Bastisti was a sly old fox. He chewed his food slowly, and finished his glass of wine. “How much do you know?”
“I know a lot of things I shouldn’t know.”
He looked straight at me, trying to figure out if I was bluffing. I didn’t bat an eyelid. “My informants were positive.”
“Stop right there, Batisti! I don’t give a damn about your informants, because they don’t exist! You’d been told what to say, and you said it. You sent Ugo to do what nobody else had the balls to do, because it was too risky. Zucca was being protected. And then Ugo got himself whacked. By cops. Cops who knew what he’d done. It was a trap.”
I felt as if I was long-line fishing. Setting out a lot of hooks, and waiting for a bite. He finished his coffee. I had the feeling I’d used up my credit.
“Listen, Montale. There’s an official version. Why don’t you stick to it? You’re just a neighborhood cop, you should stay that way. You have a nice little house, try to keep it.” He stood up. “The advice is free. I’ll pick up the tab.”
“And how about Manu? Know nothing about that either? You don’t give a damn, do you?”
It was a dumb thing to say, but it was anger that had made me say it. I’d come out with the theories I’d fabricated for myself, none of them solid. All I’d gotten in return was a barely veiled threat. The only reason Batisti had come here was to find out how much I knew.
“What holds true for Ugo holds true for Manu too.”
“But you liked Manu, didn’t you?”
He gave me a nasty look. I’d hit home. But he didn’t reply. He stood up and headed for the counter, the check in his hand. I followed him.
“Let me tell you this, Batisti. You’ve been jerking me around, I know that. But don’t think I’m going to drop this. Ugo came to see you for information. All he wanted was to avenge Manu, and you fucked him over real good. So I’m not going to let go of you.” He picked up his change. I put my hand on his arm and moved my face close to his ear. “One more thing,” I whispered. “You’re so scared of dying you’d do anything. You’re crapping yourself with fear. You’re a man without honor, Batisti. When I find out the truth about Ugo, I won’t forget you. You can take my word for that.”
He freed his arm, and looked at me pityingly. “You’ll be whacked first.”
“You’d better hope I am.”
He went out without turning back. I stood for a moment and watched him go. Then I ordered another coffee. The two Italian tourists stood up and left in a profusion of Ciao, ciaos.
If Ugo still had any relatives in Marseilles, they probably didn’t read the newspapers. Nobody had come forward after he was killed, or after the appearance of the death notice, which I’d passed on to the three morning dailies. The burial certificate had been issued on Friday. I’d had to make a decision. I didn’t want to see him buried in a communal grave, like a dog. I’d broken into my reserves and agreed to cover the funeral expenses. I wouldn’t take a vacation this year. What the hell, I never took a vacation anyway.
The guys opened the vault. It was my parents’. There was still a place for me in it, but I’d decided to take my time. I didn’t think my parents would mind too much about having a visitor. The heat was hellish. I looked at the dark, damp hole. Ugo wasn’t going to like it. Neither would anybody. Neither would Leila. Her funeral was set for tomorrow. I hadn’t yet decided if I was going or not. To Mouloud and his children, I was just a stranger now. And a cop. A cop who hadn’t been able to stop it from happening.
Things were falling apart. I’d spent the last few years in a state of calm indifference, as if I’d said goodbye to the world. Nothing really touched me. The old friends who’d stopped calling. The women who’d left me. I’d put my dreams and my anger on hold. I was getting older and I’d lost all desire, all passion. I fucked hookers. Happiness was at the end of a fishing line.
Manu’s death had shaken all that. But I don’t suppose it had registered that much on my personal Richter scale. Ugo’s death, on the other hand, was like a slap in the face. It startled me out of an uneasy sleep, and when I woke up, I saw I was still alive, and how stupid I’d been. What I thought of Manu and Ugo made no difference. They’d lived. I’d have liked to talk to Ugo. I’d have liked him to tell me about his travels. Sitting on the rocks at night, at les Goudes, that had been our big dream: to just up sticks and leave.
