Murder in Clichy

Sunday Morning

SHE WOKE UP TO her cell phone’s ringing. René lay asleep, pale lemon light pooled on the duvet bunched around him. Her stockings were twisted and she straightened them while listening to Serge’s voice.

“Sorry, Aimée, I was called to Nantes, just got back to the morgue,” Serge said. “I have to work Sundays now.”

“Which twin had the fever?” She could never tell them apart, the boys never stood still long enough to enable her to figure it out.

“Both came down with la grippe; thank God my mother-in-law came with us.”

“Do me a favor, Serge, find me the autopsy report on Albert Daudet.”

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s a suspicious death.”

“You stopped all that, didn’t you?”

Not Serge, too!

“I’ll bring Miles Davis over,” she said. “Let the twins take him for a walk.”

“Look Aimée, that’s not your field now.”

“It never was,” she said. “But if I tell the boys you wouldn’t let me bring—”

“Arrête! What’s the deceased man’s name again?”

“Daudet, Albert.”

“Like the writer, eh? Hold on.”

She heard the shuffle of papers, conversations in the background. By the time Serge came back on the line, she’d taken her pills and pulled on her skirt.

“Daudet died under medical care, so it took a while to dredge it up,” Serge said. “Hmm, interesting report. Most old men who go in for a cardiogram don’t die from cartilage thyroid fractures and hemorrhaging in the neck.”

“Meaning?”

“Asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. My guess is it came from a carotid sleeper hold.”

She gasped. Regnier and his henchmen. Hadn’t René said he’d been caught in a carotid sleeper hold?

“Daudet had a preexisting coronary condition. It didn’t help. The compression of the carotid did it for him,” Serge said. “I figure it took three or four minutes. That’s indicated by extensive bruises to the neck and petechiae.”

“Would the killer have to be muscular?” she asked.

“It helps. Hook and hold the neck in the crotch of the arm, apply pressure, and most folks pass out in ten seconds. Hold a few minutes longer and it’s the big sleep.”

“And Serge, in your professional opinion?”

“The evenness and deep pressure bruises indicate a big guy,” Serge said. “But that’s off the record.”

“Fax it to me, will you?”

“You owe me, Aimée. Count some babysitting in, too!”

AIMÉE KNOCKED on the door of Albert Daudet’s widow, Lucie. She lived in a peeling stucco former loge de concierge at the mouth of a cobblestoned courtyard.

The window lace shimmied and swayed as the glass door opened. Crocheted figures danced and then became still forever, caught on the lace panel, as if sculpted by sea-salt spray.

“Madame Daudet?” she said.

“Oui?” said a woman with a tightly curled gray perm and reading glasses hanging by a beaded string around her neck.

“May I take a few moments of your time?”

She stared at Aimée, smoothing down her apron. “The coffin’s all I can afford right now. Forget the memorial service you people try to cram down my throat. The anciens com-battants should help bury a veteran!”

“I’m a detective.” She flashed her license. “Sorry to impose at this time but I want to ask a few questions.”

“The flics came by yesterday,” she said. “I told them the same thing. It’s foul play.”

Aimée nodded. “I know. It’s in the autopsy report.”

“They won’t show it to me. Keep telling me to wait.”

“But I have a copy,” she said. “Would you like to see it?”

Madame Daudet covered her mouth with her hand. “Come in,” she said.

The converted loge, a suitcase of an apartment, was crammed with shelves of religious statues and plastic vials of holy water from Lourdes. Bronze statues of the Virgin Mary and a kneeling Bernadette were prominent. A small sink with a floral print curtain below stood next to a two burner stove.

“Albert was my second husband, you know,” said Madame Daudet, gesturing to chairs around a table which bore a file of supermarché coupons. The corners of her mouth turned down in a sour expression. “I never had to do such things before but the pension’s not enough.”

She pulled her reading glasses on and read the autopsy report.

“What’s this ‘petechiae’?”

“In layman’s terms?”

“I don’t speak medicalese.”

“Red pinpoint hemorrhages in his eyes. Their presence indicates strangulation.”

Madame Daudet’s brows creased with concern. “I don’t understand.”

But Aimée thought she did.

“Did he have enemies?”

“Albert?” Though she shook her head, the tight curls budged not a centimeter. “He supervised the tire warehouse for forty years. A joker. Always good with his hands, he was.” She pointed to the built-in shelves, like in a ship’s cabin. “I told the police the same thing. Don’t you talk to each other?”

If she thought Aimée worked with the flics, why enlighten her?

“I just need to clarify. Why do you think someone would do this?”

Madame Daudet scanned the report. “Albert talked. ‘Big mouth,’ I called him. To his face, mind you. He knew what I thought. No lies between us. That’s why I wondered. . . .”

She paused, her eyes wistful.

“You wondered if he’d run off at the mouth and it got him in trouble?” Aimée asked.

Madame Daudet nodded. For the first time Aimée saw tears in the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away.

“Was it something he mentioned to his comrades from the Sixth Battalion?”

“Some scam. For the first time, well, Albert kept secrets from me. I thought they were just old men with fantasies.”

“Fantasies?”

“Who comes out of war unscarred, eh?” she said, clipping the coupons, and putting them in the box. “But when the nightmares started again. . . .”

“Madame Daudet, what do you mean?”

