she could turn down Stella’s volume as well.

“Monsieur Caplan, I’m here,” she said, rocking the baby in her arms, rubbing the soft rolls of skin on her ankles, leaning down to blow in Stella’s ear.

And then she was shoved through the thick woolen curtains into the storeroom. Startled, she stumbled forward, throwing her arms out to protect Stella and break her fall. She grabbed a dusty wall hanging and righted herself. Aimée turned to see the glint of a gun pointed at the baby’s head. And gasped. A Beretta 87, the hit man’s weapon of choice, pioneered by the Mossad.

Fear coursed through her veins. Stella’s cries escalated into screams. Why had she listened to Caplan? She’d been set up and she’d put Stella in danger.

“I’m tired of wasting time and manpower,” said a man in a tone of mild disgust. He filled the doorway. Medium height, he had a broad, smooth forehead on a big bull of a head that joined his almost nonexistent neck. Taut muscles strained his blue work pants and jacket. A professional with dead, killer eyes.

“What do you mean? Who are you?” she blurted out.

But she knew. A Halkyut hired gun and she’d walked right into his hands. She ordered herself to play dumb and pretend, to buy time to figure something out. He wouldn’t shoot Stella, wouldn’t kill an innocent baby, she told herself. Then the realization sank in. He could shoot her, then take Stella. She tried to read something in his expressionless eyes. What if Caplan hadn’t set her up? Maybe she had stumbled into something else. Maybe she could still get out of this.

“Shut her up,” he ordered.

She stuck her finger in Stella’s mouth as she rocked her. Frantic, she looked around for any way to escape, for some weapon.

One flickering fluorescent panel overhead revealed marble busts standing at haphazard angles on grimy shelves, shards of glass from cracked picture frames stacked against the wall gathering dust. Stella fussed, gumming her finger.

“She’s got colic, I have to take her to the doctor. Let us go,” Aimée begged.

The man patted his work-pants pocket, saying nothing. Was he waiting for reinforcements? He hadn’t spoken again. What if he didn’t know who she was? She had to take the chance. Get him talking, figure out some lie, try to make a deal. Concoct a story, a way to get out.

“We live in the building. Monsieur Caplan’s been ill,” she said, words coming fast and furious. “Monsieur, I’ve seen nothing. I don’t know you. We will leave the way we came, of course, and say nothing. The baby’s sick. We just came to—”

“Bringing him some flowers?” he said. “Nice.”

“I swear,” she said, shielding her eyes, at the same time scanning the black lacquered table, the pile of dusty carpets behind it, the ocher wall in back of it. She caught sight of the tarnished silver candlesticks on the table and a dust-covered sword collection lying near the carpets. She smelled something coppery. Like blood. “I haven’t seen anything. If you let us go, I won’t say anything.”

“But that wouldn’t be sociable,” he said.

She heard a loud groan over the sound of Stella’s cries. She looked closer and recognized that what she’d taken for a pile of carpets was a body. Jean Caplan sat slumped in a chair with his hands tied. She made out his black-and-purple swollen eyes, caked blood on his nostrils, and his sagging jaw. The coppery smell of blood mingled with that of mildew. His worn brown shoes dangled over the cracked linoleum floor.

“What’s going on? He’s an old man. What have you done to him?”

Think. Think. Sweat sheened her upper lip. She felt lightheaded in the dust and blood-tinged air, with Stella on her chest radiating heat, shrieking now, as she looked at the old man who seemed half dead.

Caplan’s feet twisted and he whimpered in pain, then groaned louder.

“Haven’t had enough, mon vieux?” The man turned, edging closer to Caplan, and kicked him.

“Why don’t you give him the flowers?” the man asked Aimée.

“What?”

“You heard me. And I’ll hold the baby.”

“Non, that’s all right, I’ll just—”

“Do it now! Did you hear me?”

Her hands trembled as she reached for the flowers. Caplan blinked at her.

“No more playing mommy,” the man sneered.

“What do you mean?”

“Give her to me or I’ll start with your knees,” he said. “Then work my way up.”

She stepped back, toward Caplan, and felt the table edge with her hip.

“But you’re not listening; perhaps you don’t think I mean it. So maybe I’ll start with him,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face, as he moved closer to her and to Caplan. So close she smelled his acrid, damp sweat. “I will shoot his hands off unless you hand the baby over and tell me where she is.”

He glanced at his watch. What was he waiting for? He was stalling.

“You’re waiting for someone, aren’t you? So you can kill Nelie, like you did Orla.”

