The hanged mans tale, p.4
The Hanged Man's Tale, page 4
Mazarelle opened his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt collar. Frisking himself to make certain that he’d remembered to take his pistol out of his desk. It probably wouldn’t be necessary for the job he might have to do, but out on the edge of the city, the police weren’t always welcome visitors. His colleagues had reported run-ins out here more than once.
Making his way along a muddy road lined with a caravan of dented old cars parked bumper to rusty bumper, he entered the half-demolished shantytown. Plywood shacks, little bigger than outhouses, wobbled uncertainly. The tarpaulin on their roofs was held down by rocks against the gusting wind. On top of the rubble, exhaust pipes thrust their necks up like U-boat conning towers. On the ground, piles of debris and a splattered child’s doll, her body stuffed with straw and buttons for eyes partially blinded by drying mud. Behind this chaos, a cinder block wall with a graffito warning—i spy.
In the middle of a tropical splash of sunlight sat a burly Romani, crouched down on the torn knees of his purple pants, washing his laundry in a Pepto Bismol–pink rubber tub. He gave Mazarelle the barest hint of a nod and kept scrubbing, his swollen beer belly straining against his striped shirt. Behind, his wife and kids crowded into the doorway of a corrugated box with no running water and little power. Through the open door Mazarelle could see the long, thin extension cord they used for their electricity and the juice flickering. The thick rubber band holding the big guy’s hair in a braid down his back was much more dependable. Mazarelle came closer as the man held up the Real Madrid T-shirt he’d been washing to check for holes and stains. The commandant noted the guy’s white teeth jammed into the brown face, his flashy gold incisor, his razor scar, and his sneer when Mazarelle asked about Babo.
“Never heard of him!” growled the Romani. “Ask them.” He nodded in the direction of the two old-timers playing dominos. Mazarelle was surprised that he hadn’t noted them close by, sitting bent and motionless on their rickety chairs and quietly smoking.
The mob of scruffy kids who had seemed to come out of nowhere now surged around their visitor, curious to see who he was. Mazarelle noticed with a twinge just how painfully thin they were, their legs little more than sticks poking out of their short pants, their dark eyes big as saucers. When it came to government aid, the Romani of Paris were rarely first in line. The last time they had important visitors, it was their mayor himself, who had looked around the shabby encampment and was overheard to say, “I guess Hitler didn’t kill enough of them in the last century.” Which was followed by the Ministry of the Interior’s inspectors, and then an army of cops and bulldozers, tearing through the shacks, demolishing the only tiny homes they had. A half of the Petite Ceinture camp was now gone, the other half waiting to be torn down in the near future but still sheltering its disheveled human cargo. And Paris wasn’t alone. He had seen the paperwork. More forced evictions were coming all across the country.
Mazarelle offered up an ID and a smile. Kids like these had faced their share of bad luck over the years. Ever since the Romani people first arrived in Europe from India in the twelfth century, they’d been singled out as a plague on society, as if they had some sort of genetic predisposition to petty crime. Turned into slaves in Romania and England; locked up in Serbia and Austria; expelled and deported in Spain, Venice, and Rome, they were the target of forced schooling and imprisonment all across Europe. Even in twenty-first-century France, Mazarelle knew, his force still kept clandestine files on them.
When the kids realized that this official visitor was from the police, they drew back instinctively. Pulling themselves together, shoulder to shoulder, they formed a defensive wall, shouting at the top of their lungs, “Flic! Flic! Flic!” They chanted the word as an incantatory curse, thrusting their hands stiff armed and cross fingered like red-hot pokers at Mazarelle, attempting to keep this officer away. As they yelled, they thronged around him, whipping themselves into a frenzy.
Mazarelle eased his way through the surly group as if they weren’t even there. Walking away free and clear until all of a sudden he felt what seemed a fatal tugging on his bad leg. It was the smallest guy in the gang. He was attached to the commandant like a suction cup. A guy named Sami.
