AL02 - Murder in Belleville Page 2

In answer the heavy wooden door opened slowly. His mother, a small white-haired sparrow of a woman with deep-set black eyes, strode in. Without removing her wrinkled raincoat, she planted herself in front of his desk in the chilly office.

  “Maman!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  From the reception area beyond his open door, several heads looked up. He hurried to the door and shut it.

  “Bernard, as God is my witness,” she said, “I can’t believe you will allow this.”

  “Sit down, Maman.”

  His mother remained standing and pulled open her bag with difficulty, then set a much-thumbed carte de sejour down on his desk. “Your stepfather earned this residence permit. And Bernard, you studied the Bible. You know God’s higher law.” Her voice quavered, but her gaze held steady. “Put your hand on it; swear to me you will not deport any victims.”

  “Be reasonable, Martian.” Bernard Berge sat down heavily in his chair. How could she confront him like this?

  “Did nothing you saw of the repressions make sense?” Her hands shook. “Forget this business, but not your conscience.”

  “Right now that’s impossible, Maman.”

  “How can you say that?” She sat down. “You were born in Algiers.” She shook her head. “You spoke Arabic as fluently as French until we got to Marseilles.”

  “This immigration issue is different,” he said. “These sans’papiers stayed after their visas expired. They’re illegal. Not like us pieds’noirs; we were born in Algeria.”

  “Did our little Andre die in vain?”

  Bernard flinched as though she’d slapped him. His younger brother, Andre, had been torn from his crib by rebel fellaghas and hurled down the village well. Lots of babies had, in retaliation for the French massacres of whole villages in the countryside. But it had been years before he’d learned this. He never ceased to wonder how his mother could live with such pain.

  “Maybe I’ve been silent too long,” she said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “I instilled values, raised you as a socialist.” She shook her head. Her eyes darkened. “What happened?”

  “I’m just a fonctionnaire responsible for unpopular policy, Maman. Antoine has lived your dream,” Bernard said. He stood up, bracing himself for their ongoing argument. His half-brother Antoine ran the pediatric ward of a major hospital and a free clinic in Marseilles.

  “But these sans-papiers Africains, these Arabes… they are just people, nonl” Her voice softened, pleading. “As pieds-noirs we came to France, but we were not welcomed as real French. We were outsiders, and still are in some places.”

  “It’s the law, Maman. If I don’t do this, someone else will.”

  “The Nazis said that, too,” she said, shaking her head.

  Bernard paced to the tall ministry windows and looked down on rue des Saussaies. Once the Gestapo had detained whomever they wished in the police headquarters a block away. Lantern lights reflected long quivering rectangles in the Elysee’s fountain-fed pools.

  Why couldn’t she understand?

  “Mothers and children,” she sighed. “How can you deport them?”

  Bernard’s head was splitting. He rubbed his eyes again. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone?

  “We have laws in France assuring liberte, egalite, fraterniti,” he said. “My job is to protect that, follow the ministry policy. You know that, Maman. I don’t design these directives.”

  “You look like you haven’t slept,” she said. She rose slowly, her eyes boring into his. She turned and walked to the door. “If I had your job, Bernard, I wouldn’t be able to sleep either.”

  “Maman, please be reasonable,” he said. “I’ve served in the Palais de Justice, presided as a juge d’administratif. I must follow the law.”

  “Bernard, you have a choice,” she said, turning to face him again. “But if you make the wrong one, never defile my house again.”

  He stood at the window and listened to her shuffle away. Buried fragments from his childhood rose up in his mind—the muezzins’ call to prayer at sunrise, the long, dusty lines for bread, the blue mosaic fountain trickling in their arched courtyard, the cries in the darkness as the souk in their quartier burst aflame during the riots.

  His phone rang. Bernard debated whether or not to answer, then picked it up.

  “Le Ministre Guittard regrets to say that immigration orders can be ignored no longer,” came the smooth voice of Lucien Nedelec, the undersecretary. “Your department, Directeur Berge, has been ordered to uphold the deportation policy. Please proceed.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I understand,” Bernard said.

  The peach-colored sunset had already dipped over the Seine outside Bernard’s window when his intercom buzzed an hour later.

