Murder in the Marais (18 page)

W
EDNESDAY

Wednesday Morning

A
IMÉE PERCHED ON THE
thick black velvet sofa in her red suit, the one she could afford to pick up from the dry cleaner's. She had begrudgingly slipped a few hundred franc notes to the hotel clerk. Plush hotels rated high bribes; it was the cost of doing business.

"Mademoiselle Leduc?" came a deep voice in heavily accented French. "You wish to have a word with me?"

Hartmuth Griffe gave a modified bow, and looked expectantly into her face. He fit perfectly in the Pavillion de la Reine lounge among the discreet clink of crystal and silver. Suave, tan, and very handsome. Curt Jurgens and Klaus Kinski, move over, she thought.

"Herr Griffe, please sit down. I know you have a long day ahead of you. Would you care for coffee?" Aimee spread her arms, indicating the plush sofa.

"Actually, I'm running late," he said, glancing at her cafe au lait on the table and his watch at the same time.

"Just a quick one. I know you're extremely busy." Aimee caught the waiter's eye and pointed at her cup. She gestured towards a deep burgundy leather armchair. "Please."

"Only for a few moments then," he said. "Of what do you wish to speak?"

She wanted to stall him until he got his coffee.

Loudly she demanded, "Quickly! For the monsieur,
s'il vous plaît
!"

Immediately, a cafe au lait in a Limoges cup and a bountiful fruit tray appeared.

"Compliments of the hotel," the manager said, almost scraping his chin on the table with a low bow.

"Merci,"
Hartmuth said, reaching for his cup.

She tried not to look at his hands. Tried not to stare at the pigskin leather gloves he wore. Most of all, she tried to hide her disappointment at not being able to lift his fingerprints. She decided to get to the point.

"Did you know Lili Stein?"

"Excuse me, who?" Hartmuth Griffe stared at her.

She noticed the creamy foam in his cup trembled slightly.

"Lili Stein, a Jewish woman maybe a few years younger than you." She paused.

"No." He shook his head. "I'm in Paris for the trade summit. I know no one here."

She sipped, watching his eyes as they met hers. His stare had grown glassy and removed.

"She was murdered near this hotel," Aimee said, slowly setting her cup down on the table. "Strangled. A swastika was carved in her forehead."

"I'm afraid I don't know that n-name," he said. He blinked several times.

She heard the stutter and saw his mouth quiver at the effort to stop it.

"Her family said she'd been very scared before it happened. I think she knew secrets." Aimee watched him. "But you've been to Paris before, maybe you met her then,
non
?"

It was a long shot but worth a try.

"You've mistaken me for someone else. This is my first time in Paris." He stood up quickly.

Aimee stood up also. "Here is my card. Odd bits and pieces lodged in one's memory tend to emerge after conversations like this. Call me any time. One last question. Why are you listed as dead in the Battle of Stalingrad, Herr Griffe?"

He looked truly surprised.

"Ask the war office. All I remember is seeing bodies stacked like cordwood in the snow. Mounds of them. Frozen together. Kilometers of them, as far as the Russian horizon."

Then Hartmuth stiffened like a rod, as if he remembered where he was.

"But go ahead, Mademoiselle Leduc, and pinch me, I'm real. If you'll excuse me." He clicked his heels and was gone.

She slumped on the velvet sofa. Did he wear those gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints? All she knew was that something was bottled up inside him. Tight and close to explosion.

Aimee finished the fruit platter; it would be a shame to waste raspberries in November. But she'd learned at least one thing. He was either an incredible liar or a mistake had been made. She opted for the former. After all, he was a diplomat and a politician.

H
ORDE S OF
protesters chanting, "Not again, not again!" blocked her way to the Metro. Buses lined narrow rue des Francs Bourgeois, the air thick with diesel fumes and high tempers. Aimee wished she could get past the seventeenth-century walls, high and solid, hemming her and passersby in to the sidewalk.

Police encased in black Kevlar riot gear squatted between the Zionist youth and skinheads screaming, "France for the French." A light drizzle beaded in crystalline drops on the clear bulletproof shields of the police, who crouched like praying mantises.

