Murder on the Champ de Mars (18 page)

To Aimée’s horror, he tugged his chin, which slipped off, revealing the lower half of what had been his face, now a deep cavity of rippled pink skin with a hole for a mouth. From beside the chair, he pulled a khaki green gas mask, which he then fitted over his disfigured visage.

One of
les gueules cassées
, the broken faces, maimed in the Great War. They had been a fixture of her childhood growing up—every
quartier
had them, although there weren’t many left anymore.

“The mustard gas,
ma petite
, let’s go,” he said, motioning to her.

Sad. Her mind went back to the old Loterie Nationale tickets her grandmother had bought to support the rehabilitation of
les gueules cassées
in the old châteaux formerly requisitioned as field hospitals. A few were kept to house remaining severely disfigured soldiers, providing the grotesque a refuge from the public. Many of the generation who’d lost their youth, ideals and faces preferred to live among their own kind. Others wore masks to avoid horrifying children.

“Get the supply wagon, the one with wheels,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me?”

“After your dinner, Great-Uncle,” Madame Uzes said, matter-of-factly. “You know how you like the way the nurse cuts up your
steak-frites.”

Dinner served this late in a hospital? Or was it part of his special treatment?

“I don’t want my
soupe à l’oignon
cold again,” he said petulantly. “They always forget.”

“We’ll warm it up, Great-Uncle,” she said.

A nurse appeared at the door, clucked. “Having one of those evenings, Corporal? Let’s go to the garden before we try dinner again.”

And as quickly as he’d appeared, the gnome scuttled out wearing his gas mask.

“Madame, this doesn’t concern your great-uncle,” said Aimée.

“Good. I’m not moving him.” Madame Uzes, tall like her aunt, wore Chanel pumps and a beige cashmere sweater set. She sat down and glanced at her diary, seeming preoccupied. “If that’s all, Mademoiselle?”

Great—the woman she’d lied to in order to see wanted to dismiss her. Well, that wasn’t going to work. Aimée sat down in the adjoining chair.

“The priest at Saint-François-Xavier told me you’re in charge of Christian Helping Hands and you employ
les manouches.”

“Et alors?”

“I need Drina Constantin’s address, contacts, any information you have that will help me reach her family members.”

Madame Uzes looked up from her agenda. “Talk to her son, Nicu.”

Aimée hesitated. “You don’t know? He’s dead.”

Madame Uzes blinked. “What do you mean?” She snapped her diary shut. “But I saw them both a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

“Knew?” Shock showed on her face. “When? What happened?”

Aimée’s knees trembled. “Murdered this morning, the police have the details.”

Madame Uzes dropped her diary. “That’s terrible.”

Aimée swooped it up and handed it to her. “But you can help,
non?
There’s no time to waste.”

“Help? But how?” Madame Uzes shook her head. “A Gypsy killing? Some vendetta, you mean. I can’t believe I let that young man into our home.”

Great.

“You misunderstand, Madame,” said Aimée. “Drina was in her last days; she had been put on hemodialysis at Hôpital Laennec. Last night, someone unplugged her from the machines and abducted her. Nicu was trying to find her.”

“Drina disappeared?” Madame Uzes gasped. “But I don’t understand.”

“Every hour she’s missing brings her closer to death. Any information you have will help. Can you tell me how you used to contact her?”

Madame Uzes thumbed open her diary. “That’s the only address I have, a workshop near the La Motte-Picquet–Grenelle Métro stop.”

The atelier on Passage Sécurité.

Back to zero. She’d thought she might find something more here. But she had to give it another shot.

“Tell me about the last time you saw Drina and Nicu,” she said.

Madame Uzes thought. “Nicu delivered the kneelers, furniture Drina had repaired.”

“Did they have a helper, anyone else with them?”

“How would I know?” she said, bristling. “
Désolée
, I don’t mean to be unkind. I just spoke with Drina for a minute. My older daughter showed Nicu where to put the furniture.”

The one who had the hots for him. Rose. The one who argued with her mother.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t notice much, I’m sorry,” said Madame Uzes.

Only the hired help, Aimée thought. Gypsies.

Madame Uzes had the grace to look ashamed. “We try to bridge the differences,” she said. “Spread Christian fellowship and encourage those like Drina to join a cooperative.”

