Madame Uzes shook her head. “But it doesn’t make sense.”
Aimée’s ears pricked up. “Have you remembered something?”
“That’s right. Now I remember.” Madame Uzes stood up. “The time before last was when I saw Drina at church, maybe two weeks ago. Drina didn’t look well, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Hated hospitals. I urged her to see Doctor Estienne, a specialist who’s treated my family.”
Nicu must have listened and taken her to Laennec. But that only led her back to the beginning. “Doctor Estienne treated her,” Aimée said. “But she was abducted from H?pital Laennec last night during a busy shift change.”
“But Doctor Estienne’s established a private practice here, in the next wing. He practices out of his own clinic, affiliated with Saint-Jean de Dieu,” said Madame Uzes. “Our foundation helps with medical bills, private supplemental care and meals if needed. Why wouldn’t Nicu bring his mother here?”
Aimée wondered that too.
Outside the window in the now-lit garden, Aimée saw the great-uncle rooting in a bed of peonies while the nurse tried to restrain him.
“Désolée, I’ve got to go,” Madame Uzes said. “He’s digging trenches again.”
FIVE MINUTES LATER Aimée found Dr. Estienne’s clinic in the next wing. So far she’d impersonated a family friend and a health liaison. She prayed the nice woman in billing wouldn’t ask Madame Uzes about her daughter’s trouble with the babysitter. She needed to talk to Dr. Estienne and find out as much as she could before the staff cottoned on to her.
“Doctor Estienne’s at a staff meeting,” said the receptionist, a young man this time, wearing thick-lensed glasses. “Then he has a patient.”
“How late do evening clinic hours run?”
“I can fit you in at eight forty-five.”
That would be twenty-four hours since Drina’s disappearance. She glanced at her Tintin watch. Less than half an hour.
“You said you’re a new patient?”
She hadn’t, but she nodded and accepted the clipboard and forms.
“Oui, I’ll wait over there.” She took the clipboard to fill out on the lantern-lit clinic terrasse, which overlooked the private garden. Easy to keep a lookout from here and intercept Dr. Estienne before his patient. Here in the quiet, she tried the number Madame Uzes had given for her daughter Rose.
Monday Night
ROSE UZES IGNORED her ringing phone.
“What if it’s Nicu? Answer it, Rose,” said Robert. “My film’s finished, and he’s up next.”
Nicu didn’t have a phone. Annoying. “It’ll just be my stupid little sister.” Rose clicked her phone to vibrate without even glancing at it. “Nicu’s here somewhere,” said Rose. She scanned the dank artists’ squat under Pont Alexandre III, a former boathouse. Didn’t see him. “He promised.”
“Late, he’s always late,” said Robert, hitting the lights to scattered applause.
“I’ll find him,” she said, picking up their protest flyers.
She made her way among the graffiti artists, a hip-hop DJ anxious to spin, a few of her fellow students from Sciences Po and the odd local. A reluctant Nicu had agreed to speak. He’d promised her.
Yet, as usual, Nicu was late. “I operate on Romany time,” he always joked with her.
Robert’s award-winning documentary film, Le voyage des Manouches, which highlighted the illegal destruction of encampments outside Avignon, had brought a raised fist or two from the crowd and shouts of, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité—now!”
Where was Nicu?
Without a manouche to speak to the truth of Robert’s film, they’d have to figure something else out. And soon. Meanwhile, Robert stepped onto the metal boat rig, a makeshift stage.
“My film shows you what happened in Avignon. We can’t let the same thing happen here. March with us in protest tomorrow at the mairie of the seventh arrondissement,” he said. “Social housing in the quartier is mandated, and encampment rights for travelers should be, too.”
“Et alors?” A voice shouted. “Where’s my rights? I’ve waited three years for housing.”
“We need your voice, too. Everyone should be heard tomorrow,” said Robert. “Join us. The policy the mairie’s pursuing blatantly violates city requirements and your housing rights as well as the Roma’s. This report’s statistics prove it.” Robert took a sheet and read: “A wide disparity has been found in compliance and non-compliance with required social housing. The seventh arrondissement provides only between one and two percent available social housing in contrast to arrondissements in northeast Paris, which make up the maximum required twenty percent stipulated for the city.” Robert lifted up the paper. “See for yourselves. They’ll get away with it, like they do every year, unless we demonstrate.”
Marco, a graffiti artist, stood up. “I say we claim ground on the Champ de Mars.”
A few snickers in the crowd.
“Why not? This is the greenest arrondissement in Paris,” Marco continued, wiping his forehead in the humid air. “There’s space for everyone, not just the ministries and the elite.”
The concrete rumbled under Rose’s feet from the nearby underground RER train. She hated the squat, especially the mildew, resin and oil odors from the boats that pervaded the atelier space. She glanced around, again wondering why Nicu hadn’t appeared. So unlike the Nicu she knew. She shivered, remembering the feel of his warm arms holding her under the duvet the other night.
“The film’s advisor’s joining us tonight,” said Robert. “He’ll talk about his life, the manouche nomadic tradition, the musical heritage and Gypsy jazz—”