“I thought he’d show tonight,” Aimée said, as if to herself. “I promised to return his mix.”
The woman shrugged, shifting on her chunky platform boots.
“That other DJ, you know, the Corsican musician?”
The woman’s black eyes narrowed. “Tonight’s goth.”
Aimée scanned the crowd. “He spins all over. I really have to find him.” She paused. “Bet your boyfriend knows him. Introduce me?” Unacquainted with the protocol, she figured it was wise to ask for an introduction, after noticing the pointed black nails and vial of garnet liquid, like blood, hanging from the woman’s neck.
“He’s busy,” she said. “Can’t you see?”
“Trouble, I’ve got trouble, if I don’t find the Corsican,” Aimée said. The Stella Artois bottle the goth held was empty. “Ask him for me, eh? I’ll get you a beer while you do.”
Hesitation painted the woman’s face as the DJ announced a break. By the time Aimée returned, they were standing together. Aimée handed her the beer and the woman rewarded her with another shrug and passed it to her boyfriend.
“Corsican? I know the one you mean,” the DJ said, reaching out his ringed hand. “He’s not here. I’ll give him the mix.”
She didn’t know what to do. She hesitated. What if she gave him a disc and he played it? Though she doubted one DJ would handle another’s mix—wasn’t it their signature, their stock in trade—? There was something about a man with black nail polish and a better manicure than hers that she didn’t trust. The only things in her bag were empty floppy discs.
“Dark hair and eyes, a musician who mixes polyphony and techno. We’re talking about the same one?”
“You’re the second one tonight.” The DJ made a face.
Second one?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s goth time, not laid-back time,” he said, “That one’s a lightweight.” He looked bored, gave a dismissive sigh. “Better luck in the chill room.”
So she wasn’t the only one looking for Sarti.
Chill room . . . was that here or at another club? She made her way back toward the bar and followed a couple into the dark cavern behind, crowded with milling goths. Their black attire was like a uniform. The smoke and the rotting smell from the walls not masked by the papier d’arménie was getting to her. And in the humid, swamplike air her hair extensions had begun to droop. Already the temporary adhesive had melted into telltale glop on her neck. If she didn’t leave soon they’d come off in big clumps. She pulled a net scarf over her head and hoped they’d stay attached.
Drum and bass with a few sampled jazz riffs drifted from somewhere. She followed the beat into another cavern where a mixed crowd lay sprawled on sofas or danced with closed eyes.
The man unpacking his coffin box—a hard plastic carry case for turntables—nodded at her question. “DJ Ketlogic, a chill-room man for sure,” he said. “Good trance mix.”
She smiled, as if she understood what he meant. “Where is he?”
“You missed him.”
BACK IN MONTMARTRE she found a third club. At least she could take off the fake hair and stuff it in her bag now. Anything that didn’t kill you made you stronger. Wasn’t that what they said?
She entered the smoke-filled club now pulsing with techno located in a once elegant hotel particulier with high ceilings. The yawning marble fireplace was piled with alternative newspapers. There was a tarnished fin de siècle mirror above it and a theatre space up the stone stairs, so worn they had almost melted.
“DJ Ketlogic spinning tonight?” she asked.
“Check the bar,” said a man with a shaved head and dead brown eyes.
Lucien himself stood there by the brass-handled beer pulls. Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Just when she’d found Lucien.
“Allô?” she said, impatient.
“Aimée,” Saj said. “You had a good idea. I burrowed around and discovered a connection between the central listening center at Les Invalides and the Big Ears.”
“You did?” Never mind how—Saj had taken her idea and run with it. And found a connection! “Go on, Saj,” she said, watching Lucien gather up his music case.
“They’re monitoring Montmartre from a flat in the quartier, right there! Sounds like a sweet setup. Cozy, they just ordered Chinese takeout. Bet they’ll hear us tomorrow or whenever when they decrypt this.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Sixteen, rue Nicollet. Watch out.”
“Superbe, Saj.”
She’d better get there before they shut it down. But, having finally found Lucien, she couldn’t just leave empty-handed. As if he sensed her presence, he turned. His black eyes glittered in the dim light of the bar as he looked her up and down.
“Your usual attire?”
She’d forgotten her goth outfit. No wonder people had given her a wide berth in the Metro.
“Makes life interesting,” she said. She moved toward him and took his arm.
“Like to live on the edge, don’t you?” he said.
“They’ve mounted an operation and you’re it,” she said in his ear. “I’m supposed to turn you in. I’ll have to unless you guide me to Petru or help me find him.”
“You just don’t give up, do you?”
“If I do they’ll land you like a fat fish. Tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. Your choice.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know where the salaud went.”
“Right now, I believe you. But you can help me find him. Let’s catch a taxi.”
THE STEEP stairs of rue Nicollet, a dark narrow seam on the less fashionable side of Sacré Coeur, loomed overhead. Strains of African music floated from an open window. Green plastic garbage containers stood by a gate on the steps; tree branches cast sticklike shadows over number 16’s small walled courtyard. Before Aimée could ask Lucien to wait, she heard groaning in the shadows. Human moans. Embarrassed, she wondered if they’d stumbled on an amorous couple. Or . . . the groaning escalated . . . were they the sounds of someone in pain?
She skirted the garbage containers and stood on the dark wet pavement leading to a back building. A figure huddled against the rear wall. She shone her penlight on it to reveal a man, his black leather coat torn, bleeding onto the brown, sodden leaves. Petru.
“Salaud, bastardo,” Lucien swore, followed by more words in Corsican she couldn’t understand. He’d pulled out a knife and thrust it at the shaking Petru.
“Stop!” She never thought she’d protect this mec but now she pulled at Lucien’s arm. “Wait, I have to talk to him.”
“It’s going down now,” gasped a white-faced Petru. “The guns, the rocket launchers. I have to tell them. . . .”
“Tell the DST?”
He nodded, slumping further. His face creased in pain.
So Petru was an informer for the DST.
“Liar, you framed me,” Lucien accused, shaking Aimée off.
“Why did you pay Cloclo?” Aimée asked.
“To keep tabs on you,” Petru gasped. “What you found out. I played along, trying to find the real villain, but the DST thinks it’s you, Lucien. I have to tell them. . . .”
“Who’s behind it?” She knelt, ripped off the hem of her black net dress, and used it to stanch Petru’s leg wound. Lights blazed in an upstairs flat. Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket once again but she ignored it. She heard doors slam, footsteps. The DST. Not the folks she’d care to meet on these dark stairs.
“Who, Petru?”
His eyelids fluttered. “Conari’s site . . . the hospital . . . tunnel.”
Conari . . . the hospital. Think, she had to think. She pulled Lucien back.