Murder in the Sentier (5 page)

Aimée looked. A plaque beneath empty glass read .25-
CALIBER DESIGNED BY TOCHER FOR HEMINGWAY
. The outline where a small pistol had rested was visible against the yellowed background.

“The autopsy results?”

“No
flics
, no autopsy. Our family’s tired of public circuses.”

She knew, in cases of suicide, families had the right to refuse an autopsy and insist on immediate burial. The police would be happy to declare it a suicide if the corpse was that of an old geezer who drank. Even more so if he’d left a note. Or if he was a depressed writer suffering from writer’s block.

But Romain Figeac, according to his son, didn’t fit the latter category. And the wall smudges bothered her.

Still, she was here to find out about her mother. And Christian Figeac wasn’t asking her to investigate his father’s death. Just his ghosts.

“Papa’s big fear was when he died someone would take photos and sell them.” He looked away. “Like they did of my mother.”

Not only bad taste, Aimée thought, but sick.

“Where would your father have kept his files?”

No answer.

Aimée turned around.

Christian Figeac had disappeared.

Aimée walked toward the kitchen. She wanted to go through Romain Figeac’s papers, search for connections to her mother, Jutta, or Haader-Rofmein. The similarity of Jutta’s and Figeac’s deaths was inescapable.

“Monsieur Figeac?”

No answer.

She edged down the hall, peering into the dining room. The Prix Goncourt plaque, tarnished, and a
médaille d’honneur
sat in a dusty glass case. A framed yellowed newspaper clipping about his mother’s Cannes Film Festival nomination occupied one wall.

She agreed with Christian Figeac—the place felt like a museum. A
frisson
of apprehension went through her. For a split second she wondered if he would follow the route of his parents … with his girlfriend gone, in a bout of panic, he might be capable of it. She would be the only witness.

Maybe the aura of these strong personalities was getting to her. She brushed the thought aside and stepped into the high-ceilinged room.

Piles of heavy metal CDs along with those of the Senegalese singer Youssou D’Nour cluttered a heavy-legged Spanish-style table. Bank statements, along with letters headed by a Tallimard Presse logo, were scattered among the CDs.

Water flushed in the background. Christian Figeac emerged from a floral-stenciled door in the hallway, his pupils dilated, his face flushed.

Aimée shook her head. Dealing with druggies spelled trouble.

“Does your father’s editor know what you’re doing?”

“He’s welcome to,” Christian Figeac said, craning his neck forward like an awkward bird. He spread his arms expansively. Now he exuded an aura of confidence.

“You know what I mean,” Aimée said. The man was a mess. “Getting your courage from a needle?”

“Xanax,” he said. “I’m working on my equilibrium.”

Great.

Maybe she’d given him too much credence. His hallucinations probably came from dope, and his girlfriend had wised up.

Aimée felt something crackle under her sandaled foot. A bright yellow feather. She picked it up. The sharp quill was beaded, a broken bit of mirror tied to it.

“What’s this?”

“Some
ju-ju
crap from Senegal,” Christian Figeac said, sighing. “I told Idrissa to stop it. She gets it from her
kora
player, Ousmane. He’s so superstitious.”

Aimée turned it over. What looked like dried, crusted blood coated the feathers. Gingerly, she set it on a chair.

She decided she’d better leave the dead air of the apartment, the
ju-ju
, and Christian Figeac.

The doorbell rang.

“Idrissa?” he asked, lurching toward the door.

Aimée couldn’t see the look on his face, but his shoulders stiffened. A cool breeze entered from the hall, smelling of wax wood polish.

“Monsieur Christian Figeac, son of Romain Figeac?” she heard from the hallway.

He nodded, bracing himself against the doorjamb.

And then she heard the metal clink … something so familiar it was like slicing bread. The sound of handcuffs. Like the pair her father had.

“We’d like you to answer some questions,” a voice said. “It’s regarding your father’s account at the Credit Industriel et Commercial in Place des Victoires.”

“But I’m busy right now.”

“Down at the Commissariat.”

Aimée walked up and stood by the door. She recognized the
flic
, Loïc Bellan.

She froze.

Bellan had been one of the new breed before her father retired, recruited to combat corruption.

Her feet felt rooted to the ground. She wanted to hide but she was stuck. A sitting duck. Running away from a murder scene wasn’t looked on with favor. What if the police had circulated her description in connection with Jutta Hald’s murder? But would Bellan put it together?

