“I’m looking for Léo. . . .”
“Short for Léontyne,” she said, smiling. “My mother loved opera and Léontyne Price.”
“Nut sent me.”
“I know,” she said. “Can you hurry up? Sorry but I’ve got to add forty-five megahertz in about seven minutes.”
She gestured to a large red clock, and pulled off her headphones.
Aimée nodded. “I don’t know if my friend’s in Paris, but he’s in trouble. I’m desperate. Can you help me find him?”
Léo hit several switches and adjusted a black knob that caused a needle to quiver on the volumeter.
Aimée wrote René’s name and cell phone number on a pad of paper by Léo’s elbow.
“Parfait! Most people don’t even have that much. Now we can tap into the ocean of dialogue, ignore the police bandwidth, firefighters, ambulance drivers, paramedics, sanitation workers, and infant monitors and pinpoint it. Like they say, it’s an electromagnetic jungle out there.”
Aimée was out of her depth. “How does it work?”
“I set up a system for this phone’s ESN and MIN code, its serial number and identification number. So each time,” she paused, rubbing her neck, “René . . . that’s his name, René?”
Aimée nodded.
“So when René makes a phone call, my scanner picks up his ESN and MIN numbers, my computer, hooked up to my scanner, recognizes his cell phone, and tunes in to his conversation and records it.”
“Sounds easy. But I’m sure it’s not.”
“So far there’s no encryption in the radio spectrum,” she grinned. “When it happens, we’ll figure something else out.”
“And if the phone’s not on?”
“I can only monitor what’s out there.”
Aimée paused looking around the room filled with radios. She clenched her fists, trying to keep her hands still, to keep her nervousness in check.
“His kidnappers used his phone once. To call me on my cell phone.”
Léo’s smile vanished. “Kidnappers?”
“How closely can you track, Léo?”
“Well, during the Occupation the Nazis found hidden British crystal radios transmitting from cellars. This operates on the same basic principal. But the Nazis had roving trucks with tracking equipment to follow the signals and triangulate. Primitive, but it did the job. Stationary antennas have limitations; it depends on the signal and relay time. Keep them talking.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You must. If he’s in Paris—and we don’t have an electrical storm—the longer the phone call, the closer I can pinpoint. If the gods smile, not only the street but the building.”
“Merci, Léo,” she said. “I’ll owe you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Léo said.
On her way out, Aimée noticed the wheelchair folded by the door, and end of a metal hospital bed peeking from behind a draperied alcove. Aimée wondered when Léo’d last been out of this apartment. But then, she traveled through Paris every night. Riding the airwaves.
EARLY EVENING quiet had descended over the shadowy, intimate, crescent-shaped square near Clichy. Strains of an accordion mingling with a guitar wafted from somewhere above her. Familiar, an old working-class song her grandmother had played. Aimée looked up to see the silhouette of a couple dancing behind a lighted window.
And for a moment, she forgot the drizzle on the pavement and it could have been the countryside. Low stone buildings, a cat slinking around the corner, the church clock pealing the hour. But she couldn’t get away from the awful sound in her head of the bullets’ ricocheting by the phone cabinet where Thadée had been shot. The sickening scene replayed over and over.
Why kill Thadée?
If she couldn’t meet the kidnappers’ demand, René would be next. She looked at her watch . . . already an hour had passed! She willed her fear down; it wouldn’t help her find René.
She remembered the door closing yesterday in the Olf office foyer, her frisson of fear. If she’d been the target and escaped, and now they’d gone for René, it was her fault.
Darkness blanketed the narrow street, the furred glow of dim streetlights the only illumination.
She had to find Sophie, the woman Thadée had named with almost his last breath, his ex-wife. She had to try to figure out where Thadée had gotten the jade—and who might have it now.
She walked past the glass awning to the rear of the courtyard. Under the stone lintel, by an ancient water spigot, a nicked metal sign in old formal French forbade children to play in the courtyard. She wondered when was the last time any children had lived here.
She passed the back stairs, wrapped her scarf around her head, belted her shearling coat tighter, and thanked God she’d worn her good boots. Only a three-inch heel.
Adjoining the old tire factory, beyond the fence, she saw an eighteenth-century limestone townhouse. Preserved, with an air of neglect at the edges. Was this where Thadée had lived? She hit the two buzzers. No answer. Only darkened windows.
Galerie 591 was locked. But a dim light shone through the mottled glass. She called the gallery telephone number. The phone rang and rang.
Aimée knocked on the service door. No answer. Looking in the window, she saw a dimly lit office with state of the art computers on several desks. Beyond lay a room with metal sculptures and paintings strewn across the floor. Curtains blew from an open hall window. Glass shards sparkled on the floor.
Someone had broken in.
She turned the knob of the door. Locked. She pulled out her lock-picking kit, inserted a thin metal skewer into the bronze cylinder-like Fichet lock. A few turns and she heard the tumble of the chamber and the lock snapped open.
Inside, a 1920s-style lamp with beaded fringe cast a reddish glow over the gallery.
“. . . Ohé, someone here?”
She caught a faint whiff of classic Arpège emanating from a damp sweater flung over a chair.
Glancing out the open window overlooking the adjoining townhouse, Aimée saw a woman going out the door. In the glare of the streetlight, this woman, a pint-size Venus, was applying lipstick as she crossed the desolate square, her heels clicking on the cobbles. She wore a vintage mini-dress over beat-up jeans. A chic, downplayed look.
A chainsmoking, Vespa-riding thirty-something man puttered by, idled the engine, and stopped. Aimée noted the woman’s black hair with purple braids. Could she be Asian? But her face was turned and it was too far away to tell. After exchanging a few words, she swung her leg over the man’s Vespa and they rode away.
Aimée chewed her lip and listened. She pulled out her penlight and shone the beam on the wood floor.
“Sophie Baret?” she called out.
The only response was the rushing of water and creakings of the old warehouse mingling with the flushing of pipes and the sound of water from the roof gutters hitting the street.
Flushing? Or something else? The sound of water in the background continued.
She crouched, grabbing what seemed to be a shovel leaning against the showcase. She realized it was an artwork inlaid with a mosaic of blue glass and ceramic tile tesserae. A fairy dust-like glitter sparkled as she carried it. Making hard contact was all she cared about. The floorboards creaked. Dampness permeated her bones and she shivered.
As she kept walking, the sound of gushing water grew louder. Inside a dank hallway lined by old showcases from thirties millinery stores, lay more objets d’art: sculptures and installation pieces. Aimée recognized several of the artists from the current art scene. An older Jean Basquiat painting hung on the wall.