Murder in the Latin Quarter (14 page)

“Like rats, those cataphiles,” said Delair, ex-army by the look of him: short
en brosse
hair and straining biceps under his blue shirt. He punched the newspaper he held, whose head-line was “Diana autopsy results inquiry,” then pointed to a small article: “Party disrupted in tunnels under the Arènes de Lutèce,” the Roman arena.

“My former unit would make
pâté
of them.
Zut alors,
these underground
flics
treat these types like playground kids, slap-ping their wrists.”

“Most of the cataphiles are students or office workers get-ting their weekend thrills partying,” Aimée said. “Harmless enough.”

Delair shook his head. “Not only dangerous,” he said, frowning, “but full of undesirables, hiding. . . .”

“That’s an urban myth, Delair,” she said, signing in on the log.

“Myth? Before the bank installed the steel fence, they rousted out a nest of illegals camping in the adjoining Roman cistern.” He gestured to a printed EVACUATION/EMERGENCY diagram of the building on the wall highlighting the exits and placement of fire extinguishers. “There. Right next to where you work. Walled up now, of course.”

She’d never realized. “But how do they find these places?”

“They come out of the sewers at night, like the rats they are, take night jobs from people who need to work. Filch and steal, too.”

She’d attended parties in the catacombs; all-night benders put on by third-year med students. Could Mireille have gone underground
literally?
She’d need a contact, an
entrée
into that world. Negotiating the kilometers of tunnels, passages, and quarries required knowledge. No easy feat. The cataphiles knew of entrances and passages the authorities had no clue about. They could always burrow their way one tunnel ahead of the authorities.

Right now she had security systems to run here. She didn’t relish seeing the expression on René’s face when she arrived late. Again.

Delair waved her through the metal gate. She went down three flights of stairs, held her badge up to a reader, and the steel doors of Morel’s database center opened.

“René?” she called. But she heard only the low whirr of running computers and the humming ventilation system. She saw a note in René’s slanted script—to check on a glitch in the virus program—taped to the first terminal screen. Surprised, she set her bag down. So unlike René.

Bien sûr,
he’d set up the network monitoring system, and at this point she could run the security program in her sleep. Yet she remembered René’s more than usual irritation at this “wild goose chase” over Mireille. Had he thought she’d gone too far? But she knew she hadn’t even touched the surface.

René’s accusations came back to her: getting sidetracked, his fear that she’d neglect the business.

She remembered his large green eyes wide with excitement over that startup: “the coming thing,” he’d called it. She’d brushed his suggestion off with a quick “later” and had seen the slump of his shoulders.

But data security systems waited for no one. She did a few neck rolls and got to work.

Two hours later, systems monitored and virus scans complete, she debated calling René. She felt hesitant to interfere or interrupt some powwow with this startup client. He thrived on exploring new challenges. She’d agreed to expand their work and hire Saj. Why, they’d signed the contract with the con-tractor this week! Leduc Detective had broken even for once.

Yet the thought that he might find working for a startup more appealing stuck in her mind, wouldn’t go away. A nervous dread vibrated through her. René, the cautious and con-servative one, never jumped without thought.

She used the land line and dialed René’s number. No answer.

Wednesday Night

RENÉ STUMBLED ON the cobbles, cursing the dark street once known as rue des Malefies, the street of witches in the Latin Quarter. His hip ached, had for days, and, despite his misgivings, he’d sought a
rebouteux,
a bone-fixer. A healer with the “gift” who selected her clientele. Similar healers went by many names:
rebouteux
or
panseux
or
magnetiseurs,
and thousands of them practiced in France.

In pain and desperation he’d come here, to this dark hole, this practitioner of a nebulous craft, despite all scientific or ana-lytic knowledge. And he’d sooner die than let Aimée know.

He knew of the laying on of hands and the incantations, the ancient mix of Latin and
patois,
handed down from one
rebouteux
to the next. Sorcery, some called it, in his village bordering the château where he’d grown up. He’d witnessed both healings and those beyond healing. Along with the kids from the village, he’d mocked the old ways, for once feeling part of the group . . . but when seven-year-olds knocked on his door for him to come out to play, he’d shrunk back. He’d been eighteen, preparing for university.

But old wives’ tales, as his mother said, were based on something.

At the address for the healer stood a small produce shop with a torn awning. A mistake, he thought, and checked again. No mistake. What healer practiced out of a rundown grocery?

René hesitated, the whole idea now seeming like supersti-tious nonsense. His fibula, the outer bone in his lower leg, had grown faster than his shin. The doctors had advised straight-ening and lengthening his legs, a torturous procedure utilizing the braces he’d suffered in childhood, now looming again. It was what he wanted to avoid.

He’d come this far, left the work for Aimée. He’d ask across the street at Bar Mimile, a crumbling stone-and-plaster affair with windows none too clean. In the window he could just make out a board displaying a
bière
special written in white chalk.