“Psst!” he called in a whisper with his finger to his lips, looking up at Mazarelle. “I know Babo,” Sami said.
Mazarelle took out a pen and a thick pad. Riffling through the pages, he was reminded of what lousy records Alain kept. Halfway through, he found a blank page. “Last name?” he demanded.
“Banderas.”
“Address?”
“Who knows?” Sami shrugged.
“Where can I find him?” Mazarelle asked.
“He moves around a lot. But mostly in Montmartre. Not far from where the old Cirque Medrano was.
“And if you’ve got any stuff to sell,” Sami added, “he’ll give you a good price. I should know. He’s got my girlfriend.”
Her name was Flor, and little Sami loved her dearly. He wished he could tell this big guy how much he missed his fifteen-year-old sweetheart, her fiery eyes, her jet-black hair. He totally rejected her dumb notion that her new forty-two-year-old boyfriend was a dreamboat, and that their relationship was a match made in heaven. Before Babo stole Flor away, Sami had thought of him as a cool guy who always paid well. But now Sami hated him. He thought Babo was an old lech preying on a teenager half his age. Sami didn’t expect their relationship to last, but he had to face facts. Though he planned to hang around a while, within easy hailing distance of Flor, hoping they’d break up soon, he was no longer one hundred percent sure how long that might take.
Mazarelle looked impatient, and was already on his way, so Sami didn’t even try to tell him what he thought about Babo. But he did have a question for him.
As Mazarelle was leaving, he heard Sami calling after him. “Tell me ’Stache”—he winked—“are you really a flic?” For whatever reason, the kid had tried to be helpful, so Mazarelle had no wish to be cruel. He bent down to short pants’s ear and whispered, “I’ve been called worse things in my life.”
7
Outside the shantytown, Mazarelle was on the phone with Maurice. Mazarelle needed the facts on Babo Banderas—his address, his contacts, his priors. It didn’t take Maurice long to find the file. It was big enough.
“He’s a fence. Word is, he’s tied in to some of those Mafia Romani clans like the Casamonicas. These guys are infamous. People are too scared to testify against them. Listen to this. One informant said: ‘They are animals. They cut off fingers.’ ” As for the address, Maurice told him it was near the Place des Abbesses Métro stop. The way things turned out, it was and it wasn’t.
When Mazarelle finally arrived at Abbesses, he found that he was at the bottom of one of the deepest stations of the Métro system. The good news was that they had two elevators. And in fact they both were actually there waiting for him when he arrived. The bad news was that both of these ascenseurs had handwritten signs taped to their doors with the message Hors de service.
Mazarelle steeled himself to walk up the eight steep flights of the staircase. Or rather limp. Fortunately, he’d been going to his gym lately a couple of times a week in preparation for the Bastille Day security assignment. When he finally got to the top of the stairs, he congratulated himself. Coming out the iconic art nouveau entrance, with its flowering green Guimard-style vines, his pulse was steady, his breathing untroubled.
Mazarelle soon found the number he wanted, a not particularly stylish, unpretentious apartment building on a quiet block. The concierge’s residence was well marked and well lighted. Her name was Madame Lulu. “Lulu B,” she clarified, to make certain there was no confusion in the commandant’s mind with the many other Lulus on her block. How many were there? he wondered. The petite Lulu ran her hand through her bushy blond hair and shook it in his face, raising herself up closer to the big guy’s nose to give him the full sensory 3D impact of her latest coiffure—like Ingres’s Thetis, flirting with the giant Jupiter.
Mazarelle smiled and asked about Babo. He confided, “Don’t worry, chère madame. I’m an old friend of his.”
“Mademoiselle,” she replied coolly, looking him over cap-a-pie. “Monsieur Banderas is out for the day.”
“I’ll wait here,” Mazarelle said firmly, as if putting down an anchor. His mind was made up. He showed her his police card to help her along.
