Total Chaos (25 page)

Violence on one side, fear and racism on the other. If it worked, their fascist friends would end up in City Hall. And then they'd be left in peace. The same way Carbone and Spirito, the two big bosses of the pre-war Marseilles underworld, had been protected by Sabiani, the all-powerful deputy mayor. They'd be able to carry on with their business, and they'd be in a position of strength to confront the Italians. They could already see themselves getting their hands on Zucca's fortune.

I'd heard enough to disgust me for a hundred years. Fortunately, I'd be dead before then! And what was I going to be able to do with all this? Nothing. I couldn't see myself taking Batisti with me and forcing him to tell the whole story to Loubet. I had no evidence against any of them. The only one I could charge was Mourrabed. The bottom of the list. An Arab. The fall guy. As usual. Babette wouldn't even be able to get an article out of it. She had a strict code of ethics. Facts, and nothing but. That was how she'd made a name for herself in the press.

Nor could I see myself in the role of judge, jury and executioner. I couldn't see myself in any role anymore. Not even as a cop. I couldn't see anything. I was dizzy with it all. The hatred, the violence. Gangsters, cops, politicians. With poverty as the breeding ground. Unemployment, racism. We were all like insects caught in a spider's web. We struggled, but the spider would eat us in the end.

But I still had to know.

“Where did Manu fit into all this?”

“He never touched Brunel's safe. He negotiated with him. Against Zucca. He wanted to make more money for himself. Much more. I think he was going off the rails. Zucca didn't forgive him. When Ugo called me from Paris, I realized that I had my revenge.”

He'd talked fast, as if letting it all out. Too fast.

“What revenge?”

“Huh?”

“You mentioned revenge.”

He looked up at me. For the first time, he was being sincere. His eyes clouded over. He stared into the distance, to a place where I didn't exist. “I really liked Manu, you know,” he stammered.

“But not Zucca, right?”

He didn't answer. I wouldn't get anymore out of him. I'd touched a sore spot. I stood up.

“You're still jerking me around, Batisti.” He kept his head lowered. I leaned over him. “I'll keep going. Keep nosing around. Until I know everything. None of you are getting away with this. That includes Simone.”

I was threatening him for a change, and it felt good. They hadn't left me a choice of weapons. He looked at me at last, and smiled maliciously. “You're crazy.”

“If you want to have me killed, you'd better hurry up about it. To me, you're a dead man, Batisti. And I like that thought. Because you're nothing but a piece of shit.”

I left Batisti with his glass of
orgeat
.

Outside, the sun hit me full in the face. I had the feeling I was coming back to life. Real life. Where happiness is an accumulation of insignificant everyday things. A ray of sunlight, a smile, washing drying at a window, a boy dribbling with a tin can, a song by Vincent Scotto, a slight breeze lifting a woman's dress...

I
stood outside Chez Félix for a few moments, motionless, my eyes blinded by the sun. I could have been killed there and then, and I'd have forgiven everyone everything. But there was no one waiting for me on the street corner. The appointment was somewhere else. I hadn't fixed it yet, but I'd be there.

I walked back up Rue Caisserie and cut across Place de Lenche. I walked past a bar called the Montmartre, and couldn't help smiling. I smiled every time I passed it. The Montmartre was so out of place here. I turned onto Rue Sainte-Françoise and went into the Treize-Coins. I gestured to Ange to bring me a bottle of cognac. I drank the first glass straight down. He stood there in front of me, with the bottle in his hand. I gestured to him to pour me a second glass, and downed it as quickly as the first.

“Are you all right?” he asked, a bit worried.

“Great! Never felt better!” I said, holding out my glass to be filled again. I took it and went and sat down on the terrace. There was a bunch of Arabs at the next table.

“But I'm French, you jerk. We were born here. I've never been to Algeria.”

“Oh, you're French, are you? We're the least French of all the French. That's what we are.”

“If the French don't want you anymore, what are you going to do? Wait till they shoot you? Me, I'm taking off.”

“Oh, yeah? And where are you going? You're out of your mind!”

