The Prone Gunman (5 page)

10

After finishing his cigarette, Terrier took a shower. Then he left the hotel by car and headed for a deserted place in the mountains, an abandoned quarry, where he practiced firing the HK4. He returned to the hotel and drank eight scotches. His cheeks and the area around his eyes were red. At ten-thirty he left the hotel again and went to the Brasserie des Fleurs.

The place was full of light and heat. Smiling, Terrier sat down at a small table, not far from a redhead in a green dress whom he had noticed as he came in. She was pretty and plump, with a head of curly hair and heavy arms that were pale, soft, and smooth. Two guys were with her, huddling together to tell each other jokes and laughing noisily. Terrier ordered the special. It wasn't Dédé who served him; Dédé was taking care of another part of the room and didn't notice him. Terrier observed the redhead as he ate. The special was surprisingly disgusting.

At the end of the meal, after downing two cognacs, Terrier tossed some bills on the table and stumbled slightly as he made his way over to the redhead. She watched him approach. She was licking melted sugar from the bottom of her coffee cup with her red tongue.

“Would you come outside with me for a minute?” Terrier asked her. “I would like to speak to you.”

“Go sleep it off somewhere else, friend,” said one of her companions.

Terrier picked up the speaker's coffee cup and emptied it on his head. He was a skinny dark young guy dressed in a checked suit. Dédé had noticed Terrier and was on his way over, looking worried and with a round tray under his left arm. The young guy knocked over his chair as he stood up, raising his fists, with coffee dribbling down his face. The redhead broke into a slow laugh and bit her knuckles. Terrier slapped his open palms against the skinny guy's ears. Grimacing, his eyes shut, the young guy fell to his knees and brought his hands to his ears. He gritted his teeth to stop himself from screaming. Tears sprang from the corners of his eyes. His companion half rose, then slowly sat back down.

“Are you looking for trouble?” asked Terrier.

The other man shook his head. A watery-eyed Dédé had halted a little way off, shaking his head. The diners nearby were covertly observing the scene.

“Let's go get your coat,” Terrier said to the redhead.

“What if I don't want to?” she asked, getting up. “I don't have a coat, anyway.”

Terrier took her arm and guided her away. She threw her head back and smiled. They had to pass Dédé on their way out.

“So you're going to start acting like your old man, huh?” said the old waiter as they went by.

Later, Terrier awoke in a messy bed that was just a big mattress on the floor with sheets and a blanket in a big white room plunged in darkness (but through the slats of the shutters daylight could be seen). The man's clothing lay strewn about and crumpled on the cheap carpet. There were long twisted butts on a plate full of ashes, a poster of Marlon Brando in
The Wild One
hung on the wall, and a turntable softly played Brian Ferry's “Tokyo Joe.” Terrier checked his wristwatch. Two o'clock in the afternoon. Certainly not two o'clock in the morning. Engines were running outside; inside the building children were crying and television sets were going. The man got up and pulled on his briefs. The redhead came into the room and pointed the HK4 at him. Terrier was three meters away from her. He blinked and stayed absolutely still.

Smiling, the redhead came closer, aiming the HK4. When she came within two meters, Terrier grabbed his jacket by the collar from the back of a chair and swept the air with this article of clothing, striking the automatic and the girl's wrist. The weapon flew out of her hands. At the same moment, Terrier dove full length onto the floor and grabbed the redhead's ankles. He made her fall on her back. The girl's head collided with the cheap carpet.

“Ow! You're nuts!” she complained as she tried to get back up.

Terrier had retrieved the automatic and, with one knee on the floor, was aiming it with two hands at the head of red hair. He noticed that the safety was on. He relaxed a little.

“Shit, you hurt me! Shit on you!” The girl was sitting up on the floor with legs spread and massaging her curly head.

“Sorry,” said Terrier. “You scared me.”

He stood up and stuffed the HK4 into a jacket pocket.

“I didn't go through your pockets,” said the redhead, who was getting back up while still rubbing her skull, but now with only one hand. “I was looking for cigarettes. What is that thing? Are you a crook?”

In the darkness, her heavily made-up eyes and mouth formed three spots or three holes in her white face. She was wearing a black acrylic dressing gown decorated with Chinese ideograms in red.

“No. Don't worry about it.”

“I'm not worried.”

A kettle whistled in the kitchen.

“May I?” asked the girl.

“Sure.”

She left and came back in with a tray, cups, sugar, Nescafé, and the kettle. Meanwhile, Terrier had put his clothes back on. The girl raised the blinds a little to brighten the room.

“It's a defensive weapon,” said Terrier. “For my job.”

“And just what is your job, if I may ask?”