  “Shall I send in the caporal, Directeur?.” his secretary said. “He has no appointment.”

  The Elysee Palace must have come up with a plan and wanted his input.

  “Tell them I’ll join them in a moment.”

  Would he be served up to the country and the media on a platter, a convenient scapegoat for the controversial policy? He’d already been denounced by his mother. Could it get any worse?

  He buttoned his collar, reknotted his tie, and slipped his suit jacket on.

  The RAID paramilitary team stood in the vaulted hallway.

  “Directeur Berge, accompany us, please,” said a steel-eyed man dressed in riot gear.

  Bernard stood, holding his head high, then nodded. “Lead the way, Monsieur.”

  Bernard followed them past halls carpeted with eighteenth-century rugs and mirrored walls opening onto a sweeping staircase and a soaring, thirty-foot ceiling. More like a museum than a working ministry, he’d always thought. In Place Beauvau, he was bundled into a waiting black Renault. Once inside, the steel-eyed man pointed to the hazy northeast of Paris. “We’re escorting you there.”

  “Aren’t we going to the Elysee Palace?”

  “They’re waiting for you at the church,” he said.

  “Who’s waiting?” Bernard asked, puzzled.

  “The hunger strikers in Notre-Dame de la Croix.”

  “Aren’t there trained negotiators there?” Bernard said, his voice cracking. He knew a crowd of sans-papiers had taken over a church in Belleville. Some were staging a hunger strike to protest deportation.

  “Seems you’ve been requested.”

  “Requested?” Bernard asked.

  “You’re special,” he said, nodding to the driver who pulled into traffic.

  He had been right, Bernard thought woefully. Things could get worse.

  “ANAi’S, WHERE ARE YOU?” Aimée shouted. At least now she could hear herself. The intense heat drove her to move, to shake off the memories of her father.

  She crawled along the cobbles, then pulled herself up. Someone was crying; she heard yelling in the distance. Her body felt as if someone had beaten her all over with a bat. Long and hard.

  “Over here, Aimée,” Anaïs moaned, sprawled on the sidewalk. She was pinned down by a large appartement a buer sign, ripped from an adjacent building. The rental sign had probably saved her life, Aimée thought.

  Aimée felt for a pulse. It was weak, but steady. Aimée shook Anaïs’s shoulders. She groaned. Strands of gold chain, muddied and twisted, drooped from her neck. Her pigeon-eye pink Dior jacket was dotted with bloody red clumps and her blond hair was matted. Black vinyl fragments littered the street.

  “Can you hear me, Anaïs?” she asked, her voice soothing, as she pulled the sign away. She knelt down and took off Anaïs’s sunglasses. Luckily for her, they’d shielded her eyes from the blast.

  Anaïs blinked several times, her eyes regaining focus.

  “Where’s S-S-Sylvie?”

  “Was Sylvie getting into the Mercedes?”

  Anaïs nodded.

  “She’s gone, Anaïs,” Aimée said, taking Anaïs’s chin in her hands and making her meet her gaze.

  Anaïs blinked again and focuse
d on her, growing lucid.

  “Your hands are shaking, Aimée,” she said.

  “Explosions do that to me,” Aimée said, aware of the burning car just meters away. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Anaïs saw that there was blood on her skirt. She looked up, past Aimée, her eyes widening in alarm.

  “They’re coming back,” Anaïs said.

  Aimée scanned the street. People peered from their windows. Several men were running down the street.

  “Who?”

  But Anaïs had scrambled on all fours, pulling Aimée after her into the number 20 bis door, which had blown ajar.

  “Close the door before they see us!” Anaïs panted.

  Out of breath, Aimée crawled in, then pushed the massive door shut. Ahead, the red button of a timer light switch gleamed, and she pressed it. The damp floor and dented wall mailboxes were lit by a naked bulb overhead. Of the several mailboxes only one held a name: “E. Grandet.”

  To the right of the staircase, a narrow drafty passage led to the rear courtyard. Newspapers, thrown in a dusty heap, sat under the spiral stairwell.

  “Who are those men?” Aimée asked.

  “The ones who followed me,” Anaïs said.

  Loud shouting came from the street. What if the men broke down the door? Torn between confronting them or looking for an escape, Aimée froze.

