Total Chaos (9 page)

 

You hear that rhythm, that's the rhythm of rap,

We hit it hard 'cause we don't take no crap.

All they think about in Paris is power and money,

But us kids down here don't think that's funny.

I'm 22 years old and I'm better than those mothers,

'Cause never in my life would I betray my brothers.

I have to go now, but make no mistake,

I ain't working like a slave for no fuckin' State.

 

And they were certainly hitting hard in the carriage. Tomtoms from Africa, the Bronx, the planet Mars. Rap wasn't my kind of music, but I had to admit that IAM really did hit their target. A bull's eye every time. They were pretty funky too. You had only to see the two young kids dancing in front of me to know that.

The travelers had surged to the rear of the carriage. They had their heads down, pretending not to see or hear anything, keeping their thoughts to themselves. What was the point of opening your mouth if you ended up with a knife in your belly? At the next station, people hesitated before getting on. They pressed together at the rear, sighing and grumbling, dreaming of what they might do to these kids if they had the chance.

Cerutti slipped in among them. He was keeping radio contact with HQ. In case things turned ugly. I went and sat down in the middle of the gang, and opened a newspaper.

“Couldn't you make a little less noise?”

There was a moment's hesitation. “Don't jerk us around, man!” one of them said, dropping onto a seat.

“We bothering you, is that it?” another said, sitting down next to me.

“Yeah, that's it. How did you guess?”

I looked my neighbor in the eye. The others stopped beating on the walls. This was serious now. They pressed around me.

“What are you talking about, man? What is it you don't like? Rap? Our faces?”

“I don't like you breaking my balls.”

“You seen how many of us there are? Go to hell, man.”

“Yeah, I seen. Eight of you together, you're pretty impressive. Alone, you don't have the balls.”

“And you have the balls, do you?”

“If I wasn't here, you wouldn't need to ask me that.”

Behind me, people were raising their heads. Hey, he's right. We're not going to be dictated to. The courage of words. At Réformés-Canebière, the carriage filled some more. I could sense people behind me. Cerutti and Pérol must have come closer.

The kids were a bit confused. I guessed they didn't have a leader. They were just fooling around. Trying to annoy people, to provoke them. For the hell of it. But it might cost them their lives. A bullet could so easily go astray. I opened the paper again. The one with the ghetto blaster started up again. Another started knocking on the window, but not so loudly this time. Testing the water. The others were watching, winking, smiling knowingly, nudging each other with their elbows. Just kids.

The one opposite me almost put his sneakers on my newspaper. “Where you getting off?”

“What's it to you?”

“Well, I'd feel better if you wasn't here.”

Behind my back, I imagined hundreds of eyes staring at us. I felt like a camp counselor with a class of teenagers. The stations followed one another. Cinq-Avenues-Longchamp. Les Chartreux. Saint-Just. The kids kept shtum. They were watching and waiting. The carriage was starting to empty. Malpasse. Emptiness behind me.

“If we smash your face, no one will lift a finger,” one of them said, standing up.

“There are less than ten people. A chick and two old guys.”

“But you won't do anything.”

“Oh, yeah? What makes you say that?”

“You're all mouth.”

Frais-Vallon. Housing projects, no horizon.

“Let's go!” one of them cried.

They ran out of the compartment. I leaped up and caught the last one by the arm and twisted it behind his back, not violently but firmly. He struggled. The passengers were hurrying to leave the platform.

“You're on your own now.”

“Shit, man, let go of me!” He appealed to Cerutti and Pérol, who were slowly walking away. “This guy's crazy. He wants to smash my face.”

Cerutti and Pérol ignored him. The platform was deserted. I could feel the kid's anger. His fear, too.

“No one's going to defend you. You're an Arab. I could take you out if I wanted, right here, on the platform, and nobody would lift a finger. Do you understand? So you and your pals had better stop fooling around. If you don't, one day you're going to run into guys who won't miss. Do you understand?”

“Yes, OK! Shit, man, you're hurting my arm!”

“Pass the message on. If I see you again, I won't just hurt your arm, I'll break it!”

 

By the time I resurfaced, it was already night. Almost ten o'clock. I was exhausted. Too drained to go home. I needed to hang out. To see people. To feel the heartbeat of something that resembled life.

