“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 hu?tres; 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 open.
“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 ?le 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.”