AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“Non, she did it . . . she fought with him,” Aimee heard someone say. “She pulled him down!”

“That one,” the old woman sprawled on the wet pavement whimpered, pointing her out. Someone pulled the body off Aimee, and tried CPR.

Aimee struggled to her feet. A man grabbed her shoulders. “Hold on, Mademoiselle, we saw what you did,” he accused.

“What do you mean?”

The old woman was shaking her, grabbing at her scarf. A dog barked. Aimee looked around in panic.

“Let go! Don’t you understand . . . someone on a motorcycle shot him!” Aimee said.

Aimee saw a woman’s face in the tall window opposite, her mouth open in a silent scream. And then she heard the approaching police siren. Warm blood dripped from her arm.

A large green and white garbage truck had stopped in front of them, blocking the street. She saw the motorcycle at a distance, stuck in traffic.

“Stop that motorcycle,” she shouted, but no one listened. She broke past the throng and tried to run, the backpack bobbing on her good shoulder, the bloodstained envelope she had tried to give Baret now clenched in her fist.

The motorcycle shot down a narrow street on the right, weaving between the cars. Aimee ran, trying to keep up, for half a block. The helmeted, black-leather-clad figure looked like every motorcyclist on the street. She collapsed against a dented Citroen, panting. Tried to catch her breath.

“Stop her,” someone shouted. Then the motorcycle turned, jumped the curb, and aimed for her.

The hair rose on the back of her neck.

She scrambled to her feet, slipped as her heel caught in a cobble, got up again and ran into an open courtyard. Panting, she raced down a narrow slit between buildings. No exit, just doors. All locked. She pounded on several until one opened.

“We don’t let patrons into the laundry this way,” said a woman, plastic hangers in her hands. She eyed Aimee’s black fishnets, boots and black-leather-belted coat. Behind the woman were steamed-up windows and the roar of industrial dryers.

“My ex-husband’s on a rampage.” Aimee said the first thing she could think of. “Please, I need to come inside before he sees me.”

Another woman, bent over a pressing machine, glanced up. “Eh? This isn’t a public thoroughfare,” she said.

“Just this once, please.”

The woman shrugged and stood aside.

Aimee edged past the crisp white sheets piled on the counter, careful not to let the blood from her arm drip on them.

“Next time, use the front entrance,” said the woman.

But Aimee had pulled on a wool cap over her spiky rain-drizzled hair and gone out the front door. She wrapped her wool scarf around her arm. An ambulance and police cars came to a screeching halt by the boulangerie. She headed over to the next narrow street, her heart thumping. Keeping her head down she walked close to the buildings. On rue Boursault she huddled in a doorway until the Number 66 bus disgorged riders, then entered it by the rear doors. Trembling, she pulled her coat close around her and sank into the seat, thrusting the envelope into her coat pocket.

The few passengers on the bus read or sat with eyes closed, ignoring her. She set the backpack down on the next seat and felt inside it. Her hands touched something hard. A gun? She felt again, rummaged within, touching soft silk and hard smooth carved surfaces. She located a small, intricate object.

She peered inside. The absinthe-green of a jade monkey’s face stared back at her.

Late Afternoon Tuesday

IN THE APARTMENT, NADEGE pulled her bag from under the bed. The duvet stank of cat piss; feathers floated in the last of the November light slanting through the tall window. Techno pounded on the Radio Liberte station.

She had to make her legs move or her uncle Thadee would find her like this, hollow-eyed and shaking. Waiting for the next pipe of life. He’d throw her out, like her father had.

She’d slipped. Again.

Her little Michel, only five years old, needed milk money. But she needed money more. Well, Grand-mere would take care of him. Bien sur. Grand-mere always did.

The phone chirped. Merde! She hunted under the piled Le Parisien newspapers, around overflowing yellow ashtrays with RICARD printed on them, beneath the leather jacket on the soft wood floor. Where was it?

She wound her thick silky black hair in a knot and held it in place with a tortoise-shell comb.

“Allo?” she said finally when she had retrieved the phone.

“Where’s Thadee?” asked a deep voice.

“Playing pool at Academie de Billard,” she said. More likely, buying smokes at the cafe- tabac, she thought, wishing she had one herself. He was supposed to meet her here. Why hadn’t he come? He’d left his jacket.

“Then I’m the Queen of Hungary,” said the voice.

“Very funny,” she said.

“Tell Thadee I’m waiting.”

“Maybe I will,” she said, throwing her makeup into her bag, scrabbling into her shoes and her shearling parka. “Maybe I won’t. Tell me what you want.”

“No candy then. Kiss those bonbons goodbye.”

“Wait a minute, Thadee’s straight . . . what’s . . . ?”

He’d hung up. Arrogant salaud! She had other sources. But she didn’t want Thadee to know about them. If he found out, he wouldn’t let her stay here again.

Monsieur Know-it-all! the Bonbon King . . . what did he know? Not much unless Thadee had confided in him. Thadee had gone to clinch the deal. The deal, he’d told her, that would settle his debts, hers, and more.

Taking the two hundred francs she found in Thadee’s jacket pocket, she slipped down the winding back stairs. Passed through the gate to the cobbled courtyard with its decaying vegetable dampness and rotten wood molding smells, a repository for vats of used cooking oil re-sold to cheaper restos. A Romanian flophouse, doubling as a sweatshop in the day, faced onto it.

As Nadege exited onto rue Truffaut she saw a motorcycle take off, spraying gray splinters of ice and wetness. Her eyes rested for an instant on a stroller with a crying infant, an old woman huddled on the pavement, and then on Thadee’s body sprawled against the phone cabinet. Gasping, she edged toward the crowd. She tugged the red silk cord around her neck feeling for her lucky piece. Saw the blood, the flics, medics, and one of the Bonbon King’s henchman edging into the throng. She ducked before he could see her. Her hands shook. It didn’t make sense, this wasn’t supposed to happen!

Could she help Thadee? But she knew he was beyond help.

She backed up, shaking uncontrollably. Where could she go? And what about Thadee’s stash that he said would clinch the deal?

She ran back to the courtyard, her heels echoing on the soot-blackened stone. In the rear, behind an old staircase, she loosened a stone and felt behind it for the hollow in which Thadee had once hidden dope: only bits of brick and old paper wrappers. Dirt got under her fingernails. Then she felt something cold. Metallic. She scraped it out. An old-fashioned key. But to what? Sirens wailed. She dropped it into her vintage Versace bag and ran.

Tuesday Early Evening