Murder in Belleville (19 page)

“Too simple,” he agreed.

“Could the crisis here mimic what’s happening in Algeria?” she said.

“Nice observation,” Yves said and shrugged. “Or it could all be smoke and mirrors.”

Again smoke and mirrors.

Something ran unspoken between them. His wife must be taking up his time, she figured. She had the terrible feeling things with Yves led to a brick wall. A dead end. She wished she didn’t want so much for him to come and spend the night again.

Act smart. Much better to cut her losses and walk away. Don’t wait for him to say he’s returned to his wife.

She turned and said, “Yves, I’ve got to go.”

“Are you playing hard to get, Aimee?” he said, grinning. “That will get you everywhere.” He pulled her close. She wished he hadn’t done that.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, struggling for words to express her feelings. Why couldn’t she say it? He kept rubbing her neck and being no help. Whatsoever.

A taxi screeched in front of them. Several correspondents and photographers yelled at Yves to hurry and get in if he wanted a ride to the airport. He kissed her hard.

Then he was gone.

He’d popped in and out of her life again. And she’d let him.

She went to the nearest cafe, set her bag down, and ordered a glass of
vin rouge.
Maybe it would help drown her indecision.

“Mademoiselle Leduc?” a voice with a light accent asked from behind her.

She turned to face Kaseem Nwar, smiling beside her at the counter. Several men and women stood there, and for a moment she couldn’t place where she’d met him. Then she remembered. He was more handsome than she recalled, in a long wool coat over a
djellaba.
As if it had been designed for him. The way he dressed revealed a pride in his heritage. She liked that.

“You probably don’t remember me,” he said, his smile turning sheepish. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Mais
bien sur,
we met at Philippe de Froissart’s,” she said, saddened by the memory of her conversation with Philippe.

“You looked upset,” he said.

She gave him a small smile. “Anais was ill, things were difficult.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, his brow furrowed. “Philippe and Anais have been my good friends since the Sorbonne.”

Aimee made space for Kaseem at the bar, taking a sip of wine.

“Wine?”

He shook his head and got the bartender’s attention. “I’ll nurse a Perrier.”

She’d forgotten that Muslims took no alcohol.

“Do you live in the area?” she said, wondering why she’d run into him here.

His look turned serious at her casual question.

“Please understand, I have no political affiliation with the AFL,” he said, a shadow crossing his face. “But some of my ex-wife’s family claimed sanctuary, so I brought clothes and food. It’s important to help them, person to person.”

Aimee wondered if he could do more than that.

“Can’t you help them stay?” she said, noting the muted cafe light playing on his features.

“Not with the present law,” Kaseem shrugged, a very Gallic response. “My wife was French, but I’m naturalized. I can’t help them anymore. That’s the trouble.”

Kaseem’s mineral water arrived, and he paid for both their drinks with an assurance that commanded attention. Kaseem appeared at ease in many worlds yet was not pompous.

“Merci,”
she said. She enjoyed standing in a cafe with an interesting man and talking. Face it, she admitted to herself, Kaseem wasn’t hard on the eyes. And he wasn’t rushing off to the airport.

“Tell me about your project involved with the humanitarian mission,” she said.

“Mostly I export and import,” he said, waving his long-fingered hand. “Life in the countryside is stark,” he said. “We’re doing all we can.”

As Kaseem spoke his eyes lit up, and he gave her his complete attention. As if her every thought mattered.

“With feet in both worlds, I’m just a conduit,” Kaseem said. “But I feel a sense of responsibility. Especially since I know Philippe, maybe I can help in ways others can’t.”

She remembered the military types among the trade delegation at Philippe’s house. Broaching the subject indirectly seemed the only way.

Aimee said, “My nephew’s going through an army stage,” she grinned. “You know boys. You wouldn’t know anyone in the military?”

Kaseem returned her smile. “Sorry, I’m just a merchant.”

He laid his arm on hers.

“Right now I’m worried about Anais,” he said, interrupting. “Philippe acts stoic, but you’re her friend. Please, I want to help. But I don’t even know where she is.”

“Makes two of us, Kaseem,” she said, glancing up at the cafe clock. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

He offered her a lift to her office. Why not? He exuded an ease with himself, an elusive quality she didn’t see in many men. Except Yves. But Yves was gone, and she liked Kaseem’s attention. En route Kaseem said he knew where to get the best falafel in Belleville, so they stopped and ate on the street.