“Well, I don't give a shit. I'm from Marseilles. I'm staying here. Period. If they want me, they know where to look for me.”

They were inhabitants of Marseilles more than they were Arabs. They felt the same way about it as our parents had. The way Ugo, Manu and I had fifteen years ago. One day, Ugo had said, “In my house and Fabio's house, they speak Neapolitan. At your house, they speak Spanish. At school, we learn French. But what are we, when you get down to it?”

“Arabs,” Manu had replied.

We'd burst out laughing. And now they were here, too. Reliving our poverty. In the same houses as our parents. Taking it at face value as a kind of paradise and praying for it to last. “Don't forget,” my father had said to me. “When I first came here, there were mornings when my brothers and I didn't know if we'd have anything to eat at noon, and yet somehow we always ate.” That was the history of Marseilles, and always had been. A utopia. The only utopia in the world. A place where anyone, of any color, could get off a boat or a train with his suitcase in his hand and not a cent in his pocket, and melt into the crowd. A city where, as soon as he'd set foot on its soil, this man could say, “This is it. I'm home.”

Marseilles belongs to the people who live in it.

Ange came over to my table with a
pastis
in his hand and sat down.

“Don't worry,” I told him. “It'll all work out. There's always a solution.”

“Pérol has been looking for you for two hours.”

“Where the fuck are you?” Pérol screamed.

“At Ange's. Get over here. With the car.”

I hung up, and quickly drank my third cognac. I felt a whole lot better.

I waited for Pérol on Rue de l'Evêché, at the bottom of the Passage Sainte-Françoise steps. It was the only way he could come. By the time he arrived, I'd had a smoke.

“Where are we going?”

“To listen to Ferré, if that's OK with you.”

In his bar, the Maraîchers à la Plaîne, Hassan, an Arab, never played raï, rock, or reggae. Just French
chanson
, almost always Brel, Brassens and Ferré. He liked to catch his customers off guard.

“Hello, strangers,” he said, when he saw us come in.

Here everyone was a stranger and a friend, whatever the color of their skin, hair or eyes. Hassan's clientele was mostly young: high school kids and college students. The kind who cut classes, preferably the most important ones. They'd discuss the future of the world over a glass of draft beer, then, after past seven, make up their minds to change it. Nothing ever got changed, but it was a nice way of killing time. Ferré was singing:

 

We're no saints.

Our miracle's Cinzano.

No complaints,

We'll always pray to Pernod.

 

All I could do was drink. It was too late in the day for
pastis
. Glancing at the bottles, I opted for a Glenmorrangie. Pérol chose draft beer.

“Haven't you ever been here before?”

He shook his head. He was looking at me as if I was sick. A hopeless case.

“You ought to get out more. You know, Pérol, we should go out some evening, just you and me. Otherwise, you lose touch with reality. You know what I mean? You lose your sense of reality, and hey presto, you don't know which shelf you left your soul on. The shelf where you put your friends. The shelf where you put your women. Stage right, stage left. Or in the shoe box. You turn around and you find you're stuck in the bottom drawer, with the accessories.”

“Stop it!” he said, though without raising his voice.

“You know,” I continued, ignoring his anger, “I think a few bream would be nice. Grilled with thyme and bay. And just a drizzle of olive oil on top. You think your wife would like that?”

I wanted to talk about cooking. To list all the dishes I could make. Cannelloni, cooked slowly with ham and spinach. Tuna salad with new potatoes. Marinaded sardines. I felt hungry.

“Are you hungry?”

Pérol didn't reply.

“Pérol, you know something, I've forgotten your first name.”

“Gérard,” he said, smiling at last.

“OK, Gérard. Let's have another drink, then we'll go grab a bite to eat. What do you say?”

Instead of answering my question, he told me about the mess things were in over at the station house. Auch had come to claim Mourrabed, because of the arms. Brenier wanted him because of the drugs. Loubet refused to let him go, because, goddammit, he was investigating an actual crime. Immediately, Auch had turned on Farge, who'd been playing the fool, over-confident about being protected, and hit him. If he didn't explain how the arms had come to be in his cellar, Auch screamed, he'd blow his brains out.