“Why the hell do they want to go so far?” Toinou had screamed, appealing to Honorine. “What do these boys want to see what they can’t see here? Tell me that! You can find every country in the world in Marseilles. People from every race, every latitude.”
Honorine had placed a plate of fish soup on the table in front of us.
“Our fathers all arrived in this town from somewhere else. Whatever they were looking for, they found it here. Even if they didn’t find it, they stayed.” He’d paused for breath, then looked at us angrily. “Taste that!” he’d cried. “It’s a cure for every stupid notion you can think of!”
“We’re dying here,” Ugo had dared to say.
“We die in other places too, my boy! And that’s worse!”
Ugo had come back, and he’d died. That was the end of his journey. I nodded, and the coffin was swallowed up by the dark, damp hole. I choked back my tears. A taste of blood stayed in my mouth.
I stopped off at the head office of Radio Taxis, on the corner of Boulevard de Plombière and Boulevard de la Glacière. I wanted to follow the trail of the taxi. It might not lead anywhere, but it was the only thing connecting the two killers on Place de l’Opéra with Leila.
The guy in the office was leafing wearily through a porn mag. A typical mia. Ray-bans shielding his eyes, long hair down the back of his neck, a horrible blow-dry, a flowery shirt opened to reveal a chest covered in black hair, a big gold chain with a figure of Jesus at the end of it, with diamonds for eyes. The expression mia came from Italy. Lancia had launched a car called the Mia, with an opening in the window, which allowed you to put your elbow outside without lowering the window. That was too much for the wits of Marseilles!
The bars were full of mias. Vulgar, narrow-minded posers and wheeler-dealers. They spent their days propping up the bar, drinking Ricard. They sometimes did a bit of work, if they had to.
This one probably drove a Renault 12 covered with headlights, with the names Dédé and Valérie displayed in the front, a couple of soft toys dangling from the roof, and the steering wheel covered in moquette. He turned a page. His eyes rested on the crotch of a buxom blonde. At last he deigned to look up at me.
“What can I do for you?” he said, with a strong Corsican accent.
I showed him my badge. He barely looked at it, as if he knew it by heart.
“Can you read?” I said.
He pushed his glasses down his nose, and looked at me indifferently. Talking seemed to exhaust him. I told him I wanted to know who’d been driving a Renault 21, registration number 625 JLT 13, on Saturday night. Something about a red light passed on Avenue des Aygalades.
“So they send you out for things like that now, do they?”
“They send us out for all kinds of things. If we don’t look into them, people write to the minister. There’s been a complaint.”
“A complaint? For running a red light?” It was as if the sky had fallen in! What kind of world were we living in?
“There are a lot of crazy pedestrians out there,” I said.
This time, he took off his Ray-bans and gave me the once-over. Just in case I was putting him on. I shrugged my shoulders, wearily.
“Yeah,” he said, “and we’re the ones who pay for it! You’d be better off wasting less time on shit like this and keeping the streets safe instead.”
“Pedestrian crossings need to be kept safe, too,” I replied. He was starting to break my balls. “I want the name, address and telephone number of the driver.”
<
br /> “I’ll tell him you want to see him at the station house.”
“Not good enough. I have to make out a written summons.”
“Which precinct are you from?”
“Central.”
“Can I see your badge again?”
He took it and noted my name on a piece of paper. I knew I was crossing a line, but it was too late. He gave me back the badge, with a look of distaste.
“Montale. Italian, isn’t it?” I nodded. He seemed lost in thought for a bit, then he looked at me again. “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement over the red light. We do you a lot of good turns, don’t we?”
Five more minutes of this banter, and I’d have strangled him with his gold chain, or made him eat his Jesus figure. He leafed through a register, stopped at a page, and ran his finger down a list.
“Pascal Sanchez. Can you remember that, or do you want me to write it down for you?”