Her chest was wet with perspiration from fear and Stella’s heat. Stupid, so stupid. She couldn’t even reach her cell phone to summon backup.

He gave a little smile. “Not my job. Sorry.”

“Halkyut hired you,” she asserted.

He didn’t deny it.

“Nelie took the Alstrom file, found the proof they needed in it.”

“Who?”

“But the writing’s gone, the marks have rubbed off the baby,” she said. Her eyes locked with his. “I’ll show you. The baby’s not important any longer.”

“Salaud,” Caplan shouted hoarsely.

Moaning in pain, he kicked out with his foot, connecting with the man’s knee, throwing him off balance. And then Caplan kicked the table, sending it and everything on it crashing.

Aimée ducked behind the overturned table. She heard the thud of a shot, the tinkle of crashing glass. She saw the flash. She pulled the baby out of the carrier and shoved her between the table and the wall.

She had to move fast. She crawled forward, using the table as a shield. The reek of cordite filled the air. More shots were fired over her head. She heard the man cursing somewhere behind her. Her fingers scrabbled across the gritty floorboards as she groped for the antique sword blade. After she grabbed it, they moved to the cuplike handle.

The man sat on the floor, Beretta pointed at the table. She saw bright streaks of blood on Caplan’s shoulder.

Now! She had to do it now. She crouched and rammed the table with her shoulder, toppling Caplan against the man. Struggling to raise the heavy sword with her shaking hands, she stood and swung it with all her might at the man’s shin. His mouth opened in dumb surprise, and he screamed in pain.

She pulled the sword back. As he reached for his leg, he dropped the Beretta. His hand was covered with blood.

Before he could recover and pick up the gun from the linoleum where it had fallen, she kicked it away.

“What kind of hit man goes after old men and babies?”

“These days, everyone specializes,” he said. Then he bar-reled into her, knocking her against the wall. His fists hammered at her chest. She yelped with pain. He grabbed her by the neck, yanking her closer. She twisted her body, tasted blood, felt a searing pain in her ribs and fell to the floor.

Her hip landed on the Beretta’s grip. By the time she’d gotten her fingers around the trigger, he’d pulled her up by her hair, slamming her head against the wall. Through the waves of pain she heard Stella’s cries. The light was fading. Sparks danced in the corners of her eyes.

“Amateur,” he hissed.

You used what you had.

He didn’t let go until she’d fired the Beretta three times at point-blank range into his chest. She could hear the hiss of air as it left his lungs in a burst of blood.

Lights danced before her eyes. Whirling spirals and flashes, Stella’s cries . . . she had to reach Stella. The light faded and then she knew no more.

SHE WALKED ON a broad band of moonlight, Stella holding her hand. Stella was a toddler now, yet with the same baby face. Someone else was there. An old woman all in white. Then Stella was skipping away from her and she was reaching out for her, calling over and over, “Come back, Stella.”

Pain throbbed in her chest; cold linoleum numbed her cheek. The smell of blood and dust filled her nostrils. She heard moaning and blinked. Her eyes opened.

Where was Stella?

The baby had to be here. Panicked, she staggered upright. The man lay slumped, dead on the floor, in a dark pool of blood among the blood-spattered daffodils. She’d passed out. Whoever this man had been waiting for must have taken Stella.

She’d failed. Someone had kidnapped Stella.

She found her cell phone. She had to call the flics.

“Untie my hands,” Caplan said.

“Who took the baby?”

He shrugged. She took up the sword again and sawed away at the thick rope, strand by stubborn strand. She flinched as the rope broke and he cried out in pain. She sawed away faster to free his other hand, its thumb swollen and purple.

“Who took her?” she repeated.

“Hélène.”

The crazy homeless woman?

“No flics, please. Hélène’s helping . . . you.” His voice cracked.

“Where did she take the baby? Why didn’t she untie you?”

“She was too frightened. It would have taken her too long. I told her to take the baby before . . . there’s another one coming.”

She found a bottle of wine on the floor, uncorked it, and held it to his split lips. Blood still seeped from a dark red hole in his shoulder.

“He shot you,” she said.

“Never mind that now,” Caplan said. “Go into the shop and look in my chair. She told me it’s there.”

Aimée staggered into the shop to the chair where he kept his valuables. An envelope was wedged under the cushion. She picked it up. It bore quivering writing in violet ink that she recognized. Inside, there was a half-torn page from a magazine displaying a crossword puzzle. In the margin she could make out the words “Ask Jules Pont Louis Philippe . . . H.”

