“Family? He have very old auntie?”
Aimée nodded again. Not only was Madame Liu a good observer, but she knew who lived in this village-like warren of medieval streets.
“He teach class and eat here Fridays. Order #32 shrimp wonton soup.”
“So last night …”
“Every Friday, but not last night.”
And he was murdered around the corner.
“But did you see him yesterday? Going in the luggage shop to see Meizi, to buy a bag for his auntie?”
“Sad for auntie. Nice lady.” Madame Liu rubbed the towel over the cracked tiled counter.
“His auntie knows no Chinese would hurt him,” Aimée said. Time to stretch the truth. “But I need Meizi’s help to prove that to the flics.”
Madame Liu nodded to a young man arriving in the back door.
“He walk by maybe seven o’clock,” Madame Liu said. “No stop like usual. I go funeral service. That’s all.”
At seven in the evening it would have been dark, the shops closed.
“Was he with Meizi? Black ponytail, sweet face, jeans and green sweater?”
Madame Liu shrugged. “He wave. Alone. That’s all.”
On the way to meet his killer.
Aimée looked out the window again. Saw how close the luggage shop was. Her mind went back to last night, this table: Meizi ladling the soup, her face lighting up upon seeing René, how her smile reached her eyes. Not the face of a woman who’d killed a man and wrapped him in plastic before dinner. When Meizi excused herself to take a call, Aimée couldn’t help believing, she intended to return to her birthday meal, her present, and René.
“My restaurant full soon, dishwasher sick. I’m busy.”
In a swift movement Madame Liu joined the young man at the counter, turning her back on Aimée.
Saturday, 2 P.M.
RENÉ WATCHED THE Chinese man standing in the shadows. The red-orange glow from a cigarette bobbed as he spoke into a phone. His Mercedes jeep idled at the corner. René wanted to get close enough to see the man’s teeth.
A moment later the man flicked the cigarette in the gutter, buttoned his sleek leather jacket, and headed for his jeep, and René finally caught a glimpse of his face. Black hair, fashionable stubble shading his face. Yellow, crooked teeth.
Tso. The snakehead. The man who Aimée had discovered sold Meizi’s papers.
René turned the key in his Citroën’s ignition. He followed slowly, keeping a car between them. The jeep paused off rue Beaubourg, and two men leapt out of the back to unload boxes. A delivery. Then another, until an hour had passed. Never once had Tso gotten out. Antsy, René wished he’d hurry up and get to his destination. Then René would show him what bad teeth really were.
After the next delivery, the men disappeared and the jeep took off. René followed, staying two cars behind this time. The jeep turned into the narrow one-way rue de Montmorency and maneuvered into a parking spot.
René pulled into a red zone.
By the time Tso locked the jeep, René stood poised in a doorway, ready. But Tso crossed to the other side of the street. René looked both ways, keeping to the ancient buildings.
Tso turned at the corner, stepped into a café tabac. René considered his options. Grab him when he came out or follow him. More chance of finding Meizi if he did the latter.
“Pardonnez-moi, have a light, Monsieur?” asked someone behind René. Before he could turn, a blow hit his sternum, knocking the air out of him. Slicing pain doubled him over. His arms were grabbed behind him.
He heard laughter, “le petit,” something in Chinese.
With every bit of strength he could muster, he kicked out, connecting with a leg. Hearing a cry, he kicked again and again, until his arms were released. Remembering his judo, he jabbed a crosscut in his assailant’s ribs. Aching pain shot through his hip as he twisted away on the wet pavement. Tso and another man loomed over him.
René pulled the Glock from his pocket. Aimed up at Tso’s face. Those bad teeth. “Tell me where Meizi is, or—”
Tso ducked, tossed his cigarette, and both men took off running. Clutching his chest, René got to his feet, took a step, and folded against the wall. By the time he managed to straighten up and reach the corner, they’d gone.
But René heard the unmistakable sound of a door shutting. Mid-block, if he calculated correctly. Not much good to anyone right now, he limped into the café tabac.
“A brandy, s’il vous plaît,” he said, punching Aimée’s number on his phone. “Make it a double.”
Saturday, 3 P.M.
“BUT ACCORDING TO Aram, the sweatshop entrance is on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé, René.” Worried, Aimée surveyed René as they sat in the small café tabac. “On the next block.”
“So Tso took a shortcut.” Perspiration beaded René’s forehead and his breath came in short gasps. “But it was him, bad teeth and all.”
Aimée’s glass of fizzing Badoit water glistened under the café counter light. “You don’t look too good, René.”
“I’ll feel better if you try the front entrance,” he said. “Call me and I’ll come.”
She doubted he could walk without pain right now. She shook her head. “Stay on this stool, compris? Watch from this window until one of them leaves and call me.”
She eyed the café’s rear galley kitchen, where a sagging apron, a pair of overalls, and a white butcher-shop coat hung from the coatrack. “You work in a charcuterie, Monsieur?” she asked the man behind the counter.
“Not me. Next door.” He flicked a thread of blond tobacco from his rolled cigarette. “After a pichet de rosé the butcher always forgets it.”
“Bon, let me borrow it.”
“Eh? It’s not mine.”
She slapped twenty francs on the counter. “Then I’ll rent it.”
Drumbeats thrummed from Les Bains, the club in the old bathhouse on rue du Bourg-l’Abbé. The building entrance on the right was boarded up. No luck there. The one on the left, shrouded in scaffolding, was also boarded up. The only way to the sweatshop in the rear courtyard was through the club.
“No date?” asked the mascaraed transvestite at the door. His Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence name tag read Lola.
“Not yet, Lola,” Aimée smiled.
“We’d love to let you in, but the benefit is reservation only. Sold out.” Lola gestured with an orange-lacquered nail, which matched his eye shadow, to the poster announcing “Afternoon Tea Dance! HIV caregivers support benefit competition.”
Where were her sequins when she needed them? But Michou, René’s transvestite neighbor, entered these contests all the time.
Aimée opened her coat, revealing the white butcher’s smock. “I’m a health inspector.”
“Mon Dieu, but we’re up to code!”
“I know you passed inspection, Lola.” Aimée gave a little sigh. “But I’m inspecting the toilets in the rear courtyard. Some complaints, you know.”
A couple, tottering on high heels and wrapped together in a feather boa, passed her.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Lola said.
“Of course you don’t, that’s why you’ll let me do my job,” she said, slipping a fifty-franc note in the donation box.
“We’re all about cooperating.” Lola swept his arm at the ushers. “Let this girl in. She’s in a hurry.”
Out on the dance floor, couples gyrated under a flashing disco ball to “I Will Survive” as a large-shouldered blond, in a skintight red velour jumpsuit with the highest heeled boots Aimée had ever seen, lip-synched along.