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“Years ago,” I said. “But I saw the movie recently.”
“Okay,” he said. “That scene where Jean Valjean meets Cosette getting water? The inn where the Thénardiers robbed their customers? All in Montfermeil. It looks different today, of course, but the dark spirit of the place continues. Montfermeil is like your Bronx was in the nineteen seventies, or South Central L.A. in the nineties: high unemployment, high crime rate, and lots of gangs, drug dealers, and violence. Add an angry Muslim and young immigrant population, and it’s unimaginable to me why Mademoiselle Kopchinski would take refuge in Les Bosquets—one of the worst housing projects in France.”
I shrugged. “We’ll find out, I guess. You’re sure about the plumbers’ gear being the right way to go?”
“Bien sûr. Everybody needs the plumber at some time, in some emergency. Non? Plumbers can come and go at all hours and no one thinks anything of it other than some poor bastard has a backed up toilet. And plumbers tend not to get hassled even in places like Les Bosquets. Why is that? Because everyone needs the plumber! Someone shakes the plumber down, and soon no plumbers will come, and no one wants that. Not even there.”
“This wouldn’t fly in the States,” I said, gesturing at the full jumpsuit. “People would know we weren’t plumbers.”
Louis seemed taken aback by that. “How would they know?”
“No American plumber would wear a coverall like this. If they did, they couldn’t show their ass crack, and that’s a requirement in the States.”
Louis glanced, and then laughed. “This is true?”
“No.”
My cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a text. It was from Sherman Wilkerson and included a photograph of a pretty young woman with sad eyes sitting at a bar. At a red light I showed it to Langlois, saying, “It’s the most recent picture of her Sherman’s got. He said it’s at least four years old.”
“As a rule I don’t like babysitting jobs,” Langlois said.
“Neither do I,” I agreed, pocketing the phone. “But when a client like Sherman asks Private to look after his granddaughter, we answer.”
Twenty minutes later, and less than eleven miles from the chic streets and genteel parks of central Paris, we entered a world apart. Out the van’s window, the area didn’t look too bad at night. It kind of reminded me of East Berlin, with big clusters of drab, uniform, state-designed high-rise apartment buildings—a communist’s decaying vision of ideal housing.
Then I started seeing the graffiti. “Fuck the police” was a common theme. So were images of faceless men in dark hoods with flames painted behind them and Arabic scrawled above them.
“Was this project part of those riots a few years back?” I asked.
“Les Bosquets was in the thick of it,” Louis confirmed. “And it’s home to a vicious gang that specializes in targeting tourists who take the train from de Gaulle to Paris. A few months ago, they put a car on the tracks to stop a train holding more than a hundred Japanese visitors, then went on board and robbed everyone at gunpoint.”
“Brazen.”
“Yes, but there are reasons,” Louis replied. “Back in the sixties and seventies, when France was on the up economically, we needed labor, so they allowed anyone from a current or former French colony to immigrate here. They built the projects, and a generation later the economy busts, and the immigrants stay on, having children, lots of children. Fifty percent of the population out here is younger than twenty-five. And they can’t find jobs. So they live in terrible conditions, with no purpose. It’s a recipe for disaster for everyone involved.”
“Can’t they work their way out of it through school?” I asked.
Louis wagged a finger at me and said, “You are thinking of the States again, Jack. In France, it is not the same. There are proven paths to power here—the right schools, the right friends—and these paths are shut off to the immigrants. Worse, there is no public transportation in these areas. Without a car, you go nowhere. You’re trapped. You get angry. You explode.”
Louis flicked his chin toward the windshield. “There it is. Les Bosquets.”
The project consisted of eight decaying high-rise apartment buildings. Clotheslines hung from windows, as did immigrants of all ages and skin colors. Louis pulled over on the Avenue Clichy-sous-Bois.
He opened the glove compartment, got out a Glock 19, and handed it to me.
“I’m not licensed to carry this in France,” I said.
“You’re not a licensed French plumber either, Jack,” Louis said. “Put it in your pocket, and let me do the talking.”
It’s hard to argue with a guy who knows his turf as well as Louis. I decided to trust his judgment and nodded. We got out and grabbed toolboxes and flashlights from the rear hatchback. Men across the street had checked us out when we pulled up, but now they were ignoring us.
“You see?” Louis muttered as we headed down the road that ran north into the complex. “Everyone needs us, even if we don’t show the butt cracks.”
Chapter 4
7th Arrondissement
5 p.m.
