Cédric Fabre - Marseille Noir

“It’s horrible, why would anybody go after such a nice animal?” says the fat guy.

“You should get another one,” she advises him. “Such a nice little dog!”

All the compassion in the world is expressed in the woman’s voice, but from her very first words, Maurice understands that she would gladly bring back the death penalty for killers of little dogs and, as if the cold blade of the guillotine had landed on his neck, he feels a shiver pass through him — the Yorkshire terrier! The terrier is no longer around, running between his master’s legs. It’s the dog that died, crushed by its master’s weight. That sinister crack.

“It’s still too soon,” laments the man with the bandaged head. “Later, maybe. ”

Maurice can still hear the guy’s voice without understanding his words any better. He walks away, amazed that no one stops him. The sun is shining at the other end of the street. He’s almost there. He’s there! He turns. and starts running like mad toward cours Julien, its fountain and its trees, the tables of the restaurants set for lunch, and toward all those people, toward life, this beautiful life, toward freedom!

The fat guy isn’t dead and in a second it’s ancient history in Maurice’s head. God knows what version of his unfortunate four-legged companion’s death the fat guy has invented for his neighbors. But that filthy asshole certainly won’t have bragged about his attempted rape. It’s no longer their concern. Maurice and Sarah are free.

Belsunce

Kevin posted the selfie with his head down and a big smile, squeezing the crotch of the green bull statue on display under the Ombrière — the polished steel sunroof in front of the Vieux-Port. He was enjoying the warm, springlike weather of this February afternoon in 2013. The city was the European Capital of Culture for the year. Herds of painted plastic animals lorded it all over the city. Kevin was a mule, working for the narco-jihad. One of thousands. He’d taken a certain pleasure in roaming through Europe for two years now, successfully trafficking cocaine and heroin, covering his traces for the anti-Jihadist cells as well as those of OCTRIS (the Central Office for the Repression of Trafficking Illicit Narcotics). The young man did good work. His predecessor’s corpse had been found in a battered van converted into a whorehouse at the Belgian border. That asshole! He tried to outsmart everybody, Kevin sneered, as he posted self-portraits with a huge grin on his Facebook page. The mule before him, a cocaine addict, had begun to do business for himself and would subtract a few kilos of powder from the Organization to sell them off on the side. After slashing the guy’s neck on the orders of his bosses, Kevin had relieved the guy of seventy-eight little packets, close to 568 grams of coke that the man had been planning to sneak into Belgium. He had a spasm of nausea when he recalled the scene of his disemboweling. So much shit in one body!

Kevin got high a lot, but he had a strict rule: never touch the employer’s merchandise. This was his eighth mission and for the first time in his life he’d put a little money aside. Seventy thousand euros, to be exact, stashed in a plastered-up hole in the wall of his father’s house in Roubaix. While waiting for better days, he lived an ordinary life as a tourist out for a good time, with his camera and videocam slung across his shoulder. He’d been recruited by a guy who called himself an imam in la Santé where Kevin had spent three years for armed robbery. To work in the narco-jihad, you had to convert to Islam, but it was a pure formality. The young man also took advantage of those missions to pay visits to the narco’s branches — fly-by-night mosques, garages, or cellars in poor neighborhoods of the cities he passed through. Places run by ex-hoods turned apocalyptic preachers who rounded up young misfits dreaming of taking up arms in the name of God. Puny little runts on Rohypnol who trained for combat holed up in their rooms watching DVDs of guerillas in kaffiyehs. On those occasions Kevin would put on the traditional kashaba. He made a point of being scrupulous in all things.

Above all, he had a good time screwing as much as he could at the expense of his new employers. Sex had been his great passion since kindergarten, where he had taken advantage of his tender age to thrust his finger into plump-cheeked little girls. None of those pink-ribboned babies ever complained, Kevin remembered, as he stood under the sunroof at the Vieux-Port. In exchange, I’d have them eat the scabs on my knees. I’m going to collect as much money as I can and get out of here, far away, Mexico or Venezuela. I could see myself with a cushy life as a gaucho on my steed, galloping over the pampa. A kickass horse with a leather saddle branded with my initials. I feel like fucking, he said to himself as he scanned the lovers gathered under the Ombrière, busy taking pictures of themselves kissing. The Organization had forbidden him from approaching women in the street. Too risky. Abou Salem, his main contact, had told him many times that the sisters of the Revolution were there for that. Those women had girls whose main function was to satisfy the needs of the warrior brothers.

“If you want a war wife,” Abou Salem had said, “the Organization will provide one for you.”

I don’t feel like having one of their girls, Kevin thought. A bunch of pretentious females with martyr smiles on their faces. You listen to them, they’re all saints. Talk about sexual jihad, they’re all ass, and tits under their veils!

In Alicante, after he’d sent a coded message to Abou Salem, the two women who came to see him at the hotel didn’t speak a word of French. They were Bulgarians who’d come to the area to pick tomatoes. They would prostitute themselves from time to time. He’d done a line of coke and those whores had taken advantage, stealing a thousand euros from him.

Three days is a long time in this lousy place, Kevin said to himself. Marseille is a dirty city and scares the shit out of you. They Kalash all over the place. You get whacked easy as a fly under a swatter, he told himself, thinking of the gangland shootings that punctuated daily life in the Phocaean city. Abou Salem lied to me when he promised it was a fun town. A fair under the smoke, are you kidding? A plastic zoo. Sunday outings for old people and if you’re twenty, death at the foot of the hills. It’s a lot more fun up north in Roubaix!

He grimaced in disgust as he stepped out of the way to let a mother and her huge stroller go by. Clusters of parents were taking photos of kids perched on the fiberglass animals. Kevin stood there for a while, savoring the contagious excitement of the kids clutching the animals’ necks. He, too, was excited at the idea of perching there with his legs hanging down, like on a merry-go-round. He promised himself a little nocturnal walk in front of city hall, to climb on the slanted back of the baby giraffe with red and orange spots. The muzzle of that stupid horned beast with a red mouth is at least two yards above the ground, he told himself, thrilled by the idea of mounting it. For a moment, he saw himself as a little boy of five wrapped up in his parka, squeezing the varnished neck of the wooden merry-go-round horse as hard as he could at the Christmas market in Roubaix. His dad, with his bloated face, would take big puffs on his Gitane as he encouraged him in his booming voice, holding his son’s lollipop in one hand.

He spent the afternoon posting selfies on his Facebook page. Kevin, reflected under the high steel umbrella: short black hair, a thin, beardless face, small translucent gray eyes, a well-defined mouth with its thick upper lip, and the receding chin of a skinny kitten. He was twenty-five, hated his soft red mouth, too feminine for his taste. Kevin, snapped in front of the ferry station with the Edmond Dantès in the background ready to raise anchor for the Frioul archipelago. Kevin, in front of the Olympique de Marseille store, the selfie he liked best, posing proudly with his brand-new Adidas sports bag, its shoulder strap almost strangling him. Kevin, next to a seagull pecking away at the remains of his shish kebab. After taking that photo, he gave the animal a big kick and broke its wing. The gull tried to take off but fell back on its clawed feet with a shriek. Kevin instantly grabbed it by its broken wing and flung it into the water where it landed on beer cans and heaps of garbage floating on the surface.