AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“Aimee Leduc here. I’m trying to reach Thadee Baret. The nun Linh gave me this number.

“About time,” said the man, urgently. “I’m Thadee. You have something for me?” His suspicion had vanished.

“An envelope, we should meet . . .”

“How long will it take you to get here?” he interrupted.

“Where’s here?”

“Near Place de Clichy.” He spoke fast. His breath came over the phone in gasps.

“Say ten minutes, by the Metro. But can’t we meet at my office?” Aimee asked.

“No. Come here. Stand in front of the boulangerie,” he said. “Across from Sainte Marie des Batignolles church.”

Odd. But she knew it was a crowded, busy place. It should be safe. Easy to melt away in the crowd if this man turned out to be even more strange than he sounded.

“How will I know . . . ?” she began.

“I’ll find you.”

Why all the mystery? she wanted to ask. But he’d hung up.

She knew Clichy, the less-chic part of the many-faced seventeenth, a district containing two worlds: Aristocrats with de la before their name, whose children attended the local ecole primaire and later ENA, school of the elite, before nabbing a government post. And immigrants with -ski, akela, or khabib at the end of their names, destined for the short BAC exam, a trade school, and a factory job. The seventeenth was an arrondisse- ment of elegant consulates and the best closet-size Turkish kebab shops this side of the Seine. Now, noticing the Mercedes parked between trucks on the street, Aimee became aware of a newer cross-section of moneyed bourgeoisie and hip mediatheques added to the traditional working-class population of Clichy.

Clichy? Only a few called it Clichy these days: the flics, kids, and old gangsters who’d gone to the Gaumont cinema palace and thought it was classy. It was the area Henry Miller had tramped through, fringing the Place de Clichy, with its Boulevard des Batignolles and its boules players and narrow streets. Nowadays, the kids who sold drugs called Clichy and its boulevard bleeding into Pigalle their place of business. From the chic Avenue de Wagram and Arc de Triomphe quartier to the double wide Boulevard Pereire, nicknamed the marechaux, lined with foreign sex workers, the seventeenth now held something for everyone.

Aimee ascended the Place de Clichy Metro steps, slipping on her leather gloves against the chill November wind. Late afternoon commuters surged around her. Darkness descended before six this time of year. The Cafe Wepler, a Wehrmacht soldiers’ canteen during the German Occupation—(earlier immortalized in Vuillard’s painting)—glowed in the dusk. Its awning sheltered a stall displaying Brittany oysters on ice to passersby.

She rushed to a taxi stand, anxious to get her errand over with. But Place de Clichy traffic was at a standstill. Klaxons honked and the Number 95 bus shot diesel exhaust at the Marechal Moncey monument, commemorating peasants who defended Paris at the end of a Napoleonic campaign. She gave up on a taxi, left the busy Place fronted by cinemas and brasseries, and hurried through the narrow Clichy streets.

She passed la Fourche, the fork, that divided the quartier into the “good” seventeenth and the “bad.” More than in any other part of Paris, the architect Haussman had stamped his signature here in the last century. The image the world thought of as Paris: broad tree-lined boulevards riven by the classic gray stone five-storied buildings with metal filigreed balconies and chimney pots like organ pipes on the rooftiles.

She reached Batignolles Park with its rolling lawns and black swans gliding across the small lake. The fretwork of plane trees, puddles, and clumps of wet leaves faced real estate offices and antique shops. A gunmetal sky threatened; she hoped Thadee Baret wouldn’t be late. Beyond lay the derelict train yards, part of the 19th century ceinture, the railway belt circling Paris. Their walls were bright with silver graffiti.

She entered a cobbled crescent that had a village feeling. Two-story buildings lined the street and old people congregated on the green slatted benches beneath the clock tower of the columned church: a pocket of “old” Paris.

Aimee saw a thirtyish man, wearing black pants, his thin white shirt whipping in the wind, scanning passersby from under an awning over the boulangerie. He had a pale face, wore thick black-framed glasses, and held a backpack by its strap. An arty or political type . . . Baret?

She waved and saw recognition in his eyes. And what looked like fear.

Around him on crowded rue Legendre mothers pushed strollers and old women walked their dogs by the acacia trees. Fresh-baked bread smells wafted from the boulangerie. As she approached, she saw how thin his arms were, and how he kept picking at something on his wrist and wiping his nose with his sleeve.

She waved again, wrapping her scarf tighter as she hurried toward him. Coatless, wasn’t he cold? An old woman huddled under an umbrella near the glass phone cabinet by the blackened stone buildings.

“Monsieur Baret?” she asked. “I’m Aimee Leduc. We talked on the phone.”

He reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Do you have it?”

She nodded and handed him the envelope Linh had entrusted to her. He put the strap of the backpack in her hand.

“For Linh. Sling it over your shoulder.”

She did.

“They’re following me,” he said in his breathless way.

“Who?” She looked around. She saw only busy shoppers. Slush from car tires rolling over the cobblestone street sprayed her boots.

“But you must know,” he gasped into her ear.

“Tiens, wait a minute,“ she said. “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

He registered her surprise. His eyes darted around the crowd; he glanced across the street. “They’re here.” He clutched her coat, a wild look on his face. “But Nadege and Sophie depend on me . . . if I don’t. . . .”

“What do you mean?”

She saw his terror as a motorcycle gunned its engine, drowning his answer.

“Look, I’m just helping a nun . . .”

The words disappeared in the crack of rapid gunfire. Baret’s body jerked. Someone yanked at the backpack on her shoulder. But she grabbed the strap and held on to it. A motorcycle engine whined. The sound of a bullet’s ricochet echoed off the stone buildings. Then there was the screech of tires.

“Get down!” Aimee yelled.

Little balloons of stone dust grit burst on the pavement ahead of her. She ducked, pulling open the nearby phone cabinet door for shelter. As she pulled at Baret, he collapsed onto her, his shattered glasses red with blood mist. An exhalation, smaller than a sigh, escaped his lips.

Panic flooded her as she saw that red-black holes peppered the back of his white shirt.

He sprawled on top of her as she heard the roar of the motorcycle engine gunning away. Her arm stung. She saw blood and realized it came from her. Shouts and cries erupted around her.

Crows cawed, their nest above the boulangerie doorway disturbed.

The old woman ran, then tripped; her baguette launched onto the glistening cobbles in a slow motion arabesque. Aimee tried to pull Baret into the shelter of the phone cabinet but his hand caught on her pocket. Someone screamed. And screamed.

Aimee’s knees trembled as she felt for his pulse. None. Her fingertips traced ribbed scars and scabs, the needle tracks on his arm. Bluish purple, old marks. Blood trickled down his pale chin onto the rain-slicked cobbles.

“Mon Dieu . . . call the flics!” She couldn’t reach the pay phone. Where was her cell phone? In the silence someone was sobbing, and a child howled.

Then there were voices. “Terroristes!”