“Try not to move, Clodo.”
“But why not?” he said. Joy filled him. They were there all together at the river. “I’m at the bal musette.”
Footsteps. “Never seen one survive.” A muffled conversation. “He thinks he’s dancing, doctor.”
“His dancing days are over,” a man was saying. “If you think he’s up to it, I need to question him.”
“We’re monitoring his morphine drip,” another voice said. “Give him some time. The first few hours post-surgery are critical. No drug stills the phantom leg pains after amputation.”
What were they going on about? Now he was dancing with his mother, her flower-print sundress twirling as they spun to the music, her head thrown back, happy and laughing. But her face changed. Now it was the man, and he was yelling. Yelling until the plastic silenced his screams.
Saturday, 3:30 P.M.
RENÉ PUSHED BACK the brandy snifter on the zinc counter, his gaze raking the street, the doorways.
“Call me Bruno,” said the man rinsing tall beer glasses behind the counter. He was in his fifties, with the red, veined nose of a drinker. “Likes to dress up, your friend.”
“At every opportunity,” René said, declining another brandy.
“She a secret agent?” Bruno winked knowingly. Too many Bond movies, René thought.
“A force of nature,” René said, “but why don’t you tell me about the one with bad teeth who bought cigarettes.”
“He do that to you?” Bruno shook his head. “Seen him a few times. That’s all. No shame, these people, attacking your kind.”
His kind? All his life René had struggled against ignorant perceptions, to prove his stature made no difference. He’d studied martial arts at the dojo, achieved a black belt to prevent trouble. If only the cold hadn’t affected his hip this way.
“Implying that I can’t take care of myself?” René said.
“I call it unfair the way these Chinois take advantage,” said Bruno, on the defensive, “that’s all.”
“So he’s done this before?”
“They’re taking over the quartier, buying up the shops,” Bruno said. “Me, I’m the only family business left, apart from Chartier, the butcher.”
Seeing he had a captive audience, Bruno warmed up. René listened with half an ear to his litany against immigrants, until Bruno’s words caught his attention.
“Colonized the quartier, the Chinois have.” Bruno tipped back his bière. “Prête-nom, rent a name, compris?”
René thought he knew what Bruno meant, but shook his head.
“They use a legal name to run a business. Not the real proprietor. Some big entrepreneur in China, more like it.”
Had Meizi’s luggage shop done this? René wondered.
“Yet no one does anything.” Bruno sighed. “Only one thing riles a phlegmatic Parisian to action.”
Not selfish with his opinions, this Bruno, René thought. “So you mean transport strikes? Or the cost of Gauloises going up?” René rubbed his hip.
“I mean officials getting a free apartment.” Bruno shoved the morning edition of Libération across the counter. “Huge flat, complete with balcony terrace, private garden,” Bruno said, “while it’s us taxpayers footing the bill.”
Nothing rubbed a Parisian raw more than a plutocrat with a maison secondaire in the country who enjoyed a government-paid apartment in Paris.
“Part of the perks, non?” René’s eye scrolled the article.
“There’s perks. Then there’s excess and being found out, like this ministry official Roubel, with his pied-à-terre on the Seine.”
Why the hell hadn’t Aimée called?
Saturday, 3:30 P.M.
AIMÉE SCANNED THE attic room, the mattresses on the floor lumpy with sleeping figures. She registered the sharp drafts of air from holes in the roof, the peeling wallpaper, the pot bubbling on the stove and emitting chili paste odors. The humming of sewing machines in the adjoining room.
She wove among the mattresses, checking the faces. No Meizi. Merde!
Any moment Tso could show up, summon reinforcements.
At the sewing machines fifteen or so women treadled the old-fashioned foot pedal sewing machines and stitched zippers. Hoodie sweatshirts were piled beside them on the floor.
“Meizi?”
No one looked up.
If Meizi wasn’t here, she’d made a huge mistake. She pushed down panic.
“Police!” she shouted, flashing her PI license. “Show me your identification.”
Treadles ceased as the sewing machines stopped. She heard rustling from the mattresses. A cry.
“Ask our boss, Tso,” said a young woman in a blue hoodie, her hair in a ponytail not unlike Meizi’s. “He have our papers.”
“Not Meizi Wu’s papers. Where is she?” Aimée said, making this up as she went along.
“Don’t know.”
“I don’t like your lies,” she said, then sniffed. “Or the soup.” She pounded her fist on the stove. “Tell me or I’ll take you all to the station right now!”
Terror showed on the women’s faces.
“A girl in back,” said the one in the hoodie. “Don’t know name.”
“That’s better.” Aimée stepped back and opened the door. Looked down the hallway. “Now get out.”
The young woman moved closer, and her stale breath hit Aimée in the face. She stared at the white butcher’s coat. “You not police!”
The blue hoodie wanted to argue with her?
“Undercover narcotique.” She thrust several hundred francs in her hand. “Talk to Nina at the Chinese church. She’ll help you.”
The young woman stood dumbfounded. Loud voices came from below.
“Or you want to get arrested in a drug bust?”
Without another word, the women rushed by her, stampeding down the hall.
Tso and Ching Wao made a staggering sum, she realized, considering all the women here and in the sweatshops. Aimée picked her way through the piled hoodies to a pantry. Under a skylight was a sink filled with hundreds of zippers. Beside it, Meizi, her ankle chained to the pipe on the floor. Like a dog.
Horrified, Aimée knelt down. “Meizi, are you all right?”
Meizi nodded, her eyes wide. “Something’s happened to René?”
Had she tried to protect him and failed? Aimée’s earlier suspicions evaporated.
“He’s a black belt, remember?” She smiled reassuringly.
Noises came from the attic. They didn’t have much time. Aimée pushed the door shut and kicked at the pipe under the sink. “We’ll talk later. First we need to get out of here.”
“But I can’t leave.”
After all this, Aimée had no intention of losing her. “Au contraire.” She kicked the pipe until it shuddered apart and lifted off the chain. For good measure, she took the broken segment of rusted pipe. If only she’d kept Tso’s knife.
“Tso’s coming back,” Meizi’s voice trembled. The chain was still hooked around her ankle.
“I took care of him, for now,” Aimée said, “but it’s the flics you need to worry about.” She glanced around. “Any screwdriver here?”
Meizi’s shoulders heaved. “They want to deport me?”
“Worse, Meizi,” she said. “You’re a suspect in Pascal Samour’s murder.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play with me,” Aimée said, some of her distrust returning. “The body in the walkway behind your luggage shop.”