Murder in Montmartre (18 page)

“I heard that the storm broke right after the shooting,” Aimée said.

“To see anything in that weather, she must have laser vision.”

Before she could press further, Cloclo walked in, nodded to the regulars, and spied Aimée. Cloclo indicated a table in back underneath a sloping soot-stained glass roof. She remembered her grandfather saying, “Prostitutes are a thousand times more honorable than actresses. The first sell their bodies; the second, their souls, and more.”

“A pastis, if you’re buying,” Cloclo said, as she passed Aimée at the counter.

By the time Aimée brought over the drink, Cloclo had divested herself of her long black coat. Sparkling costume jewelry clinked in her deep cleavage, and pastel pink Diamonique bracelets encircled her wrists.

“No wonder your nickname is Cloclo,” Aimée said.

“I’m on my feet all day,” she said. “I like something to brighten me up.”

On her knees, too, Aimée thought, noticing the snags and a run in her black sheer stockings. Aimée palmed the promised francs under the table into Cloclo’s waiting hand. Cloclo’s cheap floral scent mingled with the anise smell of the pastis.

“We can talk but I don’t have much to say,” she said.

Great. She’d just slipped her the last of her cash. No taxi-ride home on a night that promised to freeze the gutter water.

“Listen, Cloclo, think of helping me as helping my friend. She’s in a coma from the blow she got up there. Hard to go downhill from there.”

“This friend . . . your friend, she’s the
flic,
right?”

Aimée nodded. “We’ve been friends since we were ten years old. Our fathers worked the beat up here. Laure always had an inferiority complex. Her harelip—”

“I know the one. Young,” Cloclo interrupted.

“She treat you right?”

“Left me alone.” Cloclo added water to the pastis, stirring it to a cloudy mixture. She took a long sip, her eyes never leaving Aimée’s face. Aimée tried to ignore the acrid smell of anise.

For Cloclo, in her line of work, that would be treating someone right.

“Laure wouldn’t kill her partner. No matter what.”

“I didn’t like
him
.”

Aimée’s ears perked up. “Her partner, Jacques?”

Cloclo shook her head and ran a finger over a black-penciled eyebrow.

“Do you know what Jacques was doing up on the roof?”

“Jacques’s not who I meant,” she said, glancing at her Diamonique watch.

Startled, Aimée leaned forward. “Who do you mean?”

Something shuttered behind Cloclo’s eyes.

“It’s getting late,” Cloclo said.

Was she afraid? “Sorry, go ahead. I thought you meant her partner, Jacques.” Aimée felt the vibration of Cloclo’s black stiletto pump tapping the wooden floor.

“That
mec
. He thinks he owns the rue, you know the type I mean?”

Aimée thought back to the musician she’d seen in the doorway, the one Conari had identified as Lucien Sarti.

“Dark skin, eyes, and hair, a musician. You mean him?” Aimée asked.

“Not that good-looker.”

“Then I don’t know who you mean.”

“The guy who gives me a hard time—a crude type,” Cloclo said. “Not the one who carries a music case.”

Near them a chair scraped over the floor, a voice rang out,
“Adieu, mes amies.
”

Cloclo waved to an old man shuffling out.

Aimée had to focus Cloclo on this other
mec
. “Did he know Laure and her partner?”

”How well he knew her partner, that I don’t know,” Cloclo said, her tone matter-of-fact. “But he flaunted his connections, you know. Wanted freebies.”

Something stirred in Aimée’s mind. If she could put the details together, some piece would fit.

“Did you see this
mec
and my friend’s partner together?”

“I saw them talking in that bar on rue Houdon.” Cloclo’s eyes flicked across the room.

Finally, a connection. “Zette’s? Does this guy have a name?”

She shrugged. “Those Corsicans keep to themselves, eh?”

“He’s Corsican, you’re sure?”

Cloclo nodded, and her costume jewelry clicked together on her ample chest.

Aimée tried to put it together. Jacques knew Zette and had been seen with this
mec.
Had he killed both of them? Why?

“Where can I find this crude Corsican?”

“Him, you don’t want to know. But he goes in and out of the chichi place down the street from my station.”

Station...her place on the street.

“You mean opposite the fancy townhouse across the courtyard from number 18?”

“Oui.
”

“Any idea which apartment he goes into?”

She shrugged again and downed her pastis.

“What does he look like?”

“Like any punk with money. Gold around the neck. Stylish hair and clothes.”

Now to the important part.

“Did you hear a shot, Cloclo?”

She shook her head. “I was working,
chérie
.”

“See anything?”

“Like I said.” She rolled her mascaraed eyes. “Working. But the good-looker walked up from Pigalle and stood in the doorway, you know where the street divides?” She drained her glass.

Aimée pictured the view from Cloclo’s station and the spot where Sarti had stood. If he came from Pigalle, would he have had time to kill Jacques and attack Laure? What about the other
mec
?

