Murder Below Montparnasse (38 page)

It took her breath away. A man almost alive looked back at her. The curve of his cheek, the thin mustache, the almond-shaped nut-brown eyes. So vulnerable, so in love, it shone. Warm with an appetite for life, a hunger to experience. Flecked with doubt, maybe, but a fully fleshed-out human being in an ingenious assemblage of deft brushstrokes. The earth tones and still-vibrant green of the jacket, the patched elbow, the hands holding a booklet.

Painted on the back, in quavering letters:
M o d i g l i a n i for my friend Piotr
.

She took the photocopied letters from her bag, rolled them up with the painting, put them all in the tube, then stuck the tube in her bag. She’d let history decide what it meant.

A
IMÉE WALKED IN
the twilight with the Trotskyist paper rolled under her arm, hoping the Sainte Anne appointment would lead somewhere. Did these old Trotskyists stick together somehow? She’d recovered Yuri’s
patrimoine
from his father, but too late. Melancholy filled her. Yuri had hired her to recover his Modigliani. There were even four thousand francs and change left to prove it. Dombasle … the rest … she didn’t know.

She turned into 64 Boulevard Arago, the walled Sainte Anne psychiatric hospital
—la maison des fous
, the madhouse, as people called it. Built over the Catacombs and quarries honeycombing the quartier, the hospital was, in the seventeenth century, a farm under the patronage of Queen Anne where
les fous
worked for their keep. The grounds never failed to make Aimée uneasy. The bars on the rain-beaded windows reminded her of La Santé a few blocks away—another kind of prison. For a moment she wanted to turn around and leave this wet, damp place.

Years ago, she’d accompanied her grandfather here to visit a woman he called Charlotte.

That cold, sleeting February afternoon flooded back to her: Charlotte’s pink peignoir, her little barking laugh, the intense look in her wide eyes; the sad expression on her grandfather’s face, the way he’d told Aimée to smile at Charlotte and act polite; how afraid Aimée had felt when Charlotte stroked her cheek with her bandaged wrist. “Why did we go see that lady, Grandpa?” she’d asked him in the café afterward over a steaming
chocolat chaud
. He’d shrugged, his shoulders slumped in resignation. “People shouldn’t be forgotten, Aimée. Not even the broken ones.”

The caramel-colored stone pavilions, each named after a writer or thinker, seemed at odds with the mix of nursing staff and hospital-gowned patients who strolled in the gardens and greenery between them. No security cameras, lax supervision. Didn’t they worry the patients would get out? Or maybe the serious cases never saw the light of day.

Half an hour early, she found the visitors’ café, a glassed-in affair with plastic chairs that gave one the illusion of sitting outdoors. Before she could order an espresso, a tall man in a green bloodstained gown joined the line. A doctor? But those weren’t scrubs. Her craving for espresso evaporated and she edged out of the line. No one looked twice at the man.

At Allée de Franz Kafka, she sat down under the pillared pavilion on a wood bench framed by green metal. Now she wondered what to do. Her Tintin watch, its face clouded with moisture, had stopped again. Great.

Muffled moans, a sob. Aimée cocked her head forward to see a woman seated further along the bench. Her face was buried in her hands, and she was rocking back and forth. Alone.

Sometimes she felt like that too. Forlorn, adrift. But this was no time to read her own story in the woman’s suffering.

“It can’t be that bad,” Aimée said, feeling inadequate the moment the words came out. Banal and patronizing. “I mean …” She hesitated. “Can I help you?”

“Only if you weren’t followed,” came a reply. But the voice issued from behind her, by the entrance to the old underground operating rooms. Struck by the accent, the inflection, she turned around. Alert.

“No one followed me,” she said.

In the shadows stood a tall figure. A woman in a doctor’s coat. Aimée mounted three steps to the glass overhang.

“You’re the fixer?” Her throat went dry.

Aimée felt her hands being grasped, squeezed in the warmth of another’s. And she was enveloped in a hovering
muguet
scent. Familiar, so familiar. She felt a jolt like electricity as her eyes fixed upon the unlined face of the woman looking back at her: the chiseled cheekbones, the dark brows and large eyes, the carmine lipstick. She’d always thought she’d know her mother the moment she saw her. Feel a connection like molten steel, the bond resurfacing. But she wasn’t sure.

