Marseille Noir

by Cédric Fabre

  While I’m talking, Bam’s reading a book of poems. He writes poetry. He’s published three collections already. In fact, he’s been nicknamed the poet-lieutenant. Moreover—and this is rare—an excerpt from one of his poems is printed on a Comorian bank note. The phone rings.

  “Yes, Chief, I’m listening.”

  “Here you go. I’ve got your little hood in the files. He has a record, mostly because of an armed robbery at Hard Discount. We haven’t heard from him since the last time he got out, a few months ago.”

  “Okay. No risk of hearing about him anymore. I wasted him.”

  “So things are heating up over there. Be careful, and come home in one piece.”

  “Don’t worry, Chief.” I hang up.

  “You don’t just supply us with Marseille sardines. Shark too, I see,” Bam says to me. “The guy with the scar has a big warehouse downtown where he organizes goods for his different stores. How about going there and having a little look around?”

  “I like your style. Let’s go,” I say, standing up.

  * * *

  Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, is plunged in deafening nocturnal silence. We drive up to a big shed guarded by two uniformed men.

  “Are they soldiers?” I ask.

  “No, security guards. Listen, go talk to them. You speak good Comorian so that won’t be a problem. Meanwhile, I’ll walk around the building and go into the yard through the back.”

  “Okay, boss,” I say, chuckling.

  We park the car at a good distance and get out. While we’re walking toward the shed, a pickup truck with a dozen soldiers stops alongside us. Their chief recognizes Bam and they salute each other. The soldier is talkative and Bam doesn’t dare send him packing. I feign an urgent need to urinate and excuse myself. I go around the shed, climb over the wall, and land in a poorly lit yard. I manage to get into the shed, which is full of bags of rice, cement, sugar—boxes and boxes of goods . . . Fifty-odd wooden crates in one corner attract my attention. I open one and there, before my eyes, are hundreds and hundreds of brand-new Kalashnikovs. I hear a noise and slip behind a pile of cardboard boxes stamped Savon de Marseille.

  “Lieutenant, lieutenant!” a voice is whispering.

  It’s Bam, and he’s staring wide-eyed at the crates. We close everything back up and leave.

  “It’s late. I’ll drop you off at the hotel,” Bam says.

  A beautiful moon is illuminating the city. This archipelago really deserves its name: Juzur al-Qamar, the islands of the moon.

  * * *

  At dawn, the phone in my hotel room rings. It’s Lieutenant Bam.

  “You have to get up, brother, it’s urgent!”

  I take a quick shower, get dressed, and go downstairs. Bam is having coffee.

  “Yesterday, after I left you here, I tracked down the scarred guy on the coast road. So I went to his place. I found a bunch of things. I’ve got two pieces of news for you, one good and one bad. The bad one is, you won’t have time to go to Milevani to visit your mother—you’re taking a flight back to Marseille in two hours. The guy with the scar will be on board and you have to keep an eye on him over there. I have lots of evidence connecting him to the death of the president of the high council of the republic so his fish-scaler friend can take power.”

  “So the president’s heart attack was an attack after all, but it wasn’t his heart that did it. And what’s the good news?”

  “You’ll find out when you get on the plane,” Bam says.

  “Okay, I’ll go pack. You’re sure things’ll be all right here?”

  “Yes, don’t worry, I’ve got the situation under control . . .”

  * * *

  At the airport, Bam gives me a signed book of his poems. Then he holds out a big envelope and says: “Open it on the plane, the good news is inside.”

  We say goodbye and promise to meet again. Each of us tells the other to dodge the bullets and do what it takes to stay alive. I’m in economy class, the guy with the scar’s in first class. The plane takes off. The islands of the Comoros get farther and farther away. I’ll be back. I open the envelope and . . .

  * * *

  Marseille. I trail the guy with the scar who doesn’t appear to suspect a thing. Night covers the city. Sitting in my car parked on rue de Lyon, I see the guy quickly pull up to the curb and park his red Clio. He gets out and goes into number 6. I follow him, walking very softly. He goes up to the fourth floor and enters an apartment. I hear him talking with another man.

