The First Fingerprint (3 page)

Marie had left a month ago.

His policeman's salary had allowed him to buy a spanking-new three-bedroom flat on boulevard Mireille Lauze, in a leafy, “classy” cluster of buildings, named Paul Verlaine Residence by its inspired promoters: three cubes of compressed concrete, each of four floors, built over a stretch of what were once gardens of the convent of the Holy Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition. The rest of the park was now occupied by a psychiatric hospital and a nursing college. On summer nights, when the nice and normal slept with their windows open, lugubrious howls tore through the purring of the televisions, providing a strange ground bass of human suffering to this theater of shadows.

“Già nella notte densa

s'estingue ogni clamor
,

già il mio cor fremebondo

s'ammansa in quest'amplesso e si rinsensa.”

Capitaine Anne Moracchini pushed open the office door and slipped her head of long brown hair through the gap. She flicked back her locks gracefully and gave de Palma a wicked look.

“You doing overtime, Michel? We're going for a drink at Le Zanzi. Want to come?”

“No thanks. I'm going to have a quiet evening at home. Tomorrow, if you want.”

“Come on now. You're not going to play at being dark and mysterious again?”

“Oh yes I am,” he answered, forcing himself to smile. “I'll take you to dinner tomorrow.”

“I can't tomorrow.”

“Some other time then?”

“You're not trying it on with me, are you? Watch yourself, Michel, I might end up taking you seriously.”

De Palma liked Capitaine Moracchini. First of all, he respected her for what she was: a police officer of rare qualities. She was the only woman on the squad. All the boys had more or less had a go at her, including Duriez, the big boss, and Paulin, the squad's head. Every one of them, except de Palma, who had never betrayed the slightest sign of physical attraction, even though her supple, slim body, as gentle as it was dangerous, provoked waves of desire in him which he sometimes had trouble controlling. As far as he knew, she had not had a serious relationship with anyone since she had divorced a dentist in Vitrolles two years before on the grounds of their political incompatibility.

“Goodbye, Michel. See you tomorrow.”

“Goodbye, my lovely,” he answered, slipping his exercise book into the top drawer of his desk.

When he was alone again, de Palma repeated to himself the oath that he had sworn to Samir's body. He had now to go back to La Castellane. His plan was in place, he would just have to wait two more hours before putting it into action. Instinctively, he checked the cylinder of his Bodyguard and went out into the city, with no special
destination in mind and just one desire: to get this case over and done with as soon as possible—along with that “Otello” air which he could not get out of his head.

“Venga la morte! E mi colga nell'estasi

di quest'amplesso

il momento supremo!”

It was verging on hot for a December night. He drove along the old port, with his window open, the smell of fuel and dry seaweed in his nostrils, then cruised up La Canebière, which was crammed with headlamps coming toward him and Christmas decorations—the same for last twenty-five years—forming two lines of light, one yellow and one white, leading toward the Reformed church. At the far end, he turned right in front of the church and went back up rue Thiers. It was dark and deserted, except for a pair of tatty transvestites who swiveled their hips grotesquely every time a car drove past. They were two black whores who used to work for the Beau Jacques and were now looking out for a pimp. Their previous one had been dug out of a blockhouse in Les Goudes the previous month, with his cute features full of lead. An occupational accident, so to speak. Case closed.

At the top of rue Thiers, he turned into the empty outskirts of La Plaine. Driving steadily in second gear, his arm leaning heavily on the car door, he surveyed the bars that were still open, now spewing out their clientele of students and dole boys. He almost pulled in to attract the attention of the small groups forming around the crouched figures of dealers. No reaction. Snatches of a blues song drifted out from a weary-looking club. The quavering notes rose up among the red lights of the belvedere only to rest in the branches of the nettle trees which the mischievous mistral had decked with plastic bags. As he passed in front of Les Nuits Bleues, he spotted Serge Pugliesi, or “Petit Serge”—the bent policeman's godfather—sounding off, crotch forward, arms outstretched, waving his hands with their five fingers and six rings in the stinking atmosphere of his local bar.

