Three to Kill (5 page)

9

“Do you know what I remember?” cried Gerfaut, alarmingly jubilant. “The only thing I remember is the sign in a shopwindow! I know the whole thing by heart!” And he recited it word for word.

“Drink your coffee,” counseled Liétard.

Gerfaut complied. He was sitting in the back room of Action-Photo, a small shop not far from the town hall of Issy-les-Moulineaux, where his old friend Liétard sold cameras, film, movie equipment, binoculars, telescopes, and a mass of smaller items. Liétard wore a red shirt and worn-out black pants. He had a long, thin intellectual's face and a gentle manner, but these traits were misleading. He is one of those who were in the entrance to the Charonne metro station at a bad moment: 17 October 1961, when police cornered Algerian protestors there. He is also one of those who came out alive. The next year, six months after his release from the hospital, Liétard set upon a lone policeman late one night in Rue Brancion, beat the man savagely with his own baton and left him naked, two ribs and jaw broken, handcuffed to the iron railings around the Vaugirard slaughterhouses.

“You must be wiped out,” said Liétard. “Did you sleep on the train?”

“No, I didn't! Of course I didn't!”

“You can lie down upstairs if you like. You ought to, you know.”

“I couldn't possibly sleep now.”

“Would you like me to give you a sleeping pill?”

“It wouldn't work.”

“Give it a try, anyway.”

Gerfaut protested weakly. Liétard brought him two white tablets with a glass of water, and he took them.

“You must think I'm losing it.”

“I don't think anything. I'm listening, that's all. I have to open up shop, okay? It's nine o'clock.”

Gerfaut nodded distantly. Liétard got up from the table and went through into the front. He opened up and almost immediately had to serve a customer wanting a 36-exposure roll of Kodachrome X. By the time he returned to the back room, Gerfaut was already half asleep and half slumped over the corner of the table. Liétard helped him upstairs via an interior spiral staircase covered with riveted jute matting. Gerfaut undressed almost unaided and lay down on the bed. He promptly began to snore—or perhaps “buzz” would be a more accurate word. He half awoke once, vaguely noticed that it was daylight, wondered where he was, and fell back to sleep. When he came to, night was falling outside the shutters. Gerfaut got up and got dressed. Liétard appeared at the top of the spiral staircase with a cup of coffee in his hand. Gerfaut rushed at him and grabbed him, and coffee sloshed from the cup and filled the saucer.

“You bastard!” shouted Gerfaut. “Have you telephoned my wife?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Did you telephone the cops? Or anyone?”

Liétard shook his head in perplexity. Gerfaut let go of him and stepped back with a grimace of apology.

“Should I make us steak tartare?” asked Liétard. “For old times' sake? I've bought all the makings.”

Gerfaut nodded.

“Do you think,” asked Liétard, once they were seated before plates of ground steak black from overspicing, “do you think they were trying to do away with you on account of that guy you picked up on the road the other night?”

“Me? But why?”

“Well, I mean, what you were saying last evening. How you thought they imagined you had run the guy over or something like that, and how they might be friends of his out for revenge.”

“I'm sorry. I don't follow you,” said Gerfaut, shaking his head vigorously.

Liétard repeated what he had said.

“Oh, well, yes. I suppose that could be.”

“You ought to talk to the police.” Liétard was pouring Médoc.

“I don't want to.”

They looked at each other as they munched.

“You can stay here for a few days if you like,” offered Liétard.

“No, no.”

“Tomorrow afternoon, on the box—oh, what shits they are, though! Did you see the Fuller yesterday? They showed the dubbed version, the morons! But of course, you couldn't have seen it, could you? What was I saying? Oh, yes, tomorrow afternoon they are showing Edward Ludwig's
Wake of the Red Witch.
It's really wild. I always cry at the end. You know what knocks me out every time—and I don't know how this works, but it never fails—it's when characters that are dead come back to life at the end, like in
Yang Kwei Fei
or in
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
Even with
The Long Gray Line
—every time I think, shit, what militaristic trash, but then at the end—it always happens—when Donald Crisp and dear, old Maureen O'Hara show up again, wham!” Liétard used his fingers like a mime to suggest tears running down his face.

