Murder Below Montparnasse (25 page)

“I’m on that Leduc until she coughs up, or else …” Flèche said.

Morgane heard the hiss of a match lighting. A swift inhale. Could taste the plume of smoke Flèche exhaled. Idiot.

“Or else what?” the woman asked in that curious accent.

“I’ll make her talk.”

“Wrong answer. Pity, Flèche. Stupid nickname—for an arrow, you’re dull as a post.”

“Tant pis,”
Flèche said, his footsteps moving past her. That smell of cigarettes that clung to his clothes. “You want a bigger cut, why do you deserve it?”

She had to warn this woman. Even though she’d attacked Morgane, bound her and threatened her, Morgane trusted her more than this idiot who’d get her killed.

“He’s got a knife strapped to his leg,” she said.

“That’s too bad, Flèche. I don’t like uncooperative types.”

Morgane heard the unmistakable sound of a revolver cartridge clicking into place. An intake of breath.

“And no need to look for the fixer anymore,” the woman said. “Here I am.”

“What the …?”

The rest was drowned in the crack of a gunshot. Morgane tried to make herself small. Sounds of shattering glass and a
loud thump on the floor next to her. What felt like a man’s arm—Flèche’s—hitting her shoulder. Morgane shivered in terror. Then an oozing, warm wetness on her sleeve. That metallic smell. Her fingers came back sticky with blood.

She tried to scream but it froze in her throat. Nothing came out.

Her body tensed, expecting the gunshot. Expecting to die. But she couldn’t force her mouth open to plead for her life. Could only sputter a few words. “My son … needs me … I beg you.…”

Only the chill draft from an open door answered her.

D
OUBTS CLOGGED
A
IMÉE’S
mind like the leaves stuck in the quai’s rain-swollen gutters. Dombasle’s informant
antiquaire
orchestrating a buy of a Modigliani at the flea market—it all seemed too easy.

Or maybe she was paranoid.

But it reminded her of the apricot tart her grandmother left to cool on the windowsill one long-ago summer afternoon—a flock of crows had swooped down and left not even a crumb. Was there a swarm of scavengers picking each other off for the prize?

She needed a plan, quick and dirty. Grabbed her cell phone.

Oleg answered on the first ring.

“Mademoiselle Leduc, you’ve thought of something? Want to talk?”

Still rude. He’d kept her number on his caller ID.

“Call off the Serbs and I’m more than ready.”

A snort. “I don’t understand.”

Damp air laced with the fresh scent of rain hovered on the quai. Aimée shook the water off her Vespa cover, took out her keys, and shouldered her bag. The sporadic showers made one feel damp all the time, her
grand-mère
used to complain. Nothing ever dried.

“Didn’t you send the goon last night to plunge my head in a bucket, like he tortured your stepfather?”

A swift intake of breath. “What?”

“Lucky my godfather’s a
flic
and—”

“Nothing to do with me,” Oleg interrupted. “You’re wrong.”

A bus whooshed by, spraying water from the puddles. She stepped back but not in time. Droplets shimmered on her leather leggings. “Act like that,” she said, irritated, wiping herself off with a café napkin from her bag. “No information then.”

“Either you have the Modigliani or you don’t,” he said.

This wasn’t going well. Accusing him might not have been the best plan. But she had a feeling.

“Oleg, you’re in the dark with a buyer and no painting,” she said. “Guess we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

“
Attends
, I never intended for this to get out of hand.”

Her foot paused on the kickstart. Her hand gripped the phone. “What do you mean?”

“The buyer’s anxious.”

“So you hire someone to threaten me?”

“Never. You’re crazy.” His voice rose a notch.

“But to kill your own—”

“I’d never hurt Yuri. Ever.”

“Expect me to believe that? He sent you away, never regarded you as his.…”

“Son?” Oleg said. “You don’t understand. Tatyana—we never thought the Serb would die. That you’d run him over.”

Realization hit her gut. “You hired the Serb.”

“A fiasco.” He’d admitted it.

“The Serb bought it before he hit our windshield,” Aimée said. “His partner’s an angry dog and I want him brought to heel or—”

“What can I do?” His breath caught. “A simple job.…” What sounded like a sob erupted. He sounded afraid. “But I never hired anyone to hurt you. Or Yuri. Don’t you get it?”

