Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

by Cara Black

  “What?”

  A sinking feeing hit her.

  “Samour put a diagram in her pile of sweatshirts.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Cho the metallurgist.”

  “Who?”

  Worried, she pulled on her coat, headed to the door. Meizi had kept the information back from her and René. She grabbed her bag. “Prévost’s informer. But she didn’t say anything?”

  Green light from the laptop screen smudged the tower’s walls.

  “You’re implying Meizi thinks it’s valuable, that she’d use it as a bargaining chip with Tso?” René said, his voice rising. “But you’re wrong, she trusts us to help her.”

  Then why hadn’t she called? Right now a terrified Meizi wouldn’t know the deal Aimée had made with Prévost. She might give Tso any information to protect her family. Get caught in the raid.… Aimée hoped it wasn’t too late. She had to convince her, get the diagram.

  “Let me know the minute you isolate the voices, okay?”

  She slammed the tower door.

  Sunday, 8:30 P.M.

  AIMÉE IGNORED THE hotel elevator and took the stairs two at a time. She knocked on Meizi’s door. No answer.

  “Meizi, it’s Aimée.”

  A maid pushed a cleaning cart down the hallway.

  “Forgot my key,” she smiled. “Mind letting me into my room?”

  “Who says you’re a guest here?” The maid’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “People pick up their keys at reception.”

  After a tip, Aimée figured. Aimée gestured to the room list hanging from the cart.

  “See room number 32, Sitbon,” she said, flashing Martine’s press card. “My friend’s asleep. Do me a favor and open the room.”

  The maid shrugged. With a ten-franc tip, she unlocked the door.

  The duvet was ruffled and soap stained the mirror over the lavabo. Meizi had forgotten a red sock.

  What did she expect? Tso’s men were after Meizi. She had to find her before they did. Before the raid. If only Meizi had confided in her or René. Trusted them and just stayed here safe.

  She rooted in her bag for Tso’s cell phone. Scrolled down the list of numbers he’d called. She’d work from that. First she needed a Chinese speaker.

  But Monsieur Cho didn’t answer his phone. Panicked, she ran out of the hotel room and down the stairs, narrowly missing an elderly couple in the hallway.

  • • •

  “S’IL VOUS PLAÎT, Madame,” Aimée asked the same Slavic-cheekboned receptionist.

  The receptionist stood with her back turned at the whirring fax machine. Aimée scanned the lobby for watchers. It was deserted.

  “Madame?” Was the woman ignoring her on purpose?

  “Your friend’s gone out,” she said.

  “How long ago?”

  “Said to tell you she’s getting a cell phone.”

  And walking into danger. But not if Aimée could stop it. She stepped out the front door, and at a glance took in parked cars and pedestrians but no vans. As she passed the Métro at Arts et Métiers she noticed a parked van on the boulevard. Wires and antennae. A surveillance van. Minutes later she reached Chez Chun’s fogged-up windows, caught her breath and entered.

  “Madame Liu, s’il vous plaît.” A waitress slicing smoked duck behind the takeout counter jerked her thumb toward the back.

  Madame Liu, who was stirring a pot of congee, looked up. Her black curls didn’t move. She frowned. “I get health-code violation if customer here.”

  “Please, I need to talk with you, Madame.”

  Steam rose and pots clattered.

  “Busy now. My cook sick.”

  Aimée glanced around. The small kitchen was a hive of activity—workers at the range, washing dishes, waitresses grabbing plates.

  “How will you keep your resto open without these people?”

  Alarm crossed the little woman’s eyes. “You try to shut me down?”

  “I want to help so you won’t be shut down.” Aimée took Madame Liu’s wiry arm and led her past sacks of rice to the rear door. A damp alley. Her mind went back to last night, the plastic, fighting to breathe. She shook it aside.

  “Alors, Madame, we’ll help each other.”

  “I answer your questions before.”

  “Within an hour the police will raid the quartier,” Aimée said. “Spreading the net to catch big fish like Tso, but your little fish will be caught too. Unless you help me.”

  Madame Liu’s eyes narrowed. “Not my business.”

  “The staff’s your business,” Aimée said. “If you don’t believe it, see for yourself. Go near République, out on rue Beaubourg. Check out all the parked surveillance vans.”

