Murder in the Bastille

what I told Josiane. And that’s all.”

“What happened on rue des Taillandiers?”

“Forget the November to March ban on tenant evictions. Mirador evicts anytime.”

Brault’s words sounded like code to Rene. But not the kind of code he could decrypt.

“The Romanian?”

“Dragos.”

“Then Dragos can verify . . .”

“Don’t bother to check,” Brault interrupted. “He’s disappeared with the wind. That’s how they work. They hire transient Romanians, Serbs, or Russians.”

Rene nodded, hoping he didn’t look as clueless as he felt.

“Josiane wrote the article to put a spoke in Mirador’s wheel,” said Brault.

Rene’s ears perked up.

“Would it be big enough to stop Mirador from evicting illegally?”

Brault’s office door swung open. Two men in suits beckoned him. “The representative of the Bureau de la Construction’s here. We can’t hold up the meeting any longer.”

Brault strode out of his office, leaving Rene to see himself out, laboriously, with short steps. Rene’s mind spun. Whirled. He’d promised Aimee he’d call after interviewing Brault. But he couldn’t stop now; he had to find out about Mirador.

RENE LABORED several blocks to rue Basfroi, in the northern part of the Bastille. He headed to his friend Gaetan Larzan’s prop rental, where he knew he’d get information. Maybe even a decent glass of wine.

“Business good?” Rene asked.

“Terrible!” said Gaetan, brushing off his stained overalls, then slicking back his hair.

Always the same reply. Like his old uncle.

Gaetan, who stood near a tarnished knight in armor, returned to consulting a checklist, marking things off.

“These television crews, they’re more careless than monkeys,” he said. Beside him stood a garish green plastic palm tree, bent as though weeping on his shoulder. Ahead lay a hall full of coat racks: wood ones, bamboo, mahogany, metal, lucite, every size and shape imaginable. In a cavernous room strewn with clawfooted bathtubs, old screens, and mirrors propped against the wall, Rene saw a massive stuffed polar bear towering between low- slung chandeliers.

“Time for a glass?” Gaetan asked.

“Twist my arm and I might,” Rene said. Gaetan’s uncle and Rene’s mother had become friends when she’d foraged through the shop for props for her act.

“How’s your uncle?”

“Spry, as usual. He escaped from the home last week,” Gaetan nodded. “But his leg gave out. He didn’t get far.”

His uncle’s wooden leg, a souvenir from the Austerlitz battlefield hospital, intrigued Rene. After the war he’d refused a prosthetic, saying so many had died, he’d been lucky to get the stump, and he wouldn’t let anyone forget that. Rene felt empathy for him. “Makes a nice pair of salt and pepper shakers,” he’d heard some workers laugh behind their backs, “a tall cripple and a short one.”

At the secretary’s desk, littered with piles of yellow invoices under a stuffed hedgehog, Gaetan cleared a place for Rene. He reached back and pulled out a dusty, unlabeled bottle. In the pencil holder he found a corkscrew, then rinsed two long-stemmed wine glasses with bottled Evian, flicked the water into the waste bin, and poured.

“Chateau Margaux nineteen seventy-six?” Rene swirled the rich rust-red liquid, sniffing the cork.

“Close. You’re quite the connoisseur. Nineteen seventy-five was a vintage year.”

Rene wondered how Gaetan managed to get hold of such excellent wine. He wouldn’t mind a bottle.

Gaetan shrugged. “Fell off a truck in Marseilles,” he said.

Comme d’habitude—as usual—Rene thought. Business must be booming, or else he was paid in wine.

“Didn’t I miss your party this year? . . . Here’s a late present. Don’t drink it all once. Happy birthday.” Gaetan pushed another bottle toward Rene.

“Salut.” They clinked glasses. The wine poured down his throat like raw silk, full- bodied yet light.

“Merci, Gaetan.”

Gaetan’s prop shop overlooked a narrow passage. Beyond lay a dirt lot, fenced in by jagged aluminum siding and stone building walls pockmarked by old, peeling wallpaper.

“Wasn’t there a ceramic factory here?” He remembered his mother buying a piece of faience, a flowered vase from the flawed seconds batch. It had sat in the kitchen hutch for years. He still had it.

“The patron died. No one to run it. Soon to be a parking lot,” Gaetan said, making a moue of disgust. “Developers!”

A pity, Rene thought. He went to the window. But he couldn’t read the construction sign which had been defaced by silver and green graffiti.

Gaetan would know about Mirador. He’d grown up in the quartier. “I hear Mirador’s hiring Romanians to kick people out of old buildings.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but I know nothing firsthand,” Gaetan said. He broke into a wide grin as he announced, “I’m getting married. Remember Giselle?”

The long-legged dancer who taught at the dance studio. “Of course, lucky man!”

“We’re moving to Tours.”

“Felicitations! But your business?”

“Pierre, my cousin, is the manager now, he’s more involved.”

“Where’s Pierre?”

“Hiking in the Pyrenees. He deserved a vacation.”

Rene’s brow furrowed. “I need information about the evictions.”

“Not your style . . . Aaaah, it’s one of your friends, non? ”

So he told Gaetan what had happened; about Aimee and the story Josiane supposedly was working on. By the time he’d finished, darkness had descended over the tiled rooftops.

“Rene, I’d like to help, but I’m hardly here these days,” Gaetan said, looking away. “Not everything in life checks out.”

But Rene could tell Gaetan was withholding something.

“There’s a load of returns in the yard,” he said, standing up. He flicked on the switch, flooding the office with light. “You know your way around; stay as long as you like.”

Was he afraid?

“Look, I’m worried about Aimee. You must know someone who can help me.”

“Don’t take this detective stuff so seriously,” Gaetan said. ”Look, genius, your metier’s computers.”

“She’s blind, Gaetan,” he said, “and my job might go down the toilet with this picky Judiciare.”

Gaetan picked up a folder of invoices, tucked them under his arm. He avoided Rene’s eyes. “Desole. Don’t forget your wine. I’ll send you a wedding invitation.”

“Here’s my cell phone number,” Rene said. “Pierre might know, or be able to give me someone who does.”

DEJECTED, RENE didn’t know which way to turn. Calling Mirador and asking them about evictions probably wouldn’t garner information. On his way back, Rene passed the fenced-in lot, but he still couldn’t read the graffiti- covered sign.

After some blocks, rounding a corner, he just missed running into an old woman. She wore a faded scarf knotted at her neck, and a sealskin coat that had flaked off in patches. She stood in front of the dark Gymnase Japy.