Murder in Montmartre (19 page)

Late Wednesday Evening

“BONSOIR,
” AIMÉE SAID. “Lucien Sarti,
s’il vous plaît.
”

“Who’s calling?” a woman asked.

“Aimée Leduc.”

“He’s gone. Left a few days ago.”

What could she say now? Think fast.

“Doesn’t he work at a club? I’m Félix Conari’s associate. There is a big snag with his music contract,” she said. “I must contact him.”

Pause. A sizzling sound came over the phone. Was the woman cooking?

“Give me your number. If he calls . . .”

“06 57 89 42. Please, as soon as possible.”

She clicked off. A hungry musician should bite at that. She hoped so.

A moment later her phone vibrated in her pocket. Hungry all right.

“
Allô
?”

“Sorry to call you so late. Yann Marant here,” a voice said, loud conversation buzzing in the background. “I just finished work, but I found something, although maybe it’s nothing, to do with your investigation.”

A break, finally?

“Can we meet? My phone’s acting up,” she said.

“Café Noctambule,” he said. “It’s noisy but I’m unfamiliar with the area.”

No problem.”
“

YANN S TOOD in the Café Noctambule, a dive with seventies-era smoky mirrors on the walls. On the small stage, a bouffant-haired man crooned
chansons
. The place was packed and couples revolved to the accordion and the beat of the snare drum.

Yann waved. “Over here.”

Next to him, two women argued, snarling at each other like cats in an alley. A smallish mild-mannered-looking man grinned at their show.

Yann covered his ears. “I’m sorry, no place to talk here. Hungry?”

Aimée nodded. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten.

A few doors away, they found a cigarette-box-sized bistro, five tables crowded into a dark room with a coal-burning stove. Warm as toast, but full. Reluctant to leave, Aimée suggested that they stand at the zinc counter and order a
jambon-beurre
.

“I appreciate your calling, Yann. Anything might help.”

“Now I feel silly. I read too many suspense thrillers,” he said, twisting his hands. “It’s probably nothing, but you said . . .”

“Go ahead.” She hoped she hadn’t made the trip for nothing. Patience, she had to have more patience.

Despite Yann’s wrinkled black pants and loosened ponytail, he exuded more appeal than most computer geeks she knew. And was better looking. Had he really recalled some vital detail or was he using this as an excuse to meet? But the warm bistro held more allure than her cold, empty apartment.

“Tonight, after I left Félix’s, I threw a water bottle into the construction’s Dumpster, the one parked in front of the building being renovated,” Yann said. “Everything fell out, a mess. I know it’s forbidden but, well, I scooped it up, climbed up to throw . . .” He paused. “Sorry to bore you, you’ll think I dive Dumpsters at night but I don’t.”

“Bon appétit
,” said the white-aproned bistro owner, setting a plate of ham and buttered baguette sandwiches in front of them.

“Please continue,” she said, taking a bite. As crumbs from the bread crust fell, she caught them in her palm.

“Trying to make space, that’s when I found these.” He reached into his pocket, set down several crumpled, blurred black-and-white photocopied papers smelling of plaster dust, and smoothed them out. They showed hand-drawn floor plans with thick arrows and Xs inked in. “I figured these came from the site, and I was about to throw them back when I noticed this.”

Curious, she leaned forward, following his finger. A diagram bore a notation:
rue du Mont-Cenis
and
rue Ordener
.

“So there is a building at the intersection of these streets,” she said. “But this isn’t a blueprint. What is it?”

“That’s what I wondered. With all these Separatist bombings . . . well, perhaps I’m reading too much into this.” He exhaled. “Sorry, at least I feel better. But stupid. Forgive me? Maybe it was kind of an excuse to meet you again.” A small smile played at the edges of his mouth. “I don’t know many people here.”

She returned his smile but her mind focused on the diagram.

He folded the papers. “Now you’ll think I’m a nerd, joined at the hip to my computer. And you’re right.”

“Wait, Yann,” she said, pulling out her pocket map and thumbing it open to the Eighteenth Arrondissement.

“The Mairie is on that corner,” she said, her voice rising. The City Hall was the only building at that location. “May I see that diagram again?” Her heart beat faster.

Along the side, in smaller script, was written: (2) 18:00 change (1) 23:00 change. Arrows pointed to the symbols for entrances. She thought back to the newspaper, the article describing bomb threats to an unnamed government building.

She stared closer. “It could mean that two guards man the main entrance until the 18:00 shift change, then one guard takes over.”

Yann blinked several times. “Who would leave such incriminating papers in a Dumpster?”

“Exactement
,” she said. “But they could be old plans, outdated, and their implication forgotten.”

