Murder in the Bastille

Thursday Morning

RENE BACKED HIS CUSTOMIZED Citroen into a vacant sliver of space on boulevard Richard Lenoir. Never mind that it consisted of several zebra crossing stripes. A Parisian parking spot—you got in where you could.

Red-brown leaves fluttered from the trees, crackling under his feet. A weak, late-morning sun was framed by the bare plane tree branches overhead.

Opposite stood the Bataclan theatre. Once a pagoda-style folly built by Napoleon III for Empress Eugenie, then un caf’ conc’, cafe concert hall, where Maurice Chevalier sang for the Germans, later a cinema. Now the marquee read “Limited run only . . . Viva Zapata, the musical!”

The chance to do something, work in the field like Aimee, excited Rene. Their roles were reversed, finally. But his stomach churned. The burden was on him to investigate a murder and the attack on Aimee. He’d made an appointment with Miou-Miou, the woman who answered the first number on Josiane Dolet’s speed dial.

“Monsieur Friant, ca va?” said a woman with blonde ringlets who skated up to him in front of the Bataclan. She flashed a card: “Astrology readings by Miou-Miou—day or night, I rollerblade to YOU.”

“Thanks for meeting me. Let’s have a drink,” he said, indicating the dim cafe.

“Bon, my next client’s the numbers man upstairs.”

Rene wondered if that boded well for the Bataclan’s finances. He struggled to keep up with her. The curse of short legs, he thought, as he had a thousand times. Boulevard de Temple, known in the eighteenth century as the notorious “Boulevard du Crime,” bordering the Marais and the Bastille, lay ahead of them.

The cafe, once the Bataclan lobby, looked overdue for a renovation. At least a cleaning, Rene thought. Remnants of Chinese temple-style pillars and red lacquer beams, paint peeling off in places, arched above them. The circular zinc bar, a 50s island in the sea of cafe tables and rattan chairs, beckoned with a rainbow display of liquor bottles.

“Taurus . . . Scorpio rising,” Miou-Miou said, with a big grin. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Rene nodded.

She sat down, crossed her rollerblades, and pulled her shoulder bag onto her lap. She opened it, and drew out a pile of astrological charts. “First consultation costs two hundred francs. Then I prepare your chart, which I keep with me. You can call anytime and I’ll give you a reading on the spot or come to you with a detailed horoscope. For fifty francs more, I do important events or weekly forecasts.”

Rene pulled out five hundred francs, signaling the waiter.

“I’m sorry but I didn’t make myself clear. I want information about Josiane Dolet,” he said. “Your number was on her speed dial.”

“My client’s charts are confidential.” She shook her head, returning the charts to her bag as if to leave.

“Not any more,” he said, forcing his eyes to move past the lime tulle ribbon around her blonde curls, the pink lips, red- and-white-striped tights, pink leggings, and green denim jacket. “Hear me out, first,” Rene said.

A waiter old enough to be his father, bald and earringed, appeared. He wore a long white-apron and skinny black T-shirt and stood, tapping his foot.

“Un Cardinal,” Rene said.

“What’s that?” Miou-Miou asked.

“Here we call it the Communard,” the waiter said, writing down the order.

“Red wine, creme de cassis, and juice,” Rene said. “It’s the same drink, but the name lines up at the other end of the political spectrum.”

The waiter shrugged.

“And you, mademoiselle?” he said, tossing a bowl of salt-encrusted cacahuetes on the ring-stained table.

“Une feuille morte,” she said. “I like the fallen leaf autumn color of Pastis mixed with menthe and grenadine.”

After the waiter moved away, Rene leaned forward. The table’s rim hit his chest. “Josiane Dolet was murdered in a Bastille passage. Your number was on her speed dial.”

“You’re a detective?” Miou-Miou’s eyes widened. “No wonder she didn’t show for her reading. Such a shame. Josiane was a free spirit. But her chart indicated tumult. A storm brewing since August. Tempestuous relations. But I never imagined. . . .”

And I’m the Rhone ranger, Rene thought.

A paunchy, middle-aged man waddled into the cafe. He kissed the harried cashier, who paused and returned his bisous, then leaned over the zinc to the shaven-headed, earringed barman, a younger version of the waiter, who was polishing glasses.

“Attends,” Miou-Miou said, “That’s my client. I’ll be right back.” She glided over to the man, whose glasses glinted, reflecting the flickering neon sign advertising Picon.

Frustrated, Rene picked at the peanuts. Stale and oily. He looked around.

In the far corner, as if supporting the Chinese pillars, sat a pale-faced trio: a couple and a midget wearing a fedora. An aura of time suspended, surrounded them. Most cafes were lively places where people conversed or went to see or be seen.

Not here. It was like a railway waiting room.

Rene’s radar picked up on it at once. Circus people. He hated the old fug of sad-eyed clowns and freaks away from the big top. They looked familiar, probably from the nearby Cirque d’hiver. Perhaps cronies of his mother. Unemployed. Or waiting for a casting call.

He felt again the trials his mother, a normal-sized juggler, had endured. The drafty circus tents, tears coursing through her makeup when money was tight, and the love she had borne him. The determination that he’d never perform as a freak.

And he hadn’t.

Her amazing good fortune in becoming the old marquis’s housekeeper in Amboise had helped. The marquis had attended her performances every year. He’d loved Rene’s mother’s unique juggling act and her wit.

A circus aficionado, the marquis had maintained a private museum of mechanical toys from the 1700s up to the 1930s. When she’d grown “ready for the pasture,” as the circus owner termed it in his delicate way after a flaming arrow severed the tendon in her left hand, the marquis invited her to oversee his “little collection.” She’d ended up running his chateau. And probably more, but Rene didn’t dwell on that.

An odd but sweet man, he’d financed Rene’s clinic bills during his stretching therapy. It hadn’t worked. His hip displacement had gotten worse. The marquis helped with his education. Paid for extras at the Sorbonne. And the car.

Rene never told Aimee any of this. He wasn’t sure why. He liked the fact that Aimee had never asked, had never wanted explanations. She’d simply introduced herself one afternoon at the Sorbonne cafe, saying “Rumor says you can access a mainframe in twenty minutes.”

She’d shoved a laptop across the table.

“You heard wrong,” he’d told her, rolling up his sleeves and establishing a net connection. “Twelve minutes is the longest it takes me.” And using the number his friend had given him he’d accessed the mainframe and done it in ten.

Her big, kohl-ringed eyes had lit up. Right there, she’d offered him a job on a project she’d undertaken. The work grew and when he ended up spending more time on computer security at Leduc Detective than at the Sorbonne, he quit classes. And she did, too.

His confused feelings about her surfaced: her terrible driving, her unconventionality, the passion she brought to things and the fierce loyalty she showed him. And glimpses of the raw inner hurt he’d seen exposed a few times. Like the hurt he’d so often felt.

He thought about her huge eyes and the funny way she hid her feelings for Morbier yet yearned for his approval.

Never mind that she didn’t provide tickets for restaurants or a Carte Orange pass for the Metro like some employers, she made sure she paid into his secu, the mutuelle