Murder in Clichy (6 page)

The gallery lay one street over from where Thadée had been shot. She figured he’d cut through a back courtyard or passage to rue Legendre. Didn’t most of these warehouses have rear courtyards?

A wrought iron fence closed off a long courtyard leading to the gallery entrance. Further on stood more warehouses, some converted into lofts. Aimée opened the creaking gate, and used the house phone to call the gallery’s number. As she stood under the eaves by a leaf-clogged gutter, she heard the echo of the gallery phone ringing. Her call went unanswered.

A dilapidated tire factory crumbled under a soot-encrusted glass roof at the rear of the couryard, the faded sign bearing the letters PNEUS in blue type. Huddled next to it was what looked like an old car parts warehouse from the thirties.

She crossed the courtyard from the art gallery to a door- way under the sign GRAPHIX. Strains of jazz came from inside. She pushed the door open and saw a space divided into red cubicles, each containing a drawing board.

“
Is anyone here?
”

“You lost?” asked a man wearing a black ribbed turtleneck sweater. His shaved head glinted in the light focused on his desk. Rain beat a murmur on the dirty glass roof.

“Does Thadée live next door?”

“You mean the gallery owner?” Irritation shone in his eyes. “I imagine he did.”

Aimée thought it best to feign ignorance. “Did? What do you mean?”

“Far as I know, he’s at the morgue. His ex-wife made a scene this morning when the
flics
came.”

So she’d found his home. Now the next step. Try her hunch.

“You mean Sophie?” she asked. If that name didn’t ring a bell she’d try the other one.

He nodded, bent over his drawing. An uphill battle, this conversation. He had the personality of wallpaper paste. Lumpy, and sticking in all the wrong places.

“Did Sophie go with the
flics
or . . .” She hesitated to say
to identify the body
.

“The last I heard was her screaming for everyone to leave her alone,” he said. “Then I shut the door and went back to work. Look, my firm rents this space and I’m on a deadline.”

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, backing out. “You won’t mind if I poke around back then?”

But his head was bent over his work as he mumbled a reply.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, closing the door.

She rang another doorbell. No answer. The rest of the courtyard lay deserted. If Sophie had to identify her ex-husband’s body she’d be gone a while. It would make more sense to come back to interview her later.

Aimée left the way she’d come in, avoiding the fluttering yellow crime scene tape by the
boulangerie
. The busy life of the village-like
quartier
streamed around her. She walked down rue des Moines, her boots wet from the slush, her heart as leaden as the gray sky above.

What else could she check? She remembered what Linh had said about an auction catalogue. But no auction house opened this early.

The only other lead she had was the name Gassot and the Sixth Battalion. She stepped into a phone cabinet, checked the phone book listings. The
anciens combattants
center was nearby. No better place to locate an old soldier like Gassot or someone who knew him. Or knew
something.
She was clutching at straws. But, until she found Sophie she had nothing else.

“
C’EST DOMMAGE
, ” said the middle-aged man behind the
anciens combattants
reception desk. He puffed at a cigar hanging from the side of his mouth. “Not my war. But the Dien Bien Phu vets meet on the second Sunday of the month. You just missed it.”

Merde!

Regimental plaques and blue, white, and red banners lined the wall of the center. Black and white photos of troops from the first and second World Wars, the Indochinese and Algerian conflicts, accompanied them. She searched the photos, but none showed the Sixth Battalion.

“Monsieur, I’m looking for Hervé Gassot or the number of the group’s secretary.”

“Let me see,” he said. He ran his tobacco-stained finger over a directory. “
Voilà
! Hervé Gassot himself’s the secretary now; he saw combat at Dien Bien Phu.”

Her hopes rose. “There were rumors that a cache of jade was looted from the Emperor’s tomb near Dien Bien Phu. . . .”

“Gassot spent time in Indochina. He knows all the stories, that’s for sure. But he keeps to himself. There’s only one number listed for him.” He scratched his grizzled head of hair. “
Non
, here’s another one, not sure which is which. Maybe a contact number. Not all of the members have telephones.”

He wrote them both down on paper and passed it to her.

“Merci.”

“
We’ve got a symposium tonight,” he said, heading toward a stack of folding chairs. “I need to set up, if you’ll excuse me.”

She tried one number on her cell phone. After ten rings she gave up. She tried the second. Again, the phone rang and rang. Disappointed, she hung up.

