Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (28 page)

“You’ve been busy,” Yves said.

She couldn’t tell if the expression in his eyes was hurt, wonder, or both.

He leaned down and brushed her cheek with his lips, inhaling her scent. “You still wear Chanel No. 5.”

“And you’re still in Cairo.” More of a question than a statement.

“I’m bureau chief now.” He gave a wistful sigh. “You’re radiant, Aimée. Motherhood becomes you.”

Words caught in her throat. She remembered the little mole behind his ear, how he hummed Coltrane’s ballad “Crescent” when he cooked, the way his legs had wrapped around her under her duvet.

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

She stared at him, found her tongue. “Stella. Her name’s Stella.”

“Aaah, you always had a thing for the stars.”

And you, she almost said.

“Remember this?” She felt around in her bag, found the lucky Egyptian coin, the one he’d given her on a street corner in Cairo when they’d said good-bye.

A beeping came from her phone, indicating a message. Yves stared at the coin, then at her phone. “Don’t you think you should check that?”

She hit the voice-mail button and listened. One message. Jean Caplan’s voice. “Hélène wants to talk to you about the girl. She knows you somehow. The side door code is 78C65, Come to the back of the store. She’ll be waiting.” And then the loud buzz of a hang up.

“Have to get home, eh? Your man’s waiting,” Yves suggested, watching her.

Claude. But she wasn’t sure he was her man. She’d put Stella first last night and he’d given his freedom priority over her.

“
Non
, it’s . . . it’s business,” she said. She wanted to explain, tell him everything, even on this busy street.

“Of course, you’d never stop working,” he said. “But I always thought if I gave you enough babies, well, you’d slow down.”

“You did?”

He pressed something into her hand. Another shining bronze coin covered in Arabic writing. “One can never have too much luck, Aimée.”

His cell phone rang but he ignored it. His warm hands held hers, not loosening their grasp.

“Got to go,” he said. “Another meeting. I fly back tonight.”

“Look, Yves, I—”

He put his finger over her lips. “Don’t tell me how happy you are, or that you’ve found the right one at last. It’s wonderful; I’m happy for you. And quit batting those big eyes at me, Aimée. I understand.”

But he didn’t.

“If your daughter’s anything like you . . . whoa.” He stroked Stella’s head, kissed Aimée long and lingeringly on the mouth. “You know, we’ve got to stop saying good-bye on street corners.”

Then he was gone. People hurried past her, their shoulders hitting hers as the shadows deepened. And she felt more alone than ever.

As she got out of the taxi at Jean Caplan’s
brocante
, she was astounded by the driver’s opening the door for her even before she produced her usual big tip. She stood in front of the shop for a moment with the baby bag over her shoulder, Stella strapped in the carrier and holding a bouquet of yellow daffodils for Hélène.

“Hélène knows you somehow,” Caplan had said. Like Nelie knew her “somehow?” Caplan had realized, seen the truth in Aimée words and convinced Hélène to talk to her. For the first time Aimée sensed she’d get answers.

She figured Hélène witnessed Orla’s killing. Then either Hélène acted in self-defense or she’d gone after the attacker. Perhaps Hélène had helped Nelie, and it was she who had written that note to Aimee. If Hélène knew where Nelie was hiding, she’d lead Aimée there.

On the pavement, a man in a blue work coat grunted as he carried a tall sheet of glass in a frame on his back. He winked at Aimée, paused, and wiped his brow with his free hand. A
vitrier
—a glass man—who hawked his services on the streets. One of the few who still made the rounds with their distinctive high-pitched cry
“Vi-tr-ier.”
A fragment of the disappearing old Paris.

Dark green metal shutters covered the front of Caplan’s shop. A dim light shone through the crack between the door shade and the glass. He’d said to use the side door; she tapped in the digicode number.

Inside, she followed the narrow brown scuffed hall to the courtyard onto which Jean Caplan’s kitchen faced. Standing by the sealed-up well she saw lights in the galley kitchen, heard what sounded like the
télé
blaring news.

“Time we meet Hélène,” she said. Stella answered with a wail.

