“No paper would dare print it.”
“Here, no. In Paris, yes. If I don’t call in two hours, it’ll be in the final edition.”
“All you have’s a story. No proof.”
“I have everything I need. All the things Manu stole from Brunel’s safe. The names, the bank statements, the check books, the purchases, the suppliers. The list of bars, clubs and restaurants paying protection money. Better still, the names and addresses of all the local businessmen who support the National Front.”
I was laying it on thick, but I probably wasn’t too far from the truth. Batisti had been playing me for a sucker all down the line. If Zucca had had the slightest suspicion about Brunel, he’d have sent two of his own men to the lawyer’s office to put a bullet in his head. Only then would they have cleaned up. Zucca was too old to fuck around. There was a line, a straight line, and you didn’t deviate from it. That was how he’d gotten where he was.
And Zucca would never have entrusted Manu with a job like that. He wasn’t a killer. It was Batisti who’d sent Manu to Brunel’s. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know what kind of game Batisti was playing. Babette was categorical that he wasn’t in the business anymore. Manu had fallen for it. You didn’t turn down a job for Zucca. He trusted Batisti. And the kind of money he was being offered wasn’t to be sneezed at.
These were the conclusions I’d reached. They were shaky, and they raised even more questions than they answered. But I couldn’t stop now. I’d come too far. I needed to have them, all of them, in front of me. I needed to know the truth. Even if it killed me.
“We’re closing in an hour. Bring the papers.”
He hung up. So Batisti had the documents. And he’d had Zucca killed by Ugo. But Manu?
Mavros arrived twenty minutes after I called him. That was the only solution I could think of. Call him and hand over to him. Let him take care of Driss and Karine. He hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been watching Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. For the fourth time, by my reckoning. He loved that movie, even though he didn’t understand it. I remembered the song by the Doors. The End.
We were all moving to a pre-ordained end. You just had to open the papers and read the international news, or the crime reports. We didn’t need nuclear weapons. We were killing each other with prehistoric savagery. We were just dinosaurs, and the worst thing of all was that we knew it.
Mavros didn’t hesitate. Driss was worth the risk. He’d liked the boy ever since I’d introduced them. These things couldn’t be explained, anymore than you could explain what attracted you sexually to one person rather than another. He’d put Driss in the ring. He’d make him fight. He’d make him think. Think about the left fist, the right fist. The reach of the arm. He’d make him talk. About himself, about the mother he never knew, about Leila. About Toni. Until he came to terms with what he’d done, what love and hate had pushed him to do. You couldn’t live with hate in your heart. You couldn’t box either. There were rules. A lot of the time, they were unfair. But if you obeyed them, you had a chance of saving your skin. And however rotten the world was, staying alive was still the best thing you could do. Driss would listen to Mavros. Mavros knew what it meant to fuck up. At the age of nineteen, he’d been sent down for a year for assaulting his trainer, who’d fixed a match he ought to have won. By the time they’d pulled him off, the guy was almost dead. And Mavros hadn’t been able to prove that the fight was fixed. In the joint, he’d had time to think about these things.
Mavros winked at me. We both agreed that we couldn’t let any of the four take a murder rap. Toni wasn’t worth it. He’d deserved what he’d gotten tonight. I wanted them to have a chance. They were young, and they loved each other. But even with a good lawyer, no excuse would hold up. Self-defense? Not easy to prove. Leila’s rape? No evidence against Toni. At the trial, or even before, Karine would crack under pressure and tell it the way it had happened. And then it would be just an Arab from North Marseilles killing a young man in cold blood. A punk, maybe, but a Frenchman, the son of a worker. The two accomplices were Arabs too, and they had a girl, the victim’s younger sister, under their spell. I couldn’t even be sure that Karine’s parents, on the advice of their lawyer, wouldn’t press charges against Driss, Karine and Jasmine and plead extenuating circumstances for their daughter. I could already see the picture. I didn’t trust my country’s justice anymore.
