Murder in the Sentier (7 page)

She hacked into a German court records site. According to what she could understand from the West German trial transcripts, Jutta had been charged with multiple counts: arson, armed robbery, stolen vehicles. A heavy-duty powder puff!

Reading further, she saw Jutta’s indictment in France was for complicity in a bank heist and murder. For that, she’d gotten twenty years.

Aimée stood up, stretched, and picked up Miles Davis.

But still no answer as to why Jutta had said her mother owed her!

M
ONDAY

Monday Morning

A
IMÉE WOKE UP KNOWING
she had to contact Etienne Mabry and find Christian Figeac’s girlfriend, Idrissa.

On the Minitel she found two clubs with Senegalese music, one in Montmartre and the other, Club Exe, in the Sentier. The one in Montmartre had never heard of Idrissa.

“Idrissa Diaffa who sings with Ousmane?” asked a woman with high-pitched voice at Club Exe.

“Yes, where can I find her?”

“She quit.”

Perfect.

“Her boyfriend, Christian, is in jail,” Aimée said. “Please, I need to find her.”

“I’d like to help you,” the woman said, “but I’m just a part-time cashier. Sorry.”

Aimée was about to hang up. “What about her friends … who was she close to at the club?”

“
Bien sûr
, everyone liked Idrissa,” the woman said. “But she hung out with Mala, the dishwasher, another student.”

“Where can I find Mala?”

“Around the corner.”

“Where’s that?”

“Rue Jeûneurs. Number 7. And could you tell her she’s needed for a double shift today?”

Aimée thanked her. At least she had something to go on.

She took the Metro into the Sentier, climbing the stairs to emerge into the heat.

Dark windows, like dead eyes, stared from above the wide marble steps of 7, rue Jeûneurs. The ancient building, once a clothier’s, as evidenced by the faded
drapier
sign, was typical of the Sentier district. Filigreed metal balconies, limestone walls in need of steam cleaning, and the cobbled courtyard exuded a forlorn charm.

On the left was a faded concierge sign, lights glowing behind lace curtains covering the glass door.

Aimée knocked.

“Bonsoir,”
said a man, poking his long face out. He worked his horselike teeth, chewing a piece of bread. The smell of frying onions clung to him.

Few buildings in the Sentier would have concierges, she imagined. From inside the
logement
came the sound of a piano scale being practiced, the same note missed each time.

“Monsieur, can you direct me to Mala’s apartment?”

The concierge scratched his neck. “She didn’t leave word to expect anyone,” he said, his syllables rolled in a Spanish accent.

“This concerns—”

“
Tiens
, I don’t pry into tenants’ lives,” he interrupted.

He must be an unusual concierge.

“What floor, Monsieur?”

He shook his head.

“Who might you be, Mademoiselle?”

A brown baguette crumb had lodged in his mustache. Aimée wanted to brush it off.

“Aimée Leduc,” she said.

“Got an appointment?”

“Sorry to disturb your meal, Monsieur,” she said with a smile, “but they need Mala to work a double shift today at Club Exe. Her phone’s off the hook. I’d appreciate your help.”

The crumb rode up and down as the man chewed. He debated for a long moment.

“Left rear staircase, third floor, door on the left.”

She felt him watch her as she crossed the courtyard.

Seventeenth century, by the look of it. Like her building. However, much of the rear courtyard and first floor of this
hôtel particulier
had been hacked into warehouses, divvied up among small manufacturers over the centuries. She heard the whine of sewing machines.

After a steep climb, she reached the dark green door. One other massive door kept it company on the black-and-white-diamond-patterned landing. Dirt filmed the single small circular window.

She knocked several times. No answer. She tried the other door. A small bronze nameplate with
click.mango
was affixed to the grime-patinaed wall.

An Internet company here? Frustrated at finding neither Mala nor Idrissa, Aimée leaned against the wall and thought.