“I need to know every detail. What’s your daughter’s number?”

“Why? This has got nothing to do with her.”

Au contraire
, according to her little sister Lisette.

“Better I talk to her than the
flics
, don’t you think, Madame? This is a murder investigation now.”

She wrote it down with a quick nod. A different number from the one Lisette had given her. “Rose attends l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris.”

The prestigious
grande école
nicknamed Sciences Po, in the 7th. Aimée stuck the info in her pocket.

“Please try to think back to when you last saw Drina. It’s important, Madame.”

Madame Uzes shook her head. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

Aimée’s ears pricked up. “Have you remembered something?”

“That’s right. Now I remember.” Madame Uzes stood up. “The time before last was when I saw Drina at church, maybe two weeks ago. Drina didn’t look well, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Hated hospitals. I urged her to see Doctor Estienne, a specialist who’s treated my family.”

Nicu must have listened and taken her to Laennec. But that only led her back to the beginning. “Doctor Estienne treated her,” Aimée said. “But she was abducted from Hôpital Laennec last night during a busy shift change.”

“But Doctor Estienne’s established a private practice here, in the next wing. He practices out of his own clinic, affiliated with Saint-Jean de Dieu,” said Madame Uzes. “Our foundation
helps with medical bills, private supplemental care and meals if needed. Why wouldn’t Nicu bring his mother here?”

Aimée wondered that too.

Outside the window in the now-lit garden, Aimée saw the great-uncle rooting in a bed of peonies while the nurse tried to restrain him.

“
Désolée
, I’ve got to go,” Madame Uzes said. “He’s digging trenches again.”

F
IVE MINUTES LATER
Aimée found Dr. Estienne’s clinic in the next wing. So far she’d impersonated a family friend and a health liaison. She prayed the nice woman in billing wouldn’t ask Madame Uzes about her daughter’s trouble with the babysitter. She needed to talk to Dr. Estienne and find out as much as she could before the staff cottoned on to her.

“Doctor Estienne’s at a staff meeting,” said the receptionist, a young man this time, wearing thick-lensed glasses. “Then he has a patient.”

“How late do evening clinic hours run?”

“I can fit you in at eight forty-five.”

That would be twenty-four hours since Drina’s disappearance. She glanced at her Tintin watch. Less than half an hour.

“You said you’re a new patient?”

She hadn’t, but she nodded and accepted the clipboard and forms.

“
Oui
, I’ll wait over there.” She took the clipboard to fill out on the lantern-lit clinic
terrasse
, which overlooked the private garden. Easy to keep a lookout from here and intercept Dr. Estienne before his patient. Here in the quiet, she tried the number Madame Uzes had given for her daughter Rose.

R
OSE
U
ZES IGNORED
her ringing phone.

“What if it’s Nicu? Answer it, Rose,” said Robert. “My film’s finished, and he’s up next.”

Nicu didn’t have a phone. Annoying. “It’ll just be my stupid little sister.” Rose clicked her phone to vibrate without even glancing at it. “Nicu’s here somewhere,” said Rose. She scanned the dank artists’ squat under Pont Alexandre III, a former boathouse. Didn’t see him. “He promised.”

“Late, he’s always late,” said Robert, hitting the lights to scattered applause.

“I’ll find him,” she said, picking up their protest flyers.

She made her way among the graffiti artists, a hip-hop DJ anxious to spin, a few of her fellow students from Sciences Po and the odd local. A reluctant Nicu had agreed to speak. He’d promised her.

Yet, as usual, Nicu was late. “I operate on Romany time,” he always joked with her.

Robert’s award-winning documentary film,
Le voyage des Manouches
, which highlighted the illegal destruction of encampments outside Avignon, had brought a raised fist or two from the crowd and shouts of, “
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
—now!”

Where was Nicu?

Without a
manouche
to speak to the truth of Robert’s film, they’d have to figure something else out. And soon. Meanwhile, Robert stepped onto the metal boat rig, a makeshift stage.

“My film shows you what happened in Avignon. We can’t let the same thing happen here. March with us in protest tomorrow at the
mairie
of the seventh arrondissement,” he said. “Social housing in the
quartier
is mandated, and encampment rights for travelers should be, too.”