Ahead, a polished black Mercedes limousine, stuck in the Hôtel Pavillion de la Reine courtyard, caught Aimee's eye. The driver gestured towards the narrow street, arguing with a riot-squad member. The smoked window rolled down and Aimee saw a veined hand stretch out.

"Phillipe, please, I want to walk," came the unmistakable voice. She remembered the last time she had heard it—on the radio after she discovered Lili Stein's body.

The highly waxed door opened and Minister Cazaux, the probable next prime minister of France, emerged into the stalled traffic. The plainclothes guards rushing to surround his tall, bony figure caught the crowd's attention.

"
S'il vous plaît, Monsieur le Ministre,
these conditions—" a bodyguard began.

"Since when can't a government servant walk among the people?" Cazaux grinned. "With the treaty about to be signed, I need every chance to hear their concerns." He winked at the small crowd around the car, his charm melting many of them into smiles as he moved among them shaking hands, totally at ease with the situation.

He smiled directly at Aimee, who'd become awkwardly wedged among the hotel staff. He appeared younger than he did in the media but she was surprised at his heavy makeup. "Bonjour, Mademoiselle. I hope you will support our party's platform!"

Cazaux grasped her hands in his warm ones, as she winced at the sudden pressure.

"Je m'excuse."
He pulled back, glancing at her hand.

His charm was laserlike. Once appointed he would be prime minister for five years.

"Monsieur le Ministre,"
she said, stifling a smile, "you promote social reform, but your party sanctions this racist treaty. Can you explain this contradiction?"

Cazaux nodded and paused. "Mademoiselle, you've made a good point." He turned to the crowd, assorted skinheads, shoppers, and young Zionists. "If there was another way to reduce our crippling 12.8 percent unemployment, I'd be the first one to do it. Right now, France has to get back on its feet, reenter the global market, and nothing is more important than that."

Many in the crowd nodded, but the young Zionists chanted, "No more camps!"

The minister approached them. "Simple answers to immigration don't exist; I wish they did."

He embraced a squealing infant shoved at him by a perspiring mother. With all the time in the world, he rocked the young baby like a practiced grandfather. Then he kissed the cooing baby on both cheeks, gently handing it back to the beaming mother. "Discussion is the foundation of our republic." He smiled at the Zionists. "Bring your concerns to my office."

Cazaux was good, she had to admit. He worked the crowd well. Several photographers caught him in earnest discussion with a Zionist youth. By the time the traffic jam broke up, even the Zionists were almost subdued.

His guards signaled to him, then Cazaux waved, climbed in the limo, and shot down the street. The whole incident had taken less than fifteen minutes, she realized. His adept handling of potential violence triggered her unease. He'd manipulated the volatile situation almost as if he'd planned it. When did I get so cynical, she wondered.

Ahead of her stood an old man in a lopsided blue beret. "Just like the old days. Maybe they'll do it right this time," he muttered. His face was contorted by hate.

"There's blacks and Arabs everywhere," he continued. "My war pension is half what the blacks get. Noisy all night and they can't even speak French."

She turned away and stared straight into the eyes of Leif, the lederhosened skinhead from LBN. He stood by the entrance of a dingy
hôtel particulier
, watching her. Even in a red suit with makeup and heels instead of leather, black lipstick, and chains, she wasn't going to wait and see if he recognized her.

When she looked again, he was gone. Stale sweat and the smell of damp wool surrounded her. She froze when she saw his bristly mohawk appear over the old man's shoulder.

"Salopes!"
the old man swore into the jostling crowd, Aimee wasn't sure at whom.

She was scared. In this narrow, jammed street, she had nowhere to go. She crouched behind the old man, pulled her red jacket off, and stuck a brown ski cap from her bag over her hair. She shivered in a cream silk top in the now steady drizzle, put on heavy black-framed glasses, and melted into the crowd as best she could.

"They laid my son off, but he doesn't get the fat welfare check those blacks get for nothing," the old man shouted.

Aimee felt groping fingers under her blouse, but she couldn't see who they belonged to. Leaning down, she opened her mouth and bit as hard as she could. Someone yelped loudly in pain and the crowd scattered in fear. Aimee darted and elbowed her way through the grumbling crowd. She didn't stop until she had reached the Metro, where she shoved her pass in the turnstile and ran to the nearest platform. Gusts of hot air shot from the tiled vents as each train pulled in and out. She stood in front of them until her blouse had dried, she'd stopped shaking, and had come up with a plan.

