Murder in Belleville (2000) by Cara Black

Author:Cara Black [Black, Cara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cara Black
ISBN: 9781569472118
Publisher: Soho Press

Friday Late Afternoon

INSIDE THE HAMMAM-PISCINE, SAMIA slouched by the ticket booth overlooking the L-shaped pool. A thirties-style vaulted ceiling and salmon tiles housed the humid, chlorine-laced air. In the shallow end an old woman, her bathing cap’s tight strap separating the fleshy folds of her neck, bobbed up and down.

Aimee’s eyes darted around the nearly empty pool. She preferred the piscine at Reuilly; cleaner, newer, and a short bike ride from her flat. A middle-aged man, kneeling with a long handled net, was fishing for something on the dark green bottom.

“Do you have a car?” Samia asked. She’d changed into a narrow black trench coat.

Aimee nodded. Rene’s Citroen sat parked nearby.

“Let’s go,” Samia said.

Wary, Aimee noticed her fluttery eyelashes, the orange-dayglo fingernails. Morbier was right. She was young. And Aimee was supposed to be protecting her.

“Tell me where.”

“The circus,” Samia said.

Aimee followed Samia’s leather mules as they scuffed down the dank-smelling stone passage into the street.

In the Citroen, Samia’s gaze wavered as Aimee adjusted Renews customized seat and pedals.

“Which circus?” Aimee said, turning on the ignition and hearing the powerful hum of the engine.

“Cirque d’Hiver,” she said. “If you don’t hurry up, we’ll miss him.”

“Who?” Aimee asked, shifting the car down rue Oberkampf.

“The man you’re dying to meet.” Samia’s full lips were set in a firm line. “He wants to see you, too. Just to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

Samia shrugged. “To see that his wholesale line goes to good hands.”

Aimee kept her surprise in check. Samia had found this connection fast.

Something about it made her uneasy, nervous. Didn’t Samia know about the explosion?

“What about Eugenie?”

“My feelers are out,” Samia said. “She owes me money.”

Aimee wondered why the Maghrebin network hadn’t spread the news about Sylvie/Eugenie’s death. Odd—were they cagey because they’d sold the plastiquel

Aimee found no parking spaces anywhere and klaxons blared in annoyance. She ended up parking under an ARRET GENANT towing sign, among several other cars on rue Oberkampf. They reached the Cirque d’Hiver, a circular nineteenth-century building resembling a tent, topped by a bronze statue of an Amazon on the roof and two bronze warriors on horses over the entrance. Circus posters proclaiming past glories—the Bolshoi Circus, Chinese glass balancers, Mongolian contortionists, Hungarian jugglers, and Canadian trapeze artists—were pasted outside.

The Cirque d’Hiver brought back memories to Aimee: traditional Christmas day visits with her grandfather, chewing the fluffy pink barbes a papa which turned fuchsia in her mouth. The monkeys sitting on the accordionist’s shoulder as he played while strolling through the audience, the spotlight’s glare on the rhinestone-studded trapeze artists. As a child she’d loved the ink-black darkness and heat from the spotlights trained on the big ring.

“Do what I say,” Samia said, jolting Aimee from her reverie. Samia pulled her coat tight around her and stared at Aimee.

“So if we pass the test, the big man gives us a contract?” Aimee asked. “My client’s picky. He wants Duplo plastique.”

Samia looked at Aimee’s wrist and grinned.

“C’est chouette!” she said tapping Aimee’s new watch. “I need one,” she said and strutted toward the red entrance doors.

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