A Nicean Standoff

In the Riviera resort city of Nice last week, the poulets were being nasty to the poules and the maquereaux were being nasty to everybody.

In the argot of the French underworld, a poulet (chicken) is a cop, a poule (hen) a prostitute, and a maquereau (mackerel) a pimp. What caused the commotion this summer was the invasion of Nice by a band of poules and maquereaux who had left their native Algeria in the exodus of French settlers when the country became independent. The invaders found a friend in Nice--Gangster Ange Bianchini, 48, who dabbles in the manufacture of pastis, the licorice-flavored aperitif, as well as in crime.

They found enemies in the other gang leaders of Nice, who ordered Bianchini to appear for disciplining. He haughtily refused, declaring "I am the viceroy!", and threatened to bust up his ex-cronies if they caused trouble. A few days later, as he was leaving a bar, Bianchini walked into a nonfatal blast of buckshot. Soon afterward, two of the Algerian maquereaux were driving through the heart of Nice when another car pulled alongside and riddled them with tommy guns. Then two more of Bianchini's henchmen were disposed of: one was found dead at the bottom of a ravine with four bullets in his head; the other staggered into a bistro with his stomach full of shotgun pellets and groaned, "Take me to a hospital. I've just had an auto accident."

Police decided that things had gone too far when two of Bianchini's rivals were gunned down in Nice's Place Massena in full sight of dozens of startled tourists. Word went out to the warring gangs to stop shooting it out in downtown Nice and frightening visitors. To emphasize their concern, the police called for reinforcements from Paris and Marseille, and last week rounded up a swarm of clucking poules, from the $5 girls who hang out at the railway station to the $50 streetwalkers of the Rue Halevy. After a night in the violon (clink), the poules were warned to make themselves scarce. A bistro proprietor was gloomy about the police crackdown. "You watch," he said. "When the maquereaux run out of money, they'll take to robbing villas. It's better for Nice to have idle pimps than active robbers." He knew his maquereaux. No sooner were the poules off the street than a Paris industrialist on holiday in Cannes was robbed of $40,000 in jewels, and an American matron lost $120,000 in gems from her Cap Ferrat villa.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.