He nodded. “Second door to the left.”
She stepped to the rear amid rows of aluminum tubing, copper wire, and chrome and bronze strips on shelves reaching to the slanted glass ceiling. The reek of soldering metal and the whining grate of an electric saw assaulted her senses. Familiar, so familiar. She thought of her grandfather’s watchmaker friend, who would come to scour these shelves for bronze.
Inside the open office door she saw a thirtyish man, shiny bald head, black turtleneck, and readers perched on his nose. He looked like a film director. She remembered the massive walnut desk he stood at.
“But I’m looking for Monsieur Colles?”
He gave her the once-over. “My father.” Glanced at her card. “Leduc Detective. But I knew old Leduc …”
“My grandfather. I’m Aimée Leduc.” She smiled. “Forgive me, I came here on false pretenses.”
“Followed in his footsteps, eh?” He grinned. “Sit down.”
“Non, merci.” She pointed out the window to the courtyard. “That man the flic’s talking to, he’s your employee?”
Colles Junior’s eyebrows shot up in his forehead.
“Cho? Three years now.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s this about?”
“He’s not in trouble. Please understand. But I’d like to talk with him.”
“Why?”
She looked around the office. Little had changed. “My client doesn’t trust the flics. In this case, I don’t trust the one who’s talking to your employee.”
He sat down in the heavy wooden chair. “Big eyes. Yes, I remember you visiting with old Leduc and the watchmaker from rue Chapon. My father, like Riboux the watchmaker, is long gone.”
She nodded. “My grandfather, too.” It took her back to her childhood, visiting here one afternoon during a sudden hailstorm in May. “Aimée, we call it les saints de glace if it hails in May,” her grandfather had said. “That means the farmers harvest crops later.”
Colles sat down, indicated she do the same.
“But you’ve followed in your family’s footsteps, too,” she said, hoping to warm him up. Enlist his aid.
“At the end of the nineteenth century, seven hundred and fifty thousand artisans and craftsmen lived and worked in Paris,” he said. “Many lived in ateliers, like my great-grandfather did upstairs. Raised families. Now it’s diminished to ninety thousand, and fewer each year.” He shrugged. “But my father loved his friends and a good excuse to open one of his bottles of Montrachet.”
The soft wooden floor creaked under her feet as she remembered. She noticed the bronze coils and intricate inner springs of the blond-wood clock that Riboux had touched with his work-worn hands. “But I can still see the watchmaker repairing this.” She gestured to the tall seventeenth-century longcase clock. “I sat crosslegged on this floor, fascinated, just watching him with his old repair diagrams.”
Diagrams.
Samour’s chalk diagrams jumped out at her. She caught herself, looked out the window. Prévost was nowhere in sight. “Look, forgive me for barging in and being abrupt about this, but what do you know about Cho?”
“Determined, too. Like your old grandfather.” Colles Junior leaned back in the chair. “Cho was a metallurgist back in China. Highly educated. A shame we can only offer him technical work beneath his skills. He’s legal. I sponsored him.”
She paused. “Then why …?”
Colles Junior snorted. “He hawked faux designer bags on the quai. Had a brush with the law. How he got here from China, I don’t know. He was living with ten in a room, they took turns sleeping.”
She nodded. No doubt Cho owed the snakeheads. And Prévost used Cho’s brush with the law to turn him into his indicateur. An informer.
That’s how it worked.
Now she knew she needed to speak with him, to get on the playing field with Prévost. Find out his investigative path in Samour’s murder.
“You owe me nothing, but seeing as we have a past,” she said, and grinned, trying on the charm, “would you mind asking Cho into the office so I could talk to him without others around?”
“Why don’t we have a drink first?”
Aimée groaned inside. Not too hard on the eyes, but not her bad-boy type. And she needed to find out Cho’s connection.
She edged closer to the desk. “Desolée, but I’m investigating my client’s murder. If Cho knows anything, it’s imperative we talk. And that he trust me.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m already late for the autopsy.” A little lie she figured didn’t matter. She counted on that to put him off for now.
And it did. He’d averted his eyes. “But how can you think Cho knows anything about that?”
She shrugged. “The flics do.” At least she hoped Prévost did.
She noticed the wedding ring on his finger before he covered his hand. But he caught her look, and she saw a slump of defeat in his shoulders.
“Alors, just five minutes,” she said. “Please.”
He buzzed the intercom.
“Ask Monsieur Cho to step into my office.”
Not a moment later, Cho walked inside smiling. She noticed scarred flesh on his wrist that his work coat didn’t cover. “Monsieur Colles, we’re still working on the custom order …”
Colles Junior rose and waved his hand. “Pas de problème. Talk to the mademoiselle here.”
Cho’s eyes widened.
Colles stopped at the door. “Not my business, you understand. But her family knew mine, and, well … I took the liberty of saying you’d cooperate.” At a loss for more to say, he left and closed the door.
Aimée smiled. “Nothing you say will leave this room, Monsieur Cho.”
Cho stared at her. Light glinted off his silver-rimmed glasses.
“Monsieur Cho, I’m a private detective investigating the murder of Pascal Samour. On rue au Maire on Friday night, I think you’ve heard.”
Cho stood as still as a cat watching a mouse. As silent, too. Well, she could play along.
“It’s not my business if you’re Prévost’s informer in Chinatown,” she said, taking a hunch.
“Why should I talk to you?” he said.
“Didn’t your patron, your sponsor, request you to assist me? I’m not with the flics. But I can give you more reasons.” She returned his stare. “I want to find who murdered Samour. I don’t think he gambled, or was jealous over a woman, but no one will talk to me.” She shrugged. “Prévost holds something over your head, non?”
“You’re threatening me?” Cho said at last.
“Not me. Prévost’s pointing the finger to Chinatown. Even if you help him, there’s no guarantee against immigration crackdowns.” She let that sink in. “Or raids in the quartier.”
“I’m legal,” Cho said.
“But what about the others? The ones who helped you when you hawked bags on the quai, the ones who fed you?”
Cho blinked. He averted his eyes. Then came to a decision.
“You think I have a choice?” Cho’s low voice was laced with inflections, a singsong French. “Here, like in China, even when you play the game, tiptoe in the political minefields, they hold something over you and pull you in every time.”
Recruiting him as an informer, Cho meant. She edged around the desk. Lines creased the bridge of his nose, radiated from the corners of his eyes. Older than she had first thought. Tired.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Cho.”
“My laboratory, our chemistry department at the university in Wenzhou …” He shrugged. “The deals I made to keep operating our laboratory sickened me.”
“So what have you heard?” she asked.
Cho stared at her. “We never bring attention to Chinatown. Too dangerous. If French people kill French people, it’s not our business.”