When we picked up Toni off the floor, I knew I was placing myself outside the law, and that I was taking Mavros with me. But it was too late now. Mavros had already arranged everything. He’d close the gym until September and take Driss and Kader to the mountains. He had a little chalet at Orcières, in the Upper Alps. Hikes, swimming and bike rides were on the program. School was out for Karine, and Driss had almost overdosed on the garage and axle grease. Kader and Jasmine would leave for Paris tomorrow. With Mouloud, if he wanted to go. He could live with them. Kader was sure the three of them could make a living from the grocery store.
I’d driven Toni’s Golf up to the door. Kader was outside, keeping watch. Not that there was any risk. The street was deserted. Not a cat, not even a rat. Just us, doctoring reality, since we couldn’t change the world. Mavros opened the rear door of the car and I slid Toni’s body inside. I went around the car, opened the other door, and sat Toni up. I used the seat belt to keep him upright. Driss came toward me. I didn’t know what to say. Neither did he. So he took me in his arms and hugged me. And kissed me. Then Kader, Jasmine and Karine did the same. Nobody said a word. Mavros put his arm around my shoulder.
“I’ll keep in touch.”
I saw Kader and Jasmine get in Leila’s Panda, and Driss and Kader climb into Mavros’ four-wheel drive. They drove off. Everyone was leaving. I thought about Marie-Lou. Good morning, heartache. I sat down at the wheel of the Golf, and glanced in the rear view mirror. The street was still deserted. I put the car in first gear. Que será, será!
15.
IN WHICH HATRED OF THE WORLD IS THE ONLY SCENARIO
I was thirty minutes late, which is what saved my life. Les Restanques was all lit up as if it were the 14th of July. By about thirty revolving lights. Police vans, ambulances. The thirty minutes had been taken up in driving Toni’s Golf to the third level down in the Centre Bourse underground parking garage, wiping off all prints, finding a taxi, and going back to the Belle de Mai to pick up my car.
It wasn’t easy to find a taxi. If I’d gotten Sanchez as a driver, that really would have taken the cake. Instead, I got a carbon copy, with a National Front pennant above the meter thrown in as a bonus. If I’d been spotted on foot on Cours Belzunce, I might have been stopped by a police car. Walking alone at that hour was a felony in itself. But no police car passed. I could easily have been murdered. But I didn’t bump into any murderers either. Everyone was sleeping peacefully.
I parked on the other side of the Restanques parking lot. On the road, with two wheels in the grass, behind a Radio-France car. The news had spread quickly. All the journalists seemed to be there, contained, with difficulty, by a cordon of gendarmes in front of the entrance to the restaurant. Babette must be somewhere. Even though she didn’t cover day to day events, she liked to be around when stories broke. Old habits died hard.
I saw her, standing slightly to the left of a crew from France 3. I walked up to her, put my arm around her shoulder, and whispered in her ear, “What I’m about to tell you will give you the biggest scoop of your career.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, gorgeous.”
“You’re late. The massacre’s over.”
“I was nearly in it. So I’m feeling quite pleased with myself!”
“Quit fooling!”
“Do you know who’s been killed?”
“Émile and Joseph Poli. And Brunel.”
I grimaced. That meant the two most dangerous ones were still at large. Morvan and Wepler. Batisti too. If Simone was still alive, Batisti must also be
alive. Who’d done this? The Italians would have slaughtered everyone. Morvan and Wepler, working for Batisti? The possibilities made my head spin.
Babette took my hand and drew me away from the journalists. We went and sat down on the ground, our backs against the low wall of the parking lot, and she told me what had happened. Or at least, what she’d been told had happened.
Two men had walked in just as the restaurant was closing around midnight. The last couple of customers had just left. There was nobody in the kitchen. Only one of the waiters was still around. He’d been wounded, but only slightly. According to him, he was more a bodyguard than a waiter. He’d dived under the counter and opened fire on the attackers. He was still inside the restaurant. Auch had wanted to question him immediately, like Simone.
I told her everything I knew. For the second time that day. Ending up with Toni and the Centre Bourse parking lot.
