At eleven the next morning, Magda texted her.
Meet me at Temple station.
Outside the Temple mètro station the news kiosk showed Rachel that the gossip magazines had moved on from Roland Guipure. Some reality star was engaged; some footballer was divorcing. The bright sunshine almost balanced out the chilly air, and passing pedestrians had opened their coats and let their scarves trail unwound from their lapels. Only a few elderly men and women kept their overcoats closed to the neck and bundled themselves up—they had been around long enough to know that Paris weather will fool you if you give it a chance.
For some reason Magda had decided that a skinny wooden bench set close to the curb was the perfect venue for their meeting. Whether this was because the only obvious choice of restaurant was an establishment called O’Tacos or because she was tired of hunching indoors to talk about murder, Rachel neither knew nor cared. It was pleasant to be able to sit outside in the sun and not talk in low murmurs, even if it did mean an occasional noseful of diesel fumes.
Magda pulled out her neatly labeled folder once again. She waited for a passerby to move on before she spoke.
“So I hacked into the employment records at Bespoke, the restaurant where Thieriot used to work.”
“You what? How?”
“Oh, well …” Her tone was casual, but a tiny smile twitched at her lips. “Once I read the book it wasn’t really very hard. It said that if you can get into a restaurant’s reservation system, you can get into everything else. So I made a reservation and then just followed the book’s instructions. And that’s how I found Thieriot’s tax number, and that’s how I was able to track his employment history, and that’s how I found out that Cyrille Thieriot works at the LaLa Lounge.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not. I thought it was odd when I asked him where he worked and he just said, ‘I’ve gone back to the hospitality industry.’ Now we see why.”
“And was he working the night of Guipure’s party?”
Now the twitching became a full-blown smile. Magda pulled a printed screenshot out of the folder and handed it to Rachel. It was the schedule for the week of April 11, and on Thursday the fourteenth, the day of Guipure’s party, Thieriot’s name appeared with some others in the rectangle for each hour between 20:00 and 23:00, and then through 03:00 the next day.
“This,” Magda continued after a pause, “is why we’re meeting here. We’re going to see who’s available to talk to at the LaLa Lounge.”
Like most people who live in a large city, Rachel knew every street and alleyway of the part in which she lived, but had only a hazy outline of most of the rest. “Where is it?”
The Rue Nôtre Dame de Nazareth angled off the Rue du Temple. There was a branch of the CIC bank at the top of the street and a discreet synagogue midway down, but otherwise it was crowded with the mixture of boutiques, cafés, and storefronts with “To rent” signs that seemed to characterize every side street in Paris. The LaLa Lounge was at the end of the first block, next to a nail bar and across from a shop selling counterfeit designer clothing—which had a version of one of Sauveterre’s dresses in its window, Rachel noticed.
“I know the papers said it’s a known drug area, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of place where someone would overdose, does it? The street’s not very wide, there really isn’t anywhere to hide, and now that people have to come outside to smoke, you’d think someone would have noticed him.”
The entrance to the club, however, was certainly designed to be unnoticed. It was a black recess in a black wall with no sign or number to identify it, the only indication of its existence a copy of its liquor license propped in an otherwise blacked-out window. Complete discretion guarantees complete exclusivity, Rachel thought.
She mounted the three steps to the door. There was no buzzer, so she knocked. Then she pounded. Then, while she rubbed the side of her hand, Magda pounded. At last there came the sound of locks turning, and the door opened just wide enough to reveal a man standing on the other side. He had the stocky build of a boxer gone to seed, and, under narrowed eyes, his cheeks and chin were pricked all over with black and gray stubble. He was chewing what appeared to be a mouthful of egg salad.
“Go away,” he said.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’re—”
“I don’t care who you are. Go away.”
“If we could just—”
“No.” He swallowed. The hand that held the black metal door ajar tightened. “The police have already been here, which means you’re either press or just death gawkers, and I’ve had enough of both. So get going.”
