Murder in Belleville

Sunday Midafternoon

AIMÉE STOOD IN THE Vietnamese jewelry shop window fingering twenty-two-karat rose-gold chains and watching Dédé. He’d paused outside Café la Vielleuse, watching the traffic as he buttoned a long mohair overcoat, then turned up his collar.

At a nearby tabac, its torn awning hiding her view, he chatted with the shopkeeper. After a minute, Dédé went inside but the shopkeeper, his sleeves rolled up, remained outside, watching the pedestrians. She left the jewelry store and stepped onto the crowded sidewalk.

A few minutes later Dédé exited, patted the man’s shoulder, then walked at a fast clip up steep rue de Belleville. He passed Cour Lesage, then turned right into rue Julian Lacroix.

Aimée’s dark glasses and Gucci scarf covered the headset she wore. In her gray raincoat pocket was the power pack for the walkie-talkie she spoke to René with. Following Dédé proved a challenge. He’d stop frequently, shaking hands or nodding to men on the street. She’d pause and look down into her bag or peer at the nameplates on grimy apartment doors.

Most of the men were beurs. By the look of it young and unemployed. From open windows came aromatic smells—spices and oil, laced by orange blossom and the refuse in the street. She kept in touch with René’as he monitored the bandwidths in the area.

“Dédé’s on the phone, I can see,” she said.

“I’ve got his bandwidth,” Rend said.

She heard clicks, a buzzing, then Dédé’s voice in short spurts saying, “Nervous, no amateur … emptied the flat… asking questions … Eugénie … move everything. General… get Muk-tar.”

“René, he’s turned off rue du Senegal,” she said.

Dédé’s boots clicked in the distance.

“I see him,” René said. “I’m below the synagogue on rue Pali Kao. He’s moving fast now.”

By the time Aimée made it to the corner, René appeared.

“Did you lose him?” she asked.

Dédé reminded her of a rat. A fat one.

“He evaporated,” René said. “But the block isn’t long. Let’s go.”

New angular buildings were nestled between old decrepit ones on the hilly cobbled street. Timber supports braced their buckled walls. She saw evidence of habitation in the lines of wash and rusted pots of geraniums, despite the walls appearing in a state of semicollapse.

“Don’t be offended,” René’s eyes twinkled. “It’s better if he thinks you’re an amateur. Shall we try this one?” He gestured toward the oldest building, rotten beams propping up damp walls. Parts of the courtyard had been torn up, bald stones, plaster, and wood laths strewn.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“He went in there,” René said.

She heard footsteps. Apprehensive, she motioned him back. Quickly they ducked into an arched doorway.

Dédé whipped past them. Aimée held her breath, counting the beads of dew on a rusty door knocker. His heels echoed off the peeling walls. They waited a few minutes before emerging into the courtyard.

“Guess I should see what he doesn’t want me to,” she said.

René stood watch as Aimée padded to the rear. She passed an upturned metal chair, its legs pointing skyward. Turning right, she followed a wet tunnel-like passage to a slant of gray light. A paint-chipped stairwell led to the next floor. The only sound was the drip of rain from a rotted metal gutter onto the cracked concrete.

On the right was a faded green door partially visible under the stairs. Then she saw the sign.

A dark blue handprint was stamped above the doorframe. Like in Samia’s building.

Excited, she looked around and listened. Only the plop of raindrops and in the distance, a muffled radio talk show.

She pulled the Beretta from her black jeans and slipped it into her coat pocket. Thinking fast, she came up with a pretext to get inside.

“Dédé,” she said, even though she knew he’d gone. “Sorry I’m late.”

No answer. She leaned forward on her toes, put her ear to the door. Nothing. She touched the wood, and it creaked open. Hadn’t Elymani said the Maghrébins used places like this?

A musty smell greeted her. The small, low-ceilinged apartment looked as if homeless people camped in it. Soggy sleeping bags emitted a reek of mildew; rags and papers littered the floor. Torn dark green plastic bags, covering the open window, fluttered.

She paused, wondering about Dédé’s purpose in coming here. He hadn’t stayed long. The floor was tracked by many dirty footsteps. Had it been a Maghrébin haven of operation? Had Dédé left because they’d moved on?

