Murder in Belleville (2000)

by Cara Black

  By the time Aimee reached the crowded mouth of the Metro, she had a plan. She still hadn’t heard from Samia, but there was one person nearby whom she could ask about Eugenie.

  Saturday Evening

  THE DEAD HAD IT easy, Bernard thought, shuffling his files together on his office desk.

  Dead easy.

  But that wasn’t true. He wished it were. Outside his window, along the gravel paths, the trees’ shadows wavered and lengthened. He tossed the empty pill bottle in the trash—he needed more or he wouldn’t sleep.

  Visions of his nounou, the caramel-faced Berber nursemaid who’d diapered and fed him, flashed in front of him. He saw her gold-toothed smile, warm and welcoming. Her eyes crinkling in laughter when he’d tickle behind her elbow on her soft, dark skin. How she’d save him the first of the season’s figs, swollen with seeds, and a fistful of golden white grapes from Lemta. He heard the hoarse notes of her song, one he’d never understood. The song, she’d said, told of the Atlas Mountains near her village, jagged, purple, and massive. And how the chergui, the dry and burning east wind, whipped the land and inflamed spirits.

  His nounou had taught him games the nomad children played in the desert. For hours they’d sit in the cool turquoise-tiled courtyard under the whitewashed arches by the fountain, playing pebble toss and hide the waterskin.

  And then the last vision that he’d tried to forget—his nounou’s head impaled on the fencepost of the Michelin factory, in a row by others accused of sabotage by the gendarmes. A cloud of black flies on her slack jaw revealing the gold tooth glinting in the sun, his mother’s screams. How his mother made them all run to the harbor. But there were no ships.

  How could an illiterate woman who spoke a Berber dialect be a spy? he’d overheard his mother ask his stepfather over the dinner table years later. Every dinar nounou earned, his mother continued, she’d sent to her family in the village.

  Roman had said both sides paid and made bad mistakes. “France will reap the dividends in the future,” he’d said. For a former soldier that seemed charitable. In fact it was the only charitable thing about Algerians Bernard ever heard him say.

  And he’d been right, Bernard thought. He dealt with that dividend in Notre-Dame de la Croix.

  Saturday Early Evening

  TWILIGHT DIMMED THE BELLEVILLE sky, canceling the magenta and orange slashes left from the fading sunset. Aimee sniffed the algae accompanying the biting wind blowing from Canal Saint Martin. The breath of spring she’d felt the other day had disappeared. Passengers erupted from the Metro like particles from a jet stream, erratic and windblown.

  The security guard by the Credit Lyonnais ATM near the Metro steps looked familiar. Very familiar, even with a leashed German shepherd beside him. Most of the guards in Paris were African, but he was of Algerian descent. It had to be Hassan Elymani, the custodian she spoke with on Sylvie/Eugenie’s street.

  And she had to get him to talk.

  She entered the nearest cafe, rubbing her arms and wishing she’d worn her leather coat. She planned to watch him from a warm and caffeine-laden environment. However, the fogged-up windows blocked her view of the corner. Too bad. Over the conversational hum and tinkling of demitasse spoons, she ordered two cafe-cremes to go. Back out on the corner of avenue Parmentier, she approached him.

  “So this is your second job, Monsieur Elymani,” she said, offering him a cafe. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

  “I’m on duty, Mademoiselle,” he said, his voice stiff, refusing to return her gaze.

  He rubbed his hands together.

  She could play this game, too. But it was a shame they were outside and it was so cold.

  “And I’m a customer with questions,” she said, still holding the cup. “Take it, please.”

  He ignored her gloved hand with the coffee.

  “Don’t you have something better to do than hound me?”

  “Not right now,” she said. “I want to know about Eugenie.”

  “You talk like an amateur!” Elymani snorted.

  She certainly felt like one. And wasn’t he a rent-a-flic?

  “The men who blew Sylvie up threatened my friend,” Aimee said. “They’re after her.”

  Elymani shook his head. “You’ve even got the victim’s name wrong.”

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  He kept silent but rolled his eyes as if she were too stupid to comprehend. His breath frosted in the air.

  She pulled out the fax from the Fichier in Nantes. “According to this the body from the explosion has been identified as Sylvie Coudray.”

