B-Ville, Ch 5
In which, as in all the best detective noir, our hero gets conked on the head and wakes up next to a corpse.
Welcome to B-Ville, a dyke noir novel in progress set in a slightly dystopian, post-plague France where a serial killer forces the flatfoot, Dik, to navigate between the power-sharing neo-Katar functionaries and far left Green Bloc.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4.
B-Ville, Chapter 5
Durand was certain it wasn’t a mugger or rapist, but not me. Not yet. I wondered why he was so sure. I texted Inés, asked her to run a background check on a David Durand, mid-forties, adding his address and phone number. Wondering what would turn-up for someone who aspired to an analog life, but still had to pay taxes, have insurance—all managed through digital accounts. That phone, was it in his name?
She responded, with a terse Okay.
The bakery downstairs had a sickly smell of glycerin, yeast and margarine. You could barely see in the windows which were covered by posters declaring the latest rules on hygiene and consumption. I opened the heavy door, and queued up behind a couple of women demanding baguettes for their dinners, and pink and yellow bonbons for the whimpering kids they’d just picked up from school. It had probably been nice once. I imagined the white tiles behind the counter sparkling and clean. The wooden shelves full of gigantic rye tortes, glossy brioche, expansive sourdoughs. Not any more. There were machine-shaped baguettes. Overproofed rolls. Croissants fresh from the freezer. One sole hornet buzzed around the last neon lemon tart.
“Yeah?” said the lady, her lipstick congealed in the corner of her mouth. Her dark eyes creased with fatigue.
“Arif around?”
The server shook her head. “He’s only here ’til noon,” she said. “Try back in the morning. Next.”
I didn’t feel like waiting. So I flashed a badge at her, or what looked like one, and demanded his address. Her lips flattened into a thin, fearful line, and she went into the office in back and returned with one. Outside, I gave one last glance to the “rentboys” and “dealers” wondering why the cops hadn’t just installed a camera or two if they were so interested in David and his neighbor Marthe. Why waste the manpower? Unless they thought they were getting close. Though maybe they were interested in the corner itself. Hard to say. The street was still lonely. Though there were a couple of unshaven guys sitting in the laundromat drinking beer. Turn the corner, there was light and bustle. Dark and then light. Light then dark. Like the Katars’ world, like mine. I really had drunk a lot.
It wasn’t B-Ville, but near enough, there on the other side of the fake waterfall and duck pond of Butte Chaumont where big Jewish families bred silent daughters and angry sons. There were big Muslim families, too, with their own daughters just as silent and sons just as angry who used to fight on rue Blanche, but after the Katars arrived declared a truce. What else could they do? There were a lot of Arifs there, too, dark little men who did their jobs invisibly all day, then packed into solitary rooms at night, cooking on hot plates, pissing in their sinks. Cleaning up on Fridays to go to the mosques which hadn’t yet been banned.
I rode there slowly after the whiskey, figuring that I was chasing wild hares. There’s always somebody on every block with their ear to the ground for falling dirt. But it gave me something better to do than watch tv and drink. And think. And think. About why I didn’t ask more questions when the cops dropped by, explained that when they had tried to arrest Christine’s murderer a couple of guns had gone off. They didn’t offer any deets. I didn’t demand. She was dead, dead, dead. Freed from the devil’s flesh. I was free, too, from the grief I’d feel every time I saw her at the office, amicable as our break-up was, we never quit working together.
Wet leaves were plastered against the street. On one side, the dark grill of the empty park, trees lurking over it. On the other, pale apartment buildings which looked deceptively cheerful as the yellow squares of windows began to light up. I turned onto rue d’Hautpoul. And stopped before I got to his building. There was a group of skinny men on the sidewalk, smoking their hand-rolled cigarettes, muttering to each other in Arabic and French. They fell silent when I came near. Beyond them, a cop was draping crime scene tape across the front of a building, Arif’s building. In a window there were figures in white jumpsuits. Blocking the street were a couple of sedans, plus cop cars, double-parked.
I lingered, hoping the men in the crowd would get used to me, begin to talk again. After a while, they did. The name they said was Arif. Durand was right after all. Arif knew more than he should’ve and paid the price. I should have turned around right then. This was above my pay grade, the tiny deposit Léo’s mother paid to find out—what exactly? If the cops were coming after CARAC? After her? Probably what she needed was an expensive lawyer with good connections. Not a peeper like me.