The door swung closed, but before it could shut Magda stuck her foot in it. “We’re not press, and we’re not gawkers. We’re detectives, and we want to talk to you about one of your employees.”
The man didn’t open the door, but he peered around it. “Which one?”
“Cyrille Thieriot.”
“Thieriot! That emmerdeur! What’s he done now?”
Magda gave the classic detective’s response. “What makes you think he’s done anything?”
“Because he lives to make other people’s lives difficult. As he demonstrated right before I fired his ass, which is why I did fire his ass.”
“What did he do?”
“What am I, the front page of Le Figaro?” But he opened the door a little wider. “Look, I’m going to tell you this, and then I’m going shut the door and not open it again. Thieriot spent all his time here telling anyone who would listen that he used to be Roland Guipure’s compagnon, so when Guipure’s company rented this place for his party, I had a little fun by putting Thieriot down to work. I figured he was lying, and I wanted to see his reaction. Well, his reaction was to disappear during the party and not come back. I had to get behind the bar myself! And when I play the security footage afterward, what do I see but him following Guipure into the men’s room and then come rushing out two minutes later, heading straight out the back door. Staff are not supposed to interact with customers, and they sure as hell aren’t supposed to bring their personal dramas into my club. So when he showed up for his next shift, I gave him the boot, and I don’t know or care anything else about him.”
Then, true to his word, he pulled the door back to slam it. But Rachel put her hand on it.
“Wait. Please. Could you just tell me if you saw this man at the party?” She held up her portable, where she had used the search engine to find Naquet’s author photo.
The man tried to close the door, but she braced her arm with all her weight. After a few seconds of unresolved back-and-forth exertion he gave up and leaned forward, squinting at the screen.
“Who the fuck is that?”
“He’s a writer. I just … Imagine him older, and with less hair.”
The man squinted harder, with his head slightly tilted. “Okay, maybe. I think so. I might’ve seen him a couple of times in the course of the night. I mean, he wasn’t taking notes or anything, so I can’t be sure it was him.” He laughed uproariously.
“And did you see—” But in her excitement Rachel had relaxed her pressure on the door. He slammed it shut.
“What was that about?”
Rachel relayed what Dolly had told her about Naquet’s book. “And I just thought, if Naquet was desperate to talk to Roland, he might try to sneak into a party where he knew Guipure would be.”
Magda made a face. “Seems like a lot of work. All Thieriot had to do was follow him into the men’s room. And then he rushed right out the door afterward.”
“Thereby drawing attention to himself as all cunning murderers do?” Rachel shook her head. “He showed up for his next shift, which doesn’t really indicate guilt.”
“Or it indicates that he’s guilty but smart enough to cover it up.”
Rachel thought of Dolly first saying Thieriot wasn’t smart enough to be a Machiavelli and then saying he might be smarter than she thought. He might be. But even if he was, murder wasn’t the most logical motivation for following an ex-lover into the bathroom. “He could’ve been trying to patch things up so he could get back on his gravy train.”
“I could say the same of Naquet. And Thieriot was the go-between for Guipure and his dealer, so we know he knew where to get heroin.”
“I think a celebrity biographer knows where to buy drugs.”
“Ah, you think. But you don’t know. But that’s what it really comes down to, isn’t it? Not who had the best motive or was in the best place, but who had the heroin. If we know that, we know our murderer.”
Rachel looked down at the pavement, made up of the same gray stone rectangles that lined the Rue Vieille du Temple, the Place Saint German des Prés, the Rue St. Paul. In her mind’s eye she saw a cup, filled with hot minty tea; a plate glass window that offered a full view out onto the street and in from it. She saw a business card that at that moment lay somewhere in her bag, its edges becoming increasingly frayed and its glossy black surface turning dull from scuffs and scratches. She took a deep breath, then sighed it out. “Matthieu Mediouri can help us with that.”