Murder in the Bastille (14 page)

“Draz?” she asked. “This old man heard the name?”

“Seems Draz was a
bon mec
. The old flutemaker heard him beating someone to a pulp below his window,” René said. “I don’t imagine that’s something you forget.”

“Good job, partner. Listen, someone stole my phone,” she said, wanting to downplay the attack. “Try my number, see who answers.”

She clicked off. René called right back.

“Your voice mail answers,” he said. “Your phone’s probably in the Seine with the fishes.”

She wasn’t so sure of that.

“I’m staying somewhere else tonight,” she said.

Another pause.

“With your doctor?”

How did René make that jump?
Was her flicker of attraction to the doctor so obvious?

“An opera singer rents rooms . . .”

“What about the residence? You need care!”

She appreciated his concern. He was the only family she had besides Morbier, who was keeping to the margins of her life.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “Look, my door got carved up and I had a close encounter hanging from my window railing.”

“Someone attacked you in your room?”

So she told him.

Right now, she was so worried that she might not see again, that everything else faded in importance.

“Stay at my place.”

“René, the doctor wants me near the hospital, available for tests. He can’t schedule in advance, he calls me in when a space opens. But thanks for the offer.”

The air brakes of a late evening lumbering bus hissed in the background.

“Of course,” he said, his tone resigned. “You need to be close to the hospital. Lucky the attacker didn’t take your laptop.”

“He came for something else: Josiane’s phone. If he saw the laptop in the drawer he ignored it. My phone must have sat in full view on the bed but I’d put Josiane’s in my pajama jacket pocket after the nurse copied the numbers for me. I’d forgotten it was in there.”

She heard René’s intake of breath. “By now he will have discovered he’s got the wrong phone. You are in danger.”

“That’s why I moved. Only you, Dr. Lambert, my landlady, and Chantal know where I’m staying.”

“Good.”

“Listen, why don’t you make an appointment with Josiane’s editor?” she said. “Find out what she worked on, see if the editor will share her notes.”

“Tomorrow. I’m beat.”

He sounded more than tired.

“We know she lived near Marché d’Aligre.”

She pictured the streets leading to it, one of the few covered markets left in Paris. Her grandfather had bought pheasant there. She’d accompanied him, transfixed by the beady-eyed stuffed guinea fowl and the bright-plumed pheasants. Rabbits hung by their feet upside down. Under the glass and wire-framed roof, he’d buy Meaux mustard sealed in its crock with red wax, and containers with olive oil from Provence they decanted into small bottles.

The
marché
hosted a thriving outdoor produce trade and secondhand dealers, too. On the outer fringes, under the arcade of a 70s “monstrosity” (according to her grandfather), stood the curve of flats replacing Haussman era buildings, where street people spread blankets, hawking odds and ends. A marketplace since medieval times, the Marché d’Aligre was the only spot in Paris to continue the tradition unbroken.

Aimée tried to view the map in her mind. Had it made sense for Josiane to go through that passage where she was killed on her way home to rue de Cotte?

No, the passage lay several blocks in the opposite direction.

Then why would Josiane go there? But she knew why . . . the phone caller, the man had begged her to meet him.

She knew because she’d heard him.

Again she wondered if they had been having a lover’s quarrel.

“René, what if this involves jealousy?” she said. “Love problems. Plain and simple.”

“Since when is love plain and simple?”

He had a point.

She smelled Dr. Lambert’s Vetiver scent before his thigh brushed against hers in the booth.

“René, I’ll get back to you later,” she said and clicked off.

She felt her hands laced around a frosted cold glass.

“The new bartender recommended Fire and Ice. A speciality of the Antilles, where he’s from, too. He swears this will get anyone through a rough night.”

“So, doctor, what gets you through?”

“Call me Guy. If you keep calling me doctor, customers will descend on us to describe their illnesses.”

Laughter. Low and melodic. Nice.

“So what gets you through the night?” she asked again.

“Sunrise.”

What a cop out! She might as well head back to the opera singer’s and try banging her head on the wall. Maybe that would jiggle those neurons into action. It might even restore her sight.

