Merde!
And then she fell asleep. She dreamt in color. Blood-red and tamarind-hued leaves spiraled down from the autumn trees in Place Trousseau. Children kicked the leaves, scattering them in a red-orange whirl, then ran to the quivering gloss-green see-saw. The crooked fingernail of a moon, its out- line burnished in blue, swayed to accordion strains. The “piano of the poor,” her grandmother had called it, as she slipped the worn straps around her shoulders.
The colors pulsed and throbbed; she’d never witnessed anything as beautiful. It grew larger than life, surreal and wonderful. And she didn’t want it to end.
But it did. The colors faded. Disappeared.
Waves of sadness hit her as she woke up.
Then she’d dozed off again, curled around the laptop, with the cursor flashing on Populax’s logo. Better get back to work, she thought, rubbing her eyes and wondering what the bright thing was on her toe. A patch of sunlight surrounded by gray fog.
Her heart leapt. She could see!
She squinted, tried to focus. And the image slowly evaporated into more fog. A fog that shifted and moved.
She wanted to shout and dance. Her sight had returned. A little, a very tiny bit, but she’d seen her toe! It was only when she struggled into her T-strap high-heels that she realized the fog, now a dense charcoal color, remained.
Depression descended over her. Would her eyesight ever come back?
Friday Morning
“WHICH EDITOR DO YOU want?” said the man in the T-shirt to René.
René, wiping his damp forehead with a handkerchief, noticed the man’s stringy hair and the ASK ME ABOUT THE BERLIOZ OPERA button on his sleeve.
Hard sunlight beamed down from the soot-laced skylight. Men hammered and saws whined in the background of the newspaper building.
“Someone in charge of investigative reporting, please,” René said, wishing he knew how to word it better. And wishing, too, that he’d foregone his early workout at the dojo.
“All reporting’s investigating for truth . . . so you could say, they all would do,” said the man, looking down at the clutter on his reception desk.
“How about the city desk?”
“If we had one, it wouldn’t be on this floor,” he said.
Great. Forty minutes of wading through construction workers and over cables . . . for this René had tramped all over this tank of a building and had ended up in Accounting?
“What about the eleventh arrondissement?”
“It’s not cheap anymore, eh, especially around the Bastille, but my former girlfriend lives there and still has a great rent.”
Frustrated, René threw up his short arms in supplication. “I mean articles, an exposé about illegal evictions in the Bastille area, the eleventh . . . who’d edit that?”
The man’s eyebrows arched. “Check with Dossiers. Behind the Archives section, second floor. That’s if they haven’t moved.”
“Moved? Don’t you know where they are?”
“They’re installing new fiber optic lines,” he said. “My phone’s dead. I’ve tried all morning.”
By the time René reached the right desk, his hip ached more than it had yesterday. Was pain cumulative? He gave a small smile to the young woman with black cornrow braids, wearing blue lipstick and a tight, bright blue jacket.
“I need to speak with a reporter about an exposé on evictions . . .”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, “those articles come from stringers. Freelancers who’ve established a relationship with us. They turn in the finished work, someone copyedits it, and it’s printed.”
“No internal control?”
“Our stringers know the rules. Of course everything’s run by the head editor.”
“May I speak with him?”
“Give me your name and number. He returns the day after tomorrow.”
Frustrated, René handed her his business card and went to sit on the island on boulevard du Temple. He wedged himself up on the green slatted bench, wondering what to do next as he watched the old men play pétanque in the dust. A crowd of bystanders looked on in the dappled sunlight under the plane trees. Still leafy, but changing color to signal autumn’s approach.
His phone rang.
“René?” asked Aimée.
“No luck with Josiane’s editor, Aimée,” René said. “But I left a message, maybe he’ll get back to me the day after tomorrow.”
Pause.
“I tried the last number on her speed dial,” he said. “But I don’t know what it means.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s in Taverny, outside Paris,” he said. “A Dr. Alfort’s office at the Nuclear Commission. The receptionist says he’s out until Monday. But I left both our numbers.”
“Bon . . . good job. When you talk with the editor, René,” she said, “don’t forget to ask what else Josiane worked on. Maybe she was also writing an article about the Nuclear Commission . . . seems she was active in the Green party.”
“A real socialist-with-a-trust-fund type!”
“Or a woman with a conscience, René,” she said. “I found out that Vaduz died in a car crash near République.”
“Vaduz, the Beast of Bastille?”
“The very same.”
“When?”
“That’s what you’ve got to find out from Serge.”
“But he’s a forensic pathologist.”
“Exactement,” Aimée said. “The flics are keeping their cards close to their chests. Letting no word out. So, on the quiet, you’re going to ask Serge. And find out the cause of Josiane Dolet’s death, too. You know, what he thinks. Ask him if it differs from the serial killer’s MO.”
“Whoa . . . after my last visit to the morgue, when we came through the sewers, I decided to skip any future ones. Except maybe my last.”
“Please, René, I tried, but it’s too risky for him to give information over the phone.”
“How can I just walk into the morgue and get him to talk?”
“But you won’t have to,” she said. “He’s willing, I’ve already arranged it. He’s lecturing at the musée des Moulages.”
René drew a breath. “The Plaster Museum?”
“Part of l’hôpital Saint-Louis; it’s in the Dermatology research wing,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Boulevard du Temple.
“Bon, you’re two Métro stops away.”
“I like to drive.”
“Even closer. Park by the northeast entrance,” she said, concern in her voice. “Your legs bothering you?”
“Me? Pas de tout, not at all, doing great, I need this exercise, it’s keeping me in shape,” he said rubbing his aching hip. He lifted his swollen ankle to rest on the green wood-slatted bench, wishing he could ice it. “Don’t worry about me. Take care of yourself.”
BY THE time René found the musée des Moulages in hôpital Saint-Louis, he realized this was the third hospital he’d been in this week. And a temple of dermatology, René noted, renowned for the treatment of plague victims, syphilis, psoriasis, ringworm, and leprosy.
Built by Henri IV, in rose-colored brick and stone, the walled hospital resembled a medieval internment camp. Distinctive, but less beautiful than the Place des Vosges, his other seventeenth century construction, the hospital had been built to combat epidemics. And isolate the Black Death, the plague raging at the time.
And getting around in it was hard on René’s short legs.
The Musée des Moulages, reminiscent of a nineteenth century natural history museum, would have made Jules Verne feel at home. One hundred and sixty-two glass showcases containing plaster samples illustrating various skin diseases lined the four sides of the huge rectangular room. More lighted showcases were reached by spiral staircases leading to long balconies running the length of the room. Glass-enclosed wooden cabinets held all manner of leprous fingers, limbs, ears and even faces pocked with bumps and lesions. Faded numbers in old script were tacked above each.