Murder in Clichy (18 page)

“You’re Blondel?”

“I represent him.”

She pushed off from the zinc bar, shaking her head. A
mec
rested his billiard cue on the green baize and moved closer. A set up?

And here she thought she’d been clever.

“Let me know when he wants to talk,” she said.

“What’s the problem?” he said, a deep chuckle. “I thought you wanted to help me. Jacky wants to talk, too.”

He gestured to the other
mec
now chalking his cue with the blue cube in his hand, and blocking her escape.

Of course, a Jacky! Buff body, tight black leather pants and a pompadour. He smiled. Gold incisors. Her throat tightened.

“Maybe I changed my mind,” she said, eyeing the restroom door. ”If Blondel wants to talk, let me know.”

“Where’s Sophie?”

“She owes me, Thadée, too,” Aimée said, “So I’d like to know, as well. I figured we could work together.”

“I’m Blondel,” he said.

“And you’re going to sell me the Pont Neuf,” she said.

“Did Nadège mention a defaulted candy bill?”

Nadège
?

“Who’s that?”

And then she remembered Thadée saying “Nadège, Sophie,” before he was shot.

“Who are you, Mademoiselle?” he asked, a sneer in his voice. His eyes hardened. “Let’s go somewhere and get to know each other.”

This wasn’t going the way she’d hoped it would.

She edged toward the exit, but Jacky barred her way with his cue.

“Give me a moment, I need to use the restroom,” she said, in a loud voice. “Excuse me.” She smiled as she edged past Jacky.

And then it hit her . . . Thadée’s defaulted candy bill?

What had she jumped into? A dope deal that Morbier had warned her against? Was Sophie responsible for it now that Thadée was dead? Or this Nadège? Had this
mec
done him in? But that didn’t make sense, why kill him if he owed money? Or might pay his debt with valuable jade in lieu of cash?

Several sweating men shouldering a massive pool table were blocking the back door by the counter. And another delivery loomed behind them.

“Mademoiselle, we’re unloading a truck of new tables. Go the other way.”

“Blondel” and Jacky stood, feet planted and arms crossed over them, barring the front door. The bulge in Jacky’s coat pocket spelled trouble. There had to be another way out.

Passing the door to the bathrooms, she climbed a narrow staircase that led to game rooms and more billiard tables. No way out up there.

Downstairs, in the restroom, she entered cubicle after cubicle. Odors of evergreen disinfectant came from the stalls. But there was neither door nor window.

Back in the hall, she found a light-well concealed by draperies next to the cloakroom. But it was nailed shut, top and bottom.

The only thing left was the garbage chute. Ripe and pungent. No way would she go down that. Then she heard footsteps. Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

“Oui?”

“I’m waiting,” the man who had called himself Blondel said. “There’s a car out front, we’ll take a drive so we can talk somewhere quiet.”

Like hell they would.

She lifted the lid of the dirty metal garbage chute, tried not to breathe, and put her legs over the edge. Rank odors swelled from below. She belted her coat tight, grabbed the rim, and lowered herself down a sticky, greasy metal slide. Her toes found a small foothold. Thank God.

Before she could close the chute lid, Jacky’s head appeared silhoutted against the light. And then she slipped.

Her arms bumped against the sides and she put them in front of her face.

She landed in darkness on something wet. Scratching came from somewhere. Rodents. Jacky shouted from above. No way would she let him catch her after going through this.

She pulled herself up, then sank. Putrid smells of decaying food and oil surrounded her. Flies buzzed. Then the container she’d landed in tipped over. Her elbows hit concrete. Loud squeals came from the corner, and her heart pounded.

She got to her feet, fell, scrambled for the wall, but her hands came back clutching half eaten melon rinds. Something scurried over her boots. Big, fat, with a long greasy tail. She ran, heading for a patch of light, praying she’d find a way out.

By the time she reached the end of the cavelike opening her stockings were in shreds and she’d lost part of a high heel. Glass crashed and broke behind her. Instead of veering into the courtyard, she spied a green-metal fence and began to climb. She remembered the mansion facing the square and the driveway leading to it.

She jumped, landed in mud, and tiptoed through bushes. Footsteps kept coming.
Merde
! She had to keep moving.

She saw the back door of the mansion’s frosted glass conservatory, wedged open with a cane. She stepped inside, closed the door and locked it.