“Eh, Monsieur?” An olive-skinned man with thick black eyebrows wiped the counter at the level of René’s head.

A narrow room, cigarette smoke spiraling from an ashtray, high stools. In this kind of place, one ordered a drink before pumping for information.

“Un bière,
” he said. “Stella,
à la pression.
”

The man slapped a cardboard coaster on the zinc counter. He reached for the Stella Artois beer pull.

René looked around. No tables. A sixties decor: brown wood veneer, faded turquoise walls, a framed autographed photo of a young Françoise Hardy with her guitar. The still-reclusive singer had to be in her sixties now.

A young man in tight jeans sat in the corner talking on a cell phone. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.

“And how will I reach the glass?” René asked.

“How you usually do, I imagine.” The man set down the tall glass of golden beer topped by white foam. He came around the counter, flipping the towel over his shoulder, and pulled out a stool. René imagined the difficult climb to mount the rungs.

The man took the beer and coaster and set them on the stool’s red leather seat. “Peanuts?” he asked.

“
Non, merci.”

“I’m Mimile,” the man said, an expectant look in his eye.

René reached into his pocket, figuring he wanted payment.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

René blinked. Nothing about Mimile looked familiar: thirties, slight paunch, brown wavy hair long behind the ears, a Mediteranean complexion. To most people, all dwarves, like all Asians, looked alike. He couldn’t count the times people “recognized” him.

“
Désolé,
” he said, wondering how to phrase his question about the healer.

“Funny,” Mimile said. “Since your girlfriend killed my cousin Déde.”

Surprise banished René’s pain. Fear took its place. “Déde . . . who?”

“Belleville Déde,” he said. “On the water tower. I saw you at the inquest.”

Now he remembered. Wary, he stepped back. “You mean my partner?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Déde kidnapped her and held her at gunpoint at the Belleville reservoir. She acted in self-defense. If you remember, the court exonerated her.”

Mimile’s expression hadn’t changed.

“Guess if you have a problem with that, here’s your money,” René said.

Not the best time to defend himself. Of all the bars in the Latin Quarter, he’d picked this one to walk into. His hip ached; pains were shooting down his leg. But he prepared for a fight by centering the force in his
chi.
He winced. He’d never get to the first defensive position. Times like this, his black belt counted for nothing. Retreat, he realized, was the best option, and he eyed the door.

“Finish your drink,” Mimile said. “Blood counts for some-thing, eh, but Déde was a bad seed my mother never tired of saying. A two-bit player.”

René’s shoulders relaxed a centimeter. “Sorry, Mimile.”

“Belleville breeds them, eh?”

René didn’t know, but he nodded.

“Not like here. Like now, anyway.” Mimile pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a flick of his lighter. “Just thirty years ago. . . .” He took a drag, gestured out the window. “People attended church and were afraid to turn the corner because of the gypsies, afraid of the evil eye. Whole gypsy families lived in one room in the rundown hotels.”

René took a sip. Mimile evidently liked to talk.

“Eh, once I knew everyone on the street; a preserve of poets and students, shopkeepers
,
workers, bar owners like me, pro-fessors from the
Grands Ecoles.
Some working girls.” Mimile winked. “Even the old alchemist in his nineties who lived upstairs.

Mimile swiped down the counter with a towel and shrugged.

“That’s until Mitterand moved a few blocks away and made the neighborhood fashionable. And too expensive.”

Shadows lengthened in the street. René downed his beer, wishing it had given him more courage than he felt.

“Not many of us left now,” Mimile said. He shook his head in disgust. “Full of tourists, too.”

“I heard there’s a healer nearby,” René said.

“Aaah, you buy into that?”

René gripped his beer glass. “What have you heard?”

“A strange one.
Maman
avoided her, some story from the war. Others call her a sorcerer.”

“And you?”

“A bag of hot air. You’re looking for her, right?” He pointed. “Across the street in the produce shop.”

René set ten francs down, but Mimile waved it away. “On me.”

“I’d feel better if you’d take it . . . Déde and all,” René said, unsure if that had come out the right way. But then what did one say?

“Sooner or later Déde had to face the accordion, that’s what my
maman
said, the big one in the sky.”

“Still, like you said, family. . . .” René stumbled for words.

“How do you think we pay the mortgage on this place, eh? Déde’s insurance money.
Zut!
I thought you were sniffing around, you know, checking up on us.”

“Not me, Mimile.”

OUT ON THE street, René paused in front of the torn awning. A light glowed inside. “
Et alors,
now or never,” said a man beckoning from inside the produce shop. “I’m closing up,
petit.
”

René ignored the taunt, biting back the comeback on the tip of his tongue. He wished he could ignore the searing ache in his hip. If he swallowed more painkillers, he’d still ache tomorrow. And he’d never know until he gave the healer a shot.

In the shop’s interior, the man gestured to the back room, hung his blue work coat on a nail, and disappeared.

