Aimée ascended the Place de Clichy Métro steps, slipping on her leather gloves against the chill November wind. Late afternoon commuters surged around her. Darkness descended before six this time of year. The Café Wepler, a Wehrmacht soldiers’ canteen during the German Occupation—(earlier immortalized in Vuillard’s painting)—glowed in the dusk. Its awning sheltered a stall displaying Brittany oysters on ice to passersby.
She rushed to a taxi stand, anxious to get her errand over with. But Place de Clichy traffic was at a standstill. Klaxons honked and the Number 95 bus shot diesel exhaust at the Maréchal Moncey monument, commemorating peasants who defended Paris at the end of a Napoleonic campaign. She gave up on a taxi, left the busy Place fronted by cinemas and brasseries, and hurried through the narrow Clichy streets.
She passed la Fourche, the fork, that divided the quartier into the “good” seventeenth and the “bad.” More than in any other part of Paris, the architect Haussman had stamped his signature here in the last century. The image the world thought of as Paris: broad tree-lined boulevards riven by the classic gray stone five-storied buildings with metal filigreed balconies and chimney pots like organ pipes on the rooftiles.
She reached Batignolles Park with its rolling lawns and black swans gliding across the small lake. The fretwork of plane trees, puddles, and clumps of wet leaves faced real estate offices and antique shops. A gunmetal sky threatened; she hoped Thadée Baret wouldn’t be late. Beyond lay the derelict train yards, part of the 19th century ceinture, the railway belt circling Paris. Their walls were bright with silver graffiti.
She entered a cobbled crescent that had a village feeling. Two-story buildings lined the street and old people congregated on the green slatted benches beneath the clock tower of the columned church: a pocket of “old” Paris.
Aimée saw a thirtyish man, wearing black pants, his thin white shirt whipping in the wind, scanning passersby from under an awning over the boulangerie. He had a pale face, wore thick black-framed glasses, and held a backpack by its strap. An arty or political type . . . Baret?
She waved and saw recognition in his eyes. And what looked like fear.
Around him on crowded rue Legendre mothers pushed strollers and old women walked their dogs by the acacia trees. Fresh-baked bread smells wafted from the boulangerie. As she approached, she saw how thin his arms were, and how he kept picking at something on his wrist and wiping his nose with his sleeve.
She waved again, wrapping her scarf tighter as she hurried toward him. Coatless, wasn’t he cold? An old woman huddled under an umbrella near the glass phone cabinet by the blackened stone buildings.
“Monsieur Baret?” she asked. “I’m Aimée Leduc. We talked on the phone.”
He reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Do you have it?”
She nodded and handed him the envelope Linh had entrusted to her. He put the strap of the backpack in her hand.
“For Linh. Sling it over your shoulder.”
She did.
“They’re following me,” he said in his breathless way.
“Who?” She looked around. She saw only busy shoppers. Slush from car tires rolling over the cobblestone street sprayed her boots.
“But you must know,” he gasped into her ear.
“Tiens, wait a minute,“ she said. “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”
He registered her surprise. His eyes darted around the crowd; he glanced across the street. “They’re here.” He clutched her coat, a wild look on his face. “But Nadège and Sophie depend on me . . . if I don’t. . . .”
“What do you mean?”
She saw his terror as a motorcycle gunned its engine, drowning his answer.
“Look, I’m just helping a nun . . .”
The words disappeared in the crack of rapid gunfire. Baret’s body jerked. Someone yanked at the backpack on her shoulder. But she grabbed the strap and held on to it. A motorcycle engine whined. The sound of a bullet’s ricochet echoed off the stone buildings. Then there was the screech of tires.
“Get down!” Aimée yelled.
Little balloons of stone dust grit burst on the pavement ahead of her. She ducked, pulling open the nearby phone cabinet door for shelter. As she pulled at Baret, he collapsed onto her, his shattered glasses red with blood mist. An exhalation, smaller than a sigh, escaped his lips.
Panic flooded her as she saw that red-black holes peppered the back of his white shirt.
He sprawled on top of her as she heard the roar of the motorcycle engine gunning away. Her arm stung. She saw blood and realized it came from her. Shouts and cries erupted around her.
Crows cawed, their nest above the boulangerie doorway disturbed.
The old woman ran, then tripped; her baguette launched onto the glistening cobbles in a slow motion arabesque. Aimée tried to pull Baret into the shelter of the phone cabinet but his hand caught on her pocket. Someone screamed. And screamed.
Aimée’s knees trembled as she felt for his pulse. None. Her fingertips traced ribbed scars and scabs, the needle tracks on his arm. Bluish purple, old marks. Blood trickled down his pale chin onto the rain-slicked cobbles.
“Mon Dieu . . . call the flics!” She couldn’t reach the pay phone. Where was her cell phone? In the silence someone was sobbing, and a child howled.
Then there were voices. “Terroristes!”
“Non, she did it . . . she fought with him,” Aimée heard someone say. “She pulled him down!”
“That one,” the old woman sprawled on the wet pavement whimpered, pointing her out. Someone pulled the body off Aimée, and tried CPR.
Aimée struggled to her feet. A man grabbed her shoulders. “Hold on, Mademoiselle, we saw what you did,” he accused.
“What do you mean?”
The old woman was shaking her, grabbing at her scarf. A dog barked. Aimée looked around in panic.
“Let go! Don’t you understand . . . someone on a motorcycle shot him!” Aimée said.
Aimée saw a woman’s face in the tall window opposite, her mouth open in a silent scream. And then she heard the approaching police siren. Warm blood dripped from her arm.
A large green and white garbage truck had stopped in front of them, blocking the street. She saw the motorcycle at a distance, stuck in traffic.
“Stop that motorcycle,” she shouted, but no one listened. She broke past the throng and tried to run, the backpack bobbing on her good shoulder, the bloodstained envelope she had tried to give Baret now clenched in her fist.
The motorcycle shot down a narrow street on the right, weaving between the cars. Aimée ran, trying to keep up, for half a block. The helmeted, black-leather-clad figure looked like every motorcyclist on the street. She collapsed against a dented Citroën, panting. Tried to catch her breath.
“Stop her,” someone shouted. Then the motorcycle turned, jumped the curb, and aimed for her.
The hair rose on the back of her neck.
She scrambled to her feet, slipped as her heel caught in a cobble, got up again and ran into an open courtyard. Panting, she raced down a narrow slit between buildings. No exit, just doors. All locked. She pounded on several until one opened.
“We don’t let patrons into the laundry this way,” said a woman, plastic hangers in her hands. She eyed Aimée’s black fishnets, boots and black-leather-belted coat. Behind the woman were steamed-up windows and the roar of industrial dryers.
“My ex-husband’s on a rampage.” Aimée said the first thing she could think of. “Please, I need to come inside before he sees me.”