Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Hard to, with an empty weekend ahead.

“Trust me, Aimee.”

Trust a flic? Never, she wanted to scream. She’d lived this while growing up with her father, the long years he was a policeman, and even after he left the force to be a private investigator—all the nights he never came home, the stakeouts, the toll showing on his face. The terrible not knowing if he’d turn the key in the front door again. Then the bomb explosion in Place Vendome. His charred body parts …

“Trust you?” The words caught in her throat. She’d gone against her code to never get involved with a flic. It never worked out. “Two minutes ago my partner called for help, but that didn’t matter. Now your job rang and you’re leaving. Phfft, like that. At least I know where I stand.”

“Zut! It’s an opportunity I can’t pass up, Aimee. Takes care of my alimony. We’ll carve out next weekend.”

She looked away.

“Didn’t we agree,” he said, cupping her chin in his hand, “at your suggestion—non, at your insistence—that our work took priority? No recriminations if work called. I respect that.” His eyes clouded. “Of all people, I thought you understood the demands of my job.”

His ex, Nathalie, hadn’t.

Part of her wanted to lock the door, barricade him in. Tell him she wouldn’t live like this. Break it off. The other part itched to help Rene.

“Nice to use my own words against me, Melac.” She reached for her cell phone.

Melac sat back down on the bed. “I’m not your father.” He took her face in his warm hands again. “I always come back. You won’t be able to get rid of me.”

Melac put on his down jacket in the hallway. She hesitated. But Melac knew everyone.

“Ever had dealings with Prevost?” she asked. “A flic in the troisieme arrondissement?”

Melac’s grip tightened on his scarf, emblazoned with hearts—his daughter Sandrine had knitted it. “Middle- aged, thin lips, married to a Chinese woman?”

She nodded, shivering. She turned the sputtering radiator’s knob to high.

“Why?”

“He questioned us last night.”

Melac shrugged. “A fixture in that area. Speaks some dialect. A plodder. I worked with him once. There were rumors.”

She was instantly alert. “Rumors like what?”

“That he’s a frustrated Ming dynasty classical scholar, a disillusioned Orientalist.” Melac shrugged. “He liked the horses. And cards.”

That gave her food for thought. “Liked? Past tense?”

Melac shrugged again. “Disciplinary action years ago.”

“So you’re saying he’s bent, on the take?”

“I’m saying that’s old news. Ancient history.”

“Any idea who’s assigned to this case at la Crim?”

“Not me.” He buttoned his leather jacket.

“Smelled like the RG’s involved.”

“A task force?” He shook his head.

She’d have to ask Morbier, her godfather, a commissaire. But he was in Lyon, and hadn’t returned her calls.

The taxi’s horn sounded from below.

“Go.”

He gave her a long, searching kiss. A moment later the hall door slammed shut behind him.

At the window, she watched him leave, but he never looked up. A pang hit her. Like her father. Her mind went back to her last day of ecole primaire. The playground, the swings, landing on concrete. Her skull fracture.

So vivid in her mind, like yesterday.

Her father’s worried face drifting in and out. Overhearing the doctor—“The operation’s touch and go.”

Beside her father at the hospital bed was white-faced Morbier, a man who didn’t pray, with a priest. The smell of incense, the cold holy water, administering the last sacrament. The huddling nurse. “The operating room’s ready, mon cure.”

Then the sun-filled room, her stuffed bear on the pillow, the tubes in her arm.

She remembered her father’s smile: “Ma princesse, you’ll need to quit the acrobatics for a while.” The nurse saying, “She needs to take lessons and learn to fall correctly.”

Aimee shook her head. She’d made it.

She said a silent prayer Melac would too.

RENE’S HORN TOOTED from the quai below her kitchen window. She opened the window to the smell of wet foliage and flashed Rene five fingers. The sluggish gray-green Seine slapped white crests against the stone banks.

Miles Davis licked the last of the horsemeat from his new Sevres bowl. In her bedroom Aimee pulled on a cashmere sweater over her black lace top, hitched up her stovepipe, stonewashed suede leggings, and stepped into her friend Martine’s high-heeled Prada ankle boots. At the door she grabbed her vintage Chanel jacket. Miles Davis wagged his tail expectantly and sniffed his leash. “On y va, furball. Madame Cachou will do the honors.”

Miles Davis scampered down the wide marble staircase, his leash trailing on the worn steps grooved in the middle, to the concierge’s loge in the courtyard. Madame Cachou’s early morning yoga on the tele had finished. Perfect timing.

In the loge, Madame Cachou ruffled Miles Davis’s ears. “My favorite little man.” The concierge, who was in her sixties, perspired in a purple yoga outfit. A matching sweatband encircled her gray hair. “I’ve lost five kilos, not even a twinge of bursitis.” Her eyes narrowed at Aimee’s pale face. “You should try it.”

That and a lot of things.

Aimee smiled and handed her the leash. “Merci, Madame.”

Plumes of exhaust came from Rene’s Citroen idling at the curb. Oyster-gray clouds hovered on the horizon. Another frigid day. She stepped over slush in the cobbled gutter, felt the urge for a cigarette, and visualized her concierge’s glowing face. She could go without a cigarette. Five more hours and she’d be a month, cigarette- free.

“I forgot Melac had the weekend off,” Rene said, turning down the radio weather forecast. Another brewing storm. “Desole.”

“Not anymore.”

She slammed the door shut. Relationships—she was just no good at them. Never picked the right man. She should know better. And a flic!

“The dojo’s open for early practice,” he said. They counted on finding Meizi’s real address in the dojo membership. “Thanks for coming, Aimee.” Rene swung the Citroen into sparse traffic on Pont de la Tournelle.

“You think I’d let you do this alone, partner?” She checked the backseat. “Where’s your martial arts bag?”

“Not important. Meizi’s in trouble. You were there, you saw—everything was fine until she got that phone call.”

Aimee noted the dark hollows under Rene’s eyes. “You look like hell, Rene.”

“Not enough beauty sleep.”

She felt for him.

Inside the dojo, the gong signaling a meditation session reverberated. The Thai monk in orange robes raised his folded hands in greeting. The young French nun, her shaved head covered by a wool cap, ran her fingers down the membership ledger. “I don’t see Meizi Wu listed.”