Paris Noir Page 15

  He knew Legendre worked for the newspapers and that’s what had led him to get back in touch with the guy: the confused hope that since his old friend had written stories about ordinary daily dramas, he had pierced this secret and could reveal it to him.

  When he spoke to Legendre about his novel, his friend had slapped him on the shoulder, pointed to the radio on a shelf, and said: “Dig that: It’s a police transmitter. When something happens in the neighborhood, sometimes I manage to get there before they do and I sell my photos for five or six hundred euros. Come sleep over next weekend and if something happens, I’ll take you along. With a little luck you’ll get to see him, your ideal killer. Don’t kid yourself, though, there’s not much going down right now.”

  But the transmitter had started crackling early in the morning, and hearing the code the police use, Legendre jumped to his feet and shook Arnaud, who was sleeping on the floor of the two-room apartment situated over an Asian produce store with its fetid stench of durian. Come on, he’d said, this is the real thing, and twenty minutes later they were turning onto rue Jouye-Rouve.

  Several of the entrances to the Parc de Belleville hadn’t been closed off, so they got in without difficulty. They were not alone; onlookers were crowding the paths, teenagers especially, standing on tiptoe to peer over the metal fences and the yellow police tape stretched from one tree to another. Despite the gray sky you could see all of Paris, just slightly veiled in mist, even the Eiffel Tower to the west. The catalpa trees were in bloom, tulips were standing straight up in carefully spaded triangles of soil, and the park’s little waterfall was murmuring; but in the middle of the roped-off space there was a slight swelling under a gray tarp. The fine drizzle had almost stopped; only the smell of moss and undergrowth remained hanging in the wet air. The spectators crowded behind the yellow tape in a warm, motionless mass, and Arnaud almost felt good: It was the first time he had ever been so near a crime scene and he was discovering the silence interspersed with whispers, the strange complicity of the crowd, that morbid fascination, the almost superstitious fear—but also the hope that a corner of the gray tarp would be lifted to reveal a hand or a leg.

  Legendre had gone off. Arnaud heard him murmuring a few yards away, moving from one bystander to another. After two or three minutes his friend came back, grabbed him by the arm, and led him away from the crowd.

  “I got some information,” he said in a low voice. “It’s a kid, a mixed-race girl seventeen or eighteen years old, Layla M. She grew up here but she’d been living with a guy for a year. She danced in a nightclub in Pigalle and they say she also slept with the customers. She was strangled to death. See, you’ve got your story now! All you have to do is find out who did it and you’ve got your book.” He glanced at the gray tarpaulin and went on: “Got something to write with? Go question the neighbors, the people who live in the old building over there—the one with the Hotel Boutha sign on it—they might’ve seen something. I’m gonna stay here and try to grill these guys—discreetly. Hurry up, you got to be the first to question them. If you go in after the cops they won’t want to say a thing.”

  Reluctantly, Arnaud walked away from the crowd. He was cold in his light jacket and he would have liked to stay in the circle, the cocoon of onlookers. “But I can’t,” he protested, “I’ve never done that. What the hell gives me the right to question them?”

  And Legendre threw open his arms, exasperated. “I thought you wanted to get involved. If you’d rather sit in front of your computer tearing your hair out, that’s your problem.” Arnaud felt ashamed to have hidden his secret so poorly. “But what am I going to tell them?” he insisted, and Legendre answered with a wink before he turned away:

  “Tell ’em you’re a private detective. They should like that and it’ll give you something to think about.”

  Arnaud waited until Legendre went away; then he groped around in the vest pocket of his jacket, took out the notebook and pen he always carried on him, and walked to the gates of the park. Hotel Boutha was a bit higher up, and Legendre had a point: It was the only building whose windows let you see out onto this part of the park. On the façade, a notice was nailed under the old hotel sign—Condemned Building—but the apartments were obviously inhabited. In the lobby, over-flowing garbage cans almost prevented him from going in, and the mailboxes had been broken into so often that their doors were dangling from the hinges; the names on the boxes were all faded out, illegible. Arnaud wrote down these details in his notebook and even copied the red graffiti on a wall. He felt a vague sense of shame, taking advantage of the situation to get his hands on these fragments of reality, like a petty thief. Then he made his way between the garbage cans and walked up the stairs.

  He rang the doorbells on the second and third floors but nobody answered; a baby was crying behind one door, but no one opened it. A little girl in pajamas opened the door next to it. Her hair was made up in dozens of braids; she looked at him in silence, but before he had a chance to say a word, her mother appeared, with hair braided the same way, and as quietly as her daughter, pulled the child back and closed the door. He started up the stairs again. The stairway smelled of urine and vegetable soup but he didn’t have the heart to write it down any more than he’d had the heart to note the serious silence of the child and her mother. For a moment he thought of going back down and telling Legendre the building was empty, but then he heard a door open on the fourth floor and when he got up to the landing, he saw an old man watching him intently from the threshold of his apartment.

  The man must have been waiting for him—or the police, more likely—because a plate of cookies was sitting on the kitchen table next to the entrance, as well as cups with coffee stains in them.