“Call me paranoid, but either Anais doesn’t like me anymore or something’s happened,” Kaseem said as they stood munching their overflowing falafels and tossing crumbs to the pigeons. “She’s never home, doesn’t return calls.”

Aimee knew the feeling.

“Did something happen?” Kaseem asked. “Tell me; I don’t want to pester.”

“Philippe’s the one to ask, Kaseem,” she said.

At the curb on rue du Louvre, she turned to thank him. Kaseem responded with a lingering
bisou
on both cheeks. Nice. In fact, quite nice. Her cheeks burned all the way up the stairs.

A
S SHE
opened her office door, the phone was ringing.

“Allo,” she said, hitting the light switch with her elbow.

“Anais’s all shaken up,” Martine said, her voice low.

“Where is she?” Aimee tossed her bag on the desk, switched her computer on, and threw herself in the chair.

“Philippe’s put her in a clinic,” Martine said. “And for once he’s done the right thing.”

Aimee doubted that.

“Look, Martine, Philippe threatened me,” she said. “Sicked a gorilla on my tail to make sure I don’t investigate further.”

“He did
what?’
Martine said, sounding more indignant than surprised.

“And threatened my business,” Aimee said, turning toward her oval window. Rain had started to prickle the glass fronting rue du Louvre.

“Philippe’s protecting his family,” she said.

“Martine, he’s hiding something,” she said. “He’s afraid.”

Over the phone Aimee heard Martine sigh.

“Anais wants you to find out what he’s hiding,” Martine said. “Don’t stop. I’ll talk to him.”

“After being beaten and shot at the Cirque d’Hiver and finding no leads, maybe he’s right.”

“Philippe did that?”

“My top suspect is an Algerian who has links to
plastique,”
she said.

“How’s that?”

“It’s a long story,” Aimee said, not wanting to go into a lengthy explanation.

“Condense it and tell me,” Martine said.

“Now you sound like an editor,” Aimee said.

But she did.

She told Martine about how she’d tried to find the
phstique
source via Samia.

“What about this General?”

“He likes magic, and he’s not nice.”

“Don’t think I’m not concerned,” Martine said, “but at least Anais is safe.”

Aimee felt there was more to what Martine said. “What do you mean, Martine?”

“Now that I’m spending time with Simone,” she said. “Maybe I want my own.”

Caught off guard, Aimee heard wistfulness in Martine’s voice. She’d never heard Martine talk like this. Disturbing.

“Attends,
Martine, it’s worse than having a dog,” she said. “You have to make them eat, and the vet bills are much higher.”

Martine laughed.

“Martine, Philippe acted strange when he heard about Hamid and the hunger strikers,” she said, “Sylvie had one of his flyers.”

“So you think there’s some connection?” Martine asked.

“We’ll find out,” Aimee said. “Do you still have your friend in
Securite sociale?

“He retired,” Martine said.

Too bad. She could have found information about the AFL.

“Anais mentioned she’d given Philippe an envelope.”

“I’ll ask him. Look, Aimee, I’m helping take care of Simone. That’s all I can do for Anais,” Martine said, her voice pleading. “Find out what’s got Philippe by the balls, please. You can do this.”

“Get the goon off my tail,” Aimee said.

“D’accord,”
Martine agreed. “You’re the only one I trust, Aimee. No matter what, I know you’ll come through. Please.”

By the time Aimee reached the crowded mouth of the Metro, she had a plan. She still hadn’t heard from Samia, but there was one person nearby whom she could ask about Eugenie.

T
HE DEAD HAD IT
easy, Bernard thought, shuffling his files together on his office desk.

Dead easy.

But that wasn’t true. He wished it were. Outside his window, along the gravel paths, the trees’ shadows wavered and lengthened. He tossed the empty pill bottle in the trash—he needed more or he wouldn’t sleep.

Visions of his
nounou,
the caramel-faced Berber nursemaid who’d diapered and fed him, flashed in front of him. He saw her gold-toothed smile, warm and welcoming. Her eyes crinkling in laughter when he’d tickle behind her elbow on her soft, dark skin. How she’d save him the first of the season’s figs, swollen with seeds, and a fistful of golden white grapes from Lemta. He heard the hoarse notes of her song, one he’d never understood. The song, she’d said, told of the Atlas Mountains near her village, jagged, purple, and massive. And how the
chergui,
the dry and burning east wind, whipped the land and inflamed spirits.

