“There’s another angle behind the DST, Martine. I feel it.”
Earlier, while trying on outfits in the dressing room, she’d filled Martine in on Pascal Samour’s murder, Meizi, and the DST.
Martine hit the horn at the bus cutting in front of her. “Better idea, give me access to Meizi,” Martine said. “Perfect for an exposé on sweatshops. I’ll write a series on working conditions, the luxury items made in China and finished here, the snakeheads. No names, of course.”
She’d whetted Martine’s appetite. Her plan. “Need to stretch your journalistic chops?”
“Call me tired of seven-minute fluff pieces on Radio France.”
Aimée grinned. “Deal.”
Martine shrugged and hit the horn again. “Watch your back with the DST. You need connections in high places. De rigueur, but have you seen any real proof on your mother?”
An investigative journalist, Martine broadcast on Radio France and nourished her network of connections.
“What if it’s all lies, Aimée?”
Aimée’s hand trembled.
At the red light, Martine forgot the clutch and stalled the car. “I don’t want you disappointed again. Or hurt. Desolée if this sounds brutal, but what’s the point if your mother’s dead? A five-year-old surveillance report doesn’t bring her back.”
The wisp of hope reopened the wound in her heart. The wound that never went away. She wondered if she could face that.
“Don’t you see, they want to use you?”
Her shoulders stiffened. “Tell me something new, Martine.”
“And you’ll beat them at their own game, Aimée?” Martine let out the clutch, ground into first. “All those psychological profilers sitting on Aeron chairs in think tanks outside Versailles, funded by you and me. Dissecting your personality, your vulnerability.”
Common intelligence practice, Aimée knew.
“They could rehash old intel, smother it with béarnaise sauce, and serve it fresh. Reel you in. Over and over.”
“Nothing’s free.” Aimée pulled down the visor, flicked on the light, and checked for lipstick on her teeth. “Plan two steps ahead, Papa always said.”
A scooter cut in front of them and Martine braked just in time. “Idiote!”
“Bien sûr! That’s it.” Of course. The DST had attached a GPS to her scooter. Stupid. Why hadn’t she figured that out before?
“Your plan?”
Aimée shut the visor. Hesitated. Sacault’s matchbox message had contained a time and location. Nothing else.
“The DST’s got me under surveillance. My scooter, my office …” She looked at Martine meaningfully.
Martine blinked. “Stay at my place, of course.”
“Martine, the first place a profiler would look is at my best friend’s.”
“So what will you do?”
“Do you still have your learner’s driving permit?”
Martine nodded. “Check my wallet.”
Aimée rifled through Martine’s Hermès. “May I take a press ID, an old one?”
“Will I regret this, Aimée?”
“Just insurance.”
Aimée put both Martine’s old Libération press ID and the permit in her bag. “I need to play the game by my rules. Not the other way around.”
All of a sudden a figure darted into the narrow street.
“What the hell?” Martine yelled.
Illuminated in Martine’s headlights was a man, on the cobbles directly in front. Aimée’s stomach jumped to her mouth. She knew they were going to kill him.
“Don’t hit him! Martine!” Aimée shouted. Each detail imprinted in her mind, as if in slow motion. The man’s camel-hair coat and dark leather buttons came closer. And closer. Martine punched the Mini Cooper’s brakes, skidding on the slick cobbles. With a squeal they veered toward a lamppost. Whipped forward, Aimée threw up her arms and hit the windshield. Pain crunched her wrist. The lime-green Mini Cooper scraped the lamppost, then shuddered to a halt. And stalled.
“He ran out of nowhere,” Martine gasped, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Into the street, just like that!”
Shaken, Aimée rubbed her wrist.
“Mon Dieu, are you all right?”
“Just a bruise, Martine.” Aimée unsnapped the seat belt. It could have been worse. The camel-hair coat under the wheels, and herself through the windshield.
“He just jumped out,” Martine said again, gesturing to the man, his light-brown coat now bobbing through the crowd.
In a hurry, that one, Aimée thought.
Martine set the gear in neutral. Turned the ignition. The engine responded.
Had he been following them? But she couldn’t think about that now.
“And I’m late. I’ll walk,” she said, trying to ignore the pain. “It’s a few streets away.”
Aimée reached for her Vuitton carryall.
Martine lit a cigarette, her hands trembling, and shook her head. “At least you bought the winter blue for Sebastien’s wedding.”
And the little black Agnès b. dress, the vintage YSL beaded turquoise bikini Martine insisted was necessary for the Martinique beach in February, plus strappy heeled sandals for next to nothing. With the huge markdowns, she couldn’t resist. She hated to think of her bank account.
“Let me drop you at Arts et Métiers.”
All Aimée wanted to do was get out of this tiny car and put ice on her wrist before it swelled like a balloon. “Faster to walk from here, Martine.”
Horns beeped behind them. Aimée pulled herself out, straightened up.
“You sure you’re all right, Aimée?”
Her boot caught in the gutter and she cursed her three-inch high heels. “Fine, Martine.”
With a wave Martine ground into first gear and took off.
A siren whined. Aimée buttoned up her long leather coat against the permeating damp. Why had she worn a black lace top and skimpy cashmere sweater with the temperature dropping and zero visibility?
She hurried in the shadows past buckling seventeenth-century buildings and grimy, dark alleys. Turning the corner in the fog, she found her way blocked by several men. They wore thin jackets and were stamping their feet on the cracked pavers, their breath like steam in the dim streetlight. Their angry-sounding rapid-fire Chinese dialect echoed off the high stone walls.
“Excusez-moi,” she said. Tso’s men? Unease filled her as she edged by them. Suspicion, or something else she couldn’t name, painted their faces. A second later the men backed off and melted into the doorways, their words evaporating with their breath.
Another world, she thought. These few blocks were a slice of an old Chinatown—where Wenzhou immigrants settled after the First World War to work in the factories. A little-known enclave tucked near the Arts et Métiers, and not the most welcoming.
The street twisted and into view came a small Chinese store with red banners proclaiming the Year of the Tiger in gold letters. Beyond that was an old diamond merchant, now a wine bar. Her destination.
JEAN-LUC TRACED THE wineglass rim with his finger. His brow creased. “I didn’t understand Pascal. Never could. Now it’s too late.”
Aimée wished the stiff, tooled leather of her chair didn’t scrape the back of her knees. That the glass of wine didn’t cost what she’d paid for the marked-down beaded YSL bikini. That the ice pack on her wrist would stop the swelling.
And that she’d reapplied her mascara.
Easy on the eyes, this Jean-Luc, still wearing his jeans jacket. In the light of the sputtering votive candle, she saw his blue gaze go to his cell phone on the table. “Sorry, but I’m expecting a call. A work crisis.” He gave an apologetic shrug.
She’d need to hurry this up. A copy of Charlie Hebdo, the controversial satirical cartoon weekly, lay on a low table. Out of place, she thought. “How close were you to Pascal?”