  “Eh,” he said, then shrugged. “Call her what you want.”

  His remark disturbed her. Elymani had made a kind of sense, since it seemed to her the dead woman had a dual persona. Aimee popped the lid and sipped her cafe. The hot, sweet jolt burned the roof of her mouth.

  “What time’s your shift over?”

  “None of your business,” Elymani snapped.

  A tall man tapped Elymani on the shoulder. The man’s chiseled dark face shone in the sodium streetlight.

  “Go make up with your lady friend, Hassan, and be nice,” he said, with a West African accent. He winked at Aimee. “I don’t mind starting a few minutes early, eh, camarade.”

  Elymani shifted in his work boots. “Beni, that wouldn’t be fair.”

  The German shepherd growled, but the new man, BENI AN-OUR labeled on his shirt, took the dog’s leash.

  “You crazy, camaradel” Beni said to Elymani, grinning. He eyed Aimee up and down. “A real woman and your shift’s over, no one in your dormitory waitin’ for ya! Has life been this sweet to ya in a while?”

  Poor Elymani, faced with his manhood in question or her interrogation, stood mute and uncomfortable. Aimee heard the click of worry beads in his pocket.

  “Look, Hassan, let’s have coffee and walk to the boulevard, please,” Aimee said, her voice low, crooking her arm under his.

  “Allez-y” Beni grinned. “Only Allah knows what she sees in you. Make some time before she wakes up, eh?”

  ELYMANI ACCEPTED the cafe, his mouth tight. Halfway down avenue Parmentier they turned into narrow rue Tesson.

  He shook her arm off and glared at her. But there was fear in his eyes.

  “I work hard, mind my own business,” Elymani said, his voice cracking. “Yet you step in and make my life…” he stopped searching for the word.

  “Complique?” she said. “My intention isn’t to get you in trouble.”

  “I have to take care of my father. Last month he got injured on the job site,” he said, his voice different. “Look,” he said, almost pleading, “My family in Oran relies on me.”

  Elymani’s eyes were large with fear.

  “We’re having a private conversation. No one will know,” she said. “I promise.”

  “The Maghrebins,” he said, scanning the deserted street, “they know.”

  Aimee’s stomach fluttered with apprehension, but she shook her head. “You can’t be sure, now can you, Hassan?” She went on before he could answer. “Someone was blown up, you saw something, and you’re nervous. Anyone would be.”

  He looked down, scraping the sides of his muddy boots on the cobbles.

  “They’ll know soon enough,” he said.

  “How?”

  Elymani took a sip of cafe, sighed, then gestured toward the building opposite. Cracked plaster facades, scrolled grills fronting tall windows, and black grime in almost a trompe l’oeil design covered the ground floor of a once exquisite Haussmann-style apartment. Now the windows were cinderblocked and a permis a demolir sign hung above the massive doors covered with graffiti.

  “In the back courtyard of that building,” he said, “they run a makeover business.”

  She rubbed her arms again in the biting chill. What did Elymani mean?

  “Makeover?” she asked.

  “Say your permis de conduire was revoked. You visit with a roll of francs, et voila, the Maghreb
ins furnish you with a new driver’s license,” he said. “At least they used to. They moved on.”

  So Elymani fed her information, not current but true.

  The warrens of old Belleville, honeycombed by courtyards, passages, and stone cellars in deserted buildings held the Maghrebins network. At least that’s what she figured from Elymani’s conversational pirouette. And that could be how Sylvie had gotten ID as Eugenie. To open a bank account, she needed ID.

  “So would you say they live in the housing projects?” she asked, lifting her eyes toward the tall concrete buildings a block away. “But run their business where they won’t be disturbed?”

  He nodded. “They find a place, maybe a building ready to be torn down or renovated. The rent’s cheap. Full of Yugoslavs, Hindus, or retired people who don’t ask questions. The tenants ignore who goes in and out, until problems erupt over turf or money. Things get noisy. Then the Maghrebins move on.”

  “So you’re saying Eugenie was involved in this?”

  A tidy hypothesis, even plausible, but how would it fit Sylvie’s murder—even if they’d furnished her with a new identity?

  “For good reasons, I keep my nose out of it,” he said. “Those hittistes want easy money, a nice life. But in the end life reckons with them.”

