When Jules was about to debut his music in the most important setting possible and at the start of an exciting season, Cathérine came with Jacqueline. Before they left home, Jules looked at his wife and daughter, both of whom had dressed beautifully, even little Cathérine, who was so young he could carry her in the crook of his arm. He loved them so much at that moment that he was diverted from ambition and felt guilty for having indulged it. Later, as they and a thousand other people watched, he began the concert with a Bach piece, the Sei Lob. Cathérine knew it well by sound, but was so young she didn’t know that music was composed by people, and thought it was just there. The public never heard Jules’ music, and Cathérine, who at first had been proud, was suddenly frightened and ashamed because, as a thousand people held their breath in embarrassment, her father wept.
As she grew older she separated from them as much as she could. She became religious. She dressed carefully. She married an accountant. She had many friends, and was comfortable in their society. When Jacqueline died, Cathérine asked her father point-blank why he had lived the way he had lived, why her mother had been that way as well, and what it was that kept him apart, even from Jews, who were themselves forever condemned to be apart. He didn’t really tell her, because it was so much what he was that he was unable to identify it as an outside force. And he had never wanted to make her like him, but rather to keep her from the details of his affliction so she would not repeat it. He wanted her to be successful and to thrive, to shed the past. So he answered indirectly.
“Because your mother and I,” he said, “are like Thierry.”
“Thierry? What does he have to do with it?” He was one of their few friends, and they saw him probably no more than thrice in her lifetime. But they often spoke about him.
“He’s one of the greatest photographers in France, and when he was younger he was quite famous and getting quite rich. Unlike many others, he was an artist of lab work, and did all his own. Photographic printing is an art in itself, and other photographers would turn to him for it. He was so good at this that he decided to build the finest lab in the world, to train protégés, and strive for better and better work. He mortgaged his house and went deeply into debt on all fronts to build a magnificent facility.
“Just as things were solidifying well, photography began to embrace digitization. Now the embrace is complete. But Thierry stuck with the old processing and printing. In five years, he lost everything. People begged him to switch while he could, but he didn’t. There’s no mystery in digital. It’s all asymptote and no curve; binary code, unvarying, with no imperceptible bridge between its discrete elements. Thierry’s prints, especially the black and white, had worlds between those elements. They gleamed as they retreated into dusk and darkness, like mother of pearl in fading light. In photographic printing, art lives in the variations of chemicals, paper base, enlarger lenses, bulb filaments, and processing permutations. He stuck with that art because, even though it was as defeated as if a tank had rolled over it, it was beautiful, it was better, he loved it, and he was loyal to what he loved.”
“But he suffered because of it.”
“He continues to suffer. But loyalty is like magic. It makes suffering immaterial.”
“You’re loyal to what? Being peculiar?”
“No, I’m loyal to a world that was destroyed.”
THEIR DIFFERENCES HAD by necessity receded into the background when Luc got sick. Now Jules was in Cergy out of love for his child and his grandchild, and to say goodbye before he left for America.
“David is working?” he asked Cathérine.
She nodded. She was worn down from living with the threat to Luc far more than she would have been had she herself been ill.
“I brought Luc a book.” He held up a thin, broad, gift-wrapped slab.
“I hope it’s not about going to the hospital. One of our friends gave him a book like that before I could intercept it.”
“This is a picture book in which there are hundreds of chubby little people in helmets and bright uniforms. They build roads, climb ladders, fly planes, and collect garbage. They all look like Hollande, they live in a world where everything is colorful, rounded, and kind, nothing sharp or dirty. Danger is everywhere, but perfectly contained. They’re safe because they wear harnesses, hard hats, and reflective vests. I’ll read it to him before lunch.”
Luc trailed in absentmindedly, but when he saw his grandfather he rushed to him and hugged his leg. Jules lifted the child onto his lap, kissed him, and said “Ah! Luc! What a good boy! And, you look less swollen!”
