Total Chaos

by Jean-Claude Izzo

  “Pérol, for you.”

  I took the receiver. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Never mind, Fabio. We found the girl.”

  I felt the earth vanish beneath my feet. I saw Djamel stand up and leave the bar without turning around. I was holding myself at the bar, like someone gripping a lifebelt. Ange was looking at me anxiously. I gestured to him to serve me a cognac. Just one. I drank it straight down. It wasn’t a cognac that could hurt me the most.

  5.

  IN WHICH, AT MOMENTS OF MISFORTUNE, YOU REMEMBER YOU’RE AN EXILE

  I’d seen a lot of ugly things in my life, but nothing to compare with this. Leila was lying face down and naked in a country lane. Her clothes were bunched together under her left arm and there were three bullets in her back. One of them had perforated her heart. Columns of big black ants were scurrying around the bullet holes and the scratches that streaked her back. Now the flies were attacking too, fighting the ants for their share of dried blood.

  Leila’s body was covered in insect bites. But it didn’t seem to have been bitten by a hungry dog or a field mouse. Small comfort, I told myself. There were long yellowish streaks between her buttocks and on her thighs. Dried shit. Her bowels must have loosened with the fear. Or when the first bullet struck.

  After raping her, they must have let her think she was free. It must have excited them to see her running naked. Racing to the end of the lane, to the main road, hoping to see the lights of a car. Retrieving the power of speech. Help! Someone help me! Forgetting her fear, forgetting the terrible thing that had happened to her. Hoping a car would stop and humanity would come to the rescue, at last.

  Leila must have kept on running after the first bullet. As if she’d felt nothing. As if that burning sensation in her back that took her breath away didn’t even exist. She was already running away from this world, to a place where there was nothing but shit, piss and tears. And the dust she’d be eating forever. A place far from her father, her brothers, her occasional lovers, the love she’d longed for with all her heart, the family she’d never have, the children she’d never give birth to.

  She must have screamed when the second bullet hit her. Because, whatever happens, the body just can’t keep silent. It cries out. Not because of the pain now, intense as that is. It’s gone beyond that. The mind summons all its energy and searches for a way out. Search, keep searching. Forget that what you’d like more than anything is to lie down in the grass and go to sleep. Shout, cry, but run. Run. They’ll leave you alone now. The third bullet had put an end to all her dreams. The sadists.

  With the back of my hand, I angrily brushed aside the ants and flies. I took a last look at the body, the body I’d once desired. The hot, heady scent of wild thyme rose from the ground. I’d have liked to make love to you here, Leila, on a summer evening. Yes, I’d have liked that. We’d have had as much pleasure and happiness as we wanted. Of course, every new caress would only have taken us closer to the inevitable: break-ups, tears, disillusionment, sadness, anguish, loathing. It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to the mess that human beings make of this world. I knew that. But at least it would have existed, that coming together in a passion that would have challenged the mess. Yes, Leila, I should have loved you. Old fool that I am. Forgive me.

  I covered Leila’s body again with the white sheet the gendarmes had thrown over her. I hesitated when I reached her face. The burn mark on her neck, the torn left ear where she’d lost an earring, the mouth biting the ground. I felt my stomach heave. I pulled the sheet angrily over her face and stood up. There was silence all around. Nobody was speaking. Only the cicadas continued their whine, indifferent to human tragedies.

  As I stood up, I noticed that the sky was blue. An absolutely pure blue, made all the more luminous by the dark green of the pines. Like a picture postcard. Fucking sky. Fucking cicadas. Fucking country. Not that I was any better. I staggered away, drunk with hate and grief.

  I walked back down the lane, with the cicadas singing all around me. We weren’t far from the village of Vauvenargues, a few kilometers from Aix-en-Provence. Leila’s body had been found by a couple of hikers. The lane was one of those that lead to Sainte-Victoire, the mountain that was such an inspiration to Cézanne. How many times had he come this way? Maybe he’d even stopped here and set up his easel and tried once more to capture its light.

