AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

“For everyone.” Felix spread his arms in a what-can-you-do gesture. “We even run them on the cleaning staff. Go figure.”

Had he found out about his involvement with Marie-Dominique?

“This Armata Corsa group.”

“I’m not a Separatist, Felix,” Lucien interrupted. If anything, he was a lover, not a fighter. “Politics isn’t my interest.”

“Then how do you explain your membership?”

Had Marie-Dominique told him, after all? Or was it in some police file? He had to allay Felix’s suspicions.

“The truth? Years ago, in drunken camaraderie with my friends, I joined. We went to one meeting. Total.”

Felix shifted; his elongated shadow in the light of the tall green metal lampadaire stretched across the street.

“Marie-Dominique said you had no papers,” Felix said. “Why didn’t you tell me? And then you disappeared from my house when the police came.”

“I have a carte d’identite, but I forgot it. I wanted to explain but with the flics . . . you know how they treat Corsicans, Felix.” He took a deep breath. “Every time Separatists make the headlines, the flics beef up security and round up types like me on the street to make themselves look efficient.” He paused; Felix lived in another stratosphere. Could he have any idea? “This has nothing to do with me. The bombings, the vendetta, all that violence, that’s why I left Corsica.”

Part of the reason. The other part being his picture, among others, plastered on every telephone pole and peeling stucco cafe wall on the island.

Felix’s brow furrowed. “A detective asked about you.”

Lucien controlled a shudder. The flics outside Felix’s gate and now a detective. The same one snooping at the vegetable shop next door to Strago?

“That makes no sense.”

“Innocent people don’t run away.”

“You lead a protected life, Felix,” Lucien said.

Felix shook his head, put his arm around Lucien’s shoulders, and they walked down the steep street. “Not always, Lucien. I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, you know that saying, eh?”

Illegitimate.

“We lived in one room. Everything I have now, I worked for.”

“My songs are all I have,” Lucien said. “You have my word, trust me.”

In Felix’s study he signed the contract, signed away his rights to his songs, and prayed he’d done the right thing. The Corsican saying, “Bad things never happen alone,” echoed in his mind. Down the road of life, he’d pay for it. One always paid.

He peered outside Felix’s gate. No flics. At least he had the contract. Halfway up the dark stairs to Place des Abbesses he heard a snatch of song, low and echoing off the dripping stone walls. He stopped. Listened. A woman’s voice from somewhere in a song about the fragrant maquis smells drifting across a baby’s cradle.

Wednesday Morning

“ YOU’RE LOOKING FOR ZETTE? ” said the blonde woman to Aimee in the rue Houdon bar. She shook her lacquered blonde bouffant hairdo. “Not here. His day off.”

A pity. Aimee had counted on probing and getting answers. Next, dropping off the computer files she’d copied at Maitre Delambre’s office, and then visiting Laure.

“Where can I find him?”

“Sleeping it off,” the blonde woman said, tying an apron around her waist, about to turn on the vacuum cleaner.

“And that would be where?”

The woman stared. “You were here the other day.”

Aimee nodded; she had to dispel the woman’s suspicion. “Zette’s an old colleague of my godfather’s,” she said, hoping it sounded plausible. “I wanted to show him a photo.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. She switched on the vacuum. It wheezed as it sucked up grit from the floor. “Come back tomorrow.”

Aimee peered at the counter, which bore wet ring marks and a filled ashtray. Below the counter sat a pile of stapled invoices addressed to Z. Cavalotti. She couldn’t read the rest.

“Does he work from home?”

The blonde woman’s mouth tightened in a thin smile.

“In a manner of speaking, eh. I think he does the accounts at his place,” she said, turning to the vacuum cleaner. “If that’s all . . .”

“I’ll come back, merci.”

Aimee left, pulled her coat tighter, and sidestepped across the slush. Five minutes later she’d found a Z. Cavalotti in the phone book, listed on rue Ronsard. Time to pay a visit chez Zette.

She climbed up the street, made a right downhill, then another right, and a left into Place Charles Dullin. Camion-nettes, small delivery trucks, their doors open, lined the bare-branched, tree-filled square. Posters advertised a current adaptation of Racine’s Phedre at the nineteenth- century theatre at the rear of the square. Phedre played in Paris all the time, either a classical performance or an avant-garde one like this ver- sion, with an African tribal motif. The timeless Greek tragedy of a woman in love with her stepson still filled the seats.

Beyond the iron-and-glass-roofed Marche Saint Pierre, a stone-and-brick wall bordered a Neolithic mound and wound its way upward. She climbed the steep flight of stairs with double rails in the middle, so typical of Montmartre, and found Zette’s address, a white stone building tilting into the hill like so many others. His, unlike them, however, had weeds in the concrete cracks, worn stucco walls, and peeling pale blue shutters.

The wooden front door lay open to a courtyard with ivy-covered walls. She peered at the mailboxes, found the name Zette Cavalotti, and trudged up a spiral staircase to the first floor. She stopped at a warped wooden landing that creaked beneath her feet; before the door was a woven mat and a sign CHAT LUNA-TIQUE! So, Zette had a crazy cat. She knocked on the door and it opened. Her hand paused in midair.

“Monsier Zette?”

No answer. Apprehensive, she stepped inside the sparse, chilly apartment. It was neat and orderly. She shivered at the freezing blast from the open window. Framed newspaper articles and photos lined the walls showing Zette, “The Corsican Magnifico,” defeating Terrance, “The Blue-Eyed Mad Moroccan,” for the championship. He’d had quite a career. Tracksuits and sweatshirts were hung from nails in the wall around the otherwise neat room. Hadn’t Zette heard of hangers or armoires? A hot plate sat on a thin wooden counter next to bottles of mineral water.

“Allo?”

No answer. Where was he?

A poster of “Corsica, Isle of Beauty” hung over the sofa, which he used for a bed, she figured from the piled blankets.

She poked around. Just the remnants of a glory-filled boxing career long over. A late-model Moulinex washing machine hummed. A matchstick was wedged into the wash-cycle panel. Was that the only way it worked? Judging by the heat radiating from the washer, it had been on for hours. A plastic basket with dirty sweats and an empty lemon-scented Ariel detergent box lay on top of a table together with bottles and vitamins, protein powder. Had he run out to buy laundry detergent and left the door open?

She leaned against the machine to wait for him. Tapped her heeled boots on the wooden floor. She heard a faint meow, noticed a closed door.

“Monsieur Zette?”

The meowing grew louder. She knocked. Waited, then opened it. A small room with barbells and weights