Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [72]
Lieutenant Mattéo had always lived in the second arrondissement. He couldn’t imagine the slightest exile from it, not even in a neighborhood next door. Montorgueil, Tique-tonne, Réaumur, Aboukir, Sentier, all these streets were like lifelines in the hollow of his palm. But for ten years now he’d really had to hang on, ever since the massive arrival of the bohemian yuppies: They spent way more every month at the sidewalk tables of the Rocher de Cancale, the Compas d’Or, and the Loup Blanc than he paid in rent. He walked along the canal, passed the camps of Romanian gypsies mixed with all the homeless displaced from the banks of the Seine, then took rue Cristino Garcia, moving into what remained of the old Spanish neighborhood. The impasse du Gaz was no more than four or five attached redbrick houses, like a mining town. It felt a little like England. Cranes were wheeling in the sky just behind this relic of the past. A mailbox had the name Carvelon it followed by the first name, Mélanie. He reflected that it was the same as his assistant’s. He pulled the chain that hung next to the door with thick iron mesh over it.
A woman of about fifty came to open it, dragging her feet and grumbling. Yellow hair, tired waves of an old permanent, pallid face, bluish bags under her eyes, the corners of her lips sagging … and the same for the rest of her body: Flavien’s mother was the very image of defeat, of abandonment. Contrary to what the lieutenant had feared, she absorbed the news of her son’s death without collapsing. All she did was clench her jaw and suppress a tremor in her right hand before wiping away the tears welling in her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
“How’d it happen?”
As he entered, Mattéo glanced at the dining room where a low table in front of the TV, lit like a night-light, was buckling under empty bottles and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.
“We don’t know much yet. His murderer might be Spanish. There are plenty of them in the neighborhood: Your son must have known some of them …”
“Sure, dozens. Back in the day, he used to go next door to the Youth Center, to play cards, dance, eat tapas …”
“Back in the day, that means when?”
She had pushed open a sliding panel, revealing a messy bedroom with walls studded with posters. A smiling Bill Gates with pinched lips was like a stain in the middle of the rows of sparkling teeth of the stars of showbiz, movies, and sports.
“For the last two years he’d just drop by in a rush. We must’ve eaten together once or twice, with his current girlfriend … Last week he brought me flowers for my birthday …”
“You remember their names?”
She removed a pack of Lucky Strikes from the pocket of her cardigan, lit the end of a cigarette with a Zippo that stunk of gas.
“The names of the girls? No. He changed them even more often than he changed cars … I don’t know the brands either.”
Mattéo hadn’t asked her permission to enter the room. He began to look through the collections of video games, photo albums, films, magazines. A few lines scrawled on a piece of notebook paper suddenly caught his eye:
Sunday, August 28th, New Orleans. The storm’s gettingnearer, stronger and stronger. The telephone never stopsringing. “You staying or leaving?” “Where’re you livingnow?” “You have the cats with you?” “What should wedo?” The governor is asking us to “pray for the hurricaneto go down to Level 2” … Finally I give in. I’m going tomove into a stronger building. An old cannery downtownmade of brick and cement, five stories high. There are sevenof us in the apartment, with four cats.
It was the same slanted, energetic handwriting as the message about Tom Cruise and the wife of the presidential candidate. He held out the paper under Flavien’s mother’s eyes.
“He’s the one who wrote this?”
“Yes, that’s his handwriting. He never stopped taking notes, scribbling … stuff he’d hear on the radio, on the phone, or things he found in