  Madame Liu’s fingers crabbed the dishtowel in her hands. Weighing her options, Aimée figured.

  “Or do you like paying protection money to buy Ching Wao’s Mercedes?” Aimée tapped her heel on the damp cobbles.

  A shout came from the kitchen. Madame Liu’s brows knitted in alarm.

  “Mais alors, Madame, there’s not much time.”

  Madame checked her watch. A long moment passed before she nodded. “What you want?”

  Aimée explained what she wanted her to do. Asked Madame to repeat it. Satisfied, she handed Tso’s phone to Madame.

  Madame Liu glanced at her watch again. Nodded and hit the first contact number. She spoke the brief message in Wenzhou dialect. Then the same message again for the next three numbers.

  “Remember what I said,” Aimée said. “Close in ten minutes. Only inform people you trust.”

  Madame Liu nodded.

  “You catch killer for great-auntie?”

  “Not yet.” Aimée pulled out the phone’s memory chip, ground it on the cobble under her heel. Pulled her own out and left a message for Prévost.

  Aimée turned to head down the alley.

  “But I see that girl,” Madame Liu said. “Tonight.”

  Aimée froze.

  “Man follow her on street.”

  “One of Tso’s men?”

  Madame Liu shook her head. “Maybe Frenchman. I don’t know.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Coat, hat, I don’t see face. Bag of crumbs, like he feed the pigeons.”

  Few people fed pigeons this late at night in the winter. The RG or the flics? Or …

  “Which way did she go, Madame?”

  “Toward Métro.”

  AIMÉE RAN, CELL PHONE to her ear. “René, please tell me Meizi’s with you.”

  “With me? I’m meeting her near Square du Temple.” René’s voice mounted in worry. “Meizi told me everything. The diagram …”

  This felt wrong. “You mean Meizi told you over the phone, on the street?”

  “Bien sûr. It’s safer for her to come to the tower, that’s why …”

  Bread crumbs to feed the swans in the square’s pond. Of course. And it was coming together. Samour’s killer’s next victim.

  “A man’s following her, René,” Aimée said. “Hurry, I’ll meet you there.”

  She clicked off. Saved her breath, wishing with every step she hadn’t smoked that cigarette.

  At rue du Temple she met a locked gate; the Square du Temple closed early in winter. She looked both ways, then hoisted herself over the side fence. Through the spindle of bare tree branches she saw the glass-roofed, green-metal band shell, home to classical music in summer, now forlorn in the mist. The frost-tipped grass, the playground, and the statue of Béranger obscured by the low-lying fog.

  The waterfall gurgled, slipping over stones and feeding into the pond, whose surface was a dull, opaque shimmer of broken ice. A lone swan glided and disappeared. Somewhere a bird trilled. The park, deserted in the dark, cold evening, held night sounds: splashing water, framed by distant traffic.

  Aimée shivered, stamped her feet. Nervous, she continued around the pond’s mud-rimmed edge. Saw floating bread crumbs.

  “Meizi?” she called, alarme
d.

  No answer.

  Aimée exhaled a plume of frost.

  A dark figure moved in the shadows. She heard footsteps, snapping branches. Coming closer.

  An attacker?

  Then splashing farther away. A scream.

  Aimée broke into a run, her heart racing.

  “Meizi?”

  Furious splashing. A figure ran from the bushes, but she could only make out a dim outline in the darkness.

  Meizi yelled, thrashing in the water.

  Aimée reached down and grabbed Meizi’s arm. Pulled her up on the mud bank from the pond. Frightened, Meizi backed up, catching her foot on a root.

  “Aimée? Someone tried to at—attack me,” said a shaking Meizi.

  Tso, or someone else? “Hurry, someone’s watching you.”

  Her teeth were clicking in the cold, her jeans dripping at the pond’s edge. “I twisted my ankle, I can’t make it.”

  “You need to try.” Aimée nodded toward the low fence. The glow of a cigarette tip by the bare branches. “I’ve worked out a deal with the flics to protect you, Meizi. But we have to hurry. You’re being followed.”