She walked toward the Batignolles church and then, under the brown awning of the
boulangerie
, she saw him: the hawk-nosed
flic
from the RG visit. The one from the team involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance where her father had been killed. She had never known his name or rank. The whole project had been hush hush. Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defense, they all peed in the same place, as her father used to say.

Had he been following her or was he nosing around for the jade on his own?

The man buttoned up his rain jacket and strode past the crime scene tape. She tailed him down rue Legendre for several blocks to a small two-story café-
tabac
: one of those she’d already visited this morning. She followed him inside, smiled at the owner, and bought some cassis-flavored gum at the cigarette counter as he mounted the back stairs.

A minute later she, too, went upstairs to find a smoke-filled rectangular room, the restroom beyond. Cracked leather banquette seats lined the wall, mirrors above them. The room was deserted, except for several tables and chairs. At one, three men played belote, a card game similar to bridge, a game she’d never had the patience to learn.

She sat down at the hawk-nosed man’s table, nodding to the heavy-lidded owner/waiter taking his order for an espresso.

“You know my name,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Did I ask you to sit here?”

She heard more annoyance than surprise in his voice.

“I invited myself,” she smiled. “Sometimes I do that. But we already know each other.”

“How’s that?”

“Last night your group searched my apartment without a warrant, remember?”

He looked away. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

She bit back a remark about short-term memory loss, and got to the heart of the matter. “Think back to five years ago,
Inspecteur.
. . ?”

“Pleyet,” he acknowledged, shifting away from her.

In the mirror she saw the belote players look up, then go back to their game, slapping cards on the table. From below came the sound of the
télé
with its replayed horse races.

“I’m in the traffic division, Mademoiselle.”

And if she believed that, she’d believe anything. He didn’t look like a meter maid. Or act like one.

“Then where’s your ticket book?” she asked. “You were with the RG last night.”

He shrugged. “They called me.”

“You were involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance five years ago.”

“Never.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you keep bringing that up? Such persistance is rude.”

“Remember one of your old colleagues, Jean-Claude Leduc, my father?”

“Guess he forgot to send you to charm school,” he said.

She felt the wooden floor vibrating as his foot began tapping.

“Is the man who works with the RG your evil twin?”

No smile answered her back. “Traffic’s my job,” he insisted. “Since 1992.”

The heavy-lidded owner returned with two steaming espressos and two glasses of water, and set them on the water-ringed table together with a glass carafe. Aimée handed him a ten franc piece. Light from the wall sconce caught and danced on the carafe’s thick rim. Around them rose occasional exclamations, then the shuffle of the belote players’ cards.

“Looks like you’re on duty,” she said.

“The traffic bureau closed early,” he said, yawning. “Just a quick cup of coffee, then the train home.”

She doubted that. “How is the jade tied to the RG, Inspecteur Pleyet?”

Anger flickered in his eyes and he gripped her elbow in a steely hold.

For a moment the card game stopped. The only sounds were the rumble of the milk steamer machine below. She looked up. One of the men said “Fold” and the others threw their cards on the table.

Pleyet relaxed his grip. In one movement, he pulled on his windbreaker jacket and stood.

“You didn’t answer my question, Inspecteur. Were you on assignment in postwar Indochina?” she asked, taking a gamble. “You look the type.”

“Why do you say that?”

She might as well probe deeper. “After Dien Bien Phu a lot of archeological treasures went missing, didn’t they? There were several incidents of looting. Did the Sixth Battalion have anything to do with that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He threw some francs on the table and left.

She gulped her espresso and watched him from the window as he walked down rue des Batignolles. Pleyet was lying. She smelled it. She could understand him not revealing his cover in a café. But would he tell her more somewhere else?

She figured Pleyet was the type to have been airlifted into a pre-dawn Lagos when things got sticky, or infiltrated into an aborted revolution that needed suctioning out. The “gleaners” were what some called them. “Mopping up” was the other term she’d heard. Guess it depended on how big a mess they found.

One of the card players, a man with a silver-white tonsure of hair, brushed past and bumped her table, spilling her glass of water.

“Pardonnez-moi
, Mademoiselle,” he said, his wide grin exposing several gold-capped teeth. “So clumsy. May I buy you a drink?”

She didn’t fancy a
tête-à-tête
with this old
mec
or his cronies, but he’d been civil.

“Pas grave,
don’t worry, monsieur,” she said and made her way downstairs.

She checked her Tintin watch. The doors of the auction houses would be open now.