  “Good morning, sir,” Arnaud said, holding out his hand, “I’m a private investigator looking into the crime that just occurred down there.” And the old man shook his hand with surprising gentleness.

  He was wearing a big plaid jacket even though it was quite hot in the apartment, and a woolen cap he immediately took off with an embarrassed look: “I don’t even know when I’m wearing it anymore. Come in, come in.”

  Arnaud remained in the doorway with his notebook in his hand, tapping the cover with his pen. “I don’t have much time, sir,” he said. “I have to question the whole building.”

  But then the old man smiled knowingly, as if he was well aware that no one had opened their door for him on the lower floors, and simply repeated: “Please, come on in.”

  Arnaud hesitated. Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall how he’d guessed the old man knew something; maybe because just as he was about to refuse again, the old man’s smile had hardened and he’d looked Arnaud straight in the eye. So he nodded and said, “Just five minutes,” and with two steps he was right there, in the kitchen. An old dog was sleeping under the radiator, stretched out on a plaid blanket the same colors as the old man’s jacket, and he didn’t even open his eyes when Arnaud pulled a chair over for himself.

  As the old man puttered around in the kitchen, checking that the coffee was hot, putting the sugar bowl and a glass of milk on the table, he said: “She’s a kid, right?”

  “Yes,” replied Arnaud, looking out the window at the trees in the park. Between their branches, blobs of color—the onlookers—were pressing against the yellow tape. “Layla M., seventeen or eighteen years old, they told me. She died from strangulation.” He was trying for the neutral voice of the private detective he claimed to be. “That means she was strangled, see.”

  The old man had his back turned. His hands were in the sink; he was mechanically running spoons and knives under the faucet. He didn’t say a word.

  “Seems she grew up near here,” Arnaud continued. “She hadn’t been living in the neighborhood for a few months, but I thought some people would be bound to remember her. You yourself—did you know her, by any chance?”

  The old man still had his hands in the sink. He seemed to be washing the silverware under the faucet for an int
erminable length of time, and Arnaud, thinking the sound of the water might have prevented him from hearing, repeated more loudly: “You know her, by any chance?”

  The old man kept his head down, but stretched out his hand and shut off the water. Finally, still without turning around, he said: “Yes, sir, I knew her. I knew her very well. I loved her like a daughter.”

  Arnaud remained silent for a moment. He cursed Legendre for having put him in this situation; he had no more idea how to console a man than he knew how to grill him or judge his guilt, and he remained silent until the old man finally turned around and leaned against the sink, drying his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he spoke again, clumsily: “She probably didn’t suffer, you know, she must have passed out when she couldn’t breathe anymore. And the police are there, they’re going to find the bastard who did it. Don’t worry, they’re animals but they always get caught in the end.”

  The old man raised his head and stared at Arnaud without answering. He picked up the coffeepot, brought it to the table, and filled the two cups. He sat down in front of Arnaud, right next to the dog; he scratched the animal behind the ear for a long time. Then, as if he’d just made a decision, he sat up, put his two hands down on the table, and said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”

  2.

  You see, sir, in two or three months this building’s going to be torn down. I think about it every time I see it. Every time I turn the corner I’m glad to see its old walls still standing, and then the potted geraniums of the old lady on the third floor, they’re old as the building. She takes cuttings from them and puts them in glasses of water, they’re all over her kitchen. During the summer, with the flowers and the wash drying outside the neighbors’ windows, you’d think it’s a street in Italy. That’s what I tell myself, you see, even though I’ve never been to Italy. Every time I see the building from the street I’m happy, and relieved. As if the demolition crew might come in with their bulldozers and jackhammers before the date they’ve set, and there’ll be nothing left of my house but a pile of rubble. They’re going to build what they call a “residence,” you know, one of those high-class buildings they sell to young people for a fortune because you can see the trees in the park, as if you couldn’t go live in the country when you feel like seeing trees. Twenty years ago it was a hotel—you can still see the sign painted on the front—then they knocked down some inside walls and turned the rooms into apartments to rent to people who didn’t mind sharing a bathroom with four other apartments and a toilet out on the landing. Yes, people like me and Layla’s mother.

  But I’m always afraid they’ll knock down the building without any warning, and every time I go out I take a bag with my most important things in it: my papers, the money I’ve saved up, my watch—I don’t like to wear it on my wrist—my social security card, some letters from my mother, and … these photos. That’s Layla. Take a look. She got these snapshots done in the Photomaton at the supermarket; she gave them to me on her fifteenth birthday. You can see how beautiful she is. Nobody ever knew who her father was; her mother got married and had three other kids but Layla was the oldest, from the years when her mom was going out and having a good time. The kid was conceived who knows where and she was born who knows where, in the street, she was in a hurry to see the world, the neighbors didn’t have the time to call an ambulance.

