Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (20 page)

But for the moment she tried to ignore Martine’s pack of Murattis near the gearshift.

“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.

J
EAN-
L
UC 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?”

“Us Gadz’Arts,
alors
, we’re a
fraternité
.” Jean-Luc combed his damp blond hair back with his fingers. “I know we appear odd to outsiders. Rituals form our traditions.”

Medieval. Tight-knit and insular for today’s world.

“I feel responsible,” Jean-Luc said. “Like in some way I let him down. Gadz’Arts weld together into a family … yes, we call it that. It’s our life.”

Important to him, she could tell. “For the rest of our lives we help each other, network, line up jobs, act as godfathers to each others’ children. That’s what hurts.”

She nodded. Remembered Madame Samoukashian’s words about the initiation rituals. “Pascal didn’t seem the group type. What do you mean by welding?”

He shrugged again. “Everyone goes through
bizutage
, initiation, it’s a rite of passage, a bonding ritual.”

“Hazing? That’s bullying.”

“Not at all, there’s a definite distinction,” he said. “But none of this is new. For hundreds of years, all Grandes Ecoles have conducted tests of courage.”

True. She remembered her first year of premed, the escalating insults and humiliation. But that hadn’t been what made her decide to leave premed. It was the cadaver dissection.

“Our rituals follow the spirit of our school.”

“In what way?” She needed to draw him out. Took a sip of the smooth, clear pinot gris. “Like secret handshakes, that kind of thing?”

He gave a small smile. “No comment. It’s based on discipline. But if you understand our history, the purpose …” He sounded almost religious.

“Which is?”

“The Duc de la Rochefoucauld founded our school in the eighteenth century, initially as a military academy. We evolved into the
Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Metiers
after Napoleon visited and decided France must cultivate industry and engineering methods, as well. Soon they were developing the machines that launched the Industrial Revolution.”

Skip the propaganda, she wanted to say.

“Even now a Gadz’Arts comes out able to design, fabricate, and operate complex machines and systems,” he said. “Who else does that today? We’re not only mechanical engineers but high-level technicians.”

Rigid and prescribed. Entering young and impressionable, graduating out the back door in a cookie mold. Not how she’d describe Pascal, from what she had seen of his life.

“Hands-on training, you mean?”

“From mathematical concept to execution. And some go on to hands-on jobs. Not that most of us need to. We teach …”

“Or run engineering departments, like you,” she said. “Sounds more managerial to me. Why didn’t Pascal go that route?”

“Did he care about money?” He shook his head, answering his own question.

She leaned forward. “What did Pascal care about?” This oddball genius.

Pause. Jean-Luc averted his eyes, sat without speaking.

“Besides machines and inventions, I mean,” she prodded.

Jean-Luc was withholding something. “I don’t know. As I said, I failed him. But if he’d just talked to me … He wanted to tell me about a project, I think. But I’m not sure. He only left a message.”

Aimée contained her excitement. “What happened?”

“Just a message. Something to do with the museum. Coulade mentioned he got a message, too.” Jean-Luc checked his cell phone. “But you work at the Conservatoire. No one seemed to know you.”

Of course he’d check. “That’s due to my firm’s pro bono work,” she explained. “We’re digitizing the Musée’s catalogs, a few tie-ins with the Conservatoire.”

“
Encore
, Monsieur, Mademoiselle?” The white-aproned waiter hovered with the bottle of pinot gris. Aimée kept her breath even. His cell phone vibrated.

“
Desolé
, I’ve got a meeting,” he said.

“
Non merci
,” she said. “The bill,
s’il vous plaît
.” She leaned across the low table. “Did Pascal’s message deal with his research, Jean-Luc?”

Had Pascal reached out when Coulade didn’t return his calls?

Jean-Luc sat back. “You’re concerned. But why?”

The tinkle of a piano, the low chords of a bass, and the shushing of a snare drum floated from a side alcove. Jazz. Soon the place would fill up.

She debated revealing her investigation. Pondered how to word it. “We’re searching for a file lost in the digitization process. I’m puzzled about what a fourteenth-century document signified to a modern-day engineer. Why Samour thought it important.”

“Lost? You think Pascal stole it.”

Interesting reaction. She needed to allay his suspicion and get information. And come up with a quick lie.

“Samour requisitioned this file as department head. Seemed anxious. We’re trying to furnish it.” Now she’d enlist his sympathy. Try to. And lie more. “Our firm’s hoping to get the museum’s website contract,” Aimée said, thinking quickly. “This means a lot to us. I wondered if you could help?”

“But as I told you …”

“I appreciate your time, forgive my persistence,” she broke in with a smile, “but if you can shed any light on what he might have meant … his contact with your former professor, Becquerel?”

Jean-Luc shook his head.

Becquerel seemed a dead end in more ways than one.

“You cared for Pascal, I see. Took over his class today,” she said. “It would be a way to help his project. See it through as he would have wanted for the Conservatoire. For the
musée
that was so important to him.”

She saw Jean-Luc weigh the option. Had she laid it on too thick? Or played enough to his Gadz’Arts traditions?

“He left a message on my machine at home last night,” he said finally. “I recognized his number, but heading my new division at work leaves little time for anything else. My cat doesn’t know me anymore.”

“That might have been Samour’s last call,” she said. “Don’t you remember what he said?”

A sadness crossed Jean-Luc’s face.

“He garbled his words. Sounded excited. But he wanted to meet. I remember,
oui
, at his work studio.”

“You mean at his apartment on rue Béranger?”

Jean-Luc shook his head. “He had an atelier, I don’t know where.”

An atelier?

“Something about a document. Encrypted, maybe? But I’d have to listen again,” he said. “Do you think he meant this one you’re looking for?”