Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, 3:30 P.M.

AIMÉE SCANNED THE attic room, the mattresses on the floor lumpy with sleeping figures. She registered the sharp drafts of air from holes in the roof, the peeling wallpaper, the pot bubbling on the stove and emitting chili paste odors. The humming of sewing machines in the adjoining room.

She wove among the mattresses, checking the faces. No Meizi. Merde!

Any moment Tso could show up, summon reinforcements.

At the sewing machines fifteen or so women treadled the old-fashioned foot pedal sewing machines and stitched zippers. Hoodie sweatshirts were piled beside them on the floor.

“Meizi?”

No one looked up.

If Meizi wasn’t here, she’d made a huge mistake. She pushed down panic.

“Police!” she shouted, flashing her PI license. “Show me your identification.”

Treadles ceased as the sewing machines stopped. She heard rustling from the mattresses. A cry.

“Ask our boss, Tso,” said a young woman in a blue hoodie, her hair in a ponytail not unlike Meizi’s. “He have our papers.”

“Not Meizi Wu’s papers. Where is she?” Aimée said, making this up as she went along.

“Don’t know.”

“I don’t like your lies,” she said, then sniffed. “Or the soup.” She pounded her fist on the stove. “Tell me or I’ll take you all to the station right now!”

Terror showed on the women’s faces.

“A girl in back,” said the one in the hoodie. “Don’t know name.”

“That’s better.” Aimée stepped back and opened the door. Looked down the hallway. “Now get out.”

The young woman moved closer, and her stale breath hit Aimée in the face. She stared at the white butcher’s coat. “You not police!”

The blue hoodie wanted to argue with her?

“Undercover narcotique.” She thrust several hundred francs in her hand. “Talk to Nina at the Chinese church. She’ll help you.”

The young woman stood dumbfounded. Loud voices came from below.

“Or you want to get arrested in a drug bust?”

Without another word, the women rushed by her, stampeding down the hall.

Tso and Ching Wao made a staggering sum, she realized, considering all the women here and in the sweatshops. Aimée picked her way through the piled hoodies to a pantry. Under a skylight was a sink filled with hundreds of zippers. Beside it, Meizi, her ankle chained to the pipe on the floor. Like a dog.

Horrified, Aimée knelt down. “Meizi, are you all right?”

Meizi nodded, her eyes wide. “Something’s happened to René?”

Had she tried to protect him and failed? Aimée’s earlier suspicions evaporated.

“He’s a black belt, remember?” She smiled reassuringly.

Noises came from the attic. They didn’t have much time. Aimée pushed the door shut and kicked at the pipe under the sink. “We’ll talk later. First we need to get out of here.”

“But I can’t leave.”

After all this, Aimée had no intention of losing her. “Au contraire.” She kicked the pipe until it shuddered apart and lifted off the chain. For good measure, she took the broken segment of rusted pipe. If only she’d kept Tso’s knife.

“Tso’s coming back,” Meizi’s voice trembled. The chain was still hooked around her ankle.

“I took care of him, for now,” Aimée said, “but it’s the flics you need to worry about.” She glanced around. “Any screwdriver here?”

Meizi’s shoulders heaved. “They want to deport me?”

“Worse, Meizi,” she said. “You’re a suspect in Pascal Samour’s murder.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play with me,” Aimée said, some of her distrust returning. “The body in the walkway behind your luggage shop.”

Meizi shuddered.

Aimée tried the adjoining door.

“Non, Aimée. We’ll go out the skylight!” Meizi looped the greasy chain and tucked it in her pocket. “We sneak out that way all the time. That’s why he chained me.”

Aimée climbed on the sink rim, praying it would hold her, unlatched the skylight and propped it open with the pipe.

The slanted blue-gray slate roof overlooked the courtyard, which was filled with the flics. To her left were more skylights. Afraid of heights and up on a rooftop. Again.

Meizi grabbed a hoodie from the pile, and a Tati shopping bag with her things. “There’s a way over the gutter. Come on, Aimée.”

She could do this. Had to. Frigid air gusted over the rooftops. The cold slate froze her knees. Aimée kept her eye on Meizi’s back and the stovepipe chimneys ahead.