She knocked, opened the unlocked door, and entered.

“Monsieur Caplan? Hélène?”

She patted Stella’s back as she edged past the hanging beaded curtains that separated the kitchen from the shop. The once exquisite chandelier, with missing crystal drops, provided the only light. Scattered piles of yellowed newspapers cluttered the floor. Stairs to the right and dark heavy curtains in front of her partitioned off what appeared to be rooms in the back.

Two half-empty demitasse cups and a blue sugar bowl with tongs sat on the small table. Were Jean and Hélène upstairs? Or in the back storeroom? Stella’s cries mixed with the evening news announcer’s words. She turned down the volume on the
télé
, wishing she could turn down Stella’s volume as well.

“Monsieur Caplan, I’m here,” she said, rocking the baby in her arms, rubbing the soft rolls of skin on her ankles, leaning down to blow in Stella’s ear.

And then she was shoved through the thick woolen curtains into the storeroom. Startled, she stumbled forward, throwing her arms out to protect Stella and break her fall. She grabbed a dusty wall hanging and righted herself. Aimée turned to see the glint of a gun pointed at the baby’s head. And gasped. A Beretta 87, the hit man’s weapon of choice, pioneered by the Mossad.

Fear coursed through her veins. Stella’s cries escalated into screams. Why had she listened to Caplan? She’d been set up and she’d put Stella in danger.

“I’m tired of wasting time and manpower,” said a man in a tone of mild disgust. He filled the doorway. Medium height, he had a broad, smooth forehead on a big bull of a head that joined his almost nonexistent neck. Taut muscles strained his blue work pants and jacket. A professional with dead, killer eyes.

“What do you mean? Who are you?” she blurted out.

But she knew. A Halkyut hired gun and she’d walked right into his hands. She ordered herself to play dumb and pretend, to buy time to figure something out. He wouldn’t shoot Stella, wouldn’t kill an innocent baby, she told herself. Then the realization sank in. He could shoot her, then take Stella. She tried to read something in his expressionless eyes. What if Caplan hadn’t set her up? Maybe she had stumbled into something else. Maybe she could still get out of this.

“Shut her up,” he ordered.

She stuck her finger in Stella’s mouth as she rocked her. Frantic, she looked around for any way to escape, for some weapon.

One flickering fluorescent panel overhead revealed marble busts standing at haphazard angles on grimy shelves, shards of glass from cracked picture frames stacked against the wall gathering dust. Stella fussed, gumming her finger.

“She’s got colic, I have to take her to the doctor. Let us go,” Aimée begged.

The man patted his work-pants pocket, saying nothing. Was he waiting for reinforcements? He hadn’t spoken again. What if he didn’t know who she was? She had to take the chance. Get him talking, figure out some lie, try to make a deal. Concoct a story, a way to get out.

“We live in the building. Monsieur Caplan’s been ill,” she said, words coming fast and furious. “Monsieur, I’ve seen nothing. I don’t know you. We will leave the way we came, of course, and say nothing. The baby’s sick. We just came to—”

“Bringing him some flowers?” he said. “Nice.”

“I swear,” she said, shielding her eyes, at the same time scanning the black lacquered table, the pile of dusty carpets behind it, the ocher wall in back of it. She caught sight of the tarnished silver candlesticks on the table and a dust-covered sword collection lying near the carpets. She smelled something coppery. Like blood. “I haven’t seen anything. If you let us go, I won’t say anything.”

“But that wouldn’t be sociable,” he said.

She heard a loud groan over the sound of Stella’s cries. She looked closer and recognized that what she’d taken for a pile of carpets was a body. Jean Caplan sat slumped in a chair with his hands tied. She made out his black-and-purple swollen eyes, caked blood on his nostrils, and his sagging jaw. The coppery smell of blood mingled with that of mildew. His worn brown shoes dangled over the cracked linoleum floor.

“What’s going on? He’s an old man. What have you done to him?”

Think. Think. Sweat sheened her upper lip. She felt lightheaded in the dust and blood-tinged air, with Stella on her chest radiating heat, shrieking now, as she looked at the old man who seemed half dead.

