AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

“You’re a private detective, you said. Aren’t the police in charge?”

Sharp. Didn’t miss a thing. “I’m investigating on behalf of a client,” she said. “Beyond that I can’t say.”

“Look, I want to be more helpful,” Yann said. “How can I reach you if I remember anything?”

Aimee hid her disappointment at their lack of information. “I appreciate your time, merci,” she said, handing them each her card.

STRAGO, ON the less fashionable and more working-class slope of Montmartre, was a storefront restaurant with a hammer and sickle on the old curling menu posted behind smudged glass. A handwritten sign in violet ink read FERME. This side of the quartier hadn’t changed much since Doisneau’s black-and-white fifties photographs, she thought. Narrow cobbled streets wound up to the butte. The corner cafes and low buildings fronting rue Labat reminded Aimee of Edith Piaf’s sad song of the rue Labat streetwalker who had lost her man. But, then, weren’t they all sad?

Thoughts of Guy intruded. His scent, the way he ran his fingers through his hair. She pushed the sadness down; she had to find this musician.

At the vegetable shop under a green awning next door, Aimee asked the owner about Strago’s hours.

“They open when they feel like it,” he told her. “If you smell garlic, Anna’s cooking.”

She put a franc down and reached into the counter’s glass canister for several Carambars. She unwrapped the yellow waxed paper, glanced at the joke printed inside, and popped the caramel into her mouth. “Ever seen Lucien Sarti, black hair, black leather jacket, who gets messages there?” she went on.

He shrugged. “When the weather’s like this, I stay in the shop.”

She handed him her card. “If you do, call me. I’d like to speak with him, Monsieur.”

She wrote down Strago’s phone number and belted her leather coat against the cold. Snow clumps in the plane tree branches melted into dripping lines that ran down the bare trunks. Snow, the rare times it occurred in Paris, never lasted long. The rising heat from the buildings took care of that. Like it had taken care of any evidence that the snow on the roof might have held.

She rooted in her worn Vuitton wallet. Found it. The card with Jubert’s name that Pleyet from Interpol had given her when she’d dealt with him in the Clichy district. Her thoughts jumped to Laure’s ramblings. For two months she’d searched for Jubert, the one link she’d found to her father’s death in the Place Vendome bombing. But he hadn’t been at the address listed, or in the Ministry. It was as if the man had never existed.

Was Jubert the “Ludovic” Laure had mentioned? Was there another Ludovic in her father’s past, a past of whispers, secrets, and shadows she’d only caught hints of. Morbier would know. She pulled out her cell phone.

“Oui,” Morbier answered.

“May I buy you a late lunch?”

“You want to thank me?”

For what? she almost said, before she remembered he’d gotten her released from the Commissariat. She paused, looking down at the oily rainbow-slicked swirls reflecting the sky in a pewter puddle. A January sky.

“Or make it up to me for your atrocious manners, ruining Ouvrier’s party and landing me in hot water with La Proc,” he was saying.

“She’s got it in for you, anyway,” Aimee said. “But how—?

A diesel bus rumbled past her, drowning Morbier’s response. Aimee felt for her gloves in her pocket.

“Le Rendez-vous des Chauffeurs in half an hour?” Morbier asked.

A taxi-driver haunt, with good food. That should sweeten the questions she had to ask.

* * *

MIRRORS LINED the walls, yellow-and-white-checked cloths covered the twelve tables in the resto, an aluminum meat slicer rested on the counter. The last diners finished a late lunch with a cheese course. Morbier sat on the camel-colored leather banquette, split and taped in places, worn by the repose of generations of taxi drivers. He was reading a newspaper.

“Nice choice, Morbier,” she said, sitting down and hanging her bag on the back of her wooden chair. The hot, close air felt welcome after the brisk chill outside. Framed posters of the Montmartre vineyard vendanges hung above the mirrors. Background jazz played low on a radio as the owner wiped down the aging red formica counter through which patches of the original zinc were visible.

“Combines all facets of the Montmartre spirit: rustic, bohemian, and bon vivant,” he said, setting down his paper. “But you’re buying me lunch. What’s your real reason?”

“Rene said you were a romantic,” she said, pouring from the pichet of rose, already on the table, into his wineglass. “And to thank you.”

“If I didn’t know you better,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together, “I’d believe it, Leduc.”

“Believe that Laure’s in the Hotel Dieu in intensive care,” she said, spreading the napkin on her lap.

Morbier shook his head.

Should she tell him the rest?

“Laure heard men’s voices from the roof,” she said. “Speaking another language.”

“You interrogated her, Leduc?”

“There’s so little to go on, I had to ask questions,” she said. “But I made her worse.”

“Blaming yourself won’t make her better. Look, we do it all the time.”

“After I saw the police dossier at her lawyer’s, nothing else looks good either.”

She poured herself a glass of rose.

Morbier touched the rim of his glass to hers. “A la sante. Clearing her is the lawyer’s job, Leduc. Not yours.”

He caught the owner’s attention and pointed to the blackboard with the prix fixe menu chalked on it. “Two of those, s’il vous plait.”

“Of course, Commissaire,” the man said, heading to the kitchen behind the small Dutch door, whose top half was open. From inside Aimee could hear chopping noises and the hiss of frying oil.

“You’re a regular here, I see.”

He gave a small smile, the jowly cheeks and bags under his eyes making him look more tired than ever.

“There’s nothing more you can do, Leduc,” he said, taking the rolled paper napkin and tucking the corner into his collar.

Aimee leaned forward. “Morbier, she didn’t kill her partner. The techs made a mistake with respect to the gunshot residue. The lab report’s not even prepared yet!”

“That’s for the police to investigate.”

“See what you can find out,” she said. “When the report’s filed, tell me.”

“You know I don’t have access to those investigations.”

Didn’t he?

She looked down, summoning her courage.

“At the hospital, Laure rambled a bit, obsessing about the past. She mentioned a report about Papa, hinting at some cover-up.”

Morbier choked on his wine. Wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“Do you know anything about it, Morbier?”

“Live in the present, Leduc.”

But in the brief unguarded look she’d seen on Morbier’s face, she sensed he knew something.

“Does it have to do with when Papa and Georges were partners?”

“Laure’s father?”

She nodded, took a piece of bread from the basket, tore off the crust, and chewed it.

“You were Papa’s first partner, weren’t you? What can you tell me about Georges?”

“Beats me.”

“Your memory going, Morbier?” She leaned forward and brushed the crumbs aside.

“That and everything else. My retirement’s around the corner.”

For a man approaching retirement, he kept a tight schedule, working at the Commissariat and part-time at Brigade Criminelle as well. He’d never confided in her about his assignments.

“You know how Laure put her father on a pedestal. Help me understand what she meant by a report, some cover-up involving my father. There is some secret that’s worrying her.”

The owner set down two plates of fisherman’s salad—potato and white fish and a sliced