Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

He pulled a swing-arm magnifier over the bag, studied it. “Voila. Micro traces of blue ink, I’d say, in the index fingerprint ridges. A little smudged on the thumb whorl.”

“You’ll run them now?” she said. “I need the works, Benoit.”

He shrugged. “I’ll need some help.”

“That’s on you.” She held up the tickets. “But this guarantees you a hot date.” Now she knew what it looked like when fingerprint techs salivated. “By the works, bien sur you’ll include the police database registry listing all cartes de sejour and pending applications, business permits and licenses.”

Government bureaucrats loved paper. Logged applications, maintained files, registries and databanks. Any official request or form left a paper trail. Even the objets trouves, or lost-and-found, had ledgers corresponding with police reports dating back over a hundred years. And that was just in the on-site storeroom.

“So how soon …?”

“You’re in luck.” He snorted. “Demontellan’s playing the piano now.”

Playing the piano, the old term used for checking fingerprint files.

“He’s the best,” Benoit said. “Knows the cards by heart.”

Her heart fell. “Don’t tell me you still match prints manually?”

“We use three match systems in total. More than the cowboys, the Brits, or Interpol.”

Thorough. No doubt he could do more. It never hurt to ask.

“Impressive.” She wrote down Meizi’s name in the spilled, white fingerprint powder. “Run this name while you’re at it, eh?”

Benoit pushed his hair behind his ears. Winced.

She waved the tickets, still in the FNAC ticket envelope, until he nodded.

“This way.”

“WE GOT A HIT. Now I call this synchronicity,” said Demontellan. “My wife bought her bag in one of those places. A faux Fendi, whatever that means.” Reddish-pink keloid scars ribbed what had once been Demontellan’s ear and trailed down his neck into his shirt collar. A victim of the bombing, a few years earlier, in the Saint-Michel RER station, he’d been luckier than the others on the train. Demontellan wore thick-lensed, seventies-style glasses. His magnified eyes reminded her of an unblinking mackerel. His index finger stabbed a file labeled Wu, Feng, age 29.

He opened it to the record within. Domiciled Ivry, owner of Lucky Luggage, rue au Maire.

“But he’s not twenty-nine years old,” Aimee said loudly to Demontellan’s ruined ear.

“Don’t shout,” he said. “My hearing’s superb.”

“Desolee,” she said, abashed, averting her gaze from the painful-looking scar tissue.

“Everyone does that at first,” he grinned. “Bet my hearing’s better than yours. I’m bionic. Cochlear implants.”

Not knowing whether to laugh or applaud, she shrugged. “We’re all special, Demontellan. Any photo of him?”

“For that let’s take a little stroll.” He led her to a bank of metal file cabinets, chose the W section, and pulled open a drawer at shoulder height. Oatmeal-colored fingerprint cards, filed by surname, stretched before her, some with worn, dog-eared edges, others crisp.

“My father used these,” she said, amazed.

“For cross verification purposes, and individuals not entered into the main system, it does the job. Zut, I can match a card’s prints faster than anyone can boot up, log in, enter the system, and search a database.”

She nodded.

“That’s if we had a current computer database,” he grinned. “Alors, the Brigade Criminelle still types reports on Remingtons.”

Archaic, like everything else at 36 Quai des Orfevres.

“Plus I know the smell. I sniff better with these.”

For any good flic, it came down to the nose. One’s sense of smell developed over years, illustrating Oscar Wilde’s aphorism, “Nothing worth knowing can be taught.” A good flic could pull out a detail cataloged in the recesses of his mind. A name or an address cross-referenced to a memory, a whisper in a bar from an informer. The methodical, painstaking accumulation of details—piecing them together, building evidence, a case.

Computers didn’t do that.

“W. Woo. Wu.” Pause. “Here we go.” Demontellan pulled out three cards. “Wu, Meizi, age 36; Wu, Feng, age 29; and Wu, Jui, age 30.”

Aimee stared at the cards. None of the photos matched Meizi or her parents. What in hell was going on here?

“Demontellan, I suggest you route these to Prevost at the commissariat in the third.”

“Think I do magic, too?”

She grinned. “You could head the report, ‘Question of identity regarding witnesses and suspect in the homicide case reported last night.” And conclude that the identity is inconsistent with fingerprints on file.”

“Did Prevost request this?”

“He should have,” she said. “But I’m sure you’ll craft it so he thinks one of his men did. Cite a paperwork request lost in the shuffle. I’m sure you know how to word it.”

Demontellan took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “You must hold something over that boy.”

“And he must hold something bigger over you,” she said.

Demontellan gave a knowing smile. “It’s evened out.” He paused. “That help you?”

“The more I dig, the deeper the hole.” Her finger traced the stiff edge of the Meizi Wu card. “Proving no one is who they say. But this gets me no closer to finding Meizi Wu.”

He jerked his thumb toward his desk. “Benoit left you a file. On the house, he said.”

She thumbed through photocopied business licenses, carte de sejour applications, work permits. All faux Wus. Ching Wao probably drove a Mercedes with the proceeds.

Disappointed, she picked up her bag from Demontellan’s desk, and saw that a paper had slipped out.

A national museum employment application for a maintenance position at the Musee des Arts et Metiers. The application was for a Wu, Meizi, dated two weeks earlier, and listing as a reference Pascal Samour, faculty department head at CNAM.

Her heart raced. Pascal Samour had given Meizi a recommendation. While Demontellan was photocopying the application and fingerprint cards, Aimee checked the in-box on his desk.

Two current reports from Prevost’s division. Taking advantage of Demontellan’s turned back, she scanned the contents. And almost whistled.

“Merci, Demontellan,” she said. “Get creative with Prevost. He needs the mental stimulation.”

Saturday, 10 A.M.

“NEW SPARK PLUGS, oil change. Your scooter will run like a dream, Aimee,” said Zaco, wiping his greasy hands on his overalls at her local garage on the Ile Saint-Louis.

Zaco told her the same thing last month. Her secondhand pink Vespa, Italian and temperamental, broke down with annoying regularity.

“Merci, Zaco.” She knotted the cashmere scarf around her neck, donned her leather gloves, hit the kick-starter, and headed over Pont de Sully. She wove her scooter through the narrow backstreets to her office. The wrought-iron balconies cast long shadows in the gray winter light. She longed for the sun, even a