He shrugged. “You name it, I treat everyone. Few of the old ones talk much. One of them just died, Albert, a crusty old bird. The kind who thinks the world owes him a living since he saw a few bullets in Indochina. He’d gone to the clinic for a routine checkup. Rumor says he got offed.”
“What do you mean?”
The man shook his head. “That’s all I heard. These old vets imagine things. Who’d go for an old coot like him anyway?”
“I’ll check into it,” she said, writing on her pad. “What’s his name?”
“Albert Daudet. Sorry, but my lunch is waiting.”
Now she had an idea. “We’re pushing for added benefits for the Sixth to make restitution for limited services.”
“You mean, so they won’t take you to court?”
The man wasn’t so sleepy after all. And he probably knew all of them. Or at least more than he let on.
“Did I say that?” she smiled. “But your cooperation would be appreciated. It’s the men of the Dien Bien Phu Sixth Battalion we’re hoping to contact. I’m meeting with a few, informally, not at my office, but at a cafe. Of course, I’d help with the forms and expedite your insurance claims if you could help me.”
Short of an out-and-out bribe, that should entice him. At least make him consider it. She pulled out a card from her card file, one with just her name on it. “Here’s my number.” She wrote it down.
SHE FOUND a phone booth downstairs at a cafe, nestled between the Sexodrome and the soup kitchen run by priests, where boulevard de Clichy bled into Place Pigalle. Garish life-size faded photos of 1985 big-haired strippers stared back at her in the hall by the phones. Her first call was to Serge, her pathologist friend at the Morgue, to inquire about Albert Daudet’s autopsy.
“Sorry Aimee, Serge is testifying at the Tribunal in Nantes,” said his secretary. “He took the kids.”
Serge turned his work trips into a holiday for his twins to give his wife a break. Like two balls of mercury, the twins never stood still.
“Will he check in?” she asked, disappointed.
“Last I heard, one of the twins had a fever,” she was told. “But I’ll tell him you called.”
Serge was the only pathologist she trusted at the Institut medico-legal. She’d wait until he returned and, if she wangled it right, he’d read her the autopsy results over the phone.
Then she called Division 17 at
Why hadn’t she thought of it before? The man must be lying low because of what happened to Thadee Baret. Baret looked old for his age, a hazard of drug use, but he was a generation younger than Gassot. What possible connection between Baret and Gassot existed? So far all she knew was Gassot had written the article about the jade and Thadee had paid for it with his life.
“Your authorization code?” a disembodied voice asked.
She prayed Morbier hadn’t changed his code.
“Alfa Romeo280,” she said. His favorite car.
Pause.
“Checking authorization.”
Perspiration dampened her collar.
“Authorization code confirmed. Checking.”
Morbier would be mad as hell when he found out. And he’d change it right away.
“Twenty-seven, rue des Moines,” the voice said.
Encouraged, fifteen minutes later she stood in front of the shuttered townhouse with a wild, unkempt garden at its side. The townhouse, separated only by a wall, stood behind the art gallery. At one time, she figured, the buildings had been joined, like a compound.
Maybe they still did?
What if Thadee let old vets live there, or rented them rooms? That could be the connection!
No one answered the door, and the place looked deserted.
She tried Rene’s number as she had all night. No answer.
Then her cell phone rang.
Rene’s kidnappers? Her heart leaped and she looked at her Tintin watch. If she told Leo the time, it might help her track the call.
“Mademoiselle Leduc,” said a clipped voice. “Commissaire Ronsard would like to speak with you.”
Her heart sank. Ronsard from the
“Concerning?”
“He’ll expect you within half an hour, Mademoiselle Leduc.”
AIMEE STOOD in the Brigade Criminelle outer office by a scuffed mustard-colored door. Wet wool, unemptied ashtrays and the sad smell of fear kept her company. She shivered, staring at the ancient brown-tiled floor and the yellowing announcements on the faded green walls. Thick, webbed skylights let in gray diffused light.
A NO SMOKING sign hung above the metal desk and a scratched billy club lay next to binders of the staff shift schedules and a log labelled SICK DAYS.
A bored
She tapped her high-heeled boot, smoothed down her leather skirt. The chilly waiting room felt like the polar ice cap. And the frigid glare of the young uniformed receptionist, who insisted she empty her pockets and bag twice before passing through the metal detector, didn’t help.
“Mademoiselle Leduc,” she said, at long last, “go in.”
Aimee passed a vaulted window in the long corridor. Below, the Seine snaked, pewter and dark khaki, under the overcast sky.
“You wanted to see me, Commissaire Ronsard?” she said, entering his office.
Commissaire Ronsard nodded. “
The Brigade Criminelle boasted of their 72 percent solved-case rate. That didn’t include the
She noted the wooden desk with stacked folders, two folding metal chairs, and photos of former department chiefs lining the mustard colored walls—one very familiar to her. Bound manuals of the Code Civil sat on a window ledge.
“Tell me about your relationship with Thadee Baret,” Ronsard said, indicating a wooden chair.
“Relationship?”
“Were you
Quaint, the old expression for the other woman.
“Not at all.” She stuffed her anger. “Why ask me?”
“But Mademoiselle, you lured him to the phone cabinet,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Accosted him. Bystanders heard you shouting. Said he seemed desperate.”
“Thadee was desperate, Commissaire,” she said, keeping her voice patient. “How did you get my name?”
“Bystanders heard you identify yourself,” he said.
“Of course, I stood—”
“Right here,” he interrupted, pulling down a screen with a diagram of rue des Moines. The half-moon-shaped square, the