  I folded my arms on the hood of the car and laid my forehead on them and closed my eyes. Leila’s smile. I couldn’t feel the heat anymore. The blood was running cold in my veins. My heart had dried up. So much violence. If God existed, I’d have strangled him on the spot. Without batting an eyelid. And with all the fury of the damned. I felt an almost timid hand on my shoulder, followed by Pérol’s voice:

  “Do you want to stick around?”

  “There’s nothing to stick around for. Nobody needs us. Here or anywhere. You know that, Pérol, don’t you? We’re just worthless cops. We don’t exist. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  He sat down at the wheel. I wedged myself into the seat, lit a cigarette, and closed my eyes. “Who’s on the case?”

  “Loubet. He was on duty. I think that’s good.”

  “Yeah, he’s a good cop.”

  Pérol took the Saint-Antoine turnoff from the highway. Being the conscientious cop he was, he’d switched on the police radio frequency. Its crackling filled the silence. Neither of us had said another word. But he didn’t need to ask any questions, he’d already guessed what I wanted to do: see Mouloud before the others got to him. I knew Loubet would be tactful, but to me, Leila was like family. Pérol had understood that, and I was touched. I’d never confided in him. I’d gradually gotten to know him since he joined the squad. We respected each other, but that was as far as it went. We could have a drink together, but we were both too cautious to go beyond that and become friends. One thing was for sure: like me, he had no future as a cop.

  He was thinking about what he’d seen. He felt the same pain and the same hatred as I did. And I knew why.

  “How old is your daughter?”

  “Twenty.”

  “And... is everything OK?”

  “She listens to the Doors, the Stones, and Dylan. It could have been worse.” He smiled. “I mean, I’d have preferred her to be a teacher or a doctor. Anything. Instead of which, she’s a cashier at FNAC, and I can’t say I’m crazy about it.”

  “And you think she’s crazy about it? You know, there are hundreds of cashiers out there who may be all kinds of things one day. Kids don’t have much of a future these days, so they grab whatever they can, when they can.”

  “Have you ever wanted to have children?”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Did you love the girl?” he asked, and immediately bit his tongue for daring to be so direct. But I knew he’d asked as a friend, and again, I was touched. All the same, I didn’t want to answer. I don’t like answering private questions. The answers are often ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. Even when the other person is close to you. He sensed that.

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “You know, Leila had the kind of opportunities only one immigrant’s child in a thousand has. It must have been too much. Life took it all away from her again. I should have married her, Pérol.”

  “That’s doesn’t stop shit from happening.”

  “Sometimes, all it takes is one gesture, one word, to change the course of someone’s life. Even if you know it won’t last forever. Did you think about your daughter?”

  “I think about her every time she goes out. But you don’t find scumbags like these on every street corner.”

  “True. But right now, they’re out there somewhere.”

  Pérol suggested he wait for me in the car. I told Mouloud everything. Apart from the ants and the flies. I told him that other cops would come se
e him, and that he’d have to identify the body and fill out a lot of papers. And that if he needed me, of course I’d be there.

  He’d sat down and listened to me without flinching. Looking me right in the eyes. The tears weren’t ready to flow yet. Like mine, his heart had turned to ice. Forever. He started to shake, without even realizing it. He’d stopped listening. He was ageing right there in front of my eyes. The years were suddenly moving faster, catching up with him. Even the happy years had a bitter taste now. It’s at moments of misfortune that we remember we’re all exiles. My father had told me that.

  Mouloud had just lost the second great love of his life. His pride and joy. The one who’d have made all his sacrifices, even the latest ones, worthwhile. The one who’d finally have proved to him that he’d done the right thing in uprooting himself. Algeria wasn’t his country anymore. And now France had rejected him once and for all. Now he was nothing but a poor Arab, and no one would care what happened to him.