  Elymani had his own survival code.

  “You better be careful,” he said. “You’re being watched.”

  “By whom?”

  “Look, my jobs are on the street. All I do is listen and keep my eyes down. I don’t want to know what goes on.” His eyes darted down the street. “What I really want to do is sleep for a week. Ahrs, the foyer is noisy, my mattress is lumpy, and I miss my wife.” He shrugged. “When my papers come through I’ll bring her over.”

  “What did you hear about Eugenie?” Aimee said, stamping her feet in the cold, wishing she had a cigarette.

  “My next job starts in a few hours,” Elymani said, turning to walk away. “Mercf for the cafeV’

  “Are you a lookout or do they pay you to keep your mouth shut?”

  He stiffened.

  “My family would be here if I did that,” he said his voice low with anger. “But dirty money brings no honor or peace.”

  “My friend’s in danger, and now they’re after me,” she said. “Don’t you understand? Tell me what you saw, Elymani, then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “All I know is that Eugenie used the place. She lived somewhere else. Sometimes Dede dropped by.”

  “Who’s Dede?” Aimee asked, forgetting how ice-like the air had become.

  “An old-fashioned mec who’s got a finger in every pot,” he said. “Like a giclee, a fine ink spray coating the surface—know what I mean?”

  She wasn’t sure but figured Dede bent with the wind.

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Cafe la Vielleuse.” He turned toward the streetlight. “Now, leave me alone.”

  Saturday Evening

  YOUSSEFA BOUGHT HAIR DYE at the Casino market around the corner from the apartment. Behind her chador it was as if she were invisible. But she had to be careful; few women in chadors frequented this kind of shop.

  In the twenty-franc bargain bin on boulevard Belleville she found a black denim coat. Back at the apartment, she mended the broken crutches she’d found discarded in the trash.

  At the bathroom sink, she read the instructions. But when her scalp started burning, she realized the chemicals had been on too long: Her hair had turned orange. Bleach was bleach, she’d thought. She did it again. In the end, when she looked in the mirror, she’d done a good job by accident. She’d fit in with the trendy crowd at Cafe Charbon, who sported the same white-hair, black-roots look.

  Youssefa felt a measure of relief. No one paid attention to a woman in a chador or a fashionable type with a broken leg. Then the sobering thought hit her that if Eugenie’d had another identity, it hadn’t helped her.

  In the church Zdanine had agreed to help her. But first, he’d said, he wanted to see the photos. He’d seemed eager when she told him why she had to speak with Hamid. After Zdanine saw them, he’d acted uninterested but promised to try and get her five minutes with Hamid.

  Youssefa finished her prayers, rolled up her prayer mat, and felt ready. She headed toward the church, hoping Zdanine had paved the way.

  Saturday Night

  AIMEE STARED AT THE mirror to the left of the bar, cracked in four or five places, in crowded Cafe la Vielleuse. Painted on the mirror was a faded image of a woman holding a vielleuse, an old-fashioned hurdy-gurdy. The woman’s blue puff-sleeved blouse and white tie bespoke turn-of-the-century fashion. The timeworn burnished wood, mosaic floor, and stumpy bar competed with seventies modernizations in the front. Cafe la Vielleuse straddled the broad boulevard de Belleville and the uphill, two-lane rue de Belleville, choked with buses, cars, and hurrying pedestrians.

  “There must be a story behind that,” she said in a conversational tone, smiling to the busy waiter behind the counter.

  He nodded and stuck his pencil behind his ear, then flicked the milk steamer into high gear, filling the cafe with a muffled whining. Then a slow hiss as the milk frothed.

  “The manager, Dede, would know,” he said.

  “Have I missed Dede?”

  “He’s in back. Dede!” the waiter yelled over the noise.

  A stocky man sat behind a large adding machine at the rear, picking his nose. The machine droned continuously, spitting out a roll of adding tape. “Merde!” he barked, giving the machine a shove and switching it off.

  “The mademoiselle has questions about La Vielleuse,” the waiter said, jerking his thumb at Aimee.

  Dede, a squat fireplug of a man who was a head shorter than Aimee, fluffed his thinning hair as he walked toward her. His cropped suit jacket didn’t meet his checked trousers. He wore pointed-toed heeled boots.

