AL01 - Murder in the Marais

Sarah.

The cooing of pigeons and soggy chill of an early November evening floated past his open balcony doors. His hands shook as he grasped the door handle. What if someone recognized him and screamed his past out loud?

Unter den Linden; that was an order. Also the Werewolves' codeword meaning: one day we will meet under the flowering linden trees in Berlin under a new Reich. The Third Reich reborn.

Unable to work, he gazed at the restored rose stone facades of the square opposite the window. I'm just an old man with memories, he thought. Everyone else had been ground into dust long ago.

Fifty years ago he'd been young, and the City of Light had spread before him, ripe for the plucking. Very ripe, for Hartmuth Griffe had been an officer with the SiPo-SD Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst Security Police and Gestapo, responsible for sweeping the Jews from the Marais.

THURSDAY

Thursday Morning

THE SEINE FLOWED SILVER, chill mist hovered, and along the mossy-stoned quai Aimee walked, debating whether to call Hecht. No contact, he'd said. But as far as she was concerned, the rules had changed when she'd found Lili Stein dead.

She crossed the Pont Neuf with the still-lighted bateaux mouches gliding below as dawn crept over the Seine. Thick fog silhouetted Cafe Magritte under her office on rue du Louvre.

Inside, at the zinc counter, she dunked a buttery croissant in a steamy bowl of cafe au lait. The espresso machine rumbled like a jet at takeoff.

She'd accepted a simple job but the stakes had skyrocketed with this grisly murder. Morbier had treated her as a suspect and had her escorted home, whether to establish authority with his minions or—she didn't like to finish the thought. Nothing about this felt good. She shivered, remembering the look on Lili Stein's face.

Warm coffee vapors laced the windows overlooking the Louvre's western wing. She especially didn't want to lie to Morbier about some odd Nazi hunter who would deny knowing her.

Revived, she slipped twenty francs across the counter to Zazie, the owner's freckle-faced ten-year-old, who worked the cash register before school.

'Mind if I get ready for work?' she said, pulling out her battered makeup kit.

Four-foot-tall Zazie stared awestruck as Aimee applied red lipstick in the mirrorlike espresso machine, ran mascara through her lashes, and outlined her large eyes with kohl pencil. She smoothed her short brown spiky hair, pinched her pale cheeks for color, and winked at Zazie.

'Buy yourself a gouter after school.' She wrapped Zazie's fist around her change.

'Merci, Aimee.' Zazie grinned.

'Tell your papa l'Americaine wants to settle her tab later, d'accord?'

Zazie's brown eyes grew serious. 'Why does Papa call you l'Americaine? You never wear cowboy boots.'

Aimee struggled not to smile. 'I keep them in my closet. Real snakeskin. My maman sent them from le Texas.' She had the cowboy boots but she'd bought them herself at the Dallas airport.

Upstairs, lights glowed behind her frosted-glass office door.

'Soli Hecht left you a present,' said her partner, Rene Friant, a handsome dwarf with green eyes and goatee. He wore a three-piece navy blue suit and tasseled loafers. Rene pumped the hydraulic lift handle of his custom orthopedic chair with his foot.

Curious, she picked up the thick manila envelope with her name scribbled on it.

Fifty thousand francs were inside along with a note.

Find her killer—tell no one. I don't trust the flics. I trust you.

Wads of franc notes tumbled out as she grabbed the desk edge to steady herself.

'He must like you!' Rene's eyes grew wide. 'We'll convince the tax board to. . .'

She shook her head. 'I can't. . .'

Rene pumped furiously until the seat aligned with his desk.

'Look at this.' He thrust one of several threatening letters from the bank manager at her. 'Our tax extension is up in the air, the bank is calling in our note. Now, the Eurocom accountant refuses to pay us the eight months of back payments we're owed, he's quibbling about a clause in the contract; it could take months.' He struggled to adjust a knob on his seat. 'Time you got out of the computer clouds, Aimee, and got back in the field.'

'I don't do murder.' She winced.

'You make it sound like there's a choice.'

'INSPECTEUR MORBIER is expecting me,' Aimee said to Madame Noiret, gritting her teeth at the Commissariat de Police reception desk. Not only did her jaws ache from the biting cold outside, she was dying for a smoke.

'Bonjour, Aimee, ca va?' Madame Noiret, the gray-haired clerk peered through reading glasses and smiled. 'I'll let him know you're here.'

'Ca va bien, merci, Madame.'

She hated coming back to the Commissariat in Place Baudoyer; her father's memory stabbed her from every corner. There was the cold marble floor of his office where she'd done homework as a little girl when he worked late, later helping him clean out his desk when he joined Grandfather at Leduc Detective, then collecting his posthumous medal from the Commissaire.

Aimee's American mother had disappeared from her life one evening in 1968. She'd never returned from the Herald Tribune, where she worked as a stringer on the news desk. Her father had sent Aimee to boarding school during the week and on weekends he took her to the Luxembourg Gardens. On a bench under the row of plane trees by the puppet theater, she once asked him about her mother. His normally sympathetic eyes hardened. 'We don't talk about her anymore.' And they never had.

Three weeks without a cigarette and Aimee's tailored jeans pinched, so she paced instead of sitting. She'd always thought the crimes investigated by the Commissariat of Police in the Marais rarely matched the division's elegant accommodations. High-tech weapon sensors hid nestled in brass wall sconces of this Second Empire style nineteenth century mansion. Rose lead-paned windows funneled pink patterns across the marble walls. But the dead cigarettes in overflowing ashtrays, greasy crumbs, and stale sweaty fear made it smell like every other police station she'd been in.

This palatial building neighbored Napoleon's former barracks and the 4th arrondissement's Tresor public, the tax office on rue de la Verrerie. But Parisians called it flics et taxes, la double morte— cops and taxes, the double death.

She drifted over the scuffed parquet floor to read the bulletin board in the waiting area. A torn notice, dated eight months earlier, announced that Petanque leagues were forming and serious bowlers were encouraged to sign up early. Next to that, an Interpol poster of wanted criminals still included Carlos the Jackal's photo. Below that, a sign advertised a sublet in Montsouris, a 'studio economique' for five thousand francs a month, cheap for the 14th arrondissement. She figured that meant a sixth-floor walk-up closet with a pull-chain squat toilet down the hall.