Murder in Belleville (18 page)

It was a guess, but by the look on Samia’s face it hit home.

“Attends,”
Samia said. “I called a number. That’s all.” Her chest heaved. She faced Aimee, her eye makeup smeared. “You leave my kid out of it,
comprisl”

Aimee wondered why Samia would say that—was her young son used to keep her in line? A pang of remorse hit her for using Samia, a mother who couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

“Zdanine used you, didn’t he?”

“Only two times,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t believe you.”

“You want to believe Zdanine instead of me …” Aimee let that trail in the air.

Silence except for the steady thrum of rain on the windshield.

“Something’s about to happen, isn’t it?”

Samia shrugged.

“What’s Eugenie’s connection?”

Samia rubbed the foggy window and turned away. “What time is it?”

“For a moment you were so helpful,” Aimee said. She leaned over, the Beretta still in one hand. “Who murdered Sylvie?”

“Sylvie … who’s that?”

Anger flared in Aimee, then died. Why would Samia know about her double life?

Aimee turned Samia’s chin toward her.

“Was it the General?” she asked.

“Who’s Sylvie?” Samia blinked several times.

Exasperated, Aimee pounded the steering wheel.

“What does Eugenie have to do with it?”

“She stayed at the apartment.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Who met her there?” Aimee said, knowing she had to pull information from Samia. Bit by painful bit.

“People dropped things off,” Samia said, wiping her face. “I’ve told you nothing. Nothing.”

“Of course you haven’t,” Aimee said soothingly. “Is someone making you afraid to tell me what you know?”

“The
Maghrebins
used that place. They scare me,” she said. “I told Zdanine, I don’t want to mix with them. He does.”

“What for?”

“They have places like that,” Samia said. “You know, all over. Like an octopus.”

Aimee remembered the flyer with “Youssef’ written on it. She felt as if she were grasping for straws.

“Did Eugenie mention Youssef?” she asked.

“Youssef? I think so: Someone called Zdanine while I was there. But I only met Eugenie once,” Samia said. “That’s all.”

“Did Eugenie give you this?” Aimee asked, holding up the pearl hair clip.

“I owe her a hundred francs,” Samia said, her voice contrite. “Look, it’s Marcus’s birthday. He’ll be hurt if I don’t make the school party. Didn’t even have time to buy him a present.”

Samia looked as if the world had fallen on her shoulders.

Aimee slipped the Beretta into her bag. She looked at her watch.

“Here,” she said, unstrapping the happy-face watch. “This suits you more than me. Give it to your son.”

Samia blinked and looked unsure.

“Take it,” she said. “Just don’t set me up again.”

“Chouette!”
Samia’s face burst into a big smile. A big-kid smile, happy with a new toy, putting it on eagerly.
“Merci!”

Aimee was amazed how childlike Samia seemed when her defenses were down. For a moment Aimee saw the young girl whose mother probably worked
horizontak,
who’d grown up in a housing project and then hooked up with a maggot like Zdanine. It reminded her of what Moliere had said about writing: First you do it because you like it, then you do it for some friends, then you do it for money.

Samia had pulled the visor down and begun wiping off her makeup in the mirror.

“I need to get to Gare du Nord,” she said. “Catch the 1:30 train for Marcus’s party.”

Of all the things Samia had told her, she believed this 100 percent.

“Tell me more en route to the station,” she said, turning on the ignition. “What’s your connection to Morbier?”

“Who?”

Surprised, Aimee kept driving. She decided to describe him, so if Samia had seen him she wouldn’t necessarily know he was a
flic.

“Morbier’s an old
mec,
salt-and-pepper hair, moustache, and he wears suspenders over his big gut.”

“Sounds like one of my mother’s friends,” Samia said. “She knew lots of old farts.”

Aimee picked up on the past tense.

“Knew?”

“Passed away,” Samia said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Curious, she wanted to explore more. At least find out why Morbier wanted her to protect Samia. She circled Place de la Republique, then gunned up boulevard de Magenta.

“What was your mother’s name?” she asked.

“Fouaz, like mine,” Samia said, her mouth crinkling in a sad smile.

Aimee was about to ask more when Samia turned to her.

“Keep this between us, but fifty thousand francs buys a hostage situation.”

Aimee’s heart skipped. Her fingers clenched the steering wheel. “Go on.”

