Free Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis Page A

published by the review
Le Feu
. Numbered 36. I’d given it to her as a present.
    It was the first time I’d parted with one of the books I had in my house. They belonged to Manu and Ugo as much as to me. They were the great treasure of our teenage years. I’d often dreamed that one day they would bring the three of us back together. The day Manu and Ugo finally forgave me for being a cop. The day I admitted that it was easier to be a cop than a criminal and I could embrace them like long-lost brothers, with tears in my eyes. When that day came, I knew I’d read the poem by Brauquier that ended with these words:
    Â 
    For a long time I searched for you
    Night of the lost night.
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    We’d discovered Brauquier’s poems in Antonin’s second-hand bookstore.
Fresh Water for Ships, Beyond Suez, Freedom of the Seas.
We were seventeen. Antonin was recovering from a heart attack. We stopped blowing our money on the pinball machines, and took it in turn to mind the store. It was a chance to indulge our grand passion, old books. The novels, travel books and poems I read had a particular smell. The smell of cellars. An almost spicy smell, a mixture of dust and grease. Verdigris. Books today don’t have a smell. They don’t even smell of print.
    I’d found the original edition of
Harbor Bar
one morning, emptying some boxes Antonin had never opened, and taken it home with me. I leafed through the book, with its yellowed pages, closed it, and put it in my pocket. I looked at the super.
    â€œI’m sorry for what I said earlier. I’m a bit on edge.”
    He shrugged. He was the kind of guy who must be used to other people putting him down.
    â€œDid you know her?”
    I didn’t answer, but gave him my card. Just in case.
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    I’d opened the window and lowered the blind. I was exhausted. I was longing for a cold beer. But, before anything else, I had to do a report on Leila’s disappearance and pass it on to the missing persons bureau. Then Mouloud would need to sign a request for a search. I’d called him. I could hear the hopelessness in his voice, the sense of misery that grabs hold of you and won’t let you go. “We’ll find her.” That was all I could say. Behind the words, a chasm opened up. I imagined him sitting at his table, not moving, eyes staring into the distance.
    Mouloud’s image gave way to Honorine’s, this morning, in her kitchen. I’d gone there at seven, to tell her about Ugo. I didn’t want her to find out from the newspapers. Auch’s squad had been very discreet. There was only a short paragraph on the inside pages. A dangerous criminal, wanted by the police of several countries, had been shot dead yesterday as he was getting ready to open fire on the police. There were a few details about his life, but no mention of why Ugo was considered dangerous, or what crimes he’d committed.
    Zucca’s death had made the headlines. The journalists all kept to the same version. Zucca wasn’t a famous gangster like Mémé Guérini or, more recently, Gaëtan Zampa, Jacky Le Mat or Francis the Belgian. It wasn’t even certain he’d ever killed anyone, or maybe just one or two people, to prove himself. He was the son of a lawyer, and a lawyer himself. Basically, he was a manager. Since Zampa had killed himself in prison, he’d been running the Marseilles mafia’s empire. Steering well clear of family feuds or battles for territory.
    His execution had gotten everyone nervous. Was it the start of a gang war? Marseilles really didn’t need this right now. The city’s economic downturn was already a heavy enough burden to bear. SNCM, the company that ran the ferry service to Corsica, was threatening to take its business elsewhere, Toulon for instance, or La Ciotat, a former naval shipyard 25 miles from Marseilles. For months, there’d been a dispute between the company and the