Murder in Belleville

Dead easy.

But that wasn’t true. He wished it were. Outside his window, along the gravel paths, the trees’ shadows wavered and lengthened. He tossed the empty pill bottle in the trash—he needed more or he wouldn’t sleep.

Visions of his nounou, the caramel-faced Berber nursemaid who’d diapered and fed him, flashed in front of him. He saw her gold-toothed smile, warm and welcoming. Her eyes crinkling in laughter when he’d tickle behind her elbow on her soft, dark skin. How she’d save him the first of the season’s figs, swollen with seeds, and a fistful of golden white grapes from Lemta. He heard the hoarse notes of her song, one he’d never understood. The song, she’d said, told of the Atlas Mountains near her village, jagged, purple, and massive. And how the chergui, the dry and burning east wind, whipped the land and inflamed spirits.

His nounou had taught him games the nomad children played in the desert. For hours they’d sit in the cool turquoise-tiled courtyard under the whitewashed arches by the fountain, playing pebble toss and hide the waterskin.

And then the last vision that he’d tried to forget—his nounou’s head impaled on the fencepost of the Michelin factory, in a row by others accused of sabotage by the gendarmes. A cloud of black flies on her slack jaw revealing the gold tooth glinting in the sun, his mother’s screams. How his mother made them all run to the harbor. But there were no ships.

How could an illiterate woman who spoke a Berber dialect be a spy? he’d overheard his mother ask his stepfather over the dinner table years later. Every dinar nounou earned, his mother continued, she’d sent to her family in the village.

Roman had said both sides paid and made bad mistakes. “France will reap the dividends in the future,” he’d said. For a former soldier that seemed charitable. In fact it was the only charitable thing about Algerians Bernard ever heard him say.

And he’d been right, Bernard thought. He dealt with that dividend in Notre-Dame de la Croix.

Saturday Early Evening

TWILIGHT DIMMED THE BELLEVILLE sky, canceling the magenta and orange slashes left from the fading sunset. Aimee 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 Metro like particles from a jet stream, erratic and windblown.

The security guard by the Credit Lyonnais ATM near the Metro 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/Eugenie’s street.

And she had to get him to talk.

She entered the nearest cafe, 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 cafe- cremes 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 cafe. “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 Eugenie.”

“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,” Aimee 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. Aimee popped the lid and sipped her cafe. 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 Aimee. “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 Aimee 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. Aimee heard the click of worry beads in his pocket.

“Look, Hassan, let’s have coffee and walk to the boulevard, please,” Aimee 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 cafe, 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.

“Complique?” 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 Maghrebins,” he said, scanning the deserted street, “they know.”

Aimee’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 cafe, 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 a