Murder in the Palais Royal (14 page)

“Do you think I have time to waste?”

“But Monsieur, I’ll pay you.”

“Forget it. I’m booked for the next two months, on a high-paying investigation. Another thing, lady: the favor I owed Morbier, consider it paid. I showed up, you didn’t. And good luck with a peanut-sized case. Finding long-lost relatives isn’t worth the time. Save your money. Apart from my bill.”

Her phone went dead. Then bleeped. The battery had run out.

Her heart sank. At a loss, she left the shop and stood on the corner of rue Catinat. She kicked the leaves into the gutter running with water. Then, ignoring the chic displays in the shop window and the chauffeured Mercedes cars parked in a line, she turned, her heels clicking on the uneven pavers. Alone.

JFK Airport, New York,

“
M
ERDE!
” S A I D
J
ACK Waller, closing his cell phone.

Known in other circles as Jacques Weill, he was still trim even in his sixties, with a mane of grizzled, dyed-brown hair combed back over his large head. He reached for his wallet and made two calls from the public pay phone in the Air France terminal at JFK, using an international pre-paid phone card. The number in Lyon didn’t answer and he left a message, as agreed. The other number, a message center in the Bronx from which calls were routed to Langley, Virginia, answered on the first ring.

“Worldwide Delivery Express, may I help you?” said a man’s voice.

“Package delayed,” he said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure, the same figure he’d noticed five minutes ago. Instead of paying attention to the flight arrival information board, he could swear the woman was watching him.

“Have you started the tracking process?” the man on the phone asked.

“That’s not in my contract,” he said. “Matter of fact, my contract’s over.”

“We’ll extend it.”

“Same terms?” he asked, ever alert to the business end.

“Correct. And indefinitely.” Now this would turn into some God-awful mess that wouldn’t end here, he thought.

“Agreed.”

He hung up, frustrated. Now he’d have to call this Mademoiselle Leduc back. Come up with some story.

First he needed to think about what he’d say. He’d be more inspired over a glass of red at a nearby airport motel. He belted his raincoat, picked up the briefcase he’d stowed between his legs, and took the escalator down. The cold wind from outside the open automated exit doors ruffled the potted palms. Near the entrance to the Air France baggage- claim area, he noticed the woman again. She was standing by the baggage carousel.

Merde!
He hated to think they had caught on to him this quick. A sigh escaped him. He was getting too old for this kind of thing. He edged his way toward the waiting figure. Arrivals crowded the area wheeling suitcases, clogging the space, blocking his way. By the time he reached the carousel, she’d gone.

“
C
ONTINUE,
G
ABRIELLE,” SAID Minister Ney. He sat at his desk, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. The gilt-framed Corot landscape hung by the marble mantelpiece. Broyard, the assistant deputy who’d been caught with the hooker, sat, legs crossed, on a spindle-back chair.

“According to the police report, Broyard,” Gabrielle said, “your actions—”

“Lies. All lies,” Broyard interrupted. His visage flushed red. He was handsome, dressed in a three-piece pinstriped suit, a “comer” amidst the phalanx of bright, ambitious, and arrogant Grandes Écoles’ alumni.

Gabrielle glanced out the minister’s tall window at the dark blot of trees in the Palais Royal, then at her watch. Her secretary would have returned from his “errand.” He would have delivered the money. She made herself concentrate on the duplicate of the Police Judiciaire file in front of her.

She had to word her questions with care in order to figure out how to craft responses to the questions she’d scripted for Cédric, the
télé
host. Cédric had caved when she mentioned his drug-possession file. The things she did in her job left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Tell me in your own words what happened, Broyard,” Gabrielle said. “Stick to the incident, please.”

He threw his arms up. “You need to deal with this. I told you, it’s lies.”

“I see. So in two hours, you’ll announce on the nation’s most-watched evening interview show that it’s lies,” she said. “And it will be just your word against that of the fifteen-year-old hooker who’s proving talkative to the tabloids.”

The determined set of Broyard’s jaw and flashing eyes boded disaster.

