Cara Black - Murder in Belleville

He slit the envelope. It took a long time, the white paper ripping and fighting him. And there it was, simple and irrevocable. The long thread back. The summons to his roots.

He’d be damned if he’d give in. The old fight blazed in him again. Human rights had to be fought for, otherwise we’re all animals!

Everything he’d spent his life working for—thirty years of it—would go down the pissoir.

He stared at the messenger, whom he didn’t know.

“No deal,” he said, shaking his head.

Sunday Late Afternoon

DÉDÉ’S GAZE REACHED OVER their heads as they shouldered the gym bags. Aimée spun around. Several men who could be Muktar’s relatives approached from both directions.

“Dédé” she said. “Who set the car bomb?”

“Let’s talk at my place,” Dédé said.

The mecs moved closer, their eyes locked on her and René as if they were rabbits. Rabbits caught between their crosshairs.

“Crowds make me nervous,” René said.

“Me too,” Aimée took his arm, edging out from the trellis toward the open grass. Three uniformed CRS, armed with machine guns slung over their chests, were visible through the grilled fence on rue des Couronnes.

Almost a shout away.

“Keep going, René.” She and René kept edging over the grass. Large signs proclaimed PELOUSE INTERDITÉ, but she didn’t care if she stepped on the grass.

The way the mecs’ jacket pockets bulged bothered her.

She and René were out in the open; to their left was a wooden playground structure. If only they they could get the attention of the CRS.

“Put those bags down,” Dédé said, his chest heaving. Several of his shirt buttons were undone, revealing gold chains.

“Dédé, I asked you a question,” she said, ready to pull out her Beretta.

“Try to behave, eh?” Dédé said, his teeth white and smiling. “Let’s work out the misunderstanding. Just hand those over. Let’s keep this civilized, eh.”

“Civilized?” she screamed. “Muktar called me nasty things in Arabic.”

The men Dédé summoned had disappeared up the trellised steps. An unreadable look crossed his perspiring face.

“You little sabpe!” Dédé said.

“Little?” she said. “I’m taller than you.”

“You’re dead,” Dédé’said, his eyes vacant. “And you’ve dug a lot of graves next to yours,” he added before disappearing.

The CRS headed through the open gates toward the grass.

“Some trouble here?” asked one of the stout-legged CRS.

“Yes, officer,” she said. “Thank God you’re here.”

And she meant it. She wasn’t often happy to see the CRS.

Sunday Evening

BERNARD SPRAWLED AT HIS desk, opening a new pill bottle, the phone on hold to the interministériel hot line cradled in his neck. That evening heightened media attention had erupted into a free-for-all when film stars, a rock mogul, and a political observer from L’ivenement joined the hunger strikers. Channel France 2 demanded access for news coverage inside the church.

Meanwhile Guittard kept the ministry in limbo, back-pedaling on the arrest and roundup order but still not rescinding the eight-hour deadline.

His other phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Finally he picked it up.

“Directeur Berge, can you speak to speculation as to whether Mustafa Hamid’s AFL links to the fundamentalists in Algiers will influence the power struggle with the Algerian military?” The reporter’s grating voice continued, not waiting for a response. “Being a pacifist, does Hamid eschew the military’s stance in Algiers?”

“Why are you asking me about Algeria?” Bernard asked in surprise. “We’re dealing with sans-papiers, an internal French immigration issue under le code civil. Defining who is a citizen and allowed to stay in France presents no forum for civil unrest in Algeria.”

He slammed the phone down. Who had started that rumor?

Bernard put his head down on his desk. How far could this go? Hamid’s reputation in all communities over the years was stellar. It could be said that he practiced what he preached more than anyone. He thought back to Hamid, remembering his remark about violence. Was Hamid a pawn? Could this affect Algerian politics?

Even if Bernard cared, what could he do about Algeria anymore? Deep inside, Bernard realized he’d given up long ago.

He’d said good-bye from the crowded ship’s deck. He remembered the smoke from the burning medina, the stench from the hanging bodies rotting in the sun on the Esplanade, and the port shaking from the oil-storage-tank explosions. He’d clutched his slain father’s watch and held his mother’s hand as the sun died over the port of Algiers.

ON THE FLOOR OF René’s studio, Aimée and René emptied the gym bag. A Prada purse, sleek and black tumbled out. The perfect match to the Prada shoes she’d found in Eugénie’s trash. Not many could afford to throw away Prada shoes with a broken heel.

“ST196” said the cover of a folder. She opened it. Black-and-white photos were stapled together. Shots of dark-skinned Algerian men, in front of a concrete background. Numbers attached by safety pins to their shirts.

But why?

Something bothered her.

“Doesn’t this all seem strange to you?”

“In what way?” René asked, as he sliced a large, crusty slab of baguette stuffed with tapenade, slivers of smoked salmon, goat cheese, and ruby tomatoes. He handed one half to Aimée.

“Why keep it in that dump I escaped from?” she said, taking a bite. “Why didn’t the boss have it? Why threaten me at the circus?”

“They deal in explosives,” Rend said. “Suppose they’re in at the deep end—not used to blackmailing ministers or their mistresses. Let’s say it’s not Dédé’s specialty.”

That made sense. She ate looking out his window onto dimly lit rue de la Reynie, which narrowed into a passage to Place Michelet. A man’s shaved head, like a thumb, caught the light.

“But I know what you mean,” René said, wiping mustard from his goatee.

She kept watching the figure. When the headlamp from a passing motor scooter illuminated his face she recognized Claude, Philippe’s goon.

She rolled the fat sandwich in nearby computer paper, stuck it in her pocket, and gathered the photos.

“Hate to eat and run but…” she said, buttoning up her black three-quarter-length leather coat. “I’m going to give this to Philippe. See if this will loosen someone’s grip on his nuts.”

“Succinctly put,” René said. “Meanwhile?”

“I’d like to leave gracefully,” she grinned, “without any fanfare from that bald mec Claude, who’s watching the apartment.”

“Philippe’s thug?”

She nodded, ruffling Miles Davis’s furry neck.

“He knows your car, René.”

René tossed her a set of keys to his old motor scooter. “Take the underground passage from the basement to my garage.”

“Can Miles Davis stay?”

“Bien sûr,” René said.

“Mind your manners, furball,” she said, slipping the keys into her pocket.

SHE DROVE René’s Vespa, an apple green remnant of his Sorbonne days. Passing the curled metal lanterns in Place des Vosges, she saw Claude following her in a small van, his lights visible in her wobbling side view mirror.

Why hadn’t Martine spoken to Philippe and gotten Claude off her tail? She gunned up boulevard Richard Lenoir wondering how to get rid of Claude. Where had he been when they’d been cornered by Dédé in Pare de Belleville?

She stayed close behind the green bus traveling up the boulevard. Claude kept a discreet distance, but she realized he was pacing his truck. He probably thought she didn’t notice him, the stupidel Well she’d make that work to her advantage.