His
nounou
had taught him games the nomad children played in the desert. For hours they’d sit in the cool turquoise-tiled courtyard under the whitewashed arches by the fountain, playing pebble toss and hide the waterskin.

And then the last vision that he’d tried to forget—his
nounou’s
head impaled on the fencepost of the Michelin factory, in a row by others accused of sabotage by the
gendarmes. A
cloud of black flies on her slack jaw revealing the gold tooth glinting in the sun, his mother’s screams. How his mother made them all run to the harbor. But there were no ships.

How could an illiterate woman who spoke a Berber dialect be a spy? he’d overheard his mother ask his stepfather over the dinner table years later. Every dinar
nounou
earned, his mother continued, she’d sent to her family in the village.

Roman had said both sides paid and made bad mistakes. “France will reap the dividends in the future,” he’d said. For a former soldier that seemed charitable. In fact it was the only charitable thing about Algerians Bernard ever heard him say.

And he’d been right, Bernard thought. He dealt with that dividend in Notre-Dame de la Croix.

T
WILIGHT DIMMED THE
B
ELLEVILLE
sky, canceling the magenta and orange slashes left from the fading sunset. Aimee sniffed the algae accompanying the biting wind blowing from Canal Saint Martin. The breath of spring she’d felt the other day had disappeared. Passengers erupted from the Metro like particles from a jet stream, erratic and windblown.

The security guard by the Credit Lyonnais ATM near the Metro steps looked familiar. Very familiar, even with a leashed German shepherd beside him. Most of the guards in Paris were African, but he was of Algerian descent. It had to be Hassan Elymani, the custodian she spoke with on Sylvie/Eugenie’s street.

And she had to get him to talk.

She entered the nearest cafe, rubbing her arms and wishing she’d worn her leather coat. She planned to watch him from a warm and caffeine-laden environment. However, the fogged-up windows blocked her view of the corner. Too bad. Over the conversational hum and tinkling of demitasse spoons, she ordered two
cafe-cremes
to go. Back out on the corner of avenue Parmentier, she approached him.

“So this is your second job, Monsieur Elymani,” she said, offering him a cafe. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

“I’m on duty, Mademoiselle,” he said, his voice stiff, refusing to return her gaze.

He rubbed his hands together.

She could play this game, too. But it was a shame they were outside and it was so cold.

“And I’m a customer with questions,” she said, still holding the cup. “Take it, please.”

He ignored her gloved hand with the coffee.

“Don’t you have something better to do than hound me?”

“Not right now,” she said. “I want to know about Eugenie.”

“You talk like an
amateur!”
Elymani snorted.

She certainly felt like one. And wasn’t he a rent-a-
flic
?

“The men who blew Sylvie up threatened my friend,” Aimee said. “They’re after her.”

Elymani shook his head. “You’ve even got the victim’s name wrong.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

He kept silent but rolled his eyes as if she were too stupid to comprehend. His breath frosted in the air.

She pulled out the fax from the
Fichier
in Nantes. “According to this the body from the explosion has been identified as Sylvie Coudray.”

“Eh,” he said, then shrugged. “Call her what you want.”

His remark disturbed her. Elymani had made a kind of sense, since it seemed to her the dead woman had a dual persona. Aimee popped the lid and sipped her cafe. The hot, sweet jolt burned the roof of her mouth.

“What time’s your shift over?”

“None of your business,” Elymani snapped.

A tall man tapped Elymani on the shoulder. The man’s chiseled dark face shone in the sodium streetlight.

“Go make up with your lady friend, Hassan, and be nice,” he said, with a West African accent. He winked at Aimee. “I don’t mind starting a few minutes early, eh,
camarade.”

Elymani shifted in his work boots. “Beni, that wouldn’t be fair.”

The German shepherd growled, but the new man, BENI AN-OUR labeled on his shirt, took the dog’s leash.

“You crazy,
camaradel”
Beni said to Elymani, grinning. He eyed Aimee up and down. “A real woman and your shift’s over, no one in your dormitory waitin’ for ya! Has life been this sweet to ya in a while?”

Poor Elymani, faced with his manhood in question or her interrogation, stood mute and uncomfortable. Aimee heard the click of worry beads in his pocket.

“Look, Hassan, let’s have coffee and walk to the boulevard, please,” Aimee said, her voice low, crooking her arm under his.