“Mathilde!” said an old man in a wheelchair before an easel painting. A faded woollen shawl, pinned around his shoulders, held flecks of paint. The brush, Aimée realized, was tied to his wrist.

“I’m sorry, monsieur.”

“Where’s Mathilde? My tea?” he said in a quavering voice. “I want my biscuits. Always have my tea with biscuits.”

“
Bien sûr
,” she said, keeping to the shadow. “I’ll check.”

He sniffed. “Mathilde forgot to take the garbage out again, eh? Lazy one. Twenty years in service and she needs reminding of everything.”

“
Tiens
, your tea’s here,” said Mathilde, an older woman, with short gray hair, wearing a housecoat and rubber boots. She saw Aimée and surprise showed on her face. “Running late, eh? Weren’t you supposed to mix the paints, get everything set up for him?”

Aimée heard crashing in the bushes outside. Her cell phone vibrated but she ignored it.

“
Désolée.
”

The older woman shook her head. “You art students are more trouble than you’re worth. He’ll complain now for days. Simple,
non
, just mix the pigments with thinner. His hands shake so much he can’t manage it.”

“But it’s beautiful,” Aimée said, looking at the oil painting on the easel, “reminds me of Renoir.”

The old man spit on the floor. “That old fool. Never paid his rent on time my
grand-mère
used to say. Brought his whole brood to live with him, too.”

“Don’t get him started,” the woman said, setting down the tea tray and rolling her eyes.

“Degas, how the laundresses hated him! They called him a dirty old man. But Manet, eh, he created Impressionism. His atelier was a few blocks from here. The Academy called them upstarts, the school of Batignolles, at first. Manet, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec. . . .” His voice trailed off and his rheumy eyes grew wistful. “Sometimes when the fog hovers over Place de Clichy, the lights mist, like the old gas lamps when I was young. . . it’s how he painted it.”

Mathilde sniffed. “Never changes.
Zut!
Artists don’t bathe, do they?”

“May I wash up?” Aimée asked, reminded of her state.

Mathilde pointed to a small laundry area. “Be quick about it, he pays the art students’ league by the hour.”

In the closet-sized space, she took off her coat and boots, ran hot water and scrubbed them down, and washed her face. She pulled out her cell phone and called a taxi, then listened to her messages.

“Since you doubt I’m Blondel,” the man said, “you’ll receive proof when I find you, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

Merde
. He’d gotten her name from her voice mail message!

Friday Evening

NADÈGE HUDDLED IN THE dark doorway, pulled her jean jacket collar over her pearls, and wrapped her scarf around her feet. She tried to still her hands. Chills and feverish jitters wracked her. She was sweating; she couldn’t stop sweating. The searing pain in her spine! The familiar, awful ache of withdrawal.

Globed lights threw a yellow haze on the wet cobbles and illuminated the infrequent evening buses that rumbled past. Quiet reigned, the school crush over, as the post-work apéritif hour settled upon the Clichy back streets.

The gnawing craving filled her. How many hours had it been? She wasn’t counting, but it had been all day. She was doing better, cutting back. She’d stopped before, she could stop again.

Waves of guilt rocked her. Leaving her little Michel.
Non
, she’d been right, that had been a good move, she couldn’t keep him with her, he was better off, so much better off with
grand-mère
. Clean sheets, a full rice bowl, and she would make sure he arrived at school on time.

And now she’d do what had to be done to clean up Thadée’s mess . . . and hers. Thadée had regretted introducing her to his supplier when she, in turn, became indebted to him. She struggled against a surge of irritability and nausea.

But which role to play? The indignant, well-bred French girl or the pliant Asian? All her life she’d acted the part that was called for, never sure which fit. Lately, she hadn’t cared much.

Mealtimes in Paris with her father or her friends’ families had been full of discussion and debate, alive with conversation in between multiple courses. Yet as a small girl her
grand-mère
admonished her if more than the click of her chopstick was heard on the rice bowl; it showed bad manners. “Show reverence for food, with silence,” she’d said. And always, “Show respect for elders, never argue, express self only in harmonious way.”

Her
grand-mère
would pull herself to her five foot height, stare at Nadège, and say “
Gweilo
stole Vietnam, push us out our country,
your
country but, it still is inside us; we never leave it, it never leaves us. Someday we return to tend our ancestors’ shrine once more.”

Growing up, Nadège had wondered when that would be as her
grand-mère
cursed the régime and her mah-jong cronies moaned about how Vietnam was changed. Later, she’d realized her
grand-mère
would never leave France. She didn’t even have a passport.