H must stand for Hélène, the clochard. The handwriting was identical to that on the note Aimée had received asking her to keep Stella. Hélène had written Nelie’s message.

She remembered Jules’s evasive answer when she’d asked him about Hélène . . . somewhere down by the bend, he’d said. Near the end of the sewer cavern lay Pont Louis Philippe and another drain sluice. Hélène might have taken Stella there.

She’d been close to Nelie last night. Vavin, her uncle, had been at the antique store nearby. Of course! Had Nelie had been here the whole time, hiding under the bridge? Right under her nose?

How long had Caplan known? Had this whole thing been a ploy, had they been using her? A sour taste filled her mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” But his head had fallen forward; now he’d passed out.

She found his shop phone and dialed 17 for SAMU.

“Fourteen, rue des Deux Ponts. There’s a man bleeding to death, another dead of gunshot wounds to the chest.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Hurry!”

She hung up. She’d killed a professional, one of Halkyut’s hired guns, in self-protection. But she doubted the flics would see it that way. And she didn’t have time for explanations or hours to spend in the Commissariat.

She stood holding onto the wall as a flash of dizziness hit her, then found her bag under the bloodstained tapestry by the Jacadi baby clothes bag. She realized that she hadn’t found the saboteur, just one Halkyut thug. Was the saboteur Stella’s father? That could make sense even though she’d relegated the idea to the back of her mind after talking with Krzysztof.

Dumb. Consider all angles, her father always said.

She searched for the Doliprane in her purse. Popped the dry chalky aspirin and chewed it so it would work faster. Her cell phone trilled.

“Allô?”

“You want the good news? Aimée, we found the real pollution reports in Alstrom’s files,” René said. “The bad news, we’ve deciphered only half of them. And none of it will make us money. But that’s beside the point.”

“Is what you have deciphered enough to nail them?” Her hands shook.

“More than enough, in the right hands,” René said. “Sickening. A crime. Makes me never want to eat seafood again.”

She read off Daniel Ristat’s fax number. “Send it all through to that number. He’s expecting your fax.”

“One more thing,” René said. “Saj figured out what the writing on Stella was all about. It’s a file title. We opened the file and found meeting notes all right but not about Alstrom’s corporate board meetings. The notes refer to MondeFocus meetings, discussions, timetables of planned demonstrations. Alstrom knew every step MondeFocus took.”

Proof that there had been an Alstrom spy inside MondeFocus.

“Can you identify the sender?”

“Fancied himself—if it’s a he—quite the comic-strip hero. He signed himself ‘Stinger2.’”

“Like the Stinger?” The slick hit man who’d infiltrated the workers’ unions on the Marseilles docks, then sold his information to the highest bidder. The one who shut down the unions and took out the leaders.

“Nice role model.” René paused. “Shall I take over babysitting Stella now?”

Guilt stabbed her. Her fault. She had to admit it and, somehow, enlist René’s help. ”I found Jean Caplan; he’d been beaten up and shot . . .”

“Is Stella . . . hurt?”

“She’s gone. Hélène, the old woman, took her.”

“What? You let that homeless woman have her?” he said, accusation and hurt in his voice. “All you had to do was watch her. How could you put her in danger?!”

“René, I didn’t mean to but—”

“Playing Wonder Woman again!” He cut her off. “For once, I thought you’d grown up and would consider the risks and consequences, with an innocent child involved.”

What about Nelie, Stella’s mother, who’d left her in the first place, she wanted to say. Nelie had left her baby with a stranger. But he was right.

“You’re right, René,” she whispered into the phone. “I’m sick at what’s happened. I was supposed to meet Hélène at Caplan’s, but when I got there . . .”

“Aimée, I’m tired of wild-goose chases and your excuses.”

“If I hadn’t found him . . . But I think I know where Hélène took her.”

“Took her? Why can’t you admit that she kidnapped Stella?” he asked.

She’d never heard him so angry. “Hélène wrote that note on the crossword that was sent to me. She’s helping Nelie. But talking is taking time. Please meet me at Pont Louis Philippe. I think that Stella’s father must be the saboteur. The spy. He must have followed one of us; he’s after Stella, too. In that case, Hélène is definitely on our side.”

“Another one of your theories?”

“You have a better one? Suit yourself, René, I’m going.”

“If I do this, I want to ensure that Stella is safe. We call the child protection services. Do you agree?”

“Pont Louis Philippe. Ten minutes, René.”

