AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

butter if Mesard was willing to invoke the Security Services Protective Act on her behalf.

Could she work with people who had links to the surveillance that had killed her father? Once she got involved with them, there would be no walking out. On the other hand, connections meant everything, and the closer she edged to the secret world, the more opportunities existed to find out about her father’s contract with the RG, and why he had died.

And maybe it would explain why Jacques was killed, too.

Doing business with the devil she knew seemed better than doing it with the one she couldn’t identify. And it was the only way she’d get Laure off. She nodded.

“Good,” Edith Mesard said, as if it was all in a busy morning’s work. “Monsieur Jubert will give you the details.”

Her heels clicked across the floor and the door shut behind her with a whoosh of cold air.

“Sit down, Mademoiselle,” Ludovic Jubert said. “I know you’re quick so this won’t take long.”

She sat down in the wingback chair, crossed her legs, and prayed she could do this.

“Before we start I need to know about the report,” she said.

“Report, Mademoiselle?” Jubert raised a thick white eyebrow.

She pulled out the photo of the four of them—Morbier, Georges Rousseau, her father, and Jubert—on the steps by Zette’s place and set it on the windowsill. The snow was still falling outside, like scattered feathers.

“Aaah, I had a flat stomach then,” Jubert said.

“I think you know what I want,” she said.

“I am clueless, Mademoiselle. Mind if I smoke?” he asked, as if they were in a cafe instead of La Proc’s office.

She pulled a Nicorette patch from her bag, then threw it back in. “Not if you offer me one.”

He handed her a pack of filtered Murati Ambassador, a Swiss brand. She took one and he lit it with a silver lighter. She inhaled, and the smooth kick slid to the back of her throat.

“Now try not to think of this as the dentist’s chair, Mademoiselle,” he said. “Enjoy this little guilty pleasure and let’s get started.”

“You’ll have my full cooperation,” she said, leaning back and savoring the Murati. “But first I need to know if you, or all of you, and my father were involved with a gambling scam in Montmartre. One Georges Rousseau took credit for stopping it though it’s still going on in Zette’s bar. And all over the quartier, I imagine.”

“That’s what you’re worried about? This secret?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

“Tell me and it will go no further than this room.”

His gray eyes flickered as he weighed his answer.

“Corruption’s a serious charge,” he said.

“I don’t believe Papa was involved in a cover-up of corruption. I think you were and saddled him with your crime. You stigmatized the rest of his life.”

“Your mother did that, Mademoiselle,” Ludovic Jubert said without missing a beat. “She tainted his career prospects.”

Her American mother who had left them and joined a group of radicals in the seventies. “That’s your opinion.” She took a drag to cover the jolt Jubert’s words had given her.

“Jean-Claude paid for that many times over,” he said, looking out the window. “A good flic. He had a nose, as they say, for the odor of crime. No getting past that. And I see you do, too.” He sighed. “Georges Rousseau liked the odor. He didn’t mind running informers and giving them too much leeway.”

“Are you saying Georges Rousseau was the corrupt one? He died a decorated—”

“And valorous commissaire,” Ludovic Jubert interrupted.

“We had to cover for him. He’d compromised too much in Montmartre.”

Was that what Morbier was hiding? Why did Laure think it was Aimee’s father who was implicated?

“Some of Rousseau’s informers played by the rules,” Jubert continued. “Still do. We turn a blind eye to their little operations and they reciprocate with information on more serious matters. Matters affecting national security. All flics depend on informers; we wouldn’t get far without insider information.” He ground out his cigarette, impatient. “But you know this. You know how the system operates.”

She’d been raised on it. Her father hated it and left to join her grandfather at Leduc Detective. One doesn’t touch pitch, he’d said, without being blackened.

“Then you’re saying Georges Rousseau took bribes and became corrupt,” she said, “but was decorated and promoted because his network of informers was needed? Then why does Laure believe my father was corrupt and the proof’s in a report?”

“Use your imagination,” he said.

“You’re implying Laure’s father fingered mine, shifted his own guilt onto my father?”

“Close.”

“Where’s the police file?”

“The RG deep-froze most of them.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Mademoiselle, it’s in your interest to do so.” He stood. “Still the little firebrand, I see,” he said. “Daddy’s little girl. Your father wanted a boy, you know.”

Bastard! That stung. How would he know?

She clutched the edge of the chair, white knuckled. She wouldn’t let him see how his words had rocked her. She recalled Laure’s mumblings and Morbier’s comments scrawled on the newspaper.

“This all ties to the investigation of Corsican Separatists six years ago, doesn’t it? The question of where they were getting arms. That’s the secret report. My father worked on it, didn’t he? With you?”

Ludovic Jubert stabbed out his cigarette and nodded.

“Your father always said you were sharp,” he said.

“Did this involve the explosion in Place Vendome that killed him?”

“Not at all. It is as I told you. Let’s move to the present, shall we?” He opened a drawer in the desk and took out a file.

“We believe this man’s running a Separatist network in Montmartre. We count on you to find him.”

He handed it to her. “Look inside. He’s a Corsican terrorist, a member of the Armata Corsa, responsible for bomb threats to the Mairie and for holdups using the arms that were stolen six years ago.”

“Eastern European arms—?”

“Taken from Croatia, stockpiled by our military in Solenzara, at least until they disappeared six years ago. This past year they’ve been turning up in Paris with disturbing regularity.”

“How do you know this?”

“We have big ears, Mademoiselle.”

Big Ears . . . Frenchelon?

She opened the file. Lucien Sarti’s image stared back at her.

Friday Morning

LAURE SAT UP IN the hospital bed, the computer keypad propped lecternlike on her hospital tray table. A hospital phone stood on the night table next to the violets Aimee had brought.

“Tres bon, wonderful progress, the commissaire’s so pleased you can use this special equipment,” said the young therapist, beaming at her. “Each time you tap a key, I copy down a letter. So far, you’ve said, ‘I remember’ and what looks like a name and phone number, oui?”

Laure blinked. If only she would stop running off at the mouth and hurry up. Why didn’t this saccharine-voiced woman call Aimee?

“I’ll inform the officer on duty and we’ll take it from there.” She patted Laure’s arm. “He wants to hear right away about anything you know that may help with their investigation.” Laure blinked twice for no.

She slid her finger onto the letters n . . . o . . . w.