She looked up to see a lean, caramel-skinned young woman coming up the stairs. She was in her early twenties with a boyish figure, and she wore a red, yellow, and green Rasta cap from which an errant braid escaped, a tank top, and army fatigue pants.

“
Bonjour
, do you know where I can find Idrissa Diaffa?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “But I don’t know you,” she said with a lilting West African accent.

“I’m Aimée Leduc,” she said. “Christian Figeac’s in jail. You were his girlfriend, right? Could we talk?”

Idrissa’s almond-shaped eyes darted around the landing. She shifted in her sandals.

“May I come in?”

Idrissa didn’t move. In the dark, cool hallway, she seemed ready to bolt down the stairs.

“I’m sorry, it’s not my place,” Idrissa said. “And I’m in a hurry.”

“Christian’s in trouble,” Aimée said.

Idrissa sighed. “Always him and his big ideas!”

“Last time I saw him he was being taken to the Commissariat for questioning.”

Idrissa waved her hand as if that were old news. Odd.

Jumbles of red and yellow beads clacked on her wrist. Aimée caught a whiff of coconut oil.

“Matter of fact, I’m trying to reach his financial advisor to spring him from the Commissariat,” Aimée said.

“Christian calls me his girlfriend but … it’s just the friend part now,” Idrissa said. “I won’t go to the apartment,
vous comprenez?”

Idrissa’s speech didn’t match her looks. Most young women in the
quartier
would have used the familiar
tu
form of address, not the formal
vous
. Was she a Sorbonne student? A heavy denim bag hung from her shoulder, weighing down her slim frame.

“Christian can’t find some boxes of his father’s work,” Aimée said. “He thought you might know where they are.”

“Accusing me of stealing?”

Why hadn’t she worded it another way? She’d put Idrissa on the defensive! As René often told her, tact wasn’t her strongest suit. “Actually,” Aimée said, trying for an ingratiating smile, “Christian’s being generous, trying to help me find his father’s research on terrorism,” she said. “My mother was involved.”

Idrissa shrugged. “My music only earns half the rent,” she said, her accent thickened. “So I typed, transcribed for his father.”

Aimée took a step forward. “For Christian’s father’s book?”

Idrissa nodded.

“How interesting,” Aimée said. “Were they his memoirs or, perhaps, stories about people involved in the radical movements?”

“I didn’t pay attention,” Idrissa said. Her gaze didn’t meet Aimée’s.

“Did he mention the Haader-Rofmein gang?”

“Nothing made much sense to me,” Idrissa said. “It seemed jumbled.”

“Jumbled … how do you mean?”

Idrissa shrugged. “He rambled, talking about the past one minute, then he’d zoom to the present.”

“So would you take dictation, or did he give you tapes to transcribe?”

Idrissa shifted against the wall. “What does it matter?”

“Do you have any of those tapes?”

“Look, it was only a job. I gave them back,” she said. “The boxes, too!” Idrissa looked at her Swatch watch. “I’m late.”

“Christian is so upset. He doesn’t know why his father committed suicide,” Aimée said, edging toward her.

Idrissa winced. “Excuse me,” she said, opening the door, “I’ve got to go.”

Aimée wanted her to talk. But Idrissa shut the door in her face.

As she passed by the concierge’s place, the piano scales climbed in an agonizing march.

Monday Noon

A
IMÉE RANG
C
OMMISSAIRE
M
ORBIER
, her father’s old colleague, at the Commissariat.

“He’s not here,” said a bored receptionist. “Gone.”

She knew he would qualify for retirement soon. But it wouldn’t be like him to leave without telling her.

“Can I reach him somewhere else?”

“Who’s this?”

“Aimée Leduc, his goddaughter.”

She waited while the receptionist checked.

“As it happens, Mademoiselle Leduc, we refer his calls to the
préfecture
at the Quai des Orfèvres on Mondays.”

“Quai des Orfèvres?” That Morbier would be at police headquarters on Ile de la Cite took Aimée aback.

