Murder in Clichy (11 page)

Thursday Morning

AIMÉE WOKE AT 6 A.M. to darkness, her shoulders and legs stiff.

Twelve hours had passed since the first kidnappers’ call. She had to get to work. Morbier snored in his back bedroom. Sophie lay asleep, after a night of twisting and turning on the couch. But she had no fever, hadn’t thrown up.

Aimée wrote “Call me when you wake up” on a graph-lined piece of paper and put it on Morbier’s kitchen table.

She swallowed her pills with an espresso at the corner café on Morbier’s street and made it to her apartment, changed into a black leather skirt and long pullover. She walked an eager Miles Davis on the fog-lined quai, then dropped him at the groomers’ for a much-needed trim.

Aimée tried Gassot’s number again but it rang and rang. Frustrated, she wanted to beat her head against the stone wall. So far, she was spinning her wheels in the sand.

On her calendar the day was circled in red . . . payday. Time for René’s paycheck. All over France, veterans and retirees collected their pensions. Most banked at their post office accounts.

That’s where Gassot would be! Too bad her bike had been stolen. She jumped on the Number 74 bus to Clichy, passing old ladies walking their
chichiteux
dogs in front of bourgeois gray Haussmann buildings.

Aimée knew the Clichy area, boasting bigger apartments, was about to become the next “in” place. It was becoming sprinkled with avant-garde boutiques whose back windows overlooked the trainyard, with newcomers who could ignore that water wasn’t connected to the main around the clock, and the fact the
quartier
had been “in” once before, then out. Far, far out.

Here Degas and Zola had argued at Café Guerbois, over Zola’s infamous article on the Salon that had refused Manet’s painting of Nana, a courtesan. Now the café was a Bata shoe store.

The rail lines, a symbol of modernity and access to the lush countryside for the Impressionists, were now grimy and soot-encrusted and the countryside better known for cinderblock
HLM
low-rent council housing. Place de Clichy’s former 1930s showcase Gaumont cinema had become the 1970s do-it-yourself Castorama hardware store.

Aimée left the bus. Her shoulders slumped when she saw the line at the post office trailing out the door. How could she find one particular veteran in a sea of old faces?

She took a black marker and on an envelope wrote “Hervé GASSOT,
anciens combattants,
” as she’d seen done at the airport.

On her third trip walking the line, an old woman tugged at her sleeve. “What’s he done?” she asked.

Aimée noted the sixtyish woman’s white hair held in place by a hairband, the tailored winter-white wool coat with dirty, too short sleeves, scuffed 70s Courrèges patent leather ankle boots.

“Nothing yet,” Aimée said. “Can you help me?”

The woman shrugged and looked away.

“Feel like a coffee?” Aimée asked.

“
Un demi’s
more my style,” she said.

“
Bon
,” said Aimée. “Let’s go. My treat.”

They ended up across the street in a working class café facing Avenue de Saint Ouen. Aimée tapped her chipped nails on the zinc counter as the old woman knocked back a beer and then another.

“Alors,
Madame, have you seen Hervé Gassot?”

The green jockeys’ jerseys flashed on the mounted
télé
above the bar. Besides them, the espresso machine whined as it steamed milk and a line of drab raincoated commuters waited to purchase the November Carte Orange pass or a phone card. Aimée could use both.

“I see him around. Plays cards.”

“So you know Gassot well?”

“Who knows anyone well? That’s relative,
n’est-ce pas?”
she said. A slight white froth edged her lip. “The Existentialists would argue that we can never know anyone, really.”

“D’accord,
” Aimée agreed.

But it was her franc and she didn’t care to discuss philosophy. She wanted to know about Gassot. On top of it, this lady in white didn’t smell all that fragrant.

“So you’ve seen him around?” Aimée said. “What about today in line at the poste?”

“I’m still thirsty.”

Aimée nodded to the barman to give her another.

“He came early.”

She pushed the holder with boiled eggs toward the woman.

“Try one, tastes good with a
demi
,” she said, noticing the tremor in the woman’s hands. Her thin legs.

The woman cracked the egg. With effort, she peeled the eggshell. Bits of white shell sprinkled on the floor. She took small bites and chewed slowly, each bite measured.