“The nightmares Albert had!” Madame Daudet said. “He woke up screaming, bathed in sweat. The first year we were married, it happened every night.”

Aimée crossed her legs and shifted the file of coupons. Outside in the courtyard, footsteps sounded on the cobblestones. Despite the cramped warmth inside, a damp muskiness permeated the floorboards.

“From the battle of Dien Bien Phu, you mean?”

“He said odd things in his sleep,” she said. “Over and over, about a dragon.”

Aimée gripped the edge of the table. “A jade dragon? Did he mention that?”

Madame Daudet took her reading glasses from her nose. “A list of animals, he kept repeating it. But when he woke up, he denied knowing anything about them.”

The astrological animals of the Chinese zodiac? Excited, Aimée leaned forward. Was he one of the soldiers who’d looted the Emperor’s tomb? Did Madame Daudet know Gassot?

“What do his comrades in the Sixth Battalion say?”

“They’re scared,” she said. “Afraid the past has come knocking on their door. After I mentioned that his pants cuff was rolled up, Picq had such horror in his eyes. He hasn’t been in touch since.”

“Wait a minute.” Aimée scanned the autopsy report. In the description of Albert’s body there was a tattoo, a flower with a dripping knife, on his left calf.

“Didn’t you think it odd?”

“More like disrespectful, a careless staff error, so I made my thoughts known to the director.”

“I mean his tattoo.”

“They all had them. Some drunken Haiphong foolishness, Albert told me.”

“Doesn’t the Sixth Battalion keep in touch, meetings and so on?”

“You mean swapping war stories of the good old days in Indochina?” She shook her head. “Not like that at all. Albert was in the supply commissary. He hid behind his desk. I think he had seen some combat but he didn’t like talking about it. Most of the boys shipped in on transports, dallied with bar girls. But then who didn’t? Got shot up and shipped out in wood boxes or on troop transports. But me, I knew the old Indochina.”

Madame Daudet’s eyes took on a faraway look. “I remember the flame trees and the tamarinds by the grass lawn that spread all the way down to the mouths of the dragon.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand, Madame.”

“The Mekong has nine tributaries, like the nine mouths of the dragon, the Indochinese say,” she said. “My parents had parties, magical soirées with lantern lights, the banana leaves nodding in the breeze, tables of hors d’oeuvres and so many servants we tripped over them.”

Aimée hoped this was going somewhere.

“My father planted rubber trees. Kept big accounts with the tire manufacturers he supplied on the île de la Jatte.”

Aimée tried another tactic. “Was your husband a rubber planter, too?”

“Paul, my first husband, was a naval attaché.” Her eyes misted over. “I polished his épaulettes, kept the gold braid just how he liked it. We’d go to Café Parisien, you know, where the right types were seen: the governor, and everyone of importance. Such a scent of frangipani in the courtyard! At one time they called it the Paris of the East. Gustave Eiffel designed the post office, can you imagine?”

Aimée didn’t think she expected an answer.

“But there’s no more rue Catinat now. Our beautiful ochre villa’s a community center, someone told me. They don’t even call it Saigon anymore,” she sighed. “We wore hand-sewn silk tea dresses. No one wears things like that anymore. And we changed several times a day, très élégantes. The humidity, you know. Dense, heavy like a wet blanket all the time. I’ll say one thing for the natives, they knew how to dress for the weather.”

“Did you know the de Lussignys over there?”

“My dear, we dined with them at the Café Parisien,”

Madame Daudet said, a trace of hauteur in her voice.

To Aimée it sounded sad, so long ago and so far away.

“Was the old man a jade collector?”

“He loved everything native, including his mistress,” she said. “Life seemed perfect until the guerillas bombed the café. As far as I’m concerned, it ended then. All the guerilla warfare that followed, attacks on us by the Hoa-Hoa and Cao Dai.”

“Cao Dai? But it’s a religious sect.”

“Religion cloaks many things.” Madame Daudet shrugged. “A political vehicle for les asiatiques. Paul always said that. The Cao Dai had an army. At first, I didn’t blame them. Starving on the streets, well, we could see that. With all those green shoots in the rice paddies, I wondered where the rice went but the guerillas took it. They brainwashed the peasants. Our servants, too. Imagine, after all those years, and how generous we were! Those betrayals hurt. But I prefer to think, well, not everyone.”

A true colonial childhood, Aimée thought. And now she had come to this. Aimée noticed the small armoire, the door ajar, which held only a few housedresses on hangers.

“When my old nanny died, a devout Buddhist, they laid a banana on her stomach, as a guarantee of an afterlife. Imagine!” she said, sighing. “The Cao Dai bury their dead sitting up.”

“With jade?” Aimée asked.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” she said.

Outside the weak sunshine slanted on the wall. The voices of children and the bouncing of a ball echoed from the recesses of the courtyard.

“How can I get in touch with Picq and Gassot?”

“Bad lot,” she said. “I always said it. They proved me right, the flics did.”

Frustrated, Aimée wished the woman would give her facts, not hints. Gassot might have the clue to the jade she needed. “What do you mean?”

“They were arrested for possession of explosives,” she said. “Last I heard, they were in jail due to their crazy scheme.”

“Gassot, too?”

“Seems he can move fast despite his peg-leg.”

“So he escaped. Where could I find him?”

