Cara Black: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

In the loge, Madame Cachou ruffled Miles Davis’s ears. “My favorite little man.” The concierge, who was in her sixties, perspired in a purple yoga outfit. A matching sweatband encircled her gray hair. “I’ve lost five kilos, not even a twinge of bursitis.” Her eyes narrowed at Aimée’s pale face. “You should try it.”

That and a lot of things.

Aimée smiled and handed her the leash. “ Merci , Madame.”

Plumes of exhaust came from René’s Citroën idling at the curb. Oyster-gray clouds hovered on the horizon. Another frigid day. She stepped over slush in the cobbled gutter, felt the urge for a cigarette, and visualized her concierge’s glowing face. She could go without a cigarette. Five more hours and she’d be a month, cigarette-free.

“I forgot Melac had the weekend off,” René said, turning down the radio weather forecast. Another brewing storm. “ Désolé .”

“Not anymore.”

She slammed the door shut. Relationships—she was just no good at them. Never picked the right man. She should know better. And a flic!

“The dojo’s open for early practice,” he said. They counted on finding Meizi’s real address in the dojo membership. “Thanks for coming, Aimée.” René swung the Citroën into sparse traffic on Pont de la Tournelle.

“You think I’d let you do this alone, partner?” She checked the backseat. “Where’s your martial arts bag?”

“Not important. Meizi’s in trouble. You were there, you saw—everything was fine until she got that phone call.”

Aimée noted the dark hollows under René’s eyes. “You look like hell, René.”

“Not enough beauty sleep.”

She felt for him.

Inside the dojo, the gong signaling a meditation session reverberated. The Thai monk in orange robes raised his folded hands in greeting. The young French nun, her shaved head covered by a wool cap, ran her fingers down the membership ledger. “I don’t see Meizi Wu listed.”

Odd. “Try W-O-O,” Aimée suggested.

René added, “She sometimes goes by Marie.”

The nun shook her head.

“But I met Meizi here at practice,” René said, exasperation in his voice.

“Check for yourself, René,” the nun said, pushing the list over. “But we don’t let people drop in on practice; they need to join.”

Sandalwood incense wafted from the meditation room.

He pushed the list back to the nun. “But you’ve seen her. Black ponytail, jeans, petite, a bit taller than me.”

“Chinese?”

René nodded.

“But those girls clean the bathrooms.”

Startled, René stepped back. “What do you mean?”

“Cash, you know.” The nun rubbed her fingers together.

So they paid girls under the table. No tax. No trace.

“But I met her in a martial arts class,” he said.

“One of the perks is taking a class for free,” said the nun.

A stunned look appeared on René’s face, so Aimée broke in. “Don’t you have an address? Or a number to reach her at?”

The nun blinked in alarm. “It’s not how it looks. We operate on donations, and it helps the girls out. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.”

“A bit late for that,” Aimée said. “She’s disappeared.”

René spread his hands, pleading. “We’re trying to help her. Please.”

The nun looked around the deserted teak-wood foyer. She pulled out a paper from the drawer. “Ching Wao. We call him and he sends girls to work.”

“They’re illegals?” Aimée asked.

“I don’t ask.” The nun paused. “But I hope this girl, Meizi, is all right.”

RENÉ SPOKE INTO his cell phone outside the dojo as freezing wind off the Seine whipped the quai. He paced back and forth, trying to get reception as the Métro clattered on the overhead tracks from Austerlitz.

Meizi had lied about living above the shop, and about cleaning bathrooms at the dojo. What else was she hiding?

Aimée couldn’t bear to see René heartbroken. If she could find Meizi, talk to her, and … what? Get her to admit she had another man?

Aimée opened the glove compartment and felt around. Under René’s car registration she found his licensed Glock pistol.

With a full clip.

Not only was he a crack shot, René had a black belt in judo. She’d always said he should register his fists as lethal weapons.

René climbed into the car, brushing a soggy brown leaf from the shoulder of his wool overcoat.

“Since when do you carry this loaded?”

“The last time I was shot made me cautious.” A grim smile. “You never know what you’re up against.”

True. Yet it didn’t ease her worry that René might go vigilante. She put the Glock on top of his car registration and shut the glove compartment.

“Ching Wao understood when I said Meizi’s name.” He readjusted the height of his adjustable seat. “The rest was in Chinese. But we’ll go to his address on rue de Saintonge.”

He gunned the Citroën up the ramp and over Pont d’Austerlitz.

“René, you’ve known Meizi less than two months.”

His jaw set in a hard line. She’d never seen him so upset. “You’re thinking she’s illegal. I don’t care. But I know she’s terrified, Aimée. And there’s nothing more to say until I get the truth from Ching Wao.”

They drove into the honeycomb of narrow streets edging the Marais. Years ago her grandfather had told her the street names reflected the professions of the ancient quartier: rue des Cordelières, road of the rope-makers; rue des Arquebusiers, musket-makers; Passage de l’Horloge à Automates, watchmakers and windup machines. He never tired of reminding her that rue du Pont aux Choux—Bridge of Cabbages—was named after a medieval bridge spanning the open sewers. Or how he’d investigated a case on rue des Vertus—road of the virtuous—where hookers plied their trade.

Traffic crawled, almost at a standstill.

The image of the man’s body in the light of the red lantern came back to her. Her stomach clenched. His gnawed flesh, those vacant eyes.

René parked near Cathédrale Saint-Croix des Arméniens, the small Armenian church. No. 21, their destination, sported chipped dark-green doors and a Digicode. Aimée tried to stifle her rising suspicions that Meizi was part of an illegal ring that preyed on Frenchmen. But that was ridiculous; she cleaned toilets.

“Doubt your dental floss will work here, Aimée.”

Wrong type of door. Damn, why didn’t she carry that casting putty anymore? The universal postman’s key, which she still hadn’t given back to Morbier, wouldn’t work either.

“We’ll have to wait until someone comes out,” René said.

“I don’t like waiting.” Aimée took her LeClerc face powder and makeup brush out of her bag and brushed the keypad with powder. She compared the congealed fingerprint oil to locations on the keypad.

René blinked. “Giving the Digicode a makeover?”

“Utility chic, René,” she said. “How many combinations can you get out of the numbers 459 and letter A?”

“Two hundred fifty-six,” he said, a nanosecond later.

Amazing. She’d need a calculator.

He reached up on his toes peering closer. “Given the alphanumeric proximity and location …” His voice trailed off. “Let’s try this.” He hit four keys.

The small door in the massive one clicked open. “Impressive, René. You got it on the first try.”

He stepped over the wooden doorframe and into the damp courtyard of what looked like an old metal foundry. Inside was a glass-roofed atelier, and ironwork everywhere. Beside the dilapidated townhouse on the left stood a Regency-era theater, complete with pillars and arabesque stonework. Amazing what lay behind the walls, she thought.