“Here’s my number,” Aimée said, handing Cloclo a card. “Call me the next time you see the Corsican. Night or day. There are more francs in it for you.”

Wednesday Evening

LUCIEN CLIMBED THE WORN stairs leading to avenue Junot, his lungs constricting in the bitter chill. It was a steep staircase dotted by infrequent old-fashioned green metal street lamps, like those in his village. Except for the ice and biting wind, he might have been home. His pulse raced despite disappointment. The recording engineer had greeted him at the studio door with a long face, informing him that he was sorry but the session had been cancelled and telling him to go to 63, rue Lepic, and up the stairs.

Lucien figured Félix was en route to some meeting and would meet him there to break the bad news that SOUNDWERX had reneged on the deal.

Nice! He didn’t even have a decent winter coat. And the
flics
were on the prowl for him. And he still didn’t have the rent.

Wild aromatic herbs grew out of the old walls, their scent mingling with that of the wet, seeping earth. The stair summit leveled off to worn stones tented by elder, ash, and sycamore branches. A gypsum rock taller than he blocked the path. Fernlike ailanthus branches spread from the crumbling stone wall, their rain-glistening leaves catching the light of the half-moon. He tripped over a raised cobblestone. A rustling in the bushes, and then speckled blackbirds and magpies swooped upward, leaving brown fluttering leaves in their wake.

A wild place in the heart of Paris. He hadn’t known one existed.

Ahead, he saw a dark-coated figure under a street lamp, eyes shining under her mauve knitted cap. Slim and lithe, he’d know her anywhere.

“Marie-Dominique!”

Had she been persuaded by Félix to await his arrival to coat the bitter pill?

“Over here, Lucien.” She motioned to where wild fig branches and cedar trees interlaced.

“What a spot to meet, Marie-Dominique,” he said. Puffs of frost filled the air between them.

“It’s the maquis of Montmartre. It reminds me of home.” She pointed with her black-leather-gloved finger past the stalks of a garliclike herb. “I discovered it. Wonderful,
non?
An old woman told me her grandmother’s farm had been here. There used to be watering troughs for the animals over there.”

All Lucien saw were dark stones and underbrush.

“These old walls were part of the mill that ground wheat for flour.”

Lucien stepped over the brush and saw the shadowy arms of a windmill looming behind the stone wall. Hidden.

“There were dozens of mills here once,” she said. “Now only two remain.”

The pinprick lights of Paris below shone like fireflies caught in a net of ferns. In the stillness, the dark, her rose scent drifted toward him. He wanted to fold her in his arms.

“You’re in danger, Lucien.” Her voice had changed.

“I know. It seems I’m an object of police scrutiny.” Longing filled him despite his earlier disappointment. Just seeing her alone made his skin tingle.

“Them, too? I found out that Petru has planted Armata Corsa propaganda at the studio,” she said, “and arranged for the police to arrest you!”

“Petru?”

“He works for us, but he’s involved in something else. I left Félix a message to warn him that Petru’s trying to sabotage you.”

“I don’t understand.”

Marie-Dominique stepped back, doubt showing on her face.y “Am I wrong? That group, the one you and your friends joined— ?”

Félix. Now Marie-Dominique. He was tired of this. “I signed up and went to
one
meeting with my brother and friends. As I told you. How can you think I’d be part of something that’s not even a political movement anymore? They’re gangsters! They extort protection money and graffiti the
tête de
Maure all over to make the bombings appear to be political.” He kicked a loose, cracked pavement stone that clattered into the bushes. “The true Separatists want to free Corsica, but not like that.”

She looked away. He clutched her arm. “I should know. Luca, my little brother, worked construction on the military base until the union went on strike and shut it down.”

“Quit that old talk, Lucien. It’s always the same!”

“The same?” He had to make her understand. “Luca forgot his tool kit and went back to retrieve it. The gangsters, the so-called “union,” thought he’d crossed the picket line. The next day they delivered his body to my mother. What was left of it.”

He trembled, trying to forget the bloody image of a mutilated Luca with a
tête de
Maure painted on his chest.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” she said.

“I had signed up in a drunken moment of idealism. How wrong I was.” He kicked a clod of dirt with his toe. “Nothing will stop them or those developers who are gutting the coast, ruining the land—”

“So you’re blaming Félix now?” Her eyes flashed.

“I spoke of the developers who are ruining the land.” His feet crunched the ice between the cobbles. “What does he have to do with that?”

“As if you didn’t know. His military contracts, the development he’s involved in . . . why he’s there right now. There’s been another crisis with the Ministry contract. He’s doing the best he can for the island.”

The best?

“I didn’t know. You’ve changed, Marie-Dominique. I once thought . . .” He paused. He snapped an elder twig between his fingers. He couldn’t bottle it up any longer. “I never understood. Now I’ve figured it out. Your hotheaded cousin Giano saw us in the cave and made trouble. So your family sent you to Paris to make a match with Félix.”

