Marseille Noir Read online

  “When the firemen arrive they certify the death right away. There’s fate for you, like I was telling you, how it makes fun of us, bides its time; whether it’s God or Allah or another, when he wants to have a good laugh he goes for a little ride on the 49, it inspires him. That asshole, that moron of a driver, the only one who was really safe, really isolated from the oil. He had to be the one who croaked.

  * * *

  “Since that day nobody goes near the 49 bus. It’s become a soapbox, too dangerous, even Nadia Comaneci couldn’t stand in it. Only tourists take it because they don’t know. Apparently, they arrive at the MuCEM with two broken ankles and a fractured jaw. They take off from Marignane with their crutches on the plane, and when they get back up there in their north, their friends ask, so how was Marseille? Was it fun? And they answer, yes, it was good but the city’s kind of slippery. They put olive oil everywhere, even in the busses. From what I’d read, I thought the specialty there was the soap. Let me tell you, buddy, for us Bavarians, the culture of Marseille is very subtle, hard to figure out.”

  THE PROBLEM WITH THE ROTARY

  by PHILIPPE CARRESE

  La Cayolle

  Kevin’s problem was the seven times table. Math in general but more specifically multiplication. The seven times table in particular. That’s what his real problem was. He did okay with subtraction. For instance, lifting three doses on the sly from a dealer in the Paternelle housing projects and getting a return four times higher than the market price when he delivered the merchandise to his client on boulevard du Docteur Rodocanachi was math he could do more or less correctly. In that specific case, the four times table was no problem. Adding the price of the lines he sold during the day and counting the number of bills he had in his pocket, no problem either . . . But the seven times table was his current problem. The cops had dismantled his network of wholesalers in Castellane, at the other end of town. Kevin was forced to borrow great quantities of prime-quality coke from seven different retailers, and now he needed to repay them. Seven times. The figure was overwhelming and so was the situation. Kevin’s other problem was his cowardliness. And also his limited vocabulary, but he was not aware of that.

  Djawad’s problem was the wheelie. He just couldn’t do it. He’d hit the ground twice already and didn’t dare accelerate too quickly on his super-powerful Booster. That drove him nuts. All his buddies in the Lauriers projects could do it: ride a whole street, a whole bus lane on the Prado from the first to the last stop, the whole width of the Grand Littoral parking lot, the whole length of rue Tapis Vert. No problem. And on the very same stolen scooters pumped up by the same guy who specialized in motorizing his neighborhood. Not him. Djawad’s other problem was the exorbitant price of his smuggled Booster. More specifically how to repay it. But that problem was about to be settled. His ride to the South End of the Phocaean city was supposed to allow him to get rid of his debt, and even fill up a few times so he could practice his wheelies.

  Richard’s problem was his mother. As is often the case with Mediterranean adult males, Richard’s problem was more material than psychological. He’d gotten rid of a large portion of his Oedipus complex when he dumped his out-of-order progenitor in a discreet retirement home, a chic place in the South End. But that was precisely the problem with it: the glitzy die-in was all too chic and was costing him a fortune. Richard’s other problem was his new BMW: flashy gray metallic—too flashy; a hands-free rig with voice recognition optional, a ridiculous built-in refrigerator, memory leather seats (Alzheimer’s brand), and golden hubcaps—way too golden. His bedridden mother was costing him, per year, the price of a Porsche Cayenne, an ideal vehicle with all the indispensable accessories. Now Richard was riding a BMW that was new, right, big, yes, metallic gray, right again, but he raged at not being able to show off at the wheel. Driving with your elbow leaning out the window, one foot above all those Saint-Giniez hicks who need a loan to buy a lousy Mercedes sure is something else.