“Maman?”
Warmth emanated from this woman.

“Curious, always so curious,” she said. “When you were little, you asked questions day and night.”

Aimée felt a sob rising at the back of her throat. A weight pressing into her. Her breathing went heavy. It couldn’t be … but it was.

Her mother lifted Aimée’s hands to take a look at them. “Ink stains on your palms,” she said, her American accent tinged by rolling
r
’s. “You had crayon marks on them the last time. Even your father.…”

“Papa?” she said. “You know he never got over you.”

Her mother glanced away.

“The company lied. As usual.”

The CIA. “You work for them. A hired killer.…?”

“Not any more, Amy.”

Aimée’s throat caught. She hadn’t denied it.

“I’ve led a double life. Done ugly things.” A shrug. “Dealt with devils. Paying the price to keep you safe,” she said. “Now I’m rogue and I can’t protect you. I counted on the wrong people. There’s no one left to trust now. But years ago I saved Yuri’s life.” A cough. “He thought selling his painting through my channels, the contacts I knew, would buy my freedom.”

“You’re a fixer. Make things happen. Buy time.”

A twist of her mouth. “I don’t have much, Amy,” she said. “Yuri shouldn’t have involved you.” Footsteps sounded and she stepped back in the shadows. Silent. Then a whisper. “Let me say what I need to.”

Everything bubbled up—the hurt, the cold afternoon, the
empty apartment she’d come home to when her mother abandoned them. Never a word in all these years.

“Every day after school I looked for you.” That eight-year-old’s whining voice came out; she couldn’t stop it. Did the shared blood coursing in their veins mean nothing? But Aimée didn’t know this woman. “Why did you leave?”

“I was protecting you,” the woman said.

“Protecting me?” The words rose like a tide. “But I wanted you. My mother.” She looked down, her shoulders heaving.

Warm fingers stroked her cheek. Rested on her chin, and with a feather softness raised Aimée’s face to hers.

“You think I didn’t want to be there? To be with you?”

The moment of silence was filled by the shooshing sounds of wet leaves running in the gutter. Her mother’s eyes darted back and forth. Watchful. For the first time, Aimée noticed a metal door standing ajar on the side of the building.

“I don’t care if you sold arms and traded with terrorists,” Aimée said, her insides wrenched. “But now you come back and say this? What do you expect?”

A deep cough. Her mother’s face stayed in shadow.

“Not everyone deserves to be a mother.” A little sigh. “But I’ve followed you for years.”

“Through Morbier,
non?
But why lie?”

Her mother opened her palm to reveal Aimée’s old charm bracelet. Hadn’t she lost that years ago?

“Your first tooth, a lock of your hair,” her mother said. “Don’t make my mistake. Find the right man, have babies.”

“That’s rich coming from you. You found a wonderful man,” she said, her voice shaking. “You had a baby.” No way would Aimée have babies. Sometimes she’d wake up at night terrified that she’d do what her mother had done. Couldn’t face the responsibility. “So why would you reappear now? Don’t tell me you feel guilty.”

“I wanted to see you once. Selfish, you’re right.” Her eyes
darted around, checking to be sure they were alone. Then bored into Aimée’s. “Everything you’ve said is true.”

“Mais non
, you wanted the Modigliani—a painting people have been killed for. You planned on it to finance more dirty deals.”

A small shrug. Her mother’s thin shoulder bones stuck out in the white coat. “You have no reason to believe me. But maybe you’ll take my advice. Learn to cook, quit criminal work,” she said. “There’s an account set up so you won’t need to worry for a while. Travel, live life, find a man, do something else.…”

Cold wind sliced through this hospital enclave, a web of pavilions and old boiler buildings. Aimée felt anger well up.

“Throw away Leduc Detective? After everything
Grand-père
and Papa worked to build?” she said. “What right do you have?” Aimée trembled with deep, raw hurt. “You’re just a stranger who’s walked back in the door. Not part of my life. You’ll leave again.” She bit her lip. “But for once I’m doing the leaving. You don’t know me—how I feel, what I want, what drives me.”

Her mother receded in the shadows. Sighed. “Amy, you’re like me. Please don’t make my mistakes.”

She said her name the American way, “Amy.” Just as she had when Aimée was a child.

