Cara Black - AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

She walked by a small Arab grocer’s with bins of fruit and vegetables outside under a canopy. Across the way stood Hôpital Bretonneau, once a children’s hospital, now inhabited by squatters, judging from the graffitied LIBRE ART, LIBRE ARTISTES sign. Huge and taking up most of the block.

She turned on rue Carpeaux. Entered the corner café with its smell of wet dog. A spaniel lay behind the counter next to the owner, who had a cell phone cupping his ear. From the look of it, the café had last been decorated in the fifties.

The owner nodded to her, the phone still cradled on his shoulder.

“Monsieur, I’m looking for the Turkish grocery store,” she said.

He jerked his thumb out the window toward the blackened stone hospital wall bordering Montmartre cemetery.

“Merci.”

How had patients felt about the view from their windows, a tree-speckled cemetery bordered by a high wall containing the final resting place of Émile Zola, among others?

Aside from the vineyard, and the cemeteries, the hospital occupied one of the largest sites in the area. A demolition and renovation approval sign dated 1989 was posted on the wall but the place still hadn’t been rebuilt.

Then she spied the Turkish grocery, a storefront with bins of fruit, packaged Parmalat tomato sauce, and a dusty hookah in the window. Inside, Turkish music whined and two men played cards on the counter by the cash register. The narrow store was crammed to the old roof beams with canned food, rubber sandals, oddments, Turkish tapes and videos.

“Bonjour, Messieurs ,” she said, picking up a bottle of Vittel and laying a few francs on the counter. “ Salaam Aleikoum .”

“ Aleikoum salaam, ” said the older of the two men, returning her greeting.

“If I may interrupt you for a moment,” she said, “my friend Petru used to live upstairs, but he’s moved. Any idea where I can find him?”

“Petru?”

“A Corsican. He changes his hair color more often than I do,” she grinned. “You know who I mean, eh ? ”

“Haven’t seen him for a while,” the man said. His companion said something in Arabic. “I’m sorry, my friend said since yesterday.”

She thanked him and went through the open door to a small apartment foyer that smelled of pine soap. A young woman in a blue smock, her hair in a thick black bun, mopped the cracked tiles.

“Pardon, Madame, I’m looking for Petru, a Corsican. Did he leave a forwarding address?”

The woman set her mop in the metal pail. “Gone.” She paused and wiped her brow. “Here people don’t leave addresses when they move,” she said. Her accent was Portuguese. “Clean, all clean, the place is vacant.”

A glittering earring hung from the woman’s pocket. It seemed familiar. Aimée stared at it. “How beautiful. It’s pink Diamonique, non ?”

The woman clutched the earring and backed away.

“Madame, did you find this on the steps, or in Petru’s apartment?”

The woman shook her head.

“A prostitute came here looking for Petru, didn’t she? She wore costume jewelry like this,” Aimée said.

“I do my job, clean the halls, mop down the stairs and—”

“When was she here? Yesterday, last night?”

The woman made the sign of the cross. “I don’t steal.”

“Of course not. But did you see—”

“She’s saying I stole it?” The Portuguese woman’s eyes blinked in fear. She repeated, “I clean good. Verra, see. No lose my job. She’s hurt. Black eye, big, swollen. She come after me?”

“Bruised, you mean she’d been beaten up?”

The woman nodded.

“I tell her God will forgive her this life,” the woman said. “Tell her, go to Bus des Femmes. Get rest. They help women like her. She laugh at me. Then I find it this morning.”

She put it in Aimée’s hands. “Take it to her. No trouble. I make no trouble.”

Worried, Aimée wondered if she’d get there in time.

AIMÉE FOUND the Bus des Femmes, the mobile unit offering medical, legal, social, and practical support to working prostitutes, parked near Porte de St. Ouen. A long motor home, painted purple, emitting steam and the fragrance of coffee from its open door. Inside, a coffeemaker and leaflets covered a small table. A straw basket of rainbow-colored condoms hung from a window with “Take me, I’m Yours” printed on it. Lists of clinics were pasted on the windows. Two women chatted as they sat on long benches drinking coffee. Another woman was doing a crossword puzzle.

From their heavy makeup, miniskirts, and bustiers, Aimée figured most of the women were just taking a break from work. The close, warm air, filled with cheap scent, made for a relaxed atmosphere, the feeling of a safe haven.

“Like some coffee?”

Aimée paused before a young woman in a tracksuit with a folder under her arm.

“No thanks , ” she said. “I thought Cloclo might be here.”

“I’m Odile, on-site legal aid.” She smiled and extended her hand. “Cloclo’s your friend?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “I think Cloclo was beaten up.”

Odile nodded. “We see it more and more. Many have moved off the main boulevards into more secluded spots: car parks, massage parlors, trying to avoid the Brigade des Moeurs, the morals squad. Or they work late nights, from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., when most people are at home, sleeping. But driving them underground makes them an easier target for violence.”

Of course.

“Is she Eastern European?” Odile asked. “Those girls do twenty to thirty clients a day to avoid a beating from their pimps.” Aimée hoped Odile hadn’t seen her wince.

“She’s older and works on rue André Antoine,” Aimée said. “She’s a chandelle ,” she said, a prostitute who waits under a lamppost. “Have you seen her?”

“You understand we respect a woman’s right to privacy. No johns, no flics , or anyone else gets information. If you don’t see her here, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

“If she’s with the doctor, could you tell her I’m here? She’s in danger.”

Odile shrugged. “That’s true for all of our women.”

Aimée saw the pamphlets on sex trafficking and hostels for women in crisis, the worn platform heels of the woman doing the crossword puzzle and the purple bruises on her legs that makeup didn’t hide.

“I haven’t seen her,” Odile disclosed.

Disappointed, Aimée crossed the boulevard toward the Metro. She figured Cloclo had been looking for Petru, too. Maybe she’d found out where his new place was but she’d disappeared. Probably she’d given Aimée the runaround.

She peered in several fogged-up café windows, hoping to find Cloclo, but didn’t see her. At Café le Rotonde, the last one before she reached the Metro station, she looked inside. No Cloclo at the counter. But as she was about to give up, Aimée saw Cloclo, huddled in a black coat, her feet up, at a far back table standing flush against the tobacco-stained wall.

Aimée ordered and paid for a brandy. “You look like you could use something strong,” she said, setting it down in front of Cloclo. The café decor looked unchanged from the thirties except for the télé blaring above the bar.

“Not you again,” Cloclo said. Yet her hand shot out and took the small balloon-shaped snifter.

“Did Petru do this?”

Cloclo snorted. “Him?”

“Weren’t you on the way to the Bus des Femmes?”

“They don’t have this,” Cloclo said, downing the brandy.

“Bus des Femmes has a doctor, Cloclo. You should be examined,” she said. “Where’s Petru?”

“Why?”

And then the centime dropped. Hurt and anger flared inside. “Petru’s your pimp, right? You lied, even after I warned you of the danger.”