Solea (9 page)

Or, as my old friend Mavros, who scraped a living from his boxing gym up in Saint-Antoine, used to say, “Any time someone talks to you about nobility, trust, honor, just look over your shoulder and you're almost sure to find someone about to shove his dick up your ass.” I couldn't quite accept that, and Mavros and I always ended up arguing.

“You're exaggerating, Fonfon.”

“Oh, sure. Go on, pour me another drink. That'll stop you talking crap.”

 

Hélène Pessayre had the same fears about the future of Marseilles as a port. “You know,” she said, “the South, the Mediterranean . . . We're always out of luck. We belong to what the technocrats call the ‘dangerous classes' of the future.” She opened her bag and took out a book. “Have you read this?”

The book was
Faith and Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire
by Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli.

“Interesting?”

“Fascinating. According to this book, now that the Cold War is over and the West is trying to assimilate the Eastern bloc—mostly to the detriment of the Third World—the myth of the dangerous classes has been revived, but now it refers to the South, to migrants from the South to the North.”

We'd sat down on a stone bench. Next to an old Arab who lay there with a smile on his face, apparently asleep. Down below, sitting on the rocks, two anglers, both unemployed or on welfare I guessed, were checking their lines.

In front of us, the open sea. The infinite blueness of the world.

“To those in Northern Europe, the South is by its very nature chaotic, radically different, and therefore disturbing. I think I agree with the authors of this book: the countries of the North will end up building a new frontier, what the Romans used to call a
limes
, to protect them from the barbarians.”

I whistled through my teeth. I was sure Fonfon and Mavros would like this woman.

“We're going to pay the price for this new vision of the world. By ‘we' I mean the poor, the unemployed, and all the kids too, the ones from North Marseilles you see hanging around town.”

“And I thought I was a pessimist,” I said with a laugh.

“Pessimism doesn't get you anywhere, Montale. This new world is a closed world. Finite, ordered, stable. There's no place in it for the likes of us. A new philosophy holds sway. Judeo-Christian, Hellenistic, democratic. With its myth of the new barbarians. Us. And we're uncountable, undisciplined, nomads of course. We're also uncontrollable, fanatical, violent. And poor, of course. Reason and law are on the other side of the frontier. Wealth too.”

Her eyes were veiled with sadness. She shrugged her shoulders and stood up. Her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her jeans, she walked to the edge of the water and stood there, silent, staring out toward the horizon. I joined her. She pointed to the open sea.

“That's the way I came to Marseilles for the first time. By sea. I was six years old. I've never forgotten how beautiful the city was early in the morning. I've never forgotten Algiers either. But I've never been back. Do you know Algiers?”

“No. I haven't done much traveling.”

“I was born there. I fought for years to be transferred here, to Marseilles. Marseilles isn't Algiers. But from here, it's as if I can see the harbor over there. I also learned to swim by jumping off the docks into the water. To impress the boys. We'd swim out to the buoys, on the open sea. The boys would follow us out and swim around us, shouting, ‘Hey, did you see the pretty seagull!' We were all pretty seagulls.”

She turned to look at me, her eyes shining with past happiness.

“The love we share with a city . . .” I began.

“Is often a secret love,” she finished the phrase, with a smile. “I like Camus too.”

I offered her a cigarette, and lit it for her. She breathed in the smoke, threw her head back and slowly blew the smoke into the air. Then she gave me a long, steady look. Maybe now I'd finally find out why she'd wanted to meet me this morning.

“You didn't ask me here just to talk about all this, did you?”

“You're right, Montale. I'd like you to talk me about the Mafia!”

“The Mafia!”

She gave me a piercing look. Hélène was Captain Pessayre again. “How about a drink?” she said.

A
nge embraced me. “Dammit, I didn't think I'd ever see you again!” Then, seeing Hélène sitting down on the terrace, beneath the magnificent plane trees, he winked at me. “That's one hell of an attractive woman!”

