Finally!
“Where have you been, Christian? You didn’t show up at your appointment to meet Etienne or at the bank. I’ve been calling you,” she said. “Your father’s editor, Vigot, knows more than he’s saying about—”
“I know,” Christian interrupted, his voice slurred. “Forget that … Idrissa’s in trouble.”
“Forget it?” she asked, angered at being brushed off. “Do you know if Vigot’s got your father’s manuscript?”
“No, but Vigot said …”
She heard a muffled sound, as if Christian had put his hand over the phone.
And then he hung up.
Worried, she hit the call-back button but the line was busy. Was he doped up and in trouble himself?
She’d keep trying his number as she headed toward Mala’s apartment to find Idrissa.
No one answered the doorbell. Club Exe was a block away, maybe she’d find Mala there.
The club’s narrow entrance on rue Poissonnière smelled of disinfectant. A sure sign of a health inspection or the rumor of one, Aimée thought. Clubs also spiffed up when they were nervous about immigration authority visits.
“I’d like to speak with Mala,” said Aimée.
“She’s not working tonight.”
Great!
“Seen Idrissa Diaffa?”
“Not here anymore,” the voice said. Only a brown elongated neck was visible above the man’s red, yellow, and green Rasta-style tank top. His face was hidden by the Club Exe’s cracked ticket-booth shade. Pounding techno music sounded from within.
“But the advertisement says she’s still here.” Aimée pointed to the sign. Club Exe advertised Tuesdays through Thursdays as “acoustic nights with Idrissa, accompanied on the kora by Ousmane.”
“That’s old … but there’s music upstairs,” the voice said. “Remix downstairs. Either way, thirty francs.”
“Pas de problème,” she said. Fine, she’d see if anyone knew Idrissa’s whereabouts or whether Ousmane had any idea where she was.
She passed the francs over worn wood. A brown hand took hers and stamped her wrist with the image of a red skeleton key. Inside, the techno beat amped up, savaging Aimée’s ears. Several men with dreadlocks leaned on the bar, an old converted zinc. They nodded at her while sipping orange punch gingembre, a Senegalese drink packing a rum wallop.
She found the back stairs. By the rear kitchen, she smelled and heard the hiss of palm oil spattering in a pan. The cook, his back to her, stood tasting a pot of tibouaiénne fish and rice.
On the next landing, past the public telephone, was a room with a small stage at the end. Patrons sat on banquettes around tables below smoky mirrors lining the walls. Some ate, most drank. It was a mixed crowd: young and old, white and black, listening to the strains of griot-inspired music. An old man wearing a long striped orange robe and what looked like a red velvet pillbox hat played the kora. He bore no resemblance to Ousmane in the photo with Idrissa.
He sang and plucked at the smooth calabash gourd backed by animal skin. Strings held in place by metal studs went up the long-necked instrument.
Aimée saw no sign of Idrissa. She walked down the side hall and peered backstage. A young woman, short braids poking from her curly hair, stacked rolls of napkins and paper goods over a bricked-in mantel.
“Bonsoir, I’m looking for Idrissa,” she said.
The woman shrugged, then moved her hands in what Aimée figured was sign language.
“Muette?”
The woman nodded. She was mute.
“Ousmane Sada?”
The woman picked up a flyer and pointed to the name Mbouela, a kora player “direct from Côte d’Ivoire.” “So, Ousmane’s gone?” Aimée asked.
The young woman nodded.
“What about Idrissa?” Aimée asked, pointing toward a dressing room. Maybe there’d be someone in there who knew her.
The woman shrugged.
“Merci.” Aimée smiled. “I’ll just have a quick look.”
The young woman returned to stacking paper goods.
The rectangular dressing room lay empty except for the costume of a clown in black and white, a Pierrot. Large windows overlooked the peaks of a wrought-iron-and-glass roof. Beyond that lay the tiled rooftops of the Sentier.
“The bitch … ,” Aimée heard someone mutter, “where is she?”
She heard a crash as something fell to the floor. She didn’t feel like waiting around to see whom they were looking for. She ducked out the open window. Below her spread the long glass-covered roof of Passage du Caire, the oldest passage in Paris.
On her left was an outdoor spiral staircase, remnant of an old conduit to the quarters above the passage where shop owners lived. She stepped out of the window and reached across to the outdoor metal staircase, pulled herself up by the railing, and climbed over. By the time she’d descended the stairs and reached the passage, the shop owners had long since closed and locked their doors. She made it out to the small triangular square of Place Ste-Foy.
Aimée looked back but no one had followed her. She paused at the dead end of rue Saint Spire. Where had Idrissa gone? She’d found no answers at the club or when she tried phoning her friend’s apartment. If Idrissa was in danger, Aimée didn’t know how to help her or where to look next.
And what did Christian’s comment about Vigot mean? She hit the call-back button. But the phone rang and rang. No answer.
Stumped, Aimée sat down on a green bench, the Passage du Caire behind her, and pulled out her notepad. Her mother remained a mystery. As did everything else.
The Place Ste-Foy lay quiet: the cafe s and wholesale clothing shops shuttered, plastic bags filled to bursting with cloth remnants and overflowing green garbage bins propped under the trees. The only sign of life was a young boy kicking a soccer ball under the watchful eye of an old woman, who wore a babushka. Aimée wondered what the child was doing up so late. Had it been too hot for him to sleep?
“Attention, Vanya,” the old woman said when his ball bounced against the stone walls of an occupied building. “Kick someplace else.”
A moped rode by, the tinny-sounding motor echoing in the square. Aimée heard its putt-putting as it sped into the distance. Only an occasional prostitute with her client turned into the ancient Passage Ste-Foy under the Roseline clothing sign.
Above her, dim lights from the narrow medieval apartments dotted the night. She thought Atget, who photographed the place in the 1900s, would probably still recognize the square. In a quartier with no green spaces but these few skinny trees, this warm pocket, Aimée realized, comprised nature and park to a titi like Vanya.
On the graph-patterned notebook page, she wrote three names, Christian, Romain, and Idrissa, and put question marks next to them. After Christian’s name she wrote “dope” and “guilt,” then connected the arrows to Romain. Christian had assumed responsibility for his father’s suicide but his father had been murdered.
She connected Jutta and her mother and wrote “Labordecache—Modigliani paintings?” None of this made any sense. Tired, she figured she better sleep on it. Aimée shouldered her bag and stood. The babushka’s tone rose in anger. The young boy had kicked the ball into a garbage bag, knocking it over. Scraps and garbage swirled in the breeze, littering the deserted square. Cloth bits blew by Aimée’s sandals. She looked over. At first she thought she saw the torso of a dummy, a mannequin. She stared.
A black mannequin.
Something was wrong.
Aimée ran over as the babushka screamed, covering the boy’s eyes with her hands. Aimée tried to shield their view.