  Samantha’s problem was her new beautician. To start with, her name was Aïcha and the kid’s Oriental origins were upsetting her. Samantha thought she’d been pretty clear; her cousin, the owner of the beauty salon, was completely misguided: hiring inexperienced girls from immigrant parents would lead to huge problems one day or another, and faster than she thought. Samantha and her cousins were granddaughters of pieds-noirs, the French from Algeria back then, so, understandably, some reflexes are hard to get rid of. Samantha had painted an apocalyptic picture of what her cousin’s salon would be like in a few months. A business with such a great location, at the edge of the last cool neighborhood in Marseille, a nail salon soon turned into an Islamic den run by women in burqas watched by bearded men in djellabas armed with Kalashnikovs. The discussion had stopped suddenly because Aïcha was back, carrying the coffee tray for the rich patrons of the salon, including an Arabica decaf from Peru for Samantha, very black with no foam and just a little sugar.

  But more specifically, Sam’s big problem was the loud red nail polish that she’d been wearing since midmorning. Not quite dry. But the time it took for the nail polish to dry was not the real problem. So damn red! And that kind of red, to top it off. Really . . . well, yes, red. It totally didn’t match the body of her Fiat 500 (the red part of the Italian flag is completely different), it totally didn’t match her iPhone case (she never should have picked one with glitter on it), it totally didn’t match her Zara suit (sale season, the only one her size that was left: poppy red). A bright red that didn’t match her present lipstick, which was a subtle red and outrageously expensive. She was trying to apply it to her lips while going over the many speed bumps of the Roy d’Espagne complex, her left knee wedged under the wheel to keep her driving more or less straight, her eyes riveted on the rearview mirror, on the delicate patches of her makeup. She had to look stunning. Because one of Samantha’s other problems was Jan, her daughter Cindy’s tennis teacher. Cindy! Another problem. The kid was only ten but a potential rival to her mother’s career as a seducer.

  The problem with Marseille’s South End is how strangely mixed it is. Opulent homes stand alongside sordid housing projects, luxurious villas next to derelict cabins, and terraces with swimming pools look down on boat garages with rusty doors turned into summer dwellings. The beautiful Roy d’Espagne park spreads its lawns one alley away from the dilapidated Cayolle projects where the former shantytown that Le Corbusier had invented was razed to make way for a supermarket on permanent borrowed time, surrounded by local vandals. Baumettes prison is at the end of all the dead ends, the old stone mansions still shelter a handful of end-of-the-line aristocrats holding on to their ghosts and past glory, a few wealthy families are holed up in their famous architect-built houses, their windows stained with the sticky resin of the ever-present Aleppo pines. The nouveau riche and the old poor, the show-offs and the sluts. The sun weighs down on minds, the sea cools them off, the most beautiful streams in the whole world are within any tourist’s reach, and the dealers are two bus stops away from the nearby junior high. Marseille, its pervasive mess, its generalized thoughtlessness. But is that really a problem . . . ?

  The problem with the Beretta automatic are the bullet casings. Like with all automatic weapons. You shoot and you leave them everywhere. It looks more modern, true, but you don’t exactly picture yourself as some experienced killer diving horizontally through a plate-glass window while emptying your charger with a piece from the last century. What’s trendy now is the automatic pistol, especially the big-calibers, and especially all chrome and shiny. But if you don’t know how to use it, it can jam, it’s got a safety lock not to be confused with the safety of the charger, the casings make a loud noise when they scatter on the ground, they leave evidence for the crime lab, and it makes the cops’ job incredibly easy: all they have to do is bend down to compare the number of bullets you’ve shot with the number of impacts on the stiff to evaluate very precisely the killer’s expertise, his skill, or how near-sighted he is. The casings, that
’s the problem. Really. So Djawad’s boss had equipped him with a Smith and Wesson, a .357 fitted with a four-inch barrel, black, inconspicuous, precise, and efficient, even in the hands of a novice. And when you shoot, the casings stay inside the cylinder.

