AT A CAFé downhill on rue Blanche, she made her way to the WC, past the crowd waiting for the quarterfinals on the télé. On France2 a news bulletin flashed:
Reggae star Jimmy Cliff will perform an open-air concert during the Fête de la Musique in honor of the Jamaica versus Argentina match. In Marseilles, a curfew was announced after violent confrontations between British and Tunisian football fans, provoking an all-country security alert and extra CRS patrols in Paris.
ALL RESOURCES WERE focused on rioting football fans. What about the little girls being raped? Welcome to World Cup Paris 1998, she thought, disgusted.
She put a franc down on the counter as a courtesy, since she hadn’t ordered anything. Her wrist was grabbed by an old lady perched on a café stool who was ignoring the blaring télé. The old woman’s red-rimmed eyes bored into Aimée. “You know where rue Blanche’s name came from?”
Aimée shook her head. Extricated her hand from the woman’s cold and dry, claw-like fingers. Too much to drink, lonely, crazy or all three?
“The gypsum, as white as my hair,” said the old woman. “The Romans used to cart it down this street from the Montmartre quarries.”
Aimée had learned that in school. Before the old woman could expound more, she snuck out.
Outside, she punched in René’s number.
“René, we’ve got to follow up with a Madame de Langlet, Mélanie’s violin teacher.” She ran down her encounter with Madame Vasseur and gave him the information.
She heard him sucking in his breath. “I’m afraid things are verging on ugly. There’s trouble here in Pigalle.”
“Trouble? But I’m near Pigalle.”
She heard shouting in the background.
“What’s going on, René?” she asked, uneasy. “Has something happened to Zazie?”
“Parents taking things into their own hands.”
“Gone vigilante?” She’d been afraid of this. The flics should have put two and two together much earlier.
“Seems you inspired the owner of the NeoCancan to stir something up all right. A witch-hunt.”
“Like I should feel guilty?” she said, walking faster. “Time someone took notice and did something.”
“More than notice … they’re by Place Saint-Georges, chasing this mec down.”
She froze in her tracks. “They found the rapist?”
“Forget it, Aimée,” he said. “The area’s not safe.”
“The hell it’s not safe. What about Zazie? If this mec’s the one … we’ll find Zazie.”
She glanced at her Tintin watch. Nine thirty P.M. Ahead, a few slick-haired barkers were enjoining young men to step inside a club. Only a few steps away in a rose-trellised courtyard, she saw children kicking a soccer ball, smelled frying garlic from an open window with lace curtains. The streets buzzed below Pigalle in the hot night.
“I’m en route.” She clicked off. Three and a half blocks downhill the streets changed, steam-cleaned limestone facades rising above chic Place Saint-Georges, the roundabout featuring a statue of Gavarni and ringed by upscale h?tels particuliers.
Off to the left, down an unrestored cobbled street, she spotted René. As she approached the corner, she heard shouting. People congregated, a jeering crowd spilling onto the street, and she made out smeared blood on a stone wall.
René caught her arm. “Don’t go up there, Aimée,” he said. “Not wise to get close.”
But she had to see.
Several members of the crowd were kicking a man crumpled on the pavement beneath the flashlight glare provided by others. Blood streamed from his shaved head onto the cobbled gutter. His clothing was torn. “Filthy pedophile,” said a woman and spat on him. “Gutter’s too good for you.”
“That’s a lynch mob,” Aimée said, shivering. “We’ve got to stop them.”
“I tried. Long past the point where we can help now.”
The mob’s elongated silhouettes bounced off the stone wall, the beating a horrific shadow play. Sirens wailed up the street.
“Time we take the law into our hands since the police haven’t,” a man shouted, lifting up a wallet. “He’s got pictures of little girls here, thinks he’s going to do it again.”
Someone else yelled, “The animal raped my neighbor’s daughter. Killed her.” More dull thuds as people kicked the moaning figure.
It was medieval. All they lacked were torches and rope. The sweat dried cold under her arms.
“Call the flics, René,” she said.
“Zut, I have, Aimée. Let’s go.”
But she moved forward, shouldering her way through the crowd with René following, trying to tug her back. Somehow she had to make them stop. To reason with them. “We need him to talk,” she shouted into the crowd. “To tell where he’s taken another girl. You’ll get your justice.”
“Fat chance,” a woman said.
She heard a sickening crunch as the heel of a boot landed on the man’s bleeding, cracked head.
“Stop, don’t you understand? He has to talk,” she said. “A girl’s life is at stake.”
The man’s body spasmed in the gutter. Sirens wailed closer.
“Merde, the flics,” someone said. The crowd scattered. A hush fell. The only sound was the water trickling into the gutter and pooling with blood.
Aimée stepped back in horror. René pulled her arm. “Come on, Aimée.”
“But I think they … we’ve got to get him help.”
“Too late. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“But if he knows … knew where Zazie is … there might be something …”
René grabbed her. “Listen to me. Village justice, mob violence—call it what you want, but you can’t be implicated, understand? That won’t help Zazie.”
It made sense. The discarded wallet lay by the streetlamp, wallet-sized photos of little girls spilling out.
“See, Aimée, he’s a pedophile. But it’s not our business.”