“Fifi and Tesla?” he repeated when she told him the names Nicu had read her. “As in a poodle and the scientist Nikola Tesla?”
“Code names, René. For who I don’t know.” Just then, at that moment, she wanted it all to go away. To go home to Chloé, give her a bath, play with the bubbles.
René’s face softened. “You okay, Aimée?”
“I miss Chloé.” Suddenly she realized that her blouse was wet. “Merde, I’m leaking.”
After a trip to the WC and an application of mascara, lip liner and some Chanel red lipstick, life had improved. Priorities. She had priorities.
What they were, besides Chloé, she still had to figure out.
Back in the office, René said, “When’s your appointment with the attorney?”
“Tomorrow. She requested Chloé’s birth certificate.”
“Une formalité, I’m sure,” said René, looking grim. “Stay calm, Aimée. Morbier told me the lawyer’s good. The best.”
“So you two are talking behind my back?” She balled up an old fax and tossed it at him.
René kicked it back to her. “Only for your own good.”
She held up the torn drink receipt from La Bouteille. “So far it’s the only lead I’ve found.”
René shook his head, pausing his fingers on the keyboard. “Not this again.”
“It’s related, René, part of a puzzle I can’t find a way into.”
“Mais everything you’ve said, Aimée, it’s all conjecture. Too many ifs—if this woman’s alive, if she’s related to a woman murdered twenty years ago, if there’s a connection to your father. What does it even matter now?”
“Not just any woman.” She took out the envelope containing Nicu’s birth certificate. Set it by René’s keyboard. “Djanka Constantin, aged twenty-four. My father investigated her homicide. René, it’s all connected but I don’t know how.” Then the tattered black-and-white photos she’d found in the envelope. “Here’s Nicu as an infant with Drina and Djanka—see, it’s labeled. Both Constantins. Look at their cheekbones. Tell me they’re not sisters.”
René stared. “A beauty, Djanka.”
She had almond eyes, an alertness captured by the camera, which had caught her lifting her baby’s feet in the air, a half smile parting her lips. A young woman full of life. A hint of the seductress.
The looks had certainly gone to her instead of Drina.
“Alors, this woman, my father’s old informer, insists on seeing me, but gets abducted before I arrive. This boy she raised as her son finds her notes mentioning my father, he’s knifed to death and the notes stolen—all within fifteen hours. I want to know who—”
“You haven’t asked the important question, Aimée.”
She was surprised to hear the note of interest in René’s voice. But he always liked a puzzle—she’d hooked him.
“What do you mean?”
“Who’s this Pascal in the second photo? Besides being Nicu’s father?”
Not that hungover after all. “You’re right, René. Nicu’s uncle would know. The one who wanted to bring her back from the hospital.”
A sigh. “Then I guess it’s up to me to ask him.” René took his custom-tailored Burberry trench coat from the back of his chair, donned his fedora. “Need to look the part, eh?”
“You mean it, René?” she said. “You’ll help?”
“Time to hear some hot manouche jazz. Ferret around, look for the uncle.” He took the photocopied receipt, Maxence’s notes on La Bouteille, the photo and Nicu’s birth certificate from Aimée’s desk. “Call it delegating. Let me work on this. You finish the proposal, don’t blow tonight’s surveillance, and prepare for the lawyer.”
Monday Afternoon
THE GREY-WHISKERED GERMAN shepherd lying on the cracked brown mosaic tiling at La Bouteille aux Puces growled as René entered. Merveilleux. Already irritated by having had to trek through the flea market in the drizzle—he’d had to park blocks away—René was less than thrilled with the bared teeth and wet dog smell in the dim Gypsy café.
Good thing he kept a packet of Chloé’s teething biscuits in his pocket. He tossed one to the dog, who chomped down. And begged for another.
They parted as friends, and René continued past the blown-up photos of Django Reinhardt and Hot Jazz posters. The walls were stained pale yellow from nicotine. He doubted La Bouteille aux Puces had changed much since Django’s time. Or that the woodwork had been scrubbed since then. Near the WC stood a wood cabin marked TéLéPHONE—rare to see one of those these days.
“Madame Bercou, n’est-ce pas?” René smiled with his most determined charm at the older woman behind the counter. “You’ve owned the café a long time, I understand.”
The woman, wearing a violet scarf tied over a long braid and a blue cardigan under an apron, looked down at him. Squinted. Then shook her head.
Not a graduate of Gypsy charm school.
Had ownership changed hands? Or had Maxence gotten it wrong? He’d wasted his own time trying to keep Aimée from getting even more involved in this goose chase. But he’d driven this far, gotten his pant cuffs wet and he’d give it another go before he left.
“Un express, s’il vous pla?t,” he said, trying to think of how to start a conversation, ease into questions. “Make it a double, Madame.”
René climbed up onto the stool. Slipped. Wished he’d worn his loafers with the non-slip leather sole.
She set a demitasse cup under the chrome machine. Brown, work-worn hands, swollen rheumatoid knuckles—every slow movement looked painful.
He felt a twinge of compassion. His hip dysplasia pained him in the damp. What he wouldn’t give for a cortisone shot right now.
Playing on the sound system was a recording of a twanging guitar with la pompe, the signature Django rhythm. On the walls, notices advertised nightly music. Photos of Django Reinhardt everywhere with his thin mustache and guitar held by the two fingers he played with, the deformed rest of his hand just visible. Gypsy cafés were the province of men, but the place was empty. Too early for the evening crowd, he figured.