Wednesday Noon

A
IMÉE WORKED IN HER
apartment on her computer, accessing Thierry Rambuteau's credit-card activity, parking tickets, and even his passport. He drove a classic '59 Porsche, lived with his parents, and had dined the night before at Le Crepuscule on the Left Bank using his American Express card.

On the previous Wednesday morning, the day Lili was murdered, the card showed a gas purchase off the A2 highway near Antwerp, Belgium. That gave him plenty of time to drive into Paris by early evening. She scrolled through the rest and was about to give up, but just to be thorough she checked his passport activity. There it was. Entry into Istanbul, Turkey, a week ago Saturday and no record of return. But most countries didn't stamp your passport on departure. No wonder he had a tan, she thought, when she'd first seen him at LBN office. And a possible alibi.

She took a swig of bottled water and called Martine at
Le Figaro
.

Martine put her on hold briefly, then spoke into the phone. "Here's what I found. Like clockwork, there's a deposit every month into Thierry and Claude Rambuteau's joint account from DFU. That's the Deutsche Freiheit Union, the fascists who burn Turkish families out of their homes. Why are you investigating this guy? I'm just curious."

"He's a suspect in a Jewish woman's murder," Aimee replied.

"Let me guess," Martine yawned. "He's really a Jew."

Aimee choked and almost dropped her bottle of water. "That's an ironic angle I hadn't thought of."

Martine was awake now. "Really? I was just kidding; it would give him some excuse to be screwed up."

"Screwed up enough to strangle a woman and and carve a swastika into her head?" Aimee said.

"Oh God, Gilles told me about that, it's in his follow-up story for the Sunday evening edition. You think he did it?"

"Martine, this is between us. Not Gilles," Aimee said firmly. She tapped the name Claude Rambuteau into her computer as she talked. "Why would Thierry's father. . .?"

"Wait a minute, Aimee. Who is his father?"

"According to Thierry's Amex application, his father is Claude Rambuteau," she said, pulling up the information from her screen and downloading it.

"Were you wondering why he would have a joint account with his son Thierry and receive DFU money?" Martine asked.

"Something along those lines," Aimee said. "I better go ask him."

R
AIN SPLATTERED
over the cobblestones as Aimee ran to number twelve. She rang the buzzer next to the faded name Rambuteau, adjusting her long wool skirt and tucking her spiky hair under a matching wool beret.

The outline of a smallish figure materialized, silhouetted in the frosted-glass door. A portly man, short with gray hair and dark glasses and dressed in a fashionable tracksuit, opened the door halfway.

"Yes?" He remained partly in the door's shadow.

"I'm Aimee Leduc, with Leduc Investigation," she said, handing him her card. "I'd like to speak with Thierry Rambuteau."

"Not here, he doesn't live here, you see," the man said. Already she'd caught him in a lie.

"Perhaps I could come in for a minute," she said evenly. Her beret was soaked.

"Is there a problem?" he said.

"Not really. I'm working on a case and—"

Here he interrupted her. "What is this about?"

"Lili Stein, an elderly Jewish woman, was murdered near here. A local synagogue enlisted my services." She glanced inside the hallway. A black leather storm-trooper coat hung from the hall coatrack. "That's your son's coat, isn't it? Let me talk with him."

He shook his head. "He's not here now. I told you."

"I'd like to clear up a few points, Monsieur Rambuteau. You can help me." She edged closer to him. "I'm getting awfully wet and I promise I'll go away after we talk."

He shrugged. "A few minutes."

Shuffling ahead, he led her into an antiseptically clean windowed breakfast room. A long melamine-topped table held a place setting for one. Next to a sunflower-patterned plate, its matching cup and saucer, and an empty wineglass were vials of multicolored pills. Yellow roses wafted their scent from a bubbled glass vase by the window.

The man motioned for her to sit down on a couch by the window. He leaned forward and took off his dark glasses. From the kitchen she could hear the monotonous tick of a clock. Piles of papers and a cardboard box of yellowed press clippings littered the floor.

Aimee opened her damp backpack and took out a sopping note pad.

Embarrassed, she said, "My ink will run on this wet paper. Can I trouble you for some dry paper?"