Wednesday Morning

Hervé Gassot gazed nervously at his two comrades. Yvon Nemours, stocky, wearing a too small tracksuit that strained around his thick waist, searched the crowd. Picq, standing by the blue-veined rabbit carcasses in the covered Marché de Batignolles, lit a cigarette.

Was this safe enough? Did the crowd of shoppers and market hawkers that surrounded them make them inconspicuous? All around them, women wheeled shopping carts and jockeyed for position at the cheese sellers. Pungent, acrid odors emanated from the stand where a man in a white apron, stained with yellow runny streaks, discussed the merits of a ripe St. Nectaire with a customer.

“Albert had become chummy with Thadée, the gallery owner shot yesterday,” Picq said, cupping his cigarette between his forefinger and thumb like a Pigalle mobster.

“We know that, Picq.”

“More than chummy. You know Albert’s big mouth. Seems he talked about the old days and this
mec’s
related to the family.”

“Related?”

“They own the buildings, that’s why he had his gallery there.

That’s two blocks from here.”

Gassot edged closer. He glanced behind his shoulder. Couldn’t help it. “So what are you saying?”

Picq ground out his cigarette with his foot, shook his head.

“Someone was asking around the
anciens combattants
center,” Nemours said. “And those two we saw in the café. . . .”

“I don’t like it,” Gassot said.

He could tell by Nemours’s and Picq’s faces that they didn’t like it either. Had the past resurfaced? Was someone after them for their mistake at Dien Bien Phu?

“I check every fifteen minutes but the gallery’s closed. No sign of life.”

“We’ll break into the gallery tonight,” Nemours said, “and ask his ex-wife about the jade. And if she doesn’t know anything. . . .”

“We should check with Albert’s doctor,” Gassot interrupted.

“The coroner’s report declares ‘Death by unusual circumstances,’ ” Picq said. “Lucie’s convinced Albert was murdered.”

Nemours turned to Gassot. “You have to see Tran.”

“Tran?’

“If anyone knows what’s happening, Tran will.”

* * *

GASSOT HURRIED through Parc Monceau under chestnut trees that shuddered in the wind. A turtledove swooped down near the pond. He passed the mansions overlooking the green lawns. The gilt trimmed fence gave it the look of a private park. Marie-Thérèse had walked Napoleon’s heir here; Proust had loved this little lake. Hadn’t he—or someone— waxed poetic about the perfume of a childhood spent in the Parc Monceau?

Gassot resented the butter and shallot smells emanating from the kitchens of these mansions, the scurrying hired help, and the smooth hum of the limousines: the sounds and smells of the homes of the rich.

Thirty minutes later, beyond Porte de Clichy at the
Cimetière des chiens,
he faced Tran. Tran, a smooth-faced man with thick, paper-white hair, wore navy blue pants and shirt and soft-soled canvas shoes. He chain-smoked as he weeded the gravel walkways. Lean and compact, Tran looked as he had in Indochina, except for the lines around his eyes and his white hair. The younger son of a Cao Dai priest, Tran had seen combat with Gassot’s regiment until his elder brother died at Dien Bien Phu. When the government outlawed the Cao Dai sect, he’d gone into service with French colonials.

That’s when it had started, Gassot remembered. The whole sad mess. The meetings, the whispered asides during humid Haiphong nights where the corpses of fluorescent jellyfish glittered on the surface of black harbor water. Rumors of jade treasures amidst the rolling rhythmic slap of the waves. The air heavy with the scent of rotting mangoes in the compound guarded by the Montagnard hill tribesmen, with their green metal bracelets, multicolored loincloths, and carbine clips slung over their shoulders.

“
Bonjour,
Tran,” Gassot greeted him.

“A wonderful treat to see you,” Tran said, one hand holding a weed-filled bucket, the other motioning to a marble bench. “Sit down.”

A formality. They met here on the first Wednesday of every month on a stone bench overlooking the dog cemetery. But Gassot was three weeks early and he knew Tran must be curious.

Gassot hesitated. He wanted to explain the fear and doubt, the smell of vengeance surrounding Albert’s death—explain it in a way so Tran would help, rather than dismiss them as scared old men.

Rows of small blackened stone crosses and suitcase-sized marble slabs stretched before them. Withered white chrysanthemums left from Toussaint, All Saints Day remembrances, defied the wind whipping over the small tombstones. Funny, Gassot thought, dog owners tended their pets’ graves better than the families of the military tended theirs.