Madame Daudet pulled back.

“I think he knows why your husband was killed,” Aimée said. “Please, tell me how to find him.”

Madame Daudet blessed herself and kissed the gold cross around her neck. She pointed across the narrow yard to a five-story hotel with peeling shutters, that displayed the sign HÔTEL, and a phone number with the old-fashioned prefix BAT 4275. There was a shuttered café below it.

“Are they ever open?”

Madame Daudet rolled her eyes. “A money-laundering front for some gang. At least that’s what Albert said. No wonder Gassot lives there cheap.”

And then Aimée remembered the address she’d gotten from the police. The building Thadée owned in the back of the gallery courtyard: What had the faded old blue sign said? A warehouse or manufacturer?

“Either your husband, Picq, or Gassot left a contact phone number at the anciens combattants. Was it the telephone number of the tire warehouse?”

Madame Daudet nodded.

“Were there other men from the Sixth Battalion in their group?”

“Nemours. He’s a gourmand who loves food more than life itself. We all thought he’d go first, with his cholesterol!”

“But your husband was the first. And someone’s after his remaining comrades, aren’t they?”

Madame Dinard looked down. “I don’t know.”

Aimée tapped her heels on the wooden floor wanting to steer the conversation back on track.

“What about Nemours?”

“He follows Picq. They’d meet with Albert at the tire warehouse. When Albert retired, he became a part-time custodian. After work, they’d go to play belote upstairs in the café on rue des Moines.”

Now it made sense. She’d met them already. The day she confronted Pleyet in the upstairs room of the café, the day after Thadée was killed. She shivered with fear.

Could she have it wrong? Had they killed Thadée, then their comrade Albert, out of greed?

“Did Albert ever mention Thadée Baret? He was related by marriage to the de Lussignys.”

“Mais bien sûr, all the time!” she said. “Albert loved talking to Thadée about Indochina. Thadée ran the gallery. He received it in the divorce settlement. Once the de Lussignys owned the tire factory. They were rubber barons who intermarried with the natives,” said Madame Daudet, her mouth crinkled in a moue of disgust.

“May I keep the autopsy report?” she asked.

Aimée nodded, wondering if it would wind up on the shelf next to Bernadette of Lourdes. She thanked Madame Daudet and left. But now she’d learned of the old men’s connection to Thadée and where Gassot lived.

Outside on the street, she ducked into a doorway and checked her cell phone. Two messages.

The first was from Pleyet, finally returning her call.

“We need to talk,” he said. “Call me back.”

She’d call him after she found Gassot. If she worked it right, she’d have information to barter with Pleyet.

The next was from Martine.

“Allô, Martine. How’s Sophie?”

She heard Martine inhale on her cigarette.

“Safe in her room. The valium helped,” Martine said. Her husky voice rose. “Interesting news, Aimée,” she said. “The Brits dropped out of the oil rights bidding. And seems the Chinese have transported impressive drilling rigs to the bay off Dingfang, on Hainan Island. They’re raising territorial issues. But right now it looks like Olf and the Chinese are neck in neck.”

“Great, keep going, Martine.”

“There’s a rumor of fat ‘commissions’ for the inside track to the oil rights. I’m still on it.”

AIMÉE ENTERED the narrow corridor of Gassot’s hotel, her shoulders brushing against the peeling, fawn-colored walls. A single bulb lit the hall. But she imagined that the pensioners who lived here appreciated it. Better than a cardboard box over their heads in an abandoned lot.

The smell of grease from a nearby kitchen hovered. Chirping came from the reception booth, a particle board structure, under a Art Deco sign advising NO EVENING VISI-TORS ALLOWED AFTER DARK. FULL AND DEMI-PENSION WITH CAFÉ MEALS AVAILABLE.

Judging by the grease smell, she doubted the inhabitants chose full pension if they could afford to dine elsewhere. A tall man wearing a raincoat and holding a watering can stood in the doorway leading to a concrete rear yard.

“Looking for someone?” he asked, in a hoarse voice, the guttural roll of consonants betraying his Russian origin. His eyes took in her legs and he grinned. “I’m available.”

A stab at Slavic humor?

She gave him a big smile.

“Which room is Monsieur Gassot’s?”

“Eh? What’s that?” he said, blocking the doorframe in a swift movement.

“You heard me,” she said, keeping the smile on her face.

“Which room does he stay in, Monsieur?”

“Spell that name for me, eh. My hearing’s gone. Everything else works fine.”

She reached for the cell phone in her pocket. As he set down the watering can, she punched in the hotel’s number. Seconds later the phone rang in the small reception area.

He glanced at the phone, his eyes unsure.

“Go ahead, I’ll wait,” she said, still keeping the smile on her face with effort.

“Please sit. Wait over there,” he said, entering the reception cubicle to answer the telephone.

Fat chance. She ran past him and into the back yard, skidding on the wet concrete in time to see a white-haired man slipping into a dilapidated lean-to shed. Rabbit hutches covered with wire-mesh lined the old wall, celery stalks peeking through the holes. She slammed the hotel door shut with her booted heel, found her Swiss Army knife, and wedged it between the door jamb and door handle. The Russian gorilla would have to kick the door down to open it. She had no intention of losing Gassot now.