She raised her eyebrows, put the key in his smooth warm palm without a word, sensing perhaps that he could be trusted or else that her morning was full of enough chores. She shrugged, then spun away smartly on her heels. No sooner had she gone than Mazarelle slipped the key into the lock and strode inside. He didn’t quite know what to expect, or what to make of it when he saw what was there.
The open door revealed a brilliantly lit Weegee scene, as if captured candidly by the reporter’s flash camera and scandalous unblinking eye. The fence’s relatively small three-room apartment was jam-packed with stuff acquired slowly over time by getting and spending and more than occasionally stealing.
Under the large Air France travel posters from Paris to Dubai on the red velvet walls were countless cartons of contraband cigarettes. Gaming consoles were stacked high in the corners of the room, surrounding a trio of life-sized marble leopards.
Nearby sat a stunning set of red satin chairs with solid gold frames. To Mazarelle’s professional police eye, they looked as if they had been stolen from a reception room at the Vatican.
The commandant had done his share of apartment searches over the years. He had a methodical approach that served him well, working his way around the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the living room. But here, the sheer volume was overwhelming. There were clues everywhere. Only not to the right crime.
As he poked around the toilet, the vents, under the sink—the most common hideaway spots for the average criminal—Mazarelle felt his spirits sink, and his stomach started to grumble, a reminder of the breakfast that he had missed. Peeking inside the refrigerator he found the moldy remains of a half-eaten goulash. Mostly, the shelves were crammed full of contraband wristwatches, from Timexes, Casios, and cheap Oulm army timepieces to an Omega Seamaster and a half-dozen top-end Rolexes with cases of rose gold, the favorite of all the Mafia Gypsy clans. The refrigerator motor had been turned off, the plug pulled out as well. Nothing useful there. And nothing will come of nothing, he thought. Poetry cheered him up a little bit and especially Shakespeare when he felt glum, but it did nothing to lessen his appetite.
Madame Lulu, who only once before had been inside this apartment, knew little about what went on there. All she cared about was getting her rent every month on the dot, and staying on the right side of the authorities. When monsieur returned, it was good that she hit the buzzer because Mazarelle had grown drowsy going through the immense secret trove he’d found in the apartment. When the sleeping bear heard her buzz from downstairs and jumped up, he had barely enough time to race inside to the bathroom to splash some water on his cheeks.
Then, suddenly, Babo was there, a box under his arm, his girlfriend Flor in tow. And his temper filled the room. “I don’t know you!” Babo screamed. “Who the hell are you? Who let you in? Get the fuck out of here!”
Mazarelle drew himself up. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he announced in a deep resonant voice. “Commandant Mazarelle, of the Brigade Criminelle. I’m investigating a homicide that occurred a few days ago.”
“A murder? What’s that have to do with me?” Babo fumed.
“The victim was a private investigator by the name of Alain Berthaud. Do you know him?”
Babo put the box down on the table. Quieter now. He gave Mazarelle a long, squint-eyed stare.
“Know him?” he said flatly. “That prick made a mess of my life.” Babo caught himself and abruptly stopped.
Mazarelle nodded slowly, sympathetically.
“I understand you threatened him.”
“Hell, yeah,” Babo snapped. “Messing around in my private life. Taking pictures. Sneaking into my bedroom.”
Once again he had worked himself from a simmer to a full-throated boil. Clearly Babo was a volatile guy. Mazarelle filed it away.
“So it seems you have a criminal record. A connection to the Casamonica family in Rome. The Gypsy Mafia.”
“Oh, sure.” Babo looked over to Flor. “It’s easy to blame the Gypsies. We’re all criminals, right? There’s a crime—find a Gypsy!”
He threw his hands out to underscore the injustice.
Mazarelle thought it was a good performance. Not quite Olivier or Johnny Depp, but still, full of emotion. On the other hand, there was that big stack of TVs piled against the wall.
Taking in Babo’s outstretched palms, he spotted something else. A raw, blistered welt cutting across the flesh of both hands. It looked painful. It looked like a rope burn. The kind of cut you might have from hanging a heavy body.
