She looked to be in her midtwenties. Too young, from what Madame Bercou had told him. “You’re not Madame Rana.”
“It’s prepay.” She gestured to the sign indicating the type of credit card taken—Carte Bleue—and the manual credit-card imprinter, the kind known as a “knuckle duster.”
René sat down, sinking into the purple fabric. “I’ve prepaid via Madame Bercou at La Bouteille. Comprenez-vous?”
The words turned her red-lipsticked mouth into a moue of disappointment. “It’s my mother you want. She’s out.”
“D’accord.” René met her gaze. “I’ll wait.”
“Could take all evening,” she said, peering out of the curtained window resembling a ship’s porthole. “And I’ve got standing appointments, clients booked until late. Désolée.”
He’d been kicked out of better places than this trailer, with its polyester curtains and IKEA candles.
“You do report your earnings au fisc, I suppose?” he said. “Display your business license somewhere? I assume you pay the three percent surcharge for bank cards?”
“We have an arrangement, the flics know we’re here. So you can’t scare me by threatening to tell them. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Payoffs and protection. René would have to use something else for leverage.
“But I’ll tell you this for free,” she said. “I see bad things in your aura.”
“Yours, Mademoiselle, doesn’t look that good either.”
She grabbed his hand, splayed out his pudgy palm. “Hmm, a split love line.” She looked up, her thick eyeliner creasing at the edges of her lids. “Must hurt, loving a woman who thinks of you as only a friend.”
René blinked. How did she know? He pulled back his hand and tried to recover, sitting back on the purple cushions and crossing his legs. He thought of a comeback. “Too bad Drina Constantin’s death will make her brother Radu get nasty. Especially when he hears you refused to help.”
The girl became very still, her hands frozen in the act of picking up the deck of tarot cards. On top was the skeleton holding a scythe.
“Maman, wake up.” The girl stood and pulled back the curtains behind her to reveal an alcove with a berth like you’d find in a train sleeper compartment. A middle-aged woman with a hairnet over a black bun sat up and yawned.
“C’est le petit. You deal with it. I need a manicure.”
With that, the girl pulled on ankle boots and a short fur jacket and flounced out.
René knew these two charlatans couldn’t see the future, didn’t have second sight. He hadn’t come for a palm reading. Still, he stole a glance at the lines on his palm as the elder fortune-teller made her way to the chair across the table from him.
“Madame Rana, if we could cut the social niceties and get to the point.”
She scratched her neck. Stretched her legs. Yawned again. “So, mon petit, a love potion to make her fall in love with you?”
If it were that simple, he’d have tried long ago.
“That’s not why I’m here, Madame.”
As you well know, he thought, but instead he set one of the black-and-white photos on the brass tray. “Djanka Constantin, aka Aurélie; her son, Nicu; and her sister, Drina. Tell me about them. And if it’s something I haven’t already heard, I’ll make it worth your while.”
Professional now, Madame Rana consulted a thick book labeled APPOINTMENTS. Waddled over to the trailer’s door, flipped the sign to FERMé and sat down.
She glanced at her watch, a faux, rhinestone-encrusted affair with a Chanel logo. On second thought, René reflected, given the bright sparkle and her clientele, it might be authentic.
“You get ten minutes,” she said. “My second cousin married a Constantin. There’s been bad blood between our families since the war. One of those things.” She jutted out her chin, pursing her mouth as if to say go figure. “Alors, my second cousin lives in Montpellier, down south. No friends of ours, this branch of the Constantin family. Djanka didn’t exist to the family anymore, according to my cousin’s wife—”
“Didn’t exist? How’s that?”
“Shunned. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”
He knew that. “Did that happen after she had her baby?”
“I’m telling you what I know, not what I don’t.”
René backtracked. “What about the boy’s father?”
“In prison. Never came out.”
Caught her in a lie. According to Madame Bercou, he’d died in a fire.
She noticed his look. “They came up with a story about burning in a caravan to protect the boy.”
“So that would explain why her sister Drina, presuming they’re sisters, raised Nicu as her son. To protect him?”
“Our people take care of our own.”
“This bad blood … who else did the Constantins feud with?”
“Feud?”
“Besides your family, I mean …”
Her tone got defensive. “You shouldn’t speak about things you don’t understand. These disputes are generations old.”
René knew the woman had something on her tongue. “But was it a feud that caused the family to shun Djanka? Or her baby?”
“All I heard is that the sister, this one, she informed to the gadjo.”
René gave a little sigh. “Tell me something I don’t know, Madame Rana.”
“My cousin’s wife said they found her in a ditch outside les Invalides.”
“She went by Aurélie, didn’t she?”
“Her stage name, and she had a lover while her husband sat in prison.”
Who must have been Nicu’s father. It fit with what the mec who’d married into the family had intimated.
“A lover?” He showed her the other photo. “This man, Pascal?”
Her glance grazed it. “I don’t know names.”
“How did she know Pascal?”
“Before my cousin’s time.”
Sitting atop his deep cushion, René struggled to reach his bag and pulled out the birth certificate.
“Yet on this birth certificate there’s no father listed. Shouldn’t the husband in prison be listed as the father?”
She shrugged.