Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, Noon

HALF AN HOUR later, after a plate of spiced lamb couscous, Aimée sat at a Formica table in a back nook adjoining the hotel’s kitchen.

“There are only three addresses on the list,” Aimée told Aram over her tiny glass of sweet mint tea.

“Be happy you’ve got that,” he said.

“Pretty expensive, Aram.”

“So’s the payoff I make to stay open. Factor that in.”

“Protection money?” Aimée pulled out her tube of Chanel Red, swiped her lips.

“At first I refused, but fires in my kitchen changed my mind.”

“You’re not saying the flics—?”

“Chinese mafia,” Aram interrupted, lowering his voice. “I pay, like everyone on the street. They extort, kidnap shop owners’ kids if they don’t pay. Demand the gold bars under the bed and a cut in the business.” He sipped his tea. “The quartier’s wrapped up tight, all ‘in-house.’ ”

No wonder the flics got nowhere.

“And the girls?”

“I don’t know, don’t ask.”

“For the meal, Aram.” She slid ten francs over the table.

But he shoved the money back. “I invited you.”

Service compris? She liked that, but wrote it off to ingrained Arab hospitality. “Merci. What’s the word on the street about last night?”

He smiled. Again that white smile. “No one sees. No one hears anything. The usual.”

“Let me understand this. You’re saying if someone did witness the murder, they—”

“Shut their mouths.” He sliced his index finger across his neck. “Compris?”

She suppressed a shudder, picked up her bag and pushed back her chair from the table. Paused at the distant look in Aram’s close-set eyes.

“That incident with your cousin, not my doing,” he said. “Just so you know. The hard stuff, not my thing.”

She believed him. “But I’m proud of Sebastien. He heeded the wake-up call.”

“Not many do.” And from the downcast look, she realized Aram knew of what he spoke.

AIMÉE HEADED HER scooter up rue des Vertus, past the Tai Chi practitioners in the Square du Temple, where denuded trees shivered in the wind. Across from Eglise Sainte Elisabeth, she turned right at la poste, whose grilled doors were open to a line of seniors snaking out to the street. Lining up for their monthly pension checks. Even in this weather!

A few brave brasserie patrons sat outside on rattan chairs under flapping awnings. Here the one-way streets were double-parked, and Aimée narrowly missed a woman pushing a stroller. She had to hop off her scooter and thread it through cité Dupetit-Thouars by foot. Narrow lanes of shuttered shop fronts sported peeling posters and flaking stucco, just as in black-and-white Brassai photos of prewar Paris. A luthier, a stringed-instrument maker, still operated behind dark windows. Otherwise, the old shops looked deserted, awaiting the gentrification heralded by the bright, white facade of a trendy kitchenware shop.

She parked her scooter on the slush-covered cobbles at the curb. Down another open passage lined by two-story buildings, she found 55. Children’s voices came from an interior courtyard.

She pressed the button and the dark-green door clicked. Pushing it open, she found another arched door, its sign engraved in gold letters: Lestimet, Custom Racing Cars.

Posh and exclusive. Not her destination.

“Lost, Mademoiselle?” A Frexpresse deliveryman appeared at the door.

“My friend’s meeting me.”

She gestured to a smaller door, unpolished and water-stained. “Maybe I’m wrong,” she said, making this up as she went along, “but I thought she said it was for rent.”

He nodded. “It’s been vacant on and off for years. Bad leaks. Not on my pickup route anymore.”

Talkative, this man. Didn’t he have deliveries to make?

“Really?” She kept her eye on the door, hoping someone would come out so she could sneak in.

“You’re better off somewhere else. A real headache, I’ve heard.” He leaned forward as if in confidence. “You know, it was a nightclub during the war. They kept it secret from the Boches. Supposedly Maurice Chevalier liked the girls there. Then squatters for years.”

Perfect venue for an illegal sweatshop.

She waited until he’d waved good-bye and buzzed himself out, then put her ear to the door. Ticking noises, the smell of leather.

The door opened and she caught herself before she fell inside.

“Pardonnez-moi,” she said to the surprised middle-aged Chinese woman hurrying out. When she didn’t stop, Aimée walked inside.

In the weak light falling from the glass-roofed atelier, thirty or so Chinese women of various ages worked at industrial sewing machines. She scanned the downturned faces. No one looked up, all intent on feeding thin pigskin leather under the punching needles. Mattresses were stacked against one water-stained wall.

Mon Dieu, they slept here. They must work in shifts.

In a corner, a group hand-stitched delicate leather straps onto handbags they took from an overflowing bin. These handbags, Aimée realized, sold for thousands of francs in Place Vendôme. It sickened her, almost as much as the pervasive leather odor.

But no Meizi. Merde.

A woman in the corner watched Aimée, saying something under her breath to the woman beside her.

Aimée scanned the walls for a schedule, anything listing workers. Perhaps her timing was off, and Meizi worked the night shift? She saw only a calendar, still turned to December, with a picture of a faded Christmas tree. She peered around stacks of cardboard boxes labeled: Fontain, luxe à la mode fabriqué en France.

Over the punching machines she heard someone approaching. Best defense was a good offense, her father always said.

She pulled out her phone. Hit mute. “The orders?” She spoke into her silent phone. “But I’m here!” She whipped around to face a short Chinese man in red-framed glasses, with spiked, blond-tipped hair.

“Attends,” she said as he opened his mouth. She rolled her eyes and raised her hand. “Of course I’ll ask him,” she said into the phone, nodded as if listening intently, then clicked off.

“Monsieur, I’m Melanie, Fontain’s new distributor,” she said breathlessly and shook his hand. “I won’t take your time except to check if the order’s ready.”

He blinked.

“Don’t tell me it’s not ready?” she said in feigned dismay.

“Tonight’s order?”

“But it’s supposed to be packed, ready for shipment.”

“Shipment?”

Wrong. She had to salvage this, keep him off-kilter.

“New policy,” she said, thinking fast. “We’re treating these leather bags as if they could be shipped overseas. Like the Italian brands. Impresses the retailers.”

Nonplussed, he shrugged. “Not my end.”

“So you’re telling me what, it’s not ready?”

“Ten P.M. tonight,” he said. “Like usual. What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Let me call the office, check on this.”

She could only keep this up so long before she blew it. “The schedule’s fixed?” She looked around. “So you’ve got another shift in tonight to guarantee the order’s ready?”

“But who’s your contact, anyway?” His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Why don’t you know how we process standing orders?”

She’d ruffled his feathers. Stupid.

She stepped forward, waved her finger close to his red glasses. He didn’t like that, she could tell. “Off point, Monsieur.” She raised her voice: “I’m asking how you’ll fill the order with only this crew. You have more people coming in, yes or no?”

He stepped back. Nervous now. Reached for his phone.

She punched numbers on her cell phone. “Bon, we’re canceling the order.”

A long moment passed. Several heads looked up, then back down at their machines.

“Mais Mademoiselle, pas de problème,” he said, clicking off his phone and now fawning. “Six of our finishers arrive in an hour to add the final touches, do quality control.”

He didn’t want to lose the order he thought she had power over. He smiled. Small teeth.

Scared. Good.

“Not those young ones who clean toilets for Ching Wao! We expect experienced hands.”

He blinked again. “I don’t know what you mean.” But he did. “They’ve all worked with me before …”

“How long?”

“On this fine detail? The lining, the seams? Three, four years. We only use the older women.”

And then it hit her. All the women were wearing cotton gloves. “Do those gloves protect their hands?”

“But Mademoiselle, cotton lisle absorbs moisture and oils from the skin to prevent stains and protect the leather. Our workers do precise work, keep their hands supple.”

He approached a woman at the nearest machine. Motioned for her to stop and take off her gloves. “See?”

Disgusted, she looked at the smooth, pale hands. Not work-worn like Meizi’s. But she’d found out what she came for.

“Bon, I’ll keep this between you and me,” she said, then turned on her heel and hurried out before he could stop her.

She ran through the next coved door, down the narrow passage and to her scooter, not pausing to catch her breath. All that to find Meizi didn’t work here.

She battled a mounting feeling that going around intimidating sweatshop managers would get her nowhere. She hated snooping, invading the lives of women forced to work in underground sweatshops. A wild-goose chase? Smarter to cut her losses and think of another way. But which way?

She pulled her scooter off the kickstand, turned the ignition, and squeezed the clutch into first gear.

One address down. Two more to go.

AIMÉE STRODE INTO the cobbled Passage du Pont-aux-Biches, which led up to a steep stretch of staircase and rue Meslay, a cache of designer wholesale shoe stores. Her friend Martine labeled it “the stairway to heaven.” But Aimée didn’t have time for shoes now.

Two men in overalls hauled an antique harp through the doorway of No. 32. She followed the grunting men and paused in the courtyard. Pots of geraniums lined the damp butterscotch stone walls. Upscale and bourgeois. Not what she figured for a sweatshop.

“Up here, Messieurs, top floor.” A gray-haired woman smiled and beckoned from an upstairs window.

“Up yours, Madame,” muttered one of the men under his breath. Had Aram steered her wrong?

Aimée closed her eyes and listened, distinguishing the sounds of the movers mounting the creaking staircase, the rush of water in courtyard pipes. And then she heard it. A faint, continuous clicking.

The clicking grew louder as she followed them to the back of the courtyard. Behind it a coved walkway nestled into the remnants of an old wall. The clicking drifted up from a grilled vent set in cracked stone. She lowered her head to duck into the dark stairway, treading over the uneven dirt to find herself in a humid warren of caverns. Vaulted stone arches supported the low ceilings. It was positively dungeon-like. She remembered a school field trip to an old château where, during the Terror, revolutionaries chained aristocrats to metal rings on the walls. Not too different, she thought.

Bare white bulbs dangled from the ceiling, illuminating squatting young Chinese women surrounded by red silk flowers—hundreds of them, exploding with color in the dank cavern. She scrutinized the young women’s faces as their fingers worked nonstop, twisting bright red flowers onto green wire stems. By an arch she saw a ponytail bent down over a pile of flowers.

“Meizi?”

A few women looked up with questioning eyes.

“Lunchtime?” an older woman said. She made a gesture of eating, and several others laughed.

Aimée stepped around the flowers and bent down. “Meizi, are you okay?”

The young woman looked up. Glasses, brown birthmark on her cheek. “Boss eat lunch. Back soon.”

Shaken, Aimée sat back on her haunches like everyone else. The women watched her with curiosity, not fear.

“Beautiful flowers,” Aimée said. “Do any of you know Meizi Wu?” She pointed to the woman’s ponytail. “Hair like hers?”

A few smiles. The women kept twisting the stems.

Didn’t they understand? Did they think she was crazy? Or both?

But she had an idea.

She rooted in her bag. Found the red velvet jewelry box she’d forgotten to give back to René. Held it up.

“Meizi forgot her birthday present.” She cleared her throat and sang, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Meizi …”

More smiles. One woman nudged the pixie-haired woman next to her, who smiled.

“Meizi Wu,” she said, pointing to herself.

A joke? But no one laughed.

“I mean Meizi Wu, who worked for Ching Wao.”

She nodded. “Me.”

Another idea flat on the dirt. Aimée shook her head. “Desolée, but …”

“You look.” In her silk-stained hand, the woman held a carte de séjour. It showed her photo with the name Meizi Wu, and the same address on rue au Maire. The luggage store.

Startled, Aimée leaned forward. As Aram had said, no one was who they said they were. Yet she could work this for information.

Aimée took out the luminous pearl ring. “Belle, eh? It’s for the other Meizi. Give me Ching Wao’s number, okay? I want to tell him.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know, or don’t want to tell me?”

“Boss call him.” Her face was blank now, no longer smiling.

But she had to get information. Something. “Where do you sleep?”

She pointed to the address.

“No, you don’t. Tell me the truth.” Aimée set the ring back in the box.

“You say you give me.” Her eyes teared, and Aimée’s heart clenched.

“We live at Chinese evangelical church,” said the woman next to her in accented but proficient French.

“Who are you?”

“Nina’s my French name,” she said. “We’re Christian. We study and pray with a pastor, who gives us a dormitory. No one works for Ching Wao, if they can avoid it.”

“But these flowers—”

“Bad times now,” Nina interrupted. “We do piecework. Have to.” She paused. “Ching Wao’s contact gave her this card yesterday. Our families pay lots of money in China for this. We don’t ask questions. You’ll give her the ring?”

“Cash is more useful.” Aimée pressed a hundred francs into the girl’s hands. “But she got a raw deal with that card. The flics suspect Meizi Wu in last night’s murder on rue au Maire. Or didn’t Ching Wao tell you?”

Nina spoke rapidly in Chinese to the increasingly frightened-looking girls.

“Something bad might have happened to the other Meizi,” Aimée said. “I need to find Ching Wao.”

“No one knows where he goes.”

Great.

“Can’t you think back, remember something, anything? What if she’s hurt, or being held prisoner?”

Nina shook her head. “Bad people. Better stay away. You’re a French woman. You don’t know.”

Like that made a difference to Meizi? Aimée wanted to shake this woman.

“But Ching Wao pays all of you centimes while he makes thousands of francs,” she said, her voice rising. “A man extorts money from this girl’s family for the carte de séjour of a murder suspect? But you think I don’t know, or can’t understand, or not want to help?”

Her speech was met by silence, broken only by the clicking of wire and shushing noises of silk. A chill went up her spine. She turned around.

A Chinese woman stood with Styrofoam containers of takeout food, glaring at her.

“Private business,” she said. “You better leave. We have a permit to work here.”

Aimée doubted that. But she was tired of seeing fake papers and arguing with people who would disappear.

She left another hundred francs by the girl’s leg, then stood and made her way out.

In the dank passageway, she felt a tug on her coat sleeve.

Nina pulled her close. “Ching Wao gets girls from Tso, a snakehead. Bad teeth. Everyone knows him on rue au Maire.”

And then she’d gone.

“TOUGH GOING, RENÉ. The two sweatshops I checked out were dead ends,” she said into her phone. She pulled her collar up against the damp chill. “But I discovered Meizi’s carte de séjour has gone to another Meizi.”

“Sweatshops?” René said. “Start at the beginning, Aimée.”

She gave him a brief account, told him about Aram and Tso, the snakehead.

“Breaking bread with a dealer who sold drugs to your cousin?”

“He’s a source, René.” One of the reasons she hated criminal investigation. Yet, down and dirty resulted in leads and information, her father always told her. You just take a long, hot shower later. “Not that I’d do it again, though he does serve a mean couscous.”

“You believe this Aram?”

“I believe he dislikes paying Chinese protection money,” she said. “Let’s call it a mutual non-admiration society.”

“So he’d know this Tso,” he said. “We have to prove my Meizi’s innocent.”

Silver rivulets of rain snaked down the apartment windows overlooking Passage du Pont-aux-Biches. Aimée’s shoulders slumped. Why couldn’t René get it?

“But Chinatown’s a closed world,” she said, frustrated. “I’m getting nowhere.”

“Has that ever stopped you before, Aimée?”