Chez Max

by Jakob Arjouni

  So he was advising me to drink another glass of wine, was he? What did he think this was, just a heated argument? No, this was good against evil! This was… And suddenly the scales seemed to fall from my eyes… We will crush the motherfuckers before they crush us! Yes, I’ll crush him! I want to crush him! I would love to crush him! It’s necessary to crush him! He will not crush me!

  And as Chen was still looking at me anxiously, but at the same time almost imploringly, I stepped back and reached behind the barbecue for the handle of the axe.

  The rest was merely a kind of choreography. As if I’d been rehearsing what followed for years. Every move was right, every step was purposeful, everything was confined to what had to be done. I left no traces.

  Some two hours later, when I let the rubbish bags drop into the Seine at a deserted place on the bank, it was as if I were ridding myself at a stroke of all the encumbrances of my life. As if my fears were sinking into the water before my eyes, all my pangs of conscience, all the injuries and humiliations, all the painful baggage of my life over the last few years. Suddenly I understood what people meant when they said they felt born again. Washed clean.

  And even more important: I had done my duty. I was a worthy heir of John Ashcroft. The world was rid of Chen. And I had no doubt whatsoever that the world was now a better place.

  7

  I spent the next few days partly in a state of euphoria, partly on tenterhooks. Because however carefully and conscientiously I had gone about it, of course there was always the possibility of a witness or some stupid coincidence. Suppose the bags with Chen in them were fished up by an angler, or found by one of the boats that dredged sludge out of the Seine? The brief time-span between his visit to Chez Max and the discovery of his remains would at least have raised questions.

  So far as the Localization Office computer was concerned, and as long as the bags remained undiscovered, Chen was still moving around the eighth arrondissement, although on an erratic course. Near Natalia’s apartment I had attached his transmitter to the collar of a dog tied up outside a food store. I naturally put it down to chance that the first dog I saw with no one watching it happened to be a Pekinese. Well, to chance in one way. In another – and I am far from being a religious man – perhaps there was someone up there after all playing games with Fate. In any event, I thought on the way back to Chez Max, this is exactly the kind of joke that Chen enjoys – that Chen would have enjoyed, I corrected myself. I had to grin. He would certainly have appreciated the humour of it, and I was glad I knew that and thought it as funny as he would. I even imagined us sitting together, both of us laughing at it.

  Only that night, as my tension subsided, did the first unsettling questions come into my mind. Had I perhaps been seen from the other side of the river? Would one of my staff notice the dark stains on the terracotta tiles paving the courtyard? I hadn’t been able to get them out in spite of repeated scrubbing. Or would someone notice the absence of a few ornamental stones which I’d taken from the fountain behind the barbecue to weight the bags?

  However, my fears were unfounded. Nothing happened for the next three days. I even went to Ashcroft Central Office twice to pick up any information I could about Chen. I was expecting something like, ‘Can you tell me where Wu is? I was supposed to be meeting him yesterday.’ Or: ‘You can tell your partner that Youssef has been trying to reach him for the last two days, and he’s not very happy about it.’ But no one said anything of the kind. Nor was anyone behaving oddly to me, avoiding me in the corridor or looking away when our eyes met. I had twice in the past seen what it was like when almost all agents except the man concerned knew he’d soon be coming before the Ashcroft tribunal for some offence or other. As if a dead man were walking around the building, and as if death was infectious.

  But it seemed as if, at least for now, Chen’s last appearance in this world had been with that drop into the Seine and the bubbles that rose from him.

  On the fourth day I called Commander Youssef at about eleven in the morning and told him I’d been trying to get hold of Chen for four days, but his phone was either switched off or still out of order, and up to yesterday evening the Localization Office had given me only some very odd locations for him, and he hadn’t stayed long in any of them: dog-exercising areas in public parks, pavements outside butchers’ shops, and according to the data found on the Ashcroft computer, an apartment belonging to a gay electrician.

  ‘… Anyway, Chen – or I suppose it must be Chen – was nowhere around when I went to look for him in the places the Localization Office gave me. And I didn’t want to ring the electrician’s doorbell because… well, as far as I know there’s nothing wrong with the electricity in Chen’s apartment at the moment, and even if there were… I mean, why an electrician from the eighth arrondissement?’

