Cara Black: Murder in Belleville

“Over here,” Anaïs whispered.

Aimée narrowed her eyes and saw Anaïs crouched on her knees in the mud behind a faded Pirelli tire sign.

“Let’s go,” Aimée said.

Anaïs crawled on her hands and knees, low moans escaping from her. When Aimée reached to help her, she realized that Anaïs’s legs were cut to ribbons from the glass.

“I tried to walk, but my legs won’t hold me,” she said, her face a chalky white in the moonlight.

Aimée looked again and saw blood oozing from Anaïs’s thigh, soaking her skirt. If she didn’t stop it, Anaïs would pass out. She couldn’t get Anaïs this far and leave her. Aimée quickly looked around—why didn’t Anaïs wear a silk foulard around her neck, like every other Parisienne? She grabbed the closest thing—a deflated tire tube—and looped it around Anaïs’s leg as a tourniquet. She tightened it, and the bleeding stopped.

Anaïs managed a weak smile. “Forgive me, Aimée, for pulling you into this.”

“You’re being really brave,” Aimée said, hoisting her up and linking her arm around Anaïs. She brushed the hair from Anaïs’s eyes. “I know it hurts. Try to walk; we’ll get to the Métro. It’s not far.”

“But look at me! What will people think?” Anaïs asked, gesturing toward her leg and blood-spattered suit.

She was right, Aimée thought. But what choice did they have?

Aimée half dragged and half carried Anaïs several meters through the abandoned lot, puddled and muddy, past the semi-roofed garage. She couldn’t keep this up all the way to the Métro, and she doubted the chances of catching a taxi here. Not to mention staying out of the sight of curious neighbors. Running away from an explosion wouldn’t look good to the flics.

Anaïs grew heavier, more like dead weight. Aimée noticed that Anaïs’s eyes were closing, and her body went limp.

Aimée set Anaïs down under a corrugated overhang jammed with old bikes and mopeds. They were stuck in a muddy garage lot.

She couldn’t leave Anaïs here. She tried to think, but her shoulders ached, her legs were scratched with glass cuts, and she wondered what in hell she was doing with a minister’s wife who was being chased by men who’d probably planted the car bomb under his mistress’s car.

What could she do now?

Barbed wire crested the chain-link fence. But only a Bricard lock held the gate. She kept Anaïs’s bag around her, then reached for her makeup bag inside her backpack. She found the Swedish stainless-steel tweezers. Within two minutes she’d jimmied the lock open, muffling the clinking sounds with her sweater sleeve. That done, she wiped the sweat off her brow with her other sleeve and surveyed the bikes strewn around Anaïs.

No way would she be able to pedal, steer, and grip Anaïs. She was exhausted. She noticed a beat-up but serviceable Motoguzzi moped by an oil can. It was like her own moped, but a lot older. And with more horsepower. One thing she knew about mo-peds—they could run on fumes for several kilometers, and if the spark plug was still good they might make an escape.

After unscrewing the spark plug, she blew on it to get rid of the carbon, scraped corrosion off the pronged head with her tweezers, and screwed it back on. She shook the body from side to side to slosh any gas around, pulled out the choke, and prayed. She started pedaling. Silence. She kept pedaling and was finally rewarded by a cough. Good, she thought. Temperamental as these Italian bikes might be, with patience and coaxing they would deliver. With much more encouragement, the cough had developed into a full-throated hum, and she hoisted Anaïs up and urged her tourniqueted leg over the moped’s passenger ledge. Anaïs’s eyes fluttered, then widened. She pushed Aimée’s shoulder and tried to get off.

“No!” Anaïs yelled. “I can’t do this.”

“Got a better idea?” Aimée asked.

In the distance the sound of a siren came closer.

“I hate motorcycles,” she wailed.

“Bien, this is a moped,” Aimée said, gunning the engine and popping into first. “Hold on!”

Anaïs grabbed Aimée’s waist.

“No matter what,” Aimée said, “don’t let go!”

Aimée reached rue Ste-Marthe as the SAMU emergency van turned into rue Jean Moinon. Odd. Why hadn’t the fire truck arrived first?

A black-and-white flic car cruised from rue de Sambre-et-Meuse, blocking the shortcut to the Goncourt Métro.

“Let’s ask them for help, Anaïs.”

“Non, nothing must connect to Philippe,” Anaïs said.

Aimée’s heart sank as Anaïs’s fingers squeezed her in a steellike grip.

She kept an even speed, afraid that going faster would invite curiosity. The flics veered in the other direction. Aimée turned into Place Sainte-Marthe, a small rain-soaked square, its single café closed for the evening.

She noticed a dark Renault Twingo turn after her at the far end of the square. By the time the verdigris art nouveau Métro sign came into view, the car had edged close behind them.

As if reading her thoughts, it pulled ahead. She drove near the closest Métro entrance, and the car cut in front of her. Its doors popped open, and two burly men jumped out.

She veered away from them at the last minute but a bearlike man obstructed the wet sidewalk. The padlocked newspaper kiosk and the Métro stairs were in front of them.

Aimée scanned the intersection, registering a few cars paused at the red light and Métro entrances on the other corners. Ahead a Crédit Lyonnais bank stood opposite Crédit Agricole, with a gutted café still advertising horseracing and a FNAC Telecom store facing that.

“Anaïs, grab me tighter.”

“No, Aimée!” Anaïs yelled.

“You want to spend the night with these mecsl” Aimée asked. “Or in the Commissariat de Police?”

“On y va,” Anaïs whimpered in answer, digging her fingernails into Aimée’s stomach.

Aimée cornered the kiosk, zigzagged across the narrow street, and headed down the Métro steps, honking and screaming “Out of the way!” It took a minute before the thugs realized that the moped had plunged down the stairs and ran after them.

Exiting passengers yelled and moved to the railing as she and Anaïs bumped and wobbled their way down. Aimée squeezed the brakes.

Thank God Anaïs was a small woman! Even so Aimée’s wrists hurt from braking so hard with the handlebars. At the landing by the ticket window, plastic sheets and barricades for construction blocked their way. A uniformed man in the window shouted at them, shook his head, and pounded on the glass. The burning rubber smell from the moped’s brakes and black exhaust filled the air.

The turnstiles were being repaired at night—just their luck, since the Métro carried fewer passengers than usual. But, Aimée also realized, she and Anaïs would be thug bait unless they could reach a platform, ditch the moped, and get on a train quickly.

Blue-overalled workers, under glaring lights, drilled and hammered. Several of them stopped their work, snickering and catcalling. They grew quiet when they saw the smeared blood on Anaïs and her look of terror.

“Tiens, this section’s closed,” one of the workers said. “Use the other entrance.”

“Her salop of a boyfriend beat her up,” Aimée improvised.

“No mopeds, mesdemoiselles.”

“He’s trailing us—vowing to kill her,” she said. “We need help.”

A large bearded man set down his drill and stood up.

“Can’t you let us through?” she asked. “Please!”

The man stepped forward, pulled the plastic sheets aside with a theatrical gesture, and bowed, “Entrez, mesdemoiselles, courtesy of the RATP. Please be our guests.”