AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Mirage-4, the jet that carried an atomic bomb.

Her mind raced into high gear. She took her notebook and wrote down what she knew so far. Zoe Tardou had recognized a man on the roof speaking Corsican about the planets and streams, before Jacques, who was half- Corsican, was murdered. Jacques had an affiliation with Zette, the murdered Corsican bar owner. Laure’s hands had borne traces of gunpowder residue with a high tin content. And she’d found a bullet that she hoped would match the tin content of the residue on Laure’s hands. Plans of a foiled plot on the Mairie in the eighteenth had been found near the place where Jacques was murdered.

Nothing fit! And yet it reeked, worse than sour milk. Had Jacques enmeshed Laure, his unknowing partner, with a gang of Corsican Separatists? If only Laure were to regain consciousness. But what answers would she have if she did?

The newspaper article indicated that a Corsican Separatist cell was operating in Montmartre. She pulled the hairbrush, containing a minirecorder in the handle, from her bag. One of Rene’s toys; he loved gadgets.

Had it recorded?

She took a toothpick from the ceramic holder standing on the white paper covering the table and stuck it in the rewind pinhole: a low whirr. Then she stuck the toothpick in Play. Zoe Tardou’s voice mingled with the shouts of the Fussbol players. Aimee rewound and replayed the conversation: “stream . . . searching,” the names of the planets. What did it mean?

She’d copied it all in her notebook by the time her croque-monsieur arrived, a frugal bistro invention. Day-old bread was dipped in egg, fried with a slice of ham, melted cheese, and bechamel sauce, a filling meal on a winter day. She set her map of Zoe Tardou’s building and the courtyard and scaffolding and rooftop of Paul’s on the paper tablecloth. She added in the Dumpster where Yann Marant had found the diagram.

Her cell phone rang.

“Allo?”

“That mec passed by me,” Cloclo said. “Twenty minutes ago.”

Too late. Aimee hadn’t seen her arrive.

“Where are you, Cloclo? I don’t see you on the street.”

“House call for an old client,” she said. “I’m in Goutte d’Or. On rue Custine where it meets rue Doudeauville.”

Or, as one politican commented, “where the bourgeois bohemian bobos met the boubous, colorful African immigrants’ robes.”

“So he’s gone!”

“Not if his kabob’s still grilling,” she said. “He went into Kabob Afrique. There’s a big line trailing out onto the street.”

“Cloclo, you’re being watched,” Aimee said.

“Men pay me for that, you know.”

“I’m serious. Be careful. Work another beat for a few days.”

“Vraiment?” Aimee heard a throaty laugh. “I could use some sun. Cannes, Menton, or do you suggest Cap Ferrat?”

“Can you describe the guy?” She threw some francs onto the table.

Just then the man who’d been ogling her walked over and took Aimee by the elbow.

“Care for a drink?” he asked. “I’m partial to big eyes and long legs.”

She knew his type; any encouragement and he’d be all over her like a rash.

“Desolee, I feel the same,” she smiled. “But I’m partial to a brain between the ears.”

She grabbed her coat.

“Oooh, letting the skirt get away?” one of his friends sniggered as she left the cafe.

She ran, the phone to her ear, into the wet street.

“Like a . . . ,” Cloclo said, her voice wavering, “. . . that lizard that changes color.”

A chameleon changed to fit its background, she thought.

“Why do you say he’s a chameleon, Cloclo?”

“. . . black hair, sideburns today, leather jacket . . .”

“Careful, Cloclo, I mean it . . .”

The line went dead.

At least Cloclo was working somewhere else now and she had given Aimee a description. She ran down the Metro stairs, slid in her pass, and joined an older woman reading Le Figaro, waiting for the train. If she made a quick train connection she might get to the kabob place in time.

She changed lines once and exited from Chateau Rouge station in seven minutes.

Under a weak setting sun filtering through a break in the clouds, she saw awning-covered stands selling all types of bananas: short, thick, green, yellow, red, as well as stubby plantains. Men wearing long djellabas stood by upturned cardboard boxes on which tapes and “used” VCRs were displayed for sale. Laundry flapped, hanging from chipped metal balcony railings above, suspended from fissured buildings. As she walked by, women in colorful boubous shouted “Iso, iso,” hawking barbecued corn in plastic bags. Several discount travel shops advertised flights—Paris- Mali, for two thousand francs—on hand-lettered signs.

The quartier reminded her of an Arab medina with its tangle of threadlike alleys, the perfume of oranges, and the cries of hawkers everywhere. She stood in the Goutte d’Or, “the golden drop” on the other side of Montmartre, named for the vineyards that once covered the slope. North African soldiers recruited for the First World War had found cheap lodgings here overlooking the Gare du Nord train tracks, after 1918. And the tradition continued; it was still cheap and even more rundown, teeming with Africans and Arabs and other segments of the “third world” according to conservative rightists and the encroaching bobos.

Aimee scanned the street and spied Kabob Afrique midblock.

Thursday evening

LUCIEN PUSHED OPEN THE corrugated metal siding that had been nailed over the warehouse door, slid out, and hitched the music case onto his back.

Three years in Paris and he had achieved nothing.

Kouros, he figured, had pulled out of the recording deal at the hint that he might be connected to terrorists. And now, instead of a SOUNDWERX contract, the law was after him and, almost worse, a fellow Corse had tried to frame him as a terrorist.

In the damp street, a line of customers trailed out of the door of the kabob place. He noticed a jean-jacketed, spiky-haired woman peering into a shop window with her back to him. Her long black-stockinged legs ended in stiletto heels.

He might as well call the Chatelet ethnic music organizer and make an appointment. Since his DJ jobs were in alternative clubs the flics didn’t police, he’d survive.

He passed Kabob Afrique, its faded green shutters latched open. Right now, he’d prefer a canastrelli biscuit, the traditional late-afternoon Corsican treat, with wine. And to be near sun-drenched, rose-yellow stone houses, basking in the last copper rays of the sun. Instead, he stood in a densely packed lane of silvery gray nineteenth-century buildings, in the wan wintry light.

The woman wearing the jean jacket was asking him something.

“Pardon, Monsieur . . .” Her bag dropped on the cobblestones in front of him.

He bent down to retrieve it at the same time she did. They knocked heads as their hands touched. “My fault, sorry,” she said.

Her flushed cheeks, huge eyes, and striking face put him off balance. He’d forgotten other women, stunning women, existed.

And then he saw fear in her eyes. She clutched her bag, stood, and retreated. She edged around the street corner into a narrow lane, getting away.

Women! He readjusted his cetera case. Then he glanced down the lane. He was