“Tell Beto I know you, that’s important,” Suzanne said, and gave Aimée his number. “Call him suspicious, but it’s kept him alive. Counterterrorism background. He owes me.”
Aimée’s knuckles whitened on the phone. “Attends, you and Melac worked counterterrorism?”
“Can’t speak to that, but Beto’s cover was blown, so he’s undercover Vice. Got the nickname after his course at Quantico—some Brazilian Ponzi-scheme strategy.”
“Merci, Suzanne,” she said.
“My life’s a balancing act, Aimée,” she said, her voice blurred with tiredness. “We make it work. Thank God my husband’s mother and my sister help out, or I’d jump off the Pont Neuf.” A pause. “But I wouldn’t trade what I have for anything else in the world.”
Clicking off the call, Aimée shifted on her side and readjusted her pillow to support her stomach and relieve the pressure on her back.
Suzanne’s words spun in her head. Why would you want to do it all? Should she cave in to that up-and-comer Florian, head of Systex, who emailed her once a week with the same proposal—join computer security forces and expand delivery systems? Then she could take a decent maternity leave and later work part-time. Should she put the baby on a waiting list for a crèche, which Martine insisted she should have done on conception? Should she move to the country, make marmalade, be a full time maman and go stark raving mad? Should she consider putting this baby up for adoption?
Or should she put her swollen feet on the cold wood floor and get a Badoit before the creeping nausea overtook her? A few gulps later, she stood at her window overlooking the dark, misted Seine. Burped.
Relief at last.
Miles Davis curled at her bare feet as she punched in Beto’s number.
“Who’s this?” Trance music thumped in a languid wave in the background.
“Suzanne gave me your number. I’m Aimée Leduc.”
Pause. “So you say, chérie.”
“Check me out. Then I’d like to talk.”
“And I’d like the Mercedes parked across the street. We’ll see.”
He clicked off.
Out working undercover, she figured. Anyone worth their salt would verify her identity. All she could do was wait. And hope.
She tried René.
“Before you ask, the bouncer remembered seeing Zazie last week. End of report. Go to bed.”
She was about to tell him she was sick of people telling her to go to bed, but René had hung up.
Monday, 11 P.M.
ZACHARIé PLAYED MARIE-JO’S message. “Papa, this man says he’ll take us to you. Should I believe him? But my friend thinks he’s lying … where are you?” Marie-Jo’s voice quivered. Non, non, don’t go, he wanted to yell. Then what sounded like chairs or a table scraping across the floor. “Put that down,” and the phone went dead.
Panicked, he punched in her number. Out of service. After trying his ex-wife’s flat, where the phone rang twenty times, he remembered she’d gone to rehab. Again. He paced back and forth in the rain on rue Chaptal. No lights showing from the third-floor windows.
His ex-wife’s restraining order hadn’t been rescinded. Only a matter of time, he knew, since he’d gain custody of Marie-Jo. Still … he had to chance it. What if someone burgled the house, or what if it was this rapist he’d heard about on the radio this evening?
He pressed the buzzer. Nothing.
“Monsieur? Vous me permettez?” He recognized the middle-aged woman, Cécile the concierge, unfolding her umbrella next to him in the doorway.
Would she recognize him? Report him to the lawyer?
“Ah, Monsieur, quite a long time,” she said with a smile. She unbuttoned her raincoat. A gold cross glittered around her neck.
Make the best of it. Use this.
“Bonsoir, Madame,” he said. “I’m dropping off those forms for my ex-wife. She told you to give me the key, non?”
Doubt flashed across Cécile’s face. “Mais non, but entrez, come in out of the rain.”
Dripping wet, he stood at the doorframe of the concierge loge. A crucifix above the minuscule brown sofa, a galley kitchen and brown tiles. Mail slots and keys to the left, in the old style. He wondered how much longer the building would pay for a concierge.
“Désolée, I’ve been at Saint Rita’s—I volunteer for the procession,” she said. “It’s every year, you know, in honor of Saint Rita, the patron saint of hope. It’s organized by us fallen women.” She gave a grin. “I once walked the streets. But Saint Rita saved me.”
A born-again convert. The worst.
Zacharié nodded. “But Marie-Jo …”
“That’s the thing,” she interrupted. “Marie-Jo promised to come down and help out at Saint Rita’s like last year. So sweet, your daughter. She took those beautiful photos of the shrine for us after we’d decorated. But she couldn’t stay, said something had come up. Apologized for having to leave.”
“Leave?”
“With her classmate, the red-haired girl, and that nice man, that friend of yours who was waiting for them.”
Zacharié clutched the doorframe. Jules had taken his daughter.
“Which way did they go?”
Tuesday, 6 A.M.
AIMéE BLINKED AWAKE to soft, cream sunlight streaming over the herringboned wood floor. The warm wind rustled her bedroom curtains. Her phone trilled, startling her.
She sat up, pushed aside the Resistance book and reached for her phone on the rococo bedside table. Her eye caught on Zazie’s black-and-white photo. The men in the square.
Her hand froze.
She thumbed the book open again to the third chapter Zazie had marked. Slid a piece of paper in to mark the place and glanced at the phone. A number she recognized.
“So you feel like talking,” she said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” said Beto.
“Bon, where do we meet?”
“How about answering your door?” Beto said. “I’ve been ringing your bell for ten minutes.”