Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (12 page)

“Not eat here.” Madame Liu took her reading glasses off. “Busy, now prepare for dinner.”

“Where did you last see him, Madame Liu?”

“Not sure.”

“Here in the quartier? On the street?”

“Dead man, right?”

Aimée nodded.

Madame Liu grabbed a dry dish towel. “Come back later.”

Aimée had to get some kind of information from her. “But the
flics
suspect a Chinese gang killed him.”

“
Flics
don’t speak good Wenzhou dialect.”

“They’re lazy, too,” Aimée said. “But that’s between you and me.”

Madame Liu leaned forward. “
Flics
like my noodle soup. Like no pay.”

She imagined Prévost enjoying a free lunch.
Flics
took it as their due, and her godfather Morbier was no exception. That grated on her.

“Me, I pay for information. I keep it quiet, too.”

Aimée pulled fifty francs from her wallet. Set it on the table. This search was getting expensive, and her bank balance was getting low, but she pushed that out of her head. “Do you know anything about his family?”

“Family? He have very old auntie?”

Aimée nodded again. Not only was Madame Liu a good observer, but she knew who lived in this village-like warren of medieval streets.

“He teach class and eat here Fridays. Order #32 shrimp wonton soup.”

“So last night …”

“Every Friday, but not last night.”

And he was murdered around the corner.

“But did you see him yesterday? Going in the luggage shop to see Meizi, to buy a bag for his auntie?”

“Sad for auntie. Nice lady.” Madame Liu rubbed the towel over the cracked tiled counter.

“His auntie knows no Chinese would hurt him,” Aimée said. Time to stretch the truth. “But I need Meizi’s help to prove that to the
flics
.”

Madame Liu nodded to a young man arriving in the back door.

“He walk by maybe seven o’clock,” Madame Liu said. “No stop like usual. I go funeral service. That’s all.”

At seven in the evening it would have been dark, the shops closed.

“Was he with Meizi? Black ponytail, sweet face, jeans and green sweater?”

Madame Liu shrugged. “He wave. Alone. That’s all.”

On the way to meet his killer.

Aimée looked out the window again. Saw how close the luggage shop was. Her mind went back to last night, this table: Meizi ladling the soup, her face lighting up upon seeing René, how her smile reached her eyes. Not the face of a woman who’d killed a man and wrapped him in plastic before dinner. When Meizi excused herself to take a call, Aimée couldn’t help believing, she intended to return to her birthday meal, her present, and René.

“My restaurant full soon, dishwasher sick. I’m busy.”

In a swift movement Madame Liu joined the young man at the counter, turning her back on Aimée.

R
ENÉ WATCHED THE
Chinese man standing in the shadows. The red-orange glow from a cigarette bobbed as he spoke into a phone. His Mercedes jeep idled at the corner. René wanted to get close enough to see the man’s teeth.

A moment later the man flicked the cigarette in the gutter, buttoned his sleek leather jacket, and headed for his jeep, and René finally caught a glimpse of his face. Black hair, fashionable stubble shading his face. Yellow, crooked teeth.

Tso. The snakehead. The man who Aimée had discovered sold Meizi’s papers.

René turned the key in his Citroën’s ignition. He followed slowly, keeping a car between them. The jeep paused off rue Beaubourg, and two men leapt out of the back to unload boxes. A delivery. Then another, until an hour had passed. Never once had Tso gotten out. Antsy, René wished he’d hurry up and get to his destination. Then René would show him what bad teeth really were.

After the next delivery, the men disappeared and the jeep took off. René followed, staying two cars behind this time. The jeep turned into the narrow one-way rue de Montmorency and maneuvered into a parking spot.

René pulled into a red zone.

By the time Tso locked the jeep, René stood poised in a doorway, ready. But Tso crossed to the other side of the street. René looked both ways, keeping to the ancient buildings.

Tso turned at the corner, stepped into a
café tabac
. René considered his options. Grab him when he came out or follow him. More chance of finding Meizi if he did the latter.

“
Pardonnez-moi
, have a light, Monsieur?” asked someone behind René. Before he could turn, a blow hit his sternum, knocking the air out of him. Slicing pain doubled him over. His arms were grabbed behind him.

He heard laughter, “
le petit
,” something in Chinese.