“You’re right about Batisti. But way off track about Morvan and Wepler. It’s your two wops who did this. For Batisti. In agreement with the Camorra. But first read this.”
She handed me a photocopy of a press cutting. An article about the Tanagra massacre. One of the gangsters taken out then had been Batisti’s elder brother, Tino. It was common knowledge that Zucca had ordered the operation. People were lining up to succeed Zampa. Tino had been top of the list. Zucca had beaten him to it. And Batisti had retired. With revenge in his heart.
Batisti had backed all the horses. He’d dropped out, given up his stake in the business, but seemed to have come to an understanding with Zucca. He had family ties with the Poli brothers, which also meant ties of friendship with Brunel then, later, with Morvan and Wepler. And he was on good terms with the Neapolitans. He’d had those three irons in the fire for years. The conversation I’d had with him at Chez Félix took on new meaning.
It was when O Pazzo was arrested that he started to plan his revenge. Zucca wasn’t so untouchable anymore. Babette’s contact in Rome had called back that evening. He had new information. In Italy, the judges had stopped beating about the bush. Heads were rolling every day, and some vital information had come out. The reason Michele Zaza had been busted was because his Marseilles branch was rotten. It had to be cut off urgently. A new man was needed to start business over again with. It was only natural that Batisti had been contacted by the Nuova Famiglia to carry out the changes.
He was clean. The police no longer had him under surveillance. His name hadn’t been linked to anything in fifteen years. From Simone, via the Poli brothers, Batisti had learned that the net was closing in around Zucca. Auch’s squad was on permanent stakeout near his house. He was followed even when he was walking his poodle. Batisti informed the Neapolitans, and sent Manu to Brunel’s office to collect any compromising documents, in order to make sure they changed hands.
Zucca was planning to escape to Argentina. Reluctantly, Batisti had resigned himself to that. Then Ugo showed up. So fired up with hatred that he didn’t realize he was being set up. I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it all, but I was sure of one thing: Ugo, sent by Batisti, had whacked Zucca without Auch’s men intervening. They’d killed him afterwards. They would have taken him out whether he’d been armed or not. But one question remained unanswered: who had killed Manu, and why?
“Batisti,” Babette said. “Just like he’s had the others killed. The big clean-up.”
“You think Morvan and Wepler are dead, too?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“But there are only three bodies.”
“They’ll arrive soon enough, special delivery!” She looked at me. “Come on, Fabio, smile.”
“I don’t believe that explains Manu. He wasn’t involved in any of that. He was planning to take off once the job was done. He’d told Batisti. You see, Batisti screwed me all down the line. Even over that. He genuinely liked Manu.”
“You’re an incurable romantic, honey. It’ll be the death of you.”
We looked at each other. We were both bleary-eyed, like people on the morning after a wild night.
“Total chaos, eh?”
“You said it, gorgeous.”
And I was in the middle of the quagmire. Wading in other people’s shit. Just a banal gangster story. One more story, and surely not the last. Money and power. The story of mankind. With hatred of the world as the only scenario.
“Are you all right?”
Babette was shaking me gently. I’d dozed off. I was exhausted, and I’d drunk too much. I remembered that when I left the kids I’d taken the bottle of Chivas with me. There was still a fair amount left. I gave Babette what was intended as a smile and got painfully to my feet.
“I need fuel. I have what we need in the car. Want some?”
She shook her head. “Stop drinking!”
“I prefer to die like that. If you let me.”
In front of Les Restanques, the show was still in full swing. The bodies were being brought out. Babette went off to see what she could find out. I took two large swigs of scotch. I felt the alcohol move down into my insides and spread heat all through my body. My head started spinning. I leaned on the hood. I could feel my guts coming up into my throat. I turned to the hard shoulder, intending to throw up on the grass. It was then that I saw them. Two motionless bodies, lying in the ditch. Two more corpses. I swallowed my guts back down, and they tasted disgusting.
