René pulled out five hundred francs, signaling the waiter.
“I’m sorry but I didn’t make myself clear. I want information about Josiane Dolet,” he said. “Your number was on her speed dial.”
“My client’s charts are confidential.” She shook her head, returning the charts to her bag as if to leave.
“Not any more,” he said, forcing his eyes to move past the lime tulle ribbon around her blonde curls, the pink lips, red- and-white-striped tights, pink leggings, and green denim jacket. “Hear me out, first,” René said.
A waiter old enough to be his father, bald and earringed, appeared. He wore a long white-apron and skinny black T-shirt and stood, tapping his foot.
“Un Cardinal,” René said.
“What’s that?” Miou-Miou asked.
“Here we call it the Communard,” the waiter said, writing down the order.
“Red wine, crème de cassis, and juice,” René said. “It’s the same drink, but the name lines up at the other end of the political spectrum.”
The waiter shrugged.
“And you, mademoiselle?” he said, tossing a bowl of salt-encrusted cacahuètes on the ring-stained table.
“Une feuille morte,” she said. “I like the fallen leaf autumn color of Pastis mixed with menthe and grenadine.”
After the waiter moved away, René leaned forward. The table’s rim hit his chest. “Josiane Dolet was murdered in a Bastille passage. Your number was on her speed dial.”
“You’re a detective?” Miou-Miou’s eyes widened. “No wonder she didn’t show for her reading. Such a shame. Josiane was a free spirit. But her chart indicated tumult. A storm brewing since August. Tempestuous relations. But I never imagined. . . .”
And I’m the Rhône ranger, René thought.
A paunchy, middle-aged man waddled into the café. He kissed the harried cashier, who paused and returned his bisous, then leaned over the zinc to the shaven-headed, earringed barman, a younger version of the waiter, who was polishing glasses.
“Attends,” Miou-Miou said, “That’s my client. I’ll be right back.” She glided over to the man, whose glasses glinted, reflecting the flickering neon sign advertising Picon.
Frustrated, René picked at the peanuts. Stale and oily. He looked around.
In the far corner, as if supporting the Chinese pillars, sat a pale-faced trio: a couple and a midget wearing a fedora. An aura of time suspended, surrounded them. Most cafés were lively places where people conversed or went to see or be seen.
Not here. It was like a railway waiting room.
René’s radar picked up on it at once. Circus people. He hated the old fug of sad-eyed clowns and freaks away from the big top. They looked familiar, probably from the nearby Cirque d’hiver. Perhaps cronies of his mother. Unemployed. Or waiting for a casting call.
He felt again the trials his mother, a normal-sized juggler, had endured. The drafty circus tents, tears coursing through her makeup when money was tight, and the love she had borne him. The determination that he’d never perform as a freak.
And he hadn’t.
Her amazing good fortune in becoming the old marquis’s housekeeper in Amboise had helped. The marquis had attended her performances every year. He’d loved René’s mother’s unique juggling act and her wit.
A circus aficionado, the marquis had maintained a private museum of mechanical toys from the 1700s up to the 1930s. When she’d grown “ready for the pasture,” as the circus owner termed it in his delicate way after a flaming arrow severed the tendon in her left hand, the marquis invited her to oversee his “little collection.” She’d ended up running his château. And probably more, but René didn’t dwell on that.
An odd but sweet man, he’d financed René’s clinic bills during his stretching therapy. It hadn’t worked. His hip displacement had gotten worse. The marquis helped with his education. Paid for extras at the Sorbonne. And the car.
René never told Aimée any of this. He wasn’t sure why. He liked the fact that Aimée had never asked, had never wanted explanations. She’d simply introduced herself one afternoon at the Sorbonne café, saying “Rumor says you can access a mainframe in twenty minutes.”
She’d shoved a laptop across the table.
“You heard wrong,” he’d told her, rolling up his sleeves and establishing a net connection. “Twelve minutes is the longest it takes me.” And using the number his friend had given him he’d accessed the mainframe and done it in ten.
Her big, kohl-ringed eyes had lit up. Right there, she’d offered him a job on a project she’d undertaken. The work grew and when he ended up spending more time on computer security at Leduc Detective than at the Sorbonne, he quit classes. And she did, too.
His confused feelings about her surfaced: her terrible driving, her unconventionality, the passion she brought to things and the fierce loyalty she showed him. And glimpses of the raw inner hurt he’d seen exposed a few times. Like the hurt he’d so often felt.
He thought about her huge eyes and the funny way she hid her feelings for Morbier yet yearned for his approval.
Never mind that she didn’t provide tickets for restaurants or a Carte Orange pass for the Métro like some employers, she made sure she paid into his seçu, the mutuelle for medical insurance, and his prévoyance. When bills were paid and lucrative contracts signed, they celebrated with champagne and sushi. The odd thing was, his mother and the marquis had seemed pleased.
Would Aimée let him take care of her now that she was blind? Or would she push him away? Should he team up with Rajeev? Join him and form a software business, as Rajeev was urging him to?
He repressed his feelings. As always. But the thought that though she was his best friend, sometimes that wasn’t enough, kept rising up. He wanted more. More of her. He pushed that away.
He drank the Cardinal/Communard and half of another, then stared at the old chrome coffee machine topped by a winged eagle and at the special VIEILLE PRUNE ARTISANALE 4L.- 45 FRS. written in white on the beveled mirror until Miou-Miou returned. Breathless. She grabbed her drink and downed it three long gulps.
“That bad?”
She nodded.
“Another?”
He caught the waiter’s eye, pointed to their glasses.
“Does your client cook the Bataclan’s books?”
“He’s the comptroller,” she said. “And since his sun crossed Virgo . . . very auspicious . . . he’s decided to ask for the hand of his plumber’s sister who lives three houses down in the same Batignolle banlieue.”
“At least he’ll be able to fall back on his brother-in-law if the theatre business gets tight,” René said. He handed the waiter several hundred-franc notes.
“Vraiment, I was worried about Josiane’s chart,” she said, reaching for her new drink. “The one I never completed. Of course not, it got stuck under . . .”
“The comptroller’s?” René interrupted.
She nodded. The tulle ribbon bobbed in her curls. “Look,” she said, setting down a chart. The spheres of planets were crossed by red, aqua, and orange lines. “I hadn’t finished the alignment of the houses and the dominant planets . . . but Josiane called, wanting to meet. She said I could finish later, but she had an important question to ask first.”
All this astral plane talk unnerved him. “And you said . . . ?”