She hung up. Avoiding the staring, dead eyes of the mec, she put one hand over her nose, and with the other reached under his lifeless leg for the Beretta 87. She slipped it into her pocket.

By the time Aimée reached Pont Marie, the metal lampposts illumined only the rustling branches of the trees that lined the quai and the glistening cobblestones. The nighttime quiet of the island was broken briefly as a couple emerged from Le Franc Pinot, a wine bar featuring jazz, the moan of a saxophone and the sound of cymbals following them.

She hurried beneath the wine bar’s old metal sign that jutted from the building—the artisanal emblem of a winemaker: a wrought-iron, grape-laden branch pointing toward Quai Bourbon. At the corner of rue Regrattier she paused under the statue of a headless woman in a niche above the street. It, like the king, had been decapitated in the Revolution. Under it was carved the former street name, rue de la Femme-sans-tête: street of the headless woman. Island lore said it really was Saint Nicholas. But over the centuries, no one had proved it either way.

She searched for René’s Citroën against the backdrop of lighted Pont Louis Philippe, trying to ignore the pain in her ribs. The bookstore partway down the quai was open late. She became aware of being watched. Again. The feeling of eyes, somewhere. She pulled her scarf around her and retreated into a dark doorway.

Waiting.

Show yourself, she wanted to shout. And then René’s Citroën purred as he pulled up alongside the quai. He parked on the curb and opened the door, putting out one foot shod in a hunter green Wellington boot.

“Well, are you waiting for the moon to rise or . . .” He stopped, handing her his handkerchief. “Your head’s bleeding.”

Her hand rose to touch it and came back red. “A scratch. Did you and Saj find any payroll connections between Alstrom and Halkyut?”

“Looks like they were using Tiscali,” he said. “A shell corporation.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tiscali’s an offshore corporation registered in Guernsey. Like many others, it’s a company in name only, a front,” he said. “Alstrom remits payments to this Tiscali. And—this is the interesting part—every month Tiscali makes a payment to Halkyut. I faxed this information to the journalist, too.”

This was like unraveling knotted string. Now she had them: the real pollution reports, the copy of the notes under Stella’s arm, the record of secret payments to Halkyut. But she didn’t have Stella.

She motioned to the stone steps leading down to the bank. Took a breath and followed him, alert for any sound. At the top of the stairs, she heard footsteps and froze.

Another Halkyut thug? Or Hélène, carrying Stella?

Just then the figure of a dark-haired woman emerged, casting long shadows onto the cobblestones as she walked up the quai beneath the street lamps.

Down on the bank, Jules’s sewer sluice lay in darkness, boarded up again. She wondered if the flics had rousted him for his own safety. On the flooded bank, the water level now was up to her knees. Her leather boots would take forever to dry. If they did. How could Hélène bring a baby to this place?

Sirens wailed. An ambulance’s red lights flashed as it went speeding over Pont Marie. Her Tintin watch read 9:34 . . . not a bad response time. Jean Caplan was tough; if his luck held, he’d live.

René played his flashlight beam over the partially cemented-up arch. “You can’t mean this?”

“The second one, there,” she said, pointing to a stone arch farther down.

René shone the beam on it. Planks of wood were nailed crisscross over the opening. No access. The flics must have closed this one down, too.

Gone. She put her head in her hands. She’d felt so sure Nelie and Stella would be here. She wanted to kick herself. No Jules, no Hélène.

“Another wild-goose chase, Aimée,” René said.

“They’re here somewhere.”

René just shook his head. Khaki-colored water flooded the deserted embankment.

They climbed back up the wet stone steps to the bridge. Directly across from them, light showed under the red awning of Libraire Adélaide, a bookstore, next to the dark window of a coiffeur.

“Go ahead—say it, René,” Aimée told him. “I was all wrong. I should have turned Stella over to the authorities right away.”

A questioning look appeared on his face.

“I should have ignored my gut instinct, right?” she said. “What’s the matter, you think I can’t feel any worse than I do? I agree, I have to call the child protection services. My hope is that Hélène may already have taken her to a homeless shelter.”

He shook his head. “I think we’re being invited to the bookstore.”

“I’m not in the mood, René.”

“That gentleman seems to know you. I think he wants to talk with you,” he said.

She spun around. Jules, wearing a navy blue pea coat and a captain’s hat, beckoned them from the bookstore’s doorway. A sign in the window read JOURNEY TO THE PYRAMIDS, SLIDE SHOW AND TALK THIS EVENING. They ran across the street.

