AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

street.”

Zette’s fists balled. He shook his head. “But I saw him last night! Nom de Dieu, he was at the bar, I bought him a drink, we talked—”

“Everyone did. We’re all shocked. He was off duty, too, when it happened.”

Zette’s face clouded with sadness and he poured more wine. Was there more behind that look?

“To Jacques, a good mec.”

They raised their glasses.

“Who found him?”

“That’s the thing, Zette; I did.”

Zette made the sign of the cross with his big knuckled hands. “I still can’t believe it.”

“What did Jacques talk about, do you remember?” Aimee asked. “Was he nervous, was he acting any way unusual?”

Zette rubbed his jaw. “How did you get my name?”

She controlled her frustration. “Nathalie, his ex-wife, said he worked for you.”

“Work? More like he did me a favor from time to time. My VIPs like protection.”

What celebrities called Club Chevalier their hangout?

“By VIPs, you mean who?”

“Tino Rossi sat on the stool you’re sitting on,” he said, with a proud look on his mug.

Tino Rossi, a Corsican singer popular with the over-sixty crowd? She tried to look impressed. “Wasn’t he before Jacques’s time?”

“My guests want to keep a low profile, they want discretion,” he said. “They like to sample Montmartre without their goons, and to be escorted by a local.”

An escort service? She looked around the club, saw the frayed postcards of Ajaccio on the smudged mirror. Of course, this was a Corsican bar, why hadn’t she picked up on that? Instead of Jacques squiring provincial businessmen to the hooker clubs, could it have been Corsican gang leaders who wanted protection without their “goons”?

“I see. You’re Corsican, Zette?”

He flashed his gold teeth. “At one time we ran the quartier. The golden days. Pepe le grand was rubbed out right in front of my place, and Ange Testo ran the big brasserie on Place Pigalle. It was a wehrmachetspeiselokal, German soldiers’ canteen, during the war. Those bathrooms were a mess, all graffitied with swastikas, things you don’t want to know. In the end Ange just wallpapered it over.” He shrugged. “We Corse had a code of honor, still do. But now, I’m the only one left.”

She nodded and drank her wine. Code of honor? More like the code of silence. Talk and one talked no more.

She envisioned the postwar days of zazous wearing big zoot suits and flashing money, the jazz clubs and strip bars, when the Moulin Rouge was considered high class.

“Zette, tell me about the last job Jacques did for you.”

“Like I said, now and then he did favors for me.”

“Bon. What favor did he do for you?”

“Like I said, some escorting.”

Getting a Corsican to talk was hard work.

A broad-shouldered young man wearing a leather jacket, wool cap low over his forehead, and jangling what sounded like coins in his pocket, entered. Zette glanced up. Instead of telling him the bar was closed, as Aimee expected, he nodded at the young man who’d gone over to a game machine. If she hadn’t been studying Zette in the mirror behind the bar she would have missed what came next. The flick of his wrist under the counter, the slight whirring sound, and the brighter red glare of the game machine reflected in the mirror.

And then she knew! It was a fixed machine, regulated by a switch under the counter! Pigalle and Montmartre bars had once been notorious for them. Placed among the legitimate game machines, one, resembling all the others, would be rigged. Inside was a device, a Sicilian specialty. The owner kept a tab of wins and losses and paid out or collected. If the player didn’t honor his tab, he never played the machines in Montmartre, or anywhere, again.

“Look, Mademoiselle, I’m busy. Time for me to open up. Jacques, rest his soul, hadn’t done a favor for me in months.”

He wanted her to leave so he could carry on with his crooked machine unobserved.

She gave him a look, understanding in her eyes. “But I want to find Jacques’s killer. If you’re his friend, you’d want to help me.”

“Mademoiselle, stick to your own concerns.”

She resented the brush-off. “I’m not interested in your business here. The rigged machines.” She gave a pointed look at his hands resting on the glass-ringed counter. A look to say she held something over him now. Or was he protected by the police, as he’d implied? Did they let him operate in return for information? Did he inform? That could be messy. But she didn’t care. There had to be something beneath the surface here. And it might have gotten Jacques murdered and backfired on Laure.

She tried a hunch. “Jacques owed money, didn’t he? To you, and he had to work it off. Repay you with your favors to your clients.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zette said. He took the wine bottle, set it back on the shelf, put the wineglasses in the sink, and grabbed a towel.

“I think you do,” she said. She paused. The pings of the game machine filled the empty bar. Rows of cherries and bananas whirled behind the young man’s shoulder. “And who might have wanted him dead.”

“That’s a big leap,” Zette said, his voice even. Unconcerned. “And here I thought you were being friendly, buying me a drink.”

He must be protected. Well protected. Maybe he paid off the Commissariat big time for his crooked machines. She gripped her bag. A new thought occurred to her. Had he been paying off Jacques?

“Help me here, Zette,” she said, in a conciliatory voice. “Why do you think Jacques was killed?”

“I have no idea.”

He swiped the towel across the counter, rubbing the water rings into blurred spots on the zinc. Try some cleanser, she wanted to say.

Instead she leaned forward, planting her elbows on the counter. “Your turf’s Montmartre. Don’t tell me ideas aren’t going through your mind about who had a reason to off Jacques. Wasn’t this his beat, his turf, too?”

Several men walked in through the door. Some wore windbreakers or tracksuits. Dark, hollow eyed, the kind of men who hung around Pigalle Metro station, picking up odd jobs, helping movers or unloading trucks. Not legal, but better than begging. Some did that, too. A sinking feeling came over her as she realized that all the money they earned ended up in Zette’s machines.

Annoyance shone in Zette’s eyes. Good. If she badgered him enough he’d give her something to get her to leave.

She put her bag on the counter, careful to avoid the wet spots, to show Zette she wouldn’t budge until he talked. “Who might have killed him, Zette?”

He didn’t like that, she could tell. Silently, he glanced at his watch, then looked out the fogged-up window.

“I’ve got time for a nice long conversation,” she said. “I can wait.”

Zette leaned forward. “You’ve heard of the vendetta?” he said, his voice lowered.

Surprised, Aimee nodded.

“Vendetta?” she repeated, in a loud voice.

That bothered Zette and she felt the eyes of the men on her back. “Jacques wasn’t Corsican—”

“His mother was. That’s why I helped him. Now, if you don’t mind, Mademoiselle, I’ll escort you to the door.”

OUT IN windswept Place Pigalle, she stared at the dry fountain. All but the Saint Sulpice and Jardin du Luxembourg fountains were kept dry in winter to avoid freezing. Gambling, a vendetta? She knew a large