  Youssef muttered something which, in him, sounded like laughter. ‘That would be quite something! Chen an Illy boy!’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Schwarzwald… everyone knows about them. Because of the coffee. Never seen it? Buy&Help: uterus implants for men. The coffee, you must know about it. It tastes… well, it doesn't taste so good.’

  ‘Sorry, Commander, I always have a kind of uneasy feeling about the Buy&Help campaigns. Of course most of it is in a good cause, but still… well, it’s really just a sales stunt.’

  ‘Hmhm… yes. Well, what did you want to know about Chen for?’

  ‘To be honest, Commander, I’m worried.’

  ‘Worried about Chen? You’d do better to be worrying a little more about yourself.’

  ‘I know, Commander, my success rate…’

  ‘Your success rate?’ he interrupted me. ‘You don’t have any successes to your credit. Except for your friend the painter.’

  I felt as if some kind of sour acid were running right through me.

  ‘Well, I’m working on various cases which I hope will soon lead to results.’

  ‘I hope so too. Right: why are you worried about Chen, then?’

  ‘Commander…’ I took a deep breath, making it audible to him ‘… for one thing I believe I found out at last, yesterday evening, what’s behind Chen’s walks around the eighth arrondissement. His transmitter is on a dog’s collar. I wasn’t able to check that myself, because the dog’s owner was always with the animal, but the data from the Localization Office and the locations of the dog on three occasions matched exactly, to the nearest metre. Then it occurred to me that I’d seen the dog a few days before while searching for Chen, only at first I naturally didn’t connect them. What’s more, if Chen wanted to get rid of his transmitter and disappear without trace – you know his sense of humour – well, the dog in question is a Pekinese. And unfortunately that all matches my assumption that Chen has made off somewhere.’

  ‘Made off? How do you mean?’ That amused sound again. ‘To that Illy poof?’

  Not for the first time, I was conscious of Youssef ’s origins: a man from the suburbs, an Arab – who else would allow himself to speak of people of a different sexual orientation like that? It probably took more than four or five generations to get the desert right out of an Arab’s mind.

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ I said rather sharply. ‘I meant that perhaps Chen has gone to the other side of the Fence.’

  ‘What…? What puts that into your head?’

  Once again I drew an audible breath before I told Youssef about the Iranian illegals under surveillance by the TFSP, and how annoyed Chen had been about it. ‘I’ve never seen him like that before. And you know Chen: he can lose his temper over all sorts of things, but he’s always in perfect control of himself at work. Nothing really impresses him. So when he fell into such a rage because the TFSP was watching them, I began to feel suspicious, and I stuck close to him one evening.’

  ‘You shadowed your partner?’

  ‘Well, Commander, partner or no partner… I mean, Lieutenant Gilbert made it quite clear that there was something wrong about Che
n and the illegals in the Rue de la Roquette.’

  He didn’t reply. Because he hadn’t read the last few days’ reports accumulating in his computer? Because he preferred studying interior design websites to choose curtains or tiles for his villa in Perpignan? What had Chen said? A pretty wife and two more years to go before he retires? The fact was, there was a certain irony in Youssef ’s blaming me for my low success quota. In-house, we all knew that recently he’d hardly been killing himself with overwork.

  Anyway, he didn’t seem to have read the email that Lieutenant Gilbert or Self-Protection must have sent him to inform him, as Chen’s superior officer, of their suspicion that Chen might be involved in something shady. One-nil to me or against him, whichever way you liked to see it.

  ‘… And in fact, at the beginning anyway, I naturally followed him hoping it was all some mistake. Because one thing seemed logical to me: if there was really anything in what the TFSP suspected, then Chen was sure to react quickly. So I thought if I kept an eye on him, saw him going out for a meal after finishing work in the normal way, meeting friends or so on, then that, luckily, would settle it in his favour.’

  ‘No need to keep on making out that you’re so anxious about whatever’s happened to Chen. You aren’t exactly bosom friends.’

  ‘Commander, if I may say so: Chen has his faults, and working with him certainly isn’t always easy, but I have the greatest respect for him as an Ashcroft man, and I wouldn’t want to exchange him for anyone else as my partner – or more precisely I wouldn’t have wanted to until four days ago.’