She chugged the Fire and Ice, a mixture tasting of tomato and strawberry zinging with tabasco. Curiously wonderful.

“Look, I appreciate the drink . . .” she said, making as if to stand up. Hard in the cramped booth when she didn’t know which way to turn.

She felt a tug on her elbow and decided to stay put. She wouldn’t have known what direction to go anyway.

“Blame it on a school trip to England,” said Guy. “We saw dawn rise through the pillars at Stonehenge. And it changed my life.”

He sounded serious.

“I was fifteen,” he said. “Since then I’ve photographed hundreds of sunrises all over the world. After an eclipse comes the best sunrise. Incredible.”

And she knew what he meant. She loved sunrises herself. Watched them from her window lighting up the Seine with a luminous glow. The quiet time before the city burst alive. Like a still breath before a large exhalation, feeling as if she were the only person on the planet.

Yet, she’d imagined him otherwise; a life filled with surgery, consultations and patients. “How do you find the time?”

“The baker loves me. We share a coffee. He’s the only other one awake at dawn on my street except for the newspaper truck. Or once in a while, kids coming home from rave parties.”

“What was sunrise like this morning? Describe the colors.”

Pause.

He attempted to change the subject. “I live behind an old hardware store, famous for doorknobs. It’s been there since 1862, has more than 130 kinds. They specialize in Louis XIII style.”

Why was he avoiding her question?

“Did you miss the sunrise this morning?”

“I don’t think it’s healthy,” he said, his voice hesitant, “talking to you about this . . .”

“Please, tell me about the colors,” she asked again. If she couldn’t see the sunrise, she’d like to hear about it. Visualize it.

“As I said . . .”

“But I want you to,” she said. “Then I can see it in my mind. I miss seeing the sunrise.”

“So you like them, too.”

A pause.

Had she made points with her doctor? He grew more human all the time.

A band of pewter fog covered the Pont Neuf,” he said.
“
“Peach lightened up the horizon, spreading and reaching for the blue.”

“What kind of blue?” she asked.

“Innocent. Baby blue. The stars and streetlights twinkled until the bands of color became one brightness.”

She wished she could see him; the shape of his eyes, how his mouth moved, if his cheekbones slanted, and how light glinted in his hair.

“It’s not something I broadcast,” he told her. “Some might say I seem obsessed.”

“Having a passion isn’t necessarily obsession. I’m just wondering what you look like.”

That must be the Fire and Ice talking.

“Chantal’s a bad teacher if she hasn’t . . .”

“But she has,” she said, interrupting him as she passed her fingers over his face. Tentatively, she traced his chinline, felt the stubble and the soft border of his lips. His mouth. It would be rosy and he’d have straight white teeth. Her fingers traveled his earlobes, then his long fringed eyelashes that never seemed to end. Black or dark brown hair? Maybe tobacco red? She felt his forehead, smooth and . . . she stopped.
Down girl . . . try and control yourself.

“Like this,” he said, taking her other hand, sliding it, with his, along her eyebrows and framing her eyes.

“I’ll leave it to the professional,” she said, enjoying this. Now if he could only give a massage.

The next table had gone quiet.

“Encore?” asked a voice near them.

“Feel like that pastis?”

“You buying?”

“Two double pastis,
merci
,” he ordered.

After the drinks landed on the table, she felt proud as she hooked her pinky over the glass’s edge to gauge just the right amount of water to pour into the milky pastis. The anise aroma hit her along with the buzzing conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the smoky atmosphere. Comfortable and familiar, even though she couldn’t see. The feeling that things could be worse crept into her mind. After all, there was a man at the table.

Not her man. Not her table. But it was a start.

Arm-in-arm they walked to Madame Danoux’s. She heard the hushed sound of the cars passing over the cobbled street. It must have rained while they were in the café. The car tires sounded different.

“Not many people appreciate sunrise,” he said, his tone low in the damp street. “They’d rather sleep.”

“My father pulled the all-night shift. When I was little, the only time we’d have to talk was before I left for school,” she said. “Sunrise was the best time of the day for me.” She remembered his worn bathrobe, tired face, and grin as he poured her steamed milk and chocolate. His thick, unread work files on the table by her bookbag. She shook off the memory.

