Murder in the Sentier

She found the back stairs. By the rear kitchen, she smelled and heard the hiss of palm oil spattering in a pan. The cook, his back to her, stood tasting a pot of tibouaienne fish and rice.

On the next landing, past the public telephone, was a room with a small stage at the end. Patrons sat on banquettes around tables below smoky mirrors lining the walls. Some ate, most drank. It was a mixed crowd: young and old, white and black, listening to the strains of griot-inspired music. An old man wearing a long striped orange robe and what looked like a red velvet pillbox hat played the kora. He bore no resemblance to Ousmane in the photo with Idrissa.

He sang and plucked at the smooth calabash gourd backed by animal skin. Strings held in place by metal studs went up the long-necked instrument.

Aimee saw no sign of Idrissa. She walked down the side hall and peered backstage. A young woman, short braids poking from her curly hair, stacked rolls of napkins and paper goods over a bricked-in mantel.

“Bonsoir, I’m looking for Idrissa,” she said.

The woman shrugged, then moved her hands in what Aimee figured was sign language.

“Muette?”

The woman nodded. She was mute.

“Ousmane Sada?”

The woman picked up a flyer and pointed to the name Mbouela, a kora player “direct from Cote d’Ivoire.” “So, Ousmane’s gone?” Aimee asked.

The young woman nodded.

“What about Idrissa?” Aimee asked, pointing toward a dressing room. Maybe there’d be someone in there who knew her.

The woman shrugged.

“Merci.” Aimee smiled. “I’ll just have a quick look.”

The young woman returned to stacking paper goods.

The rectangular dressing room lay empty except for the costume of a clown in black and white, a Pierrot. Large windows overlooked the peaks of a wrought-iron-and-glass roof. Beyond that lay the tiled rooftops of the Sentier.

“The bitch … ,” Aimee heard someone mutter, “where is she?”

She heard a crash as something fell to the floor. She didn’t feel like waiting around to see whom they were looking for. She ducked out the open window. Below her spread the long glass-covered roof of Passage du Caire, the oldest passage in Paris.

On her left was an outdoor spiral staircase, remnant of an old conduit to the quarters above the passage where shop owners lived. She stepped out of the window and reached across to the outdoor metal staircase, pulled herself up by the railing, and climbed over. By the time she’d descended the stairs and reached the passage, the shop owners had long since closed and locked their doors. She made it out to the small triangular square of Place Ste-Foy.

Aimee looked back but no one had followed her. She paused at the dead end of rue Saint Spire. Where had Idrissa gone? She’d found no answers at the club or when she tried phoning her friend’s apartment. If Idrissa was in danger, Aimee didn’t know how to help her or where to look next.

And what did Christian’s comment about Vigot mean? She hit the call-back button. But the phone rang and rang. No answer.

Stumped, Aimee sat down on a green bench, the Passage du Caire behind her, and pulled out her notepad. Her mother remained a mystery. As did everything else.

The Place Ste-Foy lay quiet: the cafe s and wholesale clothing shops shuttered, plastic bags filled to bursting with cloth remnants and overflowing green garbage bins propped under the trees. The only sign of life was a young boy kicking a soccer ball under the watchful eye of an old woman, who wore a babushka. Aimee wondered what the child was doing up so late. Had it been too hot for him to sleep?

“Attention, Vanya,” the old woman said when his ball bounced against the stone walls of an occupied building. “Kick someplace else.”

A moped rode by, the tinny-sounding motor echoing in the square. Aimee heard its putt-putting as it sped into the distance. Only an occasional prostitute with her client turned into the ancient Passage Ste-Foy under the Roseline clothing sign.

Above her, dim lights from the narrow medieval apartments dotted the night. She thought Atget, who photographed the place in the 1900s, would probably still recognize the square. In a quartier with no green spaces but these few skinny trees, this warm pocket, Aimee realized, comprised nature and park to a titi like Vanya.

On the graph-patterned notebook page, she wrote three names, Christian, Romain, and Idrissa, and put question marks next to them. After Christian’s name she wrote “dope” and “guilt,” then connected the arrows to Romain. Christian had assumed responsibility for his father’s suicide but his father had been murdered.

She connected Jutta and her mother and wrote “Labordecache—Modigliani paintings?” None of this made any sense. Tired, she figured she better sleep on it. Aimee shouldered her bag and stood. The babushka’s tone rose in anger. The young boy had kicked the ball into a garbage bag, knocking it over. Scraps and garbage swirled in the breeze, littering the deserted square. Cloth bits blew by Aimee’s sandals. She looked over. At first she thought she saw the torso of a dummy, a mannequin. She stared.

A black mannequin.

Something was wrong.

Aimee ran over as the babushka screamed, covering the boy’s eyes with her hands. Aimee tried to shield their view.

The dreadlocks twined with cowrie shells and yellow and red beads were familiar. Very familiar. Idrissa!

Aimee gasped. The half-open eyes were visible. There was a band of toche noire, a reddish brown tissue, across the pupils. Not a pretty sight. But a drying effect she recalled from premed.

She must have been killed several hours ago. Her face was distorted, her neck cocked at an impossible angle. Poor Idrissa, what a waste.

She knelt down. Something looked peculiar.

Peeling the bag lower, she saw dried rivulets of blood. But it wasn’t Idrissa.

It was a man. A man who’d been in the picture with Idrissa at Club Exe. Ousmane, the kora player.

Don’t get involved, she told herself.

Ahead, on rue Ste-Foy, she heard the whine of the late night garbage truck. Before the truck hit the square, she took a good look at the man. The pink bra and garter belt he wore were too large. Like an afterthought, Aimee figured. To make him look the Saint Denis type, on the off chance this bag, destined for the garbage truck, might be opened and the body found.

“We have to get the flics,” she said, still trying to shield the boy.

Fear shone in the old woman’s eyes. She shook her head, clutching him. She didn’t know or want to know. Maybe she had no papers.

“S’il vous plait, before the trashmen come!”

Aimee didn’t want to do this. Get involved with this.

But the woman backed up, pulling the boy. What could Aimee do? The woman hobbled toward Passage du Caire. No time to follow them.

She’d been looking for Idrissa and now she’d found her accompanist. Why had Idrissa’s partner been killed? Had the killer made a mistake?

AIMEE DRUMMED her heels on the 2nd arrondissement Commissariat floor. She sat inside a smudged glassed-in cubicle with scuffed walls, her hands on the wooden desk. Crumpled paper cups and memos filled the metal garbage can. On the duty binder was a stenciled memo, “Don’t forget the ten fingers of procedure!”

“Where’s Sergeant Mand?” Aimee asked. “I’d like to speak with him.”

“En vacances,” the on-duty flic answered.

Too bad. She’d made her first Communion with his daughter. Knew the family well. She’d lost a baby molar down their bathroom drain.

“Let me get this right,” the flic from the decouvertes de