Cara Black: AL05 - Murder in Clichy

MURDER

in CLICHY

Cara Black

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Murder in the Marais

Murder in Belleville

Murder in the Sentier

Murder in the Bastille

Copyright © 2005 by Cara Black

All rights reserved.

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Dedicated to all the ghosts,

past and present.

My heartfelt thanks go to so many for their patience and knowledge to fan the spark into a fire!

Deep appreciation goes to Li He, Chinese Department, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; Dr. Terri Haddix, MD, Renee Slon, RN, Dr. Jan Gurley MD, and to Béatrice Trang, a huge debt; Carla Chemouni, who made it happen; Thiên Ly Buu Tòa and the Cao Dai Temple, the lady in Vientiane, Barbara Serenella, Marion, Warren, Bill, Don Cannon, on computer patrol, Erick Gilbert; Grace Loh, Jean Satzer, Dot Edwards, Barbara McHugh. In Paris, the generosity, wisdom and esprit de mes amies : Anne-Françoise Delbègue for her warmth, Sarah Tarille toujours, la Tunisienne ; Gilles Fouquet his excitement, Jean-Damien his support, and Chris. For Jim Frey who spurs me forward, Linda Allen who holds my shakey hands and Laura Hruska who guides them with sure ones. My son Tate Shusei and always, Jun.

“The true heroes stay anonymous . . .”

—overheard in the Paris Métro

“. . . there is always something absent that torments me.”

—Camille Claudel, sculptress, in a letter to Rodin.

NOTE:

The Clichy quarter referred to in this work

is the area surrounding Place de Clichy, not the suburb.

PARISNOVEMBER 1994

Tuesday

IN THE STOREFRONT CAO Dai temple under the red lanterns, her foot asleep, pins and needles up and down her legs, Aimée Leduc struggled to keep her spine straight, thumb and pinky together, in the half-lotus position. Her partner René, a dwarf, sat with a look of total concentration, in perfect Lotus posture, in the men’s section. But Aimée’s brain flashed with lines of computer code and throbbed with an ache for an espresso. No blank slate of tranquility for her with sirens hee-hawing on the quai and the Seine fog curling over the skylight. As the blue-robed priest struck the gong, the sigh of relief she exhaled mingled with the mindful breaths and musk of incense surrounding her.

“Three weeks, René,” she muttered, “and I still can’t meditate!”

She’d tried and failed breathing exercises, a new practice she’d begun with René Friant, her business partner, after her optic nerve had been damaged the previous month during an assault. It had seemed like a good time to begin to live healthily.

The ten or eleven women in yoga pants, from the nearby Université de Paris, grabbed their books and headed for the door. Ripe fruit scents from the tiered altar offerings clung to the velvet curtains that kept out the cold. The swish of a broom wielded by Quoc, the temple custodian, an older Vietnamese man, filled the foyer.

“Mindfulness,” René said, rolling up his meditation mat, “think of it like that. Try to concentrate. Don’t give up, Aimée.”

René was right, of course. But the calmness and tranquility she sought remained as elusive as a wisp of smoke, even though her bouts of blurry vision had receded. She had her sight now, most of the time.

From the rear came Linh, a slender Vietnamese nun, in a Mandarin collared white ao dai tunic with matching trousers, smiling, her palms together in greeting. Middle-aged, her black hair in a bun, crows feet lines fanned from her eyes as she smiled.

“Forgive me, we’ve worked on this before,” Linh said, an undertone of sibilance just perceptible in her accented French. “Next time, Aimée, be open to the divining board; that’s a form of meditation.”

Like a large wooden ouija board, the divining board stood near the all-seeing divine eye, the Cao Dai’s symbol, a huge globelike eyeball suspended over the altar. Mediums used it to communicate with the spirit world in séances and in prayers to a pantheon of divine beings, including the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Jesus Christ. Crystal candelabras, brass drum bowls, yin and yang symbols, and peacock feathers adorned side altars.

“ Merci , Linh,” she said, grateful for help from the nun she’d met only last week.

Pictures of Victor Hugo and Sun Yat-sen lined the walls. They were venerated as saints in this esoteric sect, whose philosophy was a potpourri of Hinduism, Christianity, Taoism, Islam, and Buddhism. A sign reading VAN GIAO NHAT LY, meaning “All religions have the same reason,” faced her. Aimée inhaled the peacefulness of the small, makeshift temple, wishing that tranquility would stay with her.

She paused with René at the table littered with leaflets describing meditation courses and a solicitation for signatures to a petition.

“We’re hoping to build a real temple,” Linh said, watching Aimée. “Our lands were confiscated in Vietnam. Members of our sect were executed.”

“We’d like to help, of course,” Aimée said, after signing. “I’ll pass around your petition.”

“But there’s something more important,” Linh said. Her face crinkled in worry; there was a slight tremor in her eyelids. “Your application says you have a detective agency. Can you contact someone for us?”

“On a good day we contact encryptions, viruses, and hackers invading computer systems,” René said, grinning.

Linh pulled a creased paper from her sleeve. “What about this man?”

Aimée saw the scribbled name Thadée Baret; no address, just the 17th arrondissement, and a phone number.

“He’s sympathetic . . . he helps our cause. Can you give him something from me?”

“As I said, we want to help,” Aimée said. “But Linh, you don’t need us to telephone him or to meet him . . .”

“Politics,” Linh interrupted, shaking her head. “My father was a judge years ago in Saigon. The regime denounced him and blacklisted our family, which still remains under surveillance. My younger brother’s in prison for ‘political dissent.’ His children have been denied visits to him. Even here, in Paris, they watch me.”

Watch her?

“Please understand,” Aimée said, wariness intruding. “I want to help, but what our firm does is computer security.”

“How much?”

“ Non, Linh, it’s not a question of money, it’s simply not my field,” Aimée said, feeling awkward. Linh had helped her, a novice, in her struggle with meditation, and now. . . .

“But I read about you . . . how you found a killer in the Bastille while you were blind .”

Embarrassed, Aimée wished the newspaper articles had never appeared.

“It’s complicated . . .” Linh continued, eyelids once more fluttering nervously.

“In what way?” Aimée said. The meditation room was becoming chilly.

Linh pulled an envelope from her robe and said, “In my country we suffer anonymous denunciations by a network of informers, detentions without trial. Priests and nuns from our sect, or anyone with a political agenda that could threaten the government, live in fear. Please, just give him this from me.”