Cara Black: AL07 - Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Michou, René’s transvestite neighbor, stepped out of his pantyhose and into sweats. “You said it was an emergency so I came straight from the club.” He slathered his face with cold cream, using a counterclockwise motion. “I won’t be a minute.”

“Does Viard know about your maternal talents, Michou?” He and Viard, the crime-lab head Aimée had introduced him to, had been together for eight months . . . a milestone for both of them.

“Every man wants Paul Bocuse in the kitchen, Mother Teresa to care for his children, and a whore in the bedroom.”

No wonder she had no man. “What kind of dinosaurs think like that?”

“Not that we get it.” He grinned. His face wiped clean, Michou reared back in horror. “What did you do to this formula? It’s like cement, nom de Dieu! ”

Aimée rubbed her eyes. “I was up all night, Michou, watching her, afraid she’d stop breathing. I couldn’t figure out that damn diaper. And this formula . . .” She shrugged. “You get it in and it comes right up again.”

Michou patted Aimée’s arm. “You need some coffee.”

AIMÉE SHOWERED, SLICKED back her hair, hoped that concealer would cover the rings under her eyes, then rimmed her lids with kohl. She slid into her pinstriped suit, a Dior from a consignment shop, and picked up the daily Le Parisien from outside her door.

In the kitchen Michou hummed, hot milk frothing on the stove as he held the baby in his arms. Rays of sun haloed the baby’s head. Through the open window, Aimée saw sunlight glinting on the Seine, a tow barge gliding under the Pont de Sully’s stone supports. Another warm day. She scanned the quai for someone surveilling the apartment but saw no one lingering behind the plane trees or the stone wall. Just the man she recognized from the first floor walking his dog, a plumber’s truck idling out front. A morning on the Ile Saint-Louis, like any other. No sign of a stalker.

Michou stroked the baby’s cheek. “Notice how she turns toward my finger—she’s ‘rooting.’” He placed the bottle between her lips and she sucked. “ Voilà, she’s a pro! Tilt the bottle up so the formula fills the nipple, otherwise . . .”

“Some kind of baby voodoo, Michou?”

“I’m serious, air’s the enemy,” he said. “If air gets in, she gets gas. Gas you don’t want.”

“ Merci , Michou, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Such a little beauty, Aimée.”

She was.

He looked at her. “So she’s on loan, to see if you want to order a model?”

“Do I look the type?” Aimée gave him a brief version of how she had gotten the baby.

“Et alors, the minute the mother calls, I’ll let you know,” he assured her, rocking the baby, blowing air on her toes, eliciting a gurgle.

“You have the touch, Michou.” Some people were born with it . . . a woman’s touch, a maternal side.

“Maybe you do, too, Aimée.” He gave a knowing wink. “It comes with practice.”

“They should come with instruction booklets . . .”

“Like your computer? If only it were that easy,” he said. He grimaced at her chipped lacquered nails. “If you waited long enough for your nails to dry properly, they wouldn’t chip like that.”

As if she had time. She was lucky when she could grab a manicure at all. Still . . . “Gigabyte green, Michou, it’s the new color.”

“Quel horreur. Without that, you’re naked, Aimée.” He pointed to the tube of Chanel Stop Traffic Red on the counter.

As she wiped the lipstick over her lips, she checked Le Parisien for a mention of an abandoned baby or of a woman being attacked on the Ile Saint-Louis. But the headline was about the MondeFocus protest erupting into a riot. The accompanying story alleged that the CRS had provoked the demonstrators. She turned to the short articles from the police blotter, but saw nothing about a woman having been assaulted or a kidnapped baby. The crime section continued on the next page. There had been incidents of purse snatching and an attack in the Châtelet Metro. Strange, nothing about . . . then she saw a short notice in the lower corner: Body of a young woman found in the Seine by Pont de Sully near Place Bayre.

Her hands clutched the rim of the steaming café au lait bowl as she read: Police request help in identifying a young woman, early twenties, recovered from a drain in an overflowing sewer in the Seine.”

The public was allowed into the morgue in such cases in hopes that someone could identify the victim.

Her skin prickled. She recalled the figure with the tire iron who had chased her in the Place Bayre, across from the Pont de Sully. So close by, almost outside her window.

Her cell phone trilled.

“Taxi downstairs, Mademoiselle.” The meeting would start in twenty minutes.

“Go. Buy more diapers on your way back.” Michou kissed her on both cheeks. “What about bisous for the little peach, eh?”

Aimée leaned down into the baby smell, kissed the soft cheeks, and swallowed hard. She tucked the newspaper under her arm and headed for the door, walking faster than she had to. Then she turned around, came back for the denim jacket, thrust it into her backpack in a plastic bag, and ran.

AIMÉE NODDED TO Vavin, Regnault’s head of publicity, a man in his mid thirties, trim, with wide-set eyes. He was cradling a cell phone at his ear.

“ Bonjour, Monsieur Vavin.”

He flashed her a quick smile and raised a finger, indicating that he wanted her to wait a moment.

She knew his type: a harried blue-suit who traveled all the time, delegating and supervising ten publicity campaigns all running at once.

Beige carpet, beige walls, beige cabinets. He stood behind his desk. Also beige. The only personal touch was a framed photo on his desk, a smiling child on a wooden hobby horse.

Vavin clicked off his cell phone. “We’ve been hacked,” he said, punching the thick stapled pile of computer printouts on his desk. “Our system’s compromised, Mademoiselle Leduc.”

“Not since last night, Monsieur Vavin. Remember, you only hired us yesterday.” She opened her laptop and brought up the report on her screen, forcing herself to concentrate and ignore the article about the drowned woman she’d reread three times in the taxi. “As contracted, you hired my firm temporarily to maintain your operating system. Shall we go over what I’ve accomplished so far?”

If he’d hired Leduc Detective last week when she had presented the security proposal to him, instead of yesterday, the hacker would have been foiled. But she thought better of pointing this out.

“You can see from these results, it’s running smoothly. The system is secure.” She smiled. “For now.”

He studied her screen and calmed down. “Excellent, Mademoiselle. I like the way you’ve streamlined user functions and smoothed out the glitches in the interface. You’re as good as you claim. A small independent security firm like yours is what we need right now.”

She decided to seize the opportunity to reoffer the comprehensive security design he’d hedged about committing to the previous week.

“My firm found vulnerabilities in your system during our comprehensive security overview. We did a minor patch last night. With hackers, you can close the door but they’ll look for an open window. In our proposal we noted that . . .”

“We pay you to keep them out.” He gave her a tired smile.

He wanted a finger to plug a hole in the dike but sooner or later it wouldn’t be able to hold back the flood.

“As outlined in our proposal, your system has numerous flaws and we recommend stronger firewall protection.” She paused for effect, consulting the file in her hand, which she’d memorized. “My report shows that twice last month hackers took advantage of your vulnerability. It’s not in your interest or ours to apply Band-Aids to an old system.”