Murder in Belleville (2 page)

B
ERNARD BERGE, FORTY-FIVE YEARS
old and prematurely gray, stared out from his ministry office window onto Place Beauvau, dreading the imminent phone call. He pushed his round-rimmed glasses up on his forehead and rubbed his weary eyes. He felt in his pockets again for the blue pills. Only two left.

Across the square the flickering blue lights of the Elysee presidential palace blurred in the spring night. Bernard hadn’t slept in days. Sixty-two hours, to be exact, and he didn’t think he would ever sleep again. The sleeping pills had stopped working.

A loud knock sounded on his office door. He’d left instructions not to be disturbed. Who could this be?

“Oui,”
he said. “Is this urgent?”

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.

“A
NAi’S, WHERE ARE YOU?
” Aimee 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, Aimee,” Anais 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, Aimee thought.

Aimee felt for a pulse. It was weak, but steady. Aimee shook Anais’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, Anais?” she asked, her voice soothing, as she pulled the sign away. She knelt down and took off Anais’s sunglasses. Luckily for her, they’d shielded her eyes from the blast.

Anais blinked several times, her eyes regaining focus.

“Where’s S-S-Sylvie?”

“Was Sylvie getting into the Mercedes?”

Anais nodded.

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

Anais blinked again and focused on her, growing lucid.

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

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

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

“They’re coming back,” Anais said.

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

“Who?”

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

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

Out of breath, Aimee 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?” Aimee asked.

“The ones who followed me,” Anais said.

Loud shouting came from the street. What if the men broke down the door? Torn between confronting them or looking for an escape, Aimee 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,” Aimee said, pulling out her penlight.

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

Aimee helped her stand up.

“Put your weight on me,” Aimee 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, Aimee 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.

“Anais, did you drop this?”

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

Aimee 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, Anais?”

“Just keep going, Aimee,” Anais 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 Anais sit down.

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

On Aimee’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. Aimee 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.

Aimee tried not to panic.

Returning to Ana’fs, she noticed the buttery leather Dior bag strap tangled around Anais’s shoulder. The last time Aimee had seen Anais 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.
Aimee 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 Anais’s shoulder. “Please, Anais, tell me what’s going on,” Aimee said. “Were these men trying to kill you?”

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

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

“I wish to God I knew,” she said.

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

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

“How—who is she?”

“The sow my husband slept with,” Anais 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.” Anais began sobbing again. “Philippe, he’s such a weakling.”

Aimee wiped Anais’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 Aimee.

Aimee 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. Aimee figured they came from the boulevard. More pounding came from somewhere outside the building. Louder and stronger. Startled, Aimee almost dropped the Fat’ma symbol.

“Open up!” shouted a loud voice.

Aimee stuck the charm back in Anais’s purse.

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

Aimee steadied her hand on Anais.

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

Aimee brushed Anais’s skirt off and helped her to stand.

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

“Can you walk?” Aimee asked.

Anais nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She heard wood splintering and figured Anais had landed.

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

Aimee 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 Anais. Aimee 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,” Anais whispered.

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

“Let’s go,” Aimee said.

Anais crawled on her hands and knees, low moans escaping from her. When Aimee reached to help her, she realized that Anais’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.

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

Anais managed a weak smile. “Forgive me, Aimee, for pulling you into this.”

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

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

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

Aimee half dragged and half carried Anais 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 Metro, 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.

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

Aimee set Anais down under a corrugated overhang jammed with old bikes and mopeds. They were stuck in a muddy garage lot.

She couldn’t leave Anais here. She tried to think, but her shoulders ached, her legs were scratched with glass cuts, and she wondered what in hell she was doing with a minister’s wife who was being chased by men who’d probably planted the car bomb under his mistress’s car.

What could she do now?

Barbed wire crested the chain-link fence. But only a Bricard lock held the gate. She kept Anais’s bag around her, then reached for her makeup bag inside her backpack. She found the Swedish stainless-steel tweezers. Within two minutes she’d jimmied the lock open, muffling the clinking sounds with her sweater sleeve. That done, she wiped the sweat off her brow with her other sleeve and surveyed the bikes strewn around Anais.

No way would she be able to pedal, steer, and grip Anais. She was exhausted. She noticed a beat-up but serviceable Motoguzzi moped by an oil can. It was like her own moped, but a lot older. And with more horsepower. One thing she knew about mo-peds—they could run on fumes for several kilometers, and if the spark plug was still good they might make an escape.

After unscrewing the spark plug, she blew on it to get rid of the carbon, scraped corrosion off the pronged head with her tweezers, and screwed it back on. She shook the body from side to side to slosh any gas around, pulled out the choke, and prayed. She started pedaling. Silence. She kept pedaling and was finally rewarded by a cough. Good, she thought. Temperamental as these Italian bikes might be, with patience and coaxing they would deliver. With much more encouragement, the cough had developed into a full-throated hum, and she hoisted Anais up and urged her tourniqueted leg over the moped’s passenger ledge. Anais’s eyes fluttered, then widened. She pushed Aimee’s shoulder and tried to get off.

“No!” Anais yelled. “I can’t do this.”

“Got a better idea?” Aimee asked.

In the distance the sound of a siren came closer.

“I hate motorcycles,” she wailed.

“Bien, this is a moped,” Aimee said, gunning the engine and popping into first. “Hold on!”

Anais grabbed Aimee’s waist.

“No matter what,” Aimee said, “don’t let go!”

Aimee reached rue Ste-Marthe as the SAMU emergency van turned into rue Jean Moinon. Odd. Why hadn’t the fire truck arrived first?

A black-and-white
flic
car cruised from rue de Sambre-et-Meuse, blocking the shortcut to the Goncourt Metro.

“Let’s ask them for help, Anais.”

“Non,
nothing must connect to Philippe,” Anais said.

Aimee’s heart sank as Anais’s fingers squeezed her in a steellike grip.