“I keep the light on over the sink so as not to disturb Paul,” she said. “Low, like this.”
Isabelle stood and turned off the overhead light. A soft pink glow bathed the corner. “I could see out but, sitting here, they wouldn’t see me.”
René glanced at his watch and stiffened. “It’s late, shouldn’t Paul be in bed? Where is he?”
“Hiding, as usual. But he always comes home, sooner or later.”
“Isabelle, he could be in danger. Have you thought of that? Was the light on when he put the bookbag on the table?”
Something registered in her eyes. She’d had a new thought.
“What is it, Isabelle?”
Whether it was the wine or the warmth dribbling from the oven or both, she rubbed her cheek and volunteered more information.
“This mec asked my neighbor where Paul was. He’s rough, arrogant, pushes his way around the quartier. Why did he want Paul?”
René’s heart sank. “Maybe Paul’s hiding from someone. Maybe that’s why he’s so late.”
Or maybe he’d been caught. Where the hell was Aimée?
She grabbed the wineglass. Her hand trembled, sloshing red driblets on the tabletop. Like blood, René thought.
“We’ll have to move,” she said.
“You can’t run away,” he told her. “Call the police.”
“Police? No.”
“If he’s in danger, you have to. After he’s found, and you can tell the lawyer what you know, you’ll both be safe. I promise.” At least he hoped so.
She hesitated. “I stay away from the flics. I have a record.”
“What happened in the past doesn’t matter,” he said. “Think of Paul.”
He saw the struggle in her face.
“He could come home any minute.”
René hoped so. Otherwise he’d have to look for him.
“Now, tell me where he might be hiding.”
Thursday Night
“SO , MUSICIAN, WHY’ S THE mec following you, or is it the other way round?” Aimée said. Her breath, a vapor trail, dissipated in the night air over the lighted outdoor ice rink at Rotonde de la Villette. “I need to know.”
“You and me both,” Lucien Sarti said, leaning on the rail, looking down.
A few skaters, mostly couples at this time of night, crossed the ice. The music almost drowned out the distant screeching of brakes from the overhead Metro line at Stalingrad.
“He’s the one trying to frame me.”
“For terrorism?” she asked. “Is he part of your Separatist cell, gone rogue?”
He shook his head.
Behind them loomed the domed rotunda of La Villette, a circular arcade fronted by Doric columns, a barracks during the Commune, later a salt depot. Ahead lay the wide dark-water basin that funneled below them and narrowed into Canal Saint Martin.
They were in an open public place at least, although only a few figures, huddled against the bone-chilling cold, waited in line at the crêperie stall.
Her cold thigh still felt the warmth of his pressing against her. Instinct screamed that it must be the other mec who Cloclo had meant. Hadn’t Lucien Sarti defended her? But “Never assume,” had been her father’s dictum.
He pulled the knife from his pocket, holding it low. A worn wooden hilt, a serated blade. “A fish gutter,” he said. “The weapon of choice on the Bastia docks.”
She knew they were also used in restaurant kitchens. Then her cell phone trilled. René? She pressed Answer.
“Aimée, forgive the late notice.” The husky voice of Martine, her best friend since the lycée, boomed over the line. “Gilles shot more pheasant than we can eat in a lifetime. They’re plucked, herbed, and roasting. And there’s a perfect Brillat-Savarin for after dinner. Say you and Guy will come, please.”
These days, Martine inhabited the world of the Sixteenth Arrondissement. Soirées and châteaux on the weekend. Courtesy of her boyfriend, Gilles. But that milieu was staid and lifeless to Aimée.
“Martine, I can’t talk,” she whispered, turning toward the canal.
“Did you and Guy fight again?”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“You heard me, Aimée.”
No use pretending. Might as well come clean. She could never keep the truth from Martine for long.
She cupped her hand over her mouth. “Guy moved out, Martine,” she whispered. “This is not a good time.” She squirmed, embarrassed that Lucien Sarti might overhear her.
“Then, of course, you must come!” Martine said, her husky voice rising. “Gilles’s colleague from Le Point’s here. You’d like him.”
The conservative right-leaning journal, known for nostalgic articles on the de Gaulle era? Not likely.
“Look, this mec’s chasing me. . . .” Aimée whispered.
“Lust often, love always, as they say. You sure don’t let the grass grow under your heels!” Martine said. “A bad boy?”
“Bad-bad.”
“Tiens! You mean . . . nom de Dieu! Not this again . . . you’re not getting involved!”
“Later, Martine.” She clicked her phone off and turned back.
“Your man moved out, eh?” Lucien said.
She wanted the metal sewer lid under her feet to open up.
Sarti leaned his long legs against the skating-rink fence. The glittering quayside lights reflected in his eyes. Faraway eyes. “My woman . . . once she was my woman . . . belongs to someone else now.”
“I’m sorry.” Caught off balance, she didn’t know what else to say. These things happened. As she well knew.
“Life’s like a train,” he said, his voice low. “I got off too soon.”
Maybe she had, too. Not tried hard enough with Guy. Now, in some way, she felt that she and Sarti shared something, as if they paddled in the same boat.
She had to get back to the point.
“Let’s discuss that guy, the one framing you. Your doppel-gänger? How do you know him?”
“Petru?”
“If he’s the one who looks so much like you.”
“He’s from another clan,” Lucien Sarti told her. “He’s different from me.”
Clan? Sounded old-fashioned, insular.
“What do you mean?” she asked. She kept her eye on the sparse crowd at the crêpe stall under the arcade. A kerosene lantern hung from the cart. She heard the scraping of ice skates, scattered laughter of couples, and the strains of a Strauss waltz wavering on the wind.
He should have been fearful, but Lucien Sarti appeared sad and wistful. He didn’t seem like a killer.
“I miss the rhythm of village life,” he said. “Here the horns beep at a red light, one runs from one Metro stop to the next. Rushing, always rushing. In Corsica the pace of life is human.”
“Petru appears to have adapted pretty well,” she said. “Who does he work for?”
“You should know,” he said.
She thought quickly. Of course. Yann Marant had said Lucien Sarti had arrived at the party later. “You were at Monsieur Conari’s party. How do Petru and his goons fit in?”
“Goons? All I know is that she . . . someone warned me Petru had planted terrorist pamphlets in the recording studio and arranged for the flics to arrest me.”
“Do you believe this woman?”
His eyebrows rose. “Why should I doubt her?”
Why frame him as a terrorist? How did that connect to Jacques’s murder? Too many pieces—odd, disparate ones. How to connect them?
“Why would Petru implicate you, then follow you?”
“Like I said, he’s not from my village.” Lucien paused with a tight smile. “Who knows? My great-uncle could have stolen his father’s mule. Eh, it’s just like you Parisians characterize us.”