“He’s in charge of a unit there,” the receptionist said.

“Since when?”

But the receptionist had already patched her through. Several clicks, then a sustained buzz, and then the phone was picked up. “Groupe R,” came Morbier’s voice on the line.

What was Morbier doing in the special branch? “Got a new job?”

“Temporary assignment, Leduc,” Morbier said, his voice gruff.

In the background she heard the murmur of voices, the noise of an ancient Teletype, still in use in this age of computers, echoing off stone walls.

“Weren’t you going to tell me, Morbier?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Clue me in on the
secrets d’état
.”

A slight pause. “I’ve got another call,” Morbier said.

He seemed bent on stonewalling her. His hand muffled the receiver. She heard indistinct conversation, then recognized his hacking cough. Almost a two-pack-a-day man.

“Leduc, I’m busy.”

“Everyone in Paris either works frantically or collects
le dole
,” she said. “So what else is new?”

He put his hand over the receiver again.

“Let’s meet for lunch and you can tell me all about your new job,” she said.

“Things seem tight….”

“I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say,” she said. “I’m in the Sentier, but you name the place.”

“M
AKE IT
good, Leduc,” Morbier said over the dog-eared menu. “I don’t have much time.”

Outside, hookers plied their trade by the open
brasserie
window.

“Does murder qualify?”

“Important things first. We order.”

A true Gallic response. His mismatched socks—one tan, the other brown—his suspenders, and wrinkled jacket were as usual but he seemed different.

“Order the
formule
,” Morbier said. He didn’t look up but pointed to the blackboard, where “59 francs” had been chalked. “Cart-pusher’s special, but worth it.”

A promising scent of garlic and rosemary wafted from the black hole of a kitchen.

“The chef’s from Marseilles,” he said. “His son’s on parole.”

Aimée hated that. It meant no bill and general toadying-up from the poor staff. They ordered the
formule
from a gap-toothed young woman, who wore an apron over her jeans.

The
brasserie
bustled with a late lunch crowd: auto mechanics, white-haired ladies with full shopping bags from the outdoor
marche
at their feet, African security guards nursing
bières
, and stockbrokers from the nearby Bourse.

“
Tant pis
, my Marie’s teething,” Aimée overheard a tinsel-wigged hooker say to her sidewalk mate. Her mate, a middle-aged woman, adjusted an orange latex miniskirt, her eyes never leaving the passersby. “My sitter’s complaining,” the woman continued, “
alors
, that’s all the sitter ever does, that one!”

Why had Morbier chosen this place?

“Jean Jaurès was stabbed at that table, Leduc,” Morbier said. “The bloodstains are still there.”

Aimée looked over. A dark brown ghoulish stain, shaped like a butterfly, spread over the old table.

“As always, Morbier, you pick the scenic and informative.” She set the menu down. “Food any good?”

Was this her socialist lesson for the day? When she was in grade school, he’d insisted she read the transcript of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s trial, even quizzed her about it.

From the next table came the tang of a Gauloise. The acrid smoke teased her. Too bad she’d quit. The second time this week.

And then it hit her.

“You quit smoking, Morbier?”

He pointed to the patch on his arm.

“I’m full of surprises today, eh, Leduc?”

The waitress set two bowls of Provençal
soupe au pistou
in front of them, swirls of basil
crème
in the center.

“My visit to Berlin generated some interest.”

“And you’re proud of that, Leduc?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” She took a big swig of the rose, light and with a peachlike aroma.

Not bad. She took another.

“Tell me about this murder while I eat,” Morbier said.

She told him about Jutta Hald. “She said she’d been in prison with my mother and would give me her things, but she needed money,” Aimée said. “Later she called to say there was something I should know about my mother, but I got to the meeting too late. Jutta’s brains were all over the tower wall.” She watched Morbier run the napkin across his mouth, then snap toothpicks between his splayed fingers.

“Doesn’t sound pretty.”

