The Prone Gunman

by Jean-Patrick Manchette

  Terrier got back behind the wheel of the DS and sat still for a moment, looking frequently in the rearview mirror. A few cars passed quickly on the wet highway. Nothing else happened.

  Terrier got back on the road going the other way and returned to the center of Nauzac. From a telephone at the post office he dialed a Paris number.

  “Where are you?” asked Stanley.

  Terrier did not answer the question. He told Stanley as little as he could: he mentioned the phone calls before his departure from Paris, the ransacked apartment, the name of Luigi Rossi, the death of Alex, the cat.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Stanley.

  “Do you have any idea of what’s going on?”

  “No. You ought to come back, Christian.”

  “Try to find out.”

  “If you come back,” said Stanley, “you’ll have the protection of the company.”

  “Try to find out,” repeated Terrier. “I’ll call back.”

  He hung up and returned to his hotel.

  There was a message for him: Anne had called, she would call back, no point in calling her because she would be out. Terrier gave a hundred francs to Philippe, the clerk.

  “The tip I mentioned,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Are you on duty twenty-four hours a day?”

  “From seven in the morning till one in the morning,” said the man in the burgundy jacket.

  “You’re going to wear yourself out.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said the clerk. “I’m ambitious.”

  Terrier nodded and went up to his room. He was sweating. He went into the bathroom and looked at the shower head, then went back into the room and looked at the telephone. Finally, he sat down with a glass full of a little scotch and a lot of tepid ginger ale. He immediately stood back up and went to rest his warm forehead against the icy glass of the window. He looked vaguely at the little park and the lawn. Right then, Anne pulled into the driveway, at the wheel of a Morris. Terrier watched her stop and get out of the little automobile. She came into the hotel. Terrier ripped off his shirt as he ran into the bathroom. He splashed himself with water, sprayed on deodorant, slipped on a clean white shirt. The telephone rang.

  “Martin? It’s me.”

  “Come right up.”

  “I’m calling from home,” said Anne.

  “That’s not true,” said Terrier. “You’re in the lobby. Come right up.” With one hand he clumsily shoved his shirttails into his pants.

  “Fine.”

  A moment later, someone knocked softly on the door.

  “I’m not staying,” Anne said right away as she slipped through the half-open door. Terrier locked the door. The young woman pivoted in the middle of the room and seemed to be examining the furniture; her eyes were expressionless. “I’m not staying,” she repeated. “I only wanted to tell you. . . . I want you to stop imagining that. . . . ” She hesitated. “Can I have something to drink?”

  Terrier poured her a drink. She gulped down a straight shot, then clicked her tongue as she held out her glass for some ginger ale from the little bottle he was holding. He poured her some. He cast furtive glances at her through half-closed eyes, like a lizard in the sun.

  “I came to tell you,” Anne explained. “We’re not kids anymore.” She emptied her glass.

  Terrier gave her an ironic smile and poured her a stiff shot of J&B. Anne sighed and sat down on the bed. She took a sip. Terrier sat down next to her, took her by the head, and kissed her. She let him do it. Her mouth was passive, studious, plump, and tasted like scotch.

  “Stop,” she whispered after Terrier released her.

  “Undress.”

  She took off almost all her clothes.

  “The panties, too,” said Terrier.

  She took off her panties, got into bed, and turned to the wall, her eyes closed. Terrier undressed quickly, almost fell as he removed his socks, and joined her in bed. He didn’t dare touch Anne because his hands were cold. They kept still for a moment. Terrier realized he was losing his erection. He tried to put a hand on the young woman’s hip, but she pushed him away with her elbow and climbed over the man and leaped out of bed. She grabbed her clothes and disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Terrier got dressed and lit a Gauloise. His cold hands were trembling. Anne reappeared, completely clothed.

  “I should go home,” she said. “Anyway, this wasn’t serious.”

  Terrier said nothing in response. The muscles around his mouth were taut. Anne picked her glass up from the floor and emptied it, then she rushed from the room. Her cheeks were red.

  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 red
head 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.