I slid cautiously into the ditch and crouched by the bodies. They’d been shot in the back, with a tommy gun. Whoever had done it was a crack shot. No more tourism or flowery shirts for them. I stood up, my head humming. The corpses had indeed arrived by special delivery, only not the ones we’d expected. All our theories fell apart. I was about to extricate myself from the ditch when I noticed a dark patch a little distance away in the field. I glanced back at Les Restanques. Everyone was busy. Waiting for a statement, an explanation from Auch. Three strides, and I was standing over a third corpse, lying face down. I took out a Kleenex and moved the head slightly so that it faced me, then held my cigarette lighter next to it. Morvan. His .38 Special in his hand. His career was over.
I caught Babette by the arm. She turned.
“What’s up? You’ve gone white.”
“The wops. Dead. And Morvan too. In the ditch and the field... Near my car.”
“Shit!”
“You were right. Batisti and the wops were doing a spring clean.”
“And Wepler?”
“Still at large. What I suspect happened is that when the shooting started, Morvan tried to get the hell out, and they ran after him. Forgetting all about Wepler. From the little you told me about him, he’s the kind who’d stay in hiding, waiting for me to arrive so that he could make sure I was really alone. When the two wops showed up, he must have been puzzled but not especially worried. By the time he realized what was going down, everything exploded. When they came out, running after Morvan, he got them in the back.”
Flashbulbs started popping. Besquet and Paoli came out, supporting a woman. Simone. Auch followed ten paces behind. His hands buried in the pockets of his jacket, as usual. Looking solemn. Very solemn.
Simone crossed the parking lot. A very thin face, with finely-drawn features, framed by shoulder-length black hair. Slender, quite tall for a Mediterranean woman. Class. She was wearing an unbleached linen suit that set off her tan. She looked exactly the way her voice sounded. Beautiful and sensual. And proud, like all Corsican women. She stopped, overcome with sobs. Calculated tears, for the benefit of the photographers. She turned her distraught face to them. She had huge, magnificent black eyes.
“Do you like her?”
It was much more than that. She was exactly the type of woman Ugo, Manu and I had gone for. Simone looked like Lole. I finally understood.
“I’m getting out of here,” I said to Babette.
“Not without an explanation.”
<
br /> “I don’t have time.” I took out one of my cards. Under my name, I wrote Pérol’s home number. On the back, an address. Batisti’s. “Try to reach Pérol. He could be at the station, or home. Just find him and tell him to meet me at this address. As soon as possible. OK?”
“I’m going with you.”
I took her by the shoulders and shook her. “No way! I don’t want you mixed up in this. But you can help me. Find Pérol for me. Ciao.”
She caught my jacket. “Fabio!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll pay for the calls.”
Batisti lived on Rue des Flots-Bleus, above Pont de la Fausse-Monnaie, in a villa overlooking Malmousque, the farthest headland in the harbor. One of the ritziest neighborhoods in Marseilles. The villas, built on the rock, had a magnificent, sweeping view of the harbor, from La Madrague de Montredon on the left to well after L’Estaque on the right, and the islands—Endoume, Le Fortin, La Tour du Canoubier, Le Château d’If—as well as the Frioul islands, Pomègues and Ratonneaux, straight ahead.
I drove with one foot on the floor, listening to an old recording by Dizzy Gillespie. I reached Place d’Aix just as Manteca was starting. It was a piece I loved, one of the first to fuse jazz and salsa.
The streets were deserted. I turned toward the harbor, and drove along Quai de Rive-Neuve, where a few groups of young people were still hanging out at the entrance to the Trolleybus. I thought again of Marie-Lou. The night I spent dancing with her. The pleasure I’d had that night had taken me back years. To a time when everything was an excuse to stay up all night. I must have aged one morning, coming home to sleep. And I didn’t know how.
I was struggling through another sleepless night. In a sleeping city where there wasn’t a single hooker to be seen on the streets, even in front of the Vamping. I was about to play Russian roulette with the whole of my past life. My youth and my friendships. Manu, Ugo. And all the years that followed. The best and the worst. The last months, the last days. Staking them on a future in which I could sleep peacefully.
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