Murder in Passy (26 page)

But she couldn’t stand Joxi’s moans. Or understand how they’d leave their wounded comrade. Or her. Hadn’t the
mec
promised.…

Or maybe she didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to face the fact that they’d left them to die.

With trembling hands she raised the plastic bottle to Joxi’s lips. He gulped, dribbles running down his chin, over the blanket. Again and again, greedy for more.

A small sample-like packet labeled
PENICILLIN
sat in the stone niche. “How about your medication?”

His dark eyes rolled back in his head. His body arched, then bucked in sharp convulsions. But his grip held like iron. Good god, what could she do?

Was he dying? Having seizures? The fever burned from him like fire.

She lifted his head, opened his mouth, put the antibiotic tablet on his tongue. Closed his mouth. “Chew.” Then she emptied the water bottle over his face. Patted his brow, his face, his arms with the now-sopping blanket, trying to cool him down. Phrases in Basque tumbled from his dry lips. Rhythmic, chanting. A Basse Navarre dialect she didn’t understand except for occasional Spanish words: tree, boulder, rushing water. What sounded like a child’s song.

He lay there, shaking and helpless. White scars ribbed his shoulders, his chest, like welts from an old beating. What kind of life had he lived? she wondered. She’d never nursed her boyfriend like this, or taken care of him. He hated her being nearby if he was sick.

Twenty, thirty minutes passed; she couldn’t tell time down here in the dark. She kept on swabbing Joxi down. Finding more bottled water, wetting the blankets until his convulsions subsided into infrequent jerks.

“Hotz … no.”

Now chills wracked him. His teeth shattered. He grew aware, his eyes darted. For a man of machismo, he acted as helpless as an infant. She didn’t know which was worse: his shaking from chills, or convulsing with fever.

How could she find something dry to wrap him in? Why was she doing this when her life depended on getting away?

She found another jacket, a pair of discarded overalls, a stained plastic tarp, and wrapped him as tightly as she could to generate body heat. In the corner she eyed tubes of paper, unrolled them, and covered him like the homeless she’d seen in the doorways covered with newspapers to keep warm. She kept rubbing his arms, his legs, until her shoulders ached. After a while, his shaking subsided; his eyes closed.

She sighed in relief. And realized for the first time that the fear had left her: she’d been too busy. Tired, she leaned down on the earth floor, clasped her arms around her knees to ease her aching back and shoulders.

The kerosene lamp sputtered low on the flickering wick, casting long shadows on the stone. She looked up. Joxi’s heavy-lidded, half-open eyes watched her.

“Why?”

She stretched her neck, felt his forehead. “Your fever’s down.”

“You tied me like a hog for butchering.” His one dark eye glittered.

“Against the chills.” She tucked the plastic tighter around him. “You were delirious.”

His hand shot out, grabbed her hair. Tight. Pulling the roots of her hair. Pain seared her scalp. “Why did you use these?”

“I … I took anything to keep you warm.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. “You were convulsing with fever, then shaking with cold. That’s the thanks I get for.… ” And then it all hit her: the tiredness, the hunger, being chained up. She burst into sobs.

The look in his eye changed.

“
Miatzte ama,
just like my mother. Shut up.” He struggled to sit up. “Roll these up. Put them back as you found them.”

She rubbed her head. The chain around her ankle bit and rubbed her skin raw.

“Now,” he barked.

She put them together. Diagrams of what looked like train tracks, rail lines. She rolled them back up, slipped them in the tube.

His gaze wavered.

“Why did you help me?”

She blinked. “I don’t know. You’re a human being?” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s stupid. Maybe you’re going to kill me.”

“That’s the plan.”

She backed up in fear, shaking her head.

“Will you do two things?” He leaned on his elbow, coughing. “Do them the way I say.”

“So I’ll die sooner?” She spit on the floor. “Forget it.”

He grabbed the lip balm and tweezers from her things. “Slather this in the lock on your ankle chain; twist your tweezers inside until it clicks open.”

“Quit playing with me.”

“It’s gotten me out of jail every time.” He looked at his watch on the stone niche. “Now. Do it before they return.”

“You don’t get it, do you? Your comrades left us to die.”

“Comrades? You think a true Basque patriot lines his pockets? Kills an old comrade?” He winced in pain. “I heard the snakes. They thought I’d gone unconscious.” He shook his head. “Don’t let on. The trick’s to act the same. When they load up, make a break.”

Surprised, she stared at him.

“How can I get out?”

“You’re on your own there.” He coughed, a wheezing from deep in his chest. “Now hand me that bag.” He pointed to a khaki canvas shoulder bag in the corner.

“Why should I trust you?”

“A life for a life,
compris?”

“You’re making a deal?”

“You’re not from the Motherland, eh? Basques always make deals.”

Could she trust him? But from the shaking of his hands, the tiny beads of sweat forming again on his brow, she’d gotten the better deal.

Wednesday Night

A LIGHTNING CHOP
batted Aimée’s arm down. The stinging crosscut to her ribs whipped her against the garage wall. She yelled and toppled into the dustbins. Pain seared her side. Choking for breath, she raised her arm to ward off the next blow.

“Now the other arm. So I can see it.”

She heard the flick of a switch, and light flooded the underground stone-walled garage.

René stood, legs spread, arms extended in firing stance with a Beretta aimed at her head.

“Nice, René.” She gasped. “Register your arms as lethal weapons. Forget the Beretta.”

René’s grip wavered. “
Mon Dieu,
with the outfit I thought a man—”

“If you bought it, the EPIGN will. That’s what counts.”

René pocketed the gun, reached down to help her up. “
Désolé,
Aimée. Are you all right? Does it hurt?”

Only when she breathed. She got to her feet. Staggered.