And then Aimée saw Dombasle in conversation with a nurse at the far end of the
allée
. The nurse pointed in the pavilion’s direction. Another man joined Dombasle.

Merde!
It had been only twenty minutes since she’d left rue de Châtillon. Dombasle, in cahoots with the BRB, must have had her followed. Probably all along.

He wanted the Modigliani and the fixer.

“The
flics?
You turned me in?” Her mother’s conflicted expression, the look in her eyes seared Aimée. Turn her in, a wanted terrorist on the world security watch list who’d been expelled from France years ago—that’s what Aimée should do.
This woman who abandoned her, now full of regret. Should she? Could she?

Footsteps pounded, echoing under the archway by the war memorial to the fallen hospital staff.

“
Non
, you’re my mother. Get the hell out of here. You’re good at that.”

Her mother hugged her. For a moment, that scent of
muguet
brought her whole childhood back to her. “I love you. Stay safe, little mouse.”

Aimée heard the creaking of a steel door and they both looked toward it. “
Vite
, Sydney!” The old drunk waved his arm to hurry her along.

Aimée choked back a sob and thrust the tube under her mother’s arm.

“Go.”

E
VERY PEW IN
the Marais’s Armenian church was filled. White floral sprays covered the altar and Serge’s twin boys, for once, stood still in their short pants. Each held a lace pillow, transfixed by the wedding rings tied to them.

“Melac won’t show up, will he?” René asked, adjusting his silk cravat in the church vestibule. When Melac never returned her calls, René stepped in as an escort. “You’re sure he’s not coming?”

Staying at the hospital in Brittany, from what Paul at the
Brigade Criminelle
had told her last night: after twelve hours for the emergency crew to extricate Melac’s daughter from the bus, she remained in a coma. Critical. His ex-wife complicated events with a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide.

“Melac’s on leave from the force,” Morbier said.

Aimée’s knuckles whitened on the bouquet. And his friend Paul hadn’t told her? “How do you know, Morbier?”

“Watch the
télé
,” he said. “He’s a little busy. No promotion.”

“The
télé?
You know I don’t have one,” she said, realizing Melac wouldn’t be coming back.

The other bridesmaids filed in with their escorts. The soft tones of a flute echoed under the Gothic struts. As maid of honor, she had the distinction of having two escorts, Morbier and René.

“Ruining his career,” Morbier muttered.

“So that he can be with his family?” Aimée whispered
sharply. “Maybe he doesn’t see it like that, Morbier. That’s why he has a family.”
Unlike you
. But she kept that back. For the first time, she became aware that her family was standing right here.

“You didn’t fall for Dombasle, Leduc, did you?”

The rat who used her as bait for the Modigliani … for her mother? And to think she almost did. She shook her head.

“
Bon
, never trust an
intello
,” Morbier said.

“We need to talk about my mother, Morbier.”

His eyes shuttered. “Not now, Leduc. This is a happy occasion.”

Regula, the bride, resplendent in white lace and trailing whiffs of gardenia, winked at her from behind the rectory door.

“Aimée, love that Dior,” she said.

Determined to wear this Dior no matter what, she’d used safety pins to let out the seams as much as possible. Even more than the couturier had been able to that morning.

“Gained a little weight,
non?
” René said. “Color in your cheeks, healthy for once.”

“I’m anemic,” she said, tired of repeating this to the world. “Just awaiting the lab results so I can start iron supplements.”

“Could have fooled me.”

And then her cousin Sebastien appeared. He looked dashing in a black tuxedo, gardenia corsage, and trimmed beard. Aimée hugged him tight. “I’m so proud of you, little cousin. Bursting with pride.”

He’d turned his life around. Found a wonderful woman, a gourmet chef who loved him to bits.

“You said you’d be the maid of honor if you could wear chiffon,” he said, hugging her back. “But bursting the chiffon seams?”

Already?
Merde
. She looked down at the shredding fabric.

“No wedding cake for me,” she said. “Or just a sliver.”

Her cell phone rang in her matching beaded clutch.

“Turn the damn thing off, Leduc,” Morbier said.

“Won’t take a moment. I need the lab results so my doctor can fill my prescription today.” She answered in a whisper.
“Allô?”

“We’ve got the test results, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said a lab technician, “
Excusez-moi
, is it Madame?”