  Now the voices came from outside the massive door. Loud whacks made the door shudder, as if they were attacking the door’s kickplate. Her fear propelled her to action.

  “Let’s go,” Aimée said, pulling out her penlight.

  “My legs … don’t work well,” Anaïs panted.

  Aimée helped her stand up.

  “Put your weight on me,” Aimée said. Together they hobbled down the drafty passage leading toward the back.

  Her thin beam flickered off the dripping stone wall; moss furred in green patches. The walls reeked of mildew and urine.

  April in Paris wasn’t like the song, Aimée thought, and couldn’t remember when it had been.

  Something glinted in the cracks, where stone joined the gutter. She bent down, shined her penlight. In the yawning crevice, an indecently large pearl shimmered.

  She pried it out and rubbed the slime off with her sleeve.

  “Anaïs, did you drop this?”

  “Not my style,” she said, breathing hard.

  Aimée slipped the pearl into her back pocket. As she edged past the rotted wooden door, she was glad she’d worn leather boots. Too bad they had two-inch heels.

  “Who are they, Anaïs?”

  “Just keep going, Aimée,” Anaïs said, panting.

  She headed for an old metal fonderie workshop in the courtyard. The fluttering of disturbed pigeons greeted them.

  The building smelled of garbage. Her small penlight beam revealed several blue plastic sacks of trash. Unusual, she thought. The building appeared deserted. Not only that, but the garbage in Paris was collected every day.

  Slants of moonlight illuminated part of the rain-slicked cobbles and wet walls inside. Empty green Ricard bottles lay strewn in what appeared to be the main part of the old workshop.

  She helped Anaïs sit down.

  “Let me check for a back exit,” Aimée said. “Take a rest.”

  On Aimée’s left, twisted pipes and a network of frayed electric lines trailed up the building interior to the remaining bit of black roof.

  Through the hole above loomed the dark dome of the sky, and a yellow glow outlined the rooftops of Belleville. Aimée stumbled on the slippery concrete, caught her heel and lurched outside. She grabbed hold of something rusty that flaked in her hands. Straightening up, she took another step. She skidded and lost her balance but held on to her penlight, shining the beam ahead.

  A stone wall five or six feet high stood in front of her. Jagged glass, like a string of grinning teeth, lined the top.

  No exit.

  Aimée tried not to panic.

  Returning to Ana’fs, she noticed the buttery leather Dior bag strap tangled around Anaïs’s shoulder. The last time Aimée had seen Anaïs she’d also been in Dior, radiant and walking down the steps of St-Severin on the arm of her new husband, Philippe, as the cathedral bells chimed over the square on the rive gauche. Aimée remembered dancing with Martine and her father at the candlelit reception at the Crillon, and Ana’fs giggling while Philippe drank champagne from her silk shoe.

  She shook Anaïs’s shoulder. “Please, Anaïs, tell me what’s going on,” Aimée said. “Were these men trying to kill you?”

  Anaïs gagged, turned, and threw up all over the empty Ricard bottles in the fonderie. The delayed reaction worried Aimée—had the realization just hit Anaïs, or did she have internal injuries?

  Anaïs wiped her jaw with her sleeve and nodded. Then she burst into tears, sobbing.

  “I wish to God I knew,” she said.

  Aimée pulled out her phone to get help, but her battery was dead. They were stuck.

  “Nom de Dieu!” Anaïs said. “That pute Sylvie, she’s the cause—” Anaïs choked.

  “How—who is she?”

  “The sow my husband slept with,” Anaïs said, catching air. She straightened up, then took deep breaths through her nose. “On a regular basis. Sylvie Coudray. It was over. But I think she blackmailed him.” Anaïs began sobbing again. “Philippe, he’s such a weakling.”

  Aimée wiped Anaïs’s mouth clean and smoothed her hair back. She knelt closer, trying to ignore the stench.

  “What did Sylvie give you?”

  “Who knows?” she pleaded, her eyes wide in terror. She reached inside the handbag. Her hand came back with something metal, the size of a makeup brush, and passed it to Aimée.

  Aimée recognized the five-fingered brass hand covered with Arabic writing, a good luck ‘hand of Fat’ma’ strung with hanging blue beads and a third eye. A talisman to ward off evil spirits.