“Monsieur Gassot, I’m not a flic,” she called. “I know you’ve been avoiding me. You were an engineer at Dien Bien Phu. I read your article about the looting of the Emperor’s tomb.”

The shed door scraped open. A knife blade glinted.

All she had in her bag was a can of pepper spray and Chanel No. 5.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She had to get him to listen to her. “Aimée Leduc. Your friend Albert was murdered. You could be next.”

What if he’d been responsible? But whatever he’d done she needed to gain his confidence. Convince him to talk to her.

He edged out of the shed. Even under the 1960s-era gray twill raincoat she saw his well-built frame and muscular arms. And his limp.

“What’s that to you?”

“I was hired by a Cao Dai nun to find a set of jade astrological figures. Let me do my job. Talk to me.”

The Russian kicked at the door.

“Call this mec off,” she said. “Or I’ll treat him to pepper spray.”

“Where’s your gun?” Gassot asked.

She shook her head. The gutter dripped. Big splats of water landed on her boots. “I’m a private detective. No gun.”

Too bad it sat in the hall drawer of her apartment.

Gassot stood, rain glistening in his white hair, holding the knife with an unreadable expression.

“Why was Daudet killed? Why are they after you?” she asked.

And by his eyes, she knew she’d said the wrong thing. She’d lost him.

“I’ve lived this long, so you should know I’m not stupid enough to fall for your approach. I know you were hired to avenge the past.”

“Avenge? Wait a minute, you’re confusing me with someone else.”

Gassot’s mouth twisted. “It was a mistake. We never meant to do it.”

Do what? She had to reel Gassot in. Get him to trust her. She remembered what Linh had said.

“War’s a series of mistakes,” she said. “But you couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty years old. What did you know? The important thing was you saved a Vietnamese man’s life. The life of this nun’s father.”

“What nun?”

“A Cao Dai nun named Linh asked me to bring her the jade figures.”

“She wasn’t a nun then.” Gassot flexed his knuckles but he still held the knife. “Not when we fought at Dien Bien Phu.”

“His grandchildren are in need of the jade hoard. One’s in a Vietnamese prison for protesting the régime and his sister’s this nun who is petitioning the International Court of Justice to bring about his release,” she said, embellishing. “And you were in the Sixth Battalion, one of the men who looted the jade treasure after the battle.”

Gassot’s mouth trembled.

Aimée lifted the absinthe-green disk into the dull gray light. It glowed.

“Didn’t you find this?”

Gassot’s mouth trembled. He stepped closer and let out a deep breath. “And a lot more. We were surveying, digging trenches, but we hit an old ammunition box. There were twelve figures inside. The next day they were gone.”

She’d been right. She placed the jade disk on the rabbit hutch ledge, staying far away from Gassot’s knife.

“There’s another, isn’t there? It’s called the Dragon. The most sacred.”

Gassot turned over the small jade disk in his hands, then punched the rabbit hutch, his shoulders beaded with rain.

“You have it, don’t you?” she said. “And the dragon makes the set complete.”

“By rights they’re all ours. But I never saw them again.”

“A museum director put the figures up for auction here in Paris a month ago,” she told him. “Then they were withdrawn. He was murdered in the men’s bathroom of Parc Monceau. You know that, Gassot, don’t you?”

Silence. She saw defiance in his eyes.

“If the jade is stolen from its true owner, bad luck follows the thief,” he said.

“So you killed Thadée, then Albert, because he wanted a bigger share. Demanded it.” She was guessing. “Did you arrange to meet Dinard and murder him, too?”

Gassot shook his head. “Think what you want.” He turned the jade piece in his hand again.

“You’re not the only ones who want the jade,” Aimée said. “Albert’s wife said you and the others concocted some scheme.”

“But the rumor. . . .” Gassot hesitated.

Had she put it together wrong?

“Go ahead, Gassot. What rumor?”

“The man I saved told me the de Lussignys had stolen the jade. I never saw him again, so I couldn’t question him further. Albert insisted Thadée knew something, but he couldn’t get it out of him.”

The door splintered and the Russian stood there. And so did Blondel.

The spillover from the broken rain gutter beat a pattern on Aimée’s boots. She wished she had René for backup. Though she’d found Gassot, she had walked into the eye of the dragon.

“Time for that talk, Mademoiselle Leduc,” Blondel said. His zipperlike mouth and dull, flat gaze bothered her, but not as much as his clenched fists.

“About your dope running in Clichy?” She had to deflect him, get out of here. But how? Keep talking. “So you pay off someone in the Commissariat. I’m not interested.”

“You weren’t nice to Jacky; he remembers that,” Blondel said, motioning to someone behind him. “But I’m on someone else’s franc.”

He worked for someone else? She glanced at Gassot.

“Thadée owed you money,” she said, “Why kill him, and Albert? Whose side are you on, Gassot?”

“My own.”

“Meaning you double-crossed these mecs, and they’re after you?”

“Something like that,” Blondel said.

“I never did business with you, Blondel!” Gassot said.

“But your comrade did. And look what happened to him.”

“Albert? He talked too much but he’d never deal with the likes of you,” Gassot said, a quiver in his voice.

“Think again,” said Regnier, stepping into the doorframe. His riveting black eyes locked onto hers.

Aimée stifled a gasp. Why hadn’t she put that together? But the truth, as Oscar Wilde had said, was rarely pure and never simple.

