Simon had his answer. No differently than Coluzzi.
He made a second tour of the block, more briskly this time, looking for security cameras. Paris wasn’t London. He couldn’t find one.
He had a last impression before returning to the taxi. Tino Coluzzi had gotten smarter since he’d last seen him. Simon would be wise not to underestimate him. He’d done so once before and it hadn’t turned out well.
“Back to the hotel,” said Simon.
He rode the entire way in silence, lost in thought. He was not in Paris. He was in Marseille. In Les Baumettes. Reliving the worst moments of his life.
They came at him on his third day while he was in the yard. There was nothing hostile in their approach. Five prisoners casually walking his way. They knew his name. They knew what he was in for. They said they wanted nothing more than to introduce themselves. They were his “brothers.” Simon knew better.
The yard, like the entire prison, was segregated by race and religion. The natives, “les blancs”—comprising? French, Corsican, and any other Europeans with white skin who had run afoul of French law—had the southern side. The southern side had benches, a handball court, a bocce pit, and, most importantly, abundant shade from the coastal pine trees that grew on the steep hills surrounding the prison. The Muslims, referred to as “les barbus”—the bearded ones—and by far the largest group in the prison, had the east side of the yard, hardly more than a fifty-square-meter patch of concrete. The blacks had what was left, a patch of dirt as hard as rock during the blistering summer, damp and muddy in the winter.
At first they made small talk. “Everything okay?” “You get a room with a bed?” “Need any weed or anything else, for that matter?”
Simon replied that he was fine. He required no favors. He’d known what to expect coming in. In Les Baums, you found your own space. Cells stood open twenty-four hours a day. The assignment given on arrival didn’t count for anything. Built in the 1930s to house a population of six hundred, the prison held three times that number. On the day he arrived, Simon became inmate 1801.
He’d fashioned a shank during his time in the city jail and concealed it the only way he could. He knew how to spot the weaker man. The fight, when it occurred, was brief and bloody. Simon had his bed.
Situated in the suburbs of Marseille, the prison anchored a leafy neighborhood of lower-middle-class homes and businesses, separated from its civilian neighbors by no more than a street and a twenty-foot stone-and-mortar wall. There were no watchtowers. No barbed-wire fences. Just the wall with statues of the seven deadly sins built into its side and the towering steel door that served as the prison’s sole entry and egress.
Inside, conditions were hellish. Few renovations had been made since its construction. Even fewer repairs. The interior was bare concrete, same as the beds. There were no bars on the cells, just doors that closed no differently than ones in your home. Each cell had a bed and a hole in the ground and whatever furniture you could bribe a guard to allow you to smuggle in. Some even had windows. In the summer, temperatures inside the housing unit rose to over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The air, rank with the shit and piss and stench of nearly two thousand sweaty men, was insufferable.
Simon’s sentence was six years with the opportunity to reduce his time with good behavior. It was a light penalty as far as armed robbery with aggravated circumstances (firing with deadly intent at police) went. The judge, a woman of forty and a new mother, had been weak. She had taken into account his age, his father’s suicide, his difficult family environment. When Simon had addressed the court with his new haircut and pressed shirt, and said with a halting voice that his days as a criminal were behind him, she had believed him.
“Someone wants to meet you,” one of the men said.
“I’m not hiding.”
“Signor Bonfanti doesn’t like it outside.”
Simon followed the men without further protest. Bonfanti was “Il Padrone,” the boss, and was the de facto ruler of La Brise de Mer. His son, Theo Bonfanti, had been killed in the course of the aborted robbery. Bonfanti’s room was on the fourth floor and had windows that opened wide enough to crawl out of. The room had a real bed and a Moroccan carpet and every other amenity of civilized life, including an independent supply of electricity. In theory, he could have engineered his escape any time he chose. For the past five years, it had been safer for him inside.
“You’re Ledoux?”
Simon nodded.
Bonfanti was a short, toad-like man with gray hair and an ample belly, his voice as rough as asphalt. “You got my son killed.”
“The police killed him.”
“It was your job.”
“It was.”
“And the police were waiting.”
Simon nodded again.
“So who talked?”
Simon said nothing. From the corner of his eye, he noted the other men drawing closer. They were no longer either casual or friendly.
“Who talked?” Bonfanti asked a second time.
Simon maintained his silence. The men pressed against him, ready to kill him if given the word. He could smell their eager sweat. Simon suddenly felt his age, a nineteen-year-old in far over his head.
Bonfanti gestured at a wooden chair. “Sit.”