  He’d wait for death, here in this shitty housing project. He’d never go back to Algeria. He’d gone back once, after Fos. With Leila, Driss and Kader. To see how things were ‘down there.’ They’d stayed twenty days. He’d soon realized that Algeria wasn’t his story anymore. It was a story that didn’t interest him. The empty, neglected shops. The land, parceled out to former mujaheddin and left uncultivated. The deserted villages, turned in on their own misery. He couldn’t start over again, make his dreams come true, in a place like that. He hadn’t rediscovered his youth on the streets of Oran. Everything was on ‘the other side.’ And he’d started to miss Marseilles.

  The evening they’d moved to this little two-room apartment, Mouloud, instead of offering up a prayer, spoke to his children. “We’re going to live here, in this country, France. With the French. It isn’t a good thing, but it isn’t the worst that could happen. It’s fate. We have to adapt, but we mustn’t forget who we are.”

  I called Kader, in Paris. I told him to come right away, and to plan on spending some time here. Mouloud would need him, and Driss too. Mouloud then said a few words to him in Arabic. Finally, I phoned Mavros at the gym. It was Saturday afternoon, which meant that Driss was there, training. But it was Mavros I wanted. I told him about Leila.

  “Give him a fight, Georges. Soon. And make him work. Every evening.”

  “Shit, man, if I put the boy in a fight now, or even in two months, he’ll be killed. He’ll be a good boxer one day, but he isn’t ready yet.”

  “I’d rather he was killed in the ring than did something stupid. Georges, do this for me. Take care of him. Personally.”

  “OK, OK. Shall I pass him to you?”

  “No. His father will tell him later. When he gets home.”

  Mouloud nodded. He was the father. It was up to him to tell him the news. I hung up.

  Mouloud got up from the armchair, moving like an old man. “You should go now, monsieur. I’d like to be alone.”

  He was already alone. Alone and lost.

  The sun had just set, and I was out at sea. I’d been out more than an hour. I’d brought bread, sausage and a few beers with me. But I couldn’t fish. To fish, your mind has to be clear. It’s like billiards. You look at the ball. You concentrate on it, and the trajectory you want it to move along, then, confidently and decisively, you transmit the required force to the cue. In fishing, you cast the rod, then concentrate on the float. You don’t cast the rod just any old how. You can recognize an angler by the way he casts. Casting is part of the art of angling. Once you’ve attached the bait to the hook, you have to let yourself be imbued by the sea and the play of light on it. It isn’t enough to know that the fish is there, under the surface. The hook has to touch the water as lightly as a fly. You have to anticipate the bite, to strike the fish at the very moment it bites.

  My casting lacked conviction. I had a lump in the pit of my stomach, and the beer did nothing to dissolve it. A lump of nerves and tears. It would have done me good to cry. But nothing came out. I’d live with that horrible image of Leila, and that pain, as long as those bastards were still at large. I was reassured by the fact that Loubet was on the case. He was really thorough. He wouldn’t overlook any clues. If there was one chance in a thousand that he’d track down the bastards, he’d find it. He’d proved himself. As a detective, he was a whole lot better than most, a whole lot better than me.

  I felt bad, though, about not leading the investigation. Not because I wanted to make it a personal affair, but because I couldn’t bear the thought that these bastards were at large. No, it wasn’t really that. I knew what was tormenting me. It was hate. I wanted to kill them.

  I wasn’t catching anything today. But I couldn’t resign myself to long-line fishing. You catch a lot of fish that way. Pandora, sea bream, gurnard, goby. But I don’t enjoy it. You attach hooks every six feet along the line, and let it trail on the water. I still had a long line in the boat, just in case. For days when I didn’t want to get home empty-handed. But to me, fishing meant a rod and line.

  Thinking about Leila had reminded me of Lole, and Lole had brought me back to Ugo and Manu. It all made a hell of a noise in my head. Too many questions, and no answers. But there was one question that stood out, a question I didn’t want to answer. What was I going to do? I hadn’t done anything when Manu died. Although I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, I’d been sure Manu would end up like that. Shot down on the street. By a cop, or, more likely, by some small time gangster working for someone else. That was the nature of things on the streets. For Ugo to die in the same way wasn’t so predictable. He didn’t have that hatred of the world that Manu carried deep inside him, and which had continued growing as the years went by.