And then Meizi disappeared. Like smoke.

Aimée found herself poised over a hole in the tiled roof.

“Down here, Aimée!” Meizi shouted.

Aimée gripped the edge of a roof tile, breathing in rank odors of mildew, and dropped down, catching herself before she fell on a picture frame. She landed in a dim attic next to a half-sheeted piano.

She hit René’s number. No reception. They’d have to risk going to the café.

“Let’s go.”

But Meizi blocked the door of the small attic. “You can’t tell René.”

She wondered at Meizi’s stubbornness. If they didn’t get out of here … but she decided to play along.

“Do you want your parents caught in a raid?” she said. “Held at Vincennes detention center, checked for valid identity papers, their shop records audited?”

Meizi’s face blanched.

“They do have papers? And you?” She knew the answer, but had to get Meizi out of here. “Or are you illegal?”

The truth shone in Meizi’s eyes. Illegal. About to bolt. Aimée grabbed her shoulder. “I don’t care. But I can help you.”

“Help me? But you’ll tell René.”

He knew most of it already.

“Non, you will. Then I’ll introduce you to a lawyer specializing in asylum requests.”

Tears pooled in Meizi’s eyes. “No good. It doesn’t matter about me. Tso’s cousin threatened my parents, my family in China. One message and they’re—”

“So your parents aren’t here,” Aimée interrupted.

Meizi’s hand went to her mouth. Shook her head. “You don’t know the way snakeheads operate.” Sobs racked her shoulders.

Aimée’s mind went back to Madame Wu’s unsmiling face, René’s disappointment at the long hours Meizi worked. How the “parents” chaperoned her everywhere.

“They’re not your parents,” Aimée said. “You work for them, and this Tso controls you.”

“Tso controls everyone here, the ateliers in our building, the whole street.” Meizi took Aimée’s arm. “They keep me in the shop, speaking French, making a good face for the customers, the flics.”

Sirens whined outside. A questioning look appeared in Meizi’s large eyes. “What’s happening? Is this a raid?”

Smart. She was putting this together.

“I guess you want to find out the hard way,” Aimée said. “Or do you want my help?”

Meizi hesitated, then tucked the chain, which had fallen out of her pocket, into her jeans’ waistband and opened the door.

“This way,” Meizi said.

They ran down the corridor, descended three flights of the twisting staircase to the street door. “Out here.”

Aimée sucked in her breath. Cold, crisp air hit her lungs. Late afternoon light glinted off the damp cobbles. She could see the café. Perfect. They’d reach René …

A siren whined. Flashing red lights appeared from a police car. They had to get out of here. Now.

She grabbed Meizi’s hand, pulled her into the crooked passage. They ran past a woman shaking a tablecloth from her window and emerged on the next street. Panting, Aimée stopped and caught her breath.

Passersby in dark overcoats leaned into the wind, which rippled the red awnings of the belle epoque hotel across the street. She clutched Meizi’s arm and tried René again as they started into the lanes of traffic. She ran with her cell phone to her ear, just avoiding the Number 38 bus.

Faded gold letters on the facade advertised Hôtel Bellevue et du Chariot d’Or. In the marble foyer, festooned with turn-of-the-century colored glass, she set her bag on the reception desk. “A double room, s’il vous plaît.”

“No luggage?” The concierge, a middle-aged brunette with Slavic cheekbones, crunched her consonants.

“Does it look like it, Madame?” she said. “We missed our train.” Aimée glanced at the room tariffs posted on the wall. Old-world, all right; the kind of hotel that a few generations ago lodged patrons for the myriad theaters on the Grands Boulevards.

She set down the slimmer wad of Tso’s francs and showed her ID with its less-than-flattering photo and filled in the form. “We’re hungry. Room service available?”

The woman sniffed. “Bien sûr, if you like omelettes à l’estragon.”

They took the groaning cage of an elevator to the second floor and navigated a maze of hallways to a bare-bones room facing rue de Turbigo. If René would answer his phone, she wouldn’t have to go back out in the cold. She ransacked her mind for the name of the café tabac; finally, it came to her—Café Saint-Martin, the name of the street it was on.

