Murder in Passy (25 page)

If only Agustino had revealed more. If only the terrible events hadn’t happened. But she couldn’t waste time wishing. Play with the hand you’re dealt, her grandfather had said once; that’s the only way you survive.

In view of the Euskadi Action’s impossible demands, the girl—the princess—would die. Like Agustino. She couldn’t let that happen.

She knew the pieces led to Xavierre’s murderer. Knew that in her bones.

In the adjoining salon, she found the owner’s high-end laptop. No problem to run a program to connect to her office network, monitor the surveillance, and ask René to hack into … no, she couldn’t involve him. She’d do it herself. She booted up the sleek laptop and, in two tries, figured out his password:
GUIMARD
. Looked up the Spanish princess and saw the
Hola
magazine articles.

Party girl all right.

She felt a pang seeing the paparazzi photo of the girl caught outside a Madrid club, early morning bleary-eyed, mascara-run raccoon eyes, looking fourteen instead of eighteen. Vulnerable, lost, pathetic. Sad. A kid with too much money and privilege.

And her problem now. Agustino had given her the name of Xavierre’s murderer, Txili, who was also the kidnapper. She had to find her. Him. And to vindicate Morbier.

With the EPIGN on her tail, how in the hell would she manage within three hours? How to find her if the EPIGN couldn’t? Should she even venture to leave this apartment?

In the stainless-steel state-of-the-art fridge, at odds with the deco apartment, she found half a baguette. Rock-hard. A frozen
crème brûlée
from Picard. She opted for the latter and heated it up. Sitting on the floor, she cracked the caramelized topping with a spoon and ate the
crème brûlée,
observing the crime-scene van pull up in front of the atelier. A unit was patrolling the grounds and area. The helicopter was gone now.

She wanted to kick something. She was stuck. Then her cell phone vibrated.

About to answer, she stopped, her finger on the
ANSWER
button. The EPIGN would dump Agustino’s cell phone, trace all the numbers he’d called. Hers.

Or what if ETA had taken Agustino’s cell phone?

She copied the number calling her. Picked up the thirties-style apartment phone, a black behemoth rotary-dial model with the old Passy prefix, and dialed.

“Commissariat de Passy,
oui?
” answered Thesset.

Thank god.

“Thesset, it’s Aimée,” she said. “You called?”

“Five minutes ago a license plate, reported stolen last night, showed up on a traffic report,” Thesset’s terse voice erupted.

René’s comment about how car thieves stole plates to disguise vehicles came back to her. “On a Mercedes?”

“A maroon Mercedes coupe matching your description down to the custom fog lamps.”

At last.

Thesset gave the location, just off Place Victor Hugo.

“I’ve instructed officers to leave the vehicle in place for six hours. Counting on the boyfriend to return this on the quiet,” he said. “I don’t want to know any more. Call me crazy for sticking my neck out, eh. Do I have your word?”

“
Absolument,
Thesset.” Her spine tingled.

Her one lead. Correction: a possibility. Thesset had come through. At least Morbier had one ally. For now.

She had to move fast. But with her description in circulation and patrols combing the lanes, she wouldn’t get far. Best to avoid them and stay here. Safer to curl up in a luxurious hole and watch Morbier convicted from the sidelines?

She tossed the remains of the
crème brûlée
in the trash. In the black marble bathroom she scrubbed off her makeup with lavender-scented soap, praying that Sebastian’s patron’s style sense extended to his armoire.

She hadn’t bargained on him having only one arm.

A flesh-colored arm, down to the lifelike latex rubber fingers, leaned inside. Along with shirts, all colors, seamed at the elbow. Not much good to her, except for the one full-sleeved tailored white dress shirt. Silver cuff links attached, and formal black tie ready with one snap. About her size. No reason to dress it down when she discovered a velvet
le smoking
—a man’s tuxedo jacket with quilted lapels. Or matching satin side-seamed black-cuffed trousers. She notched the lizard belt in the last hole so it rode on her hips, and stared at herself in the tall beveled deco mirror.

