Murder in the Bastille

“Smarter than me, Martin,” she said.

“You need an appointment?”

That was his term.

“Not the usual way, Martin,” she said. “It’s urgent. Thugs evicting tenants in the Eleventh, a Romanian named Draz.”

“You know how I operate.”

He required a personal visit to impart information. He used the phone as a tool, brief and to the point.

“The murdered reporter, Josiane Dolet, what’s the word on her?” she said.

“I want to help you but . . .”

“No disrespect Martin, but I can’t come to meet you,” she said. “Logistics problems.” She didn’t want to admit her blindness. Never show a vulnerable side to a thief; it came back to haunt you.

“These days I’ve cut back,” he said.

She doubted that.

“It’s not like before,” Martin said. “The new gangs, new ways of operating . . .”

Paris had plenty of crime to go around.

“You’re the best, Martin,” she said. “Who else knew the Hsieh Tong sliced the bookie in the Thirteenth but you?”

Few penetrated the Asian underworld around Place d’Italie, but Martin had his sources. Even the flics used him there. Stroke his feathers enough and he should fly.

A low throat-clearing came over the phone. He slept all day but must smoke two packs a night. She’d never seen him without a lit cigarette between his fingers or burning in a nearby ashtray.

The thought made her wish for that Gauloise she’d shared with Mimi.

“Quality’s important, Martin, that’s why I’ve come to you.”

She heard a low chuckle. “Not that I owe you?”

“Life’s a flowing river, currents combine,” she said.

“You’re so like your father, bless him,” Martin said.

“It’s been five years, Martin,” she said.

She remembered the explosion, searing heat, and crawling on the bloody cobblestones. The charred limbs of her father, his shattered reading glasses somehow forgotten in her pocket. And the emptiness that followed.

“We were set up, Martin.” As always she wondered why. “You know that, don’t you?”

Pause.

“Don’t you work on computers now?” he said. “Gangs in the Eleventh seem too low-rent for you.”

“Evictions, they’re rent-a-thug style,” she said. “East European bodybuilder types. But they must stick their thumbs in other tartes. See what you can dig up. I’ll call you later.”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” he said. “It takes time. I’m an old man, remember?”

She hoped Martin could deliver. Time passed, and she knew, to solve a homicide, new information couldn’t come soon enough.

She punched in several numbers and finally connected with the central office at the Quai des Orfevres.

“I’m Commisaire Vrai’s adjutant,” she said, “requesting a search on an East European, goes by the name Draz. No surname known. I’ll wait.”

She knew they’d find Vrai was on leave if they checked. They did. Good.

“No luck with your computer?” the voice asked.

“We want to cast the net wide.”

“Searching Draz.” Whirring came from the background. “Nothing.”

“Try entries with D.”

Aimee heard a yawn.

“Twenty-three entries. But there might be more; not all the files have been made available online.”

“Meaning they’re sitting in the Commissariat files?”

“Or moldering away in the Frigo.”

“Any ‘D’s’ in the Eleventh?”

“Right now the only person detained in the past six months with a D is a Dicelle . . . transvestite trafficking in amyl nitrate. Sentenced.”

“Thanks for checking.”

She sat back. The clock ticked. Too bad she couldn’t see what time it was. Why hadn’t she asked Chantal for one of those talking clocks?

The lack of police interest in the attack on her bothered her. But as Morbier implied, if the Prefet wanted things nice and tidy to close the Beast of Bastille case, there stood little chance they’d exert themselves.

Would Morbier help? He was edging toward the finish line of retirement, too. These days he seemed more withdrawn than ever. And Loic Bellan detested her.

If only she could interface with Europol. She needed a last name. Had to have it. Tomorrow, she’d get Rene to lean on the architect . . . he might know more.

Meanwhile, she checked in with the answering machine at Leduc Detective. It felt like not just a few days but forever since she’d been there. She accessed and listened to the voice mail. A query for security work referred by a current satisfied client. Nice.

Then another message. No voice. The machine clicked off.

She felt uneasy. Even though she’d canceled her phone service right after her cell phone had been stolen, the attacker had time to find her addresses, home and business.

The third message, her connection from la Proc’s office, bothered her in a different way.

“The Incandescent hearing’s scheduled for Monday afternoon at sixteen hundred hours at the Palais de Justice. If your client’s not there, his firm goes on the docket for issuance of a subpoena.”

Merde!

And then she fell asleep. She dreamt in color. Blood-red and tamarind-hued leaves spiraled down from the autumn trees in Place Trousseau. Children kicked the leaves, scattering them in a red-orange whirl, then ran to the quivering gloss-green see-saw. The crooked fingernail of a moon, its out- line burnished in blue, swayed to accordion strains. The “piano of the poor,” her grandmother had called it, as she slipped the worn straps around her shoulders.

The colors pulsed and throbbed; she’d never witnessed anything as beautiful. It grew larger than life, surreal and wonderful. And she didn’t want it to end.

But it did. The colors faded. Disappeared.

Waves of sadness hit her as she woke up.

Then she’d dozed off again, curled around the laptop, with the cursor flashing on Populax’s logo. Better get back to work, she thought, rubbing her eyes and wondering what the bright thing was on her toe. A patch of sunlight surrounded by gray fog.

Her heart leapt. She could see!

She squinted, tried to focus. And the image slowly evaporated into more fog. A fog that shifted and moved.

She wanted to shout and dance. Her sight had returned. A little, a very tiny bit, but she’d seen her toe! It was only when she struggled into her T-strap high-heels that she realized the fog, now a dense charcoal color, remained.

Depression descended over her. Would her eyesight ever come back?

Friday Morning

“WHICH EDITOR DO YOU want?” said the man in the T-shirt to Rene.

Rene, wiping his damp forehead with a handkerchief, noticed the man’s stringy hair and the ASK ME ABOUT THE BERLIOZ OPERA button on his sleeve.