Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

Saturday, 4 P.M.

THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT hours of an investigation were crucial. After that the trail iced up, the odds lowered for tracking down a witness, a name, an accurate memory. As time passed, leads dropped to zero. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since Pascal’s murder.

Aimée pulled out her cell phone and made two calls. Both went to voice mail. Frustrated, she left messages as she skirted past the old covered market, the Carreau du Temple.

A homeless man—or SDF, sans domicile fixe, the politically correct term—camped on a ventilation grate. Most people still referred to the homeless as clochards. This man held a cracked transistor radio to his ear. The radio weather report cackled in the afternoon air.

“Clear afternoon skies, crisp, and ten degrees warmer tomorrow, ma chère.” He winked at Aimée. “Plan ahead.”

She was trying to. “I’ll get out my beach umbrella,” she said, reaching in her pocket and handing him change.

“Me too. Merci, ma chère.” He grinned, a weathered look on a youngish face. Fallen on rough times, as so many had these days.

And then she got an idea.

“Haven’t I seen you over there?” Aimée asked, gesturing back across the park of Square du Temple.

“Dry and warmer here,” he said.

“And no problems, eh, like last night? The murder.”

He shrugged. Turned the radio volume down. After all, she’d paid—the unspoken rule—and it was time to deliver. “I heard about it.”

She crouched down, careful to keep her stilettos out of the grate holes. “What did you hear?”

“The regulars scattered. Won’t go back.”

“Like Clodo?”

“Clodo? We’re all Clodo to the flics.” His mouth turned down in a frown. “Tell me you’re not a flic, ma chère.”

“Moi? You’re joking.” She took more change from her pocket. “I mean the mec sleeping on the steps behind the building near rue au Maire. Fur coat, pink scarf.”

“The crazy one?”

Weren’t half the ragged men on the street crazy? Shuffling and mumbling to themselves? But then sometimes she did too.

“Angels worried about devils?”

“C’est lui,” she said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“Usually goes underground at the Fantôme. Most do.”

Some code? “Where’s that?”

“Métro at Saint-Martin.”

She thought. “But there’s no station there.”

“Closed in 1939. A shelter in the war. Abandoned now, but they know ways in.” He shook his head. “Not your type of place, ma chère.”

She grinned. “But I’m a Parisian rat.”

He shrugged. “Up to you.”

“So how can I talk to Clodo?”

“The Métro opens at five thirty A.M.”

“But why don’t you go to the Fantôme?”

The crow’s feet in his weather-beaten face deepened. He pointed to a window of the third-floor apartment building across from the Carreau, rose-colored curtains. “My daughter lives there. I don’t like to be far away.”

“Could this help?” Aimée said, laying fifty francs on his sleeping bag. He gestured with a grimy hand for her to come closer. Welcome heat from the grill vent toasted her face.

“I heard Clodo’s in a bad way,” he said. “In the hospital.”

Startled, she leaned closer, trying not to breathe in his unwashed smell. “After last night?”

“Clodo sidelines in cell phones. Where he gets them …” A shrug.

So that was where Samour’s cell phone went.

“Word says a dealer confused Clodo’s stash niche for his powder, ma chère,” he said. “A misunderstanding.”

News via the homeless grapevine traveled fast. “That put him in the hospital?”

“Got him pushed on the Métro tracks today.”

“A bit harsh for a misunderstanding,” she said, interested. “Sounds like retribution.”

“That’s life on the street.”

“More like under.” She didn’t buy it. “Sounds to me like someone wanted to silence him after he witnessed the murder.”

“Tell me, ma chère, would you believe Clodo, who talks to angels and devils?”

More than she’d believe the flics.

The man peered around her shoulder, his attention on the window. His face crinkled in a smile. For a moment he looked almost lordly, as if surveying his territory from his rumpled sleeping bag. “Light’s on. My daughter’s doing her homework, nice and early. Good, she looked tired today.”

His voice was like that of any father. And it saddened her. But she sensed he knew more. “Could we trade a new radio for that phone Clodo found?”

He shrugged. “Not my thing, but I’ll check into it. No promises.”

“But I’ll depend on you for the weather forecast so I know what to wear.” She winked. Slipped him her card. “Why don’t you use that and let me know.”

He winked back.

This smelled like it went somewhere.