“Far as I know, he’s at the morgue. His ex-wife made a scene this morning when the flics came.”
So she’d found his home. Now the next step. Try her hunch.
“You mean Sophie?” she asked. If that name didn’t ring a bell she’d try the other one.
He nodded, bent over his drawing. An uphill battle, this conversation. He had the personality of wallpaper paste. Lumpy, and sticking in all the wrong places.
“Did Sophie go with the flics or . . .” She hesitated to say to identify the body.
“The last I heard was her screaming for everyone to leave her alone,” he said. “Then I shut the door and went back to work. Look, my firm rents this space and I’m on a deadline.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, backing out. “You won’t mind if I poke around back then?”
But his head was bent over his work as he mumbled a reply.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, closing the door.
She rang another doorbell. No answer. The rest of the courtyard lay deserted. If Sophie had to identify her ex-husband’s body she’d be gone a while. It would make more sense to come back to interview her later.
Aimée left the way she’d come in, avoiding the fluttering yellow crime scene tape by the boulangerie. The busy life of the village-like quartier streamed around her. She walked down rue des Moines, her boots wet from the slush, her heart as leaden as the gray sky above.
What else could she check? She remembered what Linh had said about an auction catalogue. But no auction house opened this early.
The only other lead she had was the name Gassot and the Sixth Battalion. She stepped into a phone cabinet, checked the phone book listings. The anciens combattants center was nearby. No better place to locate an old soldier like Gassot or someone who knew him. Or knew something. She was clutching at straws. But, until she found Sophie she had nothing else.
“C’EST DOMMAGE, ” said the middle-aged man behind the anciens combattants reception desk. He puffed at a cigar hanging from the side of his mouth. “Not my war. But the Dien Bien Phu vets meet on the second Sunday of the month. You just missed it.”
Merde!
Regimental plaques and blue, white, and red banners lined the wall of the center. Black and white photos of troops from the first and second World Wars, the Indochinese and Algerian conflicts, accompanied them. She searched the photos, but none showed the Sixth Battalion.
“Monsieur, I’m looking for Hervé Gassot or the number of the group’s secretary.”
“Let me see,” he said. He ran his tobacco-stained finger over a directory. “Voilà! Hervé Gassot himself’s the secretary now; he saw combat at Dien Bien Phu.”
Her hopes rose. “There were rumors that a cache of jade was looted from the Emperor’s tomb near Dien Bien Phu. . . .”
“Gassot spent time in Indochina. He knows all the stories, that’s for sure. But he keeps to himself. There’s only one number listed for him.” He scratched his grizzled head of hair. “Non, here’s another one, not sure which is which. Maybe a contact number. Not all of the members have telephones.”
He wrote them both down on paper and passed it to her.
“Merci.”
“We’ve got a symposium tonight,” he said, heading toward a stack of folding chairs. “I need to set up, if you’ll excuse me.”
She tried one number on her cell phone. After ten rings she gave up. She tried the second. Again, the phone rang and rang. Disappointed, she hung up.
She walked toward the Batignolles church and then, under the brown awning of the boulangerie, she saw him: the hawk-nosed flic from the RG visit. The one from the team involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance where her father had been killed. She had never known his name or rank. The whole project had been hush hush. Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Defense, they all peed in the same place, as her father used to say.
Had he been following her or was he nosing around for the jade on his own?
The man buttoned up his rain jacket and strode past the crime scene tape. She tailed him down rue Legendre for several blocks to a small two-story café-tabac: one of those she’d already visited this morning. She followed him inside, smiled at the owner, and bought some cassis-flavored gum at the cigarette counter as he mounted the back stairs.
A minute later she, too, went upstairs to find a smoke-filled rectangular room, the restroom beyond. Cracked leather banquette seats lined the wall, mirrors above them. The room was deserted, except for several tables and chairs. At one, three men played belote, a card game similar to bridge, a game she’d never had the patience to learn.
She sat down at the hawk-nosed man’s table, nodding to the heavy-lidded owner/waiter taking his order for an espresso.
“You know my name,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Did I ask you to sit here?”
She heard more annoyance than surprise in his voice.
“I invited myself,” she smiled. “Sometimes I do that. But we already know each other.”
“How’s that?”
“Last night your group searched my apartment without a warrant, remember?”
He looked away. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
She bit back a remark about short-term memory loss, and got to the heart of the matter. “Think back to five years ago, Inspecteur. . . ?”
“Pleyet,” he acknowledged, shifting away from her.
In the mirror she saw the belote players look up, then go back to their game, slapping cards on the table. From below came the sound of the télé with its replayed horse races.
“I’m in the traffic division, Mademoiselle.”
And if she believed that, she’d believe anything. He didn’t look like a meter maid. Or act like one.
“Then where’s your ticket book?” she asked. “You were with the RG last night.”
He shrugged. “They called me.”
“You were involved in the Place Vendôme surveillance five years ago.”
“Never.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you keep bringing that up? Such persistance is rude.”
“Remember one of your old colleagues, Jean-Claude Leduc, my father?”
“Guess he forgot to send you to charm school,” he said.
She felt the wooden floor vibrating as his foot began tapping.
“Is the man who works with the RG your evil twin?”
No smile answered her back. “Traffic’s my job,” he insisted. “Since 1992.”
The heavy-lidded owner returned with two steaming espressos and two glasses of water, and set them on the water-ringed table together with a glass carafe. Aimée handed him a ten franc piece. Light from the wall sconce caught and danced on the carafe’s thick rim. Around them rose occasional exclamations, then the shuffle of the belote players’ cards.
“Looks like you’re on duty,” she said.
“The traffic bureau closed early,” he said, yawning. “Just a quick cup of coffee, then the train home.”
She doubted that. “How is the jade tied to the RG, Inspecteur Pleyet?”
Anger flickered in his eyes and he gripped her elbow in a steely hold.
For a moment the card game stopped. The only sounds were the rumble of the milk steamer machine below. She looked up. One of the men said “Fold” and the others threw their cards on the table.
Pleyet relaxed his grip. In one movement, he pulled on his windbreaker jacket and stood.
“You didn’t answer my question, Inspecteur. Were you on assignment in postwar Indochina?” she asked, taking a gamble. “You look the type.”