  The problem with the Smith and Wesson is the recoil. Especially in the hands of someone with no experience like Djawad. Finding Kevin had been no problem at all: he was, as expected, in the basement of his building near the garbage room. And the Cayolle projects are not that big . . . Shooting had been no problem either. Djawad had come precisely for that and he was not about to go back like a shmuck to the North End after a failed mission. No way. There was bread involved, a scooter, and four tanks of gas. The first shot was no problem even though Djawad was killing one of his cronies for the first time. The problem was firing a second time, then a third, then firing a fourth time. Because of the recoil, yes, exactly. The first shot caught Kevin in the abdomen: he slumped to the ground right away. Djawad thought he could shoot his second bullet into the head of his boss’s creditor just to be sure, but it got lost somewhere inside the garbage room. The third one landed on the windshield of an abandoned van, and the fourth went toward the hills out there, far away, in the limestone that borders the road toward Sormiou. With no consequences other than a deafening cannonade, the kind that doesn’t impress anybody around here anymore. The South End is known as a hunting ground; it doesn’t get as much media coverage as the neighborhoods that spread north of the Vieux-Port but it’s just as deadly. Djawad was pissed. He took the trouble to get off his two-wheeler and stick the barrel of his gun to the dying Kevin’s forehead. He fired, surprised once again by the recoil. Pissed off again. Because the problem with blood is that when it spurts out, it stains real bad.

  Djawad wended his way home, extremely annoyed, his helmet not even fastened, as is customary in his project. His Adidas sweatshirt was all spotted with the blood of his first hit. He accelerated, found himself on the back wheel of his scooter, surprised to stay balanced. Wow! It was exhilarating. He accelerated some more. A wheelie! And one with staying power! So cool!

  The problem with rotaries is they take you to several different roads. The other problem with these rotaries is that there is, after all, a certain system of right-of-way you must abide by and that’s no small matter in the culture capital of cannabis and other herbs of Provence. Djawad’s problem at that very moment had two very definite sources: the first was named Richard, the second liked to be called Sam, even though the nickname sounded more masculine than Samantha.

  As he was entering the rotary at la Cayolle, Richard’s problem was still an ego problem. He didn’t have the Porsche Cayenne he deserved but his sedan was expensive enough to entitle him to all kinds of spectacular, bold actions: yielding right-of-way was for the underclasses, the nobodies, the proletariat used to obeying the narrow rules governing our society, a little like the traffic lights downtown and the handicapped parking spaces. So Richard accelerated. That was no problem. Man, he had power under his hood.

  Samantha’s problem was of a more domestic order. It took some hazardous research into her contacts but the touch screen finally displayed the picture and phone number of Jan, her daughter’s new tennis instructor. Sam, already very frustrated by the color of her nail polish and the red smears around her Botoxed lips (not too Botoxed, but still), had to concentrate on the conversation she was planning to have with Jan. She took a deep breath, pushed the Call button, and kept on driving toward the rotary without paying attention to the signs saying she didn’t have right-of-way. Her priority was Jan. Mostly how to arrange a date with him, if only to make clear to her daughter that the conceited little bitch didn’t have what it takes to compete in the same league as her mother.

  And then there was Francine. Francine had no problems of any kind. She was already in the rotary. She and her little Twingo had complete right-of-way.

  Richard felt like a jerk with Francine’s ridiculous car in front of his gleaming radiator grill. He accelerated, because he was a real man and had balls. Appearing suddenly on his right, and so happy to have finally mastered the wheelie, Djawad didn’t even try to brake. He kept going straight ahead, thinking that if he drove through the flowers in the middle of the rotary, he’d manage to avoid that BMW which was accelerating in an attempt to avoid the Twingo.

  “Hello? Jesus! Hey, I’m busy.”

  Completely taken by Jan’s sexy voice, Samantha found herself right next to the metal body of Francine’s Twingo, with not even the thickness of cigarette paper between the two cars. She didn’t realize that the weird rustling sound she was hearing was not crackling on the line. Her Fiat 500 had cut into the Twingo all right. Richard wrenched his wheel, trying to skid to the side, but he controlled nothing. His axles smashed against the low concrete wall around the rotary right when Djawad was trying to fly over it. Fucking wall! The scooter took off, Djawad did not. His helmet, half sitting on his skull, the way the show-offs of his neighborhood wear it, seceded. It shot off like a cannonball and exploded Samantha’s windshield, ending what sounded like a promising conversation with the handsome Jan.

  “Hello? Hello? . . . I’m in the middle of a lesson here . . . Jesus. That woman’s as dumb as her daughter . . .”

