(Almost) Still Life
Photo Olivier Amsellemtext Baptiste Piégay
Marseille, 1990s. The Underworld manages numerous nightspots stretching all the way to Aix-en-Provence. A photographer and writer decide to investigate, following the gangsters’ leads — so well that they take themselves for the protagonists in this shady business. Between fiction and realty, the thoughts of those two accomplices get more and more muddled, until they themselves begin to personify the organized crime legend. Warning: docu-fiction ahead!Footsteps smack into a puddle of water — the last sound as a hand reaches toward the car radio and some humdrum tune is about to puke out of the speakers. The moon is choked by the clouds — the last image. Nicotine with an aftertaste of whiskey & Coke — the last taste. No white light, no life flashing before your eyes, no time for regrets or an inventory of luck. From the perspective of his swan song, there’s nothing to indicate that the life of Olivero Baldini (a.k.a. “the Poison,” for reasons owing less to that outmoded method of murder than to Olivero’s talent for pissing everybody off) was exceptionally gratifying.From the point of view of the police, who will inspect the scene an hour later, it evinced a certain logic offering up a moral code pandering to their vision of the world — admittedly fairly Manichaean — reinforcing its belief that crime doesn’t pay. Which made their reasoning kind of dumb in the sense that, at 40, the stiff had numerous bank accounts, totaling six-figures, in his name (three of which would remain unknown to all, including his children, who the agency charged with turning a profit out of it would be sure to alert). It was a short but efficiently run existence.That not withstanding, the cops were thrilled to discover that he was finally rendered harmless, even if, upon further reflection, it was going to stir up quite a mess among the gangster’s rivals — his bitter former lieutenants and faithful second swordsmen. They certainly wouldn’t fail to make the most of their expectations and their legitimacy to take over now-vacant positions. Anything that lawlessness could ensure as income streams. With the exception of arms trading, so as to avoid any dealings with the Russians, who aren’t attentive enough to their business partners and never escape the attention of an intelligence community naturally suspicious of the use of explosives but less so of prostitutes.The soap-opera-like developments that suddenly took shape forced the already swamped organized crime unit to work overtime, for low wages and even more sources of matrimonial anguish. As if things weren’t complicated enough, certain members of the brigade asked for a divorce, then custody of their sons, which would irreparably drive a detective to depression, alcoholism, addiction to various euphoric substances, then to the need to supplement his income by coming to an arrangement with small dealers and, before long, bigger ones, to whom he would owe huge sums of money and who would bump him off one fine morning on the Sète Port. But we’re not there yet.• During “the Aix nightclub war,” twenty people were killed at The Oxydium in what remains the most striking event of the ‘90s.• “Slaughter at The Telephone Bar” (Marseille), October 3, 1978. Ten dead.• November 27, 1983, after being tailed for several weeks, Gaëtan Zampa is arrested at a spot known as “Le Ranquet.”• The Marseille courthouse. In 1968, at the age of 22, Francis the Belgian joins the Organized Crime Files.• The Krypton disco, managed by Christiane Zampa, has been closed since 1984.• The summer of ’84. Despite a maximum sentence of only five years, Tany Zampa hangs himself in his cell at Baumettes Prison with a jump rope.
