idealist with soft rounded cheeks, who pared the skin off a mango in deft strokes. Bao, whose laugh had sounded like warm rain.
Gassot stiffened as a uniformed policeman and plainclothes
Gassot shivered. “I’m just a customer,” he said, trying to control the shaking in his voice. “Monsieur Picq’s back there.”
And with that, Gassot opened the door and slid into the narrow passage.
“WE’RE STAYING IN A hotel,” Aimee said as she cleaned Rene’s bloodied hands with disinfectant. The taxi pulled up on rue Sauffroy in front of Kinshasa Coiffure, its windows covered with pictures of women with braided cornrows and Afros. HOTEL BONHEUR read an old sign by a window of the second-story building. Smells of fish and coconut mingled in the dusk.
“Here?” Rene asked.
She tipped the taxi driver.
“Always four star with you, Aimee,” he said.
“There’s an elevator and plenty of electrical outlets. I’ll get your car and park it in back, if you want.”
“Don’t you think we’ll stick out?” he said, observing the African women in bright scarves on the street.
“No one will think of looking for us in the African music center of Paris,” she said. “And the owner owes my cousin Sebastian a favor.”
“But we’re still in Clichy.”
“That’s why it’s perfect. Did you see the faces of the men who were holding you? Could you recognize them?”
He nodded. “One heavy-set with red hair, the other lean with a ponytail.”
Like the RG men who had been on the quai outside her apartment.
“What happened, Rene?”
He rubbed his neck. “They threw a net over me on the office stairs, then put a choke hold on my throat. A carotid sleeper special!”
Rene reached in his pocket and winced. “Does this help?” he said, pulling out the notebook.
“I’m proud of you, partner,” she said, scanning the pages.
One had writing on it, with a phone number. Regnier’s number.
“This confirms it,” she said. “Regnier, the suspended RG
“I’ve felt worse.” Though he couldn’t remember when. With an effort, he tried not to limp.
The hotel room’s furniture—two beds, an angular leopard-skin couch and 1960s Formica end tables—seemed out of place under the tall ceilings and ornate nineteenth-century scrollwork moldings. Lemon verbena scents came from the bathroom. She took out her laptop and hooked it up.
“Saj will bring laptops from the office and we’ll work from here. That’s if the doctor gives you the OK.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” he said. “I just need to lie down, and to bandage my wrists. What about Miles Davis?”
“He’s on holiday at the groomer’s. Loves it, according to the groomer.”
“Is Guy coming?”
She turned away.
“What’s the matter, Aimee?”
“Time to talk about that later. There’s something more important.”
Rene’s brow furrowed. She reached for the box of gauze bandages. She wasn’t very good at this but she had to say it. “I know I’m not the easiest person to work with Rene. But I can’t see myself anywhere but Leduc Detective. And you’re part of that. I do know that with your skills, you could go anywhere. Maybe you’ve received other offers. Was that what you meant the other day?”
An odd look crossed Rene’s face.
“Are you in pain?” she asked. Or was he afraid to tell her he was leaving?
“You’re my family, Rene, but I don’t want to stand in your way. I’ll try and talk you out of it, because I’m selfish. But I will respect whatever . . .”
“Did I say anything like that?” Rene asked.
She shook her head. “But I thought. . . .”
“I’d appreciate a raise when we’re solvent again,” he said, as Aimee bandaged his wrists.
“Consider it done,” she grinned. She took a deep breath.
“At this rate I’m going to have to put your name on the door.”
He looked away but not before she saw a small smile on his face.
“In the meantime, what I can’t figure out is why didn’t they call you again,” Rene said, “or make more demands.”
Was he trying to change the subject? But he’d made a good point. “True, Regnier was waiting for me to find the jade, or else Gassot.” She stood up. “And I haven’t found either. Not yet.”
She looked out the window to the wet street below. No sign of Regnier or anyone tailing her. The orange-pink neon of Kinshasa Coiffure reflected on the windows opposite. From the resto below, came the beat of the music of Papa Wemba, the King of Congolese Rhumba Rock.
“I have to find out why Olf wants me to monitor the Chinese and British oil bids,” she said. “You’ll have to help me.”
“Oil bids?
Rene put his feet up on the bed, laid back. His eyes looked heavy.
“And how the jade’s involved with oil. This smelled from the beginning and it’s reeking now.”
But she spoke to a sleeping Rene.
“FIND ANYTHING INTERESTING, LARS? ” Aimee asked over the phone. She hoped he’d thaw out and pass on more concrete details about the so-called Circle Line.
“That’s some pudding you’re looking into,” he said, then placed his hand over the phone to muffle some background noise.
“Count on me to stir the lumps in the pudding,” she said.
The sounds of furniture scraping on the floor, then a loud squeak came over the line. “Sorry, we’re moving out the file cabinets. Rumor has it our office has its new coat of paint and they’re shoveling us upstairs. Room 20.”
It was an old signal he used when other ears were listening in. Good thing she hadn’t mentioned Pleyet’s name.
“Can you make some time to have a coffee with me?”
“We’re worked off our feet. Call me next week; we’ll meet at the nice place under the horse chestnuts.”
He rang off.
If she hurried she’d make it to the cafe on Place Dauphine by the roasted chestnut stand in twenty minutes.
She crossed rue de Rivoli, passed the Louvre’s imposing Cour Carree, raced down the small street behind the Art Deco Samaritaine department store, and hurried across the Pont Neuf. The wind whipped at her coat but her vision was crystal clear.
Figures in overcoats, bent against the wind, formed a dark stream across the bridge. The words of Hubert Juin’s poem about the Pont Neuf came to her:
