Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, 3 P.M.

“BUT ACCORDING TO Aram, the sweatshop entrance is on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé, René.” Worried, Aimée surveyed René as they sat in the small café tabac. “On the next block.”

“So Tso took a shortcut.” Perspiration beaded René’s forehead and his breath came in short gasps. “But it was him, bad teeth and all.”

Aimée’s glass of fizzing Badoit water glistened under the café counter light. “You don’t look too good, René.”

“I’ll feel better if you try the front entrance,” he said. “Call me and I’ll come.”

She doubted he could walk without pain right now. She shook her head. “Stay on this stool, compris? Watch from this window until one of them leaves and call me.”

She eyed the café’s rear galley kitchen, where a sagging apron, a pair of overalls, and a white butcher-shop coat hung from the coatrack. “You work in a charcuterie, Monsieur?” she asked the man behind the counter.

“Not me. Next door.” He flicked a thread of blond tobacco from his rolled cigarette. “After a pichet de rosé the butcher always forgets it.”

“Bon, let me borrow it.”

“Eh? It’s not mine.”

She slapped twenty francs on the counter. “Then I’ll rent it.”

Drumbeats thrummed from Les Bains, the club in the old bathhouse on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé. The building entrance on the right was boarded up. No luck there. The one on the left, shrouded in scaffolding, was also boarded up. The only way to the sweatshop in the rear courtyard was through the club.

“No date?” asked the mascaraed transvestite at the door. His Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence name tag read Lola.

“Not yet, Lola,” Aimée smiled.

“We’d love to let you in, but the benefit is reservation only. Sold out.” Lola gestured with an orange-lacquered nail, which matched his eye shadow, to the poster announcing “Afternoon Tea Dance! HIV caregivers support benefit competition.”

Where were her sequins when she needed them? But Michou, René’s transvestite neighbor, entered these contests all the time.

Aimée opened her coat, revealing the white butcher’s smock. “I’m a health inspector.”

“Mon Dieu, but we’re up to code!”

“I know you passed inspection, Lola.” Aimée gave a little sigh. “But I’m inspecting the toilets in the rear courtyard. Some complaints, you know.”

A couple, tottering on high heels and wrapped together in a feather boa, passed her.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Lola said.

“Of course you don’t, that’s why you’ll let me do my job,” she said, slipping a fifty-franc note in the donation box.

“We’re all about cooperating.” Lola swept his arm at the ushers. “Let this girl in. She’s in a hurry.”

Out on the dance floor, couples gyrated under a flashing disco ball to “I Will Survive” as a large-shouldered blond, in a skintight red velour jumpsuit with the highest heeled boots Aimée had ever seen, lip-synched along.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. “Don’t tell me your dance card’s filled.”

She turned to face a person wearing a white Courrèges tunic with the signature geometric design. Vintage and delicious. But those cheekbones looked familiar.

“Where’s René?” He pecked her on both cheeks. “Careful, I just powdered.”

Viard. The police crime lab head on rue de Dantzig. And Michou’s partner. “It’s complicated, Viard. Where did you get that Courrèges?”

“If you’re a good girl, I’ll let you borrow it,” he said, his hips swaying to the music. He gestured to the lip-syncher. “Michou’s on next.”

“Right now I need to get to the back.”

“She’s not that bad. She’s a professional, you know.”

She and René had seen Michou’s show in Les Halles many times. “I know, stunning. But there’s a clandestine sweatshop only accessible—”

Viard put his arm up, pearl bracelet sliding. “Like we can help those poor people?”

“But I can. So you’ve seen them, Viard?”

A moue of distaste showed on his crimson mouth. “How can you miss those grinding machines?” Viard said. “It’s in the courtyard behind the men’s. As sisters under the skin, we let them use them, you know. There’s Michou!” And he danced off.

She found the door marked Exit near the men’s, pushed it open to a damp alley narrowing between the buildings. Cracked concrete and crumbling stone walls led to a thin courtyard surrounded by bricked-up windows, already dark in the fading afternoon light. Behind her sounded the distant strains of “I Will Survive”; before her the chomp, chomp of machines. She felt the vibration in the soles of her boots.

She entered the door at her left. Inside, Chinese men in sweat-stained T-shirts fed plastic sheets into twenty or so cutting machines. She recognized the plastic, which matched the luggage she’d seen. The hot oil and synthetic odors choked her. Good God, how could the factory owner let human beings work in this air? In this noise?