Big problem.

She removed one diamond stud earring and put it in her pocket. No time to peroxide her hair, so she reached for a broad-brimmed fedora, slipped on the soft vicuna silk-lined long coat. Turned to look in the mirror.

She could probably pass for a man at a distance.

She rolled down the trouser cuffs to cover Martine’s Prada boots. Using the apartment phone, she called a G7 taxi, the reservation-only service. Seven minutes later, she descended in the creaking elevator and, head down, entered the taxi waiting out front.

The taxi driver turned and raised an eyebrow. “You booked an hour, ‘Monsieur’?”

“For now.” She sat back. “Place Victor Hugo. Wait in front of the café Midi.”

* * *

F
OR TEN MINUTES
she checked the dark street radiating east from Place Victor Hugo. A high stone wall ran down one side of the canyon-like rue Lauriston near the former French Gestapo headquarters. She located the maroon Mercedes parked on rue Copernic. A few leaves clustered under the windshield wipers.

She felt the engine hood. Warm. Driven recently. Inside, on the leather passenger seat, was a street guide of Paris. Wedged between the gearshift panel and seat were the edges of something dull gold and narrow. She wiped the window with her sleeve, shone her penlight in, and recognized the red-diamond— pattern Ormond insignia on the rectangular cigarillo box. A slender six-pack pocket-size box of Meccarillos.

Where had she last seen a cigarillo? She racked her brain as she scanned the street.

Given the block of apartment buildings, inner courtyards connecting to inner courtyards, the man or men could be in any of these—or on another street altogether. Hundreds of people inhabited this block.

Prepare for the unexpected, her father always said; think of another scenario before it surprises you.

It came back to her—the acrid burning smell of the cigarillo near the plate of
gâteau
Basque at Xavierre’s on Monday night. Of course. The man had left his cigarillo, still burning. She imagined him wounded, stanching the blood, a heated argument, him grabbing Xavierre’s scarf to strangle her.

Given the effort he’d taken in stealing the plates, she figured he planned on using the car again. But when?

She couldn’t waste this chance. Or stand in a dark cold doorway without being noticed. Think. Use what you have, her father had also said.

She rooted in her bag for the camera René had purchased as backup for their undercover computer-surveillance contract. Just the thing. Still in the box. A mini wireless camera with a built-in transmitter. More suited for a nanny-cam, the camera fit in her palm and had a visibility range of up to twenty meters away, restricted to line of sight. It transmitted video to a small receiver.

She prayed to god it worked outdoors in dim light as well as indoors.

The tiny camera was powered by a nine-volt battery and could run for up to fifteen hours. Enough for what she needed, she hoped.

She scanned the limestone buildings, the high stone wall opposite, for a location in which to install the camera. Rue Copernic was a one-way street. For a moment, sheltered from the night wind by the wall and buildings, streetlight filtering over the crosshatched metal tree grille, she heard a faint rushing of water.

Opposite, the
EAU DE PARIS
sign on the wall indicated the reservoir, the one the café waiter had mentioned. The wall must support the aboveground pools. No need for a
sorcière
with a witch-hazel branch to locate water here.

No time to memorize the street and building locations. On the back of her checkbook she sketched the street and the car’s location, using the wide, dark green door of the Eau de Paris as a landmark. Given the camera’s short range and the darkness, it was impossible to view the whole street, but the microphone would catch the sound of approaching footsteps and guide her.

So she’d attach the camera to the car. If it pulled away, the camera would film the route. She ran her fingers along the rooftop, felt the sunroof lip curve, a space. For now it would work.

She pulled a stick of cassis-flavored gum from the bottom of her bag, chewed it, then attached the gum to the sunroof lip and positioned the camera over it. She activated the camera, clicked the transmitter
ON
, then checked the receiver.