“Uh-huh,” murmured Gerfaut, who hadn't the slightest idea what Liétard was talking about.

They finished their steak tartare and wine. It was late in the evening now. They lit cigarettes. Gerfaut asked Liétard if he had any music to play.

“Such as?”

“A little blues from the West Coast?”

“
Kleine Frauen,”
quoted Liétard, “
kleine Lieder, ach, man liebt und liebt sie wieder.
” And he translated: “'Little women, little songs, you love them and go on loving them.' A bit of blues from the West Coast? That's so typical of you! Sorry, old pal, all I have is hard bop.”

“Even back in high school we were never on the same wavelength.”

Then Liétard spoke a little about himself. The store brought in enough for him to survive. He had no plans to marry. The year before, he had had an affair with an American woman.

“I have written a film script,” he said, “but I am not happy with the end. I have to get the end right. And I may write a book on the great American cameramen.”

“Béa—my wife—works for the film industry as a press agent.”

“That's great. We should get together. Not just on that account, of course. I mean, generally.”

Before long, Liétard said that he would soon be going to bed, and Gerfaut said he would be leaving.

“Are you going back to Saint-Georges-de-Didonne?”

“I don't know. I suppose so.”

“No point driving yourself crazy. It was probably just two nuts, guys who were drugged up, who went for you in the water for no particular reason. There are creeps everywhere, you know.”

“Do you think you could let me have a gun?”

“Sure, if it would make you feel safer. But let's be quick about it.”

The two men went rapidly back upstairs. Liétard opened a chest of drawers containing several cloth-wrapped boxes. After a moment's reflection he removed one from its dull blue covering and produced an automatic pistol engraved with the words BONIFACIO ECHEVARRÍA S.A.—EIBAR—ESPAÑA—“STAR.”

“This one you can take with you. A guy left it here. He completely forgot about it—a funny story. Well, not so funny, really, if you think about it. A friend of a friend. He came from South America, but he was French. His father was tortured to death by the Nazis during the Resistance. He had been turned in—and the mother knew who by. The kid was raised in South America by this mother, who taught him to hate—you know, so that he would go and kill the man who had ratted on the father. Heavy stuff. Anyway, the lone avenger set out on his mission, but it turned out he was just fantasizing with his peashooter. Once he got here, he made no real attempt to find the informer—who, for all I know, may have been dead for years. He met a girl, they got married, and I think they are both teaching in Aix. The guy simply forgot his Mauser at my place. A 7.63mm.”

“Thank you,” said Gerfaut.

Liétard gave him a brief rundown on the operation of the weapon. The magazine was full, but the ammunition was ten or fifteen years old. Liétard had no more. The two men went down to the ground floor and bade each other farewell. Liétard half raised his metal shutters to let Gerfaut out, then lowered them once more. Gerfaut made his way to the Mairie d'Issy metro station. The Star was in his jacket pocket. Softly, he sang words to the effect that your youth is gone, and your lover too.

10

From Liétard's Gerfaut went straight home. After turning on the water and electricity, he went from room to room putting all the lights on. The place was comfortable and humdrum. It was impossible to imagine killers lying in wait in the broom closet. Gerfaut turned off most of the lights, took a shower, shaved, changed, and settled down in the living room with a Cutty Sark that was tepid because the refrigerator had not yet had time to kick in, there was no ice, and the weather was so warm. For a time he listened to Fred Katz and Woody Herman. At half past eleven he sent a telegram, via telephone, to Béa, telling her how sorry he was to have left without warning, impossible to contact her sooner, would explain later, letter to follow, everything all right. By this time, Gerfaut was into his sixth whisky, which no doubt explains why he promised a letter, even though he fully intended to return post haste to Saint-Georges-de-Didonne. What's more, he began to write said letter, and twice spilled whisky over his efforts.