Samia’s face, now scrubbed clean of makeup, made her look younger than she probably was. A demure peach skirt and twinset emerged from under the black coat. Aimee wondered how Samia placated her conscience, if she had one.

“Who orders this
plastique?”

“Zdanine says it’s Balkan crazies who like to blow each other up,” Samia said. “They do that shit all the time anyway.”

Aimee nodded. Too bad it wasn’t true in her case.

“Was it Duplo last time?” Aimee asked, hoping against hope that Samia knew.

“Semtex duds out sometimes, unreliable. The fundamentalists don’t seem to mind,” Samia said matter-of-factly. “Zdanine uses Duplo—only quality, he says.”

“What about the General?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But why pick Eugenie?”

“That was a one-off.” Samia’s eyes slit in suspicion. “He sells to outsiders. No locals.” She shook her head. “Don’t look at me. Zdanine was in the church—he couldn’t have blown her up.”

Rain coursed down the windshield in silvered rivulets, like mercury. Aimee flipped the wipers faster. Samia’s casual tone made her angry. But she had to play it cool or Samia would bolt.

“It’s scary,” Aimee said, staring meaningfully at her. “I mean, look what can happen.”

“Just don’t rub anyone the wrong way,” Samia said, but her lip quivered. She looked uneasy. “I called a pager number—that’s all I did.”

“When?”

“They said, ‘Call in four hours—if no answer, try in another two hours.’ Someone called back with a delivery location.”

Aimee pulled in to the taxi line. She had an idea.

“Contact Zdanine before you go.”

Samia took Aimee’s phone and called Zdanine.

Samia’s voice changed; not just the cloying, soothing line to a pimp but an earnest overtone as if convincing him. For a full two minutes she argued, her words a mix of gutter French,
verlan,
and Arabic.

Abruptly she snapped Aimee’s phone shut.

“What happened?” Aimee asked.

“He’ll come around,” she said.

Aimee didn’t care about Zdanine’s list of potential clients; she wanted the suppliers who’d been at the Cirque d’Hiver.

“Zdanine says it’s too dangerous, doesn’t he?”

Samia shook her head.

“What then?”

“He thinks your cut’s too big,” she said. “It should be split so he gets a nice slice. After all, he says, he’s Khalil’s cousin, and the contacts are his.”

Spoken like a true pimp, Aimee thought. If Samia translated correctly. Outside in Place Napoleon III, people emerged from Gare du Nord, opened their umbrellas, and ran to the taxi line.

“Nothing happens until I wire Khalil to front the money,” Aimee said. “How do I know your people can deliver the plas
tique?

“They’re not my people,” Samia said, “I told you, I don’t like them. Zdanine does the connection.”

“Until you give me the supplier’s name, I don’t cough up the front money.”

Samia shrugged. She buttoned her coat and gripped the door handle before she turned back.

“What’s the number?”

Samia opened the car door. A sheet of rain sprayed in. “Marc’s school is outside Paris, not far. I’ll be back soon.” Samia slammed the door shut and disappeared toward the train platforms in the cavernous station.

Aimee lowered her forehead onto the steering wheel. This stank. Samia had made a deal. Aimee felt it in her bones.

Here she sat at a taxi line outside Gare du Nord, the windows fogged, and no closer to Eugenie or the explosive suppliers than before.

Her gloom matched the gray sheeting rain whipping across the square. Extraordinary—she couldn’t remember when April had been this wet. It had rained incessantly all week. She took several deep breaths and thought. If those men were the explosive suppliers, why wait for Samia to get back?

She switched on the ignition and took off back down boulevard de Magenta. In record time, she parked in Cite de Crussol, on one of the passages branching from behind Cirque d’Hiver.

She punched in Morbier’s number. He answered after several rings.

“Morbier, call it intuition, but Samia’s playing me,” she said. “Your little friend got me shot!”

“Shot?”

“I pulled the shrapnel out but—”

“She’s young, Leduc,” he said. “And the young don’t know left from right.”

“No conscience, more like it,” she said.

“Bien sur,”
he said. “Tell me about it.”

She explained about Cirque d’Hiver and her abrupt departure at Gare du Nord. “I didn’t like the big guys in the circus.”

“Nice groundwork and setup,” he said.

She paused, surprised at his comment. He rarely said anything complimentary. “But I’m still in the dark. Samia became helpful too quickly.”

“She’ll come through,” he said.

