Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (31 page)

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.

T
HE 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.

I
N 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.”

A
RMED 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 espresso.”

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.

S
HE 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.

“A little of both.”

A waiter appeared with a deep bow.

“Mademoiselle,
un aperitif
before ordering?”

She glanced at the bottle of Burgundy on the table. Wine and Doliprane? “That looks fine.”

“She’ll have what I’m having, Paul,” Morbier said, reaching over to pour her a glass from the half-full bottle. “I’ll do the honors. We’d like a little quiet, if you don’t mind.”

“
Oui, Monsieur le Commissaire
.” He bowed again, more discreetly this time, and vanished.

Aimée clinked her glass to Morbier’s. “Call me impressed. His first bow almost scraped the floor.” She hesitated. Didn’t know how else to say it. “Grieving takes time, Morbier.”

“So the world tells me, Leduc.” He waved his hand, then stared at her. “What happened to you?”

So her makeup hadn’t done its job? Her hand paused at her temple. “Stupid. I ran into a lamppost.”

“Anything to do with the roundup near Arts et Métiers?”

He’d heard.

She nodded. “It got messy,” she said, fingering the white linen napkin on her lap. “A major casualty.”

“Not what I heard,” he said. “They’re calling it a success. Weren’t you involved?”

“René’s girlfriend didn’t make it,” she said. Bit her lip. “But that’s part of why I’m here.”

Again he waved his liver-spotted hand. “We’re here to eat. For once. This place costs the earth.”

“You’ve called in a favor, more like it,” she said, “or the maître d’s your informer.” She noticed the burgundy spots on the lapel of his jacket. “Killed half a bottle already, I see.”

“I’d like to enjoy it, Leduc. Looks like you could do with some food in your stomach.”

But she told him anyway. And about Pascal Samour.

Morbier pulled out an unfiltered Gauloises. Cast a warning glance at a waiter, who had promptly appeared with a lighter, then lit it with a matchbox from his pocket.

Aimée stared. Why hadn’t she seen it? Stupid again.

“All these years you’ve worked with the DST and never told me?” she said, controlling her voice with effort. “Shame on you, Morbier.”

Shock painted his lined brow. “Where does that come from?”

“A little under-the-sheets time with the DGSE too? Too bad the DGSE agent success rate is only twenty-eight percent.”

He blinked. She’d surprised him for once.

“I thought their rate was thirty-two percent.”

Her turn for surprise. And then it faded.

“Your leaked report’s more current than mine,” she said. “Don’t play dumb. You’re my contact instead of Sacault tonight.”

“The lamppost knocked you harder than you thought,” Morbier said. “Not my people at all. The opposite.” Shrugged. “There are things I need to tell you.”

Something in his voice made her sit up.

Two plates of white asparagus dotted with caviar appeared. He paused until the waiter backed away.

Morbier pushed his cell phone toward the wineglass, tucked his linen napkin in his collar. A member of the proletariat like him would enjoy a three-star
resto
in his own way. He speared an asparagus tip with his salad fork.

“Eat while it’s hot, Leduc,” he said, glancing at the other diners.

“Asparagus is served cold, Morbier. So you wanted to have dinner, eh? Talk?”

He nodded. Always a good liar.

“Then convince me.”

“You’re more than unusually feisty tonight.” He glanced at her untouched plate.

“Murder does that to me.”

“Homicide’s not my turf. Not anymore, you know that.”

She stared at the white asparagus. Couldn’t eat. Her stomach churned. She heard a choking, looked up.

Morbier paled. Swallowed several times.

What was wrong with him?

She saw an uneasy flicker in his basset-hound eyes.

“Got a stalk stuck in your throat?”

He shook his head.

“Lift your hands up in the air,” she said.

“Leduc, keep my eye contact. In a minute or so, drop your napkin. Glance at the fourth table, the couple sitting over a bottle of Vouvray.”

She dropped her linen napkin, turned as she reached down for it.

“Him or her?”

“Operatives of this caliber work in couples. Better cover.”

Now she had a lump in her throat.

“This vintage comes from a northern vineyard,” he said, all of a sudden. “You can taste the
terroir
, the rich soil.”

Morbier knew as much about vintage as a street cleaner.

“The
terroir?
We’re not describing vine-growing conditions in sandy or acidic soil here, but people.”

“Lower your voice, Leduc.” He leaned closer. “Certain branches have expressed great interest in you. I don’t know what pot you’ve stirred up …”

“It’s what I’m doing at the Musée des Arts et Métiers,” she said. “Or not doing, as I told you. But they don’t know that. I’ve got a theory.”

“Theory?” Surprise painted Morbier’s face. “Connected to Samour?”

“Good, you’ve been listening,” she said. “You’re not usually so informative. Funny, since you haven’t answered your phone. Or returned my messages in weeks.”

“Paranoid, Leduc?”

“You’re the one seeing operatives at the fourth table.” She sat back. Noticed a high-end satellite phone poking out from the napkin on the woman’s lap.