“Et alors?”
A voice shouted. “Where’s my rights? I’ve waited three years for housing.”

“We need your voice, too. Everyone should be heard tomorrow,” said Robert. “Join us. The policy the
mairie
’s pursuing blatantly violates city requirements and your housing rights as well as the Roma’s. This report’s statistics prove it.” Robert took a sheet and read: “
A wide disparity has been found in compliance and non-compliance with required social housing. The seventh arrondissement provides only between one and two percent available social housing in contrast to arrondissements in northeast Paris, which make up the maximum required twenty percent stipulated for the city.”
Robert lifted up the paper. “See for yourselves. They’ll get away with it, like they do every year, unless we demonstrate.”

Marco, a graffiti artist, stood up. “I say we claim ground on the Champ de Mars.”

A few snickers in the crowd.

“Why not? This is the greenest arrondissement in Paris,” Marco continued, wiping his forehead in the humid air. “There’s space for everyone, not just the ministries and the elite.”

The concrete rumbled under Rose’s feet from the nearby underground RER train. She hated the squat, especially the mildew, resin and oil odors from the boats that pervaded the atelier space. She glanced around, again wondering why Nicu hadn’t appeared. So unlike the Nicu she knew. She shivered, remembering the feel of his warm arms holding her under the duvet the other night.

“The film’s advisor’s joining us tonight,” said Robert. “He’ll talk about his life, the
manouche
nomadic tradition, the musical heritage and Gypsy jazz—”

“Romanticizing the Gypsies?” interrupted a balding man wearing a duffle coat. He stepped out of the crowd. “Free spirits? Music lovers? Pah, all clichés. I live here. Talk to my neighbor. Our street’s had three break-ins, all by eleven- and twelve-year-olds. The Roma teach kids to steal.” He shook his head, clucked in disgust. “They use their own children.”

Marco stepped forward. “You’re right, they’re being used. Used and victimized by the system that’s kicking families out on the street. Where can they go, how can they survive? Don’t they have a right to live as they wish, like we do?”

Two other men joined the man in the duffle coat. “By stealing? Nothing justifies robbery, the filth and garbage they leave behind in the encampments, the begging.”

“But you see, it’s a vicious circle. If we made it easier for them to access our social services and education—”

“Education?” The man was shouting. “But their children drop out of school!”

Rose noticed several figures in hoodies moving toward the center of the crowd. Filing in behind them on the paths they had cleared were skinheads with tattoos on their necks, brass knuckles glinting on their fists.

Robert jumped down to face the trio who’d pushed their way forward.

“Living in squalid caravans and stealing?” The duffle-coat man was saying. “That’s a lifestyle to promote?”

More shouting. Any minute, Rose realized, a fight would break out. She edged backward, nervous, frantically looking for Nicu under the coved stone arch. Earlier, she’d been wishing he would show up, but now she was hoping he wouldn’t.

Her phone vibrated, and this time she answered. Her sister. “Why don’t you pick up?”

“I told you never to call. Quit bugging me, Lisette. Tell Maman I’m studying.”

“Maman’s out. Least of your worries. Your boyfriend Nicu’s in trouble.”

“He’s not my … what trouble?”

Glass shattered in the crowd. The raised voices drowned out her sister’s reply.

“Lisette?”

She clicked off, searching through the crowd. She had to warn Nicu, get him out of here if …

She was shoved hard from behind, and her leaflets scattered to the concrete as she fought for balance. Marco and the graffiti artists were facing off against the skinheads. “You’re talking about a people that’s been persecuted, disenfranchised and run out for centuries,” Marco was shouting.

Rose’s chest felt tight in the humid air. Angry mumblings and red perspiring faces surrounded her. Why couldn’t people discuss this reasonably?

“This is a complicated situation, with a long and entrenched history,” she said, raising her voice to be heard and earning herself some dirty looks. “There’s no simple solution. But if we all work together, the entire community will benefit, not just
les manouches.”

“Quit with the bleeding-heart excuses,” the duffle-coat man said. “If they live here, they need to follow the law like you, me and everyone else.”

“Who says they don’t?” Marco shouted. “You can’t jump to conclusions about an entire group of people based on one or two members.” He’d climbed onto a chair now and was speaking to the crowd. “How can these people trust a country that rounded them up and put them in internment camps during the war?”