Luc, who knew what swollen was only too well, said, “Less swollen.”
“Here’s a book for you. Would you like to unwrap it?”
Children unwrap presents either three times as fast or three times more slowly than adults. Seldom is there an in between. Luc did it slowly.
“He’s going to be an archaeologist,” Jules said to Cathérine. “Look how carefully and thoughtfully he’s peeling off the layers.”
When Luc was done and he saw the bright colors, he smiled. Looking slowly over the cover and taking in all its great detail, he put an index finger – like a cat using its paw to pounce – on a little white police car in a corner of the frame. Then he wiggled off Jules’ lap and ran to his room, returning proudly with a toy car just like the one in the picture, only it had a yellow rubber dome at the top that, when depressed, made the car beep. Both the plastic and drawn cars were unthreateningly bulbous, non–aerodynamic, and taller than they were long.
Back in Jules’ lap, Luc held the toy upside down, showing his grandfather the undercarriage. Jules knew that this meant, what is it? “It’s a police car,” Jules said. “See the policeman inside?”
Luc nodded. He thought for a while. Then he turned to Jules with an expectant, skeptical look. “Are they good guys or bad guys?” he asked. At two and a half, he thought the world was divided that way, and it was, though not as clearly as he imagined.
“Oh!” Jules said. “They’re good guys. They help people. The policeman is your friend.”
TWO APJS ADJOINT – Agents de Police Judiciare, Adjoint – were stuffed into a tiny white police car almost as high as it was long, driving southeast toward a dangerous Alphaville to interview one Raschid Belghazi, the only survivor of the victims on the bridge. The police had left from the Quai des Orfèvres, in the car of Duvalier Saidi-Sief, who was attached to and worked out of the Commissariat de Police du 16é Arrondissement, Passy, because the other officer, Arnaud Weissenburger, had taken the Métro. Duvalier Saidi-Sief was from the Brigade Criminelle, taking the lead on this double homicide, although of course reporting above to his Officier de Police Judiciare, or OPJ, whom he did not like. Arnaud Weissenburger had been pulled from Les Mineurs, the Brigade de Protection des Mineurs, because one of the victims was under eighteen. He had wanted assignment to the Brigade Criminelle, La Crim, and hadn’t been chosen, but at least he’s been posted to Paris.
“Next time,” Arnaud said, “let’s go in my car. It’s twice as big.”
Duvalier, who was slight and wiry, said to Arnaud, who was tremendous and heavy, “Next time bring your car, but meanwhile this one’s fine.” He knew what he was doing.
“No, it’s not. My knees are in my teeth. And we should decide where we work. We can’t work out of two places. We should work out of the Fifteenth. Our building is bigger and there’s a restaurant right next door, Le Saint Florent.”
“That’s nice, but at the foot of our Commissariat is a bar à huîtres; and catercorner to that a boulangerie/patisserie.”
It was true. The police went in and out of the patisserie like bees at a hive. Their other hive was the station itself, which opened onto the tiny Rue Sergé Prokofiev and a tiny circular park, the Place du Préfet Claude Érignac, the Préfet of Corsica assassinated in Ajaccio in 1998. The station itself was a two-storey glass box projecting toward the back of the apartment building of which it was the base. The windows didn’t ope
n.
“The streets are less congested in the Fifteenth,” Arnaud asserted. It was true.
“Yes, but Passy is nicer.”
“Nicer?”
“More fashionable, a finer finish. Right next to our front entrance there’s a locksmith, which is sometimes very convenient. And, really, the restaurants in Passy are superior to those in Montparnasse.”
“If you’ll pay for me,” Arnaud said. “They’re more expensive, at least at our price level.”
“No no. Can’t do that.”
“Then how are we supposed to decide?”
“Do you have a coin?”
“Who has coins in the morning? I drop them in a box at home at the end of the day.”
“What about for parking?”
“We’re policemen, Duvalier. We park where we want.”
“Maybe, but I pay.”