What did I know about violent crime? Come to me if you want to know the kind of place poor lovers meet, the dark corner of a rancid bar, a sleazy hotel room. I know the joy and burn of an illicit kiss, the shock and fear when they see you lurking there. I know all that and more. The thrill of making money disappear. Hiding it in irrelevant numbers. Sliding it from account to account like beans under a cup that tourists bet on. But this. No. Unless Arif was mixed up in something else, was a little too curious for someone’s taste. It would be worth knowing, that’s for sure.
Two uniforms held off the passersby. A couple of men in shabby suits held a confab in the corner pointing to that apartment on the top floor where shadowy figures moved in a Balinese puppet theater. One of them below was a meager little thing with the reddest hair I’d ever seen. I texted Inés, asking if she’d noted that B-Ville address for the death before they went quiet on the radio. Yes, she did. Apparently I was standing in front of it.
I wheeled my bike around the corner, and joined the group of men where I’d heard Arif’s name. They looked at me vacantly.
“Terrible.”
The guy next to me shrugged, “Yeah.”
“Is it true then, the rumor that Arif knew something about…?”
I waited for him to fill in the gap, but he just shrugged again, shivering patiently in the cold. I moved to somebody else and got the same results. I didn’t expect any. We Parisians are champion shruggers. If you didn’t already know something, you weren’t gonna learn it from them. Too risky. Even had they known me for years. Even if I spoke Arabic. Still… rumors ebbed and flowed like gutter water. Somebody had to know something. And if you kept talking, said the right thing, they’d raise an eyebrow or something and you’d know.
A woman with shopping under one arm, a child under the other, started talking to a cop at the barricade, at first in a normal tone, then shouting, then enraged. Exploding in furious wails, joined by her baby. They took her to the red-headed cop who let his face drape into a sympathetic shape.
“Wife?” I asked the man next to me.
“Sister.”
I looked up at the surrounding buildings, wondering if there’d been any wits. Almost all the windows were dark, shades pulled down, shutters firmly, and definitely shut, declaring they didn’t know nuttin’. All except one. Across the street from Arif, I saw movement behind the peeling windows of a second story flat. What I did next was Marthe’s fault, goading me about Christine. How I hadn’t asked questions. Just left it up to the authorities. I locked up my bike, pulled an envelope out of my backpack, scribbled that address on a label, and slapped it on.
The cop saw me coming and shook his head. “Get lost.”
“I have a delivery across the street. See?” I pointed to the label. “C’mon. Then I’m off for the day. I’ll be out in 5 minutes.”
He let me go. More power to ‘em. Some idiot neighbor had left the door propped open, so I went in through the courtyard, past the withered plants and dog shit, and up a flight of stairs. Then knocked politely on the door, kept knocking until an old man cracked it open. His face grey with worry.
“Package for you,” I said.
“I didn’t order anything. Go away.”
I didn’t feel like waiting, and gave the door a good shove. He glanced desperately around. "You have no right."
I didn’t give the place much of a look. I thought I knew everything from the bag of bottles near the door, the hot plate on top of a small fridge next to an easy chair, the stench. The old man hadn't bathed in a month or two, his beard grizzled grey and yellow on his wrinkled face. "I didn't see nuthin'," he said, loudly.
"That's what they all say when the cops come around."
He laughed nervously at that. ”You’re no cop."
He was even shorter than me, so I got up close, grabbed his collar like they used to do in movies, and breathed my Scotch fumes into his decrepit face. "What did you see?"
"Nothing."
I pushed my way in. ”Lives are at stake and that's the way you're gonna play it, huh? You know what happens to witnesses that keep mum?"
“They live to see another day,” he said loudly. Too loudly maybe. "Fuck off. And take a bath. You smell,” he told me.
“Me?!”
I shrugged, and let go of the filthy shirt I'd pulled tight around his filthy wrinkled neck.
“Get lost,” he repeated. I could see the pulse beating in the clotted vein. A couple of grey hairs came out of his nose and flickered in his breath. Though I couldn't begrudge him his silence, I turned reluctantly towards the door. I'd come back later, bring a bottle of vodka with the idea of loosening him up.
"Be careful," I said.
“You, too, asshole."
I heard a rustle behind me. There was a little noise, then that old flash of light before the dark.
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