  ‘All right, come to the point, Schwarzwald.’

  Were the interior design catalogues waiting?

  I cleared my throat. ‘Well, sure enough, I saw him eating with a girlfriend, at work with his gardening, although – and it’s hard for me to say this about my partner; I mean, after four years of working together – ’ I was happy to keep him impatient. ‘Although he twice met terrorists known to us, once in the back room of a Vietnamese takeaway, and then right outside the door of his building. Of course he had to expect surveillance by the TFSP, that’s probably why he linked his meetings with an evening otherwise spent perfectly innocently.’

  ‘Terrorists…?’ All of a sudden there was considerable uneasiness in Youssef ’s voice. No wonder: a colleague of ours connected with terrorism – that was bad enough for the superior officer concerned, but it was much worse if the said superior officer had never expressed any passing suspicion to his own superiors. Because he wasn’t really interested in what went on in his own department any more. Because instead of keeping an eye on his agents he preferred to study illustrations of marble tiles. That could mean early and far from honourable departure from his post, which in its own turn would lead to reductions in his pension payments.

  In short: I had been correct in working out, over the last few days, that it would hardly be in Youssef ’s own interests to make Chen’s disappearance into any big deal.

  ‘I’ve taken photographs of the men and fed them into our computer…’

  And I gave him the names of two terrorists who, according to our information, were hiding out in Paris. The photos really existed. They were on the desk in front of me; I’d drawn them up from the computer.

  ‘Well… I don’t know, Schwarzwald, all this sounds rather bizarre to me…’

  He was sounding positively subdued for someone in his position. Sometimes it was better not to have any results. The commander of the Ashcroft agents in the eleventh arrondissement wasn’t going to get any commendation for this one, at least.

  ‘I mean, Chen is a crazy guy, but…’

  ‘Look, Commander, I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few days about Chen and the way he so often talked. And you know that his language… well, it’s no secret that he sometimes didn’t shrink from… let’s say, verging on taboo subjects. And the logical consequence of that…’

  ‘Oh, this is nonsense! Chen talks big, and we indulge him, that’s all. He likes to think he knows all about everything that’s wrong with the world, but when all’s said and done he’d rather be sitting in the warm toasting his feet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Commander, but… for instance, I remember him saying that – well, as he rather abruptly put it, too much fuss is made about getting things. And then he blamed the Enlightenment, and words like understanding and knowledge and so on – well, to me that means clearly that he was always convinced that deeds must follow words at some point.’

  ‘Of course he was convinced of it – only not his deeds. Chen is a clever man and also – between you and me – a randy goat, and he knows he won’t change the world and he has only one life. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t happily support someone else, someone he sees as more just or more moral, who took over, but until then… And what’s more…’ I could see him before me, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What’s more, Chen is my best man! How many of our colleagues who may be as loyal as anything to the state and the law but are total washouts wouldn’t I give for him!’

  Like me, for example, I thought. You puffed-up goatfucker!

  ‘Oh, I understand how you feel, Commander. It was a great shock to me too. Only when I thought it over later… listen, I think we’d better just wait for now. Perhaps Chen will turn up again; perhaps that business with the dog is just a practical joke. Perhaps he wants to fool the ladies in the Localization Office, something like that. And it can’t be ruled out that he could have got in touch with the terrorists in the course of an investigation. Then if he doesn’t turn up… well, you have my word for it that I won’t kick up a great fuss. We could always say Chen has simply gone missing. These things do happen, after all.’

  I could hear him breathing hard, and I knew what an effort it cost him to say, ‘Okay, Schwarzwald, I think I really would be grateful if you’d keep quiet about Chen’s meetings with the terrorists for the time being. As you very sensibly suggest, let’s wait and see.’

  *

  And that was just what happened. We waited. Over the following weeks and months, several explanations of Chen’s disappearance were suggested. Some of our colleagues thought he had fallen foul of the whisky and the Scottish moors; others, the more romantic souls among us, usually women, felt sure that a love affair had taken him to the other side of the Fence; others again, supplied by me with hints, thought he knew that Self-Protection was after him for hiding illegals and so he had no option but to go underground. At least, the bags containing his remains never came to light.