An older woman peered down at her from a stairway. Coiffed black hair, jade bracelets on both wrists, red silk scarf trailing from her neck, and thin painted eyebrows. Aimée sucked in a breath as Madame Wu pointed a bamboo back scratcher at her like a weapon.

“You lost? Bathroom that way.”

“We meet again, Madame Wu. Seems there’s quite an extended Wu clan in the quartier.”

Aimée recognized the girl behind her—it was the girl who had been packing hoodies at the luggage shop, who’d warned Aimée off. The girl’s eyes widened in fear, then flicked upward. She caught Aimée’s eye and shook her head.

“How many Madame Wus are there?” The humming of sewing machines spilled down the rotted hallway.

“This building’s private property. Privé.”

“You’re the owner then, Madame?”

The small eyes narrowed. “Manager. You go now.”

“But we’re old friends,” Aimée said. “Call this a health inspection. Lots of complaints. Just think of the unsafe working conditions for your employees.”

“I call sécurité.” The woman hurried down the steps in small, brocaded house slippers. “Private property, not for public.”

“But this isn’t up to code, Madame.” Aimée pointed to the fuse box with rusted wires trailing from it. Telltale signs of illegally tapping into the electricity source. “Dangerous.” She wagged her finger. “Where’s Meizi?”

The woman whipped out her cell phone, hit a number on her speed dial.

“Not cooperating, Madame?” Aimée reached for the fuse box switch. “Then I’ll need to shut you down.”

The woman jabbed the bamboo back scratcher at Aimée, just missing her eye. Aimée pulled the bamboo from her hand, knocked the cell phone to the floor, and grabbed the woman’s wrists.

“Get Meizi,” she said to the girl. The girl backed up, frightened.

“Now.”

“Tso!” the woman shouted, struggling. Tough and wiry, like an old hen.

Aimée twisted the woman’s arms behind her and, in a flash of inspiration, stuck the bamboo between her jade bracelets, which trapped her like handcuffs. She looked around, but the girl had disappeared. With a deft movement she twisted the bamboo between banister posts and stuffed the woman’s red silk scarf in her mouth. That should keep Madame Wu quiet for a while.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Aimée looked up to see a man, hooded eyes, a cigarette between his crooked teeth.

“If you’re security, then I’m the electrician,” she said.

“Gweilo.” And then she saw the raised knife in his hand.

She yanked the fuse box handle. A sputtering fizz, earsplitting grinding sounds. The light from the bare bulb flickered before the building plunged into darkness, machines grumbling to a painful halt. In the sudden quiet, Aimée could catch the soft conversations of workers, the drumming of Madame Wu’s feet. And that persistent humming, which came from somewhere above.

She had the advantage now; the man would have to come down the steps. She pulled out her penlight, set it on the last step, flicked it on, and stepped away.

Cold air gusted past her face. In the dim light she made out the flash of his knife. She gave a quick kick upward, contacting what she hoped were his ribs. A crunch, and a yelp of pain.

She didn’t have much time. Who knew how many of his cohorts waited upstairs? Her fingers found the penlight on the dusty floor, then his knife. She shone the beam in his eyes, put the knife tip to his throat, and stuck her hand in his back pocket. Thick wads of hundred-franc bills, a cell phone.

“Bonus time for your employees,” she whispered in his ear. “Number five on the list of secrets of successful bosses.”

He yelled.

She silenced him with another kick, this time to the temple, and his eyes rolled up in his head. Out for the count, but for how long? She had to hurry. She ran up the stairs, shining her penlight over each rotted step. The humming grew louder, and she followed it up to the third floor. She needed to find Meizi. And a way out. She hoped to God the frightened girl hadn’t sounded the alarm. She hit 1-6 on the man’s cell phone.

“Police,” the voice answered. “Je vous écoute.”

“Rue du Bourg L’Abbé,” Aimée said, “in the courtyard behind Les Bains, there’s a man with a knife attacking—”

“I’ll transfer you.”

“Listen, he destroyed the fuse box,” Aimée interrupted. “It’s dark, we can’t … he’s coming …”

She clicked off, hopeful for a quick response time, since the commissariat was located around the block. She didn’t know what she’d face inside. And she couldn’t wait.

A line of light shone from under a door. She tried the handle. It didn’t move.

She closed her eyes, tried to center herself. Focus.

Then she kicked the door in.