Monsieur Rambuteau hesitated, then pointed. "On top of one of those piles should be a writing tablet. I was making a list."

"Merci."
She reached for the nearest stack. On top was the empty tablet. She took it and a folder to write on.

He was nervously twisting the knuckle on his ring finger. "Are you investigating Les Blancs Nationaux group?" A note of anguish stuck in his voice.

Aimee replied calmly, "I'm exploring all possibilities."

He let out a big sigh and rested his palms on the spotless white table, facing Aimee. "My wife just passed away." He pointed to a silver-framed photo sitting atop a glass-front china cabinet. "I'm due at Père Lachaise; her funeral is today."

"I'm very sorry, Monsieur Rambuteau," she said.

In the photo, a woman with thin penciled eyebrows wearing shiny leather pants and a rhinestone-flecked sweater peered out from under a helmetlike bob of hair. Her eyes had a surprised look that Aimee attributed to a face-lift.

"Her things," he said, indicating the piles of paper.

"I know this isn't a good time, so I'll be brief," she said. "Did your son know Lili Stein?"

"My son gets carried away sometimes. Is that what this is about?" he said.

"I'll put it another way, Monsieur Rambuteau. Your home isn't far from the victim's deli on rue des Rosiers. Did Thierry know Lili Stein?"

"I don't know if he knew her or not. But I doubt it."

"Why do you say that?" Aimee said.

"He didn't make a habit of. . .er. . .let's say, having social contact with Jews," Monsieur Rambuteau said.

"Would he carry his feelings to an extreme?"

Startled, Monsieur Rambuteau looked away. "No. Never. I told you he can get carried away but that's all. My fault really; you see, I've encouraged him. Well, at the beginning I was happy to see him get involved in politics. A good cause."

Obviously, Aimee thought, Thierry's apple didn't fall far from the tree. She willed herself to speak in an even tone. "A good cause, in your opinion, includes Aryan supremacist groups?"

"I didn't say that." He cleared his throat. "At the beginning, Thierry and I talked about their ideology. There are some points in their program, whether one agrees or not, that make sense. I'm certainly not condoning violence but as far as I know, Thierry hasn't been involved with them recently. Filmmaking is his field."

"Would you say, Monsieur Rambuteau, that your son's upbringing was in a politically conservative vein?" she said.

He raised his eyebrows, then shrugged, "Let's say we served
sucre a la droite
, not
sucre a la gauche
."

He referred to white and brown sugar, the metaphor for right-wing conservatives and leftist socialists. She knew that in many households political leanings were identified by the kind of sugar sitting in sugar bowls.

"Did your wife hold these views?" she said.

"I'm not ashamed to say we held Marechal Petain and his Vichy government in the highest regard. You didn't live through a war. You can never understand how Le Marechal aimed to untarnish the reputation of France," he said.

Aimee leaned forward. "Is that why Thierry receives funds from a German right-wing extremist group and you support Les Blancs Nationaux?"

His eyes narrowed. "You can't prove that."

"Proving that Les Blancs Nationaux are bankrolled by the DFU Aryan supremacists isn't too hard. And that's sure to bother people who still remember Germans as Nazis and
'boches.'
"

Monsieur Rambuteau's cheeks had become red and his breathing labored. He reached for the bottle of yellow pills on the table in front of him. He shook out three, poured a glass of water, and gulped both. His shallow breath came in short spurts.

Finally, he took a deep breath and folded his hands. "I'm a sick man," he said. "You'd better go." He rose with obvious effort, and walked her to the door. "My son couldn't hurt anyone," he said. In his small, tired eyes, Aimee saw pain.

"You haven't convinced me, Monsieur." She adjusted her beret and looked at him resolutely. "I'll be back."

He closed the door and Aimee walked out into the drizzling rain to the bus stop.

She would prove that Les Blancs Nationaux existed on neo-Nazi money with Rene's help on the computer. Twenty minutes later she stepped off the bus on Ile St. Louis near her flat and entered her neighborhood corner cafe. Chez Mathieu was inviting and much warmer than her apartment.

"
Bonjour,
Aimee." A short, stout man in a white apron playing a pinball machine in the corner greeted her. Bells clanged as the pinball hit the targets.

"
Ça va,
Ludovice? A cafe
crème
, please."