  Two weeks after my phone call to Youssef I got a new partner. He was useless, certainly compared to Chen, and in other ways too. His success quota was regularly below average, his cover was working as a car-park attendant, he lived on lettuce and high-energy bars – which was a joke when you thought of his uninspired lack of energy at work – he had a wife he didn’t love and they went camping on Narbonne beach once a year, he smelled strongly of perfume, and he picked his nose throughout our discussions. But it worked on me like a rejuvenation cure. I positively blossomed as an Ashcroft agent. Suddenly I could see and sense what was going on in my area again, within a single week I brought two forgers of brand-name goods, one terrorist sympathizer and even a potential murderer before the Examining Committee, and I basked in the renewed appreciation of my colleagues. It felt wonderful, after four years of humiliation, to be Number One in the team again.

  I strolled around the eighth arrondissement without any particular plan in mind a few times, and one afternoon, by chance, I came upon Natalia in a tea-room. I sat down at the next table and made several attempts to strike up a conversation with her. Did she come here often, hadn’t we met before… But obviously she was one of those women who thought, because of the way they looked, they could treat other people less well endowed by nature like bothersome flies – at least, unless those other people were loud-mouthed Asians. Well, next morning I was ashamed of it, but I couldn’t help myself that night. What was it she had said to me? ‘Monsieur, even
if we really have met before, you are not someone I would remember. Would you please let me drink my tea in peace?’

  And she had sounded as grave, almost piously so, as if she were looking down on me from some planet which concerned itself with the really important things in life.

  Such arrogance! And how ridiculous she had made me look in front of the other customers. All the way home I felt kind of soiled. And so I had to give it to her. As I said, I was ashamed of it in the morning, and even that night I felt a kind of moral void in me when I brought out the sexomat suit from behind the sofa. On the other hand the times when I had let people treat me like dirt were finally over. I wasn’t taking that kind of thing from the likes of Chen’s ex-girlfriend – or, if you like, from Chen himself.

  Incidentally, I would dislike it very much if we were to get into bed with the same woman, however indirectly.

  Well, too bad about that!

  And then something happened that showed the events of the last few weeks in an entirely different light.

  In the middle of June I received a letter from Paris Central Penitentiary. (I suppose prisons were the only places where letters were still written, since for security reasons the inmates weren’t allowed to use the Internet or send emails.)

  The letter was from Leon, and I snatched it out of my post box with great excitement and sat down on the stairs inside the hall of the restaurant to read it.

  Dear Max

  Forgive me for not getting in touch for so long, but what happened, as you can imagine, was a bad shock. I’m not sure how much people know about my crime in our part of town, and above all how much you know. When I was, well, let’s say being driven away by the police in that new miracle vehicle, I could see you through the window. You looked dismayed and helpless, and I felt really sorry. What must you have imagined, what terrible crimes had I been committing behind your back over the years of our friendship? But the fact is they picked me up for one thing because of the smoking, and of course you knew about that, but also because of a totally stupid plan to deal in drugs. I was just about washed up, financially too, and for a few weeks it seemed to me a way out of my dilemma. Ah well, we’re not immune to outright nonsense even in our mid-thirties. Of course I wonder who gave me away – although I’m pretty sure it was the Arab who first suggested the drug-dealing to me and indeed persuaded me into it, probably in order to bargain with the police over something else. But I wonder not because, as I expect you’re thinking, I was furious with whoever turned me in or even wanted revenge, quite the opposite. The funny thing is – and you are reading this quite correctly! – I’m grateful to him. Grateful? More than that – he saved my life! Because shall I tell you something? Believe it or not, I’ve started painting again in prison! After only two weeks I was doing little pencil drawings, and then my uncle sent me paints, brushes and a small easel, and now I sit for four to six hours every day, just as I used to, painting picture after picture. The deputy governor in charge of this wing is very enthusiastic, he brings me fresh fruit and flowers for my still lifes every few days, and has got me excused from the usual work you have to do in jail. In return I give him a picture a week, and he tells me how he and his family, wife, parents-in-law, three adolescent children, take time off every evening to listen to classical music and do nothing but look at my latest work. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t it a dream?