Total Chaos (20 page)

I smiled. Just a few days ago, this had been a bachelor's house, and now three women were playing rummy in it, at ten minutes to midnight! Everything was tidy. The meal was ready. The dishes had been done. On the terrace, washing was drying. There in front of me was every man's dream: a mother, a sister, and a whore!

I heard them chuckling behind my back. They seemed to have established a kind of gentle rapport. My bad mood vanished as quickly as it had come. I was happy to see them there. I liked all three of them. A pity they couldn't be combined in one woman. I'd have fallen in love with her.

“Are you playing?” Marie-Lou asked me.

H
onorine made stuffed peppers like no one else could. Romanian style, she called it. She'd fill the peppers with a stuffing of rice, sausage meat and a little beef, well salted and peppered, then place them in an earthenware casserole and cover them with water, add tomato coulis, thyme, bay and saw-wort, and let them cook on a very low flame, without covering. They tasted wonderful, especially if you poured a spoonful of
crème fraîche
over them at the last moment.

I watched them playing rummy as I ate. To 51. When you have 51 points in your game, a tierce, fifty, a hundred, or four aces, you put your cards on the table. If another player has already folded, you can add to your game the cards he's missing, which follow or precede his tierce or fifty. You can also take his rummy, the joker, which he may have put down to replace a missing card. The winner is the player who manages to get rid of all his cards.

It's a simple game, but it requires a certain amount of concentration if you want to win. Marie-Lou was relying on luck, and she was losing. The fight was between Honorine and Babette. Each was watching the cards the other was discarding. But Honorine had spent many afternoons playing rummy, and although she acted surprised whenever she won a game, I'd have put odds on her coming out on top. She was playing to win.

As they played, I happened to glance at the washing drying on the line. In the middle of my shirts, underpants and socks, I noticed a pair of white panties and a bra. I looked at Marie-Lou. She'd put on one of my T-shirts. Her breasts showed beneath the cotton. My eyes traveled the length of her legs and thighs, up as far as her ass. I realized she was naked beneath the T-shirt, and started to get a hard-on. Marie-Lou caught me looking at her and guessed what I was thinking. She gave me a gorgeous smile, winked, and crossed her legs, slightly embarrassed.

There followed an exchange of looks. From Babette to Marie-Lou. From Babette to me. From me to Babette. From Honorine to Babette, then to Marie-Lou. I felt ill at ease. I stood up and went to take a shower. Under the water, I was still hard.

Honorine left around half after midnight. She'd won five games, as against Babette's four and Marie-Lou's one. As she kissed me goodnight, I was sure she must be wondering what I was going to do with two women in my house.

Marie-Lou announced that she was going to take a bath. I watched her as she went to the bathroom. I couldn't help myself.

“She's really very beautiful,” Babette said, with a slight smile on her face.

I nodded. “So are you.”

It was true. She'd pulled her hair back in a pony tail. Her eyes seemed huge, and her mouth bigger. She was forty, but she was more than a match for any number of young cuties. Even Marie-Lou. Marie-Lou was young, and her beauty was obvious and immediate. Babette's, on the other hand, was radiant. Enjoying life keeps you young, I thought.

“Let it go,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me slightly.

“Did she say something to you?”

“We had time to get acquainted. It makes no difference. That girl has her head on her shoulders. Are you planning to help her get free of her pimp?”

“Is that what she told you?”

“She didn't tell me anything. I'm asking you.”

“There'll always be a pimp. Unless she wants to drop out. If she really wants it and she's brave enough. It's not so easy, you know. The girls are kept on a very tight rein.” I was talking in platitudes. Marie-Lou was a hooker. She'd turned up on my doorstep because she was fucked up, and because I wasn't crazy and represented some kind of safety. I couldn't see beyond that. Couldn't see any farther than tomorrow, which was already a long way. “I have to find somewhere for her to crash. She can't stay here. It's not so safe around here anymore.”

The air was mild, like a salt-laden caress. I gazed into the distance. The lapping of the waves evoked happy memories. I tried to distance myself from the threats hanging over me. I'd landed with both feet on dangerous ground, and what made it all the more dangerous was that I didn't know which direction the blows would come from.