“You work for Olf don’t you, Regnier?” she asked. “You hired Blondel to do your dirty work.”

His eyes never left her face. A small smile painted his thin lips. “Took you awhile, didn’t it?”

“You killed Thadée, Albert, and Dinard. And kidnapped René, to force me into—”

“A little too late for those observations, isn’t it?” Regnier interrupted. “But you two make a nice couple. Now we’re going to get the jade.”

“Why? To get back at the Ministry and the RG?”

He shrugged. “You know what the RG’s like. Thanks to them I wear a hearing aid,” he said. “Once I fell for their line about honor and service. But I came to my senses, and now I work for the highest bidder.”

Did he expect sympathy from her? She remembered Martine’s comments on how close Olf and the Chinese were in the bidding for oil rights. Now it made sense.

“Interpol’s infiltrated your group,” she said. “That should screw up Olf’s plan to use the jade to get an edge on the Tonkin Gulf oil rights.”

Regnier’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” His phone beeped and he turned away to answer it.

“Pleyet’s with Interpol,” Aimée said.

Would that knock him off balance, at least for a moment? But he’d disappeared.

She looked for another door, another way out. High walls dripping with rain and the rabbit hutches hemmed them in. She was trapped in this postage-stamp-sized concrete yard. How had Regnier managed to vanish so quickly? Well, it was one less to face.

Could she take on these mecs? Her pepper spray would disable one. Maybe. Gassot had the knife but she didn’t like the bulge in Blondel’s coat pocket. And would Gassot back her up?

She pepper-sprayed the Russian, who yelled and put his arms up to his face. Gassot, lunging with his knife, tripped against the rabbit hutches, sending them crashing to the ground. She got Blondel with her Chanel No. 5 purse-size atomizer.

She raced past them, aiming for the street. Scrambled down the corridor. She heard Gassot panting right behind her. And for a moment, she thought they’d make it.

A stinging blow from Jacky threw her into the reception booth. Hands tightened around her neck.

“Shall I take care of you now or wait until you tell me what I want to know?” Regnier said, sticking his blunt-nosed Mauser in her ribs. “You choose.”

Aimée froze.

Gassot, careening from a punch, was held spreadeagled against the wall. Frightened rabbits skittered over their feet. Gassot’s knife fell, clattering on the cracked tile.

“Outnumbered and outgunned, I’d say,” Regnier said.

“Stupide. No escape route,” Gassot said, his breath heaving. “One should always have a way out.”

“So let’s talk,” Aimée said, trying to think fast. “You’ve got it all wrong, there’s—”

“We will talk, and you’ll give me the jade,” Regnier said, watching her lips. “But not here.”

A plumbing van waited on the curb, a yellow sign PLOMBERIE 24/24 painted on the side panels.

“And you looked like a nice girl,” said the Russian rubbing his red eyes as he shoved Aimée and Gassot down the hall. “Nice legs, that waif-look, half-wild and free. I like.”

“You’re not my type.”

“You never know until you try,” he said, feeling her up under her sweater.

“Later, Sergei,” Blondel said, opening the back doors.

“Keep your hands off! Help!” She screamed and kicked, hoping someone on the street would hear them. But then Jacky blocked the view in the three seconds it took to bundle her and Gassot into the van.

She and Gassot were thrown onto the van floor, the door locked. The engine gunned and the van took off, throwing them against the metal racks of supplies. No side windows. Just a small back window.

Jumbled thoughts came to her. Linh’s father had known about the jade! What a world class liar Julien de Lussigny was, acting as if he’d never heard of the jade! He’d said his father would turn in his grave if he knew of its existance. Liar! When his godfather Dinard had put it up for auction, De Lussigny had probably helped him.

The van swerved and she rammed into the wall.

“Gassot, you ok?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Think!” she said.

But he shook his head, defeated.

Maybe not this time.

She scanned the dim interior of the van. The divider between the driver’s compartment and the rear of the van, where a window had been, was blocked by a metal panel now. Had Blondel used this van to kidnap René? She didn’t think they were going far, otherwise they’d have tied them and taped them up. A whiff of pepper spray wafted from the front so she knew the Russian was up there. Jacky? Where were Regnier and Blondel?

White plastic pipe, hoses, and plumbing equipment were scattered over the van floor.

“The pipe’s not strong enough to break the rear window safety glass,” she said, rooting through the equipment. “We need a wrench, a pair of pliers, something made of metal to shatter it.”

Nothing.

She noticed Gassot’s old-fashioned flesh colored wooden leg.

“How much does that weigh?”

“Enough.”

“If you took it off, would it be strong enough to smash the glass?”

“Then how would I run away?”

Good point.

The van careened around a corner, throwing him against her.

“You jump first, then I follow,” she said, “I will pick you up.” If neither of them broke any limbs, it might work.

He shook his head.

“Got any other ideas?”

“No wonder our plan backfired,” Gassot said, his eyes faraway. “The jade was not meant for us. It’s sacred.”

Perhaps. But she had to get him back to earth. They didn’t have much time.

“The old Cao Dai priest was right,” Gassot said. “Remember the old saying, Ngoc linh phai . . .”

“Don’t go mystic on me, Gassot. That lock’s rusted,” she said. “Lean on the side and try kicking it. You need a new artificial leg anyway.”