Aimée dialed the black melamine rotary relic room phone, but only got Reception. “Mademmoiselle, could you look up a listing for me?”

The receptionist sighed. “That’s five francs extra.”

“Connect me,” Aimée said, then added, “s’il vous plaît.”

A man’s voice answered. “Qui?”

“Monsieur Friant, s’il vous plaît. He drank a brandy at your counter not twenty minutes—”

“Ah, le petit!” he boomed. “Why didn’t you say so? And you’re the secret agent. The butcher needs that coat back.”

“And if I talk to Monsieur Friant, he’ll get it.”

“Attends.” Banging as he dropped the phone. Crunching in her ears.

“What have you done, Aimée? The place is crawling with flics.”

“Try to answer your phone sometime, René. Damn irritating.”

Pause. “I’ll reinsert my SIM card. The phone fell during my … altercation.”

“Tso’s taken care of, for now.” She looked at Meizi, who sat in the room’s only chair, fingers tensed on the armrests. “Someone wants to talk with you.”

“Meizi … you found Meizi?”

“Room 22, second floor, Hôtel Bellevue et du Chariot d’Or. Around the corner, on rue de Turbigo. You can’t miss it.”

Aimée checked her face in the mirror over the lavabo, her raccoon eyes. A mascara mess. She splashed water on her face, rubbed off the smudges, lined her eyes with kohl, and applied lipstick. Then poured Meizi a glass of water and took out her lock-picking kit.

She knelt down, examined the lock chained around Meizi’s ankle, and chose a double-edged snake rake from her kit. With a swift jiggle the lock opened. Meizi rubbed her ankle.

“Now you’re going to tell me about your boyfriend, Meizi.”

“But René’s my boyfriend.” Meizi’s eyes batted in fear.

“I think you have things to tell me about last night,” she said, smoothing the duvet. “Why you disappeared from the restaurant. Why I saw you wearing my hat on a street corner. Why that man pushed you.”

Meizi’s lip quivered. She eyed the door. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But you will, and before René arrives in five minutes.” Aimée pointed to her Tintin watch. She handed her the water glass. “I won’t let René get hurt, Meizi. You’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then take a drink and explain it to me.”

Meizi’s hands shook. “It’s my family. Non, I have to go.”

“Go where?”

Meizi squirmed, terrified and shaking. How could she make Meizi open up?

“There’s a surveillance operation in the quartier. Plainclothes in cafés,” Aimée said. “In parked vans, wiretapping the shops, the ateliers.”

She knew the first part was true. Had seen more vans this morning. Figured the second part was close.

“But if I don’t work off the debt, my family’s dead,” Meizi said. “If I don’t cooperate, they send me to Marseille.”

“Marseille?”

“That means, you know …” Meizi’s voice lowered. “To be a … prostitute. Truckers at the highway rest stops, massage parlors in Aubervilliers.” She shook her head. “I hear stories. Girls don’t come back.”

No brothels anymore. Everything was mobile; girls switched and moved at a cell phone call’s notice. An ongoing headache for vice, according to Melac.

An idea formed in Aimée’s mind. She took Meizi’s hand, squeezed it. “I’ll help you,” she said. “After you tell me about Pascal Samour’s murder.”

Meizi blinked, thought. Took a sip of water. “The funny Frenchman with red hair?”

“You knew him, non?”

“He eats … ate at Chez Chun all the time. That’s all.”

Frustrated, Aimée leaned forward. The bedsprings creaked. “Quit lying. Samour recommended you for a job at the Musée.”

“Vraiment?” Meizi brightened. “He offered, but I never thought he meant it.”

“And that photo he carried of you?”

“Photo?” Meizi’s brows knit.

“The photo of you in the shop.”

She nodded. “That’s right. I remember his friend had a new camera, he played around, took some shots.”

His friend? “Do you remember this friend’s name, what he looked like?”

“But that was two weeks ago, maybe. Lots of people come in the shop. I don’t remember.”

Aimée stored that for later. Now she needed to take advantage of the few minutes before René arrived.

“Think back to last night, it’s important,” she said. “Tell me what happened. The phone call.”

Aimée saw a blossom of blood appear on Meizi’s bitten lip. How she glanced away.