“Have you seen Hélène?” Aimée asked breathlessly.

Jules looked around and then nodded. “Quick. Follow me.”

He appeared to be steady on his feet despite the wine on his breath. Inside the dark bookstore, he walked behind the counter to the rear, gesturing for them to follow. “I know the owner. Shhhh.”

Beyond a bookcase in the next room, bodies were packed together on chairs, viewing slides of golden sand and the Pyramids basking in the sun, accompanied by a droning voice . . . “In this slide we see the smallest of the pyramids at Giza built by . . .”

“Here.” Jules opened a door behind the cashier’s counter.

Aimée hesitated.

“Hurry, she’s waiting.” Then he put his finger to his lips.

Aimée trailed René down a narrow wooden staircase, lit by a single hanging bulb. Shelves of books and cardboard cartons filled the stone-walled cavern. A funeral wreath of dried flowers hung on one wall. Suspended from it was the blue, white, and red ribbon that indicated the deceased had been a war veteran. “An old Résistance hideout,” Jules said. “A cache for arms.”

“Funny how these days every place was a Résistance hideout,” René said under his breath.

Jules took a bottle from his pocket, uncorked it, and took a swig. He passed the bottle to Aimée. “Courage, Mademoiselle.”

“Merci.” She needed it. She wiped the rim with her sleeve and took a gulp to take the taste of blood from her mouth, then handed it to René.

“Use this,” Jules said, handing her the ribbon. She replaced René’s blood-soaked handkerchief with the ribbon, wrapping it tightly to stop her bleeding, wincing.

Jules pushed a carton aside with his rubber boot. He bent, stuck his finger into a ring in the floor, and pulled up a trapdoor. “This is as far as I go. Ladies first.”

Noise from the floor above sounded like a stampede of elephants. “Jules!” someone called.

“I have to go,” Jules said. “Close the door after you.”

Prepared for the damp, Aimée climbed down metal rungs and was surprised to find herself in a sandstone tunnel that was dry and relatively warm. Not at all like the sewer. She pulled out her penlight. It flickered and she shook it. She needed new batteries. A thin beam illuminated cables, red and yellow tubes running the length of the tunnel before they disappeared in the darkness.

“Where do we go?” René shone his torchlight beam alongside hers.

“Follow the yellow tubes,” she said. She noticed footprints on the loose grains of the sandstone floor.

“Is this part of the old quarries?” René asked.

Who knew what lay ahead? The mushroom cultivation industry had thrived underground in tunnels like this one until the end of the nineteenth century, a fact she remembered from science class. Even today, mushrooms were cultivated on a smaller scale under Montrouge.

“I’d guess this leads to the quarries.” It was hard to believe they were almost under the Seine. They walked for a few minutes. Along the way she noted regular gouges in the sandstone, evidence of pickaxes. They turned a corner and a light bobbed in front of them.

“Ça va?” said a man wearing a jumpsuit and a utility belt. He was dressed in knee-high rubber boots and a miner’s hat with a light on his head. She’d heard of these cataphiles, underground aficionados, who explored the quarries and sewers, held parties in them, and even camped out in them on the weekends.

“Have you seen Hélène, an older woman . . .”

“Not me,” he said. He took a sip from a bottle of water and grinned as if he’d run into them on the street. “Try the next cavern. Bonsoir.”

They rounded more corners in the winding tunnel and finally came to an open space. The shuffle of footsteps sounded from deep inside the dark cavern.

“Hélène?” Aimée’s voice echoed.

“Jean?” a woman’s voice quavered in reply.

“Hélène, it’s Aimée Leduc.”

Aimée shone the penlight. An old woman, her white hair in two long braids, wearing a white wool jacket, stood in the shadows up against the wall. Aimée saw violet eyes and a young face, incongruous with the woman’s white hair and stooped posture. Then the woman shielded her eyes with her hands. A Pharmacie Leclery shopping bag sat on the floor at her feet. “You’re blinding me.”

“Jean’s hurt, Hélène. I came instead.”

“Oui, I know. Put out the light. Paulette’s sick. . . .”

Paulette?

“Please, Hélène, we can’t see without light. Where’s the baby?”

Aimée heard a hiss as a gas camping lantern went on, flooding the chiseled walls with light. She saw a camping stove, a metal pot, plates, a broken chair, several shopping bags. Not much. In the corner, Hélène, crouched near a metal cot. On it lay a young, hollow-cheeked woman covered in brown sheets and green army blankets. Her brown hair was plastered to her face in wet strands.