Arnaud looked at him in disbelief. “When you’re driving a police car?”
“Absolutely.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to, but I do.”
“What for?”
“Honor.”
They were together because the dividing line between the 15th and 16th arrondissements ran right down the middle of the Île aux Cygnes. The bodies and pools of blood literally straddled this line. Duvalier Saidi-Sief had been transferred to Paris from Marseille, Arnaud Weissenburger from Nancy. They didn’t know the city that well.
“So how are we going to decide?” Arnaud asked. His knees really were almost touching his chest. “If this thing crashes we’re both dead.”
“Do you accept this?” Duvalier asked, continuing. “When the minute hand on your watch passes the next five-minute mark, count the cars coming at us for one minute. If less than twenty percent are white, we work from the Rue de Vaugirard, and we eat at Le Saint Florent. If more than twenty percent, we work at sixty-two Avenue de Mozart, and we eat at the locksmith.”
Worried that perhaps his new partner was touched, Arnaud checked his watch. He had three minutes before the next five-minute mark. He said, “Let me think about it.” For two minutes he counted cars, trying not to give away what he was doing.
“I know what you’re doing,” Duvalier said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Oh?”
After two minutes, when fewer than ten percent of the cars that passed were white, Arnaud said, “Okay, I’ll take the bet.”
In the minute remaining, Duvalier said, “It doesn’t matter. I saw you. You were moving your lips. Had you done it ten times that would be one thing, but the sample was too small.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
After they started the count, it was as if a white-car convention had just broken for lunch and everyone was headed for Paris to eat. “Okay,” Arnaud said, “we work out of Passy. But we use my car.”
“Good. A bigger car is better. You can take a picnic, and if you have to move a body, there’s room in the trunk.”
“Duvalier,” Arnaud asked, “now that we share this case, what is your background? Frankly, you sound like you come from an insane asylum.”
Duvalier smiled. “I’m in the police, so that answers the part about the insane asylum. What about you?”
“Me? I don’t like oysters. They remind me of Dominique de Villepin: hard, abrasive, salt and pepper on the outside, soft and gutless on the inside. But I asked first.”
“Not too much to tell. My grandfather came with his family from Algeria. As you can figure from my name, we weren’t colons, but, still, I’m second-generation French and I don’t really speak Arabic. Well, a little. I have two degrees: from Provence Aix-Marseilles, and ENA. At Aix-Marseille there are twice as many girls as boys. It was paradise. Not ENA. I know you’ll ask why the police after ENA? The answer is so someday I can head the police, maybe.”
“You’re crazy if after the ENA you came here. I was going to ask what you studied as an undergraduate.”
“Korean.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Arnaud.
“What’s so bad about Korean? What about you?”
“Université Nancy Deux. Mining engineering, but I dropped out and went to work in the blast furnace at Saint-Gobain. I’m not going to head the police.”
“Why’d you drop out?”
“We didn’t have the same boy-girl ratio you did.”
“It was better in the blast furnace?”
“The blast furnace is formidable enough to take your mind off even girls. The next exit’s for us.”
AS THEY CONTINUED ON, Arnaud, who had missed much of the briefing, and couldn’t turn enough to reach the thick folders on the back seat even if the back seat was practically the front seat, asked, “What have we got?” He expected an intelligent summary, if only because Duvalier’s bright eyes brightened even further.
“First of all, Houchard, the OPJ, is an asshole.”
“I did pick that up.”
“He left Marseilles before I came in to the police, but he couldn’t take his reputation with him. He doesn’t do any of the work, then hogs all the credit. His reports hardly mention the people under him, so your prospects are dimmed in proportion to his as they brighten. Notice how he made himself a barrier between the judge and us. Okay, we’re working for him, but there’s no reason we can’t talk to the judge. I like talking to judges: they’re usually quite bright and interesting, and they often help a great deal. I don’t see why people in our position are afraid of them. Did you see that when we were finished I disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Arnaud answered. “Why did I have to meet you in the garage?”