“I don’t want René hurt either, Aimée.”

“Alors, tell me the truth. The dead man’s great-aunt deserves to know, don’t you understand?”

“The flics make controls,” she said, “stop people in the Métro, on the street. Check for identification, the carte de séjour.”

“So the call was to warn you?”

Meizi nodded. “I had no ID. Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Someone borrowed my card. We share. So I ran.”

“But behind the shop you saw the killer.”

“Killer? I ran away from the flics,” she said. “Tried to reach les tampus, the girls in Belleville who’ve paid off Tso and work legally. But their room’s empty. Gone. I had nowhere to go.”

“Maybe you saw and didn’t know it,” Aimée said. “Think back, Meizi. The street, it’s dark, cold, snowing.” She did her best to lead her. “You’d left your coat in the resto, but the caller tells you to run, you’re afraid, you turn the corner, and then …”

“Noises like ripping plastic,” Meizi said.

The killer would have worked fast to subdue Pascal and then wrap his head in plastic. Aimée couldn’t stop herself from picturing those eyes.

“What else, Meizi?”

She hesitated. “A homeless man sleeps behind the shop on the back steps. He sings, that’s all.”

Aimée remembered the man, too. How the first-responder medics called him Clodo.

“I think you’re smart, Meizi,” Aimée said. “So smart you want me to think Clodo’s involved. But I doubt it.”

Meizi fingered the duvet.

“Tso’s men murdered Samour, non?” Aimée said. “Under Ching Wao’s orders. You witnessed them and they threatened you.”

“The snakehead’s cousin?” Meizi’s mouth opened in surprise. “But Tso’s afraid of the tax men. So’s Ching Wao, with all his Mercedes. The unreported earnings from their protection rackets. It’s about money.”

Money. Like always.

“No one dies in Chinatown,” Meizi said.

“What do you mean?”

Meizi took a long gulp of water. “A valid carte de séjour is valuable. They sell them.”

“He’s sold yours already, you know that? You’re not ‘sharing’ anymore.”

Thin vanilla light pooled on the wood floor. The radiator grumbled. Meizi pursed her lips. “You won’t tell René?”

“Tell René you’ve got another man?”

Meizi shook her head.

“He knows you’re not who you say you are.”

“I can’t let René know.”

“That Pascal got you a job?”

“Non, that I lied about my parents. He’ll never believe anything I say. Please, just until I figure this out.”

Aimée nodded. “And in return?”

“Listen, one section of the Chinese cemetery at Ivry is full of unmarked graves,” Meizi said. “Potter’s field, that’s what you say?”

Paupers, no family. Aimée shuddered. Did Tso threaten Meizi and these women with an unmarked grave? “So you’re saying …?”

“When someone old dies or commits suicide, papers get passed on.”

For a culture that reveres its ancestors, this seemed a sacrilege, and a high price for living in France. But a leverage point she could use with Prévost.

“Tell me more about their protection racket.”

“The luggage store is a front,” Meizi said reluctantly.

“In what way?”

“Like half the shops. A way to launder money from Wenzhou. Tso makes them pay ‘insurance.’ ”

“But what did Samour have to do with it?”

Baffled, Meizi shook her head. “Nothing. He’s … he was some kind of scientific engineer, non?”

“What aren’t you telling me, Meizi?”

“I don’t know what you want to hear, but …” Her throat caught. “Tso’s suspicious. He thinks I’ll run away. Had that man follow me. That’s why I wore your hat.” Meizi’s lip trembled. “René’s the only person I know here, the only one who cares. I’m short, too.” A smile flitted across her face, then it was gone. “He has a good heart.”

Meizi gulped the water, determined to go on.

“René struggles to overcome things,” she said, her voice dropping. “He thinks he hides it, but I see his lonely side. I feel lonely too. Lying to him makes me sick inside. Now he won’t trust me.”

Touched, Aimée nodded. “René calls you his soul mate, Meizi. Just talk to him.”

Her phone beeped. A message. She’d forgotten she’d muted her phone. She heard Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s voice: “Meet me at the mairie, upstairs, Salle Odette Pipoul. I need to see you. Now.”

Had Mademoiselle Samoukashian discovered something?

