Murder in Belleville

Thursday Morning

“MERCI, GASTON,” AIMÉE SAID, accepting the espresso from him at the counter in Café Tlemcen. The café, with its worn linoleum and lace-covered windows, felt familiar, almost comfortable to her. Rai, a fusion of Western pop with Algerian regional music, pounded from an open window across the narrow street.

“Wasn’t RaT outlawed?”

Gaston nodded. “The fundamentalists banned Rai as degenerate Western music. But I like it.”

“Me too,” Aimée said, tapping her foot as she sipped from the steaming cup. She reached for another lump of brown sugar. The odd look on Gaston’s face alerted her.

“Where can I wash my hands?” she asked, making her voice louder than usual.

“Follow me,” he said.

He nodded to the rear. Past the zinc bar were the toilet stalls and a passage to the back.

Old men dealt poker at the wooden tables. Several young men in tracksuits and rasta types with dreads played the pinball machines.

Aimée kept up with Gaston, who grabbed a mop en route. At a door opening to a back courtyard, Gaston motioned her to the right. Outside in the courtyard stood a wire-and-glass-roofed structure. Aimée figured it had once functioned as an iron forge or a blacksmith’s, and retained its Belle Epoque charm. The double wood doors lay half open despite the chill drizzle.

“We can talk chez moi” he said, indicating for her to follow him inside.

They tramped through sawdust, around exposed iron beams, and a sawhorse straddled by a semifinished oak cabinet. Bits of stucco clung to her heeled boots. Above her, skylights rendered opaque with age filtered weak light across Gaston’s spartan live-and-work space. She shivered and wondered how he stayed warm in this place.

An old curved alcove was set into what had been the brick oven used for heating and smelting iron or smithing horseshoes. Inside was an iron bedstead covered by a khaki-colored duvet, with a white Persian cat sleeping at the end.

Below the grimy window she saw a double-ringed cooktop connected to a blue Butagaz cylinder on the floor. The aroma of old grease underlay fragrant clay pots of fresh mint and oregano perched on the sill. The only heat source she saw was a small portable heater. In the middle of the room was a chipped Formica table, cluttered with notebooks and yellowed newspaper clippings in clear cellophane. The Persian cat blinked several times, sniffed, then resumed its nap.

“Someone said a car bomb exploded in has Belleville on rue Jean Moinon …” Gaston began, his tone hesitant. “Did something happen to Anaïs?”

“Not Anaïs. Her husband’s mistress,” Aimée said. “I think the woman assumed another identity in Belleville.”

“But why?” Gaston asked, smoothing strands of hair down over his bald patch.

She told him an edited version of what happened.

“Ever heard of Eugénie?”

Gaston shook his head. “But Aimée, after you called I searched my files. I recognized Hamid. There’s something about him you should know,” Gaston said. He pointed to a clipped newspaper photo, captioned “Souk-Ahras 1958,” from Le Soir d’Algérie. In it a group of turbaned unsmiling men, clutching rifles, stood outside a bombed-out building.

“Mustafa Hamid’s a mahgour” Gaston said pointing to a lean-faced teenager.

Curious, Aimée leaned forward. Hamid seemed to be the youngest among them. “This is a mahgour?”

“Mahgour means a ‘defenseless one,’ ” Gaston said. He opened a small refrigerator and took out a jar. “In traditional Islamic society, the family is ruled by the Koran and shari’a, a code interpreted by legal scholars, regulating everything from male inheritance to what a woman can do in her own home.”

Gaston managed quite well with his one hand, emptying scraps from the jar into the cat’s bowl on the floor.

“Hamid’s family was massacred during an early battle in the mountainous Kabylie region. He grew up on the streets—a mahgour without connection, family, or group that could provide security and protection in a society where individuals without such connections are defenseless.”

“But he’s part of this group,” she said, looking at the photo.

“That’s true,” Gaston agreed. “And now Hamid speaks for the AFL, as a leader. His group embraces all ‘African brethren,’as he says.”

“He’s accepted, then, isn’t he?” Aimée asked. She figured Gaston had a reason for telling her all this.

“A mahgour who forges complex loyalties and connections survives, can even thrive. But he remains a mahgour.” Gaston nodded. “Anciens combattants, like me, fought with many. They joined us because their people didn’t trust them. Some became Harkis—paramilitaries who fought with the French.”

“Seems rooted in tribalism,” she said.

“Most Algerians descend from the Kabylie or Berber tribes,” he said. “But if you understand this concept you understand the country.”

She felt glad that Gaston was on her side.

“Who’s this?” she said, pointing to the young man beside Hamid. Their arms laced around each other’s shoulders.

Gaston scanned the names under the photo. “His brother.”

“But you said Hamid was orphaned.”

“Orphaned brothers, once close,” Gaston scratched his head. “We had files on all the insurgents. A high percentage came from mahgours. Hamid’s brother lived in Paris but returned to Algeria, I think.”

“Djeloul Sidi—is that his name?” Aimée said, peering closer.

Gaston nodded.

“Did Hamid change his name?”

“Lots of mahgours do,” he said. “People often do that if they’re hiding.”

“Or putting the past behind and starting a new life,” she said. “Any idea what his brother’s up to now?”

“I concentrate on anticolonial struggles from nineteen fifty-four to nineteen sixty-one,” he said, “and friendly-fire situations.”

“What do you hope to achieve with your memoirs, Gaston?” she asked.

“The truth,” he said. “No one likes to talk about that time. But friendly fire happened to my troop. More than once.”

“You’re writing the history?”

“Internecine struggles between Algerian factions could fill volumes,” Gaston said, pointing to the papers. “In here, too,” he pointed to his gray temple. “Canal Saint Martin, where you called me from last night,” he said, “was a notorious reckoning spot in 1960. With hideous regularity, bodies were found floating.” Gaston shook his head. “The OAS hunted the Algerian underground, and the FLN militants policed their own.”

“So you mean the French killed their own, and the Algerians did too?” Aimée thought of the quiet flowing canal and Philippe’s threat.

Gaston nodded. “Ugly things happened.”

Claude’s fishlike eyes still bothered her. “Based on Philippe’s reaction, I think somehow Eugénie/Sylvie had contact with Ha-mid,” Aimée said. “But as a wealthy minister’s mistress, I doubt she supported Hamid’s cause. She had another identity; she had secrets.”

“Everyone has secrets,” Gaston said.

But not everyone has a double life, Aimée thought. She had to find out more.

“What do you hear about the sans’papiersl”

“Last night I broke up a fight,” Gaston said, “between a fundamentalist and a pimp’s brother.” He rolled his eyes. “Both claimed that Hamid is a figurehead. One said the mullahi Walid would take power. The other said his brother, the pimp Zdanine, had plans to divert the attention his way.” Gaston shook his head. “Meanwhile Hamid’s wasting away on a hunger strike, the focus of media attention. He’s trying to keep his AFL united with all the sans-papiers, not just the ones from Algeria.”

“So if an AFL faction splits from Hamid, they could rationalize that because he’s a mahgourl”

“Depends,” he said. “But I’d say that’s a good guess. We used to say, ‘Muck floats downstream, the good and bad, often together.’“

“What do you mean, Gaston?”

“Hamid’s got a church full of people. Some are just there for the ride.”

“Aren’t the police going to evict them again?”

“There’s another candlelight protest vigil tonight,” Gaston said. “Hamid’s granting interviews.”

“Then I’ll get one too,” she said.

But before that she had to get into Sylvie/Eugénie’s apartment on rue Jean Moinon.