She chewed on the baguette, thinking.

“I guess it doesn’t link to that
flic’
s murder,” Yann said, his face reddening. “Real life’s not like a thriller where it all connects.”

Was he right?

She studied the diagram more closely. Saw Atlas, the name of an alarm company, an X on what appeared to be a service entrance. More Xs on rue du Mont-Cenis. The placement of a car or truck bomb?

She should direct Yann to turn the diagrams over to the authorities. Stay out of it. Not dirty her hands with the Ministry’s military wing. They’d clamp down on this so fast. Just thinking of dealing with the security sector made her palms sweat. She should . . . but did she ever do what she should?

Turning over information wasn’t her style. Yet information given might earn a favor in return. That’s how they operated.

“If this diagram’s for real, it would be criminal not to report it,” she said, deciding to take a gamble. “Mind if I show this to a contact at DST?”

“The terrorist brigade? Of course not,” he said. “You don’t think—”

“Yann, did anything strike you about Lucien Sarti?”

Yann smiled. “My first impression? You’ll think it . . . well, he seems to be a sort of wandering troubadour, he lives rough, but his music drives him.”

“How do you mean?” she asked, surprised.

“Wedded to Corsica, the land and people, an idealist telling stories through his music,” Yann said. “Somehow he found Félix and sent him a tape of this entrancing blend of traditional polyphony and techno.”

“Would you describe his music as political?”

Yann’s brow furrowed. “I’d say it was about freeing Corsica
and
returning to nature. Félix can’t say enough about his music but . . .”

She nodded. Waited. A couple passed them, letting a gust of winter air enter.

“Enthusiastic, that’s Félix. A huge heart,” Yann said. “Then he discovered that Lucien’s a member of the Armata Corsa. That made it difficult for him to push a contract through.”

The diagram, this linkage of Lucien Sarti to the Corsican Separatist movement. Did it add up to Jacques’s murder? Had she read Jacques wrong? Had he met with Lucien Sarti to discover a plot, or to prevent a terrorist bombing? Was the musician his informer?

She had to find Lucien Sarti. A long night stretched ahead of her.

In the restroom she took a deep breath and called Bordereau, a contact at the DST, on the public phone. Always the public phone with the DST. They could trace calls within three minutes.

Bordereau answered on the first ring. “Unit 813.”

“Aimée Leduc,” she said. “Got something you might like to see.”

“Always interested in your little gifts,” Bordereau said. “Twenty on my favorite,” he added.

She glanced at her Tintin watch: she would have to hurry. “Make it twenty-five.” And hung up.

T WENT Y- F I V E minutes later she nodded to Bordereau, who was waiting inside the gate of the offices of the Archdiocese of Paris, a seventeenth-century building a block from the Ministry of Interior where he worked. One day, if she came to know him better, she’d ask him why he didn’t work at the DST on rue Nélaton. He looked no more than thirty, but he was well past forty. Bordereau’s
en brosse
short hair glittered with beads of rain. She’d first met him at the Reuilly pool during lap swim when his waterproof pager caught on the filter and she’d recovered it for him. The numbers had displayed a ministerial access. She knew at once that he worked intelligence and at a high level if he wore a pager in the pool. A useful man to know. And not bad in a Speedo.

A band of light crossed the pocked stone entrance as the porter, a grizzled, bent man, opened the tall wood door.

“
Entréz,
Monsieur,” he said.

Bordereau nodded. Together they stepped inside the bas-relief-lined vestibule permeated with a smell she remembered, the smell particular to a Catholic school at least during the two years she’d attended. An atmosphere she associated with hanging tapestries in high-ceilinged halls, the cattle stampede of students on wooden stairs, and nuns in full habit, their wimples and veils blocking all peripheral vision.

The porter disappeared. She pulled the diagram from her bag, kneeled, unfolded it, and spread it on the waxed parquet floor.

“This was found in a Dumpster,” she said. “I can’t vouch for authenticity or much else. On a nearby rooftop above the site, a
flic
was murdered Monday night.”

“It’s dry.” Bordereau said, his eyes scanning the diagram. “Was it at the bottom?”

“That’s my information,” she said. “According to my map, it shows the Mairie in the Eighteenth.”

He didn’t whistle but she thought he wanted to.

“I think it ties in with the
flic
’s murder and the garroting of a Corsican bar owner, Zette, on rue Ronsard. That was made to look like a vendetta killing, but I think it’s connected.”

Bordereau was quite still. His economy of movement struck her.

“Your rationale?”