She told him about Jutta’s photo of Romain Figeac, Christian’s behavior, and the blood-smudged wall. “Figeac didn’t commit suicide, Morbier, he was murdered.”

“And you can prove that?”

“Serge at the morgue concurs,” she said, hoping Morbier wouldn’t check up on her stretch of the truth. “Both Figeac and Jutta Hald were killed by high-caliber gun blasts. Serge has the evidence Baggie for testing but I know it’s the same gun.”

“What do you want from me?” Morbier sighed.

“I know it’s related to my mother.”

“Leduc, I can’t help you anymore.”

“Attention, c’est chaud,”
the waitress interrupted, wedging two heaping plates of grilled
rougets
, the brilliant red fish skin still crackling, in front of them. Thyme and olive oil aromas filled the air.

She felt sure the Berlin trip, to investigate clues to her father’s death, from which she’d just returned had kick-started Jutta’s effort to contact her. She pulled out the paper she’d taken from Romain Figeac’s desk.

“Figeac wrote ‘agit888’ and ‘Frésnes,’ the prison where Jutta and my mother were held,” she said. “Know anything about it?”

His eyebrows knit in concentration. “How old are you?”

He should know. She’d been nine when he and her father assembled her bike over a bottle of wine on a long-ago Christmas Eve. She’d watched from behind a door. The bike had always wobbled.

“You know a woman never reveals her age.”

“Will you let me eat in peace?”

She nodded.

Morbier tucked his napkin into his collar, spreading it over his suspenders. “All I know, which isn’t much, is that sometime in the early eighties a number of RAD members—”

“RAD?” Aimée interrupted.

“The Red Army Division,” he said. “Some German fugitive terrorists wanted to leave the underground. They were given a chance to lead new lives in East Germany, under different names.

“So by Red Army Division,” she said, dipping her bread in the sauce, and keeping her hand steady with effort, “you mean the seventies Haader-Rofmein gang who blew up banks and kidnapped people?”

“The newspapers called them that.” Morbier took a long sip of rose. He raised his thick eyebrows. “They called themselves the RAD. Their French counterparts were Action-Réaction.”

This fit what Jutta had told her.

“This came out in the late eighties when some ex-terrorists living in East Germany were arrested. Then the Wall came down.”

“What’s the connection to agit888?”

“Thank Jean-Paul Sartre for that,” Morbier said, attacking the
rouget
with gusto.

“Sartre?”

“The Marxist fool interviewed Haader in his cell,” he said. “And gave that infamous press conference about terrorists. For that the Ministry of Interior kept Sartre under surveillance until he died.” Morbier made a moue of distaste. “Your tax francs at work.”

“Sounds convoluted to me.”

“Agit888 is what they called the Sartre surveillance squad.”

Aimée thought old Sartre would have been secretly pleased. An existential thorn in the establishment’s side until the end.

“What happened to the RAD gang?”

“Most of them testified against their former comrades and received fairly mild sentences.”

“What about …?”

“Some did time in Frésnes. Most are free by now, I imagine.”

Aimée paused. Jutta Hald’s visit—the timing of it—right after her release, was significant. She took a deep breath. “Was my mother one of them?”

Morbier’s fork stopped midair. He didn’t look at her.

“I asked you a question, Morbier,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

“Some things in life should stay buried,” he said.

Her appetite disappeared. “I just want to know if she’s alive.”

“Rumors circulated,” he said.

“What kind of rumors?”

“A
moucharde
, a stoolie,” he said. “That she played both sides.”

“A stoolie?” She gripped the table edge. Hard. “For who?”

“The Sorbonne riots in ’68 threw everyone into turmoil,” he said. “Crazy times.”

“What do you mean?”

“She put her nose into places it didn’t belong.”

Morbier got the waitress’s attention and pointed to his empty glass.

“I asked your father once, but he avoided the topic.”

“But …”

“
C’est fini
, Leduc,” Morbier said.