Pérol reviewed the day for me. 11:30: a minor caught shoplifting, at Carrefour. A trivial offence, but the parents had to be sent for and a file started. 1:13: a fight in a bar called the Balto, on Chemin du Merlan, between three gypsies with a girl in the middle. They’d all been brought in, then immediately released, because no one pressed charges. 2:18: A radio call. A mother arrived at her local station house with her son, who had a severely bruised face. According to him, he’d been beaten up outside his school, the Lycée Marcel Pagnol. The alleged perpetrators and their parents had been sent for and confronted with the boy. The case had taken up the whole afternoon. There were apparently no drugs involved, no extortion. There’d be a follow-up, all the same. The parents had been given a sermon, in the hope that it might serve some purpose. Pure routine.
But the good news was that we’d finally found a way to collar Nacer Mourrabed, a young dealer who operated out of the Bassens housing project. He’d gotten into a fight last night coming out of a bar in L’Estaque called the Miramar. The guy had registered a complaint. He’d even pressed charges and had showed up at the station house to make a statement. A lot of people chickened out, and decided to keep shtum, even in the case of a straight robbery, without violence. They were afraid, and they didn’t trust the cops.
Mourrabed. I knew his sheet by heart. Twenty-two years old. He’d been in police custody seven times, the first time when he was fifteen. A good score. But he was clever. We’d never been able to pin anything on him. Maybe this time.
He’d been dealing on a big scale for months, but always kept his hands clean. He had eight or ten kids, no older than fifteen or sixteen, doing the dirty work for him. One would carry the junk, the other would take the money. He’d stay in his car and watch. He’d collect later. In a bar, in the subway or on a bus, in a supermarket. Somewhere different every time. Nobody had ever tried to double-cross him. Except once. The kid had been found with a gash on his cheek. Naturally, he hadn’t fingered Mourrabed. If he had, he might have gotten something worse than a gash on the cheek.
We’d gone after the kids several times. But it was pointless. They’d rather spend time in the joint than give up Mourrabed. Whenever we collared the one who had the junk, we’d take his picture, start a file, and let him go. The quantities were always too small to make the charge stick. We’d tried, and it had been thrown out by the judge.
Pérol suggested we collar Mourrabed when he woke up tomorrow morning, while he was still in bed. That was fine by me. Before he left, early for once, Pérol said, “How was the funeral? Not too hard?”
I shrugged, but didn’t reply.
“It’d be nice if you could come over for a meal one day.”
He left without waiting for an answer. That was the way Pérol was: direct and unassuming. I took over for the night, with Cerruti.
The phone rang. It was Pascal Sanchez. I’d left a message with his wife.
“Hey, I’ve never run a red light. Especially not in the place you say. I never touch that part of town. Too many Arabs.”
I didn’t pick him up on that. I wanted to bring Sanchez around gently. “I know, Monsieur Sanchez, I know. But there’s a witness. He took down your number. It’s his word against yours.”
“What time was it you said?” he asked, after a silence.
“10:38 p.m.”
“Impossible,” he replied, without hesitation. “I was on a break at the time. I went for a drink at the Bar de l’Hôtel de Ville. Hey, I even bought some smokes. People saw me. I’m not lying to you. I have at least forty witnesses.”
“I don’t need as many as that. Come by my office tomorrow, about eleven. I’ll take your statement. And the names, addresses and telephone numbers of two witnesses. It should be easy to clear this up.”
I had an hour to kill before Cerutti arrived. I decided to go have a drink at the Treize-Coins.
“The boy’s been looking for you,” Ange said. “You know, the one you brought here on Saturday.”
I downed a beer, and set off to find Djamel. I’d never spent so much time in the neighborhood since being posted to Marseilles. The first time had been the other day, when I was trying to find Ugo. All these years I’d stayed on the outside. Place de Lenche, Rue Baussenque and Rue Sainte-Françoise, Rue Francois-Moisson, Boulevard des Dames, Grand-Rue, Rue Caisserie. The farthest in I went was Passage des Treize-Coins and Ange’s bar.