Aimée had a sinking feeling that this was the woman’s meal for the day. A loud ringing sounded in the woman’s pocket. She pulled out an alarm clock, white and oblong, with large numerals on it.

“Time for my scrub,” she said. “Wonderful hot showers at the municipal pool.”

“So where does Gassot play cards?”

“He cheats, you know.”

Aimée hid her smile. “
Alors
, Madame,” she said. “Can’t you help me?”

“I’ve seen him in the square,” she said, shrugging.

“What does he look like?”

She pointed to an older man leaning against the counter, drinking a
verre
; white haired, stocky. Like a lot of older men in the
quartier.
The woman shrugged.

Aimée figured the old woman was hungry and needed a drink, that’s all. But Aimée didn’t begrudge her the food. She put some francs on the counter, stood, and hitched her bag onto her shoulder.

“But Gassot’s peg-leg gave him trouble today,” the woman told her.

At last! Aimée paused and leaned closer to the old woman, hoping gentle prodding would elicit more information.

“You mean he has an artifical limb?”

“He limped more than usual,” she said. “Might get a new one, since he cashed his pension today.”

“An injury from the Indochinese war?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“He was an engineer, wasn’t he?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Talked about oil drilling. How he couldn’t do that anymore with his pegleg. Worked with drawings.”

“
Merci
, Madame . . . ?”

“Madame Lorette,” she said. Her eyes changed. “Sorry, I haven’t helped you much.”

Did she notice the pity in Aimée’s gaze?

“Look at my hands. You wouldn’t know it, but once I was a concert pianist. Schubert was my forte. I even played at the Châtelet concert hall.”

Did this woman have someone to help her? “Do you have family?”

“I wasn’t a very good mother,” she said. “Some women shouldn’t have children. And my daughter knew that.”

“Maybe so, Madame Lorette,” Aimée said. “But children eventually get on with their life.”

Aimée felt a pang of sorrow. Had her own mother felt that way? For a moment she wished her mother was sitting in some faraway café thinking about her, knowing guilt like this woman. Whenever she’d asked her
grand-père
about her mother, he’d sigh and shake his head. “
Ma petite
, some women aren’t meant to be understood. Just to be loved.”

And in an odd way, she did understand, had no choice but to accept it. But deep down, a part of her waited for the mother who’d left one day without explanation. A woman who’d gone to fight revolutions and change the world, but left a little part of it incomplete.

After finding that old letter from her mother in the Sentier district, Aimée had known it was time to move on.

“You know my mother left us,” she said. “Like you, I guess she did better without children. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love me or that you didn’t love your daughter in your own way.”

She slipped Madame Lorette fifty francs and hoped it wouldn’t be spent all at once. But she’d found something out from the old woman. Now she knew where to search for Gassot.

AIMÉE DISCOVERED six
orthopédistes
in the 17th arrondissement. Two had retired, one specialized in sports injuries and the other two, in mastectomy fittings.

The last, near Clichy, didn’t pick up the phone. But her father’s words rang in her ears: “Check each lead or you’ll regret it later when it smacks you in the face.” So she bundled her shearling coat around her and trudged down rue Legendre to the last address.

The Centre Orthopédique was a small taffy-colored storefront nestled in an ancient building. Wooden legs and old corsets filled the shop window. She pulled a pair of heavy brown-framed glasses from her bag. A sleepy-faced middle-aged man answered Aimée’s knock.

“No more appointments this morning, sorry,” he said.

“Pardon, I’ll get to the point. Did Monsieur Gassot have a fitting this morning?” she said. “Or was it later this afternoon?”

“What’s it to you?” His eyes narrowed and he scratched his chin.

She rooted through her bag and opened her cryptography notebook. She took a moment, pretending to consult it. “We’re doing you a service,” she said smiling. “Our social worker teams now visit in the field. We coordinate directly with the service providers, such as yourself, to expedite the clients’ prosthesis delivery and make less paperwork for you.”

She thought he’d like the last part.

“They never did this before. Sounds new to me.”