“Allez-y”
Beni grinned. “Only Allah knows what she sees in you. Make some time before she wakes up, eh?”

E
LYMANI ACCEPTED
the cafe, his mouth tight. Halfway down avenue Parmentier they turned into narrow rue Tesson.

He shook her arm off and glared at her. But there was fear in his eyes.

“I work hard, mind my own business,” Elymani said, his voice cracking. “Yet you step in and make my life…” he stopped searching for the word.

“Complique?”
she said. “My intention isn’t to get you in trouble.”

“I have to take care of my father. Last month he got injured on the job site,” he said, his voice different. “Look,” he said, almost pleading, “My family in Oran relies on me.”

Elymani’s eyes were large with fear.

“We’re having a private conversation. No one will know,” she said. “I promise.”

“The
Maghrebins,”
he said, scanning the deserted street, “they know.”

Aimee’s stomach fluttered with apprehension, but she shook her head. “You can’t be sure, now can you, Hassan?” She went on before he could answer. “Someone was blown up, you saw something, and you’re nervous. Anyone would be.”

He looked down, scraping the sides of his muddy boots on the cobbles.

“They’ll know soon enough,” he said.

“How?”

Elymani took a sip of cafe, sighed, then gestured toward the building opposite. Cracked plaster facades, scrolled grills fronting tall windows, and black grime in almost a trompe l’oeil design covered the ground floor of a once exquisite Haussmann-style apartment. Now the windows were cinderblocked and a
permis a demolir
sign hung above the massive doors covered with graffiti.

“In the back courtyard of that building,” he said, “they run a makeover business.”

She rubbed her arms again in the biting chill. What did Elymani mean?

“Makeover?” she asked.

“Say your
permis de conduire
was revoked. You visit with a roll of francs,
et voila,
the
Maghrebins
furnish you with a new driver’s license,” he said. “At least they used to. They moved on.”

So Elymani fed her information, not current but true.

The warrens of old Belleville, honeycombed by courtyards, passages, and stone cellars in deserted buildings held the
Maghrebins
network. At least that’s what she figured from Elymani’s conversational pirouette. And that could be how Sylvie had gotten ID as Eugenie. To open a bank account, she needed ID.

“So would you say they live in the housing projects?” she asked, lifting her eyes toward the tall concrete buildings a block away. “But run their business where they won’t be disturbed?”

He nodded. “They find a place, maybe a building ready to be torn down or renovated. The rent’s cheap. Full of Yugoslavs, Hindus, or retired people who don’t ask questions. The tenants ignore who goes in and out, until problems erupt over turf or money. Things get noisy. Then the
Maghrebins
move on.”

“So you’re saying Eugenie was involved in this?”

A tidy hypothesis, even plausible, but how would it fit Sylvie’s murder—even if they’d furnished her with a new identity?

“For good reasons, I keep my nose out of it,” he said. “Those
hittistes
want easy money, a nice life. But in the end life reckons with them.”

Elymani had his own survival code.

“You better be careful,” he said. “You’re being watched.”

“By whom?”

“Look, my jobs are on the street. All I do is listen and keep my eyes down. I don’t want to know what goes on.” His eyes darted down the street. “What I really want to do is sleep for a week.
Ahrs,
the foyer is noisy, my mattress is lumpy, and I miss my wife.” He shrugged. “When my papers come through I’ll bring her over.”

“What did you hear about Eugenie?” Aimee said, stamping her feet in the cold, wishing she had a cigarette.

“My next job starts in a few hours,” Elymani said, turning to walk away. “Mercf for the cafeV’

“Are you a lookout or do they pay you to keep your mouth shut?”

He stiffened.

“My family would be here if I did that,” he said his voice low with anger. “But dirty money brings no honor or peace.”

“My friend’s in danger, and now they’re after me,” she said. “Don’t you understand? Tell me what you saw, Elymani, then I’ll leave you alone.”

“All I know is that Eugenie used the place. She lived somewhere else. Sometimes Dede dropped by.”

“Who’s Dede?” Aimee asked, forgetting how ice-like the air had become.

“An old-fashioned
mec
who’s got a finger in every pot,” he said. “Like a
giclee,
a fine ink spray coating the surface—know what I mean?”

She wasn’t sure but figured Dede bent with the wind.

“Where can I find him?”

“Cafe la Vielleuse.” He turned toward the streetlight. “Now, leave me alone.”