“Makes you wonder about the world, eh, Tran,” he said. “Humans are less remembered than dogs.”

Tran smiled and shrugged. “Maybe because dogs are more faithful. Truer,” Tran said, offering him a cigarette, a Vinataba brand. “Remember the La Bai we smoked,
camarade
?” Tran asked. State Express 555, Ho Chi-Minhs’ favorite brand, had been a black market exclusive, too expensive for him.

“
Merci.
” Gassot accepted one and lit his from Tran’s: the way they had in Indochina, where no one had matches to waste.

He remembered the woody tobacco taste of the unfiltered cigarettes and the picture of playing cards on the package. He’d never smoked so much as in Indochina where it was a national pastime. That, and sabotaging the French. Of course, that came later. Much later, it was the Americans’ turn.

“Has something happened,
camarade
?” Tran asked. He exhaled smoke that spiraled in a blue-white haze.

And then the Paris sky opened, rain spattering down in furious fits and starts. Unlike the warm Indochina monsoons that descended steadily onto corrugated tin-roofed huts, Gassot remembered, leaving fat beads of water on the curled palm leaves.

Tran tugged his arm and they ran for cover.

“Ça va
?” Tran said. “Your eyes are far away today.”

Gassot could still hear the rustle of the silk worn by the half-Asian mademoiselles, denigrated as
bui doi,
the dust of life. He remembered the acrid odor coming from the opium smokers next door.

“What’s the matter,
camarade?
”

In the shed where tools were kept, Gassot straightened his shoulders, realizing Tran was studying him. He forced himself back to the present and took a deep breath.

“Do you ever hear from Bao?” She had been Tran’s cousin, Bao of the pale oval face and laughing eyes. He knew that after forced marches and prison camp, the light would have gone out of them.

“Not for several years,” said Tran.

“Still in Indochina, is she?”

“Seems we’re talking about the old times instead of why you came here,
camarade.
. . .” Tran’s voice trailed off in disappointment. His manners were more French than Gassot’s and his accent was impeccable. But then he’d lived in France almost as long as Gassot, working for a wealthy old colonial family as an indentured servant until his retirement. Though slave would have described it better.

But he liked to keep busy, so he worked part-time now, here, as groundskeeper.

“You’re worried. It’s Albert . . . his heart?” Tran said.

Gassot gathered his courage. “Albert died in the hospital. But he was murdered there.”

“What makes you think he was murdered?”

“Who else knows, Tran?” Gassot asked.

“
Mais,
you don’t mean—”

“Who else knows about the massacre at Lai Chau?”

“The dead know,” Tran replied. “And your comrades.”

And it had been their regiment’s fault. Their bombing coordinates had been off. Off by half a kilometer, sending them into the no-fly zone.

A plain of burning flames, so intense the heat had melted the straps of Gassot’s helmet on his neck. The hidden mines planted by the Vietminh in the plain had exploded under the hail of the French bombing attack—an attack that had been meant to destroy the Vietminh forces, not ignite a incendiary vortex claiming thousands of both Indochinese and French lives. The deafening explosions cratered the red earth. Rice paddies were clogged with body parts kilometers away, destroying the ancient drainage system. The peasants starved the next season, refusing to eat a crop nourished by the blood of their ancestors.

No one talked of their mistake; the reports were destroyed, the incident hushed up.

“Only three of us left now,” Gassot said. “But someone could have escaped.”

“No one escaped from that hell,” Tran said.

“A victim in a field hospital? Or an eyewitness?” he said. “Someone who heard the stories and has come for revenge?”

“Go ahead and torment yourself,
camarade,
” Tran said. “You’re good at that. But it can’t bring them back. Nothing will. As they say, it’s all termite spit.”

“Albert opened his big mouth; he talked about the jade. And then the man he spoke to was shot. Killed.”

Tran’s hand shook as he lit another cigarette. “
Merde!”

Tran, reestablish your connections,” Gassot said. “Go back
“
to the house. Talk to the old buzzard about the jade. You’re the one who heard the rumor in Haiphong.”

Tran bowed his head. “That’s so long ago,” he said.

“The jade is here. In Paris. We know it. We’re not the only ones looking for it, Tran,” Gassot said. “Remember that.”

“But we’re the only true believers.”

Gassot turned away. He stooped, tried to control the quiver in his shoulders. “Tran, you have to go back to the house.”

No one would suspect Tran. Gassot kept to himself his fear that someone was picking them off, one by one.