Murder in Belleville

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“Until Eugenie—an angel, that one,” he said, spreading his fingers over the coffee table.

Aimee’s response caught in her throat. She took a deep breath. “Eugenie sounds very thoughtful, Monsieur Denet.”

Denet’s eyes held a faraway look.

“I told her about the boulangerie,” he said. “Looking back, if she was bored, she never let on. Told me it was better than waiting for her boyfriend.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“I never saw him,” he said. “Seems he was married. You know the type!”

Aimee nodded, unsure that her meaning of the “type” matched Jules Denet’s.

It was hard for Aimee to picture Philippe de Froissart, an aristocrat gone socialist, having a rendevous with Sylvie/Eugenie in this dilapidated building. Why not a hotel? Then again maybe he’d liked slumming in has Belleville.

“But you saw her girlfriends, of course,” Aimee said. “Did she have a friend with long dark hair?”

“Not that I remember,” he said. “I’d see Eugenie every few weeks. Maybe a month would pass.”

“What about her friends?” she asked. “Did you see them?”

Denet’s face fell. “I wouldn’t call them friends.”

Aimee sat up. “How’s that, Monsieur Denet?”

“Arabes,” he said, his mouth tight.

“Young or older?” Aimee asked.

“Eugenie had a good heart,” he said and sighed.

Aimee remembered that Roberge the jeweler had said the same thing.

“She helped anyone,” Denet said. “I told her, ‘Don’t let those types hang around. They’ll take advantage. Steal.’“

“What did she say to that, Monsieur?”

“She’d smile. Say everyone deserved a chance in life. Everyone.” Denet shrugged. “Who can argue with that?”

Aimee saw that it bothered Denet.

“Eugenie liked pearls, didn’t she, Monsieur?” she asked.

He seemed taken aback. “She wore overalls—like my baker’s ones—we used to joke about that. Very down- to-earth.” His smile turned bittersweet. “She seemed sad sometimes. There was a big hurt in her.”

Was she sad that Philippe, a minister with a family, wanted only an affair in has Belleville while he lived in the heights?

Aimee noticed Denet’s tapered fingers, trimmed nails, his graceful little movements illustrating his words. Here was an artist who used his hands. Every day.

She tried to question him further, but he protested, finally revealing he’d seen nothing, only heard noises, and he hadn’t been sure of that since he’d been watching a Jet Li action flick. She wondered how that soothed his nerves to sleep.

“Here’s my card,” she said. “If you remember anything else, please give me a call.”

But he’d seemed more concerned about his noise trouble with the Visse family. And that bothered her. She figured he’d heard her and Anais in the old garage yard and wanted to get back at the Visses. But at least now she knew when to break into Eugenie’s place.

Wednesday Midafternoon

BERNARD HAD FAILED TO deliver the immigrants to the airport. Now he’d be dismissed, relegated to some third-rate office at the ends of the earth.

Bernard walked away from the church. His feet carried him; his mind was blank. He wished he were numb. He found himself on familiar streets, the haunts of his later childhood. In bas Belleville, where his family had counted themselves lucky to find a cheap apartment after their exodus from Algeria. With no servants or belongings, only the clothes on their backs.

It had been a frigid, biting April, like this one. One of the coldest in years. Bernard had been surprised at the cold and gray of Paris. He’d never imagined the sheeting rain, density of human habitation, or so many vehicles. Not like Algiers, with the bleaching sun, the clamor of the medina, and the donkey droppings on the stone streets. He’d worn his coat in their small apartment, never feeling warm.

The nearby Belleville haunts of his childhood had changed. Now the narrow streets were full of discount Chinese shops, cell phone stores with signs in Arabic, even a M. Bricolage do-it-yourself home fix-it chain. Bright green AstroTurf lined the entrance. Once, he remembered, that had been a glass factory.

His first vivid memory of Paris was seeing the workers in overalls at the glass factory pouring sand into yellow cauldrons—huge, steaming pots made of black cast iron. On his way home from school, he wondered at the crisp and brittle glass sheets lined up for delivery. “Sand into glass?” he asked, and his mother had nodded yes. “But you told me you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse,” he said. “Of course, that’s different,” she sighed. “How?” he persisted, and she, weary or late for work, would say “Later, Bernard, later.” No one had ever successfully explained it to him. At the polytechnic the dry professor had discussed the chemical process. Secretly Bernard had dismissed the theory, preferring to believe in magic, as he always had. Remembering the stories of the djinn from his Berber nursemaid, and the Aicha qandicha, who, as everyone knew, had goat’s feet and one eye in the middle of her forehead.

No magic lay in his old apartment building. A restaurant stood on the ground floor where formerly a dark wood brasserie had occupied the corner. The bright, gold-trimmed Thai restaurant advertised EARLY-BIRD DINNER SPECIAL 48 FRS. Memories drew him to the door.

His stepfather, Roman, a displaced Pole who’d joined the Legion in Algeria, had been a butcher by trade. Roman had supplied the meat and played cards with the owner of the old brasserie, Aram, a Christian from Oran. Roman, he remembered, had resented—as he resented so much else—Aram’s buying the place cheap after the war. But his mother had countered: “The former owners are ashes, Roman, that’s why.” Roman’s eyes had hardened. He’d been quiet after that. His mother too.

Bernard went inside the restaurant.

“Monsieur, a party of one?” the smiling black-haired woman asked. Her gold-flecked patung caught the light, a fuchsia band encircled her waist. The scent of lemongrass came from the kitchen. He remembered the wood-paneled walls, the dark interior, and the lack of windows.

Bernard nodded.

She showed him to a table set with chopsticks and blue-and-white porcelain bowls and plates. Gold-leaf dragons, like gargoyles, protruded from the ceiling. In the half-full restaurant, low conversations hummed and glasses clinked.

“Thai iced tea?”

He nodded again, happy to follow her lead.

She shoved a plate into his hands. “Help yourself, Monsieur.”

The buffet table, with steaming soup and heated platters of rice noodles, spring rolls, lemongrass chicken, and other tantalizing dishes made him realize how hungry he was. He remembered that where the buffet stood had been the old birchwood bar. Oiled and polished by Aram every week.

Bernard was amazed. He hadn’t thought of these things in years. Memories of people and the building opposite, victims of the wreckers’ ball, flooded back to him as he ate. He felt almost giddy. Once it had been different, he remembered. Once it had.

He helped himself several times to the buffet. A calmness settled over him, like the way he felt from the little blue pills.

He went to the restroom, passing the kitchen, and looked in. The paint, the grease-spattered tile, even the pipes looked new. Only the arched ceiling downstairs in the lavatory was the same. Bland gray paint covered the old stones where Roman once hung his bloody aprons, the nights he stopped by after work to play cards.