“Let me wrap your ribs. Come upstairs.… ”

“No time.” She pulled out the video receiver, grabbed the wall as her vision reeled and then righted itself. “I need you to hook this up to your laptop, record and monitor the feed.”

René stared at the dim video playing on the palm-sized screen. “But that’s the Mercedes. I recognize the roof line.”

“That’s right, René, parked with stolen plates on rue Copernic.” She winced at every breath. “Did you bring me a phone?”

His brow crinkled in worry. He took his cane from the car. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I didn’t want you involved,” she said. “Look, just trust me—”

“Not until you tell me what all this means, why the EPIGN was asking questions.”

“There’s not much time.”

“I’m waiting, Aimée.”

So she gave him the short version.

“Kidnapped?” René rocked on his handmade Lobb shoes. “If Euskadi Action, this ETA group, kidnapped the princess using the Mercedes, are they likely to use it again?”

“The stolen plates.” She wished she had one of the painkillers sitting on her bedside table.

“They’ll abandon it if they’re smart,” he said.

“Got any other ideas, René?”

He brushed cobwebs from her coat. “I might. Let’s go upstairs.”

“What if the EPIGN are watching your place?”

René swallowed. “Good point. But Michou’s expecting me next door for a drink.”

The blood sample from her Louboutins. She still hadn’t heard back from Viard.

“If Viard’s there, can you ask him to meet us down here?”

René shook his head but punched in the number and made the call. “What about hooking up the feed? Please, René.”

In the back seat of the Citroën, René opened his briefcase, set his laptop on the leather seat, and hooked a cable to the receiver.

Not two minutes later, footsteps sounded on her left.

“Giving Michou a run for her money?” Viard grinned. “I like your androgynous look. Very Helmut Newton. But why the cloak and dagger, Aimée?” Viard dusted his hands in the less-than-clean subterranean garage René rented for half the price of his apartment and felt lucky to have.

“You don’t want to know, Viard.”

“Again?” He pulled a notebook from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket. “We were swamped. I managed to get to your heels this morning. O-negative blood type. Nothing special. Except for the mucosa traces.”

“Mucosa?”

“You know, the lining in the nose. After lunch, we had a lull,” Viard said. “Thought I’d put a portion of the sample under the microscope. Interesting.”

Anxious and hot in the humid dank garage air, she took off the fedora. Shook her hair. “In what way?”

“The mucosa came from the nose. Along with the blood. I’d say there was a nosebleed.”

Surprised, she moved closer. “Not from a gunshot wound?”

“I found no gunpowder residue. Of course, that might not present in such a small sample. But, why someone might have a nosebleed: I looked more closely at the blood—red cells, white cells, platelets.… ” Viard, enthusiasm creeping into his voice, thumbed to another page in his notebook. Nodded as he read and rubbed his chin. “Then it got fascinating, or morbid, depending on your point of view.”

Why couldn’t he just tell her?

“What’s your take, Viard?”

“Far too many white blood cells—abnormal ones at that—for a healthy individual. Also not a normal number of platelets.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m not a doctor, Aimée,” he said.

“Neither am I, remember?” Her ribs ached. She wished he’d get to the point. “I got through a year of premed and never hit the lab. Chemistry and biology did me in.”

“Speaking based on the lab smear, with such a high white blood cell count, he’s about done in.”

She unsnapped the tie. Fanned her neck. “How can you tell?”

“Like I say, I’m not a physician. But symptoms such as nosebleeds, fatigue, weight loss, and high white blood cell count— and abnormal white blood cells—in most cases indicate an advanced stage of disease. Leukemia.”

Stunned, she leaned against the wall. Did she need to rethink everything with this revelation?

“A terminal terrorist? Gives him an interesting motive,” René said.

“Worse, René,” she said, thinking. “Nothing to lose.”

She pecked Viard on both cheeks.
“Merci.”

“So when’s our dinner?”

“Ask René,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”

“But it’s safer here,” he said. “Stay with Michou.”

“My taxi meter’s running.”

René handed her a red cell phone. “That’s your new number. It’s programmed in my cell. Keep in touch every twenty minutes.”

She paused at the door, a dark unease flooding her. Morbier’s weight loss, the hollows under his eyes. “How long does the man have, Viard?”

“I run the lab, but I don’t provide diagnoses, Aimée,” he said.

“But according to … the platelets, your observations.… ” Her throat caught. “

At this point, I’d suggest he live every day like it’s his only one.”

* * *

A
IMÉE SURVEILLED THE
winding street, the corners. Deserted except for the taxi. She clutched her side, sinking into the back seat. “Rue Raynouard,
s’il vous plaît.
On the way, stop at the all-night pharmacy on Champs-Elysées.”

Ten minutes and three extra-strength Dolipranes—washed down by fizzy Vittel—later, she crouched in the back seat as the taxi cruised past Xavierre’s dark, shuttered town house. She noted the parked cars and the Renault with two heads silhouetted against the darkness. The Renault from the market.

Across the narrow street, she noted a dim glow emanating through Madame de Boucher’s second-floor lace curtains. Then a darker curtain blocked the dim light.

A car door slammed, an engine rumbled, and the Renault’s headlights flashed on.

“Turn right.” Past the steepled church on rue Jean Bologne, paralleling rue Raynouard, she motioned for him to pause. “Wait by the florist’s across from the Boulainvilliers Métro.” She took his card. “If I don’t call you within one hour, erase my record. Put me down as a no-show pickup. You never heard of me.”

She passed him two hundred francs.

“Deal?”

He nodded, took the francs, patted a tattered copy of a Simenon novel on his dashboard. “Got an Inspector Maigret investigation to keep me company. Almost as exciting as tonight.”