“The dead
flic
moonlighted on and off for Zette,” she said. “Too much of a coincidence, I think. Now I have some questions for you, OK
?
”

He nodded, his eyes still on the diagram.

“Did this attack take place?”

“Almost. Sunday night. It was thwarted; the bombs were defused.”

The night before Jacques’s murder, a failed bomb threat.

“Was it related to the Armata Corsa?”

“Rumor has it,” he said, getting back to his feet, folding the plan, and slipping it into his coat pocket. “But we had no proof. Your source?”

“Yann Marant, a programmer, threw trash into an overloaded Dumpster near 18, rue André Antoine. When the trash fell out he tried to shove it back and found this.”

“Merci.”

Even if it’s outdated, it must have some value, she thought.

“Anything interesting about Corsica I should know?”

His blond eyebrows shot up. “Besides mafiosi under the guise of Armata Corsa using arms from Eastern Europe to rob armored truckloads of sensitive documents? And a data-encryption leak from Big Ears?” He grinned. “No, I don’t think so.”

She returned the grin. “A data-encryption leak—what do you mean?”

“Keep it coming. And forget I said that.” He stood up. “Haven’t seen you at lap swim this week.”

“Busy.”

On the Metro, she tried to make sense of it all: sensitive documents, a data-encryption leak, a failed bomb threat rumored to be connected to Corsicans? The implications gnawed at her. A rooftop murder in a snowstorm, Laure charged and in a coma. Events were spiraling out of control.

Thursday Morning

STREAKS OF THE MORNING’S first light filtered through the mist enveloping Pont Marie. Aimée slid Miles Davis’s tartan winter sweater over his hind legs, settled him in her bike’s wire basket, and cycled through the mist to Leduc Detective. Feeling guilty about being absent again, she’d arranged for Marcel, the one-armed Algerian war veteran who ran the kiosk on rue du Louvre, to dog-sit Miles for a few days.

In the office, she powered up their espresso machine and made a strong espresso
double
. She hoped for some responses from the three clubs where she’d left messages for Lucien Sarti. With any luck she’d find him and discover his link to Armata Corsa and why he’d left Conari’s party before being questioned. Her hunch was that he’d witnessed Jacques’s murder and had some connection to it or to the diagram Yann had found. Or worse.

In the meantime, she cranked open the window shutters to let in the damp gray air from rue du Louvre together with the smell of butter emanating from the nearby
boulangerie
. She put on a trance-techno tape she’d bought from a DJ last night. Moody, and with a steady beat. She booted up her computer and searched the Net for information on the data-encryption leaks that Bordereau had mentioned and to find out what she could about Big Ears.

She came up with Big Brother, the nickname for the U.S. and U.K.’s Echelon, the big ears of eavesdropping.

That sounded old-fashioned, dated by the Cold War, she thought, ancient history.

Au contraire
, she discovered, as she dug deeper. Echelon, according to NSA, the National Security Agency based in the U.S., was responsible for the interception of international signals; all traffic from telephone links, to e-mails, to faxes, whether sent over land lines or by cell phones.

More than impressive.

Echelon, a network, operated on a filter system that utilized banks of powerful computers programmed to recognize key words in various languages and intercept messages containing those words for recording and subsequent analysis. All from a Helios-1A satellite beaming down to earth to wire and parabola-dish antennas.

She knew Helios-1A took high-definition photos for surveillance: spy stuff. How did that work? Searching further, she found a French military site. What she saw there made her sit up. France had its own version of Echelon: “Big Ears,” dubbed “Frenchelon.” She searched for twenty minutes until she discovered a short article in the left-leaning
Le Nouvel Observateur
indicating that Frenchelon had the capacity to process two million phone calls, faxes, and e-mails each month. Or more. It was even rumored to be capable of tracking individual bank accounts.

Her phone rang. “Leduc Detective,” she said.

“
Bonjour,
I’m calling from Varnet and we’re interested in your proposal. Can you answer some questions?”

She switched gears as she shuffled through the pile on her desk. “Of course. Your proposal’s right here and I’m delighted to help you.”

She spent the next half hour walking the Varnet manager through Leduc’s proposal, clarifying information as to the computer-security service they offered. And the next two hours run- ning the programs waiting in her laptop. By the time René appeared, she’d worked three hours and updated all the accounts on their database.

“We’re current, René,” she said. “Rent paid and twenty-three francs in the bank! How’s that for being in the black?”

“At least Saj will work for food,” René said, hanging up his camel wool coat on the rack.

Saj, from the Hacktaviste academy where René taught, hacked part-time for them.

“This should help,” he said, setting down a check from Cereus.