“Remember the upcoming National Archives ruling, Bro-yard.” The Minister had raised his voice. “Fifty thousand sealed documents from the Occupation, a dark era. Unsealing them would expose the ministry’s complicity in matters we’d prefer to remain buried. And embarrass people at the highest level of government, even destroy their lives. No one needs the past brought up. There’ll be untold damage if this happens. Remember that.”

Names like her father’s. The minister’s uncle. She had to salvage the situation and please her boss. She had to find a solution in less than two hours.

“But according to the report, you mentioned you’d stopped at the traffic light,” Gabrielle said. “Did the girl—”

“The whore looked twenty.”

“She’s fifteen. A minor.” Gabrielle kept her voice even.

She’d had an idea. “Would you say she could have been arguing with another prostitute? Could she have been escaping from a quarrel, or that you thought she’d be attacked?”

Weak, but a start. She glanced at Ney, saw him straightening his shoulders.

“Broyard, could she have jumped into your car to escape? Could you have thought she’d be attacked? And, not knowing she was a prostitute, you offered her help?”

Broyard ran his hand through his coiffed brown hair. “I’m the victim. It’s a plot to sabotage my career.”

He sickened her.

“Not so fast,” Gabrielle said. “Didn’t you insult the
flics
, and I’m quoting here, tell them ‘Don’t forget that your jobs depend on me’?”

Minister Ney said, “Keep going, Gabrielle. Details later.”

“Maybe the officer misunderstood your words? Maybe he misquoted you, when you meant to say ‘So much depends on my job. . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

“Exactly!” Broyard said. His eyes lit up; he was catching on. He took off his jacket.

Gabrielle nodded. “
Alors,
let’s go back over this.”

Ney needed him until the resolution to unseal the National Archives was defeated. After that, Broyard’s resignation, worded in such a way as to not admit guilt but to protect the junior deputy from further malicious allegations, et cetera. A little time in the country, working with his constituents to create a groundswell of support. Another year, or two or three, and Broyard would be appointed to another post in Paris. The usual.

How many times had she done this? And not for the first time, she wondered how many more there would be.

“We’ll return in a few minutes, Gabrielle.” Ney motioned to Broyard to join him in the antechamber.

Gabrielle waited until they’d left, then slipped into her secretary’s office.

“Mission accomplished, Jean-Georges?”

Jean-Georges looked up from Gabrielle’s appointment calendar. He handed her back the envelope that she had asked him to deliver to Robard. “I regret that, according to the florist next door, the old man suffered a heart attack. The shop’s closed indefinitely.”

Gabrielle’s smile froze. Her second attempt . . . would the blackmailer lose patience?

Years of training kicked in. She had to buy time. Dodging mines was in her job description, as well as navigating the ins and outs of the Ministry. She made her feet move and walked to the water cooler, leaned down, and took a sip. Broyard’s loud laugh echoed down the carpeted hallway.

“Your son Olivier left a message,” Jean-Georges said. “But I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Gabrielle looked up.

“It sounded urgent. He said. . . .” he hesitated. “He’d seen a ghost.”

T
HE PHONE WA S ringing as Aimée unlocked the frosted glass door of the office of Leduc Detective. She caught it on the fifth ring.

“Leduc Detective,” she said, breathless, hoping to hear René’s voice.

“I have what you want,” said Clémence. Again no greeting. In the background Aimée heard clanging, what sounded like plates clattering. The hiss of something frying.

“You’ve got Nicolas’s notebook?”

“For ten thousand francs I do.”

Aimée set her bag on the desk, threw her denim jacket on her chair. “Why should I pay for something he wanted to give me, Clémence?”

“Because it concerns you.”

Aimée shivered.

“Bring cash,” Clémence ordered.

“Do you think I can lay my hands on that amount? On short notice?”

“You want to know, or not?” Clémence asked. “People will pay to keep this quiet. You’ll make money with this, Aimée, but I don’t have time.”

Blackmail. Clémence was a manipulator. It added up.

Nicolas hadn’t trusted Clémence. So she’d arranged the prison visit, counted on Aimée being able to pry information from him. Did she really think Aimée would blackmail whoever Nicolas had named in this coverup?