She believed him. He sounded in over his head. But he was withholding something. She leaned on the quai’s stone wall, overlooking the rippling Seine. Below chugged a long, open
barge loaded with sand like she remembered from years ago. Didn’t see many of those these days.

“Then explain. I’m listening, Oleg.”

“Tatyana knew someone who knew someone,” he said finally.

“Too vague, Oleg.”

“A word here and there, back channels, I don’t know,” he said. “
Zut
, part of me wanted Yuri to keep it. A family heirloom.”

His depiction of himself as a solicitous stepson contradicted Madame Figuer’s, Natasha’s, and Damien’s accounts. Again, that suspicion niggled—had he stolen the painting and concocted an elaborate scheme to derail the
flics?
And now answered her call to find out what she knew?

“I wish we could have kept that painting. The Modigliani spoke to me, I told you,” Oleg said. “But we’re working people. Tatyana convinced me, said this buyer has a private museum, people would admire it. Yuri needed money for an operation. I thought he’d come around, given time.”

She doubted that part. Yuri was a feisty old goat who wanted things his way. Hadn’t he “hired” her?

“You invited him over for dinner, Tatyana cooked his favorite meal. But he refused to let you sell the painting,” she said. “Ruined your plans. He’d found a fixer to handle the painting.”

A sigh. “He told you all this, then you know.…”

She wouldn’t disabuse him of the idea that Yuri had confided in her. Or reveal that she knew nothing.

“But someone stole the Modigliani before the Serb got there,” Oleg said. “And now his brother’s demanding payment. A job’s a job, he insists, no matter the outcome.”

That she could believe.

“Call him off, Oleg.”

“Believe me, I want to,” he said. “I tried.”

“Tried, Oleg? Tell me how you contacted him.”

“By cell phone, but he doesn’t answer.”

Why couldn’t he just spit it out?

“Give me his number. He’s gone vigilante on my colleague.”

Pause.

She wanted to kick him. Raised her voice. “Now, Oleg. I need it”

Aimée reached in her bag, grabbed a pen from the car insurance company, and wrote the number on her palm. A seagull strutted down the wall, squawking. She covered her other ear to hear better.

“Tell me who else wanted the Modigliani,” Aimée said.

“I don’t know.”

Holding back again.

“I think you do, Oleg,” she said. “There was blood on the wall.”

“Look, I’ll give you a percentage,” he said, sounding rushed now. “Think it over.”

He thought she wanted in on the profit. Thought she knew the painting’s whereabouts. Damien’s words came back to her. “But Damien heard you argue that night.”

“That bleeding heart?” Oleg said. “Damien should mind his own business. Yuri never gave me a chance whenever I tried to help him. But Mr. Do-Gooder’s always at his beck and call, when he’s not demonstrating, or at the hospital with his dying aunt. He wants first place in line for her inheritance.”

“Funny, he said the same thing about you.”

Oleg hung up.

As long as Oleg thought she had access to the painting, she had value. But he might have already told her everything he knew. The desperation in his voice sounded real enough.

Aimée tried the Serb’s phone number. Out of service. A disposable phone. And a dead end.

She kicked loose gravel at the stone wall. Alarmed, the seagull took off, his wings making a flapping whoosh as he
skimmed the dimpled surface of the green-brown Seine. The color reminded her of lentil soup.

She rang Saj. Gave him the latest.

“What did you expect, Aimée? Thought the Serb would answer and apologize?” Saj sounded worried. “Like a slap on the wrist would make any of them walk away? High stakes like this?”

She figured these were rhetorical questions. “
Bon
, Oleg lives not far from Yuri in the fourteenth.…”

“So pay him a visit,” Saj said. “Meanwhile, since I don’t have the thumb-drive prototype.…” He paused. “I’d like the anti-malware program that’s in the drawer at my computer desk at my place. Can you stop by? Grab my stress busters while you’re at it?”

Her neck felt hot with shame. “Don’t tell me you came from the hospital to the office without even going home?”

“Good thing, too, with you getting attacked,” he said. “Someone’s got to mind the office with René gone. Look, I want to keep the business going, forget what I said before.”

Guilt riddled her. Unlike René, loyal Saj stuck with her. And he needed help in return.

“
Bien sûr
, Saj.”