Caplan’s feet twisted and he whimpered in pain, then groaned louder.

“Haven’t had enough,
mon vieux?
” The man turned, edging closer to Caplan, and kicked him.

“Why don’t you give him the flowers?” the man asked Aimée.

“What?”

“You heard me. And I’ll hold the baby.”

“
Non
, that’s all right, I’ll just—”

“Do it now! Did you hear me?”

Her hands trembled as she reached for the flowers. Caplan blinked at her.

“No more playing mommy,” the man sneered.

“What do you mean?”

“Give her to me or I’ll start with your knees,” he said. “Then work my way up.”

She stepped back, toward Caplan, and felt the table edge with her hip.

“But you’re not listening; perhaps you don’t think I mean it. So maybe I’ll start with him,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face, as he moved closer to her and to Caplan. So close she smelled his acrid, damp sweat. “I will shoot his hands off unless you hand the baby over and tell me where she is.”

He glanced at his watch. What was he waiting for? He was stalling.

“You’re waiting for someone, aren’t you? So you can kill Nelie, like you did Orla.”

Her chest was wet with perspiration from fear and Stella’s heat. Stupid, so stupid. She couldn’t even reach her cell phone to summon backup.

He gave a little smile. “Not my job. Sorry.”

“Halkyut hired you,” she asserted.

He didn’t deny it.

“Nelie took the Alstrom file, found the proof they needed in it.”

“Who?”

“But the writing’s gone, the marks have rubbed off the baby,” she said. Her eyes locked with his. “I’ll show you. The baby’s not important any longer.”

“Salaud,”
Caplan shouted hoarsely.

Moaning in pain, he kicked out with his foot, connecting with the man’s knee, throwing him off balance. And then Caplan kicked the table, sending it and everything on it crashing.

Aimée ducked behind the overturned table. She heard the thud of a shot, the tinkle of crashing glass. She saw the flash. She pulled the baby out of the carrier and shoved her between the table and the wall.

She had to move fast. She crawled forward, using the table as a shield. The reek of cordite filled the air. More shots were fired over her head. She heard the man cursing somewhere behind her. Her fingers scrabbled across the gritty floorboards as she groped for the antique sword blade. After she grabbed it, they moved to the cuplike handle.

The man sat on the floor, Beretta pointed at the table. She saw bright streaks of blood on Caplan’s shoulder.

Now! She had to do it now. She crouched and rammed the table with her shoulder, toppling Caplan against the man. Struggling to raise the heavy sword with her shaking hands, she stood and swung it with all her might at the man’s shin. His mouth opened in dumb surprise, and he screamed in pain.

She pulled the sword back. As he reached for his leg, he dropped the Beretta. His hand was covered with blood.

Before he could recover and pick up the gun from the linoleum where it had fallen, she kicked it away.

“What kind of hit man goes after old men and babies?”

“These days, everyone specializes,” he said. Then he bar-reled into her, knocking her against the wall. His fists hammered at her chest. She yelped with pain. He grabbed her by the neck, yanking her closer. She twisted her body, tasted blood, felt a searing pain in her ribs and fell to the floor.

Her hip landed on the Beretta’s grip. By the time she’d gotten her fingers around the trigger, he’d pulled her up by her hair, slamming her head against the wall. Through the waves of pain she heard Stella’s cries. The light was fading. Sparks danced in the corners of her eyes.

“Amateur,” he hissed.

You used what you had.

He didn’t let go until she’d fired the Beretta three times at point-blank range into his chest. She could hear the hiss of air as it left his lungs in a burst of blood.

Lights danced before her eyes. Whirling spirals and flashes, Stella’s cries . . . she had to reach Stella. The light faded and then she knew no more.

SHE WALKED ON a broad band of moonlight, Stella holding her hand. Stella was a toddler now, yet with the same baby face. Someone else was there. An old woman all in white. Then Stella was skipping away from her and she was reaching out for her, calling over and over, “Come back, Stella.”