With every bit of strength he could muster, he kicked out, connecting with a leg. Hearing a cry, he kicked again and again, until his arms were released. Remembering his judo, he jabbed a crosscut in his assailant’s ribs. Aching pain shot through his hip as he twisted away on the wet pavement. Tso and another man loomed over him.

René pulled the Glock from his pocket. Aimed up at Tso’s face. Those bad teeth. “Tell me where Meizi is, or—”

Tso ducked, tossed his cigarette, and both men took off running. Clutching his chest, René got to his feet, took a step, and folded against the wall. By the time he managed to straighten up and reach the corner, they’d gone.

But René heard the unmistakable sound of a door shutting. Mid-block, if he calculated correctly. Not much good to anyone right now, he limped into the
café tabac
.

“A brandy,
s’il vous plaît
,” he said, punching Aimée’s number on his phone. “Make it a double.”

“B
UT ACCORDING TO
Aram, the sweatshop entrance is on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé, René.” Worried, Aimée surveyed René as they sat in the small
café tabac
. “On the next block.”

“So Tso took a shortcut.” Perspiration beaded René’s forehead and his breath came in short gasps. “But it was him, bad teeth and all.”

Aimée’s glass of fizzing Badoit water glistened under the café counter light. “You don’t look too good, René.”

“I’ll feel better if you try the front entrance,” he said. “Call me and I’ll come.”

She doubted he could walk without pain right now. She shook her head. “Stay on this stool,
compris?
Watch from this window until one of them leaves and call me.”

She eyed the café’s rear galley kitchen, where a sagging apron, a pair of overalls, and a white butcher-shop coat hung from the coatrack. “You work in a charcuterie, Monsieur?” she asked the man behind the counter.

“Not me. Next door.” He flicked a thread of blond tobacco from his rolled cigarette. “After a
pichet de rosé
the butcher always forgets it.”

“
Bon
, let me borrow it.”

“Eh? It’s not mine.”

She slapped twenty francs on the counter. “Then I’ll rent it.”

Drumbeats thrummed from Les Bains, the club in the old
bathhouse on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé. The building entrance on the right was boarded up. No luck there. The one on the left, shrouded in scaffolding, was also boarded up. The only way to the sweatshop in the rear courtyard was through the club.

“No date?” asked the mascaraed transvestite at the door. His Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence name tag read Lola.

“Not yet, Lola,” Aimée smiled.

“We’d love to let you in, but the benefit is reservation only. Sold out.” Lola gestured with an orange-lacquered nail, which matched his eye shadow, to the poster announcing “Afternoon Tea Dance! HIV caregivers support benefit competition.”

Where were her sequins when she needed them? But Michou, René’s transvestite neighbor, entered these contests all the time.

Aimée opened her coat, revealing the white butcher’s smock. “I’m a health inspector.”

“
Mon Dieu
, but we’re up to code!”

“I know you passed inspection, Lola.” Aimée gave a little sigh. “But I’m inspecting the toilets in the rear courtyard. Some complaints, you know.”

A couple, tottering on high heels and wrapped together in a feather boa, passed her.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Lola said.

“Of course you don’t, that’s why you’ll let me do my job,” she said, slipping a fifty-franc note in the donation box.

“We’re all about cooperating.” Lola swept his arm at the ushers. “Let this girl in. She’s in a hurry.”

Out on the dance floor, couples gyrated under a flashing disco ball to “I Will Survive” as a large-shouldered blond, in a skintight red velour jumpsuit with the highest heeled boots Aimée had ever seen, lip-synched along.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. “Don’t tell me your dance card’s filled.”

She turned to face a person wearing a white Courrèges tunic with the signature geometric design. Vintage and delicious. But those cheekbones looked familiar.

“Where’s René?” He pecked her on both cheeks. “Careful, I just powdered.”

Viard. The police crime lab head on rue de Dantzig. And Michou’s partner. “It’s complicated, Viard. Where did you get that Courrèges?”

“If you’re a good girl, I’ll let you borrow it,” he said, his hips swaying to the music. He gestured to the lip-syncher. “Michou’s on next.”

“Right now I need to get to the back.”

“She’s not that bad. She’s a professional, you know.”

She and René had seen Michou’s show in Les Halles many times. “I know, stunning. But there’s a clandestine sweatshop only accessible—”

Viard put his arm up, pearl bracelet sliding. “Like we can help those poor people?”