“I know,” Babette said.

“You know everything,” I replied, a touch annoyed.

“No, not everything. But I know enough to be worried.”

“That's good of you. I'm sorry.”

“As far as Marie-Lou is concerned, is that all there is?”

I was embarrassed by this conversation. In spite of myself, I became aggressive. “What do you want to know? If I'm in love with a hooker? It's a common male fantasy, isn't it? Fall in love with a hooker, and take her away from her pimp. Become her pimp. Have her just to yourself, as a sex object...” I suddenly felt very weary, as if I was at the end of my tether. “I haven't yet found the love of my life. Maybe she doesn't exist.”

“I only have a studio apartment. You know that.”

“Don't worry. I'll find something.”

Babette took an envelope from her bag, opened it, and handed me a photograph. “The reason I came was to show you this.”

Several men around a table, in a restaurant. I knew one of them. Morvan. I swallowed.

“The one on the right is Joseph Poli. Very ambitious. He's looking to be Zucca's successor. I'm certain the killers at the Opéra were his men. He's a friend of Jacky Le Mat. He took part in the Saint-Paul-de-Vence heist in 81.”

I remembered it. Seven million items of jewelry stolen. Jacky Le Mat had been brought in for questioning, but had to be released after the main witness retracted.

“The man standing,” Babette went on, “is his brother, Émile. Specializes in protection. Slot machines, discos. Looks laid back, but he's as hard-boiled as they come.”

“Are they lining Morvan's pockets?”

“The guy on the left is Luc Wepler,” she continued, ignoring my question.

Her description of him sent a shiver down my spine. Wepler was born in Algeria. He joined the paras very young, and soon became an active member of the OAS. In 65, he was in Tixier-Vignancourt's security team. When his man did so badly in the election, he turned away from official activism. He went back to the paras, then became a mercenary. Fought in Rhodesia, in the Comoros, and Chad. In 74, he was in Cambodia, as a military advisor to the Americans fighting the Khmer Rouge. After that, Angola, South Africa, Benin. He fought alongside Bechir Jemayel's falangists in Lebanon.

“Interesting,” I said, imagining a face to face talk with him.

“Since 90, he's been active in the National Front. With his commando background, he prefers to work in the shadows. Not many people in Marseilles know him. On one side, you've got the sympathizers. Victims of the economic downturn, unemployed workers, people who feel let down by the Socialists or the Communists. They're attracted by the National Front's radical ideas. But on the other side, you've got the militants. The really determined ones. Backgrounds in the Oeuvre Française, the GUD, the Anti-Communist Front. They're organized into action cells, and they're spoiling for a fight. Wepler deals with them. He has the reputation of being a good trainer of young people. Which means that you do it the way he wants, or you're out.”

I couldn't take my eyes off the photo. Wepler's ice-cold, electric blue eyes were hypnotic. I'd known guys like him in Djibouti. Cold-blooded killers. The whores of imperialism. Its lost children. Let loose in the world, full of hatred for having been the ‘cuckolds of history,' as Garel, my chief warrant officer, had said one day.

Then I noticed another familiar face. In the background, on the right. At another table. Toni. The handsome Toni.

“Do you know this one?”

“No.”

“I made his acquaintance this evening.”

I told her how and why I'd met him. She grimaced. “That's bad. The photo was taken at a dinner for the real fanatics. The ones who are even more rabid than the usual National Front militants.”

“You mean the Poli brothers have turned fascist?”

She shrugged. “They get together for a meal and a laugh and sing Nazi songs. Like Chez Jenny in Paris, you know. It doesn't prove anything. But there's clearly a business arrangement in there somewhere. The Poli brothers must be getting something out it. I don't see why else they'd bother with these people. But there is a link. Morvan. Wepler trained him. In Algeria, First Parachute regiment. After 68, Morvan was a militant in the Anti-Communist Front, where he became head of the Action Group. That was when he met Wepler again and they became best buddies...” She looked at me and smiled, confident she was about to make an impression. “And he married the sister of the Poli brothers.”

