Murder in the Sentier

His eyebrows knit in concentration. “How old are you?”

He should know. She’d been nine when he and her father assembled her bike over a bottle of wine on a long-ago Christmas Eve. She’d watched from behind a door. The bike had always wobbled.

“You know a woman never reveals her age.”

“Will you let me eat in peace?”

She nodded.

Morbier tucked his napkin into his collar, spreading it over his suspenders. “All I know, which isn’t much, is that sometime in the early eighties a number of RAD members—”

“RAD?” Aimee interrupted.

“The Red Army Division,” he said. “Some German fugitive terrorists wanted to leave the underground. They were given a chance to lead new lives in East Germany, under different names.

“So by Red Army Division,” she said, dipping her bread in the sauce, and keeping her hand steady with effort, “you mean the seventies Haader-Rofmein gang who blew up banks and kidnapped people?”

“The newspapers called them that.” Morbier took a long sip of rose. He raised his thick eyebrows. “They called themselves the RAD. Their French counterparts were Action-Reaction.”

This fit what Jutta had told her.

“This came out in the late eighties when some ex-terrorists living in East Germany were arrested. Then the Wall came down.”

“What’s the connection to agit888?”

“Thank Jean-Paul Sartre for that,” Morbier said, attacking the rouget with gusto.

“Sartre?”

“The Marxist fool interviewed Haader in his cell,” he said. “And gave that infamous press conference about terrorists. For that the Ministry of Interior kept Sartre under surveillance until he died.” Morbier made a moue of distaste. “Your tax francs at work.”

“Sounds convoluted to me.”

“Agit888 is what they called the Sartre surveillance squad.”

Aimee thought old Sartre would have been secretly pleased. An existential thorn in the establishment’s side until the end.

“What happened to the RAD gang?”

“Most of them testified against their former comrades and received fairly mild sentences.”

“What about …?”

“Some did time in Fresnes. Most are free by now, I imagine.”

Aimee paused. Jutta Hald’s visit—the timing of it—right after her release, was significant. She took a deep breath. “Was my mother one of them?”

Morbier’s fork stopped midair. He didn’t look at her.

“I asked you a question, Morbier,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

“Some things in life should stay buried,” he said.

Her appetite disappeared. “I just want to know if she’s alive.”

“Rumors circulated,” he said.

“What kind of rumors?”

“A moucharde, a stoolie,” he said. “That she played both sides.”

“A stoolie?” She gripped the table edge. Hard. “For who?”

“The Sorbonne riots in ’68 threw everyone into turmoil,” he said. “Crazy times.”

“What do you mean?”

“She put her nose into places it didn’t belong.”

Morbier got the waitress’s attention and pointed to his empty glass.

“I asked your father once, but he avoided the topic.”

“But …”

“C’est fini, Leduc,” Morbier said.

Aimee’s heart sank.

Her father had refused to discuss it with her, too. The whole family had.

She didn’t know what to think or how to figure out what her mother had or hadn’t done.

“You knew my mother, didn’t you, Morbier?”

He shrugged. “Not well.”

“What was she like?” Sadly, she realized she’d used the past tense.

“A handful. Like you,” he said.

The lunchtime rush had subsided. Shouts and horns sounded from the street.

Here she was sitting with a man who knew her mother and father, but wouldn’t talk about them. Why couldn’t he cooperate?

“Jutta Hald’s gone,” Morbier said after a long pause. “Those radicals have a death wish, always did.” He swirled the wine, sniffed his glass. “Take my advice, eh—move on.”

Aimee remembered that the only good thing to do with advice, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, was to pass it on to someone else.

She managed a thin smile. “I’ll try.”

“Tiens, say it like you mean it, Leduc,” Morbier said.

“Just make one inquiry about Jutta Hald, that’s all I ask.”

Morbier leaned back in the chair, shaking his head. His thick salt-and-pepper head of hair could use a wash, Aimee thought. He looked like he’d been up all night.

“You’re well acquainted with the French legal system, Leduc.”

“But there’s a lot I don’t know.”

“There’s a rule stating that for 150 years no one can look at a prisoner’s dossier,” he said. His thick eyebrows crinkled, tenting his eyes. “Just to be clear, that’s 150 years from date of birth. I can’t find out anything about your mother, even if I wanted to.”

“But, Morbier, if you’re working a case and need the info …”

“My hands are tied,” he said. “This is to protect the prisoner.”

She tried to hide her disappointment.

If she couldn’t see the file on her mother, the trail ended.

“Any idea how to get around this rule?” she asked.

Morbier shrugged, a typical Gallic shrug. “You’re friends with higher-ups. Complain to the ministry.”

At least two ministers in the Ministry of Interior weren’t happy with her after the incidents in Belleville, although Martine, the sister-in-law of one, remained her best friend.

She thought about Fresnes, the old brick prison on the out-skirts of Paris where Jutta had been held. Unheated and the worst in the system. She remembered something. “No cell holds just two,” she said. “They usually cram in three or four prisoners…say Jutta and my mother—”

“Wasn’t that years ago?” Morbier interrupted.

She nodded. The words caught in her throat. She made herself go on, leaning forward, her eyes locked on Morbier’s. “But Jutta was just released, it should be easy to find out whom she roomed with.”

Morbier frowned. “Her last cell mate might not be the same person.”

“True.” Morbier had a point. “But if Jutta was excited about getting out, she could have talked to a cell mate about the past, discussed her plans. She told me she came straight from prison to my apartment.”

She knew Fresnes also held the CNO, the Centre National d’Observation, for prisoners who required physical and psychiatric evaluations when up for parole. Or those under surveillance for undesirable behavior.

The CNO assessments could take up to six weeks. All the prisoners hated them, but several times in their prison life they had to endure them. Some more often than others. Prisoners in this transit loop were much easier to track down than others in the penal system.

“Morbier, do me a favor,” she said. “Discover who shared Jutta’s cell in Fresnes before her release. Maybe she can help me to find out about my mother.”

“You’re chasing pipe dreams, Leduc.” Morbier expelled a quick breath. “Wasting your time.”