“She's a police captain.”

“No!”

“She is, I tell you.” I laughed. “You see, I'm bringing you a new kind of customer.”

“You're dumb, you know that?”

Hélène ordered a
mauresque
, I ordered a
pastis
.

“Are you eating here?” Ange asked.

I gave Hélène a questioning look. Maybe what she wanted to ask me didn't leave any room for Ange's simple, but always delicious, dish of the day.

“I have some small mullet,” he suggested. “They're wonderful grilled, with a little
bohémienne
sauce. And as a starter, there's a
feuilleté
of sardines—fresh sardines, of course. The best thing in this heat is fish.”

“I agree,” she said.

“Do you still have that Puy-Sainte-Réparade rosé?”

“Sure! I'll bring you a carafe to start.”

We clinked glasses. I felt as if I'd known this woman forever. We'd formed an immediate bond. Ever since we shook hands the night before. Our conversation by the sea had merely confirmed it.

I didn't know what was happening to me. But in forty-eight hours, two very different women had managed to get inside me. I guess I'd been steering clear of women, and of love, since Lole had left. Sonia had opened the door of my heart and now anyone who wanted could come in. Well, not just anyone. I was sure Hélène Pessayre wasn't just anyone.

“O.K., I'm listening,” I said.

“I've been reading about you. At the office. Official reports. You've twice been involved in cases with Mafia connections. The first time after your friend Ugo died, part of the war between Zucca and Batisti. The second time when a hitman named Narni came to Marseilles to settle a few scores.”

“And killed a sixteen-year-old boy. Yes, I know. Coincidence. What of it?”

“If it happened twice, it can happen three times, can't it?”

“I don't follow you,” I said, trying not to seem too dumb.

I followed her only too well. And I wondered how she'd managed to come up with this theory so quickly.

She gave me quite a severe look. “You like to play the fool, is that it, Montale?”

“What makes you think that? Just because I don't know what you're talking about?”

“Sonia's death wasn't a random killing, Montale. Some maniac with a knife who just happened to break into her apartment.”

“Maybe it was her husband,” I said, as innocently as I could. “I mean, the boy's father.”

“Sure, sure . . .” She tried to look in my eyes, but I kept them trained on my glass.

I emptied it in one go, trying to appear composed. “Another
mauresque
?”

“No, thanks.”

“Ange!” I called. “Give me another
pastis
.”

As soon as the drink had been poured, she said, “I see you haven't gotten out of the habit of telling tall stories.”

“Listen, Hélène—”

“Captain. These are a captain's questions. Part of a criminal investigation. An investigation into the death of a woman named Sonia De Luca, the mother of an eight-year-old boy. Unmarried. Thirty-four years old. Thirty-four, Montale. The same age as me.” Imperceptibly, she'd raised her voice.

“I know that. This was a woman who won me over in a single night. And then she talked to my two dearest neighbors for five minutes and won them over, too. She was a wonderful woman, no doubt about it.”

“And what else do you know?”

“Nothing!”

“That's bullshit!” she cried.

Ange served us the sardine
feuilleté
. He looked from one to the other. “Enjoy,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Hey! If he bothers you, you just call me.”

She smiled.

I echoed Ange. “Enjoy.”

“I will.” She swallowed a mouthful, then put down her knife and fork. “Montale, I spent a long time on the phone with Loubet this morning. Before I called you.”

“Oh, yes. How's he doing?”

“As well as you'd expect for someone who's been given the push. As I'm sure you can imagine. He says he'd like to hear from you.”

“Right. I should have done it before. I'll call him. So what did he tell you about me?”

“That you're a pain in the ass. A good man, an honest man, but a royal pain in the ass. Capable of withholding information from the police, just to give yourself a head start and settle things your own way. Like a grown-up.”

“Loubet's just flattering me.”

“And when you finally deigned to let go, things were always in a worse mess than before.”

“Oh, sure!” I said, irritably.

