She shivered. A sign? For a moment she wondered if Drina stirred in their midst. But she had to get past this woo woo.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Constantin. Truly sorry.” She shook her head. “Instead of blaming me, what about the doctor who was paid off and her abductors? Hold them accountable, not me. Demand an investigation into her case. Get to the root of this and insist on prosecuting the guilty.”
He pulled Le Parisien from his coat pocket. Shoved it in her face. “You think the press gives us justice? That this works?”
“Pas du tout. But it doesn’t hurt. What you did protesting last night was instrumental in bringing this to public attention. It makes the people responsible nervous. Makes them sweat.”
A snort. “As if that will ever happen.”
“Don’t you want to make the system, however flawed, work in your sister’s favor? Like it never did during her lifetime or your nephew’s.” She couldn’t read his expression. “Hadn’t she returned because of her illness, because she needed her family?” Aimée tried her hunch, moving closer to Radu. “To say goodbye? But it had to be on your terms, non? Wasn’t that why you and Nicu argued?”
“Stop.” He raised his ring-weighted hand. The thick gold band on his pinkie glinted under the streetlight.
He did blame her. No understanding shone in his face—not that she expected any. He’d lost a sister and a nephew, after all. She could feel his numb grief—but she also sensed that it was partially rooted in guilt over the past.
“What did my sister say in the clinique?” His voice rose, whether in fear or suspicion, she couldn’t tell. “I know she spoke to you.”
Should she hold back or tell the truth to this irrational man who resented her? Blamed her? If she walked away, like she wanted to, it would get her nowhere.
“I expect information in return, Radu. It goes both ways, or you wouldn’t be here. Martin told me.”
He hadn’t. But if Martin had gotten him here, Radu wanted something—and that “something,” whatever it was, was her bargaining chip.
He jerked his head in agreement.
“She witnessed my father’s murder years ago. Told me to ‘make it right’ and find those implicated. She gave me two names—Fifi and Tesla. Martin says you know them.”
“That’s all? You broke our traditions for that?”
She’d have understood disappointment, but where was the bite of anger in his voice coming from? What did he expect? “So I broke your traditions, some taboo,” she said. “To me, murder’s a taboo. How about you tell me how you know Fifi and Tesla.”
“That’s years ago.” He put his hat back on his curly black hair.
“I’m listening.”
He opened his car door. “Why should I tell you?”
She almost kicked the door shut. Playing hard to get and lying—well, she could play that game, too.
“Guess you don’t want to know what your sister said about you.”
Radu Constantin paused, his coat lapel bent upward in the wind. A shrug of what she took as defeat. “Non, that’s all scattered with the wind. Like her spirit. Gone.” He opened the car door. Paused. “She mentioned those names.”
Aimée’s breath caught. “What did she say about them?”
“That’s why she had to hide, she said. That’s all.” Radu averted his eyes. “I blamed her for mixing with gadjo, like always, and refused to help. Then she disappeared.”
He’d shunned her when she’d asked for help.
“But why had she recently come back to Paris?”
“To make her peace, to depart among her people. But the gadjo found her.” He looked up at the night sky hazed by clouds. “Me, I wanted her forgiveness.”
And she believed him.
AIMéE STOOD FOR a long moment watching the Mercedes disappear into the cars on the brightly lit Champs-élysées. Radu Constantin’s sad case was one of too little, much too late.
Her phone vibrated in her inner jacket pocket. René.
“Leseur’s on the move, Aimée.” She heard him clicking the keyboard in the background. “He’s going down rue du Bac. Now he’s turning onto … rue de Grenelle. Maybe he’s walking his dog …”
“Or maybe not, René.” She plugged in her earphones, put on her helmet, keyed the ignition and revved the engine. “Guide me from the Pont de l’Alma. I should be crossing it in three minutes.”
“Sure about this, Aimée?”
“Keep talking, René.”
René directed her remotely, keeping tabs on Leseur, who maintained a brisk pace.
“Where did you really get this little toy?”
“My real-time simulation prototype?”
“Talking geek again, René? Did some gamer friend with military contacts ask you to alpha-test this?”
“Not military, non. My Silicon Valley friends.” He pronounced it Zeeleekon Vallée.
“You got in trouble with them before, René, n’est-ce pas?”
And had to escape the vallée on a drug plane. But no need to bring that up.
“Leseur must have jumped into a taxi,” said René, excited now. “He’s passing les Invalides.”
“I’m on Avenue Rapp.” Tiled Art Nouveau fa?ades flew by.
“Take a left at Avenue de la Bourdonnais to intercept him at rue de Grenelle.”
She stretched out her arm to signal a left turn and almost got clipped by a speeding Alfa Romeo. Centimeters from losing her hand to a red bullet with Italian music blaring from the open window.
Shaken, and feeling more wary of Italians than she had before, she kept to the right.
“He’s going straight on rue de Grenelle,” René was saying, “passing … non, slow down, it’s hard following on the screen …” A few clicks. “Veer right … it’s a one-way. Make a right on Grenelle which becomes rue Belgrade.” A few moments later René shouted, “He’s stopped at the Champ de Mars! In front of it. Non, beside it.”
“Make up your mind, René. Tell your cursor to behave.”