here.”
Cho’s eyes widened.
Colles stopped at the door. “Not my business, you understand. But her family knew mine, and, well … I took the liberty of saying you’d cooperate.” At a loss for more to say, he left and closed the door.
Aimee smiled. “Nothing you say will leave this room, Monsieur Cho.”
Cho stared at her. Light glinted off his silver-rimmed glasses.
“Monsieur Cho, I’m a private detective investigating the murder of Pascal Samour. On rue au Maire on Friday night, I think you’ve heard.”
Cho stood as still as a cat watching a mouse. As silent, too. Well, she could play along.
“It’s not my business if you’re Prevost’s informer in Chinatown,” she said, taking a hunch.
“Why should I talk to you?” he said.
“Didn’t your patron, your sponsor, request you to assist me? I’m not with the
“You’re threatening me?” Cho said at last.
“Not me. Prevost’s pointing the finger to Chinatown. Even if you help him, there’s no guarantee against immigration crackdowns.” She let that sink in. “Or raids in the quartier.”
“I’m legal,” Cho said.
“But what about the others? The ones who helped you when you hawked bags on the quai, the ones who fed you?”
Cho blinked. He averted his eyes. Then came to a decision.
“You think I have a choice?” Cho’s low voice was laced with inflections, a singsong French. “Here, like in China, even when you play the game, tiptoe in the political minefields, they hold something over you and pull you in every time.”
Recruiting him as an informer, Cho meant. She edged around the desk. Lines creased the bridge of his nose, radiated from the corners of his eyes. Older than she had first thought. Tired.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Cho.”
“My laboratory, our chemistry department at the university in Wenzhou …” He shrugged. “The deals I made to keep operating our laboratory sickened me.”
“So what have you heard?” she asked.
Cho stared at her. “We never bring attention to Chinatown. Too dangerous. If French people kill French people, it’s not our business.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shook his head. “No one is who they seem.”
“I know about the false identities, the unmarked graves at Ivry, the shops fronting money-laundering operations, the protection racket.” She tapped her heel. “I need more, Monsieur Cho.”
“Look deeper,” he said.
She didn’t have the time for a philosophical exploration. “Deeper?”
Cho backed up toward the door. “My room’s on rue des Vertus. If a Chinese murdered this man, I would have heard, as I told Prevost. I need to get back to work.”
She believed him. “What’s behind the surveillance?”
“The sting operation?” he said. “The usual roundup of little fish. Why do you care? Your neck’s not on the line.”
Cho needed convincing.
“Call this a love bite, do you?” She pulled her scarf down, showed him her bruises. “Whoever murdered Samour thinks otherwise. I was attacked last night. And Meizi, who worked in the luggage store, is in danger.”
“Don’t tell me you want to warn her?”
“Protect her if I can. But I need your help.”
Cho hesitated. “The owners of the handbag, luggage, and costume jewelry shops hide their profits.” His voice lowered. “Never pay into the fisc for illegal workers. You’re right, most of it’s a front for laundering money from China.”
Meizi had told her the same thing.
“But what about Tso, the snakehead? Ching Wao?”
“Both would provide a goldmine of back taxes and penalties,” Cho said. “If the tax men find proof, they’ll freeze their network’s bank accounts. That’s all I know.”
And then he’d gone out the door.
She caught up with him in the wet, footprinted hallway. Slid her card with a hundred-franc note in his hand. “I’d appreciate a call if you hear anything.”
He shook her hand off, a flash of pride in his eyes. “I cooperated for Monsieur Colles.”
Again, she’d put her foot in it. Offended him. “
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, taking out a notepad with measurements from his jacket pocket.
One last effort. She pulled out the photo scan of the chalk diagrams. “Can you tell me anything about this?”
“This? A diagram.”
“Recognize anything?” Aimee asked.
He pulled off his glasses and peered closer. Shrugged.
“What about this?” She pulled out one of Rene’s photo scans of the chalk diagrams.
He pointed his smudged forefinger to the border. “Formulas.”
“These?” She stared closer at what could be elongated symbols. Why did they seem so familiar? “The ones that look like old French?”
“Partially, and engineer shorthand.” Cho gave a little smile. The first time he’d thawed. “Electrical engineering’s not my field.” Interested now, he studied the diagram. “But we metallurgists sometimes worked with similar equations.”
“So what can you tell me?”
“It’s hard to say.” He shook his head.
Take a guess, she wanted to yell. Instead, she managed a smile. “But with what you know, your expertise …”
“Clearly these symbols represent an alloy. But this … maybe glass?”
She stared at the diagram, wishing she could see what he saw.
“If I enlarge these, could you tell me more?”
“The diagram looks like a map. But this? Your best bet, Mademoiselle?” Cho put his glasses back on. “Find an electrical engineer.”
AIMEE DOUBLE-KNOTTED THE cashmere scarf around her sore neck, donned her leather gloves, and wove her scooter through traffic on chilly Boulevard de Sebastopol. Thoughts of sunny Martinique and Melac spun in her mind.
Her cell phone rang. With one hand she answered it.
“Saj cracked the encryption, Aimee,” Rene said.
Finally.
“See you in five minutes.” She clicked off and veered around a bus and gunned her scooter.
AROMAS OF CILANTRO and curry drifted from the Indian takeout cartons on Rene’s desk. Saj stepped on a Louis XV chair, spread a damask tablecloth over the gilt-framed mirror hanging above the fireplace. He then angled his laptop on Aimee’s desk. “I cracked a portion. A part’s missing. I figure if he’d encrypted this a week, two weeks ago—”
“Then found the other part yesterday,” she interrupted, taking off her leather gloves, “it wouldn’t be in there. I’ll get going on that at the museum.”
