Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Madame Liu, who was stirring a pot of congee, looked up. Her black curls didn’t move. She frowned. “I get health-code violation if customer here.”

“Please, I need to talk with you, Madame.”

Steam rose and pots clattered.

“Busy now. My cook sick.”

Aimee glanced around. The small kitchen was a hive of activity—workers at the range, washing dishes, waitresses grabbing plates.

“How will you keep your resto open without these people?”

Alarm crossed the little woman’s eyes. “You try to shut me down?”

“I want to help so you won’t be shut down.” Aimee took Madame Liu’s wiry arm and led her past sacks of rice to the rear door. A damp alley. Her mind went back to last night, the plastic, fighting to breathe. She shook it aside.

“Alors, Madame, we’ll help each other.”

“I answer your questions before.”

“Within an hour the police will raid the quartier,” Aimee said. “Spreading the net to catch big fish like Tso, but your little fish will be caught too. Unless you help me.”

Madame Liu’s eyes narrowed. “Not my business.”

“The staff’s your business,” Aimee said. “If you don’t believe it, see for yourself. Go near Republique, out on rue Beaubourg. Check out all the parked surveillance vans.”

Madame Liu’s fingers crabbed the dishtowel in her hands. Weighing her options, Aimee figured.

“Or do you like paying protection money to buy Ching Wao’s Mercedes?” Aimee tapped her heel on the damp cobbles.

A shout came from the kitchen. Madame Liu’s brows knitted in alarm.

“Mais alors, Madame, there’s not much time.”

Madame checked her watch. A long moment passed before she nodded. “What you want?”

Aimee explained what she wanted her to do. Asked Madame to repeat it. Satisfied, she handed Tso’s phone to Madame.

Madame Liu glanced at her watch again. Nodded and hit the first contact number. She spoke the brief message in Wenzhou dialect. Then the same message again for the next three numbers.

“Remember what I said,” Aimee said. “Close in ten minutes. Only inform people you trust.”

Madame Liu nodded.

“You catch killer for great-auntie?”

“Not yet.” Aimee pulled out the phone’s memory chip, ground it on the cobble under her heel. Pulled her own out and left a message for Prevost.

Aimee turned to head down the alley.

“But I see that girl,” Madame Liu said. “Tonight.”

Aimee froze.

“Man follow her on street.”

“One of Tso’s men?”

Madame Liu shook her head. “Maybe Frenchman. I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

“Coat, hat, I don’t see face. Bag of crumbs, like he feed the pigeons.”

Few people fed pigeons this late at night in the winter. The RG or the flics? Or …

“Which way did she go, Madame?”

“Toward Metro.”

AIMEE RAN, CELL PHONE to her ear. “Rene, please tell me Meizi’s with you.”

“With me? I’m meeting her near Square du Temple.” Rene’s voice mounted in worry. “Meizi told me everything. The diagram …”

This felt wrong. “You mean Meizi told you over the phone, on the street?”

“Bien sur. It’s safer for her to come to the tower, that’s why …”

Bread crumbs to feed the swans in the square’s pond. Of course. And it was coming together. Samour’s killer’s next victim.

“A man’s following her, Rene,” Aimee said. “Hurry, I’ll meet you there.”

She clicked off. Saved her breath, wishing with every step she hadn’t smoked that cigarette.

At rue du Temple she met a locked gate; the Square du Temple closed early in winter. She looked both ways, then hoisted herself over the side fence. Through the spindle of bare tree branches she saw the glass-roofed, green-metal band shell, home to classical music in summer, now forlorn in the mist. The frost-tipped grass, the playground, and the statue of Beranger obscured by the low-lying fog.

The waterfall gurgled, slipping over stones and feeding into the pond, whose surface was a dull, opaque shimmer of broken ice. A lone swan glided and disappeared. Somewhere a bird trilled. The park, deserted in the dark, cold evening, held night sounds: splashing water, framed by distant traffic.

Aimee shivered, stamped her feet. Nervous, she continued around the pond’s mud-rimmed edge. Saw floating bread crumbs.

“Meizi?” she called, alarmed.

No answer.

Aimee exhaled a plume of frost.

A dark figure moved in the shadows. She heard footsteps, snapping branches. Coming closer.

An attacker?

Then splashing farther away. A scream.

Aimee broke into a run, her heart racing.

“Meizi?”

Furious splashing. A figure ran from the bushes, but she could only make out a dim outline in the darkness.

Meizi yelled, thrashing in the water.

Aimee reached down and grabbed Meizi’s arm. Pulled her up on the mud bank from the pond. Frightened, Meizi backed up, catching her foot on a root.

“Aimee? Someone tried to at—attack me,” said a shaking Meizi.

Tso, or someone else? “Hurry, someone’s watching you.”

Her teeth were clicking in the cold, her jeans dripping at the pond’s edge. “I twisted my ankle, I can’t make it.”

“You need to try.” Aimee nodded toward the low fence. The glow of a cigarette tip by the bare branches. “I’ve worked out a deal with the flics to protect you, Meizi. But we have to hurry. You’re being followed.”

Meizi’s eyes glittered in fear. Aimee pulled her back into the bushes, put her arm around her shaking shoulders, and guided her through the damp foliage.

Trying not to make a sound, Aimee propelled her to the mound by the grilled fence.

“Climb over.”

Meizi winced. “You’re kidding, right?”

Instead of arguing with her, Aimee gripped Meizi’s shoulder tighter, pointed to the foothold in the low grillwork. “Put your good foot here, see? Then swing your other leg up.”

Before Meizi could protest, Aimee boosted Meizi up, then climbed over, herself. “Give me your hand … et voila.”

Down on the pavement, every step Meizi took squelched water from her dripping shoes. Aimee gripped Meizi’s shoulder tighter. The frigid air made breathing hard. She struggled not to slip on the ice and to keep Meizi, shivering and soaked, moving forward. “We’re almost there.”

So dark, and the street blanketed in fog.

“Where’s the diagram, Meizi?”