“I prevented the vendetta.”

“The vendetta?” She sounded like his mother. “It’s changed. Young people don’t care; they hate the rivalries and killings. I should have spoken up, explained to your father. Or maybe the vendetta is just an excuse. You agreed to marry a rich man. Maybe you really wanted the good life. But Félix? An old roué?” He wanted to bite his tongue. He hadn’t meant to say that.

“How can you attack Félix?” she said, hurt in her eyes.

“Someone who’s trying to help you . . . your career. But, as always, you lash out with no regard for anyone else’s feelings.”

Shame and anger filled Lucien. Had he gotten it all wrong? Conflicted, he looked down. His legs didn’t seem to work. He was torn, paralyzed. He should go, he knew.

“That’s the one thing I miss, the scent of the maquis,” he told her.

“‘The maquis has no eyes but sees everything,’” Marie-Dominique reminded him.

Did it see inside him? Did she?

“I’m late for my next job,” Lucien said, finally making his legs move.

Her face was in shadow.

“You’re still a terrible liar, Lucien.”

She edged past him. Stopped. Stood on the stairs, her wool coat glistening with drops of rain in the light of the street lamp. Her back to him, her gloved hands shaking. “You don’t understand.”

And then he finally realized. For her, he’d just been a fling. A flirtation, easily gotten over.

“You have no ears to hear what I’m saying,” Marie-Dominique said.

She’d changed. Hardened. Where was his Marie-Dominique with the sand-dusted feet and olive-oil-stained hands?

Her heels clicked down the stone steps and when he looked, she’d already turned the corner.

LUCIEN PULLED his coat collar higher and stared at the fingers of mist floating over the buildings below. He was cold and alone, the murmur of Paris below him. He should be recording right now, but Félix was in Corsica, the
flics
and this Petru were in league against him, and Marie-Dominique had left him again. As they said, a life could fall apart in seconds. And his had.

Bad luck dogged him. His
grand-mère
would call it “the evil eye.” Superstition, all superstition. He believed in science, empiricism. Still, the image of the old
mazzera
came to him, “the witch” they called her in the village. She was supposed to know how to lift curses.

He saw the piercing topaz eyes in her lined face, her black shawl redolent of the herbs she used, the tarnished silver cross and amulets she wore around her neck. He’d still been in short pants, sleeping on the platform in the attic under the skylight when he’d visited her. A rash had covered his palms and he’d tried to hide them under his school desk. The older boy he had asked to whittle him a slingshot saw them and ridiculed him: “Leper.”

Desperate to rid himself of the rash, he’d walked through the
mazzera’s
open door. The one-room stone house smelled of smoke and pork grease. Smoked sausages and cured hams on strings hung in rows from the wood beams. The old crone, huddled by the wood-burning stove with its chipped enamel coffee pot, looked up.

“
Petit
, you’ve come to buy my
sanglier?
” she asked in a curious high-pitched voice.

She cured and smoked the best wild boar sausages in the village.

“N-not exactly,” he stammered.

Her eyes, like a young woman’s, penetrated the smoky haze.

“
Non,
of course not. You need my help,” she said. “Come here. Show me your hands.”

Surprised, he stepped forward, past the sleeping dog curled at her feet.

He lifted his palms, his eyes down, and showed her. “Maman’s tried ointments, olive-oil soap, but nothing works.”

“You want it to go away and your friends to stop making fun of you.”

How did she know? He nodded, shifting his sandaled feet on the uneven wood floorboards.

“It’s a sign,
petit
. Ask yourself why.”

Perplexed, he backed away. “You’re supposed . . .”

“I see things.” Her voice crackled and the dog thumped its tail. “You’ve forgotten a promise, haven’t you?”

A promise? Hadn’t he fed the chickens this morning?

“I mean forgotten what you know deep inside. So the spirits have sent you a reminder.”

She made the sign of the cross over his forehead and chest three times, murmuring words in some language he didn’t understand. Latin sounding. “Every night for three nights look into the sky and ask your ancestors’ help.” She poured herbs and boar fat into a small mortar and ground them with a pestle into a foul-smelling brown paste.

“Smear this on your palms afterward,” she said. “Three nights, don’t forget.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a tied clump of sage he’d gathered in the maquis. He handed it to her.

“
Merci
, good boy,” she said. “You honor the customs.”

For three nights, staring at the glistening stars, he’d crossed himself. Thought hard. The promise he’d made to his grandfather to carry on the family music tradition came back to him. As he applied the awful paste, his dead grandfather’s face floated above him.

The fourth day he’d sat at his school desk and had seen that his rash had gone. And so had the older boy. “Moved to Bonifacio,” his teacher said. Slingshot and all.

He never knew if the vile paste or his exhortations or both had worked.

But he had no
mazzera
to lift this curse now. He scattered a handful of bread crumbs for the blackbirds perched on a leafless sycamore branch and made his way down the steps.