A knock sounded on the door. Aimée put two hundred francs and her card in Meizi’s hand. An idea had formed. “Call Tso. Tell him you’re afraid, hiding. But promise to tip him off before the big raid happens. Convince him, Meizi. Say you don’t know the details yet but you’ll warn him,” she said. “He’ll call his dogs off. He’ll need you.”

“He will?”

“Trust me. Buy a pay-as-you-go cell phone. Call me. I have a plan.”

She checked the peephole, then tossed her lipstick tube to Meizi. “A little color does wonders, Meizi. Keep it.”

She opened the door and smiled at René.

“Merci, Aimée.” His brow was beaded with perspiration. He held a bouquet of blue forget-me-nots.

Aimée leaned, kissed René on both cheeks.

“Expect room service in a few minutes.” She winked. “And a few hours alone.”

A man in a windbreaker huddled with the receptionist at the lobby desk. His stance, the way he nodded, pricked up Aimée’s antennae. A moment later he sat behind a wilting palm and pulled out a newspaper.

This didn’t feel right. Listen to your gut, Morbier always said. Instead of crossing the lobby, she kept to the wall by the manager’s office and slipped into the door marked Service.

She hurried down a corridor full of room-service trays to another flight of stairs. As with most hotels, the back environs never matched the exterior. Cracked concrete partially covered the faded whitewashed brick walls leading to a turn-of-the-century laundry, complete with airing cupboards and ancient ironing boards.

She followed a faded red-and-yellow line to the next level. Evidence of an exit or an old bomb shelter, she figured. Matching painted arrows led down the stairs to a subterranean series of brick rooms. Bed frames, chairs, racks with dust-furred wine bottles. Hotel storage.

Notausgang—emergency exit, from the little German she remembered—was painted above an alcove. She waded through plastic bags and old pipes to find a padlocked slatted-wood gate.

Cold gusts of mildewed air came through it. At least it was a way out. With a padlock shim from her lock-picking kit, it took less than a minute to gain entrance to a dark, wet cavern. Her penlight revealed browned notices in German script with SS lightning bolts. And a partially bricked-up staircase.

A prickle ran up her spine. No time to linger among Nazi ghosts. The bricks yielded after several kicks. Up the staircase, to another gate that jiggled open. She found herself in a smoke-filled room. Poker players sat around a table under a low-hanging green light. She nodded to the surprised men and kept going.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER she entered the courtyard of the neo-Renaissance mairie, the town hall laid out like an H in the florid style favored in the nineteenth century. She mounted the marble staircase of honor, passing the acting sentinels: two buxom female bronzes. Over-the-top, as most of these architectural homages were. Promoting a feeling of grandeur where citizens of the quartier attended to mundane affairs: school registration, housing, senior services, marriage and death certificates.

In the Salle Odette Pilpoul, Mademoiselle Samoukashian sat on a gilt-backed chair that was all but swallowed up in the grandeur of the room: maroon velvet floor-length curtains, stained-glass windows, a massive fireplace at one end, a stage at the other. Why meet here? Aimée wondered.

“I did my homework.” Mademoiselle Samoukashian gestured to a pile of newspapers. “They archive them downstairs.”

Copies of Libération, headlined “Kidnapped Spanish Princess Found” and “Basque Terrorists Linked to ETA Discovered by Leduc Detective.”

“I knew I remembered you from the papers,” the old woman said.

Outed, Aimée shrugged, then pulled up a little gilt chair. “It was personal, Mademoiselle.” A little over a month ago she’d almost lost Morbier, her godfather. She’d protected him and saved his career by a hair’s breath. Too close. “My godfather—”

“Bien sur, family, I understand,” she said. “I accessed Pascal’s safe deposit box.”

“Vraiment? Aren’t the banks closed on the weekend?”

“Not if you know the manager,” said Mademoiselle Samoukashian. “He’s Armenian.” She waved her age-spotted hand. “Not only did I change his diapers, I hid his father during the war. With Odette Pilpoul.”

Aimée was impressed, and wondered what memories this musty salle brought back to her. “Mademoiselle, it sounds like you’re connected to the quartier’s history.”