She wondered why he kept excusing her.

“Why do you let her off the hook so easily?”

“No questions, remember?” he said. “Marcus must be six or seven, eh?”

His comment didn’t surprise her. Morbier had an immense memory, like her father and those of his generation possessed. No computer files or central storage systems; they kept it all in their head: a
mec’s
street record, an unsolved murder in their arrondissement years back, whose palm oiled the important palms, a pimp’s harem, and their children’s names.

“Where are you going now?” Morbier asked.

“To church,” she said. “Zdanine might be more helpful.”

“Will he talk to you?”

“I won’t know until I try.”

A
LIGHT DRIZZLE BEADED
Aimee’s glasses. The smell of wet wool rose from the damp pavement in front of Notre-Dame de la Croix.

In the midst of the rain, the noise, and pushing bodies, she felt someone staring at her.

Aimee’s throat tightened. Had someone followed her from the circus or was she some street
mec’s
target?

She looked up.

Yves stared across the barricade, his navy anorak glistening with rain droplets.

His gaze pulled her in as if it were a homing signal. Caught in his magnetic field, she was powerless to resist.

And then she was next to him.

“New perfume?” he muttered, as the police pointed them toward the barricade’s end.

“Does this have to do with the way I change the air?”

“The other night you wore lemon verbena,” he said, nodding at the other reporters.

“Quite a memory you’ve got,” she said.

“You’d be amazed,” he said, “at what I remember.”

She turned away.

“Slumming or trying to meet me?”

“Working,” she said.

“You ought to charge your cell phone,” he said, flashing his press pass at the barricade. “Makes it easier for people to reach you. I’ve been trying since this morning.”

“Other people can reach me, why not you?”

Dumb. Why let him know it bothered her?

She felt his hot breath on her earlobe, and his bristly chin brushed her neck as he turned back to a policeman. He smelled the same. The dusky Yves scent.

She had no time for someone who popped in and out of her life when it suited him. Most of all she didn’t want these feelings; couldn’t deal with them at the best of times.

But he could help her.

“Look, I need to get into the church,” she said. “Say I’m with you, just for now.”

“You want to use me,” he said. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Make sure you abuse me later.”

“If you’re lucky,” she said, trying not to smile.

“Let me do the talking. Nice touch.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, pushing her feelings aside.

“The glasses,” he said.

She frowned and briefly felt disappointed.

He leaned over and whispered, “The police think you’re Martine’s assistant. Keep it that way for now.”

She followed him, threading past an old woman with ill-fitting dentures who yelled at a reporter waving a microphone. Shouts of “Let the
sans-papiers
stay!” arose from the swaying crowd contrasting with the CRS riot squad: silent impassive faces behind clear, shatterproof visors, hands clutching billy clubs. Legitimized by the press credentials and with Yves escorting her, Aimee crossed the wooden police barricades.

Once inside the church, Yves motioned for her to wait. He approached a bearded man guarding the confessional. Apprehensive, Aimee crouched by the marble holy water font. What if she couldn’t find Zdanine?

Incense mingled with sweat. Obsidian-faced men in bright pastel polyester shirts sprawled in the wooden pews. The whites of their eyes caught the gleam from dripping wax candles. Murmured conversations echoed off vaulting pillars. A plump, honey-colored woman in a maroon
djelfoba
wrote on a chalkboard. Teenagers in tracksuits sat before her on the stone floor. She admonished them in Arabic, and several raised their hands.

Aimee felt a tug at her elbow and turned. A longhaired man in a priest’s collar, corduroy pants, and worn loafers smiled at her.

“I’m
Abbe
Geoffroy,” he said. “My hope is that you report on the plight of these people.” He gestured around the gothic church.

“Bonjour, Abbe
Geoffroy,” Aimee said, shaking his hand. “I understand a minister is negotiating, granting permission for these immigrants to stay in France.”

“I hope it’s not too late,” he said. The priest’s brow furrowed and he brushed a stray hair behind his ear. “The ten hunger strikers are in the twentieth day.”

She’d noticed how thin and listless the men were who lay on the pews. She and the priest walked toward high-backed dark wood stalls.

“Pacifists,” he said. “Many are political refugees from Algeria, Mali, and Senegal. To send them back would mean certain execution.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,
Abbe,”
she said. Ahead of them, the carved altarpiece lay bathed in a mauve glow from the stained-glass windows surrounding the nave. “Seems to me this goes against their philosophy.”

