AL05 - Murder in Clichy

out from the boucherie in the dim evening dusk.

“Call the police,” she yelled.

But the old woman shut the door.

The rumble and clack of a train below reminded her that rue Legendre bridged the rail lines. A black Peugeot screeched to a halt behind them. Regnier and Blondel loomed on the pavement.

Blocked in both directions. And a prime shooting target. Gassot stood immobile, like a frightened deer in the car headlights. They had to take advantage of the confusion.

“I hope you can climb, Gassot,” she said. She grabbed him by the shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“Hurry. Metal criss-cross beams support these railway bridges.” At least they did under the Pont Neuf outside her window. She prayed this bridge had them, too.

Chunks of concrete flew as bullets hit the ledge. She moved her hands, her toes reaching for footholds on the metal struts, trying not to look down and see the huge drop beneath them.

Gray-green criss-cross beams ran below. Dizzied, she held tight to the faded green steel span. Electric freight trains with yellow lighted windows clattered below on the dark, glistening metal tracks. A narrow gray-ribbed walkway for workmen ran parallel underneath, spanning the rail lines.

“Now, Gassot . . . here!” she said, reaching with her legs and finding solid metal.

And somehow he did it. Landed next to her on the narrow walkway.

“Keep moving, Gassot, we can make it. It’s not far.” She pointed to a ladder built into the stone side wall. At least they could climb it instead of getting picked off like flies.

Grit flaked off the steel girders as bullets peppered the steel, pinging and sparking.

Bad idea.

“Get down, Gassot.”

And then her feet slid and she tripped on metal rebar scraps. Airborne, she grabbed the rusted railing and fell against it. Rebar pieces sailed past her. She grabbed one before it fell and crouched down, pulling out her cell phone, and punched in the number.

“Allo. Pleyet! We’re under the rail bridge on rue Legendre,” she shouted, hunching down.

“Sightseeing?”

“Regnier’s men are shooting at us. Isn’t Interpol interested in the jade?”

More shots pinged on steel and Gassot fell, knocking her phone into the air. Merde!

The snub nose of a pistol edged around a metal girder. And then she saw a blue-sleeved arm. She lifted the sharp, cold rebar piece and swung with all her might. Only air. She tried again, this time hitting something solid. Heard a yell muffled by the sound of clacking train wheels. She pulled it back. Swung again.

A hand with a pistol appeared in front of her face. She banged the rebar into the knuckles. Heard a clanging and the crunch of flesh.

And then Blondel whipped past her, flapping his arms like a bird. The wind took his scream. She fell back against the girder. When she looked down, the blue of his jacket lay sprawled on the roof of a freight car rumbling into the night.

She grabbed Gassot, pulled him toward the ladder in the stone wall a few steps away. Sweat ran down between her shoulders.

“Climb, Gassot,” she said, pushing him up.

“My leg. . . .”

“You can do it.”

Gassot stopped. Shuddered.

She looked up to see Regnier straddling the ladder. And Gassot crumpled back on her, falling onto the narrow walkway.

She clutched the metal cross strut, rusted flakes covering her hands.

“We’re worth more to you alive, Regnier,” she shouted.

A stinging kick at her jaw. But she held on, grabbed at some twisted wires hanging down. Regnier had one leg on top of Gassot’s head. “So where is it?”

She clenched her fist around the flashlight in her bag. “I’ll take you there.”

“Look at me when you talk,” Regnier yelled.

She felt her collar grabbed and then her shoulders pulled. Her feet slipped and she hung suspended, her legs dangling. Her arms flailed in the cold air.

“Hurry up, or I drop you.”

She tried to look up but her coat tore with a loud rip. She saw the glistening wet tracks below her twisting boots. Her father’s face flashed in front of her, a black and white image of her mother, the little apartment with a blue table they’d once lived in.

Her hands struck a steel girder and she grabbed. Her fingers slipped, and she grabbed again. Caught the thick edged steel. Her heel struck the stone wall and slid. She swung back, hit the wall again with her foot, and pushed off.

And then Regnier let go. Pounding and yelling sounded above her. Then a scream and a sickening thud from below.

Her right leg reached the girder and she caught her heel in a hole. She grabbed higher with her other arm, finding the steel beam, and scrambling with the other leg, she pulled herself up.

“Gassot . . . Gassot?” No answer. She kept reaching and climbing. The train whistle screeched below.

And when her shaking hand couldn’t hold the metal grid columns anymore, she realized that now sirens were wailing overhead. And Gassot was singing. Something in Vietnamese.

She peered over the steel girder. Caught her breath. Regnier lay sprawled below on the train tracks. And then a train flashed by. Gassot leaned over. She was afraid he was about to jump.

“Gassot, it’s all right,” she said, rubbing his shoulder. “Help me. We’ve got to recover the jade.”

“I should never have touched it,” he said.

“YOU TOOK your time, Pleyet,” Aimee told him.

“I try to keep a low profile,” he said, shielding his face from the photographers on rue Legendre. The whirr and flashes of photographer’s lights shot off like fireworks until the flics shooed them away. Blue lights from the police cars and ambulances played kaleidoscopically over the balconied buildings overlooking the train lines. Jacky, handcuffed, spit in Aimee’s direction as he was escorted into a police van.

“Nice view,” Pleyet said, pointing to the rail line walls. One read PARIS in white letters on the blackened stone.

“There’s a better one,” she said. “In the Parc Monceau. Get us out of here.”

“I’d like to, but the flics want to question you. . . .”

“Use your clout, Pleyet,” she interrupted. “Don’t international oil rights and looted art take precedence? Call headquarters in Lyon, make your buddies smooth this over. Or it will be too late. I know where the jade is.”

SHE HELPED Gassot into Pleyet’s blue Renault, borrowed Pleyet’s phone, and called Rene.

“What did you find, Rene?”

“Interesting stuff, Aimee,” said Rene. “The oil bid the French Ministry made contains a unique offer.”

“The jade figures?”

Aimee saw Gassot’s hand stiffen.

“Bingo. But here’s what’s even more interesting. The Chinese bid includes it, too.”

Whoever had the jade would claim the oil rights by virtue of patrimony. Just as Derek Lau had told her in his restaurant. The ancient jade disks, older than the animal figures, were the guarantee of legitimacy for the claimant.

“You have proof in written form?” she asked.

“It’s all printed out in the e-mails and ministry documents. The jade’s supposed to be returned by the Ministry of Interior to the Vietnamese people in a munificent gesture in consideration for oil rights. The vast untapped