“But I can. So you’ve seen them, Viard?”

A moue of distaste showed on his crimson mouth. “How can you miss those grinding machines?” Viard said. “It’s in the courtyard behind the men’s. As sisters under the skin, we let them use them, you know. There’s Michou!” And he danced off.

She found the door marked Exit near the men’s, pushed it open to a damp alley narrowing between the buildings. Cracked concrete and crumbling stone walls led to a thin courtyard surrounded by bricked-up windows, already dark in the fading afternoon light. Behind her sounded the distant strains of “I Will Survive”; before her the
chomp, chomp
of machines. She felt the vibration in the soles of her boots.

She entered the door at her left. Inside, Chinese men in sweat-stained T-shirts fed plastic sheets into twenty or so cutting machines. She recognized the plastic, which matched the luggage she’d seen. The hot oil and synthetic odors choked
her. Good God, how could the factory owner let human beings work in this air? In this noise?

An older woman peered down at her from a stairway. Coiffed black hair, jade bracelets on both wrists, red silk scarf trailing from her neck, and thin painted eyebrows. Aimée sucked in a breath as Madame Wu pointed a bamboo back scratcher at her like a weapon.

“You lost? Bathroom that way.”

“We meet again, Madame Wu. Seems there’s quite an extended Wu clan in the quartier.”

Aimée recognized the girl behind her—it was the girl who had been packing hoodies at the luggage shop, who’d warned Aimée off. The girl’s eyes widened in fear, then flicked upward. She caught Aimée’s eye and shook her head.

“How many Madame Wus are there?” The humming of sewing machines spilled down the rotted hallway.

“This building’s private property.
Privé
.”

“You’re the owner then, Madame?”

The small eyes narrowed. “Manager. You go now.”

“But we’re old friends,” Aimée said. “Call this a health inspection. Lots of complaints. Just think of the unsafe working conditions for your employees.”

“I call
sécurité
.” The woman hurried down the steps in small, brocaded house slippers. “Private property, not for public.”

“But this isn’t up to code, Madame.” Aimée pointed to the fuse box with rusted wires trailing from it. Telltale signs of illegally tapping into the electricity source. “Dangerous.” She wagged her finger. “Where’s Meizi?”

The woman whipped out her cell phone, hit a number on her speed dial.

“Not cooperating, Madame?” Aimée reached for the fuse box switch. “Then I’ll need to shut you down.”

The woman jabbed the bamboo back scratcher at Aimée,
just missing her eye. Aimée pulled the bamboo from her hand, knocked the cell phone to the floor, and grabbed the woman’s wrists.

“Get Meizi,” she said to the girl. The girl backed up, frightened.

“Now.”

“Tso!” the woman shouted, struggling. Tough and wiry, like an old hen.

Aimée twisted the woman’s arms behind her and, in a flash of inspiration, stuck the bamboo between her jade bracelets, which trapped her like handcuffs. She looked around, but the girl had disappeared. With a deft movement she twisted the bamboo between banister posts and stuffed the woman’s red silk scarf in her mouth. That should keep Madame Wu quiet for a while.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Aimée looked up to see a man, hooded eyes, a cigarette between his crooked teeth.

“If you’re security, then I’m the electrician,” she said.

“
Gweilo
.” And then she saw the raised knife in his hand.

She yanked the fuse box handle. A sputtering fizz, earsplitting grinding sounds. The light from the bare bulb flickered before the building plunged into darkness, machines grumbling to a painful halt. In the sudden quiet, Aimée could catch the soft conversations of workers, the drumming of Madame Wu’s feet. And that persistent humming, which came from somewhere above.

She had the advantage now; the man would have to come down the steps. She pulled out her penlight, set it on the last step, flicked it on, and stepped away.

Cold air gusted past her face. In the dim light she made out the flash of his knife. She gave a quick kick upward, contacting what she hoped were his ribs. A crunch, and a yelp of pain.

She didn’t have much time. Who knew how many of his cohorts waited upstairs? Her fingers found the penlight on the
dusty floor, then his knife. She shone the beam in his eyes, put the knife tip to his throat, and stuck her hand in his back pocket. Thick wads of hundred-franc bills, a cell phone.