The technicians go in first. They wear tool belts and carry these big wrench-like things, and they have walkie-talkies. Summer-afternoon heat throbs off the compound, and one of the technicians takes off his jacket. The cop we know from before, Petit, goes to his car, gets behind the wheel and shuts the door. He just sits there.
It’s not long before he raises his walkie-talkie to his mouth and speaks into it. We all see him do this, and the crowd shifts again. He gets out of the car and goes to the first ambulance, but not pressed, not in a hurry, more like he’s lost in thought. The EMTs rush two gurneys into the compound entrance, and I’m thinking the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought. Seeing them gurneys, I’m thinking, What’s going to happen with the game? Only four days left. If Moose is hurt, how will we replace him?
There’s a collective gasp, then one huge sigh when a few minutes later the EMTs roll the first gurney out. On it, a body bag, zipped closed, bottom to top.
Right behind is the second gurney: another body bag.
The EMTs wheel the gurneys to the ambulances and slide them into the back. They close the ambulance doors—a loud clack!—and get in front.
The whole night pulses with light, like a disco ball on a dance floor, but all the dancers are still. Matt’s face throbs blue then dark, blue then dark. Yaz, Khalil, stone still. I look back at Karim, the hoodie boys. Even the loudspeaker is silent.
The old man next to us moves first. He removes his prayer cap, his head collapsing forward onto his chest, his wrinkled hands wrenching and twisting the knit cloth.
A grand frère holds Khalil. Yaz says, as if to no one, “I have to tell Monsieur Oussekine.” He turns, his face dazed, arms limp at his sides, working his way through all these people. I follow Matt, who follows him.
None of us says anything on the walk to the Cinq Mille. Behind us, we can still hear the police loudspeaker. “Dispersez-vous.” I look back, and even more cops have arrived, all blue-lit, but none of the crowd is leaving. No one is doing anything. Most folks just stand there, looking at the substation or at the cops or at the CRS guys behind their plastic shields.
In the foyer of Moose’s building, Yaz heads toward the stairs. Me and Matt follow. One flight. Two. Three. The dank smell of piss. French hip-hop filtering from somewhere down a hallway. When we get to their floor, the apartment door is open, Monsieur Oussekine in his djellaba already standing there. There’s puzzlement in his expression.
We all stop.
Over his shoulder, I can see the little girl who greeted us and the other little ones, crowding the window, trying to make out whatever can be made out below.
Yaz steps forward. “Papa Oussekine,” he says.
Then it shifts, Monsieur Oussekine’s face. Not the rest of him, just his face.
“My son!” he cries—it fills the whole hallway—and he collapses against the door.
Yaz catches him and carries him inside. “My son! My son!” And the kids behind, stunned to stillness, look blank-faced at their father as the door slowly swings closed.
Me and Matt stand there in the darkened hallway.
There’s a wailing from inside. Madame Oussekine.
We just stand there, me and Matt, the sound of commotion and “My son!” coming through the closed door.
Matt turns toward the stairwell, and we go.
He stops two floors below, heads toward an apartment and knocks.
“Sidi’s place?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond, just knocks more urgently.
There’s no answer.
“They’ve got to be at the hospital,” I say.
“Do I go there? Or call?”
Bad idea. He and Aïda have been hanging some, and I know he’s worried about her, but Sidi’s people need to be alone together. I say it as gently as I know how.
“Naw, Matt. Not yet.”
He doesn’t agree or disagree.
We leave the building.
“Should we go by practice?” he says. “Let everyone know?”
“There’s no practice. They know.”
We head toward the RER. Are silent on the train.
Matt says toward the window, “With the cops earlier, I was embarrassed. To be standing there like that, handcuffed. You know?” He looks my way, then back. “Like, ashamed.”
“Wasn’t nothing else to do.”
“There’s always something you can do.”
“What?” I say. “What were we going to do? Bust the lot of them free?”
“I don’t know.” He looks me in my eye. “Maybe if we’d have run too, the cops would have come after us and not them.”
Maybe. And maybe it’d be us zipped up in them bags.
I turn my phone on, and the list of text and voice-mail messages fills my screen. Two texts are from Françoise. The first reads: Please call. Let us know you are safe. F. I don’t read the second. Am fine, I write in French shorthand. Am not in Vllnve. Dont worry.
At Gare du Nord, my transfer, I stay on the train. I mean, I don’t want to have to explain this stuff, any of it, to Georges and Françoise. Or to anyone else, for that matter. I just want to hang with Matt, who saw exactly what I did.
Matt doesn’t question my staying. We ride to Cité Universitaire.