  For a long time she was ashamed of it, being born in the street. The other kids in the neighborhood knew—kids always know everything—and you can bet they made fun of her. Then one day I took her by the hand—her mother asked me to watch her a lot when she was a little girl and the kid was used to coming over my place—and I took her to rue de Belleville to show her the marble plaque on number 72, where Piaf was born, you know, five minutes away from here. And then I took her to the library to show her what a great lady Piaf was, I showed her books and I made her listen to recordings too, she looked like a little mouse with those earphones—she was … oh, not more than five or six. I never had a record player and neither did her mother.

  That story of Piaf who was born in the street like her … it was a good thing for her—and a bad thing too. Because she decided right away she’d be a singer, and she did have a nice little voice. She started singing all the time. Since they couldn’t handle her anymore at her place, with the three other kids squealing, she’d come to mine. She used to give me sheets of paper with the words of the songs and I had to check if she was making any mistakes, and me, I hardly know how to read, sir. When it was nice out we’d go down to the park, right next door, I’d spread out a sheet or a blanket under a tree and I’d give her what I’d made to eat, sandwiches usually, cheese or chicken sandwiches, and sometimes she’d run off to get Cokes at the nearby Franprix. Those days, when I listened to her sing, with the smell of the flowers all around, stretched out on the blanket with a piece of grass between my teeth—sometimes she sang so softly I’d fall asleep—yes, sir, no doubt about it, those were the best days of my life.

  They should have given her singing lessons, of course, and taught her to play an instrument too, but they didn’t have any money for that either. For a while she thought she’d pay for them herself and she sang in the street, especially in summer at the sidewalk cafés around Ménilmontant, and there too, I’d go with her to make sure nothing happened to her; I used to take along a folding chair and I’d roll myself cigarettes until I decided it was time to go home. Yes, you see, I never had a kid, so naturally it was like she was mine, almost, what with her mother always busy with the three little ones. But she was never able to collect enough money to pay for lessons or a musical instrument.

  When she grew up things got difficult. At fourteen she started changing her name all the time, saying she was looking for a stage name. She used to go to the library a lot, first with me and then alone, that’s where she learned all those names of singers and opera heroines, Cornelia, Aïda, Dorabella. Plus, you had to watch out: You couldn’t make a mistake, confuse her most recent name with the old one, or she’d get mad; it was like mentioning somebody she’d had a fight with. One day, just kidding around, I told her she was like an onion adding skins instead of taking them off, but after that she wouldn’t talk to me for a week. Maybe what the girl really missed was bearing the name of a man who was a real father to her.

  She hung onto the idea of becoming a singer. Her parents wouldn’t hear of it, of course, they wanted her to get a real job, with a good salary. But she stuck to her guns. Then it began to go to her head, and it’s my fault too, because I always encouraged her. Those years, when she was fourteen or fifteen—they were the worst. Layla wasn’t going to school anymore—we learned this by pure chance because she’d steal the notes from school and imitate her mother’s signature. Her stepfather gave her a beating and she went back, but not for long, she never stopped cutting classes, she’d leave in the morning with her school bag but she’d hang out in the street all day.

  Things were so bad at home that she got used to sleeping here from time to time, then more and more; her parents felt secure knowing where she was. I wanted to give her my room but she said no, she made her bed on the living room sofa, over there, she’d sleep with Milou at her feet. She said she didn’t want to bother me but mainly I think she wanted to be able to go in and out without my hearing her; I’ve gotten hard of hearing in my old age and it wasn’t so easy to watch her, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. And then, I didn’t have the guts to bawl her out, I was afraid she’d leave, that’s the way it is when you’re not really the parent, you don’t dare to be too strict. And then she started disappearing for days on end. We didn’t know where she went. I had a feeling she was traveling with a bad crowd—when she came back her breath smelled of cigarettes and even liquor, but you see, sir, she still loved to sing. So I used to tell myself that would save her, I always thought that in the end it would save her from the worst, that’s how naïve I was!

  A year ago, she started telling me about people she’d met who worked
in television. She told me there were shows that helped young people like her become singers or actors and she was going to try her luck, and for the first time she asked me for a little money to buy herself a dress and shoes. For the audition, she said—she’s the one who taught me the word: audition. She told me it was going to be in a suburb of Paris and she’d sleep over at a girlfriend’s place, a girl who dreamed of going on stage too. She told me all that sitting right where you are, with Milou’s head on her lap, pulling his ears the way she liked to do when she was a little girl. At the time we already knew the building was going to be torn down and she told me that when she was famous she’d buy a big house with a garden and there’d be a room for me and a basket for the dog. Yes, that’s what she said. Then she asked if she could sleep on the couch and of course I said yes. When I went to bed, she kissed me. She told me she’d keep in touch, because she’d probably have to stay a few months there in the TV studios, after the audition. She was laughing. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that for a long time. The next morning when I woke up, she was gone.

  Right away I knew she’d left for a long time. She’d been to her place very early and took some money from her mother’s purse. Everybody was still sleeping. They thought one of the kids had left the door open and someone had snuck in. I didn’t say a thing, but I was sure it was her, even if she never stole before. I was hurt, less because of what she did than because it meant she wouldn’t be coming back for a long time. And also because I told myself that if I’d only given her more she wouldn’t have had to steal.