Murder in the Sentier

sublime.”

Aimee traced the condensation on her glass with her finger.

“Figeac’s prose was velvet smooth, like a baby’s cheek, but his mind was more barbed than a hacksaw. In literature that’s called the hallmark of a civilized mind.”

“And what about at the end?”

“Mademoiselle Leduc,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you but he hadn’t written in years. Dried up.”

She didn’t believe him or like his condescending manner. Voices rose from the bar. A close smoky haze reigned over the tables.

“Christian said he was writing again,” she said. “Furiously, as if possessed.”

Vigot shook his head. “All I saw was a scared old man.” He sighed. “I should have paid attention, seen it sooner.”

“But you were his friend.”

“A good friend!” Vigot’s eyes sparked. “I carried him for years.” His brow creased. “Compiled the anthologies, reissued works to keep his name alive. That American pute … she killed him.”

Did he mean Christian’s mother, the actress?

“But she committed suicide ten years ago,” Aimee said.

“He never got over her,” he said. “Never wrote the same. Something had died.”

Aimee wished she was outside instead of in this dark masculine sports bar with this sad-looking man.

“Why don’t you lunch at Brasserie Lipp?”

He grinned. “With all the literary sophisticates?” He surveyed her legs again, took another swig, and finished the glass. “Romain and I had an inside table; we lunched there for years. It bothers me to go there.”

He nodded to the waiter again and pointed to his glass.

He turned to her with a restrained smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me …”

“But I haven’t gotten to why I came here,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Figeac’s apartment burned down last night,” she said.

Vigot’s eyes narrowed. “Is Christian all right?”

She nodded. “I’m sure that among the other left-wing radicals he befriended, Romain Figeac knew my mother. That’s my personal interest. I want to find her, or at least find out about her.”

“Don’t tell me the old radical chic’s back in style?

“As Figeac’s friend and editor, you were close to him,” she said. “Years ago he was involved with Action- Reaction, wasn’t he?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Where are the tapes and boxes containing his work?”

Vigot recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “They’re none of your business.”

“Everything belongs to Christian Figeac as literary executor,” she said.

“Leave him out of it.”

“You’re not very helpful.” She shook her head.

“It’s for his own good,” said Vigot.

“My mother’s name was Sydney Leduc. She was an American.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to mean something to me.”

“I won’t leave until you explain this.” She took the sheet of paper she’d filched from Figeac’s desk on her first unofficial visit to the atelier, the sheet that had been tucked under the typewriter, with the Tallimard logo, Alain Vigot’s name at the top, the typographical symbols, and agit888 written on it and placed it in front of him.

Vigot studied her. He seemed to weigh his options. “I don’t know much. There was an American who spoke excellent French and German, I don’t remember her name,” he said. “She helped Jean-Paul Sartre interview Haader in prison because he spoke no French.”

Aimee sat back. Her breath was short. “The translator may have been my mother!”

“I’m not sure.” Vigot shrugged. “Some of them used code names. But she was at Romain’s apartment one day. Romain wanted to publish Sartre’s interview in a left-wing magazine he was starting. But nothing came of the magazine, it never got off the ground.”

“Tell me more about this American.” She leaned closer to him.

“You’re asking me about an afternoon more than twenty years ago with a woman whom I remember vaguely.” He moved away.

“But you remembered she was an American.” She gave him space, afraid of looking too desperate.

“The reason I remembered that much is that right afterward Ulrike Rofmein helped Haader escape from prison. They weren’t caught until years later.” He’d relaxed again.

“Why did Figeac write the words agit888?”

Vigot shook his head. “That’s all I know. Romain always said if he’d published the article the magazine would have taken off.”

“What happened to the article?”

“Sartre published it. That took courage, given the climate then. He looked like a toad, did you know that? Don’t think me cruel, Sartre said it himself,” Vigot said. “Just leave Christian alone, he’s had a rough time.” He gestured to the waiter for another drink and stood up. “I’m going to the rest room. When I return, you’ll be gone, won’t you?”

His gait was unsteady as he moved past the table. He turned and looked at her, his eyes unfocused and very tired. “Leave me alone. I like to get drunk in peace.”

SHE LEFT the cafe to the chorus of invitations to join the men at the bar for more biere brulee. What did it mean if her mother had helped translate an interview with Haader? But she felt there was more to what Vigot had said. And that there were boxes of Figeac’s work unaccounted for.

Still at sea, she hurried along Boulevard Saint Germain. Back at Tallimard, she hit the kickstart on the scooter and gunned the engine. She’d counted on Vigot enlightening her as to how Figeac was connected to her mother.

But she thought he knew more than he was telling.

She called Rene on her cell phone.

“Allo?” She heard Rene’s fingers striking keys on the keyboard in the background. Then an insistent low buzz.

“Etienne Mabry wants you to call him.”

A brief frisson of excitement hit her, then faded. Of course, it must concern Christian Figeac.

Aimee held the phone between her ear and neck as she rode across Pont Royal. The Seine breeze whipped up her skirt, scattered the perched pigeons from the large letter N incised on the bridge by Napoleon’s orders.

“He needs your help with”—low static, clicks—“before we go.”

Something sounded odd. The phone line was tapped.

“Hold on, Rene, I’ll be there soon.” She hung up. The office was five minutes away but she didn’t want to tell him and the others who were listening that she was meeting Christian at the bank. She stuck her phone in her pocket.

She sped along the Quai des Tuileries, turned left under the Louvre’s arcade, and veered by the Carousel roundabout past the Pyramide.

It bothered her that their phone line was tapped. A lot.

She squeezed her brakes before the Number 39 bus threaded the narrow grime-blackened arches to cross rue de Rivoli, almost flattening her against the Louvre’s portal. She inhaled a big breath of exhaust.

Tuesday Afternoon

ALAIN VIGOT LOCKED his office door and set the silver flask on his polished cherry-wood desk. He lifted it up quickly. The flask had left an oval of spilled Scotch and he wiped it up with his sleeve.

Beside the window overlooking the publishing house courtyard near Saint Germain, framed book jackets filled