“Monsieur Figeac, we’d like you to cooperate with us,” Bellan said, taking her in with a quick glance.

“You’ve made a mistake.” Christian Figeac shook his head dismissively. “My father had no account there.”

Bellan nodded. He’d changed. His dark hair had grayed, his once thin frame had settled into a stocky middle age. If he recognized her, he didn’t let on. But
flics
were trained for that, she knew. Let a perp sweat, then play with him. Like a cat with a mouse.

“We’ll just have a talk and clear all this up,” Bellan said. “After you, Monsieur Figeac.”

He lunged past Bellan. Too bad he tripped over the
flic
’s foot and landed hard on the floor. Scuffling and kicking sounds came from the landing, then a metallic snap as the cuffs closed.

“If you haven’t charged Monsieur Figeac, you need an
interpellation
to demand his attendance,” Aimée said, stepping forward reluctantly. “The handcuffs are unnecessary. In fact, illegal.”

“We’ll leave the niceties to the police
judiciaire
, eh, Mademoiselle Leduc?” Bellan said. He nodded to his partner, another
flic
with a long, sallow face who stood in the foyer.

Her heart thumped in her chest. Bellan didn’t miss a trick; he had recognized her. But if he had found evidence of a crime he would have searched the premises.

“Monsieur Figeac and I know each other …” Bellan let his words dangle in the air. “Let’s say, quite well. I really wouldn’t want to charge him with possession of illegal substances.” Bellan smiled. “But I could.”

Christian Figeac’s jacket sleeve had ripped. Aimée saw needle tracks on his wrists. Purplish brown and old.

“Call this number,” Christian Figeac said, his manacled fingers fishing a card from his front pants pocket. “Tell him to meet me at the Commissariat. I’ll be out in an hour.”

The card read, “Etienne Mabry, 28 Boulevard de Sébastopol.” There was also an office in the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange.

“He’s your attorney?” she said.

“My financial advisor on stocks.”

On the stairs, two older women paused, speaking in a Slavic dialect. Mops and buckets were in their hands. “Agence Immobilière sent us. The agent wants the apartment cleaned for a showing.”

Downstairs, the
flics
took Figeac to a waiting Peugeot. Aimée didn’t know whether to be relieved that Bellan hadn’t asked her to accompany him, or suspicious.

Bellan drove away without so much as another glance. As soon as the car turned the corner, she ran back to Christian Figeac’s apartment.

Sunday Morning

R
EADY FOR THE DRIVE
into Paris, Stefan eased the old Mercedes onto the
périphérique
. He adjusted the headphone for his left ear. His only good ear. The one able to hear subtly differing tones and low frequencies.

The opening strains of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” rippled over him. The notes calmed him, transported him back to the commune. To the crisp autumn day when the Pink Floyd record played continuously like a theme song. Back to the day Ulrike tore the joint from his hand and shoved a Mauser in it.

“Time for you to join the Revolution,” she’d said, throwing an ammo clip onto the sheets next to a long-haired girl. “Not sleep with it.”

It was either that or leave the commune. Time to go the
distanz
. The long-haired girl, his Maoist tutor, not only smelled of vanilla, her kisses tasted of it. And he’d grown comfortable there.

Ulrike’s eyes, dark and flat, were hidden behind the sun glasses she always wore. To conceal her intellect, he realized. Or the fact that she’d cofounded and edited the radical German paper
Dié social
. She gave no hint of her astute dissection of current politics. Or her influence on them.

Mousy and awkward, at times painfully shy when in front of the group, Ulrike, with her distinctive patchouli fragrance, kept her distance from Ingrid and Marcus, the rock star revolutionaries.

Yet Ulrike needed their in-your-face terrorist pranks and brazen lifestyle to publicize the Revolution. They needed her brains and media prominence for credibility. Molding urban guerrillas to fight the Revolution was the only thing they agreed on.

The endless ideological conflicts, studying Marx and Mao, bickering over who slept with whom, Marcus’s ranting if he couldn’t get his drugs, Jutta’s sullenness, all drained Ulrike. Stefan sensed that right away.

He looked up to her. She’d cultivated him after a demonstration in Colmar. “You have potential,” she’d said. “The Revolution needs people like you.” He was eighteen, she twenty-eight, a mother of twins, who’d given up her children and life for the cause. Like Ingrid. But Ingrid was different, stone cold and calculating.

