His eyes narrowed. "You can't prove that."
"Proving that Les Blancs Nationaux are bankrolled by the DFU Aryan supremacists isn't too hard. And that's sure to bother people who still remember Germans as Nazis and 'boches.'"
Monsieur Rambuteau's cheeks had become red and his breathing labored. He reached for the bottle of yellow pills on the table in front of him. He shook out three, poured a glass of water, and gulped both. His shallow breath came in short spurts.
Finally, he took a deep breath and folded his hands. "I'm a sick man," he said. "You'd better go." He rose with obvious effort, and walked her to the door. "My son couldn't hurt anyone," he said. In his small, tired eyes, Aimee saw pain.
"You haven't convinced me, Monsieur." She adjusted her beret and looked at him resolutely. "I'll be back."
He closed the door and Aimee walked out into the drizzling rain to the bus stop.
She would prove that Les Blancs Nationaux existed on neo-Nazi money with Rene's help on the computer. Twenty minutes later she stepped off the bus on Ile St. Louis near her flat and entered her neighborhood corner cafe. Chez Mathieu was inviting and much warmer than her apartment.
"Bonjour, Aimee." A short, stout man in a white apron playing a pinball machine in the corner greeted her. Bells clanged as the pinball hit the targets.
"Ça va, Ludovice? A cafe crème, please."
He nodded. The cafe was empty. "I've got bone shanks for your boy." He meant Miles Davis.
"Merci." Aimee smiled and chose a table by the fogged-up windows overlooking the Seine. She spread her papers to dry and took out her laptop, but the marble tabletop was sticky and she needed to put something over it. She pulled out some paper and realized she held Monsieur Rambuteau's tablet. And a folder, too, that she'd picked up by mistake. She opened it.
Lists of Nathalie Rambuteau's personal belongings filled two sheets. Well-thumbed film scripts and old theater programs lined the folder next to a sheaf of photocopies, one labeled "Last Will and Testament." Curious, Aimee opened it. On the top was a codicil, dated three months previously: "Suffering from a terminal illness, I, Nathalie Rambuteau, cannot in good conscience keep secret my son's origins. I cannot break the promise I made to my son's biological mother. Upon my death, I request that my son, Thierry Rambuteau, be informed of his real parentage."
Stapled to the back of it was a note in spidery writing: S.S. letter with Notaire Maurice Barrault. Shaken, she sat back. Who was Thierry's real mother?
"Ça va?" Ludovice asked as he set her cafe on the table.
"God, I don't know. Got a cigarette?"
"I thought you quit." He rubbed his wet hands across his apron and reached in his pocket.
"I did." She accepted a nonfiltered Gauloise and he lit it for her. As she inhaled deeply, the acrid smoke hit the back of her throat, then she felt the familiar jolt as it filled her lungs. She exhaled the smoke, savoring it.
Aimee gestured to the chair. He untied his apron, sat down, and lit a cigarette.
"Let me ask you something-" she began.
"Over a drink. I'll buy." He reached for a bottle of Pernod and two shot glasses and poured. "What's the question?"
The empty cafe was quiet except for the drizzling rain beating on the roof.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" Aimee asked. "Because I think I'm beginning to."
AIMÉE LEFT the cafe when the rain stopped and wearily entered her apartment. Before she could kick off her damp clothes her phone began ringing.
She answered. The nurse she'd slipped several hundred francs to inform her of any changes in Soli Hecht's condition spoke quickly.
"Soli Hecht came out of his coma fifteen minutes ago," she said.
"I'll be right over."
Quickly, she put on black stirrup pants and red high-tops, draped her Chanel scarf around her neck under her jean jacket, and ran down two marble flights of stairs. Her mobylette wobbled and bounced over the uneven cobbles on the Quai. Rain-freshened air mingled with a faint sewer odor as she crossed the Seine. The perfume of Paris, her father had called it. She kept to small streets in the Marais. Outside l'Hôpital St. Catherine, she rammed her moped in a row with all the others and locked it.
Dead cigarette smell and muffled bells on a loudspeaker greeted her as she emerged on the hospital's fifth floor. Overflowing ashtrays littered the waiting area near a row of withering potted plants.
She strode over the scuffed linoleum towards room 525. Loud buzzers sounded as a team of nurses and doctors flew by her.
"Attention! Out of the way," yelled a medic, who wheeled a shock unit past them.
She followed him, feeling a terrible sense of foreboding. A doctor kneeled over an unconscious blue-uniformed policeman, sprawled on the linoleum.
Uneasy, she asked, "What's happened?"
"I'm not sure," the doctor said, feeling for a pulse.
She ran into room 525. Hecht lay naked except for a loose sheet across his waist, wires and tubes hooked into his pasty white body. His skin glistened with perspiration. His forearm showed an injection mark with a bubble of blood.
She rushed to the hallway. "Doctor, this patient needs attention!"
Surprised, he nodded to the nurse and they went in.
Aimee reached for the radio clipped to the policeman's pocket and flicked the transmit button. "Request assist; fifth-floor attack on Soli Hecht-officer down. Do you copy?"
All she heard was static. As she reached for the policeman's pocket, her hand raked a cold metal pistol. She wondered why a Paris flic would carry a Beretta.765. Flics she knew didn't carry this kind of hardware. They weren't even issued firearms. She slid it into her pocket.
More static, then a voice said, "Copy. Backup is on the way. Who is this?"
But Aimee stood at the foot of the bed where doctors and nurses worked on Soli Hecht.
"Adrenalin, on count of three," said a doctor near Soli's chest, which was heaving spasmodically.
She looked at the bubble on his arm, swollen and purple now, heard the labored breathing. Soli's hollow cheekbones contracted as he desperately sucked air. Recognition flashed in his eyes.
The doctor looked up. "Better get the rabbi. Somebody go look. Any family here?"
Aimee ignored her pounding heart and stepped forward. "I'm his niece. My uncle is on twenty-four-hour protection but someone got to him. Injected him with drugs."
The doctor looked up and gave her a quizzical look. "You mean this on his arm…?" He grabbed Soli's chart, hooked to the bed. Scanning it, he shook his head. "He's not responding. Check the IV solution."
"Can't you do something?" Aimee moved towards the head of the bed, feeling guilty for lying. Soli's eyes fixed on her and she returned his gaze.
"Vital responses are minimal," the doctor said.
Aimee bent over, gently touching Soli's arm, which was clammy and moist to the touch. Her conscience bothered her but she didn't know how else to find out. She whispered in his ear, "Soli, what does that photo mean?"
His arms broke loose from the tubes and flailed wildly. He reached out to her.
"You know, Soli, don't you?" She searched his eyes. "Why Lili was killed."
His sharp nails dug like needles into her skin. Aimee winced, drawing back, but he pulled her close. He rasped in her ear, "Don't…let…him…"
"Who?" Aimee said as his arid breath hit her cheek.
Someone touched her shoulder. "The rabbi is here. Let your uncle pray with him."
Soli's eyes rolled up in his head.
"Tell me, Soli, tell me…" But the nurses started pulling her away.
His head shook and he pulled Aimee tighter, his nails raking into her skin.
"Say it! Say his name," Aimee begged.
Soli's other arm flailed, scrabbling at the sheets. "Lo…"