Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

“He’s sold yours already, you know that? You’re not ‘sharing’ anymore.”

Thin vanilla light pooled on the wood floor. The radiator grumbled. Meizi pursed her lips. “You won’t tell Rene?”

“Tell Rene you’ve got another man?”

Meizi shook her head.

“He knows you’re not who you say you are.”

“I can’t let Rene know.”

“That Pascal got you a job?”

“Non, that I lied about my parents. He’ll never believe anything I say. Please, just until I figure this out.”

Aimee nodded. “And in return?”

“Listen, one section of the Chinese cemetery at Ivry is full of unmarked graves,” Meizi said. “Potter’s field, that’s what you say?”

Paupers, no family. Aimee shuddered. Did Tso threaten Meizi and these women with an unmarked grave? “So you’re saying …?”

“When someone old dies or commits suicide, papers get passed on.”

For a culture that reveres its ancestors, this seemed a sacrilege, and a high price for living in France. But a leverage point she could use with Prevost.

“Tell me more about their protection racket.”

“The luggage store is a front,” Meizi said reluctantly.

“In what way?”

“Like half the shops. A way to launder money from Wenzhou. Tso makes them pay ‘insurance.’ ”

“But what did Samour have to do with it?”

Baffled, Meizi shook her head. “Nothing. He’s … he was some kind of scientific engineer, non? ”

“What aren’t you telling me, Meizi?”

“I don’t know what you want to hear, but …” Her throat caught. “Tso’s suspicious. He thinks I’ll run away. Had that man follow me. That’s why I wore your hat.” Meizi’s lip trembled. “Rene’s the only person I know here, the only one who cares. I’m short, too.” A smile flitted across her face, then it was gone. “He has a good heart.”

Meizi gulped the water, determined to go on.

“Rene struggles to overcome things,” she said, her voice dropping. “He thinks he hides it, but I see his lonely side. I feel lonely too. Lying to him makes me sick inside. Now he won’t trust me.”

Touched, Aimee nodded. “Rene calls you his soul mate, Meizi. Just talk to him.”

Her phone beeped. A message. She’d forgotten she’d muted her phone. She heard Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s voice: “Meet me at the mairie, upstairs, Salle Odette Pipoul. I need to see you. Now.”

Had Mademoiselle Samoukashian discovered something?

A knock sounded on the door. Aimee put two hundred francs and her card in Meizi’s hand. An idea had formed. “Call Tso. Tell him you’re afraid, hiding. But promise to tip him off before the big raid happens. Convince him, Meizi. Say you don’t know the details yet but you’ll warn him,” she said. “He’ll call his dogs off. He’ll need you.”

“He will?”

“Trust me. Buy a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Call me. I have a plan.”

She checked the peephole, then tossed her lipstick tube to Meizi. “A little color does wonders, Meizi. Keep it.”

She opened the door and smiled at Rene.

“Merci, Aimee.” His brow was beaded with perspiration. He held a bouquet of blue forget-me-nots.

Aimee leaned, kissed Rene on both cheeks.

“Expect room service in a few minutes.” She winked. “And a few hours alone.”

A man in a windbreaker huddled with the receptionist at the lobby desk. His stance, the way he nodded, pricked up Aimee’s antennae. A moment later he sat behind a wilting palm and pulled out a newspaper.

This didn’t feel right. Listen to your gut, Morbier always said. Instead of crossing the lobby, she kept to the wall by the manager’s office and slipped into the door marked Service.

She hurried down a corridor full of room-service trays to another flight of stairs. As with most hotels, the back environs never matched the exterior. Cracked concrete partially covered the faded whitewashed brick walls leading to a turn-of-the-century laundry, complete with airing cupboards and ancient ironing boards.

She followed a faded red-and-yellow line to the next level. Evidence of an exit or an old bomb shelter, she figured. Matching painted arrows led down the stairs to a subterranean series of brick rooms. Bed frames, chairs, racks with dust-furred wine bottles. Hotel storage.

Notausgang—emergency exit, from the little German she remembered—was painted above an alcove. She waded through plastic bags and old pipes to find a padlocked slatted-wood gate.

Cold gusts of mildewed air came through it. At least it was a way out. With a padlock shim from her lock- picking kit, it took less than a minute to gain entrance to a dark, wet cavern. Her penlight revealed browned notices in German script with SS lightning bolts. And a partially bricked-up staircase.

A prickle ran up her spine. No time to linger among Nazi ghosts. The bricks yielded after several kicks. Up the staircase, to another gate that jiggled open. She found herself in a smoke-filled room. Poker players sat around a table under a low-hanging green light. She nodded to the surprised men and kept going.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER she entered the courtyard of the neo-Renaissance mairie, the town hall laid out like an H in the florid style favored in the nineteenth century. She mounted the marble staircase of honor, passing the acting sentinels: two buxom female bronzes. Over-the-top, as most of these architectural homages were. Promoting a feeling of grandeur where citizens of the quartier attended to mundane affairs: school registration, housing, senior services, marriage and death certificates.

In the Salle Odette Pilpoul, Mademoiselle Samoukashian sat on a gilt-backed chair that was all but swallowed up in the grandeur of the room: maroon velvet floor-length curtains, stained-glass windows, a massive fireplace at one end, a stage at the other. Why meet here? Aimee wondered.

“I did my homework.” Mademoiselle Samoukashian gestured to a pile of newspapers. “They archive them downstairs.”

Copies of Liberation, headlined “Kidnapped Spanish Princess Found” and “Basque Terrorists Linked to ETA Discovered by Leduc Detective.”

“I knew I remembered you from the papers,” the old woman said.

Outed, Aimee shrugged, then pulled up a little gilt chair. “It was personal, Mademoiselle.” A little over a month ago she’d almost lost Morbier, her godfather. She’d protected him and saved his career by a hair’s breath. Too close. “My godfather—”

“Bien sur, family, I understand,” she said. “I accessed Pascal’s safe deposit box.”

“Vraiment? Aren’t the banks closed on the weekend?”

“Not if you know the manager,” said Mademoiselle Samoukashian. “He’s Armenian.” She waved her age- spotted hand. “Not only did I change his diapers, I hid his father during the war. With Odette Pilpoul.”

Aimee was impressed, and wondered what memories this musty salle brought back to her. “Mademoiselle, it sounds like you’re connected to the quartier’s history.”

A small sigh. “Not that I care to remember those days.” She shook her head. “All the hotels requisitioned for the Wehrmacht’s telegraphists, their drivers, the Luftwaffe pilots, bordellos for the soldiers. Even took over the Conservatoire.” A shrug. “Odette and I printed false identification papers in the printing press below my family’s apartment. We targeted disruptions at the Centre Telephonique et Telegraphique, their communications headquarters on rue des Archives. A ‘nest of saboteurs’ was what the Gestapo called the quartier.” Her eyes were far away. “We rendezvoused at the pharmacy on Boulevard de Sebastopol, next to the German recruiters. Who’d know it now?”