“But it is!” she said, eager to keep talking and throw him off balance. “You know we may have made a mistake. Perhaps Monsieur Gassot’s obtaining his prosthesis from someone else, but I’ve checked with all the concerns like yours in this arrondissement, so I assumed he dealt with you.”

A wonderful scent of rosemary came from inside the shop. The man’s eyes darted away.

“Look, I don’t want to hold up your lunch,” she said. “Can you just tell me if he’s getting a new prosthesis today?”

The man shook his head. “No new prosthesis appointments today.”

A dead end.

“
Merci,”
she said.

She had a bad feeling. Was Gassot so scared that he had run away with his
pension
check? She turned to go.

“But the old goat came for an adjustment,” he said. “Won’t get a new leg, always tells me he likes this one, but today he admitted he’s considering a modern one.”

What did that mean? She kept her excitement in check. “I’ll have to look into our coverage,” she said.

“He’s been too cheap to admit he needs a new one. Maybe some relative died and he got a windfall.”

A windfall? Or the jade?

Or was the
orthopédiste
trying to drum up business?

“
Aah,
so that’s it,” she said nodding, thinking quickly and looking at the number the man at the
anciens combattants
had written down. “I’d like to follow up with him. Is his number still 01 38 65 02?”

“Doesn’t have a phone. Doesn’t like them, he says.”

Whose number had she been given?

“Well, Monsieur, you’ve nailed the problem for us. Now we know why we haven’t been able to reach him. I suppose he’s still at the same address.” She flipped through her cryptography notebook. “I must have left that on my desk, can you give me his address?”

“No clue.”

Did Gassot move around, stay with friends? “Do you treat others from the Sixth Battalion?”

He shrugged. “You name it, I treat everyone. Few of the old ones talk much. One of them just died, Albert, a crusty old bird. The kind who thinks the world owes him a living since he saw a few bullets in Indochina. He’d gone to the clinic for a routine checkup. Rumor says he got offed.”

“What do you mean?”

The man shook his head. “That’s all I heard. These old vets imagine things. Who’d go for an old coot like him anyway?”

“I’ll check into it,” she said, writing on her pad. “What’s his name?”

“Albert Daudet. Sorry, but my lunch is waiting.”

Now she had an idea. “We’re pushing for added benefits for the Sixth to make restitution for limited services.”

“You mean, so they won’t take you to court?”

The man wasn’t so sleepy after all. And he probably knew all of them. Or at least more than he let on.

“Did I say that?” she smiled. “But your cooperation would be appreciated. It’s the men of the Dien Bien Phu Sixth Battalion we’re hoping to contact. I’m meeting with a few, informally, not at my office, but at a café. Of course, I’d help with the forms and expedite your insurance claims if you could help me.”

Short of an out-and-out bribe, that should entice him. At least make him consider it. She pulled out a card from her card file, one with just her name on it. “Here’s my number.” She wrote it down.

SHE FOUND a phone booth downstairs at a café, nestled between the Sexodrome and the soup kitchen run by priests, where boulevard de Clichy bled into Place Pigalle. Garish life-size faded photos of 1985 big-haired strippers stared back at her in the hall by the phones. Her first call was to Serge, her pathologist friend at the Morgue, to inquire about Albert Daudet’s autopsy.

“Sorry Aimée, Serge is testifying at the Tribunal in Nantes,” said his secretary. “He took the kids.”

Serge turned his work trips into a holiday for his twins to give his wife a break. Like two balls of mercury, the twins never stood still.

“Will he check in?” she asked, disappointed.

“Last I heard, one of the twins had a fever,” she was told. “But I’ll tell him you called.”

Serge was the only pathologist she trusted at the Institut médico-légal. She’d wait until he returned and, if she wangled it right, he’d read her the autopsy results over the phone.

Then she called Division 17 at
le Préfecture de Police
. If they traced the call, this café was perfect. She waited while the receptionist connected her to the landline search office.

Why hadn’t she thought of it before? The man must be lying low because of what happened to Thadée Baret. Baret looked old for his age, a hazard of drug use, but he was a generation younger than Gassot. What possible connection between Baret and Gassot existed? So far all she knew was Gassot had written the article about the jade and Thadée had paid for it with his life.