Good, a talker.
“Can you run down your timeline from last night? We know two patients were discharged …” Merde, what term had the receptionist used? “… inter-hospital. May I see your log?”
“Inside.”
In a cubbyhole of an office, which they reached by Gothiclike stone stairs, Lana pointed to an open binder. “Voilà. Last night at eight oh five P.M. Monsieur Dracquet was taken to Résidence Sans Souci, a fancy name for the nursing home we’re partnered with in Montrouge. Then at eight-forty, Mademoiselle Ribera was taken to H?pital Lariboisière.”
“Is that usual?” Aimée asked. “I mean late-night transfers to other medical facilities?”
“Depends.” Lana shrugged. “If the nursing homes get behind on paperwork, they might only be able to accept transfers late in the day. Or if a patient has an early-morning procedure, which was the case with that old spinster Mademoiselle Ribera.”
That didn’t interest Aimée, but it did show Lana’s observation skills.
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary last night?” she asked, pretending to consult notes in her red Moleskine. “An orderly hanging around, for example?”
Lana looked at the log and thought. “We kept the gates open, that’s right, because of the two transfers. Other than that, the quartier’s quiet as a tomb at night. Alors, with all the ministries, embassies and you lot patrolling …”
She paused.
“Go on, Lana. You thought of something, didn’t you?”
“It’s nothing. We see them all the time.”
“See what?”
“Like I said, nothing, but …”
Spit it out, Aimée wanted to say.
“There was a black car blocking the impasse egress onto rue Vaneau.”
“Wait a minute, you mean blocking the ambulance exit?”
“I had to honk, which we don’t usually have to do.”
“Black. You’re sure? Not a brown Mercedes?”
Lana tapped her short-nailed index finger on the log as if trying to jog her memory. “Black, tinted windows, anonymous looking. That’s right,” she said. “Rue Vaneau’s a one-way street, it’s quiet and that rarely happens, that’s all.”
“Did you see the driver, or do you remember anything distinctive?”
“I wish I had. Désolée. I’m working a double shift since last night.” Lana was waving to someone in the courtyard. “That’s my boyfriend, Naftali.” She grinned. “Eighty-five years old, a charmer with a pacemaker. I call him my boyfriend to keep my husband on his toes.”
“And what time did you honk at the car?”
Lana pointed to the log. “Eight forty P.M., when I left with the old spinster.”
The timing fit with Drina’s abduction.
“Merci,” Aimée said. “Does your boyfriend’s room overlook the allée?”
“Try asking him. His hearing’s gone, but he sees like a hawk.”
NAFTALI, ONE FOR the ladies despite his wheelchair and his pacemaker, gestured her to sit close to him when she introduced herself. He had thick, snow-white hair, charcoal brows and bright green, watering eyes. He grabbed her hand and winked. “Let’s make Lana jealous.”
Aimée grinned and planted a kiss on his leathery cheek. His hearing seemed fine. “Only if you tell me what you saw last night.”
“Saw? I saw everything. I don’t sleep much.” Naftali noticed her look. “Like a lot of old people, you’re thinking.”
“Lack of beauty sleep hasn’t harmed your looks, Naftali,” she said, squeezing his hand. She realized that one of his green eyes never moved. A glass eye. Great.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, you are as charmante as my first wife, Rosa, may the Lord take good care of her,” he said, beating a gnarled fist against his heart. “But an old fart like me, I haven’t had a full eight hours since before the camps.”
A faded tattoo of a number showed on his inner arm, below the rolled-up sleeve of his robe. A survivor.
“It was the screaming, you see …” Naftali’s words trailed in the air, and Aimée braced herself for another sad story of the dark times, as her grandfather had called the German occupation.
“That woman screaming in Romany,” Naftali was saying. “I know, because I speak a little Romany myself.”
She moved closer. “Last night, you mean?”
His good, watery eye looked far away.
“In my day the manouches—les Tziganes, les Roms, les Sintis, les Ziganers, les gens du voyage, whatever you call them—lived in des roulottes.”
“You mean wagons with wheels? Caravans, trailers?”
“C’est ?a.” He nodded. “Back then, during the war, whole families of nomades were rounded up by the French Vichy gendarmerie and put into some flimsy barracks at Montreuil-Bellay, in the Loire Valley,” he said. “Me too—I got caught in Nantes along with a bunch of Republican Spaniards escaping Franco, white Russians and clochards.”
She squeezed Naftali’s hand. Hoped this led somewhere.
“They branded us asocial types, misfits, and administered the camp under a 1940 décret signed by the last president of the Troisième République,” he said. “The Nazis could have taken notes: electrified barbed wire, no heat or sanitation. The camp was stuck in a field, no trees. Nothing but dirt and mud in the winter.”
“That’s how you picked up some Romany, Naftali?” she said, gently trying to steer him back on track.
“I had to keep my mind active,” he said. “Or I’d give up.”
“So what did you hear? Can you tell me about last night, Naftali? Could you understand?”
“Les manouches live in the moment. Incredible people.” Naftali sighed and shook his head. “They sang. They shared food, the little they had. I’ll never forget that. Or their loyalty. Only a quarter survived the extermination camps the Germans sent them to. Les manouches call it Porajmos—the devouring. But who even talks about them? It’s always about us Jews.”