“I plan to return to Saint-Georges very quickly,” he wrote. “My little flight must seem quite incomprehensible to you. Quite frankly, I don't understand it very well myself. I'll explain everything. I suspect that nervous exhaustion is the main culprit. Struggling all the time—and for what?” Gerfaut crossed out this last sentence. “This year has been hard, and I've had to struggle a great deal. There are times when I want us to pack everything in and go and live in the mountains and grow vegetables and raise sheep. Don't worry, though—I know this is all idiotic.” He closed his letter with declarations of love, having put away another four whiskies. By now he had ice cubes. He opened a fresh bottle of Cutty Sark, but there was no Perrier. He tore up the whisky-splattered missive and tossed the pieces into the kitchen trash can. Then he stretched out full length on the couch; he meant to take a fortifying nap, for just a few minutes, but instead he fell into a deep sleep.

The telegram to Béa reached the post office at Saint-Georgesde-Didonne at nine the next morning. The two hit men were parked in their Lancia on the corner of a small residential street, whence Carlo, through the windshield, could observe the Gerfauts' vacation home some two hundred and fifty meters away. Around nine-fifteen he saw Béa and the girls leave for the beach with a bag and towels. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from the passenger seat and focused them on the woman and the two kids. The glasses were very powerful, and Carlo could clearly see that Béa's features were drawn and that she had been crying recently.

“Hey, look at this! Psst! Hey!”

White Streaks sat up in the back where he had been dozing and locked one hand onto the back of the front seat. With the other, he rubbed an eye energetically. He yawned.

“I was dreaming of the old man.”

“Taylor?”

“Taylor's not old. No, the other one. The old man the other day.”

The other day, the two hit men had gone into the old man's office. First, they told him what was what. Then, as White Streaks held him, Carlo hit him repeatedly across the neck with the blackjack, effectively crushing his throat. Finally, the two threw the old man out of the window, and he crashed onto the pavement three stories below.

“The broad and the brats have just left for the beach,” said Carlo. “He'll be out, too, any minute now.”

“Carlo, I tell you I don't think he's in the house.”

“Let's not have that discussion again, okay?”

“Last night there was only the wife and little girls in the main room, and no lights on anywhere else. So since he hasn't come back….”

“He must have been in the john,” Carlo asserted—and he smirked as though he had said something funny.

White Streaks shook his head. He seemed about to argue the point, but he thought better of it.

“Here comes the mailman.” he said.

Indeed, a telegraph messenger on a bicycle was just then braking in front of the Gerfauts' rental house. He leaped from his machine and in the same motion leaned it against the hedge, then he hurried into the garden and mounted the front steps with a martial air. He rang the bell. As though by magic a telegram had appeared in his hand. After a moment he rang again and then again. He hammered loudly on the door with his fist. Eventually, he slipped the telegram half under the door, returned to his bike, and pedaled off.

“He sleeps like a log, the asshole,” said Carlo. “Perhaps we should just go in there and fix his wagon.”

White Streaks was instantly halfway out of the car.

“Hey, no!” said Carlo. “I didn't really mean it. Don't screw up, Bastien.”

But Bastien was already on his way to the house. Carlo started the Lancia up, but Bastien turned around, still walking, and motioned him to silence. Carlo cut the engine and let himself sink into the back of his seat with a sigh of exasperation. His back hurt; the two men had spent the night in the car.

Bastien reached the front of the house, pushed open the wooden gate into the garden, and went and retrieved the telegram, which he opened delicately. His lips moved silently as he read the message. Then he replaced the telegram under the front door and returned to the car.

“It's from him,” he reported. “From Gerfaut. It's signed Georges and it's a telegram sent by telephone, sent by Georges Gerfaut from his address in Paris. He isn't here—he went home. So? Who was right?”

“Fuck you!”

“Come on. Who was right? Tell me who was right!”

“You were, dickhead.”

Bastien got back in the car—in the front this time and at the wheel. He started up.

“Whoa!” said Carlo. “Where are we going?”

“Paris, you prick.”

The Lancia revved into motion and vanished into the distance. A few moments later, one of the Gerfaut girls appeared and went into the house. She failed to notice the telegram. After a while she reemerged with a set of plastic balls for
pétanque
in an openwork plastic carrier. This time she spotted the wire. She picked it up, read it, and sped off toward the beach.