Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

He remembered his aunt coming home at dawn with a tired smile and a package of butter, bread, a tied length of saucisson. The contents varied. Sometimes he’d meet a soldier in the bathroom on the landing. Green-gray uniforms with lightning bolts; then, after la Liberation, the uniforms were blue with stars.

One day he’d found an envelope with money from his aunt on the kitchen table. “Getting married in Canada. Will write from Quebec.” But she didn’t. After la Liberation he found his parents’ names on a deportation list of Jewish Communists.

Seized by another fit of coughing, he grabbed at the magazine rack. The kiosk vendor raised his fist. “Buy a paper or move on.”

“Who reads that shit anymore, eh?” he snarled back, pulling his frayed fur coat tighter and shuffling away.

He anticipated snow. The chill air sliced his lungs as he breathed. Just as it had that other January—under another cloud-frosted sky—when he’d quit school.

Old Madame Tulette’s son ran the silversmith’s courtyard atelier and gave him odd jobs. He worked when he wanted. The years went by; les Chinois moved in and took over the building. The pain went to his legs, the women he slept with didn’t invite him home as often, and he ended up on the streets. Not that he minded a bottle of wine under a roof of stars in the summer, or the shelters in winter, like during the war. But nowadays his joints ached. His perfect spot on the alley steps—layered with cardboard, newspapers, and blankets —was ruined.

“Clodo? Got wax in your ears? Can’t you hear me, Clodo?”

The blue-uniformed flic shook his shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw last night.”

“You kicked me out, remember?”

“We took you to a warm shelter. Let’s talk at the cafe. Try to remember, eh? You must have heard something, seen a Chinese girl. Help me, won’t you?”

Help him, and get wrapped in plastic?

Like the other one?

Clodo lifted his bag and joined the flic at the zinc counter. “Order me a cafe creme. I need the WC.”

And by the WC, he slipped out the back exit.

Saturday, 9 A.M.

DOWN IN THE passage, Aimee fought the urge to light a cigarette. The pack of crumpled Gauloises lay, like a talisman, in the bottom of her bag. Just knowing its proximity reassured her, gave her the power to choose to smoke or not. She inhaled the crisp, cold air and exhaled, her breath like smoke.

She hit Rene’s number on her cell phone. “The bags aren’t the only faux things in the shop, Rene,” Aimee said, unfurling her scarf. “The Wus aren’t the Wus.”

Rene cleared his throat. “Try making sense, Aimee.”

“Visualize the new Monsieur Wu I met: middle-aged, shorter, speaks good French, with an attitude.”

“New?”

She recounted what happened in the luggage shop. “Smelled bad, Rene. He’d prepared.”

“And you bought it?”

She rooted for her gloves. “Hard to dispute after he showed me his business license, permit and ledger showing he’s owned the shop since 1995.”

“But he could have hidden the real Wus. Maybe he waited until after you left. Hurt them.”

“I checked everywhere,” she said. “There was nothing in back, just storage. So I took his fingerprints. My contact in the crime-scene unit will run the prints to find out his real identity.”

Silence.

“Alors, what if he’s the real deal?” she said. “For argument’s sake, Rene, suppose the Wus we met are as faux as my leopard coat?”

Pause.

“I’ll get back to you when I find something on Ching Wao.”

He hung up.

A taxi idled on rue Beaubourg and she hailed it.

“FNAC at Bastille,” she said to the driver.

He hit the meter. “Shopping in those crowds?”

“Just the ticket window, five minutes. Then 36 Quai des Orfevres.”

AIMEE HATED WAITING in the dark bowels of the prefecture by the crime-scene unit. Its bunker-like underground atmosphere was reinforced by narrow corridors, dim lighting, and serious uniformed law enforcement rushing in and out, carrying on hushed conversations under oppressively low ceilings.

Beside her, a glass case displayed the history of French criminology techniques. Notably those of Alphonse Bertillon, a police officer and biometrics researcher who—according to the placard in the case—created anthropometry, the identification system using photos and physical measurements to identify criminals. He was the first person in the world to use fingerprints to solve a crime—right here, in 1902, in the small, glassed laboratory, so the sign boasted. She’d researched Bertillon in a premed course and realized today they’d call him a racial profiler.

“Aimee, I’m fitting you in.” Benoit, sporting Levi’s under his lab coat, gestured her down the hall. A lank lock of brown hair fell across his forehead and pockmarked cheeks. “I was just about to lift prints off a batch of counterfeit francs.”

“Can you do that?”

“Call me an optimist.”

“Then call this slicing butter, Benoit.”

He opened the lab door. Glanced around. Then motioned her inside. “Remind me why I’m helping you. Again.”

“Can you spell M-O-T-L-E-Y C-R-U-E?”

His eyes popped. “You got the tickets?”

Scalper prices for a sold-out show at the new Stade de France next month had emptied her worn Vuitton wallet. And then some.

“For you, Benoit, the best. Front stage section in arena seating.”

“We’ll rock the place.”

“Better you than me.” Not her type of music.

The green-walled laboratory, small by some standards, housed up-to-date forensic fingerprint wonder machines, many of them British.

“Tell me you got a good set of latents.”

She held out her rouge-noir nail polish bottle. “At least he held the whole thing in his hand.”

“Position it for me the way your perp did.”

She donned a set of blue plastic surgical gloves from the box on the counter. Careful not to smudge the bottle, she showed him, shaping her hand around the baggie.

He got to work dusting the glass surface with powder.

Nothing. Her heart dropped.

“Patience.” Benoit redusted from another pot, then flipped on a blue light. “For you, Aimee, the works. Any idea what he’d been touching before?”

She thought back. “Plastic bags and synthetic materials.”

“Meaning?”

“Those faux designer bags. Fuchsia, if that helps. The shop counter, a ledger written with a ballpoint pen.”