He drove swiftly down to the town center again, taking boulevard Salvator, then the bus lane along rue de Rome toward place La
Castellane. His instinct told him that Samir's killer was still right there, in the heart of the estate, and maybe in the very same block. Several clues backed up this hypothesis. He had been cruising round the neighborhood for days, each time in a different car so as not to be spotted in such a vertical microcosm.

Samir had been murdered at 6:00 p.m. At that time of day, no-one could wander around the estate without being noticed by the kids, who acted as lookouts at its entry points. Samir had probably been a lookout too. Not one of the few witness statements he had so far managed to gather made mention of seeing a stranger in La Castellane. This was his only chance: he had to make the witnesses talk.

“At any price,” he said aloud.

One way or another, he had to break through the law of silence which governed the small world of drug pushers. He had to rid himself of that feeling of impotence and guilt which rose from his guts.

He accelerated. His life had a meaning once more. A quarter of an hour later, he was on boulevard Barnier. He parked in traverse des Transhumants and then walked over to the huge La Castellane housing estate.

A red light was glowing from the tops of the tower-blocks, refracted by the dampness of the cold air. At the entry to the estate, he spotted the group of kids who kept their eyes on any comings and goings. As de Palma walked by the group, he picked out the youngest of them, then went around the block to return to his car without drawing attention to himself. He started up and drove off into the night.

This kid's name was Karim. He had heard it during the questioning after Samir's murder. Karim lived in the same block as the victim, and had been his best friend. “Like a brother,” he had said. De Palma had sensed that the boy was hiding something, that he had been silenced by a terror which was indefinable, invisible, but definitely there. He had seen it from the way he squirmed in his chair during questioning, from the way he filled up all the silences which the police imposed on him, and from his disturbed gaze when he had been shown photographs so as to identify the deceased.

Ten minutes later, de Palma had reached the Commissariat of the third arrondissement: a concrete fortress, stuck there like a bad joke
at the gloomy entrance of the Parc Bellevue housing estate. Everyone called it “Félix-Pyat.” Half of the population was Comorian and the other half Slavic. It was dangerous. With a sea view for those on the top floors.

Every time de Palma went there, he reminded himself that the Third World was not necessarily several hours' flight away from Marignane airport. Félix-Pyat, with its smell of ozone, its façades eaten away by poverty, its walls towering over car parks full of decaying motors and gutted washing machines, exactly conveyed all of the failings of society. It was a pitiless zone amongst the blind zones of a great city.

Outside the Commissariat, a plain-clothes team was waiting for it to be 9:00 p.m., their asses parked on their Safrane's bonnet. The Brigadier arrived and tossed that night's equipment on to the back seat: truncheons, rifles and rubber bullets, walkie-talkies, Maglites. The men exchanged a few inaudible jokes. Then the Brigadier spotted de Palma.

“So you've come to see how the job's really done.”

“Where are you going with that Safrane?” de Palma retorted. “Do you reckon you're going to catch any hoodies in that thing? Wake up, use a Solex. That way, they won't spot you so fast.”

De Palma went inside the Commissariat, gave a friendly wave to the officer who was fighting off sleep behind the switchboard, and walked round to the other side of reception, through the debriefing room, shaking a few hands on the way and glancing at the filthy plexiglass cages which seved as cells. Pell-mell, they contained everyone who had been picked up by that day's patrols. Drunks who were already snoring, two young dealers looking like beaten dogs, a huge tramp in a once-white, blood-stained shirt, who was pacing up and down, slapping his forehead and mumbling: “fuck, cunt, fuck, cunt, fuck …” as if it were a mantra. There was an acrid smell: sweat, bad breath and anxiety, mingled with the smoke of Gitanes and Marlboros.

In the staff room, separated from the debriefing room by a row of gray metal cupboards, an old boy was doing his crossword while waiting for the change of shift. On a wobbly shelf, a portable TV was spilling out the late-evening program on the most popular channel. To general indifference.

De Palma went up the stairs at the far end that led to the first floor, taking them two at a time, then pushed open the door of the North Sector. For the first time that evening, a friendly hand was laid on his shoulder.