  Samantha saw red. In fact, it’s the last thing she saw. No time to seduce the handsome Jan, no time to find out that the tennis instructor was Kabyle—in other words, of Arab descent—something that would surely have put a damper on her desire to seduce him.

  Djawad crashed onto Richard’s hood before he ended up wedged between the left side of the Twingo and the right side of the Fiat 500. No luck. There was no room left for him between the two . . . The metal bodies acted like a press. The cracking of his bones was reminiscent of the irritating noise of a cockroach being crushed under a leather sole. Djawad’s scooter landed heavily on the roof of the Twingo, which did not prove to be particularly resistant. Francine now had a real problem. As for Richard, he ended his trajectory embedded in a low wall after rolling over twice. This time he really had something under the hood, on the hood, and all around it. Richard cursed his mother once more. With a Porsche Cayenne, he might have survived the collision.

  The paramedics’ problem was deciding where to start: with the kid shot with a .357 next to his garbage cans, or with the mass grave at la Cayolle rotary. They started with the traffic fiasco, a problem definitely less common and more complex than drug dealers killing each other. Because in Marseille, the real problem is that it’s easier to put a hit on someone than to drive a car.

  The PROSECUTion

  by PIA PETERSEN

  Vieux-Port

  Once upon a time there was a man sitting in a café drinking his beer, looking at the street and beyond the street, at the square and the port and the cars speeding between the street and the square and the port. He was in a very bad mood and he felt like insulting someone but he didn’t know who, only that it could be anybody. He had been angry for so long.

  He had made his decision and he intended to do exactly what he had written that very morning in his diary. If they wanted to know why, they could just read what was written there.

  The why of the why was a murky and confused story and nobody would really understand the generosity of his act but that was not sufficient reason for giving up.

  He had put the diary on his living room table so that everybody could see it. One day, someone would read it.

  Once upon a time there was a man who landed in Marseille, a city that faced out toward the sea and turned its back on France. Marseille had changed names again and again because it was too rebellious said some, too much of a mess said others, but nobody really knew. The man had landed with a great deal of enthusiasm, with plans and even with money to last him awhile but a few years later he had no enthusiasm, no plans and no money at all and now he was too poor to leave the city. I’m stuck here, I’m stuck in this bitch of a city, he said to the few people he associated with.

  He u
sed to be a poet, a philosopher, a writer, a great reader and a humanist, that’s what he replied when people asked him who he was. I like the proximity of seismic faults, he told his friends to explain why he was moving to Marseille, he said it was a logical poetic choice, even though he would have preferred the seismic fault of Los Angeles, it looked classier but it was too far away, too expensive, too dangerous, too complicated and he didn’t know what an ESTA was, they had explained at the American Embassy that it was an Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which had seemed to him an insurmountable hurdle and so he landed in Marseille one fine morning to live in a little studio on rue Francis Davso at the Vieux-Port, right near the opera and its whores, or ladies of the night as they were sometimes called. He didn’t know there weren’t any seismic faults, Marseille felt like a city on the brink of disaster and everything else was just details. From his window, he could see the dumpsters from the fast-food restaurants on rue Glandèves and sometimes a rat would scoot out of the sewers to the garbage cans.

  In Marseille nobody asked him for an ESTA, that would have been the last straw.

  He could have settled in Haiti where they also had a major seismic fault. Or Japan where he could have lived right on the fault.

  At first it was magical. Every day he would cross cours Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves, an Italian-style mineral square, a trendy concept a friend told him with a mysterious air but he saw only an empty concrete square, no lawn/trees/flowers. He would stroll along the Vieux-Port on one side and then on the other, taking the ferry that crossed the harbor several times a day and then walk back, passing under a strange roof that someone had built right in the middle of the port. Maybe it was built to shade people from the sun, he said to himself. But why there, why precisely that spot? He never got an answer. When he asked his friends who lounged around the neighborhood for hours on end, as he did, they would lean back and look at the roof but nobody knew. One of them said it was to reduce the smell of fish from the market where the early-morning catch was sold, a kind of lid but no one thought this a plausible answer.