Paul did so moodily. Mentally, he had given the Cipher just one chance. If he failed with Marius, then he would take him straight back to the home in Longéres. But he was also impatient to see this monster at work.
"Park on the other side of Boulevard de Strasbourg," Schiffer ordered. "If we have problems, we can always leave via an emergency exit I know"
Paul drove across the street, up another block, then parked at the corner of Rue Bouchardon. "There won't be any problems, Schiffer."
"Give me the photos."
He hesitated, then passed him the envelope containing the photos of the corpses. Schiffer smiled, then opened the car door. "Just give me a free hand, and everything will be fine."
Paul then got out as well, thinking, One chance, you old bugger. One and no more.
24
In the concert hall, the beat was so strong that it obscured any other sensation. The shock wave hit you in the belly, stripping bare your nerves, then dived into your heels before surging back up your vertebrae, making them vibrate like the strips of a vibraphone.
Paul instinctively sank his head into his shoulders and bent double, as though dodging blows being rained on his stomach, chest and both sides of his head, where his eardrums were ablaze. He blinked to get his bearings in the smoky atmosphere while projectors on the stage were turning.
Finally, he made out the décor: carved, gilded balustrades, stucco columns, fake crystal chandeliers, heavy crimson curtains… Schiffer had mentioned a former cinema, but it instead reminded him of the ancient kitsch of an old cabaret. A kind of music hall for operettas with frilly shirts, in which ghosts wearing brilliantine would have refused to yield their places to furious neometal groups.
On the stage, the musicians were writhing about, chanting their endless fuckin' and killin'. Bare-chested, gleaming with sweat and fever, they were wielding their guitars, mikes and drums as if they were assault rifles, raising the first rows in violent waves.
Paul left the bar and went down onto the floor. Diving in among the crowd, he felt suddenly nostalgic for the concerts of his youth: pogoing furiously jumping like a spring to the heady riffs of the Clash: the four chords learned on his secondhand guitar, which he ended up selling when its strings started to remind him too much of the bloody zigzags in his father's car seat.
He realized that he had lost sight of Schiffer. He turned around, staring at the spectators who had remained at the top of the steps, by the bar. They were standing nonchalantly glass in hand, deigning to respond to the frenzy on the stage by a mere slight swing of their hips. Paul looked among their shadowy faces, ringed with colored beams. No Schiffer.
Suddenly, a voice burst into his ear: "Wanna score?"
Paul turned around to see a livid face, gleaming beneath its cap. "What?”
“I've got some great Black Bombays."
"You've got what?"
The man leaned over, hooking a hand over Paul's shoulder. "Black Bombays, Dutch ones. Where've you been hiding?"
Paul pushed him away and produced his tricolor card.
"That's where. Now piss off before I run you in."
The man vanished like a blown-out flame. Paul stared for a moment at his cardholder, with the stamp of the police, and measured the gulf benveen the concerts of back then and his present profile: an intransigent police officer, upholding law and order, implacably shaking up the dregs of society. Could he have imagined that twenty years back?
Someone tapped him on the back.
"Are you nuts?" Schiffer yelled. "Put that thing away!"
Paul was running with sweat. He tried to swallow but could not. Everything trembled around him and the sparkling lights dislocated the faces, crumpling them up like sheets of aluminum foil.
The Cipher tapped him again, more amicably this time, on the arm. "Come on. Marius is here. We'll catch him in his lair."
They headed off between the crush of shifting, waving bodies: a frenetic sea of shoulders and hips writhing in time, brutally, instinctively, with the rhythms being spat from the stage. By elbowing their way through, the two cops managed to reach the front.
Schiffer then turned right, below the acute wafflings of the guitars that were surging from the loudspeakers. Paul had a hard time keeping up with him. He noticed that Schiffer was talking with a bouncer while the amplifier hummed furiously. The man nodded and opened a concealed door. Paul just had time to slip in through the gap. It led into a narrow, corridor. Posters gleamed on the walls. On most of them, the Turkish crescent and the Communist hammer were joined into a political symbol.
Schiffer explained, "Marius is head of an extreme left-wing group on Rue Jarry. It was his pals who set fire to the Turkish prisons last year."
Paul vaguely remembered hearing about those riots, but he asked no questions. This was no time for geopolitics. The two men set off. The music continued to echo dully in their backs.
Without stopping, Schiffer sneered, "Putting on concerts was a smart move. A real captive market."
"Sorry?"
"Marius also has a hand in dealing. Ecstasy. Uppers. Anything with speed in it."
Paul blinked.
"Or LSD. With these concerts, he can build up his own clientele. He's a winner every way"
It occurred to Paul to ask, "Do you know what Black Bombays are?”
“They're all the rage these days. It's Ecstasy cut with heroin."
How come a fifty-nine-year-old man, just out of a retirement home, knew the latest E trends? Another mystery.
"It's ideal when coming down," he went on. "After the excitement of speed, the heroin is calming. It's an easy passage from saucer eyes to pinhead pupils."
"Pinhead pupils?"
"Of course heroin puts you to sleep. A junkie's always dozing off" He stopped. "I don't get it. You've never worked on a drug bust before?"
"I spent four years in the drug squad. But that doesn't make me a druggie."
The Cipher gave him his finest smile. "How can you fight something you've never experienced? How can you understand the enemy if you don't know his strengths? You have to know what kids are looking for in that shit. And the strength of drugs is that they're good. Jesus, if you don't know that, there's no point even trying to bust them."
Paul recalled his initial idea: Jean-Louis Schiffer, father of all cops, half hero, half demon, the best and the worst brought together in one man. He swallowed his anger. His partner had set off again. A last bend, then two giants dressed in leather coats appeared on either side of a black-painted door.
The cop with the crew cut produced his card. Paul shivered. Where had this relic come from? This detail seemed to confirm their current situation. It was now the Cipher who was calling the shots. To make matters even worse, he started speaking in Turkish.
The bodyguard hesitated, then raised his hand to knock at the door. Schiffer stopped rapidly and opened the handle himself. On going in, he barked at Paul over his shoulder: "Not a word from you during the questioning."
Paul wanted to answer back appropriately, but he did not have time. This interview was going to be his initiation.
25
"Salaam aleikum, Marius!"
The man slumped in his desk chair nearly toppled backward. "Schiffer? Aleikum salaam, my brother!"
Marek Cesiuz was already back in control. He stood up, grinning broadly, and walked around his iron desk. He was wearing a red-and gold football shirt, the colors of Galatasaray. His scrawny body floated in the satiny material like a banner on the terraces. It was impossible to guess how old he was. His reddish gray hair looked like still-smoldering cinders. His features were frozen into an expression of cold joy, which gave him the sinister look of an ancient child. His coppery skin accentuated his robotic face and melded into his rusty hair.