“Business. Sometimes I have to carry a lot of money. And you?”

“I'm in electricity,” said the girl. She sat down cross-legged near the tray and made coffee in the cups. “Yes, well, shit, I'm a worker, to be more precise. I assemble record players.”

“I've already met someone like you before,” said Terrier.

“There's no shortage.”

“Tell me, did we fuck last night?” asked Terrier.

“Only a little. You don't remember?”

“Not really. Was I good?”

“You were loaded.”

“But for a guy who was loaded, was I good?”

“You piss me off,” the girl said.

“Come to bed.”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed the girl. “It's my Saturday. I have one Saturday per month.”

“Saturday,” repeated Terrier. “Saturday? Oh, yeah.”

He got up and left.

11

“I talked a little with Anne,” Félix said affably. “She's annoyed because she doesn't know how to make you understand that she doesn't want you.”

Terrier said nothing in response. Félix emptied his glass.

“I like whisky sours because they taste like vomit,” he said, looking malevolently at Terrier. (Félix seemed to have already had a lot to drink.)

The two men were seated in bamboo armchairs on the terrace of the so-called cabin—actually, a rather spacious wooden chalet, planted on a steep, wooded hill some hundred kilometers from Nauzac. The Atlantic was visible between the pine trees. The ocean was iron gray, and the whitish sky was turning darker. There was little wind. It was cold, but less so than inland. Félix was wearing jeans and boots and a thick white ribbed sweater of virgin wool. He had offered to lend Terrier a pullover, but Terrier had refused and sat stiffly in his suit. His back didn't touch the back of the chair; the tips of his elbows were on the armrests; his hands were clasped around his nearly full cylindrical glass.

“If you systematically drink something that tastes like vomit,” continued Félix, “you won't be confused when you end up vomiting.”

The two men were looking attentively at each other. Félix was smiling; Terrier was not. Near the low table with its cane top was one more armchair, an empty one. Anne came back from inside the house with a silver cocktail shaker and sat down in the chair. She was wearing a thick loose sweater, corduroy trousers, and red boots. She refilled her husband's glass, then served herself. She glanced at Terrier, then looked down at the ground.

“We regularly come here because there's nothing to do in Nauzac,” declared Félix. “What a hole! Two photography exhibitions per year, domino tournaments, things like that. An undubbed foreign film the first Monday of every month, at midnight—you get the idea. Have you seen the latest Altman?”

“What?” said Terrier.

“The latest Altman. Robert Altman.”

“He's a film director,” Anne explained. She was looking up now; the sky was turning darker than the sea; it was twilight.

“What do you think of Régis Debray's position on the media and intellectuals?” asked Félix, giving Terrier a mean look. “What do you think of the new French crime novel? And do you think that jazz can still progress? Personally, I have my doubts when I see Archie Shepp practically return to bebop if not to Ben Webster, or when I see a guy like Anthony Braxton hailing Lee Konitz, or when I see what's become of guys who once showed such promise, like Marion Brown or, more in our line, Chico Freeman. Between meaninglessness and suffering, I prefer bacon, as the Auvergnats say. No, seriously, it's frivolity on one side and boredom on the other, and I say fuck it. Of course, I'm well aware that these are aspects of the same crisis. Don't you agree?”

Félix noisily caught his breath. Terrier was frowning.

“I don't know,” said Terrier.

“Stop bullshitting, Félix,” Anne murmured distractedly.

“So what do you like?” Félix mockingly asked Terrier. He glanced at Anne and looked back at Terrier, who was perplexed. “In music, for example.”

Terrier shrugged. Félix brought his glass to his lips and emptied it at one go.

“Maria Callas,” said Terrier.

Félix had a choking fit. He coughed, spat up his whisky sour all over his chin and his sweater, stood up desperately gasping for breath and whistling like a fife, coughed again and stumbled as he circled the table, stamping his heels on the terrace floor in an apparent attempt to clear his bronchial tubes and trachea. Anne looked at Terrier, who got up and thumped Félix's back. Then the young woman suddenly turned her head toward the interior of the little house because there had been a small crash, as if a breakable object had fallen on the kitchen floor. Anne left the terrace while Félix was trying, with difficulty, to catch his breath. His face was flushed; tears streamed from his eyes.

“But you're not for real,” he said to Terrier in a weak, halting voice. He had trouble pulling a vast white handkerchief out of the pocket of his tight jeans; he dabbed his eyes and chin and then the front of his sweater with it. “You're a fool,” he asserted, wonderment in his voice. “That's it. You'd have to be a fool to go away for ten years and imagine. . . . ” He broke off with a little gesture and a little laugh. “As for money, I didn't have any more than you in terms of personal money. But I'm intelligent. I'm not a fool like you. A lot of good that does me, mind you.”