She tiptoed over a phone book and tripped, catching herself on an armoire that groaned dangerously. The slender wooden handle came off in her hand. Sooty and full of splinters, it stung her scarred palm.

She almost didn’t notice the fat Bottin Administratif government directory on the warped linoleum floor. What a strange thing, she thought. Someone would need a handcart to carry that heavy volume.

She found her penlight and shined it along the floor. Nothing but dried-up yogurt cartons. But there wasn’t the film of dust or layer of dirt she’d expect if the place had been deserted. By the old tiled fireplace sat an ancient coal bin. She shoved it aside with her boot; underneath lay a wooden trap door to the coal cellar. She pulled the worm-holed top up, shone her penlight around.

Cold, dead, empty space.

She checked the mattress in the back room, finding dried rat turds. Flakes of stucco powdered the scuffed floor. On the wall an old calendar with saints’ pictures had been turned upside down.

Her walkie-talkie vibrated on her hip. Startled, she switched it on.

“You’ve got company,” René said.

She looked around nervously.

“Whereabouts?”

“Approaching the rear courtyard,” René said.

No time to go out the way she came in.

“Dédé?”

“Some Maghrébins,” René said in a throaty whisper. “Get out of there!”

She pulled a chair to the window, leaned on the sill, kicked the chair. Digging her toes into the wall, she hoisted herself up. She prayed the building held up and she would have somewhere to land.

Outside the window she faced a wall.

A wet dripping wall to nowhere.

Sewer smells clung in the dank crack between buildings. Probably from a leaking toilet somewhere above, sweating rivulets furred by moss. Below that lay packed earth and cracked glass.

No exit.

Blindly she reached out and felt for a ledge.

Nothing.

She let herself back down into the room, her hands trembling.

Where to go?

Voices and footsteps came from the passageway. She spied the trap door, ran and opened it.

She folded herself inside and pulled the door closed. Soot filled her lungs, her legs cramped in that sliver of a space. She could hardly breathe in the frigid cellar. Footsteps pounded heavily over the floor.

She wished she understood Arabic because, from above her, the conversation was clear. They stood right over the wooden door, which creaked and groaned with their weight. To her the clunk and scraping from above sounded as if they were pulling tiles or bricks from the fireplace. Then she realized they might look down in the coal cellar. She scooted as far back in the blackness as she could. As far back as her knotted legs would push her. She wished her hands wouldn’t tremble so much; she was afraid to drop her penlight. More footsteps entered the room.

She recognized the words “Dédé” “rue Piat,” and realized they spoke verlan, too. The only word she recognized was erutiov, the inverse for voiture, car. At least she thought it was.

Every breath she took filled her lungs with a chalky powder. Her throat ached with holding back her cough. She inched her foot out, then leaned her back against the wall. Laboriously she stretched her other leg out into the cramped space. She managed to push her body in the opposite direction along the cold, uneven stones.

The space opened up to a larger cellar. She saw dim outlines of a chute. Above that a rotted metal grille came into view. She hoped it fronted the backstreet.

The conversational pitch carried, but she couldn’t make out any meanings. The tone seemed angry, almost confrontational. One voice kept saying “lnsh’allah-hent al haram, insh’allah!”

And then she remembered that voice. The voice hissing “bent al haram” in her ear before her head got whacked into orbit at the cirque.

“René,” she whispered into her headset. “Take the stairs toward Maison de l’Air in Pare de Belleville. These mecs plan to meet Dédé on rue Piat.”

“See you there,” he said.

A welcome channel of fresh air came from the grille.

If she could just keep going! Sweat beaded her forehead and her knees weakened. She heard the footsteps again.

Above her pinpricks of light fanned from the street. She clutched for something along the slippery wall. The smooth metal chute led up. She climbed, searching for footholds with one foot while bracing the other against the wall.

And then her toe slipped, and she fell onto something hard and wooden, banging her knee. Above her the footsteps stopped. Had they heard?

She had to get out of there.

Trying again, perspiring and pulling herself up, she reached the grille. She straddled the chute’s entrance, but the grille was rusted shut. At least more air came through.

Frustrated, she didn’t know what to do; shuffling noises came from the apartment.

She kicked the metal latch with her heel. Nothing budged. She heard a scraping, as if the wooden door was being opened.

