A shrug. “Feliks didn’t want me involved,” he said.
Aimée thought back to the police report Serge had shown her in the morgue. The contents of the Serb’s stomach.
“But Feliks ordered a kebob takeout from rue d’Alésia. The receipt was in his pocket.” She took a guess. “You shared it, didn’t you? Lie to me again and the deal’s off.”
Goran hung his head. Nodded. “He was so blasé. I worried about him. The danger. But he kept saying.…”
Blasé? “Just a routine job, non?” she said. “He’d done this a lot.”
Goran’s shoulders sagged again. “He shouldn’t have been a criminal. Feliks was such a gentle boy when we were children. He changed after Pristina. The massacre in the town square, the roundups in the hills … our family thrown in a pit.”
Pain creased his brow.
“You waited behind the old man’s house by the wall in the rosemary bushes, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I worried for him.”
“But Feliks didn’t come out the back like you thought, right, Goran?”
He looked up. In his lined face, his eyes brimmed with tears. “I heard sirens.”
“Did you see a white van?”
“A white van?”
“Think back. Which way did you run?”
“I went through the park by the wall. Then toward the Métro … non, I waited in the park.”
Aimée nodded. A queasiness rumbled in her stomach. Residue of last night’s drug, she thought, but the horses pawing in their stalls, the manure, the leather tang of the saddles didn’t help. She wanted something to settle her stomach, but she couldn’t stop. This went somewhere. She needed to keep pressing him.
She sat down cross-legged on the earthen floor, took a deep breath. Then shoved aside the hay, brushing away the mouse droppings with her boot. With her finger she drew a square and lines in the dirt. “Goran, think of this as a map. Here’s the park, here’s the wall behind Yuri’s.”
“Yuri?”
“The old man Feliks attempted to rob. But the painting had been stolen.”
“Phfft,” Goran expelled air in disgust. “Painting, jewelry? I don’t ask. All I know is this Tatyana contracted Feliks for a job. Never paid him, you understand. Now she owes me. A job is a job.”
His words echoed what Oleg had told her. She drew a circle. “See, here’s the old townhouse with shutters. Show me where you were.”
Goran stared. Then pointed. “Here, maybe there. I kept walking in the bushes trying to find somewhere to climb over the wall. So dark, and every place was so high.” He blinked, shook his head. “I couldn’t get out.”
“You remember something, don’t you?”
He put his finger in the dirt. Scratched an X.
“In the park I hid below the wall here. Looked for a rock, a tree. I saw a van drive by two, three times. That’s right,” he said, almost to himself. “Like it was circling the block.”
Aimée started to nod, but every time she moved her head queasiness rose from her stomach. She kept still, willed it down.
“You noticed because you were looking out for your brother,” she said. “You watched out for the flics.”
“At first I thought it was the police,” he said, his finger hitting the dirt. “But no blue light, no blue letters.”
The pieces fit together. The person who fought the Serb—a member of Luebet’s gang? Now it seemed everyone who knew of the Modigliani had tried to steal it.
“Where did the van go?”
“It pulled over, waited.…”
“How long?”
“The driver got out.… Wait, I remember, I heard metal noises. He was doing something on the back of the van.”
Aimée remembered the white van shooting out in front of them, Saj downshifting and honking the horn.
“I don’t know after that,” Goran said.
What was she missing here? “So you left? Took the Métro?”
“I waited maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Climbed the fence, then I walked. Along here.” He trailed his finger in the dirt along rue de Chatillon.
“What did you see? People, lights?”
He closed his eyes, thinking. “Some lights in windows, a small factory, but no one saw me. I avoided the Métro.”
“Where did you head?”
“Tombe Issoire, a place full of squatters. I was supposed to meet Feliks there, but he never came.”
“But where was Feliks supposed to hand off the painting to Tatyana?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
Aimée believed him.
“Did you see the van again?” she said. “You were nervous, non? Had an eye out for white police vans.”
He shook his head. “I kept my head down. Walked fast.”
One last try. “The van. Think again. You said it parked here on rue de Chatillon by the park. Then it drove on. Anything strike you? The lettering on it, the model or make, scratches or dents, old or new?”
“Was that who hurt Feliks?”
He’d registered the bruise marks from the autopsy.
“Someone beat him to the painting,” she said. “Try to remember. Could the van have been a rental?”
He nodded. “Maybe. Maybe like those ones that service Orly.”
Excited, she leaned forward. “A service van for catering, or packages like express post, or baggage handling?”
His brow furrowed. “Now that I think back, like those. Just white, square, wedge back … a Renault? Too hard to see through the bushes.”
Like every other Renault van in Paris. But she made one more attempt. “I know it was dark, but try to think. An older model, even a partial license plate?”
“You’re joking.” He paused. Thinking. “Non, like new.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
“It had, like, you know, a temporary license until new plates come.”
An itching feeling told Aimée he knew more. “But you haven’t told me everything, have you, Goran?”
The smell of his fear and sweat mingled with the dust.
“I’m giving you a chance, a way to start over. Quit holding out,” she said. “Feliks failed to show that night, so you returned in the morning, non? To find out what happened.”