Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Aimee nodded.

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

Aimee 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,” Aimee said. “But that’s between you and me.”

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

She imagined Prevost 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.”

Aimee 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?”

Aimee 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,” Aimee 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.

Aimee 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 Rene, 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, Aimee couldn’t help believing, she intended to return to her birthday meal, her present, and Rene.

“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 Aimee.

Saturday, 2 P.M.

RENE 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. Rene 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 Rene finally caught a glimpse of his face. Black hair, fashionable stubble shading his face. Yellow, crooked teeth.

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

Rene turned the key in his Citroen’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, Rene wished he’d hurry up and get to his destination. Then Rene would show him what bad teeth really were.

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

Rene pulled into a red zone.

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

Tso turned at the corner, stepped into a cafe tabac. Rene 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 Rene. 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.

Rene 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, Rene 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 Rene 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 cafe tabac.

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

Saturday, 3 P.M.

“BUT ACCORDING TO Aram, the sweatshop entrance is on rue du Bourg-l’Abbe, Rene.” Worried, Aimee surveyed Rene as they sat in the small cafe tabac. “On the next block.”

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

Aimee’s glass of fizzing Badoit water glistened under the cafe counter light. “You don’t look too good, Rene.”

“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 cafe’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 rose 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’Abbe. 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,” Aimee smiled.