  I didn’t think Ugo had changed that much. I couldn’t believe he was capable of taking out a gun and shooting a cop. He knew what life was about. That was why he’d broken with Marseilles, and Manu. And given up Lole. I was sure someone capable of doing that wouldn’t have put his life on the line. If he’d been cornered, he’d have let himself be arrested. The joint is just an interlude. You get out eventually. Alive. If there was one thing I had to do for Ugo, it was that: understand what had happened.

  I was thinking again about my conversation with Djamel when I felt the bite, and didn’t strike quickly enough. I pulled in the line and attached another bait. If I wanted to understand, I had to follow that lead. Had Auch identified Ugo from the testimony of Zucca’s bodyguards? Or had he had him tailed as soon as he left Lole’s? Had he let Ugo kill Zucca? It was possible, but I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t like Auch, but I didn’t think he was that Machiavellian. I went back to another question: how had Ugo found out about Zucca so quickly? Who’d told him? Another lead to be followed up. I didn’t yet know how to go about it, but I had to try. Without getting in Auch’s way.

  I finished the beers and actually managed to catch a bass. About four and a half pounds. For such a bad day, it was better than nothing. Honorine was waiting for me when I got back. Sitting on her terrace, watching TV through the window.

  “Poor man!” she said, when she saw my bass. “You’d never have made your fortune as a fisherman!”

  “I never set out to make my fortune.”

  “But a bass like that...” She looked at it regretfully. “How are you going to cook it?”

  I shrugged.

  “It mightn’t be too bad with a Belle Hélène sauce.”

  “I’d need a crab for that, and I don’t have one.”

  “Oh, no, you’ve got that look in your eyes. I guess I’d better not do anything to annoy you! Hey, I have some cod tongues. They’ve been marinating since yesterday. How about I bring them tomorrow?”

  “I’ve never tried them. Where did you get them?”

  “A niece of mine brought them from Sète. I haven’t eaten them since my poor Toinou passed on. Anyhow, I’ve left you some vegetable soup. It’s still warm. You need a r
est, you’re not looking so good.”

  Babette didn’t hesitate for a moment.

  “Batisti,” she said.

  Batisti. Shit! Why hadn’t I thought of him earlier? It was so obvious, it hadn’t even entered my mind. Batisti had been a henchman of Mémé Guérini, the Marseilles boss in the Forties. He’d dropped out about twenty years ago, after the massacre at the Tanagra, a bar in the Vieux-Port, in which four rivals, all associates of Zampa’s, had been slain. As Batisti was a friend of Zampa’s, had he felt threatened himself? Babette didn’t know.

  He’d started a little import-export company and led a quiet life, respected by every gangster in Marseilles. He’d never taken sides in the gang wars, had appeared indifferent to power and money. He advised, served as a go-between, put guys together. For the Spaggiari heist in Nice, he was the one who organized the team that had gotten into the safes of the Société Générale in the dead of night, using blowtorches. When the time came to share out the loot, he refused to take any commission. He’d simply done a good turn. He became even more respected. And in the underworld, respect is the best life insurance.

  One day, Manu showed up on his doorstep. It was something you had to do, if you didn’t want to remain a small time holdup man all your life. Manu had hesitated for a long time. Since Ugo’s departure, he’d become a loner. He didn’t trust anyone. But holdups were more dangerous than they used to be. Plus, there was more competition now. For a lot of young Arabs, it had become a favorite sport. A few successful jobs and you could get together the money you needed to become a dealer and have control of a patch, maybe a whole housing project. Gaëtan Zampa, the man who’d rebuilt the Marseilles underworld, had just hanged himself in his cell. Le Mat and The Belgian were trying to avoid things fragmenting even more. New recruits were needed.

  Manu started doing occasional jobs for The Belgian. Batisti and Manu had liked each other from the start. For Manu, Batisti was the father he’d never had. An ideal father, someone who was just like him, and never lectured him. For me, that was the worst kind of father. I didn’t like Batisti. But I’d had a real father, and hadn’t had anything to complain about.