The van slowed down. She had to galvanize him to action.

“Quick, Gassot. Brace yourself against me. Now! Kick!”

And he started kicking.

He missed the lock. Pounding came from the driver’s compartment.

“Try again.”

Gassot kicked. Again and again. Only a small bulge where the doors joined. But a thin lick of streetlight showed through.

“Keep kicking.” She grabbed several white plastic pipes from the floor and wedged them into the opening he had created.

“Harder, Gassot!”

She braced him and worked the pipes back and forth. One cracked and splintered and she shoved another in. At each corner, the van slowed, then shot ahead, to throw them off balance.

The door buckled. But the lock wouldn’t give. She felt the gears downshift, heard the brakes screech. Then a sickening crunch of metal and a crash that sent them sprawling. They’d run into another vehicle. The van shuddered to a halt.

“Get up, try again, Gassot.” Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. “Give it all you’ve got.”

He strained, hammering the lock with quick jabs of his foot. She twisted the pipes back and forth and the door burst open.

“Now,” she said, pulling Gassot up and dashing out the door.

They landed on the surprised Russian, his eyes still red and tearing, in a crosswalk on rue Legendre. Smoke billowed from the mangled van now enmeshed with a small truck. The angry red-faced truck’s driver had Jacky in an armlock on the pavement.

“Run, Gassot,” she said, kicking the Russian in the head.

No passersby. Only a shuttered violin shop and a boucherie. An old woman peered out from the boucherie in the dim evening dusk.

“Call the police,” she yelled.

But the old woman shut the door.

The rumble and clack of a train below reminded her that rue Legendre bridged the rail lines. A black Peugeot screeched to a halt behind them. Regnier and Blondel loomed on the pavement.

Blocked in both directions. And a prime shooting target. Gassot stood immobile, like a frightened deer in the car headlights. They had to take advantage of the confusion.

“I hope you can climb, Gassot,” she said. She grabbed him by the shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“Hurry. Metal criss-cross beams support these railway bridges.” At least they did under the Pont Neuf outside her window. She prayed this bridge had them, too.

Chunks of concrete flew as bullets hit the ledge. She moved her hands, her toes reaching for footholds on the metal struts, trying not to look down and see the huge drop beneath them.

Gray-green criss-cross beams ran below. Dizzied, she held tight to the faded green steel span. Electric freight trains with yellow lighted windows clattered below on the dark, glistening metal tracks. A narrow gray-ribbed walkway for workmen ran parallel underneath, spanning the rail lines.

“Now, Gassot . . . here!” she said, reaching with her legs and finding solid metal.

And somehow he did it. Landed next to her on the narrow walkway.

“Keep moving, Gassot, we can make it. It’s not far.” She pointed to a ladder built into the stone side wall. At least they could climb it instead of getting picked off like flies.

Grit flaked off the steel girders as bullets peppered the steel, pinging and sparking.

Bad idea.

“Get down, Gassot.”

And then her feet slid and she tripped on metal rebar scraps. Airborne, she grabbed the rusted railing and fell against it. Rebar pieces sailed past her. She grabbed one before it fell and crouched down, pulling out her cell phone, and punched in the number.

“Allô. Pleyet! We’re under the rail bridge on rue Legendre,” she shouted, hunching down.

“Sightseeing?”

“Regnier’s men are shooting at us. Isn’t Interpol interested in the jade?”

More shots pinged on steel and Gassot fell, knocking her phone into the air. Merde!

The snub nose of a pistol edged around a metal girder. And then she saw a blue-sleeved arm. She lifted the sharp, cold rebar piece and swung with all her might. Only air. She tried again, this time hitting something solid. Heard a yell muffled by the sound of clacking train wheels. She pulled it back. Swung again.

A hand with a pistol appeared in front of her face. She banged the rebar into the knuckles. Heard a clanging and the crunch of flesh.

And then Blondel whipped past her, flapping his arms like a bird. The wind took his scream. She fell back against the girder. When she looked down, the blue of his jacket lay sprawled on the roof of a freight car rumbling into the night.

She grabbed Gassot, pulled him toward the ladder in the stone wall a few steps away. Sweat ran down between her shoulders.

“Climb, Gassot,” she said, pushing him up.

“My leg. . . .”

“You can do it.”

Gassot stopped. Shuddered.

She looked up to see Regnier straddling the ladder. And Gassot crumpled back on her, falling onto the narrow walkway.

She clutched the metal cross strut, rusted flakes covering her hands.

“We’re worth more to you alive, Regnier,” she shouted.

A stinging kick at her jaw. But she held on, grabbed at some twisted wires hanging down. Regnier had one leg on top of Gassot’s head. “So where is it?”

She clenched her fist around the flashlight in her bag. “I’ll take you there.”

“Look at me when you talk,” Regnier yelled.

She felt her collar grabbed and then her shoulders pulled. Her feet slipped and she hung suspended, her legs dangling. Her arms flailed in the cold air.

“Hurry up, or I drop you.”

She tried to look up but her coat tore with a loud rip. She saw the glistening wet tracks below her twisting boots. Her father’s face flashed in front of her, a black and white image of her mother, the little apartment with a blue table they’d once lived in.