“What’s on this street, Guy?”

“Café, fabric store for decorators, the offices of the La Rochelle Film Festival, and of
Médecins san frontières
,” he said, pausing.

Was there something else he wanted to say?

“There’s a uniform manufacturer, a public relations agency . . . it’s written in Chinese but it looks like a wholesale accessory shop. In the courtyard there’s an organ grinder’s supplier. He’s the only one who still makes the music rolls.”

She recalled something: the sheets of music from Clothilde’s café . . . and the sheet of music René found in the garbage at Mathieu’s. Did they connect? But she’d think about that later. At the door, she reached for his hand, not knowing where to plant the customary
bisous
on his cheeks.

“I didn’t learn much about the MRI,” she said. “But I enjoyed myself.
Merci
.”

“That’s the point,” he said. “Chantal and the others frequent the bar we went to. The owner was a madame way back when, a ‘character,’ as people say.”

“A colleague of Mimi’s?”

He laughed. “That’s the rumor. People watch out for each other here. The
quartier
takes care of the non-sighted.”

Her heart chilled. “Not well enough. I was attacked in the passage and Josiane was killed.”

“But the serial killer’s . . .”

“It wasn’t him. It was someone who knew Josiane.”

“Let’s concentrate on the present,” he said.

And then she felt his fingers on her lips. Then his lips on hers. Warm and searching.

And she was 16 again . . . late kisses in a hallway at night, stolen and wonderful. Something mysterious revealed for the first time.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he said.

What did he see in her?

The door opened. “Dr. Lambert . . . is that you?” Madame Danoux’s distinctive contralto filled the hall.

By the time Aimée got to bed, her tiredness had evaporated, leaving a brittle restlessness. Didn’t patients fall for their doctors all the time? What a cliché.

Again, she wondered what had appealed to him? She was blind. Had it been pity . . . a mercy gesture?

Yet, he hadn’t said he was married or involved. She hadn’t felt a ring on any of his fingers.

And what good would she be to a man? How could it go anywhere? Did she want it to go anywhere?

Stop
.

But he knew how to kiss. If she didn’t quit this, she’d be fantasizing about him all night. Forget counting sheep. She had to switch gears, distract herself, but she couldn’t call René, it was too late.

She felt for the laptop, trying to ignore the mustiness and mothball scent emanating from the corner armoire, wishing Miles Davis, her puppy, was curled at her feet. As usual.

But thank God, he was with René’s neighbor in Les Halles. He needed care and she couldn’t provide it. Maybe they could enroll in the guide dog course together.

After booting up the laptop, she created a file, titled it
Chanson
and typed in what bothered her. A big list in no particular order. And as she typed, the voice repeated the words. After five minutes she played the list back.

Over and over.

Then she arranged them in order of importance. Blindness, Vincent’s obstinate refusal to furnish the hard drive, and Mirador with Draz, the scum, rated as the top three.

And René. She worried about his health, what he’d found out, and what he might miss. She often missed things, only to notice them later. Or details might hit her as she walked away or in the middle of the night.

Like now.

This was the kind of thought process she’d learned from her father and grandfather, growing up in a household of policemen. Not to mention the smoky Pelote nights with half the Commissariat playing cards around the kitchen table. The talk. The nuances, the glances, the tipoffs. The way they treated their
indicateurs
. Every
flic
nourished informers. Had to. By osmosis, she’d absorbed what to be aware of, what to suspect, and how to tell when something was being withheld.

Fat lot of good that did her now. She wasn’t in the field. She had to depend on René. And part of her worried about people’s cruelty to him because of his stature.

She wanted to tear her short, spiky hair out, but not seeing the result would ruin the pleasure. All she could do, besides stew, would be to put her fingers to work. She felt around, made sure the modem wires hooked into the phone line.

She couldn’t do much about her blindness. But she could find out if Mirador had a website and garner info from it. René would get the scoop from Josiane’s editor, but in case it might help . . . she’d call in the morning and butter up whoever hired the casual labor . . . assuming she got that far.