The club, formerly a bathhouse, was locked. The thirties sign of now-rusted neon reading Pigalle Bains Douches protruded from the white-tiled wall. He paced in front of the door, the light crust of snow crunching under his worn boots, wondering why a detective was looking for him and wishing more than five public baths remained in Paris. He’d like to warm up, get the chill out of his bones.
“You’re late,” said Pascal, the owner of the club, meeting him at the door.
So was he, Lucien wanted to say.
Pascal, all in black, pulled a key chain from his suede jacket and unlocked the wooden door. He switched on the lights illuminating the tiled walls, red-and-silver-velvet-wallpapered bar cove, faux-zebra-skin seat covers, and gilt-framed mirrors. The decor exuded a faint air of bordello.
“I’ll set up,” Lucien said, pulling out his compact turntable.
“You spin lounge, followed by acid jazz, and then the playwright reads,” said Pascal, a gruff, no-nonsense Auvergnat, who watched every centime and ran a tight ship, like most bougnats, who had migrated from the Auvergne countryside at the turn of the century. They still operated a good number of cafés. Pascal consulted a ledger on the counter. “A mec’s been looking for you.”
Here, too? Lucien kept his hand steady. “The mec have a name?”
Pascal ran his finger over the ledger. “A foreign type, maybe Corsican, with bleached-blond hair.”
The waiter from Bastia who had served at Félix’s? Good news! Then Félix was still anxious to sign the contract.
Lucien connected the turntable and his equipment in a hurry. “May I use your phone?”
“Make it quick,” Pascal said. Paused. “No trouble, eh? I don’t want any trouble here.”
Little did Pascal know that once he signed the contract, he’d be out of here so fast.
“Can’t I have friends, Pascal?”
“Friends like that?”
Lucien left it alone, ignoring his barbed question. “Allô, Félix?” he said into the telephone.
“My boy, you disappeared last night,” Félix said.
Hadn’t Marie-Dominique explained? But why should she mention an inconvenient old lover who’d appeared, then disappeared.
“Things got sticky, Félix. I didn’t have ID. . . .”
“Make it up to me, eh? Stop by my home and sign the contract before you go to the theatre. Kouros, from SOUNDWERX, will come to hear your show tonight.”
LUCIEN DESCENDED the ice-crusted staircase from Place des Abbesses with eager steps on his way to sign Félix’s contract. He pulled his collar up against the wind and that’s when he saw the flic on the corner of rue Veron. The flare of a match illuminated the face of the man he’d seen questioning partygoers last night. The flic was only a few feet away. Lucien ducked into a doorway. Above him, a carved plaque stated, “1872, site of the first free theatre” and he realized he stood under a nude reclining female reading a book sculpted in the stone portal.
“No sign of him. Not yet,” the flic said into his phone. “Copy me on the bomb alert.”
Were they looking for him? Some mecs, a detective, and now the flics? When a couple passed arm in arm under the globed light, he hurried behind them back up the steps. At Place des Abbesses, outside a bookshop, he saw the headlines in France Soir: CORSICAN BOMB THREATS—ARMATA CORSA SEPARATIST RING ROUNDED UP.
Again?
He bought a paper and scanned the article. “Reports of bombing threats in Ajaccio and on the French mainland have sparked heightened security by the DPJ. Several Paris targets have been named by the Armata Corsa. . . .”
He shuddered. “Find and round up the Corsicans” time. If he signed the contract, would it give him credibility? But he couldn’t tell Félix his problems, at least until he in turn had signed. He’d avoid Marie-Dominique, sure she would do the same, unable to face her disdain or his feelings for her. At a phone cabin, he inserted a calling card with ten francs left on it. Félix’s answering machine responded.
“Félix, something’s come up. I’m sorry but please meet me at the theatre with the contract” was the message he left.
Lucien hurried into the dusk, avoiding the green street sweepers’ spray on the cobbles.
Tuesday Afternoon
RENÉ SHIFTED ON THE wet cobblestones. Thank God he’d worn his thermal underwear and several layers under the painter’s smock. So far he’d seen no prostitute or anyone else in or around the building.
He shouldn’t have followed through on his big idea. What a joke. He’d just wasted an afternoon.
Had he really believed he could pull this off? Feeling sheepish, he’d hidden his online PI class from Aimée. If he kept at it, in a year or more he’d have enough credits to earn a PI license. The difficulty had been the undercover work required for field research credit. This had seemed to be a golden opportunity.
But a freezing afternoon spent with no result . . . . Delusional, that’s what he was. No one his size could do undercover surveillance. After all this effort, it rankled. He’d worked a deal with an acting troupe, rented a costume—all in all a costly project just so he could stand outside in the cold. He felt like an idiot, but without the costume to impersonate Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the crippled artist famous for sketching Montmartre nightlife, he’d never have fit into the neighborhood.
One of the actors pumped an accordion, his fingers racing over the keys. A tall thin woman with bright red hair piled on her head 1890s style, black skirt and ruffled pantaloons à la Jane Avril from a Moulin Rouge poster, did the cancan on the slick pavement. A cluster of small schoolchildren divided their attention between her and René. Le vieux Paris! Something they’d heard of in between bouts of video games. Most stole glances at the fun fair carousel being set up near the Metro exit.
A pale-faced boy close to René’s height nudged him. “Can I see?”
René showed him a prepared pastel, a print of one Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had done while studying in an atelier nearby. Now the atelier was part bathroom-fixture warehouse and part dance studio.
He’d heard the teacher identify the group. They were from the local école primaire around the corner and he figured the boy must live nearby. This was René’s first chance to question someone and it turned out to be a little poulbot, a pint-sized Montmartrois with too-short jacket sleeves revealing a dirty shirt beneath.
“You live on the square?” René asked.
The boy shook his head. “Over there.” He pointed to a building down the steps from the Abbesses. “But we’ve lived lots of places.”
René’s interest heightened. Establish rapport, wasn’t that what the detective manuals said? “You mean the building with scaffolding?”
The building where Jacques had been shot.
“Across the street, on the top floor,” the boy said. “I pull my book bag up by a rope.”
René controlled his excitement.
“I move a lot, too,” said René. Toulouse-Lautrec had lived all over Montmartre, his landlords kicking him out when he’d been too drunk to pay his rent bill.
From a wax-paper bag in his pocket, René pulled a villageoise, Montmartre’s brioche-type specialty. The small boy sniffed and looked with longing at what René held.