Aimée’s heart sank.

Her father had refused to discuss it with her, too. The whole family had.

She didn’t know what to think or how to figure out what her mother had or hadn’t done.

“You knew my mother, didn’t you, Morbier?”

He shrugged. “Not well.”

“What was she like?” Sadly, she realized she’d used the past tense.

“A handful. Like you,” he said.

The lunchtime rush had subsided. Shouts and horns sounded from the street.

Here she was sitting with a man who knew her mother and father, but wouldn’t talk about them. Why couldn’t he cooperate?

“Jutta Hald’s gone,” Morbier said after a long pause. “Those radicals have a death wish, always did.” He swirled the wine, sniffed his glass. “Take my advice, eh—move on.”

Aimée remembered that the only good thing to do with advice, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, was to pass it on to someone else.

She managed a thin smile. “I’ll try.”

“
Tiens
, say it like you mean it, Leduc,” Morbier said.

“Just make one inquiry about Jutta Hald, that’s all I ask.”

Morbier leaned back in the chair, shaking his head. His thick salt-and-pepper head of hair could use a wash, Aimée thought. He looked like he’d been up all night.

“You’re well acquainted with the French legal system, Leduc.”

“But there’s a lot I don’t know.”

“There’s a rule stating that for 150 years no one can look at a prisoner’s dossier,” he said. His thick eyebrows crinkled, tenting his eyes. “Just to be clear, that’s 150 years from date of birth. I can’t find out anything about your mother, even if I wanted to.”

“But, Morbier, if you’re working a case and need the info …”

“My hands are tied,” he said. “This is to protect the prisoner.”

She tried to hide her disappointment.

If she couldn’t see the file on her mother, the trail ended.

“Any idea how to get around this rule?” she asked.

Morbier shrugged, a typical Gallic shrug. “You’re friends with higher-ups. Complain to the ministry.”

At least two ministers in the Ministry of Interior weren’t happy with her after the incidents in Belleville, although Martine, the sister-in-law of one, remained her best friend.

She thought about Frésnes, the old brick prison on the out-skirts of Paris where Jutta had been held. Unheated and the worst in the system. She remembered something. “No cell holds just two,” she said. “They usually cram in three or four prisoners…say Jutta and my mother—”

“Wasn’t that years ago?” Morbier interrupted.

She nodded. The words caught in her throat. She made herself go on, leaning forward, her eyes locked on Morbier’s. “But Jutta was just released, it should be easy to find out whom she roomed with.”

Morbier frowned. “Her last cell mate might not be the same person.”

“True.” Morbier had a point. “But if Jutta was excited about getting out, she could have talked to a cell mate about the past, discussed her plans. She told me she came straight from prison to my apartment.”

She knew Frésnes also held the CNO, the Centre National d’Observation, for prisoners who required physical and psychiatric evaluations when up for parole. Or those under surveillance for undesirable behavior.

The CNO assessments could take up to six weeks. All the prisoners hated them, but several times in their prison life they had to endure them. Some more often than others. Prisoners in this transit loop were much easier to track down than others in the penal system.

“Morbier, do me a favor,” she said. “Discover who shared Jutta’s cell in Frésnes before her release. Maybe she can help me to find out about my mother.”

“You’re chasing pipe dreams, Leduc.” Morbier expelled a quick breath. “Wasting your time.”

From the table behind them, several patrons sat smoking and drinking espresso. Such a perfect end to a meal! She could almost taste the tobacco, feel the jolt in her lungs. Instead of turning around and begging for a cigarette, she popped some Nicorette gum and forced herself to continue.

“A lot of retired
flics
sit on the parole board,” she said, chewing fast. “Can’t you make a phone call or two?”

“Favors cost,” he said. “If I start nosing around Frésnes, they expect their backs scratched. On my turf.”

Now she was stroking his fur the right way. He always wanted a favor in return and would bargain until he got it. Being his goddaughter gave her no exemption.