After punching in 12 for directory assistance, she found Oleg’s address. One bit of luck, thank God. First she’d stop at Saj’s—the least she could do. And it was en route. She donned her helmet again and gunned her scooter to the Left Bank. Not ten minutes from Yuri’s on Villa d’Alésia lay rue des Thermopolyes, a village-like street battling developers. She saw the jagged walls of half-demolished buildings with a faded Dubonnet sign, the abandoned plot an attempt at a community garden with a rusted pinwheel turning in the wind. Farther on, she passed pastel two- and three-story maisonettes, painstakingly restored, and the taffy brick walls of the occasional small workshop. Saj lived in one of these.

A churchbell chimed in the distance. Pastoral and quiet. She keyed in his door code and reached his studio on the second floor. Diffused light from the slanted glass roof bathed the former workshop in a clouded vanilla. On the oblong window facing the courtyard, something was painted in red, like graffiti. Art? But when she got closer, she saw the misspelled words slashed like blood spatter:
I’ll get you murderrer
.

Her heart jumped into her throat. She gasped. Stepped back, and stumbled on Saj’s pile of encryption manuals. She didn’t need a high IQ to know the handiwork of a Serb bent on vengeance.

A creak behind her startled her and she turned to see a female figure in black Goth garb. “Can’t get away this time.”

Aimée dove under Saj’s kitchen table just in time to avoid the swinging scythe. She scooted on her hands and knees as fast as she could over the tatami mat. “Hold on, I’m Saj’s friend,” she said, meeting the woman’s heavily made-up eyes, black holes in her white face. “Who won’t get away?”

“Like I believe you? I heard those noises this morning.…”

By the time she’d convinced this Goth neighbor—Solange, or Sheila, the Celtic name she preferred to be called by—that she wasn’t out to kill Saj, five precious minutes had passed. But at least she could get some information, if Sheila had seen the Serb. “So you heard him. Did he speak? Have an accent?” she asked.

“I was rushing to work and heard loud noises. That’s all.”

Work, in the morning? Not some vampire party? Aimée blinked.

Sheila noticed her reaction. “Had to open my medieval shop on rue du Couédic early today for the confluence gathering. The tribes request it, you know,” she said, her high-pitched voice at odds with her appearance—black lace, tapestry-festooned apron, and matching black fingernails. She resembled a milkmaid from Hades.

“Then I found the door open, and no Saj. I’m worried.”

“Did you see who did this?”

“He ran away.”

Obviously.

“What did he look like?”

“Everything happened so fast.” She shrugged. “He took off through the courtyard.”

Aimée was stuffing several of Saj’s muslin drawstring pants and matching white shirts, an alpaca vest, and his mail in her bag. He wouldn’t be coming back here. Of that she’d make sure.

“Try to remember something about him. Anything strike you?”

“A hat, a cap? But he ran, I … didn’t see well.”

Great.

“We’re a community here, supporting the garden, keeping developers out.…” She sighed. “Hasn’t Saj told you? We’re the last bastion for artists and musicians, the way it used to be. The only thing that hasn’t changed is people living on the margins.” Another shrug.

This Goth liked to talk. Aimée wished her acute observations extended to this morning.

“The closer you get to the Périphérique, the cheaper,” she continued. “We’ve never had trouble even with the squatters who live by the garden. The single men, the day workers, they even respect the families.”

She painted a pretty picture, but the words dripping in red on Saj’s window belied the harmony.

“We’re a mix—old anarchists, poets,
intellos
, and film stars who like
la vie de bohème
without the prices closer to Montparno.”

Montparno, argot from an old Jean Gabin film.

“Violence and sick attacks like this just don’t happen here,” she said. “At least La Coalition is militant and rabid to stop the developers. Those bloodsuckers.”

La Coalition, those demonstrators who’d blocked rue d’Alésia.

“That so?” Aimée was half-listening, checking Saj’s computer—untouched—and finding the malware program. She scanned Saj’s tatami floor, the walls basic, white and untouched apart from the red letters on the window. “What about the Roma, the Gypsies on rue Raymond Losserand?” Many a time she’d seen women sitting on the street corner begging with a child in arms. Saj called it the shame of the quartier.

“From encampments beyond the Périphérique? Sad.” Sheila shook her head. “The bosses drive them here in vans, drop them on the corner to ‘work’ begging. The bosses take it all when they pick them up. Beat them when they don’t make their quota.”

Horrible.

Just then, she remembered Saj’s disgusting rabbit pellets, his stress busters. She found them by the window.