Her hands struck a steel girder and she grabbed. Her fingers slipped, and she grabbed again. Caught the thick edged steel. Her heel struck the stone wall and slid. She swung back, hit the wall again with her foot, and pushed off.

And then Regnier let go. Pounding and yelling sounded above her. Then a scream and a sickening thud from below.

Her right leg reached the girder and she caught her heel in a hole. She grabbed higher with her other arm, finding the steel beam, and scrambling with the other leg, she pulled herself up.

“Gassot . . . Gassot?” No answer. She kept reaching and climbing. The train whistle screeched below.

And when her shaking hand couldn’t hold the metal grid columns anymore, she realized that now sirens were wailing overhead. And Gassot was singing. Something in Vietnamese.

She peered over the steel girder. Caught her breath. Regnier lay sprawled below on the train tracks. And then a train flashed by. Gassot leaned over. She was afraid he was about to jump.

“Gassot, it’s all right,” she said, rubbing his shoulder. “Help me. We’ve got to recover the jade.”

“I should never have touched it,” he said.

“YOU TOOK your time, Pleyet,” Aimée told him.

“I try to keep a low profile,” he said, shielding his face from the photographers on rue Legendre. The whirr and flashes of photographer’s lights shot off like fireworks until the flics shooed them away. Blue lights from the police cars and ambulances played kaleidoscopically over the balconied buildings overlooking the train lines. Jacky, handcuffed, spit in Aimée’s direction as he was escorted into a police van.

“Nice view,” Pleyet said, pointing to the rail line walls. One read PARIS in white letters on the blackened stone.

“There’s a better one,” she said. “In the Parc Monceau. Get us out of here.”

“I’d like to, but the flics want to question you. . . .”

“Use your clout, Pleyet,” she interrupted. “Don’t international oil rights and looted art take precedence? Call headquarters in Lyon, make your buddies smooth this over. Or it will be too late. I know where the jade is.”

SHE HELPED Gassot into Pleyet’s blue Renault, borrowed Pleyet’s phone, and called René.

“What did you find, René?”

“Interesting stuff, Aimée,” said René. “The oil bid the French Ministry made contains a unique offer.”

“The jade figures?”

Aimée saw Gassot’s hand stiffen.

“Bingo. But here’s what’s even more interesting. The Chinese bid includes it, too.”

Whoever had the jade would claim the oil rights by virtue of patrimony. Just as Derek Lau had told her in his restaurant. The ancient jade disks, older than the animal figures, were the guarantee of legitimacy for the claimant.

“You have proof in written form?” she asked.

“It’s all printed out in the e-mails and ministry documents. The jade’s supposed to be returned by the Ministry of Interior to the Vietnamese people in a munificent gesture in consideration for oil rights. The vast untapped reserves in the Gulf of Tonkin.”

“Good job, René. So the People’s Republic of China and the Vietnamese Government both claim to be legally entitled to the oil,” she said. “No wonder Julien de Lussigny wanted me to monitor the Chinese and hired Regnier.”

And tried to seduce me, she thought.

“Martine left you a message,” René continued. “Since you didn’t answer your phone. Olf pays secret commissions from a fund that funnels back to politicians and officials.”

No wonder de Lussigny could afford the Parc Monceau mansion.

“Do me a favor, overnight everything to Interpol in Lyon. Put down Pleyet’s name as the sender.”

“All in a day’s work,” René said.

“Good job, partner.”

The windshield wipers kept time to the pounding of the rain as Pleyet drove. The gray-misted Clichy streets were haloed by red-orange traffic lights.

“Thanks, Gassot,” she said, taking in his huddled form in the back seat.

But his eyes watched the wet cobblestone streets.

“You owe me, Pleyet,” she said.

“Want a job?”

“You know what I want,” she said. Her peripheral vision fogged and she clenched the door handle. She reached for her pills, swallowed them. Took the vial of mint oil, rubbed it on her temples, and closed her eyes.

“Tell me when we get there.”

AIMÉE LED them around the back to the mansion’s rear wing. An older Asian man, in blue pants and work jacket, smoking a cigarette, answered the door.

“We’re here to see Madame Nguyen,” she said. Odors of lemon grass wafted toward them.

“She’s not here,” he said, blocking the door.

“Tran, it’s all right,” Gassot said.

Aimée noticed the quiver in Gassot’s voice, the hesitation.

“Since you know each other, won’t you let us wait inside?” Aimée said.

She walked past Tran into the kitchen and toward Madame Nguyen’s room. A woman stood by the red-lighted altar where incense was burning. As the woman turned, her silk red scarf shimmered in the light of the votive candles.

Aimée saw Gassot lean against the doorframe and heard his swift intake of breath.

“What’s the matter, Gassot?”

He took a few steps. Stopped.

“Bao?” Gassot asked.

Aimée blinked. She saw a stunning Asian businesswoman of indeterminate age. Shocked, she stepped closer. Linh looked different in makeup and wearing a black pantsuit, a Hermès silk scarf around her shoulders.

“But . . . aren’t you a nun?” Aimée said.

“Half-right,” Linh said. “I was a nun. Once.”

No wonder Aimée hadn’t found her at the temple. The words of Quoc, the temple cleaner, came back to her. He hadn’t seen her before; she wore streetclothes. She should have paid attention.

“You’ve changed, Bao,” Gassot said, haltingly.