“Good day, Baron. Are you here on a visit? Is your old lady in the family way? Or are you just here to see how the real fucking police do the business?”

De Palma leaned his cheek toward his old friend, Commandant Jean-Louis Maistre, or “Le Gros,” as he was called.

“What about you? Have you told those assholes that they can forget about all those nights when you used to be a Parisian?”

“Forget it, Baron, they'd never forgive me.”

Maistre was short, direct, as furry as a demon, with hair like a raven's wing, sparkling eyes, frowning brows and a dimpled chin. His pronounced nipples, heavy thighs and fighter's hands made him look like a ox. And yet, he was a man whose great sensitivity made him suffer terribly for not looking as he really was. His physique meant that he could never carry off the uniform of a mild commandant of public safety.

He dragged his friend into his office, closed the door and sat down with a sigh. De Palma watched as he carefully removed from a top left-hand drawer a bottle of Four Roses and two mustard glasses decorated with Achille Talon cartoons.

“Have a drink, Baron, then tell me why you're here.”

“I've come to ask you a favor.”

“Again!”

Maistre poured two large shots of bourbon, clacked glasses with the Baron, then knocked down his dose in one, with a grimace.

“I'm still on the Samir case,” de Palma said. “I think I've now got the right idea about La Castellane. But I'll need you.”

“When, this evening?”

“What do you think? In six months' time?”

“Take it easy. I'm on duty till 4:00 a.m.”

“I know. But then you're free!”

“Yeah … free to go and sleep.”

“No, free to come with me on a little trip to La Castellane.”

“Baron, I'm your friend, you know that, but this time you're definitely out of your tree. What the hell do you want to do in La Castellane at 4:00 a.m? With the cold coming on as well. They'll all be home with their mothers.”

“Do you want to be in on the arrest of the century, or don't you?”

“Calm down, Baron. Don't get carried away.”

Maistre and de Palma met when working together at quai des Orfèvres, at the end of the '70s. After five years, de Palma asked to be transferred to Marseille, and Maistre then followed so as not to lose his friend. He had not immediately liked the city. He had even hated it for quite a long time. This pure-bred Parisian had not at all appreciated the shabby quartiers in the center, their grandiloquent inhabitants, or the haughty and secretive bourgeois heights overlooking the town. Marseille had given him the impression of being like an over-made-up slapper, with her skin wrinkled from the midday sun, a tart of an Artemis offering her heavy dugs to the highest bidder.

Surreptitiously, like a rare opium, the city had taken Maistre over. When he would go back up to the capital to see what was left of his family, he felt bored out of his skull. He missed Marseille. He could not have explained why. Yet it was a fact. The city would not now let go of him, it was forever on his heels, like a jealous mistress.

The first surprise awaiting the two officers was that they were transferred, without a word of discussion, to the drug squad with the unwritten agreement that they would return to the murder squad within two years.

At the time, Marseille was still a grim town, rusted over by the economic crisis. It was a time of disillusion, the end of the glory days. Forget the flesh trade on the routes from Indochina, or the speakeasies in the back rooms of dives around the Opera, just then it was all about drugs. In discreet villas, the chemists of Marseille cooked up the world's finest heroin, and business was damn good: mobsters in gold-stitched suits were blowing one another away on every street corner.

The French Connection. A planetary fuck-up.

Both France and the U.S.A. had their eyes fixed on the dozen officers in the Marseille drug squad. And the opposition were no amateurs either, far from it: Jo Cesari, the king of 98% pure juice;
Gaëtan Zampa, a.k.a. “Le Grand Tany,” and Francis Vanverberghe, “Le Belge,” his enemy, along with their squadrons of soldiers. They were the crème de la crème of the scene, at the top of this can of worms, along with quite a few policemen from headquarters who were well in with the gang. So you had to be good. Very good. And de Palma and Maistre were very good.

They were the best.

Their friendship was bonded in life and in death when they raided their first lab: a villa, trying to pass itself off as a snug cottage, tucked up on the heights of Gémenos.