  “Tiens, there’s quite a story to that,” he said, then extended his hand to shake hers.

  Aimee dropped her purse on the floor, “Je m’excuse,” she said, quickly stooping to pick it up. The linoleum was littered with sugar-cube wrappers, cigarette butts, and lottery stubs. But anything was better than shaking Dude’s hand!

  When she stood up, Dede lit a cigarette, set down his gold lighter, and leaned on the zinc counter. She smelled wine on his breath. “In 1914 les Aliemands encamped at Fontainebleu. Their cannon flattened the shop next door and shattered la viell kuse, comme ga” Decle said. “We left her like that so people would remember.”

  Outside on rue de Belleville, Chinese children, a heavy-set Arab woman, and Jews in yarmulkes thronged the sidewalk. Gawking at something. Aimee wondered what drew their attention. Then she saw a figure on stilts juggling what looked like bowling pins.

  “Rumor has it that the Germans’ big gun got pulled back for duty on the front,” Dede said, fingering a soccer ball on the end of a keychain, “and that saved Paris from bombing.”

  “Lots of history here.” Aimee kept a smile on her face, her tone neutral. She figured she’d better buy him a drink.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a biere Iambic, Belgian style.”

  “Make that two,” she said.

  Dede smiled and snapped his fingers. Every so often he jangled the keychain, as though he needed to know it was still there. Aimee wondered if he’d tell her about Edith Piaf.

  She didn’t have long to wait. As the froth-topped glasses of beer appeared, Dede recounted the “Sparrow’s” birth on the steps of 72 rue de Belleville. He said a plaque now proclaimed: EDITH PIAF SANG FIRST ON THE STREETS OF BELLEVILLE. MUCH LATER HER SONGS TRAVERSED THE BOULEVARDS OF THE WORLD.

  A nice way to put it, she thought.

  “To tell the truth, Piaf s mother made it to Hospital Tenon, behind Gambetta,” Dede said. “But the other makes a better story.”

  Dede had a point. Aimee sipped the biere Iambic letting the toasty hops mingle with the sweetness of raspberry.

  Not bad
.

  She noticed, as they stood at the counter and Dede recounted the story, how he’d nod to patrons, send a wink across the cafe, or raise a hand in greeting. He never broke his conversational thread or lost her attention. Or missed noticing a spilled glass or conveying a sharp glance to a waiter who hadn’t noticed a patron ready to pay the bill. Elymani’s description, the slick giclie type, came to her mind.

  “My old boss told me that Piaf sang out front, but then so many did in those days,” Dede shrugged. “Truth to tell, she wasn’t anything special until her cabaret-owner boyfriend was killed and the police judiciare hauled her in for questioning. Brought her major publicity.”

  He grinned.

  “Things haven’t changed, eh?” Aimee said. “People get famous any way they can.”

  “Belleville was different then, all populaire, working class. The populaire worked hard, played hard,” he winked, draining his glass. “My papa inspected rail lines, and my mama shoved a vegetable barrow in the market. So I say I grew up in between the market and the tracks.” He let out a bark of laughter and palmed his empty glass. “Raised on this like mother’s milk.”

  Several of the staff behind the counter joined his laughter. To Aimee the guffaws sounded brittle and forced.

  “Encore, s’il vous plait,” she said, realizing she’d need to keep buying to hold Dede’s mouth open. Dede seemed to relish portraying himself as a populaire descendant. And he probably drank all day, nourishing his memories. But he stayed razor sharp and seemed to make it his business to nurse acquaintances, know people. She wondered how he knew Eugenie.

  “They say Piaf never stopped, had the energy of a hummingbird,” Dede continued as he raised his Here. “Salut.”

  Aimee saw her opening.

  “My friend Eugenie, who lives right near here, is just like that,” Aimee said, nodding. “Sometimes it’s tiring to be around her.”

  Dede sipped his biere. His eyes had narrowed. He didn’t respond.

  Maybe he was used to doing all the talking, or maybe he didn’t like how she’d turned the conversation. A chirping noise sounded in his pocket, and he plucked out his cell phone. Red and compact, a new Nokia. He answered, mumbled something Aimee couldn’t hear, clicked it off, and slipped it back in his pocket.