“Did I include you mecs in my conversation?” Theo frowned.
The oil fumes from the kerosene heater permeated the air. Her nose itched and she sneezed. She caught Theo looking at her legs.
The burgundy, smooth and full bodied, left a tart aftertaste.
“So we should work faster and end up in the quarries?” Theo asked, throwing up his arms.
“Typical union talk,” said the cigar smoker. “Always whining.”
“Limestone quarry pockets honeycomb the foundation. On this part of the hill it’s like you’ve got to put on velvet gloves just to move a few centimeters of earth.”
“He’s right,” said Marcus, wiping down the counter. “We had to get a special clearance to replace a water pipe!”
A vigorous discussion ensued, reminding her of her grandmother’s Auvergnat village, where the café was the social scene on winter nights. Familiar, like a worn blanket. But instead of farmers, the café patrons mirrored the face of the butte: bricklayers, intellectuals, a reporter from Le Canard Echaine, the satirical newspaper, and retired bureaucrats.
The barman, Marcus, refilled her glass and winked. “On Theo.”
“Santé,” she said, raising her glass, figuring the lull in the conversation was a good time to ask questions. “Theo, wasn’t there a shooting where you work?”
“Caused another delay,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Some flic offed another flic.”
“That’s not what I heard,” she said. The conversation paused. “My neighbor saw men, not cops, shooting on the roof.”
“What could your neighbor see in a freak snowstorm? She must enjoy freezing her eyeballs off. Some kind of record, the amount of snow that fell that night.”
“I heard that the storm broke right after the shooting,” Aimée said.
“To see anything in that weather, she must have laser vision.”
Before she could press further, Cloclo walked in, nodded to the regulars, and spied Aimée. Cloclo indicated a table in back underneath a sloping soot-stained glass roof. She remembered her grandfather saying, “Prostitutes are a thousand times more honorable than actresses. The first sell their bodies; the second, their souls, and more.”
“A pastis, if you’re buying,” Cloclo said, as she passed Aimée at the counter.
By the time Aimée brought over the drink, Cloclo had divested herself of her long black coat. Sparkling costume jewelry clinked in her deep cleavage, and pastel pink Diamonique bracelets encircled her wrists.
“No wonder your nickname is Cloclo,” Aimée said.
“I’m on my feet all day,” she said. “I like something to brighten me up.”
On her knees, too, Aimée thought, noticing the snags and a run in her black sheer stockings. Aimée palmed the promised francs under the table into Cloclo’s waiting hand. Cloclo’s cheap floral scent mingled with the anise smell of the pastis.
“We can talk but I don’t have much to say,” she said.
Great. She’d just slipped her the last of her cash. No taxi-ride home on a night that promised to freeze the gutter water.
“Listen, Cloclo, think of helping me as helping my friend. She’s in a coma from the blow she got up there. Hard to go downhill from there.”
“This friend . . . your friend, she’s the flic, right?”
Aimée nodded. “We’ve been friends since we were ten years old. Our fathers worked the beat up here. Laure always had an inferiority complex. Her harelip—”
“I know the one. Young,” Cloclo interrupted.
“She treat you right?”
“Left me alone.” Cloclo added water to the pastis, stirring it to a cloudy mixture. She took a long sip, her eyes never leaving Aimée’s face. Aimée tried to ignore the acrid smell of anise.
For Cloclo, in her line of work, that would be treating someone right.
“Laure wouldn’t kill her partner. No matter what.”
“I didn’t like him.”
Aimée’s ears perked up. “Her partner, Jacques?”
Cloclo shook her head and ran a finger over a black-penciled eyebrow.
“Do you know what Jacques was doing up on the roof?”
“Jacques’s not who I meant,” she said, glancing at her Diamonique watch.
Startled, Aimée leaned forward. “Who do you mean?”
Something shuttered behind Cloclo’s eyes.
“It’s getting late,” Cloclo said.
Was she afraid? “Sorry, go ahead. I thought you meant her partner, Jacques.” Aimée felt the vibration of Cloclo’s black stiletto pump tapping the wooden floor.
“That mec. He thinks he owns the rue, you know the type I mean?”
Aimée thought back to the musician she’d seen in the doorway, the one Conari had identified as Lucien Sarti.
“Dark skin, eyes, and hair, a musician. You mean him?” Aimée asked.
“Not that good-looker.”
“Then I don’t know who you mean.”
“The guy who gives me a hard time—a crude type,” Cloclo said. “Not the one who carries a music case.”
Near them a chair scraped over the floor, a voice rang out, “Adieu, mes amies.”
Cloclo waved to an old man shuffling out.
Aimée had to focus Cloclo on this other mec. “Did he know Laure and her partner?”
”How well he knew her partner, that I don’t know,” Cloclo said, her tone matter-of-fact. “But he flaunted his connections, you know. Wanted freebies.”
Something stirred in Aimée’s mind. If she could put the details together, some piece would fit.
“Did you see this mec and my friend’s partner together?”
“I saw them talking in that bar on rue Houdon.” Cloclo’s eyes flicked across the room.
Finally, a connection. “Zette’s? Does this guy have a name?”
She shrugged. “Those Corsicans keep to themselves, eh?”
“He’s Corsican, you’re sure?”
Cloclo nodded, and her costume jewelry clicked together on her ample chest.
Aimée tried to put it together. Jacques knew Zette and had been seen with this mec. Had he killed both of them? Why?
“Where can I find this crude Corsican?”
“Him, you don’t want to know. But he goes in and out of the chichi place down the street from my station.”
Station...her place on the street.
“You mean opposite the fancy townhouse across the courtyard from number 18?”
“Oui.”
“Any idea which apartment he goes into?”
She shrugged again and downed her pastis.
“What does he look like?”
“Like any punk with money. Gold around the neck. Stylish hair and clothes.”
Now to the important part.
“Did you hear a shot, Cloclo?”
She shook her head. “I was working, chérie.”
“See anything?”
“Like I said.” She rolled her mascaraed eyes. “Working. But the good-looker walked up from Pigalle and stood in the doorway, you know where the street divides?” She drained her glass.
Aimée pictured the view from Cloclo’s station and the spot where Sarti had stood. If he came from Pigalle, would he have had time to kill Jacques and attack Laure? What about the other mec?
“Here’s my number,” Aimée said, handing Cloclo a card. “Call me the next time you see the Corsican. Night or day. There are more francs in it for you.”
Wednesday Evening