René winced with pain as he edged himself up onto the work bench. His short legs dangled, his only company crates of red and white-tipped radishes, a bin with assorted plastic price signs, several crossword-puzzle magazines, pages folded back and puzzles filled out, and a two-burner cooktop stained with grease. A bright red fire extinguisher hung on the cracked wall. Incongruous, he thought, here in the dank sup-ply room with its permeating smell of yesterday’s leeks.

What kind of healer practiced in a place like this? he wondered for the tenth time. Aimée would call him silly, prod him to have the surgery. But she didn’t know how slim were the chances of the operation succeeding nor how high the odds that he’d have a setback. She didn’t know a lot of things, including the way he felt about her. But he repressed that.

An old man mounted the stairs, a cap tilted on his head, his eyes rheumy red.

“What’s going on?” René asked.

The man took in René’s stature. He jerked his thumb. “You’re next.”

Without a word, René descended from the bench, trying to keep his leg straight, trying to compensate for the flaming ache in his hip, the straining in his calves. But the minute his foot contacted the hard earth floor, pain shot to his hip and up his back.

He wanted to brush the dirt off his linen trousers, but he couldn’t bend to reach it. Never had he let himself appear dirty, nor would he wear the children’s clothes that fit him: the shirts with trucks on them, the shoes with lights. He’d vowed with his first paycheck that he’d wear custom-made garments from then on. And he’d starve before he changed that.

He gripped the railing, biting his lip, determined not to cry out. He felt the impact of each step, all ten of them.

By the light of a flickering lantern René saw a figure in a chair in the cellar under the shop. The lantern emitted a kerosene smell and cast a harsh light. The wooden wheel of a barrow, a remnant of produce-sellers who had once filled the streets, leaned against the damp vaulted stone wall.

He wanted to turn around, leave. But he couldn’t face the trek up those stairs again quite yet.

He saw a woman in her sixties, a porcelain-white face lined by wrinkles, gray steel wool hair, a blue apron over her floral print dress . . . she could be anyone’s grandmother or a produce-shop owner, both of which she was.

Or a charlatan as well preying on the desperate and afflicted? Like him.

“Madame Suchard?”

“You’re the last one tonight,” she said, adding in her deep Parisian accent, “I sense your reluctance.”

The dampness emanating through the cellar increased the pain in his hip. A barred window in the thick wall above revealed the legs of passersby on the street.

“It’s not what I thought, Madame.”

“You expected walnut furniture and deep bookshelves? Whether I can help you remains to be seen.” She shrugged thin shoulders. “But it’s your choice.”

In other words, put up or shut up. What did he have to lose?

She indicated that he should take off his jacket and remain standing. “Now, tell me.”

He did, describing the shooting pain flaming from the arches of his feet up his back, the debilitating ache with no respite.

“Any surgery?”

He shook his head. “Never.”

“Come here.” She motioned him forward, put her gnarled hands out and laid them on his hip. She closed her eyes. And for a moment in the wavering light, with her sunken eyes and her prominent cheekbones, she resembled a corpse. He repressed a shudder.

She kept her hands on him, her body utterly still.

“Inflammation.” After a few minutes, she said, “Turn.”

He turned and winced. She put her hands on the small of his back. He felt nothing but the hard earth floor beneath his feet. Then, a lifting. A curious coolness. As if the heat had been drawn up and away, like smoke. He stood there he didn’t know how long, aware of the kerosene fumes, of an occasional thump overhead.

The pain had subsided. He could straighten up. There was only a small dull throb in his calves. Whatever she’d done had worked.

“Madame?”

She slumped in the chair, her lids half-lowered, her breaths shallow.

“What do I owe you?”

No response.

What’s wrong, Madame?” he asked, worried.
“

Her lids fluttered open. “It takes a lot out of me,” she said. “There’s still hip inflammation. Take salt baths. Return in two days.”

Spent, she waved away the francs he thrust in her hand.

“No money.”

“Please, it seems only fair,” he said, not wanting to owe her. Or anyone.

“It’s the power working through me. But you must not speak of this.”

Why not? he wondered. Did she hook the afflicted, only later to run a scam and demand their savings?

“If you do, I’ll know,” she said. “This doesn’t work for everyone.”

“If I can’t pay . . . what can I do?”

“Aah, that part. . . .” She nodded. “The time will come. You’ll know.”

* * *

THE OLD WOMAN’S enigmatic words echoed in René’s head. And then he dismissed them to concentrate on this curious cool sensation and the alleviation of his pain.

Blocks away, he unlocked his car, parked on Impasse Maubert, the short passage infamous for the townhouse where Saint Croixe and his lover, the Marquise de Brinvilliers, notorious poisoners in the seventeenth century, had concocted potions before the guillotine took the Marquise’s head.

He checked his phone. A message from Aimée. And then he took the paper from his pocket. The fax that Loussant, his Haitian student, had sent him. Should he tell her?