“I offer my prayers hourly for them.”

“Please don’t be offended, but isn’t there something more concrete that can be done?”

“Dissident factions took over,” he shrugged.

“Can you point out Zdanine for me?”

Abbe
Geoffrey’s expression grew pained.

“Gone,” he said.

“Can I reach him somehow?”

“I can’t keep track,” the priest said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

Aimee wanted to ask more, but Yves beckoned her. She excused herself and joined him.

“They’ve just finished their prayers,” Yves said, handing her a black veil. “Put this
hijab
over your head. Hamid’s like an
imam,
and this shows respect.”

She knew about
imams,
Muslim religious leaders or persons officiating in a mosque. Every
bidonville,
or shantytown, had one.

“Will this level the playing ground or score points?” she asked draping it over her and raising her eyebrows.

“Forget it,” Yves said. “In Islam, as a woman, you won’t even be allowed a catch-up role. But Hamid’s unique, a man who works to bridge the gap between strict Islamists and the
beurs,
tiptoeing over the French colonial legacy.”

Again that word
beur,
Sylvie’s bank password. She wanted to know more, but Yves strode ahead.

Back in a recessed side altar, several robed men sat on prayer carpets. Yves nodded toward Hamid, who wore a skullcap. Fatigue laced Hamid’s deep black eyes. His long black beard, flecked with gray, rose and fell with his labored breath.

“I partake of no food along with my African brethren,” he said before either of them could speak. “I wet my tongue for sustenance. Dead, I will serve no purpose.”

Hamid’s breath, a sharp acid odor, emanated unpleasantly. A characteristic of severe hunger, she knew, which indicated the body’s slip into a negative balance. She shuddered. This came from the body literally consuming itself.

“We appreciate you granting this interview,” Yves said, and sat down.

Aimee did the same, keeping the veil tight as she lowered her head. Hamid didn’t look old, but it was hard to tell.

“Your motto—” Yves began.

“The AFL’s motto,” Hamid interrupted, “remains the same, forged by oppressed people who demand their rights.”

“Can you speak to the situation?” Yves asked. “Comment on the fundamentalist factions rumored to be attempting to gain control of the AFL?”

“At times one must bend like the willow branch to Allah’s will or stand firm like a rod of iron.”

Aimee studied Hamid as he spoke. Whether it was his manner, the brief facial tick scoring his lips, or her sixth sense, she doubted he wanted this infighting or this publicity. Hamid didn’t make a very good liar.

“Does the fact that your followers refer to you as a
maghour,
an ‘outsider,’ disturb you?” Aimde asked.

“We are all Allah’s children, some his disciples,” Hamid said simply.

“Forgive me,” Aimee said, catching Hamid’s gaze but keeping her head lowered. “How can you assure these
sans’papiers
that they will stay?”

“We await the minister’s action, secure in our belief.” Hamid’s dark eyes filled with pain, his breathing faltered. “The AFL’s aim remains the same. Mutual cooperation will solve this conflict.”

“Did you know Eugenie Grandet?”

“Forgive me, fatigue claims my efforts,” Hamid said.

Frustrated, she studied him. Hamid’s hollowed cheekbones creased his face. His lids were half closed, and the stark white below his pupils glowed eerily. Aimee watched Hamid’s eyelids flutter. Had he gone into a trance, or was he about to pass out from hunger?

She wanted to know more about his dealings with Eugenie.

“Hamid must reserve his strength for prayer. Please end your audience,” an aide said to them.

“I respect Hamid’s duties, but he agreed to this interview,” Yves said.

“Later. Now he must rest,” the aide shouldered his way toward them.

Reluctantly Yves stood, and Aimee followed suit.

“The Koran teaches the spirit how to live among men,” Hamid said to Yves, his voice fading. “A code of life, harming no brethren. You must tell people this.”

The aide waved Aimee and Yves back toward the vestibule. He stood guard, watching them leave.

“Not even five minutes for an interview,” Yves said, distressed. “He looked ill.”

“He’s weak,” Aimee said, pulling Yves aside. “But he’s covering something up.”

“You mean lying?” Yves said.
“Imams
have immunity, like priests do. They can be creative with the truth, and followers buy it. Reporters, like me, have problems with that.”

