Cara Black - AL05 - Murder in Clichy

“Show me, we’d all like to see.”

Bao moved nearer. Something glinted. Was that a knife blade under her silk scarf? She shot Pleyet a look.

Michel pulled out the red, blue, white, and yellow pieces. One by one. Aimée sensed weight shifting on the wooden floor behind her as Bao moved closer.

“Michel, let me help you get the big green one down there.”

Madame Nguyen said something in Chinese. Aimée reached down, lifted a silk scarf, and something that it had hidden under the layer of toys.

She lifted out the green jade monkey.

“This belongs to my people,” Madame Nguyen said. And screamed, as Tran grabbed Michel and held a knife to his throat.

“Maman, where’s maman !” Michel’s eyes were wide with fright.

Aimée’s heart dropped. She heard scuffling, saw Nadège’s purple black hair, outlined against the doorframe.

“Let go of my son!”

And then Tran’s eyes bulged; a red cord was pulled tight around his neck, cutting into his skin. Nadège was strangling him from behind with the silk cord from her jade pendant. Aimée lunged, pushing Michel aside.

Pleyet sprang, but Tran turned, and plunged his knife into Pleyet’s side. Aimée got to her knees and knocked Bao off balance, pinned her on the floor, and twisted the woman’s silk scarf around her flailing hands.

“In here,” Nadège shouted. Aimée saw blue uniforms, raised billy clubs.

By the time Aimée got to her feet, the flics were cuffing ran. All eyes were on Gassot, who’d leaned down to staunch Pleyet’s bloody wound. Aimée stood in front of the toy chest, blocking it from view, as she scooped the figures into her bag.

“ Maman ’s here,” Nadège said, folding Michel in her arms.

“You saved me, maman! ” Michel said.

“Mon coeur, you saved me,” Nadège breathed, shaking.

“No hiêú. Young people. No tradition,” Madame Nguyen observed.

But Aimée disagreed, looking at the three generations. The old grandmother had held them together and imbued them with tradition. At least, she’d done her best.

Now Aimée would finish the job.

Monday

THE WAN NOVEMBER SUN slanted through the skylight onto the Cao Dai temple floor tiles. The all-seeing eye seemed to follow Aimée. Miles Davis curled beside her feet.

“These were in your care once, I believe,” she said, handing the bag to the priest Tet. “What you do with them is your decision.”

He nodded, his eyes grave. “Our government has changed, despite what you’ve heard. After your message, I spoke with the Director of the National Museum in Hanoi. They will display the jade with the dragon disk, recovered last year in Seoul. Our people, and visitors, will appreciate the jade. It will all be back where it belongs.”

One by one, he set each jade piece crowned by a disc on a side altar. “They don’t belong to China, nor to anyone else. They are our patrimony.”

The jade figures glowed. They took her breath away.

“The zodiac figures symbolize the animal hidden in one’s heart,” the priest said. “They help one to know oneself and to divine the path.”

Aimée knew that she could find her path only by putting one foot in front of the other.

“Very auspicious,” the priest said, grinning at Miles Davis. “Your dog.”

Miles Davis wagged his tail.

The gong sounded. “Please,” he said, indicating a meditation mat. “Join us.”

She sat, folding her legs. Sometime later Aimée opened her eyes and grew aware of the wind rustling over the soot-stained chimney flues on the roof, students putting their mats away, and René.

“Did you experience Mindfulness?” René asked.

She grinned. “Something close. A small shining moment.”

IN THE temple foyer, Aimée found her coat.

“Olf and the Chinese will be upset,” she said. “But right now, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“A subtle way of putting it,” René grinned.

She stared for the last time at the jade. The figures, bathed in the afternoon’s last light, emitted a sea-foam green glow. And she drew inner strength knowing they’d return to their rightful place.

Her stitches hardly ached today as she slipped her arm into the sleeve of her coat.

“No one suspected how ancient the disks were,” Aimée said, “except Dinard and Bao who knew their value, financially and historically.”

“And Bao?” René asked.

“Interpol’s file on her only goes back to Oslo, 1992,” she said. “Before that, in the late sixties, she was a Chinese agent acting with traveling troupes along the Vietnamese border.”

René stroked his goatee. “And the older de Lussigny stole the jade right after Gassot discovered it.”

Aimée found her scarf and wrapped it around her neck.

“In the 1930s the last Chinese Emperor, Pu Yi, is thought to have sold the jade disks to warlords in the south to finance his private opium patch,” Aimée said. “Rumor was that a local French governor stole the disks and hid them by having them fastened to the jade astrological figures that were being held in safety by the Cao Dai. He planned to prop up the failing colonial rubber industry by selling the disks, piece by piece. The governor was Julien de Lussigny’s father.”

René rocked on his feet. “Ironic that Julien de Lussigny tried to use them just as his father had earlier.”

She nodded. “After the colonials fled Indochina, no more was heard of them,” she said.

She picked up her bag. Put the leash on Miles Davis. Aimée stretched her arm and winced.

“Dinard and Julien de Lussigny planned to sell them at auction,” Aimée said, “but then they withdrew the jade for a ‘private sale’ to the ministry.”

“From what I saw in Thadée’s files,” René said, “it seemed that Thadée counted on selling the jade to settle his and Nadège’s debts to Blondel.”

“And the gallery’s, but Blondel not only had drug debts to collect, Regnier had hired him. He shot Thadée,” she said. “And strangled Dinard. But it was Gassot’s comrades who strung up Sophie. They all wanted the jade.”

René reached in his coat pocket. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time, Aimée.” He flipped his wallet open. Despite his misgivings, he put a creased business card with a man’s name on it in Aimée’s hand.

“Pleyet left this at the hospital for you,” René said. “This man’s retired, Pleyet said. But he worked with your father.”

She stared at it. “Merci. ”

“Pleyet told me to tell you ‘Sometimes in life the answers we want don’t make sense.’ ” René buttoned his coat. “ ‘Or make the sense we’d like them to.’ And to remember that.”

OUT ON the quai, the apricot-hued setting sun filtered through blue-gray tree branches. Aimée paused under a quay-side light, its pinprick of illumination reflected in the sluggish Seine. The Métro rumbled over the Austerlitz bridge, looped past the red stone Morgue, and hurtled toward Bastille.

“I’m off to my Hacktaviste class,” René said.

“See you later. Miles Davis needs a walk.”

Down on the quai, Miles Davis barked and sniffed a man’s pants. He turned. Surprised, Aimée stared into Guy’s eyes. She didn’t know what to do. Had he come to accuse her, hand her a summons, or inform her of the bill for his damaged office?

She stood tongue-tied, wishing it had happened differently. And that she was wearing more mascara.

Guy shifted his feet. “Don’t forget, you need to have those stitches taken out.”

His gray eyes and lopsided smile were the same. And his wonderful hands, that ruffled Miles Davis’s neck fur.

“Let me write you a check for the damages,” she said, pulling out her checkbook. But her newly bandaged hands impeded her progress. “Please forgive me. I owe you an explanation.”