Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction Read Online Free PDF

‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
    Laughing, Perreaux said, ‘It’s a good thing I had all that wine during lunch today, huh?’
    The cops left, laughing. Omar wiped at his face with his sleeve a couple of times, trying to get the blood and piss off his lips, but then he was too exhausted to move his hand any more and he just lay there.
    Then, as his eyes started to close again, he thought he was imagining it. But no, it was definitely there, attached to the side of the building, maybe twenty metres away, pointed in his direction. It was working too, because it was shifting slowly back and forth.
    Looking up at the surveillance camera, Omar managed a wide smile.

THE LOOKOUT by MARC VILLARD

LYDIE
    I pull away from the pavement, dropping two Rastas in front of La Cigale. There’s a Gladiators comeback show on tonight. Then my taxi cruises into Square Anvers, picking up a scared blonde. She says she lives at La Madeleine.
    Midnight.
    In thirty minutes we’ll be alone among the taxis and motorbikes, speeding down the city’s streets. I take the wide boulevards, avoiding drunken louts staggering onto the tarmac, cans of beer in hand, and sleepy couples, cyclists without lights.
    I’ll never forget Paris, all the cities I’ve driven through. Stockholm’s powdery snow. The strangled guitars of Barcelona’s Rambla del Raval. The shouts of restless rockers in Camden. The youngsters streaming with sweat in the port of Naples, about to sail for Ischia. The drizzle darkening Amsterdam’s windows. And I was forgetting Berlin: Berlin, its smell of warm beer in the nightclubs, leather gear and Lobotomie playing punk rock. All slip by under the wheels of my Citröen, between my fingers fiddling with my twenty-third Camel. The girl behind me moans on, talking about health and the environment, but I don’t give a shit. My cab’s my kingdom. I slam the brakes.
    ‘Get out, bitch.’
    She gets out, shouting, while I tune in to Radio Nova: Solomon Burke pounds out ‘Don’t give up on me’. I can see him from here, Stetson glued to his head, in his regal attire, slumped on his king’s throne. I change into second, go back up to Barbes where the lights are smothered by kebab smells.
    Glance in the rear-view mirror: a forty-five-year-old woman’s there, bags under her eyes, hair tumbling over her black biker’s jacket. The night is vast, the wind picks up under the elevated section of the Métro. Neon explodes in the dark. I park the Citröen round the corner from Virgin and go into Mekloufi’s bar.

SUGAR
    I’ve got Roger in front of me and I already know what he’s going to say. A tirade about how I’ve got him by the balls on my walkie-talkie. Lomshi, next to me, thinks the same thing.
    ‘Right guys, I’ll give it to you straight: my balls are attached to your walkie-talkies. The deal’s going down in Square Saint-Bernard. Sugar, you’re covering rue Myrha and you, Lomshi, rue Stephenson. Is that clear?’
    ‘Got you, Roger.’
    ‘The slightest thing, you call me, that’s it. You’re the only ones on that frequency.’
    ‘How much are you dropping?’
    ‘Five hundred grams of coke. OK, get to your positions.’
    I scarper to my bit of terrace on the fifth floor, just round the corner from the mosque on rue Myrha. Then my imperial eye sweeps the street. Nobody. So I take out my Colombian, my papers and my matches. And roll myself the spliff of the century. If Marley could see me with my Rasta hat, he’d be proud of me. I light it, inhaling the sweet smell. Vague glance down the street. I zone out, thinking about the cock fight the night before in the Sernam warehouses. I’d bet on a little runt with a gold comb the breeder called Chico. He was fighting a creature that was raised easy in the dust of the cock-fighting pit. After three minutes both of them were pissing blood and my breeder’d lost his beast who deserved a fortnight’s holiday in the country. But he was dead, doped with brandy, his neck