Then Muscles, who I'd sent to Pérol, ran into Farge in the corridor, and started screaming that he was the one who'd sent him to break the hooker's teeth. As soon as the word ‘hooker' reached the floor below, Gravis showed up. Pimps were his department. And he knew Farge like the back of his hand.

“That was when I decided to say how surprised I was that Farge didn't have a record.”

“Good thinking.”

“Gravis screamed that the station was full of idiots. Auch screamed that they'd make a new record for Farge right away. And he passed Farge on to Morvan for a guided tour of the basement.”

“And what happened?” I asked, even though I could guess the answer.

“Couldn't handle it. Had a heart attack, forty-five minutes later.”

How much longer did I have to live? I wondered what dish I'd like to eat before I died. Maybe fish soup. With a good spicy sauce, made with sea-urchin flesh and a little saffron. But I wasn't hungry anymore. And I'd sobered up.

“How about Mourrabed?”

“We read over his confession, and he signed it. Then I passed him to Loubet. OK, now you tell me your story. I need to know what you're mixed up in. I don't want to die an idiot.”

“It's a long story. Let me just go take a leak.”

In passing, I ordered another Glenmorrangie. It was the kind of drink you didn't even notice you were drinking. In the toilet, some joker had written:
Smile, you're on Candid Camera.
I gave my smile No 5. Don't worry, Fabio. You're the fairest of them all. The strongest too. Then I put my head under the faucet.

By the time we got back to the station house, Pérol knew the whole story. In the smallest detail. He'd listened without interrupting. It did me good to tell him the story. It didn't really help me to see things more clearly, but I had the feeling I knew where I was going.

“Do you really think Manu planned to double-cross Zucca?”

It wasn't impossible, given what he'd told me. It wasn't so much the job itself that had excited him, it was all the money he was going to make from it. But at the same time, the more I thought about it, the less likely it sounded. Pérol had put his finger on it. I couldn't see Manu hustling Zucca. He sometimes did crazy things, but he was like an animal, he could smell real danger. And besides, it was Batisti who'd found him the job, and Batisti was the father he'd chosen for himself. The only guy he trusted, more or less. Batisti wouldn't have done that to him.

“No, Gérard, I don't think so.”

But I still didn't see who could have taken him out.

There was one other question I couldn't answer: how had Leila gotten to know Toni?

I'd been planning to ask him. It was academic now, but I felt strongly about it. It gnawed away at me, like jealousy. Leila in love. I'd come around to the idea, but it wasn't easy to admit that a woman you desire is in bed with another guy. I may have made my decision, but it just wasn't as simple as that. With Leila, I might have been able to start from scratch, to reinvent, to rebuild my life. Free of the past, free of memories. It was an illusion. Leila was the present and the future. I belonged to my past. If I was to have a happy tomorrow, there was unfinished business I had to get back to. Lole. And the past we'd shared.

Leila and Toni was something I couldn't grasp. It was definitely Toni who'd picked up Leila. The super from the college residence had called during the afternoon, Pérol told me. His wife had remembered seeing Leila in the parking lot talking to the driver of a Golf convertible, then getting in. She'd even thought, “Hey, all right for some!”

 

Behind the railroad tracks of the Saint Charles station, stuck between the exit from the northern freeway, Boulevard de Plombières and Boulevard National, the Belle de Mai neighborhood was the same as ever. The way of life there hadn't changed. A long way from downtown, even though it was only a few minutes away. There was still a village spirit there, just as there was in Vauban, the Blancarde, the Rouet, or the Capelette, where I'd grown up.

As children, we often went to the Belle de Mai. To fight, usually over girls. There was always a scrap going down. And a stadium or a waste land where we could lay into each other. Vauban against the Blancarde. The Capelette against Belle de Mai. The Panier against the Rouet. After a dance, a fair, coming out of the movies. It wasn't like
West Side Story
, Latinos versus WASPs. Every gang had its share of Italians, Spaniards, Armenians, Portuguese, Arabs, Africans and Vietnamese. We fought over a girl's smile, not because of the color of our skins. It created friendships, not hatreds.