  Meizi’s eyes glittered in fear. Aimée pulled her back into the bushes, put her arm around her shaking shoulders, and guided her through the damp foliage.

  Trying not to make a sound, Aimée propelled her to the mound by the grilled fence.

  “Climb over.”

  Meizi winced. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Instead of arguing with her, Aimée gripped Meizi’s shoulder tighter, pointed to the foothold in the low grillwork. “Put your good foot here, see? Then swing your other leg up.”

  Before Meizi could protest, Aimée boosted Meizi up, then climbed over, herself. “Give me your hand … et voilà.”

  Down on the pavement, every step Meizi took squelched water from her dripping shoes. Aimée gripped Meizi’s shoulder tighter. The frigid air made breathing hard. She struggled not to slip on the ice and to keep Meizi, shivering and soaked, moving forward. “We’re almost there.”

  So dark, and the street blanketed in fog.

  “Where’s the diagram, Meizi?”

  “I threw it away,” she said, her voice trembling. “Don’t you see, it’s all trouble since …” She stumbled, leaned hard into Aimée.

  Something glinted ahead. “René’s up there,” Aimée said. “Just to the corner, you can make it.”

  Then the start of an engine. A car’s headlights blinded her. The wheels crunched ice. Merde. They’d been seen.

  With a burst of energy, she ran, pulling Meizi along with her.

  “My ankle!” Meizi cried.

  “Half a block, not far.”

  Meizi let go.

  “The car!” René shouted. “Watch out.”

  Aimée heard an ouff as Meizi stumbled on the street, shoving Aimée forward. Aimée’s heel caught in the cobble cracks, and then she was flying through cold air. A thump as her head hit the lamppost. Lights spinning. And she crumpled, dazed, on the wet pavement.

  The car’s engine whined.

  Aimée heard Meizi’s scream. A sickening thud. Shots.

  René was firing and running.

  The car pulled away. Red brake lights evaporated in the fog.

  “Non … non,” she heard René’s voice break. Saw the gun in his hand.

  THE REST PASSED in a blur. Vaguely, she was aware of the surveillance van, the flashing blue lights from the flics’ cars, her examination in the emergency room of Hôtel-Dieu, the public hospital. Sometime later, the waiting room, Meizi in the operating room, René’s pacing, and Prévost’s long face.

  “But I wrote down the license plate number,” René was saying in the waiting room.

  “We found the car,” Prévost said. “Stolen and abandoned at Place de la République.”

  “But Tso’s men followed her,” René said, insistent. His fingers drumming the blue plastic chair.

  “We apprehended them approximately fifteen minutes prior to the incident.”

  “Incident?” René shouted. “Attempted homicide!”

  Prévost cast a look at the flics by the reception desk. “We took them into custody at Théâtre Dejazet’s back entrance. But I think Mademoiselle Leduc knows more about that.”

  Thanks to Madame Liu.

  Aimée nodded. Pain shot through her temple. She shouldn’t have done that. The doctor had diagnosed a raging headache, not even a mild concussion, and had counseled against foot races or long division.

  “Did you get anything from dumping Samour’s phone?”

  She hadn’t heard back from Saj on the microcassette yet.

  “Different SIM card,” Prévost said. “Replaced.”

  Useless now.

  She wished her head didn’t ache. Wished the nurse would update them on Meizi’s surgery. “But the killer’s still out there,” she said.

  “Tso’s under interrogation, Mademoiselle,” Prévost said. “He’ll talk.”

  Enjoying his cake and claiming the credit too. But she didn’t care. “Don’t you understand? A Frenchman followed Meizi. Ask Madame Liu. Aren’t you investigating—?”

  “Monsieur Friant, I’m sorry.” The surgeon in green scrubs appeared, taking off his surgical mask. “We did everything we could to save her. But she suffered massive internal bleeding.”

  René blanched. Staggered. Aimée caught his arm.

  She stared at Prévost. “It’s homicide now.” Prévost turned, strode past the white curtains to the flics down the green-tiled hall.

  IN THE OPERATING room, René took a stool and climbed on it. He pulled back the sheet, revealing Meizi’s ashen pallor, the bruises, the blue tinge already formed around her lifeless mouth. Aimée trembled. So senseless.

