Aimée blinked in the sunlight as she emerged from the Métro. The sun wavered, then retreated behind a steel gray cloud shrouding Belleville.
Friday, market day, found a densely packed strip of stands on the long pedestrian islands, stretching from Menilmontant through Couronnes to Belleville Métro. Fruit and vegetable sellers and poissoniers carrying fish from Marseilles and Brittany mingled with merchants selling children’s clothing, pocketknives, ornate Egyptian teapots, and hair ornaments.
The unmistakable squawking of chickens sounded in her ear. Aromas of fresh mint wafted. Hawkers cried “Viens! viens!” thrusting samples of glistening Spanish melons, a thimble of pistachios, or fifty-franc Piaget lookalikes at shoppers.
The humanity varied as much as the products, Aimée thought. Nearby was the home of the French Communist Party. She passed bas Belleville, once housing the prolétariat français—a working-class bastion—now home to crumbling serrurerie metal factories, partially bricked up. Their graffitied walls were surrounded by teenagers pushing strollers speaking a patois of Arabic and verlan.
A certain charm remained, and Aimée liked that. The charm of an old world, when life moved slower and residents had time for each other, spending most of their lives in the quartier. Narrow winding passages, cafés of former époques patinaed by grime, hidden courtyards, and overgrown gardens of small dilapidated villas tucked on the hillsides existed until the dreaded permis de démolir brought the wrecking ball. The steep staircases, joining one street to another, resembled those of Montmartre, their scrolled metal balustrades worn and chipped in places.
Ahead of her, Aimée marveled at how two piano movers carried a piano up five steep and narrow floors to an apartment hardly wider than two Citroëns nose to nose.
She wondered how Sylvie/Eugénie fit into the melange that swelled the boulevard: the Tunisian Jewish bakery where a line formed while old women who ran the nearby hammam conversed with one and all from their curbside café tables, the occasional roller blader weaving in and out of the crowd, the Asian men unloading garments from their sliding-door Renault vans, the Syrian butchers with their white coats stained bloody pink, the tall ebony Senegalese man in flowing white tunic, crocheted prayer hat, and blue jogging shoes with a sport bag filled with date branches, a well-coiffed French matron tugging a wheeled shopping cart, a short one-eyed Arabe man who hawked shopping bags hanging from his arms, and the watchful men in front of the Abou Bakr Mosque near the Métro.
By the time she reached that part of the boulevard, the vegetable stands were being dismantled and crates repacked. Honey drenched cigar-shaped pastries beckoned her from a Lebanese stall but she resisted. The stench of ordure rose from the cobbles.
Aimée heard the whine of Arabe music—the same tune from before. She shuddered: She’d heard it right before the explosion.
She scanned the corner. The trouble with car bombs was that they were impossible to see. She willed herself to relax; it wouldn’t make sense for an Arabe to bomb an Arabe quartier. For a moment she felt ashamed; she was thinking like a flic.
MORBIER SAT at a café table under a white awning where rue des Maronites met the boulevard. Parked motorscooters lined the curb.
He sat smoking, fingers wrapped around a glass of vin rouge, his posture unnaturally erect due to the body brace. Normally his favorite pose was leaning back in a swivel chair at the commissariat, feet up on his cluttered desk and barking orders on the phone while chain-smoking. He still chain-smoked, and his socks were mismatched, but the suspenders were slack. He’d lost weight, she noticed. For once his wool pants stayed up on his belly without help. Sitting there he guarded his cigarette from the wind, cupping it in his palm like a street mec.
“What’s so important, Morbier?” she said, sitting down.
“Besides keeping me company?” he asked.
She eyed the carafe of wine and extra glass.
He poured her a glass, raised his, and said, “Salut.”
Gesturing toward the boulevard, he said, “I hate to think that this is what retirees do—take a walk, go to market, prepare the midday meal, visit the girlfriend, stop in the square for an aperitif. Next day, they do it all over again. The golden years!” His mouth turned down in disgust.
For a career flic like Morbier, this kind of leisure was like a slow death. Wasn’t he too old for le demon de midi—the midlife crisis?
“Forget about retiring,” she said. He’d recited this litany whenever he’d been injured or on leave and didn’t know what to do with himself.
“Morbier, soon as the brace comes off you’ll be back in the saddle.” She looked at her Tintin watch, which had stopped. “I’m curious about why you invited me to lunch.”
“All in good time,” he said, sipping his wine. “Since you’re here, notice that mec over there?”
She followed his arm and saw a short middle-aged man with mouse brown hair and prominent nose in a blue work coat. He stood in front of a tabac.
“You mean the man in the crowd,” she said. “The one I’d never notice or think twice about?”
He shrugged. “We call them Pierres, these market thieves. He’s been shadowing his mark for a good while now, weaving, ducking, and helping load the poor sucker’s van. Of course that was after he’d eyed the cashbox under the driver’s seat.”
“What are you going to do about it, Morbier?”
Morbier’s eyes lit up.
“Leduc, you’re going to go and whisper in the mec’s ear how my eyesight is perfect and it’s trained on him.”
She shrugged. “If it puts you in a good mood and makes you feel useful, it will be my plaisir” she said and stood. She knew this was Morbier’s form of manipulation—he’d make her “work” for any information he shared with her. It was just his way.
And she wanted to humor him. There was something unsettling about seeing him in the brace and alone with a carafe at the table.
A hoarse voice bellowed, “Get your burgundy onions!” and a crisp wind scattered leaves in a whirlwind dance. She had the sad thought that the only person Morbier cared about—Mouna—was gone now. And her father too …
She offered “Pierre” a cigarette. His eyes narrowed, but he accepted. She took him aside and gestured across the way toward Morbier, who winked and smiled. Aimée bent down and whispered in Pierre’s ear, trying not to laugh at the look of alarm spreading on his face. His eyes widened, then he tipped his beret to Morbier and disappeared around the corner.
“Pierre’s a quick learner,” she said to Morbier on her return.
“They usually are,” Morbier said, lighting a cigarette from a glowing butt in the Ricard ashtray.
She motioned to the waiter. “Un café, s’il vous plaît.”
“Red wine’s better for your heart,” he said, pouring himself another glass. “I’ve already bailed you out, Leduc.”
Her shoulders slumped. Was he just going to warn her off? Had she wasted her time?
“Look, Morbier—”