A world-weary sigh escaped Gisela’s lips. She played with the tobacco with her pinkie and offered a cigarette to Aimée.
With an effort, Aimée refused.
Gisela lit up and inhaled deeply.
Aimée wanted to suck in the smoky gray spiral mounting lazily to her high ceiling. Instead, she fingered her pocket for Nicorette gum but found only a crumpled wrapper.
“I met journalists, old colleagues of my mother,” Gisela said. “They once respected her. Even now some believe mother was set up by the Polizei and a bungling Bundeswehr who killed her in prison, fabricated her suicide.”
To Aimée, Gisela’s matter-of-fact tone seemed at odds with her tragic tale.
“I guess I realized we had things in common. And she wasn’t so bad.”
Aimée wondered what she’d have in common with her mother. She had a vague memory of a rally in Boulevard Saint Michel, a candlelit vigil in the biting cold. Aimée wondered if her father had been stationed opposite the protestors, enforcing the other political stance? What kind of couple had they been? She could never remember them fighting. Had she blocked the memory out?
She studied her fingers. Drummed them on her desk. “But you hate your mother, right, Gisela? Hate all of them.”
Gisela squashed her glowing cigarette in the grounds of her espresso. “Don’t you?” Gisela asked.
Aimée finished her espresso in one gulp. “Gisela, don’t you find it hard to hate someone you don’t know?”
Gisela’s eyes flashed. Her lips pursed. “My mother betrayed the cause, so did the others,” she said.
Aimée grew aware of the espresso machine’s escaping steam vapor and the low thrum of the fax machine. Below, on rue du Louvre, the insistent blare of a klaxon sounded.
“Tell me how my mother figures in this, Gisela,” Aimée said. “If you want me to turn helpful.”
“She joined Jean-Paul Sartre to interview Haader in prison. They hooked up there.”
“Tell me something new,” Aimée said. Alain Vigot, Romain Figeac’s editor, had already intimated as much.
“Your mother stole Laborde’s stash,” Gisela said.
Wary, Aimée stood up. Laborde, the industrialist. Had the stash been placed in Liane Barolet’s mother’s coffin?
“Work with me,” Gisela said, “I know people. People who move things, no questions asked.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Gisela leaned forward, intense, confrontational. “But she’s sent you something … something only you can understand.”
Aimée’s spine prickled. Modigliani, in her Emil book?
She noted dark hair growing in, jaggedly, at Gisela’s roots, a bad dye job. Gisela seemed a mixture of chic and seedy, like the Sentier. Like this whole affair. She wanted Gisela gone.
“Just thank me for the coffee, since you know nothing about”—she hesitated, then continued—“my mother. I understand if you must be on your way. I’ve got work….”
Gisela didn’t move. “We’ll share.”
Jutta had said the same thing.
Aimée ruffled her spiky hair. Maybe she was tired and that’s why they all sounded the same. She’d tried to be polite but it hadn’t worked. This woman was getting to her. “Clue me in. Or leave.”
“The tower,” Gisela said.
Tour Jean-Sans-Peur in the Sentier?
An awful feeling hit her. Turned her stomach. Was that why Jutta had set their meeting there?
“You saw Jutta Hald,” Aimée said, her breathing slowed.
“Not in this lifetime,” Gisela said.
“Of course, you thought the Laborde cache was in the tower, but you couldn’t find it. Jutta wouldn’t talk, then you killed her.”
“Not me,” Gisela said. “Maybe it was your mother.”
Her mother?
She couldn’t breathe. Had her mother sent her the book?
The familiar hiss of the espresso machine, the whine of a passing bus below shifted to another plane. A layer where familiarity lied. She floated, adrift in a netherworld of disguised people. Like the old nightmare of her childhood … opening doors, people pulling off masks revealing another mask, then another. No persona real or tangible.
Sweat beaded her lip.
She saw a bulge in Gisela’s open purse. Something glinted dully. How stupid she was … Gisela carried a gun despite tight French gun control. What if she had come ready to use it?
Aimée clutched her desk. Her compact 9 mm. Beretta was in the drawer. She hooked her fingers around the drawer handle.
Gisela reached into her purse.
“Start talking. Or I’ll get upset,” Aimée said, raising the Beretta slowly. “Quite upset. Put your piece down.”
“Live by the gun,” Gisela nodded. Her gaze held no fear. “Marcus Haader liked to spout that. It was his favorite saying.”
Aimée held her hand steady.
“It’s in our blood,” Gisela said, her eyes gleaming. She laid a stun gun on Aimée’s desk. “We deserve the spoils.”
Only a stun gun! Stop it, Aimée told herself, gain control. This woman unnerved her.
Aimée lowered her Beretta, ignoring the shaking in her other hand.
“Do you have a license for that?”
Gisela grinned. “Do you?”
“I’m a detective,” Aimée said. Too bad the Beretta wasn’t registered. But Gisela wouldn’t know that.
“What happened to your hand?” Gisela said.
“You mean the scar? Terrorists blew up my father, I got in the way.”
“A real daughter of the Revolution.” Gisela’s eyes shone. “You see, we’re meant to carry on. Your mother hid the contents of the industrialist’s safe. Now we need that money to finance our movement.”
So that’s what this was all about.
“If that were true, after twenty years why do you think anything would be left?”
“We’ll carry on. We deserve it. Not all the bonds were cashed. They show up every so often.”
“Bonds?”
“And land and mine deeds, in Africa.”
“Why come to me now?”
Silence.
“So that’s what Jutta Hald was after,” Aimée said. “She thought my mother hid them? So my mother’s alive?”
Gisela said nothing.
Aimée laid the gun back in the drawer. Scooped the tobacco into a pile and into the trash can.
“How old are you, Gisela?”
Gisela hesitated for the first time, unprepared for this question.
“Did you forget when you were born?” Aimée asked.
“1962,” Gisela said.
The woman was a fake. From the clippings, Aimée knew Ul-rike Rofmein had twins in 1963. This woman lied.
“Too late … wrong.” She gestured to the door. “Better luck with the next one on your list. Sorry, I’m not in sympathy with sisterhood and shared terrorist memories. I don’t buy your story.”
“Maybe you don’t like what I have to say,” Gisela shrugged. She stood and walked to the door. “Your mother wasn’t a saint,” she said. “Get used to it.”
Aimée felt like hurling the espresso machine at Gisela.
“If you don’t cooperate, things might get … how do you say it?” Gisela paused. “Sticky for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your health and your partner’s, for one thing.”
Aimée froze. “He’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep in touch,” Gisela said with a small smile. “I’m good at that.”
By the time Aimée could move again, Gisela had ducked around the door. Her footsteps clicked faintly in the distance.
Aimée backed into the espresso machine, knocking it over. Hot muddy grounds, broken shards of black plastic, and mangled metal mesh littered the wood parquet. A fine chocolate-hued spray arced over her poster of the Miles Davis concert at the Olympia. Like old blood.
Aimée sagged and slid down her desk leg to the floor, fighting tears. She sprawled there, in the damp mess.