“Because I ran after the judge. I asked if we could contact him directly. He said, ‘Why? You’re supposed to go through Houchard.’ I said – I took a big chance – ‘Monsieur le Juge, I want to put this as diplomatically as possible. Houchard is an asshole.’ The judge laughed. I said, ‘He’ll ruin the investigation. I’m not looking for credit, but we want to do our job without undo obstruction. Each of has to wrap up our other cases, but this is by far the most important. We’re going to have to work like hell to fit everything in.’ After thinking about this, he said, ‘First go to him. If you can’t reach him immediately – let’s say after two rings? – give me a call. The important thing is that we get this done, and although I haven’t worked with him before, I’ve heard things about him. This is not to be repeated.’”
“You should have asked me before you did that,” Arnaud said.
“You’re right. I apologize. I’m not good at procedure, and I didn’t have time. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. The OPJ is an asshole. We’ll go around him when we need to. It can be done. Who knows, he might even leave us alone, and the best time to risk your career is at the beginning, when maybe you can do something else. But what about the case? Which is what I asked you.”
“Okay, nine forty-five on the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, a weeknight, rain and wind. Three skinny ‘Arabs,’ two of whom are dead, one we’ll meet shortly. An assailant who, according to the survivor, killed the first victim by smashing his head against an abutment after charging out of nowhere while screaming racial slurs in German.”
“Does he know German? How does he know they were racial slurs?”
“We’ll find out. Second victim, according to the survivor and the preliminary autopsy report, was ridden down the stairs like a magic carpet and punched in the throat expertly and hard. Airway collapse. Two witnesses, unconnected as far as we know, saw the assailant standing over the body and the panicked survivor screaming for help. When our men arrived they saw the alleged killer, chased him, and lost him in the river. They came from both ends, so it must’ve been that.”
“The body fished out?”
“Not yet.”
“Surveillance cameras? Along the river?”
“That’ll be our life for who knows how long. Just you and me, because we can’t trust eyes not invested in the case. They’d almos
t certainly miss something. We don’t have final autopsies, or DNA, but we do have blood typing. The first victim, one Firhoun Akrama, was Type B negative. Amire Bourrouag, victim number two, and the survivor, Raschid Belghazi, both A positive. But there was blood at the site of the initial encounter up on the bridge. It painted the pavement, left spatters, and some pooled and congealed into little recesses in the concrete where there had been cut-off pipes or the ends of rebar or something. It was pried out in thick, maroon circlets, and didn’t match the victims or the survivor. O positive. That’s our assailant.”
“Maybe they attacked him.”
“Self-defense or not, he went at them hard enough to kill them. Because of the severity of the crime it’s an expedited case. If there’s no defense of necessity it’s an aggravated homicide – homicides – if only because one of the victims was a minor. The judge allows that a defense of necessity may exist, but suspects that it would be disallowed on the principle of disproportionality. He suspects it’s a racial crime. And he hopes not.”
“Maybe,” Weissenburger speculated, “there was a fourth person.”
“Occam’s Razor,” Duvalier said. “What are the odds?”
“Occam’s Razor,” Arnaud replied, “is not sharp enough to exclude them. What is this supposed German’s description?”
“I spoke to the two witnesses who were walking on the Île aux Cygnes, and I really don’t think they’re connected. The man is a high-school geometry teacher, his wife a salesgirl at a Monoprix. They said our guy looked like Gérard Depardieu only he wasn’t as fat as a hippopotamus, his nose wasn’t flat like a spatula, and his hair was shorter and darker.”
“So how did he look like Gérard Depardieu?”
“That’s what I asked. Then they said, ‘Oh, the young Gérard Depardieu, when he was about twenty or twenty-five, and after he dyed his hair blond.’ But this guy was about fifty. The woman said he had the look of someone in shock. He didn’t speak in their presence, so we have nothing more on his language or nationality.”