Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, 3:30 P.M.

RENÉ PUSHED BACK the brandy snifter on the zinc counter, his gaze raking the street, the doorways.

“Call me Bruno,” said the man rinsing tall beer glasses behind the counter. He was in his fifties, with the red, veined nose of a drinker. “Likes to dress up, your friend.”

“At every opportunity,” René said, declining another brandy.

“She a secret agent?” Bruno winked knowingly. Too many Bond movies, René thought.

“A force of nature,” René said, “but why don’t you tell me about the one with bad teeth who bought cigarettes.”

“He do that to you?” Bruno shook his head. “Seen him a few times. That’s all. No shame, these people, attacking your kind.”

His kind? All his life René had struggled against ignorant perceptions, to prove his stature made no difference. He’d studied martial arts at the dojo, achieved a black belt to prevent trouble. If only the cold hadn’t affected his hip this way.

“Implying that I can’t take care of myself?” René said.

“I call it unfair the way these Chinois take advantage,” said Bruno, on the defensive, “that’s all.”

“So he’s done this before?”

“They’re taking over the quartier, buying up the shops,” Bruno said. “Me, I’m the only family business left, apart from Chartier, the butcher.”

Seeing he had a captive audience, Bruno warmed up. René listened with half an ear to his litany against immigrants, until Bruno’s words caught his attention.

“Colonized the quartier, the Chinois have.” Bruno tipped back his bière. “Prête-nom, rent a name, compris?”

René thought he knew what Bruno meant, but shook his head.

“They use a legal name to run a business. Not the real proprietor. Some big entrepreneur in China, more like it.”

Had Meizi’s luggage shop done this? René wondered.

“Yet no one does anything.” Bruno sighed. “Only one thing riles a phlegmatic Parisian to action.”

Not selfish with his opinions, this Bruno, René thought. “So you mean transport strikes? Or the cost of Gauloises going up?” René rubbed his hip.

“I mean officials getting a free apartment.” Bruno shoved the morning edition of Libération across the counter. “Huge flat, complete with balcony terrace, private garden,” Bruno said, “while it’s us taxpayers footing the bill.”

Nothing rubbed a Parisian raw more than a plutocrat with a maison secondaire in the country who enjoyed a government-paid apartment in Paris.

“Part of the perks, non?” René’s eye scrolled the article.

“There’s perks. Then there’s excess and being found out, like this ministry official Roubel, with his pied-à-terre on the Seine.”

Why the hell hadn’t Aimée called?