AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

“Make it up to me, eh? Stop by my home and sign the contract before you go to the theatre. Kouros, from SOUNDWERX, will come to hear your show tonight.”

LUCIEN DESCENDED the ice-crusted staircase from Place des Abbesses with eager steps on his way to sign Felix’s contract. He pulled his collar up against the wind and that’s when he saw the flic on the corner of rue Veron. The flare of a match illuminated the face of the man he’d seen questioning partygoers last night. The flic was only a few feet away. Lucien ducked into a doorway. Above him, a carved plaque stated, “1872, site of the first free theatre” and he realized he stood under a nude reclining female reading a book sculpted in the stone portal.

“No sign of him. Not yet,” the flic said into his phone. “Copy me on the bomb alert.”

Were they looking for him? Some mecs, a detective, and now the flics? When a couple passed arm in arm under the globed light, he hurried behind them back up the steps. At Place des Abbesses, outside a bookshop, he saw the headlines in France Soir: CORSICAN BOMB THREATS—ARMATA CORSA SEPARATIST RING ROUNDED UP.

Again?

He bought a paper and scanned the article. “Reports of bombing threats in Ajaccio and on the French mainland have sparked heightened security by the DPJ. Several Paris targets have been named by the Armata Corsa. . . .”

He shuddered. “Find and round up the Corsicans” time. If he signed the contract, would it give him credibility? But he couldn’t tell Felix his problems, at least until he in turn had signed. He’d avoid Marie-Dominique, sure she would do the same, unable to face her disdain or his feelings for her. At a phone cabin, he inserted a calling card with ten francs left on it. Felix’s answering machine responded.

“Felix, something’s come up. I’m sorry but please meet me at the theatre with the contract” was the message he left.

Lucien hurried into the dusk, avoiding the green street sweepers’ spray on the cobbles.

Tuesday Afternoon

RENE SHIFTED ON THE wet cobblestones. Thank God he’d worn his thermal underwear and several layers under the painter’s smock. So far he’d seen no prostitute or anyone else in or around the building.

He shouldn’t have followed through on his big idea. What a joke. He’d just wasted an afternoon.

Had he really believed he could pull this off? Feeling sheepish, he’d hidden his online PI class from Aimee. If he kept at it, in a year or more he’d have enough credits to earn a PI license. The difficulty had been the undercover work required for field research credit. This had seemed to be a golden opportunity.

But a freezing afternoon spent with no result . . . . Delusional, that’s what he was. No one his size could do undercover surveillance. After all this effort, it rankled. He’d worked a deal with an acting troupe, rented a costume—all in all a costly project just so he could stand outside in the cold. He felt like an idiot, but without the costume to impersonate Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the crippled artist famous for sketching Montmartre nightlife, he’d never have fit into the neighborhood.

One of the actors pumped an accordion, his fingers racing over the keys. A tall thin woman with bright red hair piled on her head 1890s style, black skirt and ruffled pantaloons a la Jane Avril from a Moulin Rouge poster, did the cancan on the slick pavement. A cluster of small schoolchildren divided their attention between her and Rene. Le vieux Paris! Something they’d heard of in between bouts of video games. Most stole glances at the fun fair carousel being set up near the Metro exit.

A pale-faced boy close to Rene’s height nudged him. “Can I see?”

Rene showed him a prepared pastel, a print of one Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had done while studying in an atelier nearby. Now the atelier was part bathroom-fixture warehouse and part dance studio.

He’d heard the teacher identify the group. They were from the local ecole primaire around the corner and he figured the boy must live nearby. This was Rene’s first chance to question someone and it turned out to be a little poulbot, a pint-sized Montmartrois with too-short jacket sleeves revealing a dirty shirt beneath.

“You live on the square?” Rene asked.

The boy shook his head. “Over there.” He pointed to a building down the steps from the Abbesses. “But we’ve lived lots of places.”

Rene’s interest heightened. Establish rapport, wasn’t that what the detective manuals said? “You mean the building with scaffolding?”

The building where Jacques had been shot.

“Across the street, on the top floor,” the boy said. “I pull my book bag up by a rope.”

Rene controlled his excitement.

“I move a lot, too,” said Rene. Toulouse-Lautrec had lived all over Montmartre, his landlords kicking him out when he’d been too drunk to pay his rent bill.

From a wax-paper bag in his pocket, Rene pulled a villageoise, Montmartre’s brioche-type specialty. The small boy sniffed and looked with longing at what Rene held.

“Like one?”

“We’re not supposed to accept food from strangers,” he said.

“Of course, but I’m Toulouse-Lautrec.” Rene winked. “You know me, eh?”

The boy nodded. Rene put the warm pastry bag in the boy’s cold hands.

“Voila.” Rene nodded. “Share them with friends.”

The boy shook his head. “We haven’t been there long. But I know the concierge; I help him with jobs.”

A loner? Rene noticed now the boy kept apart from the others crowding around the teacher.

“Jobs, like what?”

“I carried his hammer when he fixed the gutter.”

The gutter bordering the roof? Rene remembered the layout Aimee had described. Had the boy seen something?

“So your apartment looks out onto the roof with the scaffolding?”

The boy nodded.

“Dangerous, non. Climbing at that height for a little boy!”

“Easy,” he said. “Maman says I climb like a monkey.”

“Even for someone with short legs, like me?”

The boy’s eyes sparkled for the first time. “You can see everything from up there. The roofs, the Tour Eiffel, even people cooking and getting undressed!”

A lonely, mischievous boy who watched life from the rooftop? Rene thought fast.

“But you couldn’t have seen those men on the roof with the scaffolding last night. You must have been in bed.”

“I go to bed when I want!” The boy pointed again to the pastel Rene held. “She looks sad,” he said, his mouth full. “Like Maman looks,” he went on, brushing his hair from his eyes. He had no gloves.

Rene looked for the teacher. She stood surrounded by a group of bundled-up children, explaining how the accordion music came from ivory keys and a sound box.

“What happened to your legs? Why didn’t they grow?” The boy licked the crumbs from his chapped lips.

Rene had asked the same question when he’d realized he’d never grow like other children and would always have to reach up for door handles, get on his tiptoes to grasp a boiling kettle, hike himself up to sit on a chair from which his legs always dangled.

“When I was young, something happened and my legs never caught up with my body,” Rene said.

“Sometimes things shouldn’t catch up, my maman says, or we’d be in the street.”

Rene wanted to steer this conversation back to the roof. But he didn’t feel much like a detective, questioning a little boy who looked as though he wore the clothes he’d slept in. Still, he had to try.

“So you didn’t see what happened last night, you were asleep.”

“Mais non, I heard a shot, saw a flash like on the tele. Then another flash. Maman got mad, said I shouldn’t talk about it.”