“I’m a detective, Clémence. I don’t blackmail people.”

Aimée kicked the steam radiator, without result. There was no issuing warmth. Then she kicked it again. There was a rumble.

“Nicolas didn’t commit suicide, did he, Clémence? He was murdered, and now this is too big for you to handle.”

“I leave tonight,” Clémence whispered. “My kid will grow up in the south, where it’s green, not gray. You want to help me? Bring cash and the notebook’s yours.”

Aimée heard the clattering of plates, a muttered
“Merde”
! Then, “Table 4 wants their bill!”

“
Bon,
I guess you’re not interested,” Clémence said. “I thought you were sharp. Guess not.” She paused. Shouts and hissing noises filled the background. “Sad, too.” Her voice was now a hurried whisper. “He said you were the only one who’d be able to expose them. But obtaining justice, doing the right thing,
alors
, that’s easy to promise, when you’re not broke, hard to accomplish.”

A little voice inside told her that if she didn’t agree, Clémence would make her own deal with the devil. And then she’d never find René’s shooter.

“Where, Clémence?”

“Passage des Deux Pavillons, 10:15.”

The line went dead.

She reached for the spring under her desk blotter. With a ping, a slot opened, revealing the hollow space in her desk in which they’d hidden their reserve office funds. A few hundred francs. She took them, stuffing the bills into her pocket. Somehow she’d talk Clémence into it.

In her head she heard René’s voice, recollecting the many times he’d called her “reckless, impulsive.” He would insist she call the
flics
. But how could she tell Melac, who already thought her psychotic?

So far, her calls and messages to all the clients René had worked with in the last two years had resulted in no clue to a suspect. Not that anyone would admit sabotaging Leduc Detective by wiring the money to its account, much less shooting René.

A new message popped up on her e-mail—the sender, BRIF, Brigade de Researches et d’ Investigations Financières
,
the financial
flics.
She hit OPEN. A curt message informed her of an appointment the next morning with a Monsieur Fressard pertaining to her Paribas account.

Already!

The old station clock in her office chimed 10 P.M. She had to hurry. Her cell phone rang, startling her.

Clémence again?

But Saj’s number was displayed.

“Aimée,” Saj said. “Checked the business’s account recently?”

She pulled up their Paribas account on her laptop screen and scanned the balance. “Another deposit of fifty thousand! It adds up to more than a hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

Where was it coming from?

“BRIF’s summoned me for a meeting tomorrow.”

“Did they request any documentation?”

“Not yet,” she said. “But the meeting’s not at the Préfecture. It looks like it’s at some tax office.”

“So it’s an exploratory meeting,” Saj said. “Ask to see what they have.”

There was a silence, then she heard clicks on the other end. Was he delving into their account?

“Think of it in simple terms,” Saj said. “They’re looking for dirty money.”

“And if I use a centime of it, then it’s as good as—”

“Admitting you’re laundering it?” Saj interrupted. “They don’t care about ethics, Aimée; it’s not a court of law.”

She asked, “But why pick on me?”

“Rather than Colombian cartels or Chechen arms dealers?” Saj asked. “Who knows?”

“
Exactement
. It’s deliberate. Someone fingered us,” she said. “Someone denounced me.”

“Don’t forget, arms dealers can afford creative accounting and offshore accounts. You can’t.”

She pounded her fist on the desk. “Saj, did your contact know anything?”

“The Luxembourg bank that originated the transfer tops the Tracfin blacklist.”

“Tops the list?”

“A behind-the-scenes financial investigative unit at BRIF is monitoring for Tracfin,” Saj said. “Tracfin’s priority is investigating money-laundering. Think terrorists, drug cartels, Russian mafia money. That kind of thing, along with politicos and their slush funds after the Elf affair.”

Aimée knew of the ongoing Elf oil scandal involving the sale of frigates to Taiwan with kickbacks linked to the highest echelons of various ministries. A minister’s mistress, a lobbyist, dispensed bribes with a largesse likened by the press to the court of Louis XIV at Versailles.