Loubet was right, of course. But I was stubborn. And I didn't trust the cops anymore. The racists, the officers on the take. The ones whose only concern was climbing the career ladder. Loubet was an exception. In every town, cops like him could be counted on the fingers of both hands. The exception that proved the rule. Our police really believed in liberty, equality and fraternity.

I looked Hélène in the eyes. The wicked gleam had gone, so had the nostalgia for past happiness. And so had that feminine softness I'd caught glimpses of.

“I don't care,” I said. “The corpses, the blunders, the mistakes, the harassment, the beatings . . . That's always you people. I don't have blood on my hands!”

“Neither do I, Montale. And neither does Loubet, as far as I know! Stop with that! What are you trying to do? Play Superman? Get yourself killed?”

I remembered some terrible murders committed by Mafia hitmen. One of them named Giovanni Brusca had strangled an eleven-year-old boy with his bare hands. The son of Santino di Matteo, a veteran of the Corleone family who'd turned State's evidence. Brusca had then thrown the boy's body in an acid bath. Sonia's killer must be a graduate of the same school.

“Maybe,” I muttered. “Would that bother you?”

“Yes, it would.”

She bit her lower lip. The words had slipped out.
They gave me a brief tingle of excitement, then I quickly forgot them, and told myself I might have a chance to regain the upper hand in this conversation. She might be a captain, but I had absolutely no intention of talking to Hélène Pessayre about the Mafia. About the one-in-a-million chance that had cost Sonia her life. Or about the killer's phone calls. Much less about Babette being on the run. At least, for the moment, as far as Babette was concerned.

No, they couldn't change me. I'd do what I always did. What I felt was right. And ever since that bastard had phoned, I'd been seeing things very simply. I'd arrange to meet with the guy, the killer, and empty my gun into his belly. I'd take him by surprise. He'd never imagine that an idiot like me could handle a gun, let alone kill him. Hitmen all think they're better, more cunning than anyone else. They think they stand out from the crowd. It wouldn't change anything about the mess Babette had gotten herself into. But it would relieve some of the grief in my heart.

I'd left home yesterday afternoon, certain I was going to bring Sonia back with me. We'd have had breakfast on my terrace, we'd have gone swimming in the sea, and Honorine would have come over and suggested what to eat for lunch and dinner. And in the evening all four of us would have had dinner together.

An idyllic vision. That was what I always did with reality. Tried to raise it to the level of my dreams. To the level of a man's eyes. The level of happiness. But reality was like a reed. It bent, but it didn't break. Behind the illusion, you could never lose sight of human corruption. Or death. Death, which has eyes for everyone.

I'd never killed anyone. But now I thought I could do it. I could kill. And I could die. Killing meant dying, too. I had nothing left to lose. I'd lost Lole. I'd lost Sonia. Two chances of happiness. One I knew about. The other I'd only glimpsed. They were identical. All loves take the same road, and reinvent it. Lole had been able to reinvent our love in another love. I could have reinvented Lole with Sonia. Maybe.

It didn't matter anymore.

I thought of a poem by Cesare Pavese called “Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes.”

The eyes of love.

 

It will be like giving up a vice,

Like seeing a dead face

Appear in the mirror,

Like listening to closed lips.

We will descend silently into the whirlpool.

 

Of course, Fonfon and Honorine wouldn't forgive me for dying. But they'd both survive. Their lives had been based on love. Tenderness. Loyalty. That was how they'd lived, and they'd continue living like that. Their lives weren't failures. Unlike mine . . . “When you come down to it,” I told myself, “the only way to give death a meaning is to feel gratitude for everything that went before.”

And I had gratitude to spare.

 

“Montale.” Her voice was soft now. “Sonia was killed by a professional hitman.”

Hélène Pessayre had finally gotten around to telling me what she'd been wanting to tell me.

“The killer left a signature. Only the Mafia cuts people's throats that way. From right to left.”

“How do you know about things like that?” I said, wearily.