  Sirens sounded in the distance; the hee-haw got closer. Aimée figured they came from the boulevard. More pounding came from somewhere outside the building. Louder and stronger. Startled, Aimée almost dropped the Fat’ma symbol.

  “Open up!” shouted a loud voice.

  Aimée stuck the charm back in Anaïs’s purse.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Anaïs said.

  Aimée steadied her hand on Anaïs.

  “What kind of hell is this?” Anaïs said, covering her ears with her blood-spattered hands, and rocking back and forth. “You’ve got to help—so sordid,” she gulped, grabbing Aimée’s arm.

  Aimée brushed Anaïs’s skirt off and helped her to stand.

  “Philippe’s a minister. I can’t let them find me here!” Anaïs’s knees buckled.

  “Can you walk?” Aimée asked.

  Anaïs nodded.

  From the passage, she heard scraping metal noises and footsteps.

  Aimée looked around the courtyard. They were hemmed in by the U-shaped building and stone wall.

  Behind Aimée and Anaïs, the passage’s wooden door banged. The footsteps pounded closer. Aimée figured the only way for them to escape was over the stone wall topped by jagged glass.

  Aimée helped Anaïs to the wall, then cupped her hands. “Climb. Be careful of the glass.”

  Aimée winced as Anaïs stepped a high heel on her hands. She heaved her up and heard Anaïs groan. Aimée braced herself and pushed Anaïs’s slender frame over the wall. For a small woman, Anafe felt heavy.

  “Go on,” Aimée hissed. “Let yourself drop to the other side.”

  She heard wood splintering and figured Anaïs had landed.

  “Run toward the boulevard. Whatever happens, just get to the Métro,” Aimée said. Getting back to the car would be impossible.

  Aimée climbed and gripped the jutting stone. She shimmied herself up trying to find footholds, afraid to cut herself to shreds on the glass if she got stuck. Her fingertips had just reached the ledge with broken glass when she heard voices. She had to move and
forget the pain.

  Stretching her leg as far as she could and scraping her heel across the stone, she hit something flat and pulled herself up.

  She took a deep breath, then pushed off the wall into the yard of the next building. She landed on her feet. No Anaïs. Aimée took off, running, into a disused garage lot, but slowed down to avoid banging into something and alerting the neighbors. A heap of rusted bicycles and once-chrome car bumpers were piled close to each other.

  “Over here,” Anaïs whispered.

  Aimée narrowed her eyes and saw Anaïs crouched on her knees in the mud behind a faded Pirelli tire sign.

  “Let’s go,” Aimée said.

  Anaïs crawled on her hands and knees, low moans escaping from her. When Aimée reached to help her, she realized that Anaïs’s legs were cut to ribbons from the glass.

  “I tried to walk, but my legs won’t hold me,” she said, her face a chalky white in the moonlight.

  Aimée looked again and saw blood oozing from Anaïs’s thigh, soaking her skirt. If she didn’t stop it, Anaïs would pass out. She couldn’t get Anaïs this far and leave her. Aimée quickly looked around—why didn’t Anaïs wear a silk foulard around her neck, like every other Parisienne? She grabbed the closest thing—a deflated tire tube—and looped it around Anaïs’s leg as a tourniquet. She tightened it, and the bleeding stopped.

  Anaïs managed a weak smile. “Forgive me, Aimée, for pulling you into this.”

  “You’re being really brave,” Aimée said, hoisting her up and linking her arm around Anaïs. She brushed the hair from Anaïs’s eyes. “I know it hurts. Try to walk; we’ll get to the Métro. It’s not far.”

  “But look at me! What will people think?” Anaïs asked, gesturing toward her leg and blood-spattered suit.

  She was right, Aimée thought. But what choice did they have?

  Aimée half dragged and half carried Anaïs several meters through the abandoned lot, puddled and muddy, past the semi-roofed garage. She couldn’t keep this up all the way to the Métro, and she doubted the chances of catching a taxi here. Not to mention staying out of the sight of curious neighbors. Running away from an explosion wouldn’t look good to the flics.

  Anaïs grew heavier, more like dead weight. Aimée noticed that Anaïs’s eyes were closing, and her body went limp.