He hesitated.
“If this man’s holding something over you, why not go to the flics?”
“You know I’m on parole. I can’t. That’s why I came to you.”
This put a new spin on it. But she needed more. “Tell me who took them.”
“Do you really want an answer? Or do you want to rescue the girls?”
A nervous energy emanated from him. Intense eyes. The eyes of a father. She hated to, but she believed him.
“Why me?”
“Everyone trusts a pregnant woman; together we’ll be able to get in without arousing suspicion. Plus you’re a detective, I checked,” he said. “I saw you on the télé—you want to save them as much as I do.”
He had that right.
“But last night’s murder …” Her throat caught. “Were you involved in the shooting of that woman? Is that related to whatever this is?”
“Non. Pas du tout.” He stood. “But your choice. Either you take the chance and believe me, or you wait to find out the Ivry warehouse is a hoax and lose two hours.”
He was already hailing the taxi, which started up its engine.
“Coming?”
Wednesday, 11 A.M.
PIGALLE. THE MORNING street sweepers’ brooms raked the detritus from the celebrations into the flowing gutters. The scraping over the cobbles sounded not unlike fingernails on a chalkboard to Aimée—her nerves were acting up. Parents walked children to school on the narrow pavement. The neon club signs looked naked in the sunlight.
“Follow the plan, okay?” said Zacharié.
A makeshift plan involving a reputed lead to an old crony’s brother-in-law, but she put on her Jackie-O sunglasses and readjusted her spiky black wig, the one she kept in the pocket of her oversize bag. Thank God the leather pants’ waist was expandable. “I’ll call you.”
“What?”
“If there’s an obstacle, we go to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” said Zacharié.
“Improvise.”
She left the taxi in front of the disco Le Bus Palladium, the “temple of rock” when she and Martine clubbed there in the early nineties. Or had it been the late eighties? The white facade glared starkly in the daylight.
She was overrun by doubts about Zacharié’s plan. But she knew one thing. If Zazie was here, she’d find her.
“Bonjour.” She smiled at the young woman barring her way with a vacuum cleaner. “I’m late. But he’s waiting for me.”
“Who?” The woman stood her ground, readjusting her paisley headscarf.
“Like I said, he’s expecting me.” Aimée scanned the vacant box office, the deserted, red-carpeted foyer. She remembered the layout: beyond the ground floor’s closed double doors lay the dance floor. That wouldn’t help. To the right was a short staircase leading to a resto. Directly across from the resto she saw a sign: OFFICE.
The disco, a former theatre, hadn’t changed except for the DJ names on the posters. She’d never heard of any of them. A new generation and it made her feel old.
“He’s waiting for me in the office.”
“No one’s up there, Madame,” she said. “Only the cleaning crew comes in this early.”
“And you’re so efficient. He couldn’t run the place without you.” She tried to step around the woman towards the stairs.
“No one’s allowed upstairs.”
“Chut!” Aimée pressed her finger over her Chanel red lips. “Let’s keep this between us. Woman to woman.” Aimée pointed to her stomach. “His wife doesn’t know yet. But she’ll understand, I tell him. All the nights he spends away, here with me.”
The young cleaning woman blinked. “Raoul?” She pointed to the color photos of staff on the wall. “That Raoul?” A balding, fifty-something man in thick glasses squinted at the camera. He wore a floral shirt.
“L’amour.” Aimée sighed.
The woman shrugged. Aimée took the stairs two at a time and knocked on the office door. No answer. It was locked. “Bonjour, chéri, it’s me,” she said loudly, for the benefit of the cleaning woman.
With her lock-pick set, she inserted an upper and lower prong into the door lock and toggled. A moment later she turned the handle. A dark, empty office.
She hit the lights. Desk, posters of Johnny Hallyday and Depeche Mode, a brocade chaise in need of reupholstering.
No Zazie.
No closet, no back room. She wanted to kick the legs off the ugly chaise. Stupid to go along with Zacharié’s idea, to think that this Raoul would lock the girls up in an office, with the resto so close by. But he’d been so sure, so adamant that Raoul was key.
Key.
The desk’s third drawer yielded to her lock-pick. Paper clips, business cards, and three sets of color-coded and labeled key rings: yellow backstage door, red stage entrance, blue lighting loft.
She took all three. Picked up the yellow-handled flashlight from the desk and noticed a receipt under it. Bottled water, toilet paper, apples from the nearby Monoprix—the receipt was dated last night. She stuffed it in her pocket. Parched, she twisted the cap off the Evian bottle from her purse and drank in the hot, airless room.
She had to find something else, something more, and quick—before the cleaning woman got curious or Raoul showed up. She opened and went through every drawer again—there were only three—then lifted the faded Turkish throw rug, peeked behind the posters, emptied the metal-wire trash bin. Vacuuming sounds came from the stairway. As she was about to give up, her eye caught on something red tangled in the bottom of the overturned trash bin.
A red tassel. Like the one on Zazie’s backpack zipper. Like the one she’d already found in the de Mombert apartment.
Her pulse raced.
Outside in the hallway she studied the evacuation diagram required in every building for the fire brigade.
She hit Zacharié’s number. Let it ring once. Clicked off then rang again.
“Oui?”
“I’ve got Raoul’s keys. Meet me at the backstage entrance.”
“Where’s that?”