Murder in Belleville

Saturday Early Evening

TWILIGHT DIMMED THE BELLEVILLE sky, canceling the magenta and orange slashes left from the fading sunset. Aimée sniffed the algae accompanying the biting wind blowing from Canal Saint Martin. The breath of spring she’d felt the other day had disappeared. Passengers erupted from the Métro like particles from a jet stream, erratic and windblown.

The security guard by the Crédit Lyonnais ATM near the Métro steps looked familiar. Very familiar, even with a leashed German shepherd beside him. Most of the guards in Paris were African, but he was of Algerian descent. It had to be Hassan Elymani, the custodian she spoke with on Sylvie/Eugénie’s street.

And she had to get him to talk.

She entered the nearest café, rubbing her arms and wishing she’d worn her leather coat. She planned to watch him from a warm and caffeine-laden environment. However, the fogged-up windows blocked her view of the corner. Too bad. Over the conversational hum and tinkling of demitasse spoons, she ordered two café-crèmes to go. Back out on the corner of avenue Parmentier, she approached him.

“So this is your second job, Monsieur Elymani,” she said, offering him a café. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

“I’m on duty, Mademoiselle,” he said, his voice stiff, refusing to return her gaze.

He rubbed his hands together.

She could play this game, too. But it was a shame they were outside and it was so cold.

“And I’m a customer with questions,” she said, still holding the cup. “Take it, please.”

He ignored her gloved hand with the coffee.

“Don’t you have something better to do than hound me?”

“Not right now,” she said. “I want to know about Eugénie.”

“You talk like an amateur!” Elymani snorted.

She certainly felt like one. And wasn’t he a rent-a-flic?

“The men who blew Sylvie up threatened my friend,” Aimée said. “They’re after her.”

Elymani shook his head. “You’ve even got the victim’s name wrong.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

He kept silent but rolled his eyes as if she were too stupid to comprehend. His breath frosted in the air.

She pulled out the fax from the Fichier in Nantes. “According to this the body from the explosion has been identified as Sylvie Coudray.”

“Eh,” he said, then shrugged. “Call her what you want.”

His remark disturbed her. Elymani had made a kind of sense, since it seemed to her the dead woman had a dual persona. Aimée popped the lid and sipped her café. The hot, sweet jolt burned the roof of her mouth.

“What time’s your shift over?”

“None of your business,” Elymani snapped.

A tall man tapped Elymani on the shoulder. The man’s chiseled dark face shone in the sodium streetlight.

“Go make up with your lady friend, Hassan, and be nice,” he said, with a West African accent. He winked at Aimée. “I don’t mind starting a few minutes early, eh, camarade.”

Elymani shifted in his work boots. “Beni, that wouldn’t be fair.”

The German shepherd growled, but the new man, BENI AN-OUR labeled on his shirt, took the dog’s leash.

“You crazy, camaradel” Beni said to Elymani, grinning. He eyed Aimée up and down. “A real woman and your shift’s over, no one in your dormitory waitin’ for ya! Has life been this sweet to ya in a while?”

Poor Elymani, faced with his manhood in question or her interrogation, stood mute and uncomfortable. Aimée heard the click of worry beads in his pocket.

“Look, Hassan, let’s have coffee and walk to the boulevard, please,” Aimée said, her voice low, crooking her arm under his.

“Allez-y” Beni grinned. “Only Allah knows what she sees in you. Make some time before she wakes up, eh?”

ELYMANI ACCEPTED the café, his mouth tight. Halfway down avenue Parmentier they turned into narrow rue Tesson.

He shook her arm off and glared at her. But there was fear in his eyes.

“I work hard, mind my own business,” Elymani said, his voice cracking. “Yet you step in and make my life…” he stopped searching for the word.

“Compliqué?” she said. “My intention isn’t to get you in trouble.”

“I have to take care of my father. Last month he got injured on the job site,” he said, his voice different. “Look,” he said, almost pleading, “My family in Oran relies on me.”

Elymani’s eyes were large with fear.

“We’re having a private conversation. No one will know,” she said. “I promise.”

“The Maghrébins,” he said, scanning the deserted street, “they know.”

Aimée’s stomach fluttered with apprehension, but she shook her head. “You can’t be sure, now can you, Hassan?” She went on before he could answer. “Someone was blown up, you saw something, and you’re nervous. Anyone would be.”

He looked down, scraping the sides of his muddy boots on the cobbles.

“They’ll know soon enough,” he said.

“How?”

Elymani took a sip of café, sighed, then gestured toward the building opposite. Cracked plaster facades, scrolled grills fronting tall windows, and black grime in almost a trompe l’oeil design covered the ground floor of a once exquisite Haussmann-style apartment. Now the windows were cinderblocked and a permis à démolir sign hung above the massive doors covered with graffiti.

“In the back courtyard of that building,” he said, “they run a makeover business.”

She rubbed her arms again in the biting chill. What did Elymani mean?

“Makeover?” she asked.

“Say your permis de conduire was revoked. You visit with a roll of francs, et voilà, the Maghrébins furnish you with a new driver’s license,” he said. “At least they used to. They moved on.”

So Elymani fed her information, not current but true.

The warrens of old Belleville, honeycombed by courtyards, passages, and stone cellars in deserted buildings held the Maghrébins network. At least that’s what she figured from Elymani’s conversational pirouette. And that could be how Sylvie had gotten ID as Eugénie. To open a bank account, she needed ID.

“So would you say they live in the housing projects?” she asked, lifting her eyes toward the tall concrete buildings a block away. “But run their business where they won’t be disturbed?”

He nodded. “They find a place, maybe a building ready to be torn down or renovated. The rent’s cheap. Full of Yugoslavs, Hindus, or retired people who don’t ask questions. The tenants ignore who goes in and out, until problems erupt over turf or money. Things get noisy. Then the Maghrébins move on.”

“So you’re saying Eugénie was involved in this?”

A tidy hypothesis, even plausible, but how would it fit Sylvie’s murder—even if they’d furnished her with a new identity?

“For good reasons, I keep my nose out of it,” he said. “Those hittistes want easy money, a nice life. But in the end life reckons with them.”

Elymani had his own survival code.

“You better be careful,” he said. “You’re being watched.”

“By whom?”

“Look, my jobs are on the street. All I do is listen and keep my eyes down. I don’t want to know what goes on.” His eyes darted down the street. “What I really want to do is sleep for a week. Ahrs, the foyer is noisy, my mattress is lumpy, and I miss my wife.” He shrugged. “When my papers come through I’ll bring her over.”

“What did you hear about Eugénie?” Aimée said, stamping her feet in the cold, wishing she had a cigarette.

“My next job starts in a few hours,” Elymani said, turning to walk away. “Mercf for the caféV’

“Are you a lookout or do they pay you to keep your mouth shut?”

He stiffened.

“My family would be here if I did that,” he said his voice low with anger. “But dirty money brings no honor or peace.”

“My friend’s in danger, and now they’re after me,” she said. “Don’t you understand? Tell me what you saw, Elymani, then I’ll leave you alone.”

“All I know is that Eugénie used the place. She lived somewhere else. Sometimes Dédé dropped by.”

“Who’s Dédé?” Aimée asked, forgetting how ice-like the air had become.

“An old-fashioned mec who’s got a finger in every pot,” he said. “Like a giclée, a fine ink spray coating the surface—know what I mean?”

She wasn’t sure but figured Dédé bent with the wind.

“Where can I find him?”

“Café la Vielleuse.” He turned toward the streetlight. “Now, leave me alone.”