Terrier put his fists in his jacket pockets and stiffened his arms, which made him pull his head down between his oddly raised shoulders. He had the posture of a man fighting against the cold or against a disagreeable emotion.

Félix smiled nastily and sadly as he looked off into space.

“What I have belongs to me,” he whispered, still hoarse and panting. “It's not for you. That's the way it is. There's no mistake.” He frowned; he seemed to be thinking hard. “No, there's been no mistake,” he concluded firmly.

“Dinner's ready!” shouted Anne from inside the house.

“We're coming!” Félix shouted back. He looked at his watch and said in a low voice: “Shit, what's the matter with her? I'm not hungry yet.”

Terrier took his hands out of his pockets, turned his back to Félix, and went into the house, going directly into the vast main room, where there was a dining nook, a living area, and a convertible sofa where visiting friends could sleep. The walls were made of rough boards coated with a clear varnish, most of the furniture was rustic and old, and here and there old copper utensils decorated the place. In the hearth burned a wood fire that Félix had lighted a little while before and stoked with a copper toasting fork some sixty centimeters long that he had purchased the year before at an antiques shop in Ireland. Terrier took a deep breath. After emptying what remained of the whisky sour in his glass, Félix followed him in.

“What's going on? The table's not even set!” he exclaimed in the direction of the half-open door of the kitchen.

The door opened completely, revealing Anne. A dark young woman with a Louise Brooks cut, her cheeks slightly blotchy, in a navy blue nylon raincoat, was holding Anne's blond hair in her left hand and with her right sticking the short barrel of a Colt Special Agent revolver in her ear.

“Stop right there,” she said.

Terrier came to an instant halt. Félix took one more step and stopped, his mouth forming an O and his eyes blinking. Astonishment or alcohol made him totter a bit.

“Hey, look,” he said in a half-choked voice.

“Silence,” said a man's voice.

Two guys had stolen across the terrace; they entered the room. The shorter was also the fatter. His beige fur-lined jacket was stretched over his belly; a brown Tyrolean hat was perched on his bald round head. He wore glasses and had an awful complexion riddled with tiny craters and blackheads. He quickly and very carefully frisked Terrier without finding a weapon.

Meanwhile, the other man—who was thin, no older than twenty-two or twenty-three, with longish glistening black hair, fleshy lips, and the soft pretty face of a pimp or a faggot—was closing the shutters. He wore a khaki hunting jacket and a khaki sun hat pulled well down. As he was fastening the last shutter, the other man, the short fat one, turned on the lights. Terrier drew imperceptibly closer to Félix.

“There's a pistol in my leather coat,” he whispered under the racket made by the closing shutter.

“No whispering!” commanded the brunette with the Colt. She released Anne's hair and, with a shove, sent the young woman stumbling into the middle of the room. “Everyone sit down on the floor with their hands on their heads!”

Terrier and Anne obeyed immediately. Félix put one knee on the floor, with his hands half raised and a nervous smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

“What is this?” he asked, stuttering a little. “Is this a holdup?”

The brunette took three steps forward and smashed his nose with the barrel of her revolver. Félix let out a horrified cry and tried to get back up. The girl struck the base of his skull with the Colt, and the thin young man booted him in the small of the back. Félix rolled and moaned on the floor. He closed one hand over his smashed nose. Blood ran from his nose and from his opened scalp.

“Leave him alone. He's a nitwit,” declared Terrier.

He remained motionless, sitting on the floor with his hands on his head, as instructed. The brunette looked at him unsmilingly. She slipped behind Terrier, stuck her Colt in the pocket of her raincoat, grabbed his left hand and pulled back his little finger. The joint gave way with a dry crack. Terrier gave out a long, violent groan through his closed mouth, his chest heaving and tears bursting from his closed eyes, then he suddenly puked a little of the whisky sour over his knees.

“Compared with what we're going to do to you if you annoy us, that's nothing,” declared the brunette. She moved around to look Terrier in the face. “I'm Rossana Rossi,” she said. “And you are Martin Terrier. Some people call you Christian. Five years ago, you killed my brother. You're going to tell me about that.”

“Tie up the other two and stow them upstairs, and we'll talk,” said Terrier.

“It doesn't matter anymore—they know my name.”

“Yes!” shouted Félix. “Yes, it matters! We don't know anything, we don't want to know anything—settle your business between yourselves! Tie us up and lock us up upstairs and settle things between yourselves! Listen, I've already forgotten your name. Listen, I can prove my good faith: Terrier has a gun. I can tell you where!”