Aimée recognized Nelie. They’d found her at last. And stood paralyzed with horror as she realized that the sheets Nelie was wrapped in were brown from dried blood.

“The bad man’s coming to hurt Paulette.” Hélène’s eyes were wide with panic. She grabbed Aimée’s arm. “Did he hurt you, like the other girl?”

Hélène was living in the past; she’d confused Nelie with Paulette. And because of that she’d saved Nelie’s life.

“You mean Orla . . . the girl he threw into the Seine?”

“But I took care of Paulette, I thought I’d done for him.”

So that’s what she’d meant in her words to Jean Caplan.

“I saw him—”

“Hélène,” Aimée interrupted, putting her arm around the thin, shaking shoulders. “Where is the baby?”

“Shhh,” Hélène said, her eyes fluttering in terror. “The bad man’s here.”

“Nom de Dieu, we have to get this girl to the hospital,” René said. “Now!”

Aimée bent over Nelie, whose face was sweaty and pale, and whose breath was labored. She was hemorrhaging by the look of the new bright red stains on the sheets. She must have lost so much blood. She looked like a broken bird.

“Call for the ambulance, René.”

She propped Nelie’s head up, took a bottle of water from the floor, and raised it to Nelie’s lips. Hélène stood in the shadows by the wall again, wringing her hands.

“After my C-section,” Nelie said, “there were . . . complications. . . . I became so weak that . . . I couldn’t take care of my baby. I had nowhere else to go . . . but I knew . . . you were working with my uncle; he told me. Then one time . . . on your street . . . I saw you. I looked up your telephone number.”

The effort of saying so much exhausted her and she closed her eyes.

So that was it. . . .

Nelie made an effort to go on. “At the march, I . . . couldn’t walk; the incision had beome infected. We hid in your courtyard but I heard noises. Orla ran the other way, to distract him . . . then I . . . I know he’s after me . . . but now I can’t move,” she said, then whispered, “Hélène thinks I’m someone else . . . but she has been feeding me and hiding me. Otherwise . . . he would have found me . . . by now.”

“We’ll get you to the hospital.”

René had his cell phone out and was muttering at it. “Bad reception,” he said.

“My baby, she’s . . .” Nelie continued haltingly.

“But Hélène has her, doesn’t she?” Aimée asked. “Hélène?” She called. But there was no Hélène, just the sputtering camp light.

Aimée panicked. What had Hélène done with Stella? She ran to the mouth of the cavern. “Hélène, come back!”

And then she heard noises from the nest of blankets near Nelie.

“What’s that?” René said, going over to the blankets.

A gurgle. So familiar an ache of longing filled her. Please, she prayed, let it be her.

René leaned over and rose with Stella cradled in his arms. He draped a blanket around her and gave Aimée a meaningful look. “I’ll take Stella to the bookshop and call SAMU from there. Can you manage?”

“Go.” The sooner the better, she thought. “Take the camp light. Go, René, hurry.”

René took off with Stella in his arms; his footsteps echoed from the tunnel.

Aimée rested her palm on Nelie’s forehead. She was scorching hot, but she shivered in the damp blankets, burning up with fever.

“The doctor told me . . . I have proof,” she said, her eyes bright and wandering. “They framed us. We were running like fugitives . . . but I couldn’t run anymore.”

“I understand. Tell me about the proof in the doctor’s report.”

“Alstrom loaded an old tanker with toxic waste, sent it out to the oil platform . . . and they sank it there. The crew all died . . . drowned . . . except for the captain. He’s dying from uranium poisoning.”

“How do you know this?”

“I found out in La Hague,” Nelie said. Her eyes fluttered. “I saw the captain. He admitted it. And the doctor’s examination notes . . . symptoms of uranium poisoning. That’s proof that Alstrom lied.”

She had to get Nelie out of here right away. But Aimee’s ribs ached and she knew she couldn’t carry Nelie through the quarry tunnels and up the rungs of the ladder to the surface.

“Nelie, I’ll tie you to the blankets and pull you, OK? We have to get you help.” Aimée laid a blanket on the sandstone floor, reached under Nelie, and lifted her onto it, then folded another blanket over her and tied it around her.

“Your uncle found the files, didn’t he?”

Nelie blinked. Then her eyes closed.

“Stay with me, Nelie,” Aimée pleaded.

“Everything . . . the doctor told me,” Nelie said. ”But it’s all . . . report.”

They heard footsteps. “Hélène?”

No answer.

And then her penlight went out.