She kicked harder until the latch moved.

After two more kicks, she tried the grille. It grated noisily, then fell forward. Welcome fresh air filled her lungs. She grabbed the edge and shimmied through.

Outside she blinked in the light and got to her knees. She realized she’d emerged through an oval window into a crumbling courtyard.

A dark, rotund woman in a multicolored African robe, one shoulder bare, was hanging wash on a line. She stared at Aimée.

“Je m’excuse,” Aimée smiled, dusting herself off.

The woman returned the smile and resumed hanging clothes.

“You haven’t seen me,” Aimée said, placing a hundred francs in her hand. “D’accord?”

The woman winked, then waved, as Aimée slipped into rue Julian Lacroix. She headed to open-spaced Pare de Belleville.

Aimée paused inside the entrance by the Resistance Mimorial aux morts. Blue, white, and red flowers lay on the engraved slab. Memories didn’t die with the victims, she thought, heartened by the fresh bouquet. She scanned the park. A few gardeners tended the beds of tulips on her left.

No mecs. No Dédé.

“Where are you, René?” she spoke into her headset, turning up the volume.

René’s panting came from the other end.

“Near Terrasse Belvedere,” René’said. “My binoculars find them heading toward the vineyard, midway between us.”

“How many?”

“Two mecs, heavy-set,” Rend said.

She inhaled the rain-freshened air scented by damp grassy smells. Except for the gardeners and two women with strollers headed down the hill, no one else came into view. Before the highest point, Terrasse Belvedere, were benches under catalpa trees, near spreading beds of pink and yellow tulips. Vestiges of old Belleville, once dotted by vineyards and waterfalls sourced from subterranean tunnels, were evidenced by fountains and struggling rows of vines.

“Did you get dipped in charcoal?”

“Close enough,” she said, brushing her shoulders and rubbing her face. Her fingers came back black. “Still up on your martial arts?”

“At the top of my dojo,” he said, pride in his voice. “Got a plan?”

“Something quick and dirty should work.”

“You can do the dirty,” Rend said. “I’ll do the quick.”

“What are they carrying?”

“Gym bags, dark blue,” René said.

Of course, she thought. Simple and inconspicuous. Everyone carried them. It gave her pause, thinking of all the foot traffic carrying gym bags along rue de Belleville.

“What are they wearing?”

“Gray tracksuits, not very color coordinated. Let’s meet halfway,” René said. “I’ve got an idea, remember those mecs in Canal de 1’Ourcq?”

“Alors, René be careful!” She remembered how creative he’d gotten with his feet.

“Follow my lead,” he said.

By the time she reached the second segment of trellised stairs, arched with trailing jasmine, the mecs had stopped just ahead of her.

René stood at the top of the stairs blocking the way, his short legs apart. Budding pink-and-white jasmine released a sweet fragrance.

“Fashion police,” René said. “I’ve had a trend alert. Hand over those bags.”

The two Algerian mecs paused and laughed.

“Mon petit,” the bigger mec said, looking up at René at the top of the stairs. “Are you lost? Dwarf land is that way.”

“Your colors clash,” René said, his tone serious.

The mec stepped up to swat René. His diamond ring sparkled in the weak sunlight.

Aimée went cold. She recognized that ring, in the shape of a star and half moon, and the hairy paw that went with it, from Cirque d’Hiver.

“Hey, Muktar!” she shouted.

He spun around as René shot a fancy kick to his chin. She heard a loud crack. Then another, as René’s boot landed on his shoulder. Muktar twirled, struck the railing, and landed, bumping down the steps. His face etched in permanent surprise.

Aimée settled for some hard rib chops to his partner from behind. Startled, the partner crumpled, then began flailing wildly at Aimée and the jasmine trellis. Aimée ducked. René crosscut a series of punches to his kidneys, causing the mec to wail in pain. René’ stepped forward, then pushed him over.

It was easy after that to roll him down the stairs to midway in the path. At that point neither one of the them felt a thing and wouldn’t for a while. Aimée and René tugged them both behind the dark green bench, covering them over with vines.

“Sorry,” René grinned, moving the gravel aside with his shoe. “I had to improvise the first part.”

She looked up. “We’ve got new company.” Her heart raced. “Dédé’s brought more gorillas.”