Salim Bachi - Paris Noir

Sydney stared at me in disbelief.

“Go check it out, the scooter’s probably still in the hole. We caught a taxi back to Marc’s place. I thought we’d gotten out of the jam we were in. I was wrong.”

The phone started ringing in the next room. Ralph picked up. I sighed. This didn’t escape Sydney. A second call, a few seconds later. They were asking for Ralph again. I closed my eyes. The second conversation, in English, was more laborious. Italy. When Ralph hung up and joined us, his voice was less assured, more concerned. “I have bad news.”

I lowered my head, sniffled. “Yelena’s dead.”

“How did you know?” The cop in the polo shirt wasn’t so condescending anymore.

I knew it because of what had happened afterwards. Ilona and I had arrived at Marc’s very annoyed with each other. Especially me with her. The adrenaline was subsiding, giving way to a more muted tension.

“What time was it?”

“Two-thirty in the morning, maybe three.”

I remember yelling at her while pacing in front of the bay window of the loft. At my feet was the Place de la Bastille, with its July column and its little golden Genie of Liberty at the top of it all lit up. But I didn’t care about the view, I couldn’t stop yelling.

Ilona backed into a corner of the living room, near a low table, far from my outbursts. After a long moment without her reacting, she removed a packet of powder from her jacket pocket and traced some lines on the table. I jumped on her, beside myself, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. I stopped when I saw her sad, beaten look. The look of a girl who knew she’d lost everything. She put a finger on my mouth, snorted a line with a rolled-up bill before passing it to me. “I hesitated and then did the same. Believe it or not, it has been a long time since I’ve done coke. We finished the lines and stared at each other.”

Then everything got pretty hazy. She stroked my cheek, kissed me on the mouth, and bit my upper lip. Until it bled. First we made love there, on that low table. I could see myself again, lifting her skirt and pulling down her tights. She’s the one who had wanted me to take her like that, urgently, from behind. A violent, desperate ass fuck that went on for a long time, everywhere, until we both ended up passing out in the bedroom. “When I came to my senses, the three Russians were standing around the bed.”

“How did they find out where—”

“Yelena. She was the only one who knew where I was staying in Paris. I’d told her and she also knows... knew Marc.” I swallowed to avoid crying. “Did she suffer?”

Ralph nodded yes.

“And her kid?”

“All of them, the husband too. The thugs took their time.” Ralph looked at his boss. “Same for the housemate in Oberkampf.”

“Jesus! Who are these assholes, for God’s sake? Tell us if you know!” Sydney banged his palm on his desk.

I shook my head. “They spoke Russian the whole time. One of them dragged me off the bed and punched me in the face. I ended up in the paws of the older one, the famous Victor. That much I understood. I think he was the boss. He pushed me onto my knees, threatening me with a gun. Then he made me drink vodka from the bottle. To put me out, I think. He kept poking me with the barrel to make me swallow faster.”

I would have preferred to forget what happened next. The two other Russians had set to work on Ilona. One was holding her by the arms, the other was straddling her thighs to prevent her from moving. This guy started to cut up her face with a knife while he questioned her. “They never spoke French. Between every cut, he’d pour alcohol on her wounds. She was screaming.” A tear ran down my cheek. “She was struggling, and the more she screamed, the more the thugs enjoyed themselves.”

“You did nothing?”

I pointed to my cut eyebrow. “After a long time, she stopped moving. I thought they’d killed her. There was blood everywhere, on the sheets, on the walls. The torturer turned to Victor to speak to him. He got a reply and stuck his face close to Ilona’s. That jerk was holding his knife just under her chin, like this...” I mimicked his posture, “the blade facing up. And then...”

Then, Ilona shoved his hand with her head. The point of the blade sunk into the guy’s neck and he fell back holding his throat. His pal, the one with Ilona’s wrists, stood up, surprised, before reacting and hitting her with all his strength. Victor had forgotten me. His piece pointed to the bed, he was too busy trying to understand what was happening.

“In a burst of despair, I stood up and lunged at the gun. We fought, shots were fired toward the bed. I heard a thump and I knew his pal was hit.”

“A good hit, all right.”

I ignored Yves ’s lame irony. “The weapon passed between us, we fought some more. There was another blast and Victor fell on top of me. I hit my head on the ground and lost consciousness. When I woke up under his corpse, the police were there. All the others were dead. Then you came.”

“That’s all?”

No, obviously. I looked at my interrogators one by one. “You don’t think it’s enough?” Probably not, but they would have to make do.

As he was aiming his gun at me, Victor had told me — in broken French — what he and his henchmen were looking for. He owned a special kind of airline that dealt in illegal freight. I even work with CIA, I transport prisoners terrorist , he’d slipped in, laughing, between two swigs of vodka, in Marc’s living room. At the end of the ’90s he had a business partner , Leonid, a Ukrainian Jew who had acquired Israeli nationality. Victor thought that was hilarious. They were selling weapons to the rebels in Angola and Liberia and the rebels were peddling some of them to al Qaeda for diamonds. Down there everything was paid for in local precious stones, conflict diamonds, war diamonds.

Six years earlier, Victor and Leonid had met in London to seal a pact with a rival. They’d ordered some girls — Ilona and Yelena — to celebrate. The evening had gone well, but in the early hours of the morning they’d noticed that the payment for their last African shipment, five million dollars in rough stones, had disappeared. They’d blamed the other criminal, of course, and settled the score with him. Neither of the two would have suspected those little whores , as Victor called them, of pulling off the theft. And as for the girls, they waited.

Not long enough, apparently.

A month ago, Ilona had traveled to Antwerp with Polaroids of the uncut set of stones, to find out their market value from some diamond merchants. A rumor had swept through the diaspora before reaching Leonid, who started to watch her. He quickly understood that Yelena had also been in on the job, and his plan was to send some of his men to Italy to get the diamonds back.

Without suspecting anything, Yelena had gotten ahead of everybody by entrusting me with the gift to Ilona. Then her luck turned, and I nearly got myself killed. Bitch. “I’m tired.”

“You’ll be able to rest soon.”

The cops released me the next day. The DA told me to stay in France a few more days for final verifications and then told me that the case would probably be taken to court, and that I would have to come back. I was able to go back to Marc’s place to collect my things, particularly the jacket I’d been wearing that evening, which I’d intentionally left there. Inside was Ilona’s cloakroom ticket.

I’m a really, really patient guy.

Rue de la Santé