“How’d you get those?”
“That?” scoffed Babo. “That’s nothing.”
“Right. And you came by them…”
Babo sighed, aggrieved with the world. “I have an import business. All right? We’re always boxing up things and sending them out. One of the boxes got away from me.”
Mazarelle wasn’t convinced. “Okay,” he said. “So tell me. Where were you on the night of July nineteenth?”
“The same place I am every night. Between the legs of my sweetheart.”
Babo turned to his chouchou. On cue, Flor replied, “Of course he was here with me! Where else would he be?”
It was an alibi, but only the slimmest. With that temper, those rope burns—and the threat against Berthaud—Mazarelle thought he might have his suspect.
“All right, Babo. I understand what you’re saying. But we have to check all this out.”
“Go ahead.” The suspect smirked.
“I mean down at headquarters. You’re going to have to come with me until we can get a little more information. A few more questions answered.”
Mazarelle put in the call for a police car, and sat down to wait.
Now Babo paled. “I am not a murderer,” he insisted. “This is just crap.”
An hour later, even as the commandant pushed Babo into the police car downstairs, the thief continued to protest. It was the way he swore to his innocence that would come to haunt Mazarelle.
8
Out in front of 36 Quai des Orfèvres, a crowd was already gathering as Mazarelle and Babo pulled up in the police car. Dozens of angry faces, shouting, chanting. Maybe a hundred or more.
Send them home! read a sign. France for the French.
Mazarelle sighed. How had word already leaked out into the chat rooms? He asked the driver to pull up closer, but this was as close as he was going to get today.
No barricade. No officers out front. They weren’t making it easy for him.
“Here we go,” he said. “Keep your head down.” He opened the door. An ugly sound rippled through the crowd.
“That’s him,” someone yelled. “Gitan! Murderer!” Other voices chimed in. A college student waving his fist. An old woman waving a sign. A man in a dark gray sweater. The crowd started to surge forward.
In his snapshot-like scan of that moment, Mazarelle took in the frantic faces. He recognized the expressions. The agitation. The fury. A lot of dark clouds on such a sunny day. And they were so convinced of the rightness of their cause. That’s what made them scary.
Mazarelle put an arm around Babo and hustled his suspect toward the front door of the building.
Even as he pushed forward, an image came to him. A memory, straight off the rugby fields of his youth. A ball carrier had gone to ground. His friend Khalil, fresh from Algeria, holding on to the leather ball for all he was worth. In the ruck, players from both teams pushing and shoving. And then things turning really nasty. As if the anonymity of the pack unleashed an inner violence. Stomping, digging in their elbows, raking toward his face and eyes with their fingernails. “You dirty Arab,” they hissed. “Go on home. We don’t need your kind here.” Young Mazarelle couldn’t believe what he was hearing at first. And then he did. Reaching down, he threw bodies off right and left, put the young Khalil under his arm like the ball, and plowed through them all.
And here he was again, his shoulder into the crowd, parting the bodies in front of him.
Up ahead, the demonstrators seemed to be redoubling their efforts. “Kidnappers!” came the shouts. A red-faced woman in a blue coat, screaming, “They kidnap little kids!” As if shouting the old wives’ tale made it more true.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the man in the gray sweater again, tracking along on the far side of the crowd. Mazarelle noticed the odd expression. The faces all around were full of heat and anger, but his was curiously cold and expressionless…
The crowd pressed forward, closing in. A wave of bodies crashed around him. Now there were sticks waving in the air…and then the flash of metal.
Out of nowhere, a blade came slicing out.
Mazarelle barely had time to swing Babo behind him. The point snicked forward. He caught it on his forearm. The edge slashed through his jacket. It cut fabric and flesh.
The man in the gray sweater, the blade jutting out of his hand.
With a yell of pain, Mazarelle rolled his arm forward and snagged a wrist. Twisting until he heard a snap and a shout. The clank of metal on the ground.
Babo had stopped, staring at him openmouthed.