A woman pushing a stroller emerged from the apartment door behind her. She pulled a blanket over the infant inside and smiled at Aimée. Aimée smiled back, took a few steps, and lifted the receiver to her ear as if talking on her cell phone. The woman stopped a few steps away, putting the brakes on the stroller to converse with a man emerging from an apartment.

A watcher? Lookouts? Surveilling the car?

Aimée hit
MUTE
on her cell phone, just in case, nodding and pretending to listen to the receiver crooked between her neck and shoulder.

By the time she’d walked halfway down the street, she’d slid the receiver into her coat pocket. With this wireless model, she’d have the car in sight if it kept within fifteen kilometers of her. More than she needed. Unless, with the stash of stolen blank documents and the princess, they left Paris en route to the border. But she couldn’t do anything about that right now.

At the end of the street, she checked the monitor in her pocket. The red light blinked in transmission mode. The dark outlines of the Mercedes roof glinted with raindrops.

But she needed a clean cell phone, to hook up to her laptop and record the feed. She needed René’s help.

At Place Victor Hugo, the lit fountain sprayed and the taxi waited. She slid into the back seat. “Rue de la Reynie,
s’il vous plaît
.” She passed a twenty-franc bill over the leather backrest.

“Eh, you pay at the end,” he said, tired eyes under his brown-gray grizzled hair.

“My battery’s dead. Mind if use your cell phone? Local call.”

“Then I’d have to give you change and.… ”

“Keep it.”

She used the taxi driver’s phone and punched in René’s number.

“Oui?”
said René.

“It’s Aimée. Has anyone asked about me? Called?”

René cleared his throat. “
Oui,
Madame. Matter of fact, even more than that.”

She heard conversations in the background. She shivered. “The EPIGN’s at the office, aren’t they? Big man, bland face.”

“I’d say so,” he said.

“Then you haven’t heard from me. You’re going home, it’s late, closing the office,” she said. “Bring me a fresh cell phone, too. Leave. Matter of fact, why are you there?”

“Some people need to work, Madame. To pay bills.”

As if she didn’t?

“I’ll meet you in your garage. Ten minutes.”

Within ten minutes, the taxi crawled up narrow medieval streets leading to Beaubourg. The soot-stained spires of Saint-Merri loomed, highlighted against the space-age red-and-blue— tubed Centre Pompidou behind it. Her hands shook.

The taxi pulled over under a streetlight. “Monsieur, I’d like to book another hour. Can you wait here?”

“Pas de problème.”

She kept to the walls on narrow rue Quincampoix, entering the back door of René’s garage. The automatic garage door opened and René’s DS Citroën rolled in. She waited behind the dustbins until the aluminum shuttered door rolled back down.

Darkness.

Then she felt a gun in her ribs.

Wednesday Night

O
UT OF BREATH
and shaking, Maria scraped a twisted wire into the crumbling concrete surrounding the iron rung holding her leg chain. At this rate, it would take hours to dislodge the rusted iron. Hours she didn’t have. She prayed that her father was cooperating with their demands. But for the life of her, she didn’t know if he would—after last time. Or if he could.

Only the steady drip of water accompanied Joxi’s moans. His tossing and turning raised the goose bumps on her arms. The man was in pain, his condition worsening. And the others had left.

They were alone. Her stomach gnawed with hunger. No food.

His moaning escalated.

Unnerved, she set down the wire, held the chain, and crept over to him. Joxi was covered by a rough blanket, and his sweat-beaded face was flushed. Broken red blood vessels marked a path from his swollen eye; the blood-soaked bandaging crisscrossed his inflamed cheek. Sour smells of sweat emanated from him.

His vise-like grip encircled her wrist. “Ur … ur.”

A moan, or the Basque word for water? In a stone niche, she saw bottled water among the strewn contents of her bag. She scrabbled her fingers through the objects. No cell phone. Her agenda containing addresses, phone numbers was gone. Fodder for ransom demands?