  She reached for his hand but he shook her off.

  “I meant for her to have this.” He pulled the red velvet box from his pocket. Took out the ring. The pearl glinted under the harsh operating table lights. Aimée forced herself to watch René as he slipped it on Meizi’s stiff, dirt-covered finger.

  Aimée’s gut wrenched. “I’m sorry, René. I should have …” Her voice cracked. All the things she could have done flashed in her mind: bolted Meizi to the bed, given her the damn phone, gained her trust.

  René reached on his toes and kissed Meizi’s forehead.

  “It’s not your fault, Aimée,” he said, his eyes wide and dry.

  Aimée looked down. Meizi’s spattered blood on the green tile, the oxygen machine tubes trailing on the floor. She made a sign of the cross.

  “I’ll take you home, René.”

  “Meizi made me feel things. Things I didn’t know I’d feel again for anyone. Almost as much as …” He paused. “And I thought …”

  What was that look on his face? “What, René?”

  His voice had changed when he spoke again. “I want to say good-bye. To be alone with her.”

  “But René …”

  He raised his hand. “Do one thing for me, Aimée.”

  “Anything, partner,” she said.

  “Get the bastard.”

  She blinked at the hardness in his voice.

  “That’s a given, René.”

  Sunday, 10:15 P.M.

  ARMED WITH EXTRA-STRENGTH Doliprane, she left Hôtel-Dieu and stood across from floodlit Notre Dame. No tourists, just bare-branched trees and the speckles of light from the Gothic window. Opposite lay the prefecture.

  Her headache had subsided to a dull throb. She could walk for hours and still not erase the ache, the pointlessness of Meizi’s death. Or the hardness in René’s voice.

  She needed to talk to someone. And she bet that someone sat in his office on the quai behind the prefecture.

  She pulled out her cell phone.

  “Morbier, turns out I’m free for dinner.”

  A clearing of his throat. “Ever hear of advance notice, Leduc?”

  “Knowing you, you’re at your desk with a cigarette burning and a half-drunk cup of espres
so.”

  She heard what sounded like the closing of a door.

  A pause. “Something wrong, Leduc?”

  “Why don’t I stop at Le Soleil, bring up a casse-croûte?” she said. “You’re paying, right? I’ll put it on your tab.”

  Pause. “Forget it.”

  “Didn’t you want to talk to me, Morbier?” she said, kicking a cobblestone. “No matter if you don’t have Clodo’s file. He didn’t make it.”

  “I meant forget Le Soleil.” Voices, a loudspeaker in the background. Sounded like a train station. “L’Astier. Give me twenty minutes.”

  He hung up.

  SHE WALKED BACK to her Île Saint-Louis apartment knowing this only postponed the sleepless night ahead of her. Reliving the sickening thud, Meizi’s ashen face, her spattered blood on the green hospital tiles. The fact she hadn’t found Samour’s murderer and he’d struck again.

  In the bathroom she applied arnica to her bruises and antibiotic cream to the still-stinging cuts on her face, then a heavy dose of concealer to the bump on her forehead. In her armoire she found the little black vintage Chanel, still in its plastic dry-cleaning bag. On her way out she grabbed her long copper coat and hailed a taxi down on Pont Neuf. She touched up her mascara on the short ride.

  The driver let her off at Place des Vosges. Her red-soled Louboutin heels echoed under the dark, vaulted arcade. Several black limos double-parked, as unobtrusively as possible, waiting for the dining ministers inside.

  She’d discovered part of Samour’s project. Too bad she hadn’t found all the DST wanted. But tomorrow she’d make a deal with them. Ignore the hollowness inside. Right now she needed Morbier’s help to fine-tune her dealings with them. To find the killer.

  The tuxedoed maître d’ glided her past late-night diners to a secluded corner table. Morbier was sitting there, drinking something red. His basset-hound eyes were ringed with deeper circles than usual. His jowls sagged. The corduroy jacket with elbow patches and the crumpled tie looked even shabbier than usual. Xavierre’s death had hit him harder than she’d thought.

  “A three-star Michelin resto without reservations? You’ve come up in the world, Morbier. Or you’ve got something on the maître d’.” She summoned a smile. At least the Doliprane was working.