Cara Black: AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Cloclo waved Aimée away with her costume-jewelry-be-ringed hand.

“My head’s splitting. Listen, he paid me to tell him when I saw you,” she said, rubbing her temple.

Paid her? “I’ll double it. Where the hell is he?”

And for the first time Aimée saw fear on Cloclo’s made-up face. “I have to go,” she said and scrabbled for her purse.

Aimée reached over and clamped her hands on Cloclo’s shoulders. “Not until you tell me where I can find Petru.”

Cloclo’s eyes darted around the café. “It’s not safe. And he’s not my pimp.”

“You’re not leaving until you tell me.”

Cloclo downed the brandy.

“ They took him.”

Aimée stiffened. “Who?”

“A van pulled up; some mecs grabbed him and drove off.”

“ Mecs with black caps and down jackets, one with bad teeth?”

Cloclo nodded.

“Where?”

“They sped off, I don’t know where.”

Aimée noticed the red welts on Cloclo’s neck, pictured Cloclo’s bleak future. She threw the earring and fifty francs on the water-stained table. “Go see the doctor, Cloclo.”

Friday Evening

DARKNESS HAD FALLEN OVER the wet street filled with buses and taxis. Passersby gripped shopping bags and hurried, their coat collars raised against the frigid air.

Aimée was stumped, didn’t know where to turn, where to look. She called Strago. No answer. Then she had an idea.

Sebastian, her cousin, knew the club scene. She reached him at his framing shop in Belleville. The pounding of hammers in the background told her that her little cousin was working late.

“Sebastian?”

The pounding ceased, replaced by the slow whir of a table saw.

“Rush order, Aimée,” he said. “Twenty prints to frame and hang for a resto opening tomorrow. No time to climb roofs tonight.”

His business had taken off. She felt proud of him. And he’d been clean, drug free, for four years now.

“One question, I’m looking for a DJ spinning vinyl, Lucien Sarti. Got an idea where I could find him?”

“What’s his moniker?”

“DJ moniker? No clue. He’s a Corsican musician, plays a blend of techno and polyphony.”

In the pause, she heard grinding and the punch of metal.

“He could spin in a style totally different from his own music.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trad, cyber, synth, eighties industrial, trance. You name it,” he said.

She didn’t have all night. How could she ever find him?

“Sebastian, please narrow it down.”

“DJs cater to the club crowd, that’s how they make a living. The good ones create a style and guard it. Lead double lives. I know a flic who spins vinyl near République, but you’d never know it. A down and dirty place full of goths, punks, metal-heads, and transients.”

Hadn’t Yann said Lucien slept rough?

“What’s it called?”

“Gibus on rue du Faubourg du Temple,” he said.

“Gibus . . . argot for a flip-flop cap?”

“The same. Everyone spins there at one time or other.”

She could start there. And with a little work, she had the perfect outfit.

DOWN A PASSAGE under the railway lines she found Gibus. There was no name outside, only a scuffed graffitied door, where a few goths stood smoking. She heard the flutter of wings as pigeons swooped from the rusted rafters above.

The roofed passage once had been occupied by depots and warehouses for goods arriving by train. Now freshly painted signs proclaimed it to be a future site for an Internet and software hub dubbed “Silicon Alley,” sponsored by the government. Judging by the peeling walls and dilapidated buildings, they had a long road ahead of them.

Aimée walked through the door, passing twenty francs to a skinhead with several gold teeth.

“DJ tonight?” she asked.

He nodded and unlatched the worn velvet entry rope, leading to a corridor with fluorescent pink walls. “It’s goth night, mind the stairs.”

Goth. She wouldn’t look too out of place with her long black net dress and matted black hair extensions. If Sebastian had steered her right, someone in the DJ network would know Lucien. She descended in the dark, holding the metal banister of a thin spiral staircase, and felt her way along the damp wall of the stone vaulted underground passage that was vibrating to the thrum of heavy metal. Her hands came back moist with an oily patina.

The passage widened into a cavern redolent of papier d’ar-ménie, the old-fashioned dark rose strips, folded accordion style, burned to freshen rooms, which left a distinctive aroma behind. A smell she associated with her piano teacher, an old Russian woman who burned it to hide the fact that she cooked on a hot plate and lived in the same single room she taught in.

Aimée sniffed something else. Cats, she figured, to keep down the rodent population. Fine by her.

Her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light given off by black candles burning in niches in the walls and lining the bar. The goth crowd, male and female, wore black lipstick and nail polish. They congregated against the moisture-laden walls or sat on what looked like prayer benches, presenting a tableau reminiscent of a medieval tapestry, updated with a twentieth-century twist. Several goths clustered deep in conversation, over a leather-bound volume whose cover bore a gold-embossed cross. Some après -club Black Mass negotiation?

She heard voices raised in an argument. Someone was being sick in the corner. In this kind of place, one kept moving to avoid a fight. She lifted her trailing hem and headed toward the bar.

Her second dive that night.

She ordered a Belgian beer laced with framboise —raspberries— from the barman. A row of silver rings curved up his ear and glow-in-the-dark bracelets shone up his arm like twisting fluorescent green snakes. She paid but stopped him from pouring the beer into a tall glass as she noticed the sink filled with scummy water. She took the bottle. Hygiene, she realized, was not a priority here.

State-of-the-art speakers blared from niches in stone coves. A woman leaning on the pewlike benches nodded to the beat, her black-ringed eyes like dark holes in her face, her chains clinking against the spiked dog collar on her neck.

“Who’s spinning?” Aimée asked, sidling next to her.

“MC Gotha, my boyfriend,” the woman said, pride in her voice. “Grooves, non? Zero le Crèche, he calls it.”

At least that’s what Aimée deciphered; the woman’s tongue stud garbled her words. The DJ bent over a turntable, big hair and tight black tank top, his silver-ringed fingers catching the reflection of the flickering black candles.

“I thought he’d show tonight,” Aimée said, as if to herself. “I promised to return his mix.”

The woman shrugged, shifting on her chunky platform boots.

“That other DJ, you know, the Corsican musician?”

The woman’s black eyes narrowed. “Tonight’s goth.”

Aimée scanned the crowd. “He spins all over. I really have to find him.” She paused. “Bet your boyfriend knows him. Introduce me?” Unacquainted with the protocol, she figured it was wise to ask for an introduction, after noticing the pointed black nails and vial of garnet liquid, like blood, hanging from the woman’s neck.

“He’s busy,” she said. “Can’t you see?”

“Trouble, I’ve got trouble, if I don’t find the Corsican,” Aimée said. The Stella Artois bottle the goth held was empty. “Ask him for me, eh? I’ll get you a beer while you do.”

Hesitation painted the woman’s face as the DJ announced a break. By the time Aimée returned, they were standing together. Aimée handed her the beer and the woman rewarded her with another shrug and passed it to her boyfriend.