His tone made her stand still. “Sounds like big trouble, René.”
“Tradelert’s front running and I secured the back door in their damn system. Now if I don’t disable it.…” He hobbled to his desk. Must be his hip, she thought. “Please just let me work. I need my tools here. Can I explain later?”
“Go ahead,” she said, surprised. “Why the sombrero?”
“Mexico City.”
“I thought you.…”
“Long story, Aimée. I’ve had ten hours on the flight to prepare,” he said. “Think I’ve found a shortcut to rewind the algorithms, circumvent the disabler. But it’s all contingent on the clone providing me access. From here.”
She understood less than half of what he’d just said.
“If I don’t execute preventive measures, Wall Street will come after me and it’ll be all my fault. Not now, maybe tomorrow.…” He opened his desk drawer. “Then I’ll leave.”
Aimée bit her lip. She’d never seen René so upset. Or with a stain on his jacket. “Can I help?”
René connected his laptop to the terminal, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Call Saj. Tell him I need his eyes and his old relay and delay codes. Use my car.”
His car. Aimée looked away.
She heard a buzz—the alarm had been disabled. Saj walked in with Maxence. “I forgot my herbs … René!” He shot Aimée a look.
She shrugged.
“Long time no see, René. At least three days.”
René kept his eyes on the screen. “Still have your relay and delay programs here?”
“Bien s?r,” Saj said.
“Let me help too, René,” Maxence said, smiling. “No luggage? Means you’re going to stay a while, I hope.”
René looked up. His green eyes widened at Saj’s neck brace, his arm in a sling. “Saj? Mon Dieu, are you all right?”
“Did you tell him, Aimée?”
“Not now, Saj.”
A knowing look passed over René’s face. “My car? Never mind, are you okay?”
“All systems go,” Saj said, rubbing his good hand. “Two seconds for me to dig out that program. But I think you’ll be more interested in the newer version.”
Glancing at the time, Aimée reached for her scarf and left them to it.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, on rue Delambre, she pushed open the tall green door into a courtyard. She felt like she’d stepped back in time. A cold dampness crept up her legs. Ivy trailed the walls of faded tea-stain-colored stuccoed workshops, timbered two-and three-storied ateliers roofed by zinc tiles. Tall windows, like dead eyes in the twilight, faced northern exposure—as favored by artists. Skylights dotted the slanted roofs, glowing patches swept by the beacon light of the Eiffel Tower. A mustard-colored cat padded over the wet cobbles at her approach. Strains of a high-pitched binioù kozh bagpipe trailed from the Ti ar Vretoned, the Breton cultural center at the heart of the courtyard.
She wondered why Dombasle insisted on meeting here. What happened to the vernissage? Inside the large hall of the Breton cultural center, children held hands in a wide circle, dancing, concentration on their faces. The girls wore lace caps, kicking and performing intricate back steps. The sheepskin pipes wheezed in the background.
“Any luck on the white van?” Aimée said, sidling up to Dombasle by the Breton-language bulletin board.
“The traffic chief’s daughter-in-law went to school with my sister,” he said. “Life’s a gratin, non? The white van with corresponding license plates clocked Avenue du Général Leclerc’s traffic cameras at Alésia five times within an hour.”
That confirmed what she’d thought. He’d come through. “Et voilà.”
The music and the dancers’ pounding feet made it hard to hear. She edged closer and caught Dombasle’s scent. A woodsy musk … Aramis? Stupid, she needed to focus.
“Morgane’s on parole,” Dombasle said. “A single mother, eager to talk.”
“She confessed?”
“Nothing we can use.”
Would Aimée have to drag each word out of him? But she smiled. “Meaning?”
“Luebet hired her to organize the job. She admitted to planning and hiring her accomplices: Servier, to break into Volodya’s atelier, and a mec called Flèche to transport the painting to Orly. But someone else beat him to it, Servier says, no painting. A mec punched Servier, he returned the favor and ran.”
“But you can arraign them on breaking and entering.”
“After the fact.”
Flics always worried about technicalities and judges.
“You don’t call screwing up my building door, drugging and almost drowning me in a bucket in my office …?”
Ahead of them, a mother with her child in her arms turned in alarm.
“Blindfolded, weren’t you?” Dombasle said, his voice lower. “Can you prove who did it?”
Her head hurt—the music and the dense air made it hard to think.
She forced herself to remember. Felt those large hands shoving her head down as she gasped for air, water filling her mouth, her nose, down her throat, her lungs bursting. Those hands ripping her hair. Stop, she had to go back to the voice on the phone. Remember. The slushing tires over wet pavement, the car horns, the street sounds. No doubt the call came from a pay phone. Useless.
“Morgane blamed it on the hot-tempered amateur she’d hired,” Dombasle said, pulling out a notebook from his pocket. Consulted it. “This Flèche. She said he’d threatened to take things in his own hands.”
“Rounded him up yet?
He turned pages in the notebook, sucked in his breath. “You could say that. We discovered his corpse in a rented room close to Yuri Volodya’s. The concierge heard a gunshot. Saw a tall female figure leave the courtyard.”
Aimée shivered. The fixer?
“So make it up, Dombasle,” she said. “Morgane doesn’t know if the blindfold slipped, if I saw her mec leave. That I couldn’t identity him from a mug shot.”
Lie, she wanted to say. Force the truth. That’s the flics’ speciality.