Wonderful. Thank God, it covered René’s paycheck. If their clients paid on time, they’d have six figures to join the twenty-three francs, but that would be a miracle.

“Varnet’s interested; I think we’ve got a new client.”

Instead of being relieved, he appeared worried.

“What’s the matter, René?”

“No sign of Paul or his mother at their apartment. I checked twice yesterday
and
last night.”

A bad feeling came over her.

“Did they do a runner?”

“Hard to say.”

“We need his statement. The autopsy found one bullet but your little friend Paul saw another flash. But for him to skip school—”

“Paul’s nine years old, he’s lonely, and his mother’s alcoholic!” he said. “Where would they go?”

“We look until we find them,” she said. “Dig up your Toulouse-Lautrec outfit.”

“He knows I’m not Toulouse-Lautrec, Aimée.”

“Don’t give up. We not only have to find them but we must convince his mother to let him talk to Maître Delambre.”

“I’ll need your help for that, Aimée,” he said.

“But our first priority is to review the lab findings on the gun residue found on Laure’s hands. Right now I have to corral Maître Delambre. Find out what’s holding up the lab report.”

René rolled his eyes.

“I need to do this for Laure. You with me, partner?”

“If we do it together,” he said.

Her eye fell on the underground Paris map tacked to the office wall. Orange and pink delineated the old quarries and limestone formations in the eighteenth and fourteenth arrondissements. She pulled out her cell phone. Affixed the broken antenna.

René’s mouth turned down. “That’s the third phone in—”

“I’ve got a mirror in it.”

“Always the fashionista!”

“Listen, last night I spoke to the prostitute on that beat. According to her, a Corsican goes into that building regularly.” She pointed to the diagram she’d made. “He’s crude and she doesn’t like him. She saw this Corsican talking with Jacques in Zette’s bar. There’s some connection.”

“Connection? Most likely she was telling you what she thought you wanted to hear.”

She shrugged. “And I think Sarti, the musician, who went to Conari’s party and left before being questioned, knows something.”

“Suspicions, ideas. That’s all you’ve got,” René said.

Aimée stared at the map of the wall, at the limestone formations of Montmartre, orange and kidney shaped, that spread over the area. “Sarti stood right here, I saw him.” She pointed, lost in thought, looking for a link. “Yet the diagram Yann Marant found—”

“Marant, the systems analyst from Conari’s party?” René interrupted.

Aimée nodded. “Good memory, René. He is the consultant to Conari’s construction firm. He found a diagram, like a floor plan, in a nearby Dumpster.”

“Since when do systems analysts work with contractors?” René took out a linen handkerchief with his initials, RF, embroidered on the edge, and blew his nose. “The sure way to catch a cold, coming out of the Metro to a hot office!” He blew his nose again. “Conari’s firm must have Ministry contracts.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Having a systems analyst is a government requirement. Look in the guidelines. We’d need one, too, if we did Ministry work.”

“René! You’re not suggesting we angle for Ministry work?”

Before he could answer, she pointed to the piles of paper on her desk. “Look, we
have
work, and will have
more
work from the proposals we’ve sent out. You know our problem’s with negligent clients who take forever to pay.” Corporations were notorious for delaying payment to independent contractors.

“It’s either collect or do a
créance,
” René said. “Which invites another kind of trouble.”

She knew all too well that the
créance,
a loan made by a bank against the borrower’s pledge of accounts receivable plus a ten percent commission, spelled trouble. When a bank collected, firms would notice and figure it reflected Leduc Detective’s financial difficulties.

“True, René, but we’re not there yet.”

Not quite. She took a deep breath, counted to five. They had to get back on track. She drew a quick sketch, replicating the diagram she’d turned over to Bordereau.

“Look at what Yann’s diagram showed. Supposedly, the bombs were set here, in the Mairie, by Corsican Separatists, where there are Xs on this diagram.”

René’s mouth dropped. “Bombs?”

“Defused before they could go off. My DST contact confirmed it. What if Jacques had an informer who knew about the plan or—”

“Defused when?”

“Sunday night.”

“Jacques was murdered Monday night,” René said. “Nice try.”

Deflated, Aimée stared at the map. Thought hard.

“Correct.” She wouldn’t give up that quickly. “Suppose Jacques knew of a backup terrorist plan and met an informer to try to discover the next target. My DST connection also mentioned a data-encryption leak,” she said. “Suppose there’s a connection.”

“Flics
don’t buy suppositions,” René said.

Aimée nodded.

“I fished around for Big Ears and data-encryption leaks and found Frenchelon. Want to help me?”

“Ask Saj,” René said. “Last year, he designed those ‘nasty little ciphers,’ as the Ministry called them, to retool security in the Bankverein Swiss bank scam. Remember?”