I whistled between my teeth. “anymore surprises like that?”

“Batisti.”

He was in the foreground of the photo, but with his back to the camera. I hadn't even noticed him.

“Batisti,” I repeated, idiotically. “Of course. So he's mixed up with these people, too?”

“His daughter Simone is Émile Poli's wife.”

“The family, right?”

“The family on one side, everyone else on the other. That's what the Mafia's all about. Guérini was the same. Zucca married a cousin of Volgro, the Neapolitan. It was when there was no family in charge in Marseilles that things fell apart here. Zucca realized that. So he joined a family.”

“
La
Nuova famiglia
,” I said with a bitter smile. “New family, same old shit.”

Marie-Lou came back, her body wrapped in a big terry towel. We'd almost forgotten about her. Her appearance was a breath of fresh air. She looked at us as if we were conspirators, then lit a cigarette, poured us two large glasses of Lagavulin, and went back inside. Soon after, we heard Astor Piazzolla on bandoneon, followed by Gerry Mulligan's saxophone. One of the finest musical encounters of the last fifteen years.
Buenos Aires, twenty years after
.

The pieces of a puzzle lay scattered in front of me. Now all I had to do was put them together. Ugo and Zucca with Morvan. Al Dakhil and his bodyguards with Morvan and Toni. Leila with Toni and the two killers. But the pieces didn't fit. And what was Batisti's part in all this?

“Who's this?” I asked, pointing to a distinguished-looking man to the right of Joseph Poli.

“No idea.”

“Where is this restaurant?”

“The Auberge des Restanques. Just outside Aix, on the way to Vauvenargues.”

The warning lights went on instantly in my head. I forgot about Ugo, and switched to Leila. “That's not far from where Leila's body was found.”

“What's the connection?”

“That's what I'm wondering.”

“Do you believe in coincidence?”

“I don't believe in anything.”

 

I'd walked Babette to her car, after making sure there was no immediate danger on the street. No car or motorbike had set off after her. I'd waited outside a few more minutes. By the time I'd come back inside, I felt reassured.

“Be careful,” she'd said, stroking the back of my neck.

I'd taken her in my arms. “I can't turn back, Babette. I don't know where it's going to lead me. But I'm going on. I've never had an aim in my life. Now I have one. It may not be worth much, but it's mine.”

I loved the gleam in her eyes when she freed herself from me. “The only aim in life is to stay alive.”

“That's what I say.”

Now I had to face Marie-Lou. I'd been hoping that Babette would stay. They could have slept in my bed, and I'd have slept on the couch. But Babette had replied that I was a big boy now, and I'd be fine on the couch, even if she wasn't there.

Marie-Lou was holding the photo. “Who are these guys?”

“Rich guys with ugly minds! All crooks, if you really want to know.”

“Are you after them?”

“I might be.”

I took the photo from her and had another look at it. It had been taken three months ago. It was a Sunday, a day when Les Restanques was usually closed. Babette had been given the photo by a journalist on
Le Méridional
who'd been a guest at the party. She was going to try to find out more about the participants, especially what the Poli brothers, Morvan and Wepler were cooking up.

Marie-Lou had sat down on the couch, her legs folded under her. She looked up at me. The marks on her skin were fading.

“You want me to go, right?”

I showed her the bottle of Lagavulin. She nodded. I filled two glasses and gave her one.

“I can't explain it all to you, Marie-Lou. I'm involved in something ugly. You saw what happened last night. Things are going to get complicated. It's too risky to stay here. These guys don't fool around,” I said, thinking of the faces of Morvan and Wepler.

She kept looking at me. I really wanted her. I wanted to throw myself on her and have her right there and then, on the floor. It was the easiest way to avoid talking. I didn't think she'd want me to do that, so I didn't move.

“I realized that. What am I to you?”

“A hooker... But I really like you.”

“Bastard!” She threw her glass at me. I'd known it was coming and dodged. The glass smashed on the tiles. Marie-Lou didn't move.