  “You’re a loser. I asked you to come to the Comoros with real men and all you can do is send me some asshole who can’t even use a Kalash!”

  “Lower your voice, will you? You know who you’re talking to?”

  “Of course. Your father may be the interim president, but you seem to be forgetting that he is where he is because of me. So if you want him to croak like all the others, and you with them, just keep talking to me like that. I lift my little finger and you go straight to hell.”

  The guy with the scar doesn’t kid around. I kick the door in with my gun in my hand. The interim president’s son pulls out his weapon but my Sig Sauer SP2022 is watching him with its cyclops eye, ready to spit fire like the Ngazidja volcano.

  “Hi, guys, I came to have a cup of coffee or maybe eat some mayele, whichever you like,” I say.

  The guy with the scar crosses his arms and puts on a funny smile. He glances at his associate, who fires. I duck quickly and empty my chamber into his stomach. He doesn’t seem to appreciate this five-bullet meal and collapses into a pool of blood. The scarred guy panics, tries to run out of the apartment, but I jump on him, tackle him to the floor, and cuff him. I make him sit down on a chair and plant myself in front of him.

  “Welcome to Marseille, you son of a bitch. You wanted to knock me off back in the old country, but now the game’s here at home. Let’s have a little chat.”

  I open the envelope and take out papers, photos, and a French passport.

  “Let’s not waste time, because when you come down to it, things aren’t so complicated: to enable Madjid Ben Mawlana to take power without a coup d’état, you had the president killed. But there’s a problem: your boy wasn’t the president of the high council so he couldn’t take over. No big deal, you cut the brake lines in M’hadjou Ben M’sa’s car. And according to the constitution, the position goes directly to your pal. I must say, your Marseille fish scaler was pretty clever. They thought he was a fool when he refused to become a minister and asked to be appointed to the high council. A good move, I must admit . . . I’ve got it right so far?”

  “Yeah, and so what?” sighs the scarred guy.

  “So what? I have photos here of you with a certain Radhia, and her passport was found in your house in Moroni. It’s covered with a lot of visas. Radhia sure got around. And knowing her, I don’t think she was traveling as a tourist. She belonged to your network and you’re going to tell me why you had to get rid of her.”

  “What will you give me if I talk?” he asks.

  “We lay everything on your friend, the interim president, and you get the hell out of here and go far, far away. I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”

  He peers at me and asks: “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

  “Hayi, wemkomori mi mkomori na mbe kali mbe!” (Hey, you’re Comorian and I’m Comorian. An ox never eats an ox.)

  The fact that I spoke in his native tongue reassures him. So he starts talking: “Radhia was a very beautiful girl. After she got out of school, she couldn’t see herself earning pennies at some boring office job. I recruited her. She went on lots of missions. When we had to kill the president, I sent Radhia to seduce him because no one was ever able to resist her charms. When he was in Marseille, the president invited Radhia to lunch, just him and her, at a restaurant on the Vieux-Port, where the man who is our interim president had been a dishwasher. Then, like in the movies, she poisoned the president’s coffee while he was out answering a phone ca
ll from one of our accomplices. And that was that.”

  “Classic. So if he was poisoned here, how come he didn’t die in Marseille?”

  “No way. The president of the Comoros dies suddenly in France, can you imagine what a diplomatic mess that would make? We simply used a poison that doesn’t take effect right away. After accompanying the president to the airport, Radhia was filled with remorse. She came to see me and told me she wanted to end all this, find the love of her younger days, ask for forgiveness, get married. But she knew far too much, especially state secrets. It wasn’t safe to let her live. So I put out a hit on her, and the next morning two men on motorcycles took care of her.”

  “Give me the killers’ names.”

  “You wasted the first one in the Comoros and you just killed the second. That’s the whole story. Now it’s your turn to keep your word.”

  I pick up my cell and say, “Oh shit, my phone recorded the whole thing. You’re screwed. By the way, your boy the fish scaler was dismissed from his post. Lieutenant Bam read him a long poem before he arrested him. Your network has been dismantled.”

  I slip Radhia’s passport into my pocket.