“Go downstairs, Stefan, help pack the van,” she’d said that day. “We’re going to visit our brothers.”

“Brothers?” he’d asked as he struggled into his faded, patched jeans. The glamour was fading from his Revolution.

“Action-Réaction,” she said. “Our French brothers and sisters.”

Stefan shrugged. He had a hard time keeping up with the various radicals.

“Ever been to Paris?”

Stefan shook his head.

Her mouth crinkled in a small smile. “Join the Red Army and see the world.”

Stefan remembered their 1972 Paris visit, full of endless espresso, Moroccan hashish, and sleeping on the floor in an intellectual writer’s fancy apartment. What a contrast, he’d thought, to nearby rue Saint Denis, where every kind of hooker waited in the crumbling doorways.

They had been hosted by the writer’s wife, an American actress and Revolutionary wanna-be. She supplied them with wine and champagne, played with their guns, and popped pills.

Her young child, his overalls dirty and torn, followed her around. She’d pay attention to him sometimes, blowing hashish smoke in his face to keep him quiet. Stefan remembered Ulrike’s stricken look at this. But Ulrike kept quiet. The actress wrote big checks for their cause, found them a safe house, and slept with some of them.

Action-Réaction’s organization proved loose. But they were passionate and had a certain Gallic flair. Dogma’s for the
boche
, they’d said, discussion and dialectic for us.

Stefan liked that.

He’d also liked Beate, a long-haired American hanger-on. Like Ulrike, she showed a certain
élan
and she understood his halting French. Or seemed to. He liked their midnight talks over
vin rouge
, sharing dreams under the chandeliers. Subversion with style.

He’d met leftist students in Action-Réaction. Ones who kick-started the cause through terrorism, but a decade later were the main force behind the Green Party. He’d even recognized a Maoist years later on the news; he’d toned down, bought a suit, and joined the ministry.

But he’d never told Beate, or Ulrike, the plans Marcus outlined for him.

“How about a drink?” Marcus had asked him one afternoon.

They’d gone to a nearby café where cart pullers stood drinking
panaché
, beer laced with lemonade.

“Here’s your urban guerrilla future,” he’d said, introducing him to a
mec
standing at the bar. “Meet Jules.”

Jules smelled of Gitanes. His shaggy hair in a stylish cut hit his shoulders. A Che Guevara T-shirt peeked from under his slim-fitting jacket. Another French
intello
, in expensive clothes, flirting with revolution.

“Marcus spoke of you.” Jules shook his hand, then pulled him close. “I like you already.”

The radioactive look in Jules’s eyes nailed him. Restless and lethal.

“We’re doing something big,” Jules said, dinging his glass with his finger. The insistent
ping
echoed in the quiet cafe. “Every piece needs orchestration, fine-tuning. No detail is too small.” Jules signaled to the barman wiping the zinc counter.
“Encore.”
He turned to Stefan. “And you’re the linchpin.”

The bewilderment on Stefan’s face and a warning look from Marcus made Jules simplify.

“I hear you’re good with engines. You’ll drive the getaway car.” He winked and raised his cloudy amber glass.
“Salut.”

Now, as he drove into Paris, Stefan realized he’d guessed wrong. Jules was an
arnaqueur
, a con man, using the cause for his own purposes. But, Stefan reasoned, hadn’t they all … in one way or another?

Paris had changed over the years, he thought, but it still made him nervous. He shuddered, easing the old Mercedes into the parking spot. Time for his quarterly visit. Time to pick up some goodies. The older he got, the more careful he grew. No big amounts to attract attention. Just a little at a time.

He adjusted his Basque beret, donned dark glasses and a brown raincoat. Outside the car, he walked fast, his hands swinging by his sides.

For all he knew, some off-duty
flic
might recognize him from the old Interpol wanted list. Now they called it Europol. Same thing. He was still wanted. They all were. Small chance after all this time, but the fear jelled his bone marrow some nights.

He bought a mixed floral bouquet. Like always. Inside the cemetery gate, he took a deep breath. Not to worry, he told himself, patting the tools inside his pocket. This wouldn’t take long.

Flowering plane trees swayed in the weak breeze. Distant traffic and shouts of children in the nearby playground hummed in his good ear.

He walked down the path to the mausoleum, pulled the grill gate open.

The coffin was there. He raised the lid. It was empty.

He stood stock-still. Shock waves hit his heart.

Where?

He collapsed onto the sandy gravel.

Who? Had Jules taken it?