Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [74]
“You can go into the kitchen. I’ll take him in to you as soon as he shows up.”
When the bartender of the Singe Pèlerin arrived, the lieutenant saw that he had put on a raincoat over his working clothes. The bartender asked for some water to take a handful of pills, then refused the chair the lieutenant pointed him to.
“I can’t stay, it’s the noon rush. All the big boys are there. What do you want from me? Is it about the guy who got shot on rue des Degrés?”
“If you ask the questions and then answer them, it’ll go a lot faster … His name was Flavien Carvel and he wasn’t shot, he was stabbed … What can you tell me about him?”
The bartender raised his head with his mouth open, as if he was trying to get some fresh air. “All I know is, he was loaded. He began hanging around the neighborhood about six months ago. He bought some shares in The Sphinx as a way of getting in with the mob. Recently there was a rumor of his buying heavily into the peep show on the corner of rue Greneta … a first-class business. They were talking about his coming in with 200,000 euros.”
“I took care of them two years ago; a real rough place. You sure you’re not giving me the wrong club?”
Mattéo got up to fill a pot of water and put it on the gas stove.
“No, everything’s back on track again. It’s one of the joints that brings in the most. All the bread in cash, tax-free. From what I know, there were lots of extras too …”
“What kind?”
“They opened up little trapdoors so the customer could stick his hands through ’em and feel up the dancers’ tits and stick dildos or vibrators up their asses or pussies. Stuff they bought exclusively at the shop, for the highest price imaginable. It went both ways—if the customer asked for it, the dancers screwed them with the same utensils.”
“You have any idea where he lived?”
The bartender stuck his hand into the pocket of his raincoat and took out a business card he then handed to the police officer. “I did him a favor by telling him what I heard … He told me I could reach him through this real estate agency if it was urgent.”
Mattéo took the card. It was from Luximmo, a business on rue Marie-Stuart. He memorized the name of the person printed under the company name: Tristanne Dupré. Then he turned the paper rectangle over, mechanically. The other side was covered with Carvel’s tense writing:
December 26 could have been the happiest day in Rafiq’slife if the tsunami hadn’t struck, because he was supposedto get married that day. The time of the wedding was set fornoon, but the waves came in the morning. Rafiq was in thevillage of Patangipettai, near the other villages that werehit. Immediately, all the men in the community swung intoaction with Jamaat, their local organization. They tookaway the food for the wedding and gave it to the disastervictims. Up to the day we met them, one week after thetsunami, the organization provided breakfast and lunch tothe victims, cooking lemon rice or veg. biryani.
The lieutenant drank a mint tea sweetened with acacia honey before saying goodbye to old Assaf.
All you had to do was walk a hundred yards and you left the sex and garment district behind; you were entering the area reserved for the winners in the new economic order. All the pretty little faces in the world of finance, advertising, top civil service jobs, TV and movies would be walking around on these harmless decorative cobblestones. They crowded into sidewalk cafés, their cell phones glued to their ears, connected to vitamin cocktails by means of fluorescent straws. Mattéo liked the place, despite everything: the façades, the smell of eternal Paris. But he had lived here too long to forget how fake it all was. Going beyond rue Saint-Denis into Mon-torgueil was like crossing a border. He felt almost as if he were at a show, or a tourist: Sometimes he was sorry he hadn’t slung a camera across his chest.
He quickened his pace. Street people were sorting through the garbage cans lined in front of Suguisa, La Fermette, and Furusato, the Japanese restaurant. They were looking