A small sigh. “Not that I care to remember those days.” She shook her head. “All the hotels requisitioned for the Wehrmacht’s telegraphists, their drivers, the Luftwaffe pilots, bordellos for the soldiers. Even took over the Conservatoire.” A shrug. “Odette and I printed false identification papers in the printing press below my family’s apartment. We targeted disruptions at the Centre Téléphonique et Télégraphique, their communications headquarters on rue des Archives. A ‘nest of saboteurs’ was what the Gestapo called the quartier.” Her eyes were far away. “We rendezvoused at the pharmacy on Boulevard de Sébastopol, next to the German recruiters. Who’d know it now?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian shrugged. “But some of us paid.”

Was another old war story coming? Aimée crossed her legs on the small, creaking chair.

“My cousin Manouchian, a poet. And the man I loved, a Jew. Others. But I missed the bus and was too late to warn them,” she said, her voice trailing off. “Alors, all that’s left now is the plaque on the building, a mass grave.”

An almost palpable sadness radiated from this little woman.

She pointed to a sealed manila envelope on the table with the words: “to be opened in case of my death only by one whom my great-aunt trusts.” “I’m late again,” she said. “But please read what’s inside, Mademoiselle. I haven’t opened it.”

Aimée’s brow lifted. She was intrigued. “Why?”

“Pascal made me promise,” she said. “If you don’t help me, no one will. His project will be ruined.”

Aimée stiffened. “A project? You think it connects to his murder?”

“I want you to find out.”

Pause.

“The museum fascinated him,” the old woman said. “I told you. He’d volunteered the past two years, cataloging their holdings during their renovation. He was so excited last week about some discovery there. Alors, won’t you respect his wishes?”

Aimée stalled, uneasy. “First tell me why he gave Meizi a recommendation for a job there.”

“This Chinese girl?” Madame Samoukashian shrugged. “Bien sûr, the Chinese are immigrants like us. I raised Pascal to think of others, not just himself. But look what it got him.”

What did that mean? “I don’t understand, Mademoiselle.”

“Non, I shouldn’t say that. Who knows? Find this girl and ask her.”

“I did.”

“And?” Mademoiselle Samoukashian leaned forward, expectant.

“She heard noises and ran away. At least, that’s what I’ve learned so far.” And she believed Meizi.

“Of course, she had no papers,” Mademoiselle Samoukashian said. “I told you. Who’d stick around?”

Aimée took the manila envelope off the table. “Shouldn’t you give this to the flics?”

“Like I trust them?” A bitter laugh. “Now it’s the Chinese. Before it was the Jews, Eastern Europeans, and us Armenians. But it hasn’t changed. They don’t like people to know they held deportees here, downstairs at the old commissariat. My father and mother were in a cell until they had enough to fill a train for Drancy. Next stop the ovens.” The anguish hardened in Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s brown eyes. “But we’re not here to talk about that.”

Aimée slit the sealed flap open. Inside she found a note, dated two weeks earlier:

Whatever you do, smile at my great-aunt, tell her I meant to fix the loose tiles in the kitchen. At my Conservatoire office ask Coulade for the green dossier. You’ll find keys for my flat under the geranium pot on the 3rd floor of 19 rue Béranger. Give Becquerel the 14th-century diagram you find. He’ll tell you what to do next. Say nothing to my great-aunt, for her safety. No matter how she grills you. Now hug her for me. Pascal.

Aimée’s hand shook. Under the envelope lay a check for five thousand francs made out to Leduc Detective.

“You know what to do?” Mademoiselle Samoukashian’s voice quavered. “But you can’t tell me, n’est-ce pas?”

Aimée nodded. “For your safety, Mademoiselle.” She averted her eyes. “Who’s Becquerel?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian shook her head. “Professor Becquerel? But he passed away last week. He was ninety. Pascal’s last professor.”

Too late. Aimée felt a cold pit in her stomach. Becquerel led nowhere.

She leaned down to hug the old woman, again felt her thin shoulders. “Pascal said he meant to fix the loose tiles in the kitchen,” she said, trying to smile. “May I take you home?”

Mademoiselle Samoukashian shook her head. And when she spoke, Aimée heard the grit in her voice. “You’ve got more important things to do, Mademoiselle.”