  * * *

  It’s raining. It’s night. I’m pacing back and forth in my apartment. I look out my window at La Solidarité. A boring housing project is just great. Far off, I see Radhia out there in the hills. I run down the stairs and follow her. She goes into a huge warehouse. She says to a lady: “I came to pick up what I was before and return what I have become!”

  The woman taps away at a keyboard and answers: “Hah! Too late, mademoiselle. You missed the expiration date. You are sentenced to remain what you became.”

  Radhia weeps. She didn’t know that in the warehouse for people from before, you have to read every clause of the contract very carefully. And she evaporates.

  I need rest. Monday, I’ll fly back to the Comoros. Milevani. My mother’s little village is waiting for me.

  JOLIETTE SOUND SYSTEM

  by CÉDRIC FABRE

  La Joliette

  He had the confident, greedy eyes, keen and dark, of those who have known for a long time, without having ever read a book, that the flesh is sad, as Mallarmé said. He was bald, had no eyebrows, and his own flesh was wounded, shriveled, and crushed in many spots on his arms and face. A scar ran from one ear to the other, as if his skull had been split in two. He wore a T-shirt advertising some exotic island. I clenched my fists as I watched the feet of the three huge guys sitting at the gaming table, each of their faces agitated by a nervous twitch as if they were synchronically beating out some kind of rhythm. They must have been listening to the same heavy metal song in their heads. No less than 160 bpm, I would have said.

  Despite the cool wind coming in through one side of the double door, we were all sweating: the walls of the container they used for this dive had heated up in the sun all afternoon. The bar was made of a board resting on two oilcans, and cases of beer were piled up behind it. The fat guy had been introduced to me as both the manager of this improvised drinking joint and a kind of leader for the community that had cropped up on the docks in the last few weeks. Gypsies, gangsters on the run, dealers who had fallen out of favor, refugees, antiglobalization activists, and punks with dogs, but also ordinary families expelled from their homes occupied these abandoned containers converted into temporary shelters. Dozens of “boxes,” as maritime transportation professionals referred to them, spread out between esplanade J4 and the silo d’Arenc. A whole makeshift village that had mushroomed up on the docks of the industrial port.

  The fat guy pointed to my ring with the skull on it. I’d been trying to do business with him for the last ten minutes.

  “Keith Richards’s ring, right?” he said.

  “Exactly. Lifted from his dressing room in Marseille during the last Stones tour.”

  He wanted the ring. He was ready to swallow anything with his gaping mouth. His breath stank of hash. He was flying high and I kept my distance, careful not to violate his air space. He had a piece of information I needed.

  “You really think Keith snorted his father’s ashes?” he asked.

  “They say he even snorted the ashes of Mick Jagger’s mother and that’s why they hate each other.”

  “Can I trust you? You from Marseille? You don’t have no accent.”

  “Depends on the day. I’m bilingual and bipolar.”

  He didn’t laugh. Me neither. The container was plunged in semidarkness. Sprawled out in a corner, a woman I hadn’t noticed till then coughed in her sleep. She was curled up on herself with her neck twisted, her head resting on her naked shoulder, her clasped hands holding her dress between her thighs, ripped net stockings and Dr. Martens on her feet. The fat guy pointed to her with his head.

  “For that wheat-sucker, you got to wait a little. She had a hard day. What about the projectionist, what do you want from her?”

  “I’d like to interview her,” I said, frowning at the strange expression he used for the woman.

  He ripped out a page from La Provence, blew his nose in it, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor.

  “Artists—it’s all about them, these days. I never respected them. They make a mess out of workers’ work. Look at César, he busted up cars and compressed them to make big cubes that still sell for millions. No wonder nobody respects work and industry in this town anymore.”

  “Yeah, the world’s going down the drain . . . Can you help me or not?”

  I took off the ring and held it out to him. He examined it. Tried to put it on his middle finger, grimaced as he forced it. In vain. He shrugged and stuffed the junk ring into his pocket.

  “The girl you’re looking for—the projectionist—her name’s Phocéa.”

  He walked behind the bar, opened two cans of beer and gave me one. It was warm. He raised his can for a toast.