I went into O'Stop, an all-night restaurant, on Place de l'Opéra. A place where music lovers and prostitutes rubbed shoulders amicably. I knew who I wanted to see. And there she was, Marie-Lou, a young West Indian hooker. She'd arrived in the neighborhood three months ago. A real looker. Like Diana Ross at the age of twenty-two. Tonight, she was wearing a pair of black jeans and a low-cut sleeveless top. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a black ribbon. There was nothing vulgar about her, not even the way she sat. She was almost imperious. Not many men dared approach her without her having agreed to it with a look.

Marie-Lou didn't hustle. She worked on Minitel. Being selective, she fixed her appointments here, so that she could check out the client's looks. Marie-Lou really turned me on. I'd been with her a few times since that first appointment. We liked seeing each other. For her, I was an ideal client. For me, it was easier than being in love. And at the moment it suited me just fine.

O'Stop was packed, as usual. A lot of hookers, taking a break: scotch or Coke and a leak. Some, the older ones, knew their Verdi, especially their Pavarotti. I winked and smiled at some of them, and sat down on a stool at the bar, next to Marie-Lou. She was staring into her empty glass, lost in thought.

“How's business?”

“Oh, hi. Buy me a drink?”

A margarita for her, a whisky for me. The night was off to a good start.

“I was going to do something tonight. But I wasn't too keen on it.”

“And what did this ‘something' involve?”

“A cop!” She burst out laughing, then kissed me on the cheek. I immediately felt the electricity, not just on my cheek, but in my pants too.

We were on our third round when I saw Molines. We'd talked a bit, about nothing very important. We'd concentrated on our drinking, which suited me fine. Molines was one of Auch's team. He was standing on the sidewalk outside O'Stop. He seemed to be bored stiff. I ordered another round and got down off my stool.

When he saw me, he jumped like a jack in the box. Clearly, my presence didn't send him into raptures.

“What are you doing here?”

“One, drinking. Two, drinking. Three, drinking. Four, eating. From five on, I haven't decided. How about you?”

“Duty.”

A real cowboy. The strong, silent type. He started to walk away from me. Obviously I wasn't worthy of his company. As I watched him go, I saw them. The rest of the team, on different street corners. Besquet and Paoli on the corner of Rue Saint-Saëns and Rue Molière. Sandoz and Mériel, now joined by Molines, on Rue Beauvau. Cayrol pacing up and down in front of the Opéra. The others I couldn't see. I guessed they were in cars parked around the square.

A metal-gray Jaguar turned onto Rue Saint-Saëns from Rue Paradis. Besquet lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. He and Paoli left their post, crossed the square, taking no notice of Cayrol, and slowly walked up Rue Corneille.

The door of one of the cars opened, and Morvan climbed out. He crossed the square, then Rue Corneille, as if he was headed for the Commanderie, a night club where journalists, cops, lawyers and gangsters rubbed shoulders. He passed a taxi that was double-parked directly in front of the Commanderie. A white Renault 21. Its indicator light was on ‘busy.' As he passed, Morvan casually knocked on the door. Then he continued on his way, stopped outside a sex shop, and lit a cigarette. Something was going down. I didn't know what it was, but I was the only one to see it.

The Jaguar turned, and parked behind the taxi. I saw Sandoz and Mériel approach. Followed by Cayrol. They were closing in. A man got out of the Jaguar. A muscular Arab, wearing a suit and tie, his jacket unbuttoned. A bodyguard. He looked right and left, then opened the rear door of the car. A man got out. Shit! Al Dakhil. Known as the Immigrant. The head of the Arab underworld. I'd only ever seen him once before, when he was being held in custody. Auch hadn't been able to pin anything on him. His bodyguard closed the car door and walked to the door of the Commanderie.

Al Dakhil buttoned his jacket and leaned over to say something to the driver. Two men got out of the taxi. The first was a short guy, about twenty, wearing jeans and a linen jacket. The other was of medium height, not much older, with close-cropped hair. Black cotton jacket and pants. Instinctively, I made a mental note of the taxi's license number as it drove away: 675 JLT 13. Then the shooting started. The shorter guy opened fire first, on the bodyguard. Then he swiveled and shot the driver as he was getting out of the car. The other guy emptied his magazine into Al Dakhil.

