Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, 8 A.M.

“YOU’RE POPULAR, CLODO,” said the volunteer at the Salvation Army shelter desk. “A flic left you a message. Someone else, too.”

Clodo stiffened. Already? January bit with cold teeth if the flics wanted to talk to him. He needed to get the hell out of here.

Clodo waved his blistered hand. “I’ll let my agent handle them.” His lungs burned, his eyes teared. He needed something warmer to wear.

He rooted in the clothes donations pile, grabbing a scarf. Pink and thick cashmere. He wrapped it around his neck.

“Hot enough water in the showers today, Clodo?”

Always a new volunteer. Kids who knew nothing about the streets. Or life.

“Not bad,” said Clodo.

Time to move. Once a week he came to this shelter in the east exit of the closed old Métro station. A shower, a meal, clothes, a warm place. But he hated the questions, the checking up. A few years ago, the city let the homeless sleep in alcoves on the platforms when the thermometer hit four degrees centigrade. Not anymore.

The volunteer refused to be put off. “The flic said it’s important, Clodo.”

As if he wanted to talk to a flic, after last night.

The salauds kicked him out from his spot on the stairs, which had been covered and dry. They’d questioned him about the mec the rats feasted on. Clodo, he minded his own business. Had to survive, didn’t he? He learned that in the war.

A racking cough overtook him. Damn lungs.

The kid pointed to the nursing station. “Get your cough checked out, Clodo.”

Like hell he would. He needed a drink. “Lend me some fric, eh. My cough syrup’s ready at the pharmacy.”

“You know we can’t do that.” The kid looked away. “But I can check on beds tonight in the Bastille shelter.”

Damn do-gooder. He needed a drink. He snorted and mounted the stairs to Boulevard Saint-Martin.

Later he’d sleep in the old ghost station. He knew the subterranean web of tunnels like the holes in his shoes. Had slept there during the air raids in the war, while the British bombed the train supply depots. People forgot that. They forgot how once neighbors, shopkeepers, postmen, and bourgeois families all huddled together in the deep stations—République, Temple, Arts et Métiers, and Saint-Martin, the ghost station. They forgot how the aerial bombing reverberations rained powder over their faces. The terror.

But he didn’t forget. He didn’t forget his parents, either. Communists, rounded up the day his Aunt Marguerite took him to the doctor for his seven-year-old checkup. They’ll come back, she’d said. But they didn’t. She worked nights playing the accordion and singing at the dance hall on the Grands Boulevards. He’d go to the shelter with Madame Tulette, the concierge.

“Watch where you’re walking, old man.” In the sea of passersby, a man in a suit jostled Clodo into a half-frozen puddle. The pavement rumbled and warm gusts shot up through the grill from the Métro running below. He leaned against the kiosk to catch his breath. Horns blared.

He remembered his aunt coming home at dawn with a tired smile and a package of butter, bread, a tied length of saucisson. The contents varied. Sometimes he’d meet a soldier in the bathroom on the landing. Green-gray uniforms with lightning bolts; then, after la Libération, the uniforms were blue with stars.

One day he’d found an envelope with money from his aunt on the kitchen table. “Getting married in Canada. Will write from Quebec.” But she didn’t. After la Libération he found his parents’ names on a deportation list of Jewish Communists.

Seized by another fit of coughing, he grabbed at the magazine rack. The kiosk vendor raised his fist. “Buy a paper or move on.”

“Who reads that shit anymore, eh?” he snarled back, pulling his frayed fur coat tighter and shuffling away.

He anticipated snow. The chill air sliced his lungs as he breathed. Just as it had that other January—under another cloud-frosted sky—when he’d quit school.

Old Madame Tulette’s son ran the silversmith’s courtyard atelier and gave him odd jobs. He worked when he wanted. The years went by; les Chinois moved in and took over the building. The pain went to his legs, the women he slept with didn’t invite him home as often, and he ended up on the streets. Not that he minded a bottle of wine under a roof of stars in the summer, or the shelters in winter, like during the war. But nowadays his joints ached. His perfect spot on the alley steps—layered with cardboard, newspapers, and blankets—was ruined.

“Clodo? Got wax in your ears? Can’t you hear me, Clodo?”

The blue-uniformed flic shook his shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw last night.”

“You kicked me out, remember?”

“We took you to a warm shelter. Let’s talk at the café. Try to remember, eh? You must have heard something, seen a Chinese girl. Help me, won’t you?”

Help him, and get wrapped in plastic?

Like the other one?

Clodo lifted his bag and joined the flic at the zinc counter. “Order me a café crème. I need the WC.”

And by the WC, he slipped out the back exit.