“Everyone changes, Gassot,” she said. “Except you.”

“You know her, Gassot?” Aimée asked.

“In another life,” he said. “As Bao—”

“Bao Tran, the Chinese recruited you in the labor camp,” Pleyet said. “They schooled you and your cousin Tran as saboteurs.”

“We’re an old-fashioned country,” Bao said. “We have to go far to catch up to the next century. But the jade will make it possible. We want what’s ours.”

Aimée quailed. She’d believed her . . . Linh . . . Bao. Been taken in by her warmth and calculating patience.

“And I was a perfect tool for you,” Aimée said. “Everything you told me was a lie. You made everything up.”

“Not everything,” Bao said, her voice wistful. “My brother is in prison and my country is in chains.”

“So you betray your country by helping China to win the oil rights? How can that help Vietnam or liberate your brother? You set me up, and Thadée, too,” Aimée said.

“It should have worked,” Bao said. “You would have brought me the jade. Simple!”

“Simple, except that Thadée owed Blondel,” Aimée said. “And Regnier, in Olf’s pay, knew that. He paid Blondel’s henchmen to do his dirty work. But Albert got in the way.”

“Albert wasn’t that big a fool,” Gassot said, his voice shaking. “I don’t believe it.”

“Albert worked in the tire factory—the de Lussigny’s factory— next door to the gallery for years. He knew all about the lost treasure. When old de Lussigny died, Thadée found the jade. Albert suspected that Thadée had taken it.”

Gassot hung his head. “It was my old comrades. They’d concocted a plan to use Thadée.”

“Linh, or should I say Bao, you promised Thadée money. Money he needed for the gallery and to pay old drug debts.

“And you played on Thadée’s sympathy,” she continued. “You told me yourself he had a good heart—you promised the jade would help the Cao Dai. It’s the ancient disks the Chinese government wants.”

Bao raised an eyebrow. “You lied to me,” Bao said. “Madame Nguyen used the surly one with the withered arm—”

“Wait, do you mean the temple cleaner?”

“Don’t play dumb.” Bao’s eyes flashed. “He took the jade from the doctor’s office where you hid it. You planned it that way. You know where the jade’s hidden now. So you will lead me to it.”

It made sense. Quoc, the mahjong-playing temple cleaner had followed her after Thadée’s murder, and stolen the jade.

Did Bao truly believe she was in league with Quoc, and knew where he’d hidden the jade?

“Tran, what’s the matter?” Gassot asked.

“Now it’s my turn to use you, the way you used us,” Tran said.

“But Tran, it wasn’t like that—”

“It’s not enough you French colonized us, salted the fields, raped our women, firestormed my village . . . but to take our beliefs—”

A door slammed. Small footsteps crossed the tiles. Aimée saw Pleyet’s shoulders tense and his hand bunch in his pocket.

“Maman? Maman’s here!” Michel ran in and dropped his bookbag. “She called us. Where is she?”

Everyone froze.

Madame Nguyen stood behind him, staring. Aimée followed her gaze.

“Michel, come here,” Madame Nguyen said.

But Aimée had knelt down by the old chest filled with toys and lifted out the Legos. She had to get Michel engaged.

“Michel, can you finish this?” she asked, keeping her voice steady with effort. “Looks like you were building a truck.”

Michel grinned. “Fire engine, silly.”

“Show me, we’d all like to see.”

Bao moved nearer. Something glinted. Was that a knife blade under her silk scarf? She shot Pleyet a look.

Michel pulled out the red, blue, white, and yellow pieces. One by one. Aimée sensed weight shifting on the wooden floor behind her as Bao moved closer.

“Michel, let me help you get the big green one down there.”

Madame Nguyen said something in Chinese. Aimée reached down, lifted a silk scarf, and something that it had hidden under the layer of toys.

She lifted out the green jade monkey.

“This belongs to my people,” Madame Nguyen said. And screamed, as Tran grabbed Michel and held a knife to his throat.

“Maman, where’s maman!” Michel’s eyes were wide with fright.

Aimée’s heart dropped. She heard scuffling, saw Nadège’s purple black hair, outlined against the doorframe.

“Let go of my son!”

And then Tran’s eyes bulged; a red cord was pulled tight around his neck, cutting into his skin. Nadège was strangling him from behind with the silk cord from her jade pendant. Aimée lunged, pushing Michel aside.

Pleyet sprang, but Tran turned, and plunged his knife into Pleyet’s side. Aimée got to her knees and knocked Bao off balance, pinned her on the floor, and twisted the woman’s silk scarf around her flailing hands.

“In here,” Nadège shouted. Aimée saw blue uniforms, raised billy clubs.

By the time Aimée got to her feet, the flics were cuffing ran. All eyes were on Gassot, who’d leaned down to staunch Pleyet’s bloody wound. Aimée stood in front of the toy chest, blocking it from view, as she scooped the figures into her bag.

“Maman’s here,” Nadège said, folding Michel in her arms.

“You saved me, maman!” Michel said.

“Mon coeur, you saved me,” Nadège breathed, shaking.

“No hiêú. Young people. No tradition,” Madame Nguyen observed.

But Aimée disagreed, looking at the three generations. The old grandmother had held them together and imbued them with tradition. At least, she’d done her best.

Now Aimée would finish the job.