Bankverein Swiss had lost millions of francs to hackers but kept it quiet to avoid customer panic. And covered it with their reserves. A mere dent, financial analysts concluded, in the bank’s hefty assets.

She’d call Saj later.

René took the Varnet folder. “Shall I follow up with a visit?”

“Before they change their mind? Good idea. Take this contract form with you and sign them up.” She paused. “What happened with your date?”

He looked away. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. Meanwhile, here’s the refund notice from the tax office. Finally!”

“Bravo, René!”

He surprised her all the time. It had taken a year and René’s tenacious determination to wade through paperwork issued by a string of offices to obtain their refund.

“Don’t celebrate yet. Now I have to reach the bureaucrat who dispenses refunds. He’s been out with gallbladder problems. But then we will be able to afford the new laptops we need.”

She stood up and hugged him, caught the pride in his eyes and the pink on his cheeks before he turned away. René blushing?

“Get the refund, partner, and they’re yours. And more. You can impress your girlfriend.”

“Then I better get going,” René said, reaching back for his coat.

“Me, too.”

Out in the hallway she realized she’d forgotten to stop at the accounting firm next door for an envelope that had been left there according to the delivery notice.

“Go ahead, René,” she told him.

“How are you, Diza?” Aimée said to the receptionist. “Got something for me?”

Diza, wearing a tight green wool skirt, fuchsia floral-print silk shirt, and knockoff agnès b. jacket, balanced a tray of espressos from the café below. Though she was in her forties, she dressed young and carried it off. Most of the time.

“On my desk, Mademoiselle Aimée,” she said, grinning. “Coffee time for the boys.”

The “boys” she referred to were none of them under sixty.

Aimée slit open a manila envelope with her name printed on it in block letters. Several grainy black-and-white photos fell out. The kind made at night with a long-distance telephoto lens. They showed two women standing on a street. She looked closer and recognized Cloclo and herself in conversation. Her stomach clenched. Two more photos showed René with a woman with spiky hair. Herself or . . . ?

“Such a nice photo of you and Monsieur René,” Diza said, peering over her shoulder. “You two were having fun. That’s good. Nice to see Monsieur René smiling.”

“Alors,
Diza, it’s not me.”

“Looks just like you, Mademoiselle Aimée,” Diza said.

“So she does, Diza,” Aimée said, nonplussed. Spikey hair, heels and all: René’s new girlfriend, Magali, resembled her!

“Diza, how did this envelope arrive?”

“By messenger. You know, the ones who ride like madmen on their bikes. One almost ran me over yesterday.”

“Can you describe him?”

Diza grinned. “Let’s see, black cap, down jacket, you know the big kind that puffs out, jeans. Like all of them.”

“Yellow teeth?”

“Come to think of it,” she said, dropping a sugar cube into one of the espressos, “yes.”

The
mec
from the phone booth who’d chased her through the Marché Saint Pierre! The photos meant, We know who you are and we’re watching you.

Aimée ran down the stairs out onto rain-slicked rue du Louvre. She caught René before he stepped into a waiting taxi at the curb.

“René, look at these photos. We’re being watched.”

René set his briefcase on the taxi seat and thumbed through them, a tight smile on his face.

“I didn’t think stalkers went after men,” he said.

AIMÉE PACED in the cavernous marble-floored Tribunal. It was crowded with scurrying lawyers, their black robes trailing, and with defendants knotted in earnest discussion; the smell of cold stone and wet wool lingered in the corners. She peeked through the oval window of the courtroom’s oak door. Four robed judges sat on a dais—more oak—one leaned back, her eyes closed.

A minute later, Maître Delambre came through the door. His cheek was swollen and his arms loaded with dossiers. He’d survived the dentist’s chair, it seemed.

He pursed his lips when he saw her.

“Those
mecs
are still following me,” she said, keeping her voice calm with effort.

“Better mind your own business, Mademoiselle Leduc. A difficult task for you, I’m sure,” he said, shifting the pile of dossiers to his other arm. “Laure’s case looks open and shut. Guilty.”

“What do you mean? You don’t even have the lab report.”

“It came this morning,” he interrupted her, pulling out a sheet. “The report confirms the preliminary finding of gunshot residue on her hands. None on yours, however.”

It didn’t make sense. How could Laure? Why would she?

“Why the delay?” She thought fast. “Wouldn’t that indicate issues as to inaccuracy or as to procedures? May I see this report?”

He handed it to her. “According to the lab, they’ve experienced an unusually high frequency of cases. A big backlog. But the GSR test results are clear, and damning.”