“Didn’t I miss your party this year? . . . Here’s a late present. Don’t drink it all once. Happy birthday.” Gaetan pushed another bottle toward René.
“Salut.” They clinked glasses. The wine poured down his throat like raw silk, full-bodied yet light.
“Merci, Gaetan.”
Gaetan’s prop shop overlooked a narrow passage. Beyond lay a dirt lot, fenced in by jagged aluminum siding and stone building walls pockmarked by old, peeling wallpaper.
“Wasn’t there a ceramic factory here?” He remembered his mother buying a piece of faience, a flowered vase from the flawed seconds batch. It had sat in the kitchen hutch for years. He still had it.
“The patron died. No one to run it. Soon to be a parking lot,” Gaetan said, making a moue of disgust. “Developers!”
A pity, René thought. He went to the window. But he couldn’t read the construction sign which had been defaced by silver and green graffiti.
Gaetan would know about Mirador. He’d grown up in the quartier. “I hear Mirador’s hiring Romanians to kick people out of old buildings.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, but I know nothing firsthand,” Gaetan said. He broke into a wide grin as he announced, “I’m getting married. Remember Giselle?”
The long-legged dancer who taught at the dance studio. “Of course, lucky man!”
“We’re moving to Tours.”
“Félicitations! But your business?”
“Pierre, my cousin, is the manager now, he’s more involved.”
“Where’s Pierre?”
“Hiking in the Pyrenées. He deserved a vacation.”
René’s brow furrowed. “I need information about the evictions.”
“Not your style . . . Aaaah, it’s one of your friends, non?”
So he told Gaetan what had happened; about Aimée and the story Josiane supposedly was working on. By the time he’d finished, darkness had descended over the tiled rooftops.
“René, I’d like to help, but I’m hardly here these days,” Gaetan said, looking away. “Not everything in life checks out.”
But René could tell Gaetan was withholding something.
“There’s a load of returns in the yard,” he said, standing up. He flicked on the switch, flooding the office with light. “You know your way around; stay as long as you like.”
Was he afraid?
“Look, I’m worried about Aimée. You must know someone who can help me.”
“Don’t take this detective stuff so seriously,” Gaetan said. ”Look, genius, your métier’s computers.”
“She’s blind, Gaetan,” he said, “and my job might go down the toilet with this picky Judiciare.”
Gaetan picked up a folder of invoices, tucked them under his arm. He avoided René’s eyes. “Desolé. Don’t forget your wine. I’ll send you a wedding invitation.”
“Here’s my cell phone number,” René said. “Pierre might know, or be able to give me someone who does.”
DEJECTED, RENÉ didn’t know which way to turn. Calling Mirador and asking them about evictions probably wouldn’t garner information. On his way back, René passed the fenced-in lot, but he still couldn’t read the graffiti-covered sign.
After some blocks, rounding a corner, he just missed running into an old woman. She wore a faded scarf knotted at her neck, and a sealskin coat that had flaked off in patches. She stood in front of the dark Gymnase Japy. Yellow pools of light from the just-lit streetlamps glistened on the wet brick walls. She was knocking on the tall wood door.
“I promised Maman to do better. Every time the teacher says fois in the dictée I will write it correctly,” she said, then repeated in a falsetto voice, slow and measured:
“Il était une fois une marchande de foie qui vendait du foie dans la ville de Foix. Elle se dit ma foi c’est pour la pre-mière fois que je vends du foie dans la ville de Foix.”
She uttered the passage again and again, faster and faster. René watched her, unsure of what to do. How could he help?
A blue uniform turned the corner. A young flic on his beat. “Bonsoir, Madame,” he said, taking in the situation. “The gym’s closed now.”
“But the tutor’s supposed to meet me. He’s waiting . . .”
“Not tonight, eh, it’s late. Let me accompany you.”
The old woman gave him a toothless smile. “Maman would like that.”
“Bon,” said the flic, taking her arm gently, “let’s take you home, it’s time for your supper, non?”
“But they won’t let me back in,” she said. “I tried.” She pointed her ragged glove at a bricked-up, soot-coated, eighteenth century hôtel particulier facing the square. A jewel in its heydey, René thought. Fronted by doric columns, with arabesques of rusted iron balcony railings and nymph-bordered plaster detail. A crane with a dirty black wrecking ball stood suspended over the building. Large placards across the door said “Villa Voltaire—Luxury Apartments Ready Soon.”
“Alors,” said the flic, “they’ve moved you someplace, non?”
The old woman shook her head. “I want to go home.”
“We’ll just go find out now.”
The flic noticed René. “Do you know Madame?”
Before René could shake his head, a second floor window opened and an old man leaned out, a pipe in the side of his mouth. “Madame Sarnac’s lived in the quartier all her life,” he said. “Right there.” He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed at the hôtel particulier.
“Can you help, monsieur?” the flic asked, his tone polite. “She’s confused.”
“That was where she lived. She worked in the magasin below,” he said. “She went to school here. So did I.”
“But where does she stay now? I don’t want to bring her to the Commissariat.”
“It’s sick, throwing old people out. Armée du Salut sheltered some and the Maison des Femmes, too. But just the ones who had no families to take them,” he said. “She’s here everyday, doesn’t know what else to do. Me, I took action. It was I who got them to put up that plaque.”
He pointed to the plaque on Gymnase Japy that was just visible in the fading daylight. René could only read the last part. It was signed the ASEJD: Association en souvenir des enfants juifs déportés du XI.
The flic walked away, escorting the old woman, and the man shut his window. But now René knew who to ask about Mirador.
Looking around, René observed BANQUE HERVET lettered in silver, a small beauty salon and dimly lit brasserie. Beyond was a fire-gutted building—scorched black stone and broken windows— overlooking the gym opposite the center of the square.
He turned and stood under the rippled glass awning held by curlicues and spokes of wrought iron. A chipped and faded hotel sign was wedged inside an iron circle. The bubbled glass of the door was covered by a metal grillework pattern of flower bouquets and palmettes. He pushed the buzzer.
The door opened to display a diamond-patterned black-and-white tile foyer. The tiles were cracked and worn but the period staircase of white marble and swirls of scrolled ironwork retained its grandeur.