What struck me now was that there was something unfinished about the way the neighborhood was being redeveloped. There were plenty of art galleries, boutiques and other new businesses, but I wondered if they attracted customers. And if so, where did the customers come from? Not Marseilles, I was sure. My parents had never come back to the neighborhood after being expelled by the Germans. The metal shutters were down. The streets deserted. The restaurants empty, or nearly empty. Except for Étienne’s, on Rue de Lorette. But Étienne Cassaro had been there for twenty-three years. And he did make the best pizza in Marseilles. Prices and opening times depend on the owner’s mood, I’d read in a report on Marseilles in Géo. Thanks to Étienne’s mood, Manu, Ugo and I had often eaten there for free. Even if he did yell at us that we were idlers and good for nothings.
I walked back down Rue du Panier. My memories echoed louder than the footsteps of the people on the street. The neighborhood wasn’t Montmartre yet. It still had a bad reputation. And a bad smell. And Djamel was nowhere to be found.
7.
IN WHICH IT’S BEST TO SAY WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND
They were waiting for me outside my house. My mind was on other things, and I was exhausted. I was dying for a glass of Lagavulin. They emerged from the shadows, as silent as cats. By the time I realized they were there, it was too late.
They pulled a thick plastic bag down over my head, and two arms slid under my armpits and around my chest and lifted me off the ground. The arms were like steel. I was pinned against the guy’s body. I struggled.
A powerful blow hit me in the stomach. I opened my mouth and swallowed all the oxygen that was still in the bag. Shit! What was the guy hitting me with? A second blow. Same strength. A boxing glove. Fuck! A boxing glove! There was no more oxygen in the bag. Shit! I kicked out with my legs, and hit nothing but air. On my chest, the vice-like grip grew tighter.
A blow landed on my jaw. I opened my mouth, and another blow followed in my stomach. I was going to suffocate. I was sweating gallons. I wanted to bend double, to protect my stomach. The guy with steel arms must have felt it. For a fraction of a second, he let me slide down. Then he pulled me up again, still pinned to him. I could feel his cock against my buttocks. The bastard was getting a hard-on! Two more blows. Left, right. In the stomach again. With my mouth wide open, I moved my head in every direction. I tried to cry out, but no sound emerged, except a slight moan.
My head seemed to be floating in a kettle, with no safety valve. The vice on my chest did not relax. I was nothing but a punching bag now. I lost all sense of time, didn’t eve
n feel the blows anymore. My muscles had stopped reacting. I wanted oxygen. That was all. Air! A little air! Just a little! Then my knees hit the ground, hard. Instinctively, I rolled up into a ball. A breath of air had just entered beneath the plastic bag.
“This was a warning, asshole! Next time, you’re dead!”
A kick landed in my back. I groaned. I heard a motorcycle engine. I tore off the plastic bag and breathed in all the air I could.
The motorcycle rode off. I stayed there without moving, trying to get my breathing back to normal. A shiver went through me, then I began to shake all over. Move, I told myself. But my body refused to obey. It wouldn’t do it. If I moved, the pain would start all over again. Lying there in a ball, I felt nothing. But I couldn’t stay like this.
Tears were running down my cheeks. I felt the salty taste of them on my lips. I must have started to cry when I was hit and hadn’t stopped.
I licked my tears. The taste was almost good. How about going in and pouring yourself a glass of scotch, huh, Fabio? You just have to get up and go inside. No, don’t stand up straight. You can’t. Take it easy. Get down on all fours and crawl to your door. There it is, you can see it. Good. Now sit down with your back to the wall. Breathe. Go on, find your keys. Good, lean on the wall, get up slowly, put all your weight against the door. Now open it. The top lock first. Then the middle one. Shit, you forgot to lock that one!
The door opened, and I fell into Marie-Lou’s arms. The impact made her lose her balance. I saw the two of us tumble to the floor. Marie-Lou. I must be hallucinating. Then everything went black.
I had a glove soaked in cold water on my forehead. I felt the same cold sensation on my eyes and cheeks, then on my neck and chest. A few drops of water slid down over my shoulder blades. I shivered, and opened my eyes. Marie-Lou smiled at me. I was on my bed, naked.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded, and closed my eyes. Despite the dim light, I found it hard to keep my eyes open. She took the glove off my forehead. Then put it back. It was cold again. It felt good.
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