On their way out she saw a Berber woman with hennaed hands and callused bare feet, asleep against the water font. The woman’s mouth hung open, her tongue flicking, as if tasting the air as a snake does to find its way. Maybe I should do the same, Aimee thought, and discover who attacked me in the
cirque
and planted Sylvie’s bomb.

Suddenly the woman’s eyes batted open and she sat bolt upright, her frayed black caftan trailing on the floor. She glared at Aimee, then wagged her finger, a silver bangle outlined against her dark-skinned tattooed wrist.

“Hittistes,”
she said, drawing out the first s into a hiss.

“Comment,
Madame?” Aimee asked.

The woman muttered to herself. Yves tugged at her sleeve.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As Aimee walked past her, the woman emitted a piercing series of wails, bloodcurdling
“you’you’you”
ululations. From what she knew, Arab women in anguish or mourning did that.

Aimee knelt down on the cold stone and put her hand on the woman’s knee. Scars lined the woman’s weather-beaten arms.

“Tell me what you mean, please,” she said.

The woman spoke rapid and guttural Arabic. All Aimee caught were the words
hittiste
and
nahgar,
which the woman repeated over and over. She covered Aimee’s hand with her tattooed one, beat her heart with the other, then let go.

Outside, past the crowds, she turned to Yves. They stood across from the parked buses in Place Chevalier. Yves leaned his backpack on a stone stanchion, tucking his tape recorder and notebooks inside.

“Got a clue to what the woman meant?” Aimee asked.

“Hittistes
are the young, unemployed men hanging out on the streets,” he said. “Holding up the walls in every
bidonville
as well as in Oran, Constantine, and Algiers.”

Aimee wondered if the hittistes composed the dissident faction who’d joined the church. Like Zdanine.

“And
nahgar?

His mouth pursed in thought.

Aimee remembered his slim hips, the way he’d made her feel. Stop it, she told herself, pushing those thoughts from her mind.

“My grasp of Arabic is rudimentary,” Yves said. “But it’s something to do with humiliating people, abusing power.”

Had the Berber woman tried to tell her the hittistes were undermining the immigrants’ cause? “I thought the Algerian government promoted an official Islam compatible with socialist ideals. Or tried to.”

Yves shrugged.

“There’s a lot more going on here than a protest, isn’t there?” she asked.

“In Algeria,” Yves said, “the fundamentalist opponents charge Hamid’s group with running guns-for-drugs operations in Europe. They accuse him of being supported by the most repressive Islamic regimes in the Arab world.”

“But he’s not like that at all,” Aimee said. “The AFL sponsors adult education and food programs.”

Aimee felt in her jacket pocket for cigarettes. None. She paused by Yves at the corner of rue du Liban and found Nicorette gum in her pocket. Yves’s words made some kind of sense, but she wasn’t sure how. She popped a piece in her mouth and chewed furiously.

Yves continued. “Many think the fundamentalists’ broader goal is building
umma islamiyya,
an Islamic empire, countering the depraved West, which they see as doomed to hell even though they use it for asylum and access to media.”

“Should I take my pick, or do you have a preference for one theory?” she asked, pulling her jacket tighter against the cooling air. He certainly knew his subject, she thought, but he was a top journalist.

“Algeria’s in civil war,” Yves said. He pulled out a small pad and jotted some notes. “A quiet underreported war rarely highlighted on CNN. It’s a fight for power between the hard-line military and the strict Islamic forces to govern the country.”

Aimee nodded. That made sense.

“Les barbes,
among others, fuel this war. But
les barbes,
the religious scholars, and preachers in storefront mosques adopt the white robe, skullcap and beard of the traditional
mullah.
The difference is in their fanaticism. The West brands it Islamic fundamentalism.”

“Does the Algerian government disavow les
barbes?”
she asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Of course, they accuse us journalists of oversimplifying political and religious connections. Like the secular structured state pitted against religious opponents.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Yves,” she said. “But hear me out.”

Swift-moving clouds obscured the sun again, throwing them into shadow. Chimneys dotted the rooftops. She had an idea.

“What if Hamid lost internal AFL control?” she said. “Say a rebel fundamentalist faction splinters off for recognition and publicity. But Hamid bows to the faction so the cause isn’t lost—after all, he’s on a hunger strike and has principles—so the fundamentalists get media coverage, and Hamid gets the immigrant deportations halted.” Aimee shook her head, “I don’t think it’s that simple, events stack up wrong.”