Murder in the Sentier

“I have to speak with you,” she said. “Give me fifteen minutes. I’m on my way.”

Either Christian was a flake or in trouble. Right now she couldn’t solve that. Back at the table, Rene’s vacant place had been taken up by newcomers.

“Rene ran into his friend,” Etienne said. “He said you’d understand.”

Aimee felt awkward. Had he left on purpose so that she could be alone with Etienne? The music’s pitch and the DJ’s voice escalated so it was hard to hear.

“Desolee, but I’ve got to go. Something just came up,” she said.

Etienne glanced at his watch. “I was hoping we could go somewhere together.”

Torn, she figured Christian would come late or not show. Martine would call her nuts to leave but she had to meet this Georges and find out about her mother.

“It’s business, je le regrette,” she said.

Surprise crossed Etienne’s face. This didn’t happen to him often, she figured. Few women would walk away from him. Not if they were smart. Wrong place, wrong time.

“Why don’t we meet later?” he asked. “At Rouge. I’ll bring Christian if he shows up.”

Did he think she was playing hard to get?

“Sounds good,” she said, trying to sound casual.

“How will I reach you?”

She pulled out her lip liner and wrote her cell phone number on his arm.

“A bientot.” Etienne pulled her close and gave her a bisou. His warm breath seared her cheek. She almost sat back down.

Instead, she made her way through the packed crowd dancing in the hallway. Keep going, she told herself; she had no time for Etienne. No sign of Rene. Out on rue Feydeau she saw his car. Maybe he’d gotten lucky with one of the women.

Hurrying through the quiet Sentier streets, she reached Action-Reaction ten minutes later. The building on rue Beauregard, a squat survivor from the sixteenth century, had suffered a face-lift in the fifties. Unsuccessful by the look of it. Rusted neon signs advertised TEXTILE VASSEUR on the wall behind it. On both sides, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings leaned over it, their clay chimney pots askew on their slanted roofs.

At the corner, several Pakistani men stood gambling on cardboard boxes. Beyond them, Aimee heard the gurgle of the drains as fresh water washed the gutters. Garbage containers, tall and green, peculiar to the Sentier, lined the street entrance.

In the courtyard, a man pushed a wire clothes rack, full of swinging wool- and fur-collared jackets, jiggling over the cobbled way. An office window stenciled with EAT THE STATE fronted the grime-blackened courtyard facing a wall of bricked-up windows.

A chill penetrated the dark courtyard recesses. She knocked on the door that read AR in faded letters.

Aimee expected to find a lair of old radicals or a seething den of subversives mobilizing for the World Trade demonstrations in Place de la Concorde.

But she had to knock several times on the thick wooden door. Only the narrow crescent of the July moon illumined the dark courtyard. Finally, the door scraped open. A man with graying corkscrew curls tight to his head and a broken nose peered out.

“Georges?” she asked.

“We’re in a hurry, entrez,” he said, looking around behind her.

She stepped inside Action-Reaction’s squalid office. Posters and old Maoist leaflets covered the ceiling and walls like wallpaper. A sagging sofa was draped with threadbare African cloth, Che Guevara’s image smiled from behind the single pasteboard desk. The only concession to the present was a shiny new fax machine.

A damp mildew smell came from the corners. Typical in these buildings, the rot and mold of centuries. But Che stayed forever the gorgeous revolutionary martyred in Bolivia, while the movement declined. Chunks of plaster were missing, revealing laths, and a fine powdery sprinkle covered the floor.

Some men were passing around a bottle of Pernod, the licorice liquor.

“Look, I’m sorry, maybe you can help me. I need to ask you about …”

Georges did a double take. “Don’t I know you?” He took a long, hard look at Aimee.

“I can’t believe it!” he said, moving closer to her. “Fredo, look. Look!”

A thin man with paper white hair turned to look at her. “Nom de Dieu,” he said.

In the glare of a naked bulb, she saw furled banners piled against the dank wall. She felt Georges’s face close to hers. Saw his bruised purple-red nose.

“You look so much like her … the resemblance is amazing!”

A cold shiver ran through Aimee.

“What do you mean?”

Fredo joined them. “You’re her daughter, non?”

“Who?” Her hand shook, she couldn’t help it.

“Tiens! You’re Sydney’s daughter!” Surprised, she noticed that their looks were welcoming instead of accusing. Finally, she’d found a connection to her mother. A positive one!

“Amazing!” Fredo stood, beaming at her. “That look. So innocent and wild … you have it. But of course, I should know, eh? We were intimate.”

Wednesday Night

AIMEE TOOK A LONG swallow, then passed the green bottle of Pernod to Fredo beside her on the couch. The licorice smell didn’t even bother her anymore. Normally, it shriveled her taste buds.

Had she arrived on another planet? Finally she sat with people who’d known her mother, loved her, and talked about her.

“What luck our paths crossed, Marie!” Fredo said. “So you coordinate magazine photo shoots, eh?”

Aimee hoped her wince didn’t show. “Crazy job. These art directors … so fickle, they changed their mind. Found another site on Boulevard de Sebastopol.”

“But we found you!” Georges said, leaning forward from his perch on the cheap desk. He had a plastic bag of ice on his swollen nose. “Uncanny! Such a resemblance to your mother!”

Why had no one ever told her that?

Aimee put her hand out for another swig. Her trembling was controlled now. She took several deep gulps. On the wall was a framed yellowed notice from December 1981 titled “Our Sentier Initiative”: ‘Action-Reaction will organize the occupation of numerous secret ateliers or sweatshops in addition to helping rehouse a hundred or more foreigners: Turkish families, Senegalese, and refugees fleeing U.S. imperialism.

“Such an inspiration, you know,” Georges said. “She surprised us. We thought she was soft, but she took action. So dedicated to the cause in her own way.”

Dying to find out more, she figured she’d better not appear too eager.

“We’ve been out of contact,” she said. “I’m trying to find her.”

“Let’s see, she went to Spain….”

“No, Greece with Jules,” Georges interrupted. “But that was in the seventies.”

Aimee’s heart slowed. These men were out of date. Years out of date.

“Jules?”

“Jules Bourdon.”

In the background, a radio played a plaintive Mozart aria Aimee recognized from The Magic Flute. Pamina’s mother’s voice trilled and vibrated, mourning the disappearance of her daughter, the daughter whom she’d tried to coerce to kill the rival king.

Aimee’s grandfather had played the vinyl record on Saturday mornings. She’d heard the strains when she returned from her piano lesson and waited on the steps with the bag of warm brioches in her arms, until the aria had ended. As she didn’t understand German, she’d only learned the story years later. And figured out why her grandfather changed the record when she returned. The evil mother sacrifices her daughter …