And “harmony” would get Nadège nowhere unless she found Thadée’s stash. It wasn’t in the apartment, but she hadn’t checked out Thadée’s old townhouse, whose rear faced the shadowy gallery courtyard. She clutched her beaded bag, pulled her denim jacket tighter, and took advantage of the mid-evening lull to slip across the narrow street and press 75AB on the digicode buttons. The massive dark blue door opened and she stepped inside.

Thadée had told her once, if anything happened, to go find his cache and she’d be safe. And then distracted by a phone call, he’d forgotten to give her its location.
So typical of Thadée
, she thought, and a pang of remembrance lanced through her. But she had found the key, if only it was the right one.

The dank foyer, lined with old mailboxes, held a green garbage container and puddles. The plaster ceiling leaked and dripped on the spiral staircase. Occasional acquaintances of Thadée had used it as a shooting gallery until he’d cleaned himself up and thrown them out. He’d never used drugs after that. She doubted that Sophie, who disliked her, had ever graced the crumbling place.

There was a ghost in every house. One had to make peace with it or get out. Would Thadée’s ghost cooperate?

She reached into her bag for incense sticks, the votive candle and the silk flowers, now crushed and bedraggled, that she carried. She set them on the dry first step as a makeshift shrine. A half-empty bottle of Evian would have to do for an offering, in place of Thadée’s favorite drink, Pernod. Her hands shook as she lit the candle, then she put them together in a silent prayer.

May his spirit and all the spirits wander in peace.

The votive candle caught and flickered, casting Nadège’s oblong shadow onto the peeling wallpaper. She gripped the wobbling banister and mounted the steps. She’d locate the stash, but not do anything with it, of course. Then she’d go to the station, take a train, and lay low in the countryside.
Non
, better first to take care of business.

But as she went through the rooms, she heard a shuffling sound and saw a flickering of light.

She wasn’t alone. Her stomach clenched in fear.

“May I help you?” said an older woman, stroking a purring cat that was nestled in her arms.

Nadège noticed the woman’s slender, graceful body and chiseled cheekbones. She must have been a stunner in her day. The woman set down the cat and unfurled an umbrella she picked up from the floor. A good thing, too, as the soggy plaster leaked with a steady
drip, drip
, from the coved ceiling. Nadège worried that Thadée’s stash would already have become moldy.

“Gotten chilly, hasn’t it?” the woman said, chatting as if they were meeting at a garden party.

“You’re Thadée’s friend? Do you live here?”

“Sometimes.” The woman gave her a wide smile. “
Un vrai Monsieur!
So generous.”

Nadège’s eyes welled and she nodded. “Do you know . . . ? ”

“Terrible,” she said, reaching for Nadège’s arm. Her hands were ice cold but sympathy radiated from her. “You’re too beautiful to be so sad! Come, take a seat.”

In the adjoining room stood a bed and an upright harpsi- chord, whose legs tilted, its wooden frame warped, keys missing. Once, though, it must have been exquisite. Several water-stained boxes blocked an antique armoire. Nadège fingered the large old-fashioned key in her pocket. Sniffled, and wiped her nose.

“Call me Neda,” the woman said, sitting down on the mitered herringbone pattern parquet floor as if they were at a picnic. “You have such beautiful pearls. You’re an
artiste
, I can tell.”

“
Moi?
Just a year in École des Beaux-arts, but. . . .” Nadège felt shy.

“Voilà
,” Neda said, smiling. “See, I knew right away.”

“It doesn’t count, really,” said Nadège, biting back a smile.

But those months had been unlike any others. She’d taken stage and set design courses and planned on apprenticing at the Opéra Garnier. Life had held rose-framed sunsets in the student
quartier
. Then she met Michel’s father, a costume designer with a habit. Just after Michel was born, he’d left and everything had fallen apart.

“Thadée confided in you,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“A little,” Nadège said.

“What about that chest he found and the things inside?”

Nadège shrugged her shoulders, trying still to ignore the pains in her back.

“So,
ma chère,
” Neda said as she pulled off her gloves and shot up between her fingers. Now Nadège understood. Aristocratic addicts had to hide like everyone else.

Neda leaned back with closed eyes and sighed. “How can I be your friend? A little
poudre?
Opium? Or liquid morphine?”

Nadège nodded.
Juste un peu
. To help tide her over. That’s all.