Murder Below Montparnasse - By Cara Black Page 0,100

Pause. “Sandrine, in the school bus? Speak slower for God’s sake.… How long ago?” He reached for his gym bag, his face ashen. “What hospital?”

FROM HER COURTYARD, she watched Melac pull away in an unmarked Peugeot, sirens screaming down the quai. A sliver of blue lined the zinc rooftops under a cloud-filled sky. She stood under the budding branches of the old pear tree and prayed his daughter would make it.

Madame Cachou, her concierge, poked her head out of the round window in the courtyard loge.

“The way men come and go around here!” Her penciled eyebrows had climbed up her forehead.

“His daughter’s one of thirty children injured in the school bus crash with the TGV,” Aimée said.

“That train catastrophe in Brittany? It’s all over the télé newsflash. Mon Dieu.” Madame Cachou made a sign of the cross. “I’ll tell the curé. We’ll say a novena.”

From Melac’s terse description, she’d need to say a novena and more.

Miles Davis pawed the paving stone.

“Wants his walk, the little man,” Madame Cachou said, coming out with his leash. She zipped up a bright aquamarine hoodie that fit her now—she’d lost five kilos doing yoga. And looked ten years younger.

“We’ll stop at the church. Shall I keep Miles Davis tonight?”

Aimée nodded. “Merci.” She pulled her scooter off the kickstand. Walked it over the damp cobbles. Paused. “What men, Madame Cachou?”

“Un Russe,” she said.

Aimée spine stiffened. The former KGB chauffeur had tracked her down already? But how?

Madame Cachou made a sniffing sound. “Vodka seeping from his pores. Couldn’t fool me. The old coot stank to heaven.” She reached back behind the loge door. “He left something for you.”

A Trotsyskist newspaper. It must have been the old man with the red-veined nose, drunk to the world, at Marevna’s resto. But he’d already left one for her with Marevna.

“He said you’d understand.”

Understand?

Taped to the second page was a postcard-sized blue note card.

Sainte Anne Hospital, Allée de Kafka. Friday, 5 P.M.

“SIM CARD CLONED,” Saj greeted her. He was sitting cross-legged on his tatami mat, laptop in front of him, the neck brace still on but his arm without the sling.

“Delay switch in place for the Bereskova Swiss bank account,” René said, smiling. Cables and wires were draped over a massage table that had been set up by the fireplace in the office. The scent of eucalyptus oil hovered. René noticed her look. “The shiatsu masseur makes office visits, Aimée. I feel new again. You look like you could use one yourself.”

Like she had the time.

“So you defused your situation, René?”

“Big time, Aimée.” Maxence’s eyes shone from the desk next to René’s. “I’m in awe. Brilliant work. I’m designing a game based on the delay stock market option.”

“Not for a while, Maxence,” René said. “I want to reenter the States with my own name, and not the way I left.”

“How did you leave, René?” Aimée asked.

“With a lot of luck and a drug smuggler,” René said. “More your style. Hate to think of all the laws I’ve broken.”

“And with only a sombrero to show for it,” she said.

“Don’t forget my clean conscience.”

“What about Rasputin’s take on the oligarch?”

René pulled a window up on his screen. “Interesting. Said we should ask the question: Why would a low-end oligarch create a museum in France? Tax laws in the UK favor the Russians more and they all create strings of shell companies to move their money to London. A museum in France doesn’t make sense, Rasputin says. Unless the museum’s non-profit, given government subsidies, tax loopholes to foster Russian relations, cultural exchanges, keep tsarist art stolen during the war or brought by the White Russians back here.”

“What’s in it for the oligarch?” Saj asked, clicking keys on his keyboard. “Curry favor?

“Loopholes, if you know where, exist in the regulations,” René said. “Money laundering and kickbacks become donations and a perfect conduit for bribes. Financial compliance on minimal security for non-profits. Too many big fish to catch—why pursue minnows in the arts?”

“How does Rasputin know?” Aimée asked.

“It’s all done through backdoor operations of hired hackers,” Saj said.

René nodded. “True. He’s Estonian. The best.”

René caught her look.

“I didn’t ask any more, Aimée. Disrespect him once and he’ll never answer another email. Hired hackers set up the system to evade security nets and skirt financial compliance via loopholes. Nothing new. Done it myself.”

“I don’t want to know, René,” she said.

“Rasputin’s info checks out. Give it another eight months until an idiot talks, gets caught, and tumbles it,” he said. “The exchanges of art and culture translate