  “That’s it? What about Phocéa, where am I supposed to find her?”

  “Just hang around here and there and she’ll find you. I never knew what she meant to tell us with her improvised screenings. You seen them already?”

  I nodded. I’d been told that every day a little before dawn, a film was projected on the side of a ferry. That morning, since I couldn’t sleep in my shabby hotel on place de la Joliette, I’d gone out for a walk along the port as the streetlamps were turning off. A few destitute people sitting on the edge of a wharf with their feet hanging over the filthy water were looking at the pictures. They were black-and-white shots of the death throes of the Costa Concordia. Blurry images, as the distance between the source of the beam of light—impossible to locate—and the white hull that served as a screen must have been very big.

  I absolutely had to meet the woman who was projecting those images. I had questioned a kid with wolfish eyes. He’d only said: “Ask the fat guy at the Cité Phocéenne, the dive in the container on esplanade J4. You can’t miss it.”

  True enough. On one side of the container, there was an inscription in red paint: Cité fausse et haine—a pun on Marseille’s nickname, la cité phocéenne.

  The fat guy’s gaze wandered off into space.

  “That doesn’t seem like a fair deal to me,” I said.

  “I know where she’ll be tonight.”

  I turned around. It was the girl who’d said these words in a gravelly voice. She had just gotten up and was stretching.

  “I could’ve gotten this info without you, it’s not exactly worth my Keith’s ring, is it?”

  “Take the wheat-sucker with you, she’s yours . . .”

  I sighed and left. The mistral had risen. The girl caught up to me.

  “Why does he refer to you as the wheat-sucker?” I asked.

  “That’s what they called the pipes that pumped the grain directly into the holds of ships to transfer it into the silo. Like thick metal straws.”

  “You live in a container too?”

  “Here and there. I get by.”

  Ever since city hall announced the shutdown tw
o months back, there had been no public services. The unemployed no longer got their benefits, landlords evicted them, and in a matter of days there’d been hundreds of them flocking from the three cardinal points of the city; the fourth was the west, the horizon. Because if disaster was on the way, salvation was always the sea, they thought. Whole families had moved into those containers that a street-art company had placed there for some kind of event. The boxes had served as restaurants, bars, venues for art shows, even a hairdresser’s salon. Once the event had ended, everybody cleared out, but the cranes never showed up; the containers stayed and then were squatted and transformed into real pads, complete with mattresses, sometimes a table, and even knickknacks. I had even seen ex-votos hanging inside as decoration, probably stolen from the Cathédrale de la Major. Between the boxes, in the alleys, the residents would meet around improvised tables to drink pastis, gossip, or rail against continental Europe. There was a recent announcement that an early municipal election was coming. Perpetually drenched in sweat, the opposition candidate was out campaigning, mingling with the crowd, promising jobs and clean sidewalks. He wanted to be the mayor of Marseille so badly that he never failed to mention his Italian roots. I thought to myself, In this country it’s always the children of immigrants who get the worst jobs.

  I had been hanging around the “village” for three days, between the esplanade, the site of the new museums—including the MuCEM, closed like all the others—and the cathedral, and also between the docks and place de la Joliette. I had to get my hands on that video they wanted me to find.

  “They” had called me directly at the paper where I wrote the culture column. It was one guy, actually, but he was only the messenger, as I quickly realized. A wheezing voice, slow speech. A threatening tone, an allusion to my poor mother who was losing her memory little by little in an old people’s home.

  “A videotape’s going around the docks, from VCR to VCR. It’s in the hands of a woman, an artist. You can see two well-known soccer players on it. You have four days to get hold of it. We’ll call back.”

  I objected that I was neither an investigator nor a private detective and they were mistaking me for someone else, but the guy insisted, emphasizing my excellent “networks” in the world of culture and art. I had resigned myself to it, thinking of my mother and telling myself that it wouldn’t be the first time in this city that a guy did a job for which he was neither qualified nor competent. I had vaguely deduced that the people behind this had their eyes on city hall too, or interests to defend. And the contents of the tape would help them, or ruin their ambitions if it fell—or had already fallen—into the wrong hands.