located around the block. She didn’t know what she’d face inside. And she couldn’t wait.
A line of light shone from under a door. She tried the handle. It didn’t move.
She closed her eyes, tried to center herself. Focus.
Then she kicked the door in.
CLODO BLINKED AT the bright white light. He was cold all over. Even the blood coursing in his veins felt cold.
“He’s responding,” a voice said, and the white light receded. “Two more milligrams of morphine.”
“Can you feel this, Clodo?”
He floated on a river, strains of an accordion drifting in the air. Sun speckles shivered on the water’s surface.
“Feel what?” Clodo asked.
“Good.” The voice moved away. “Rest for a while.”
His aunt—he was dancing with his Aunt Marguerite, a long, thick braid down her back, and it was 1942. His parents watched them, laughing and drinking wine. It didn’t matter that he’d never danced with Marguerite before. Or that his parents were already gone in 1942. Light glimmered on their wineglasses; his mother crinkled her nose like she always did.
“Try not to move, Clodo.”
“But why not?” he said. Joy filled him. They were there all together at the river. “I’m at the
Footsteps. “Never seen one survive.” A muffled conversation. “He thinks he’s dancing, doctor.”
“His dancing days are over,” a man was saying. “If you think he’s up to it, I need to question him.”
“We’re monitoring his morphine drip,” another voice said. “Give him some time. The first few hours post- surgery are critical. No drug stills the phantom leg pains after amputation.”
What were they going on about? Now he was dancing with his mother, her flower-print sundress twirling as they spun to the music, her head thrown back, happy and laughing. But her face changed. Now it was the man, and he was yelling. Yelling until the plastic silenced his screams.
RENE PUSHED BACK the brandy snifter on the zinc counter, his gaze raking the street, the doorways.
“Call me Bruno,” said the man rinsing tall beer glasses behind the counter. He was in his fifties, with the red, veined nose of a drinker. “Likes to dress up, your friend.”
“At every opportunity,” Rene said, declining another brandy.
“She a secret agent?” Bruno winked knowingly. Too many Bond movies, Rene thought.
“A force of nature,” Rene said, “but why don’t you tell me about the one with bad teeth who bought cigarettes.”
“He do that to you?” Bruno shook his head. “Seen him a few times. That’s all. No shame, these people, attacking your kind.”
His kind? All his life Rene had struggled against ignorant perceptions, to prove his stature made no difference. He’d studied martial arts at the dojo, achieved a black belt to prevent trouble. If only the cold hadn’t affected his hip this way.
“Implying that I can’t take care of myself?” Rene said.
“I call it unfair the way these
“So he’s done this before?”
“They’re taking over the quartier, buying up the shops,” Bruno said. “Me, I’m the only family business left, apart from Chartier, the butcher.”
Seeing he had a captive audience, Bruno warmed up. Rene listened with half an ear to his litany against immigrants, until Bruno’s words caught his attention.
“Colonized the quartier, the
Rene thought he knew what Bruno meant, but shook his head.
“They use a legal name to run a business. Not the real proprietor. Some big entrepreneur in China, more like it.”
Had Meizi’s luggage shop done this? Rene wondered.
“Yet no one does anything.” Bruno sighed. “Only one thing riles a phlegmatic Parisian to action.”
Not selfish with his opinions, this Bruno, Rene thought. “So you mean transport strikes? Or the cost of Gauloises going up?” Rene rubbed his hip.
“I mean officials getting a free apartment.” Bruno shoved the morning edition of
Nothing rubbed a Parisian raw more than a plutocrat with a
“Part of the perks,
“There’s perks. Then there’s excess and being found out, like this ministry official Roubel, with his pied-a- terre on the Seine.”
Why the hell hadn’t Aimee called?
AIMEE SCANNED THE attic room, the mattresses on the floor lumpy with sleeping figures. She registered the sharp drafts of air from holes in the roof, the peeling wallpaper, the pot bubbling on the stove and emitting chili paste odors. The humming of sewing machines in the adjoining room.
She wove among the mattresses, checking the faces. No Meizi.
Any moment Tso could show up, summon reinforcements.
At the sewing machines fifteen or so women treadled the old-fashioned foot pedal sewing machines and stitched zippers. Hoodie sweatshirts were piled beside them on the floor.
“Meizi?”
No one looked up.
If Meizi wasn’t here, she’d made a huge mistake. She pushed down panic.
“Police!” she shouted, flashing her PI license. “Show me your identification.”
Treadles ceased as the sewing machines stopped. She heard rustling from the mattresses. A cry.
“Ask our boss, Tso,” said a young woman in a blue hoodie, her hair in a ponytail not unlike Meizi’s. “He have our papers.”
“Not Meizi Wu’s papers. Where is she?” Aimee said, making this up as she went along.
“Don’t know.”
“I don’t like your lies,” she said, then sniffed. “Or the soup.” She pounded her fist on the stove. “Tell me or I’ll take you all to the station right now!”
Terror showed on the women’s faces.
“A girl in back,” said the one in the hoodie. “Don’t know name.”
“That’s better.” Aimee stepped back and opened the door. Looked down the hallway. “Now get out.”
The young woman moved closer, and her stale breath hit Aimee in the face. She stared at the white butcher’s coat. “You not police!”
The blue hoodie wanted to argue with her?
“Undercover