He nodded. The cafe was empty. "I've got bone shanks for your boy." He meant Miles Davis.

"Merci."
Aimee smiled and chose a table by the fogged-up windows overlooking the Seine. She spread her papers to dry and took out her laptop, but the marble tabletop was sticky and she needed to put something over it. She pulled out some paper and realized she held Monsieur Rambuteau's tablet. And a folder, too, that she'd picked up by mistake. She opened it.

Lists of Nathalie Rambuteau's personal belongings filled two sheets. Well-thumbed film scripts and old theater programs lined the folder next to a sheaf of photocopies, one labeled "Last Will and Testament." Curious, Aimee opened it. On the top was a codicil, dated three months previously: "Suffering from a terminal illness, I, Nathalie Rambuteau, cannot in good conscience keep secret my son's origins. I cannot break the promise I made to my son's biological mother. Upon my death, I request that my son, Thierry Rambuteau, be informed of his real parentage."

Stapled to the back of it was a note in spidery writing:
S.S. letter with Notaire Maurice Barrault
. Shaken, she sat back. Who was Thierry's real mother?

"Ça va?"
Ludovice asked as he set her cafe on the table.

"God, I don't know. Got a cigarette?"

"I thought you quit." He rubbed his wet hands across his apron and reached in his pocket.

"I did." She accepted a nonfiltered Gauloise and he lit it for her. As she inhaled deeply, the acrid smoke hit the back of her throat, then she felt the familiar jolt as it filled her lungs. She exhaled the smoke, savoring it.

Aimee gestured to the chair. He untied his apron, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

"Let me ask you something—" she began.

"Over a drink. I'll buy." He reached for a bottle of Pernod and two shot glasses and poured. "What's the question?"

The empty cafe was quiet except for the drizzling rain beating on the roof.

"Do you believe in ghosts?" Aimee asked. "Because I think I'm beginning to."

A
IMÉE LEFT
the cafe when the rain stopped and wearily entered her apartment. Before she could kick off her damp clothes her phone began ringing.

She answered. The nurse she'd slipped several hundred francs to inform her of any changes in Soli Hecht's condition spoke quickly.

"Soli Hecht came out of his coma fifteen minutes ago," she said.

"I'll be right over."

Quickly, she put on black stirrup pants and red high-tops, draped her Chanel scarf around her neck under her jean jacket, and ran down two marble flights of stairs. Her mobylette wobbled and bounced over the uneven cobbles on the Quai. Rain-freshened air mingled with a faint sewer odor as she crossed the Seine. The perfume of Paris, her father had called it. She kept to small streets in the Marais. Outside l'Hôpital St. Catherine, she rammed her moped in a row with all the others and locked it.

Dead cigarette smell and muffled bells on a loudspeaker greeted her as she emerged on the hospital's fifth floor. Overflowing ashtrays littered the waiting area near a row of withering potted plants.

She strode over the scuffed linoleum towards room 525. Loud buzzers sounded as a team of nurses and doctors flew by her.

"
Attention!
Out of the way," yelled a medic, who wheeled a shock unit past them.

She followed him, feeling a terrible sense of foreboding. A doctor kneeled over an unconscious blue-uniformed policeman, sprawled on the linoleum.

Uneasy, she asked, "What's happened?"

"I'm not sure," the doctor said, feeling for a pulse.

She ran into room 525. Hecht lay naked except for a loose sheet across his waist, wires and tubes hooked into his pasty white body. His skin glistened with perspiration. His forearm showed an injection mark with a bubble of blood.

She rushed to the hallway. "Doctor, this patient needs attention!"

Surprised, he nodded to the nurse and they went in.

Aimee reached for the radio clipped to the policeman's pocket and flicked the transmit button. "Request assist; fifth-floor attack on Soli Hecht—officer down. Do you copy?"

All she heard was static. As she reached for the policeman's pocket, her hand raked a cold metal pistol. She wondered why a Paris
flic
would carry a Beretta .765.
Flics
she knew didn't carry this kind of hardware. They weren't even issued firearms. She slid it into her pocket.

More static, then a voice said, "Copy. Backup is on the way. Who is this?"

But Aimee stood at the foot of the bed where doctors and nurses worked on Soli Hecht.