Before the guy with close-cropped hair could turn around, Morvan shot him. No warning had been given. The other one ducked, and dodged between two cars, with his gun still in his hand. He glanced quickly—too quickly—behind him, and started walking backwards. Sandoz and Meriel fired at the same time. I heard shouts. People appeared as if from nowhere. Auch's men, and onlookers too.

I heard police sirens. The taxi had disappeared along Rue Francis Davso, to the left of the Opéra. Auch came out of the Commanderie, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Behind my back, I felt Marie-Lou's warm breasts.

“What's going on?”

“Something not very nice.”

That was putting it mildly. The war had started. But it was Ugo who'd taken Zucca out. And what I'd just seen left me speechless. Everything seemed to have been staged. Down to the last detail.

“A settling of scores.”

“Shit! That won't be good for business!”

I really needed a pick-me-up. I didn't want to lose myself in conjecture. Not now. I needed to empty myself. To forget about everything. The cops, the gangsters. Manu, Ugo, Lole. Leila. And above all, myself. I wanted to melt into the night, if that was possible. Alcohol and Marie-Lou were what I needed. And fast.

“Set your meter to ‘busy.' Let me buy you dinner.”

I
was jolted awake by a muted noise. Then I heard a child crying, somewhere upstairs. For a moment, I had no idea where I was. My tongue was furred, my head heavy. I was lying on a bed, fully clothed. Lole's bed. I remembered now. I'd left Marie-Lou in the early hours of the morning, and come here. I'd even forced open the door.

We'd had no reason to stick around Place de l'Opéra. The neighborhood was cordoned off. The cops would soon be all over it. Too many people I preferred not to see. I'd taken Marie-Lou by the arm and led her to the other side of Cours Jean Ballard. Chez Mario, on Place Thiars. Mozzarella and tomatoes, with capers, anchovies and black olives, for starters. Spaghetti with clams as a main dish. Tiramisu for dessert. To drink, a Bandol, from the Pibarnon vineyards.

We talked about this and that. She talked more than I did. Languidly, separating her words as if she was peeling a peach. I listened to her, but only with my eyes, letting myself be transported by her smile, the shape of her lips, the dimples in her cheeks, the astonishing mobility of her face. Looking at her, and feeling her knee against mine, gave me a chance not to think.

“What concert?” I finally said.

“Which planet are you on? The Massilia concert. At la Friche.”

La Friche was the former tobacco factory behind the Saint-Charles railroad station. A hundred and twenty thousand square meters, housing workshops, rehearsal studios, a newspaper,
Taktik
, Radio Grenouille, a restaurant, and a concert hall. It was something like the artists' squats in Berlin, or P.S.1 in New York.

“Five thousand of us! Fantastic! Those guys really get you fired up.”

“So I guess you understand Provençal?”

Half Massilia's songs were in dialect. Maritime Provençal. What the Parisians call Marseilles French.
Parlam de realitat dei cavas dau quotidian
, as Massilia sang.

“It doesn't matter whether you understand or not. We're slaves, not idiots. That's all you have to understand.”

She looked at me, curiously. Maybe I was an idiot. I was more and more disconnected from reality. I moved through Marseilles, but I'd stopped seeing anything except the violence and racism simmering just under the surface. I was starting to forget that life was more than that. That this was a city where, despite everything, people liked to live, to have a good time. That happiness was a new idea every day, even if the night ended with some strong-arm guy checking your identity.

We'd finished eating, emptied the bottle of Bandol, and had two coffees.

“Let's see what we can see.”

That was the established formula. Seeing what we could see meant doing something exciting for the night. I'd let her lead me. We'd started at the Trolleybus on Quai de Rive-Neuve, a huge club I hadn't even known existed. Marie-Lou found that amusing.

“But how do you spend your nights?”

“Fishing for bream.”

She laughed. In Marseilles, ‘bream' is also a slang word for a pretty girl. The Trolleybus was housed in what had once been the arsenal of the penal colony. You went along a corridor of TV screens, and at the end, beneath the vaults, were separate rooms for rap, techno, rock and reggae. Tequila to start, and reggae to quench your thirst. How long was it since I'd last been out dancing? A hundred years, or a thousand years? As the night wore on, we went from club to club, from bar to bar. The Passeport, the Maybe Blues, the Pell Mell. Always moving on, like the Spaniards.