Cara Black - Murder in the Sentier

She watched the two men. Friar Tuck shook his head, pulled a notebook from his pocket, and wrote something. Aimée couldn’t see the other man’s reaction since the waiter had appeared with her café noir and blocked the mirror.

When she could see again, they’d stood up, their chairs scraping the linoleum, and were headed out the glass doors. Aimée took a gulp of espresso and threw some francs on the table.

They paused in front of the old stone portal of the passage by the Roseline sign. She couldn’t see their faces, only their black suit jackets beaded with rain and the frizzy-haired man’s fist pounding his palm. And then the other man violently shook his fist.

Aimée pulled the leather jacket’s collar up for protection against the rain and turned to study the café window. Men clustered in doorways, leaning on their hand trucks and smoking. She tried to appear nonchalant as rain beat down, avoiding a tall African woman in blue leather hot pants sashaying into the passage.

And then they were gone. One man walked toward the square and the other disappeared into the passage.

Whom should she follow?

The heavyset man took off down the street in a waiting black Peugeot.

She slipped into the graffiti-covered sandstone passage. A blackened crust of grime coated the damp walls. Drainpipes leaned crookedly, loose electric wires trailed from the ceiling. The passage opened to an unroofed area lined with green garbage bins, then forked toward some stairs, mounting to vestiges of the ancient ramparts.

On her left was an entrance to the crumbling, flaking stairway. A musty coldness hit her. The stairs sagged and creaked as she mounted them. She heard moans from behind doors, and over the passage roof came the whine of sewing machines.

From a coved window on the small landing she saw the man’s shiny bald dome in the apartment across the way. Instead of a light well where the buildings joined, there was open space. In medieval times, she imagined neighbors conversing with each other across the way or the king’s men leaning out and throttling their enemies.

The bald man turned. And before she could duck, he saw her staring at him. She moved aside.

Opposite her, a door opened. Inside the room, a man combed his stringy hair with his fingers before a cracked mirror. His false teeth on the cheap dresser caught the light.

“Adieu, chéri,” the pute said, tucking franc notes into the tiny pocket of her blue leather hot pants. She shut the door, showing no surprise at seeing Aimée on the landing.

“My horoscope today said quick and easy.” She rolled her eyes. “Not even slow and hard!”

Aimée controlled her shudder at the thought of the old man.

“Know him?” Aimée gestured across the window to the bald man. “Over there.”

“Not as a client but … ” the pute said, her voice trailing off.

Aimée hoped she invited a confidence. She folded a hundred-franc note and gingerly slipped it into the woman’s already stuffed pocket.

“As my landlord,” the woman continued, as if there’d been no pause. “The salaud ’s raising our rent and won’t even fix the hall lights. At night, with my johns, I have to use a flashlight.”

“His name?”

“You a flic? ”

It was Aimée’s turn to roll her eyes. “Would I hunt small fry like this?”

“Didn’t think so, but then you could be some new type of undercover,” the woman said.

“People hire me,” Aimée said. “Kind of like you. Every job isn’t picture-perfect or smooth sailing but it keeps my interest.” She smiled. “I get bored easily.”

“You mounting a sting?”

He must be a bigger fish than she thought.

Aimée looked down to cover her surprise. The woman’s turquoise platform heels were worn down on the sides. She pounded the cobbles, all right.

“ Mais could I tell you even if I wanted to?” Aimée said.

The pute grinned. “Just get Nessim Mamou into hot water … maybe it will warm him up.”

So that was Nessim, Michel’s shady uncle. “I’m looking for Jules, his partner.”

The prostitute shook her head.

“Distinguished, white-haired mec , nice tan.”

The woman nodded. “He’s around.”

She saw Nessim scurry through the passage. Aimée walked down the stairs, and past the overflowing green bins of garbage marked PROPRIÉTÉ DE PARIS.

She strode over the pitted cobbles, toward the punch of machines coming from the rear courtyard, as if she knew where she was going. She didn’t. Her teeth ached from clamping down so tightly. But attitude counted, especially in the Sentier.

She’d lost him.

Reaching the last courtyard, the one with a faded sign saying WASNARD, she veered to the left. She mounted the curved wooden stairs, the treads of which were grooved and worn. A cotton taste filled her mouth. Dry and bland. What if someone asked her why she was here? She had to think of something quickly. And she had to find out where Nessim Mamou had gone.

Above, the punching noise of machinery grew louder. Voices, in what sounded like Chinese, pattered from an open window. She peered closer. Across the well, open windows spiraled upward along the path of the stairs. Opposite her, one was cracked open. A dark-skinned man, his hair tied back, fed cloth into an industrial sewing machine. She could see mattresses behind him stacked against the walls.

Did these workers sleep here? Sprawl after work on the floor in buildings little changed from the fifteenth century?

The solid door opened in front of her and a muttered curse caught her before she could move. Several faces looked up from the pressing machines.

“What are you doing standing here, eh?” Nessim asked. With his long face and jowly cheeks, he resembled a basset hound. His brown suede jacket enhanced the effect, she thought.

“Monsieur, I’m looking for …”

“The showroom’s downstairs,” he interrupted, edging her toward the staircase.

“But you’re the patron , of course,” she said, managing a smile. Widening it and winking. “ C’est dur . You’re a hard one to catch up with.”

“Like I said …” His eyes narrowed, looking her up and down. Sizing her up. Good thing she had the leather jacket on.

“I’m a location scout for Canalt + film,” she said, improvising.

“The cinema?”

“A historical production, a made-for-TV drama,” she said, injecting a world-weary tone into her voice. “You know, a sixteenth-century vehicle for Depardieu, his favorite kind. Good thing he plays the king, he’s gotten immense.”

In the dim light, she saw the man grin. Then frown. He had an olive complexion and wore gold chains around his neck.

“Why here?” he asked.

Good point, she thought, standing in this peeling arched hallway, plaster crumbling onto the weather-beaten tiles and pigeon droppings coating the opaque glass. The sweatshop crew watched them.

“Cutting corners on a fast production schedule,” she said, her voice lowered. “We plan to use parts of the Sentier, filming at night and on weekends when it’s empty. Paris can be a cheap location with a local crew.”

The man nodded. Cheap and quick, he understood.

She glanced around. “After all, the old wall of Paris ran through here, didn’t it?”

She was making this up as she went along. But she remembered from her school days that Charles V had built battlements that crossed the present-day Sentier.

He liked that, she could tell. Maybe she’d just made a friend.

“Come with me to my office.”

He locked the door with a slender long-handled key and gestured for her to go ahead. Now no one could see them.