Anne turned toward Félix and sized him up. He was pitiful and pathetic with his hair sticky with blood and the mixture of blood, tears, and mucus that trickled from his nose. Rossana Rossi was also looking at Félix.

“In his leather coat,” said Félix. “On the coat rack over there.” With an indistinct movement of his head, he indicated the rack where Terrier's leather coat hung, at the far end of the room. “The hell with you, you stupid jerk,” added Félix for the benefit of Terrier, who was not looking at him. Then Anne's husband closed his eyes and carefully palpated his nose. “I can't breathe anymore except through my mouth!” he whined.

The short fat man, a CZ automatic dangling from the end of his pudgy arm, exchanged glances with Rossana Rossi, nodded his head, and crossed the room. He found the HK4 in the outside pocket of the leather coat and came back, fiddling with the weapon with a contented look. The brunette brought her gaze back to Terrier.

“Well, then?” she said.

“Tie them up and take them upstairs.”

“We're wasting time,” said the brunette.

“He's right!” proclaimed Félix. “Take us upstairs! We don't have anything to do with your fucking problems!”

“Kill him,” the brunette said to the short fat man, who pocketed his CZ and worked the action of the HK4.

“Wait, you're crazy!” shouted Félix. “Wait, Terrier is in love with my wife! Take me upstairs and keep my wife to make him talk!”

He gave Rossana Rossi a supplicating look. She half smiled. Terrier had closed his eyes; he gave a long sigh. The short fat man glanced at the brunette. She nodded, and he aimed the HK4 at Félix Schrader's head and pulled the trigger. The weapon made considerable noise in the enclosed room. Félix's head exploded. Organic debris flew in several directions and splattered against the walls and windows. Félix's corpse collapsed all at once on its side, with a thud. The smell of cordite hung in the air.

Terrier looked at Anne. She seemed absolutely calm, except that she had sunk her teeth into her lower lip.

“Ducio,” the brunette said to the young guy, “look around, there must be candles somewhere in this shack. Find me a candle.” Her hands were in the pockets of her raincoat. She leaned slightly toward Terrier. “We're going to put a candle in cutie pie's vagina,” she announced with seeming affability.

“I killed your brother with a carbine, on a road in northern Italy,” said Terrier. “I don't remember the date. What else do you want to know?”

The man called Ducio had gone into the kitchen where he was opening drawers and dumping their contents on the floor.

“We'd like to know why.”

“I can't go on,” Anne said suddenly. She rolled on the ground, emitting sharp little groans. Her limbs trembled. Her eyes turned up, and her teeth were bared. Her convulsions moved her almost a meter on her back, and then her body relaxed and she began breathing deeply. The whites of her eyes were visible between her lids. She stopped moving.

“How did you find me?” asked Terrier.

Rossana Rossi shook her head.

“You'll die without knowing. That's harder,” she said. “We'll finish you and cutie pie off quickly if you tell us everything.”

“I killed a certain number of people in recent years because I was ordered to,” said Terrier. “I worked regularly for a guy by the name of Cox. An American. That's all I know.”

“No. You obviously know a lot more than that.”

Terrier sighed and began giving a rather exact physical description of Cox. There was dribble at the corners of Anne's mouth. Her convulsions had brought her close to the fireplace, where no one was paying her any mind. She suddenly got up and grabbed the long toasting fork in the hearth. Holding the utensil with both hands, she charged Rossana Rossi. Anne was screaming.

She was so fast that she reached the brunette before the woman could even begin to turn around. The three giant tines of the fork, entering under a shoulder blade, ran through one of the Italian's lungs.

Terrier jumped instantly to his feet and wrenched the Colt Special Agent from Rosanna Rossi's hand. A geyser of foaming blood was spurting from her mouth. When the two women fell flat on their bellies, one on top of the other, Terrier and the short fat man opened fire at the same time. The short fat man missed Terrier. A .38 caliber bullet burst the fat man's heart, and he fell. Terrier turned toward the kitchen, where the panic-stricken young guy was clumsily pulling a Savage automatic from his pocket. Terrier put a bullet in his stomach. Ducio dropped his automatic and fell to his knees, wailing. He caught hold of the kitchen door and slammed it shut. Terrier emptied the Colt through the door, then ran toward the terrace, picking up the HK4 on his way. He went out of the house, raced around to the other side as fast as he could, slipping in the pine needles and sand, and went up to the broken kitchen window. In the ravaged room, the man called Ducio leaned against the kitchen door. In his back were two craters the size of tomatoes. Hanging on to the doorknob, he was still trying to get up. Terrier entered the kitchen through the window. He picked up the Savage automatic and put it in his pocket, seized Ducio by his hair, and pulled him away from the door before going back into the living room.