The Prone Gunman

by Jean-Patrick Manchette

  “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.

  The short fat man was dead, the two women unconscious. Terrier quickly examined Anne, noted that she had no physical wound, picked her up, and carried her to the convertible sofa. He hurried back to the kitchen. The young Italian was dead. Terrier returned to the living room, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his brow. His lips were trembling. After a moment, they stopped trembling. Then he saw that Anne had opened her eyes and was looking at him.

  “I have to go,” he said. “You have to say that you were upstairs, that you saw no
thing, heard nothing. No, you heard gunshots, you came down, you found everyone dead. . . . ”

  “I’m going with you,” Anne cut in.

  For a moment, Terrier seemed incapable of formulating an answer.

  “You don’t have to,” he said. “You just have to say . . .”

  She interrupted again: “I’m going with you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Yes,” said Terrier. “Yes.”

  He turned on his heel, striking his left palm with his right fist.

  “Wait,” he said. “I’d like you to go upstairs for a minute. You must . . . I should. . . . ” He leaned over Rosanna Rossi and saw that she was dead. “No,” he said. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  12

  They passed a police van, an Estafette, on the shoreline road.

  “The neighbors must have heard something,” said Terrier.

  He glanced at Anne. She didn’t seem in shock. She was sitting in a relaxed manner. She was looking straight ahead. There was a black spot on her lower lip, where she’d bitten it and made it bleed. She didn’t respond.

  “I can’t run the risk of stopping back at my hotel or your house,” said Terrier after a moment. “But I could drop you in the center of Nauzac.”

  “No.”

  “Or I can get right on the highway, and we head for Paris.”

  The young woman gave a small quick nod.

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes!” she said. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “No,” said Terrier.

  Anne turned around awkwardly under her seatbelt to grab the bottle of Martell cognac from the backseat. Before leaving, Terrier had collected all the handguns, abandoning the automatic weapons, an M16 and an Uzi, where he had found them: in the Rossi clan’s car, a BMW parked under the pine trees about a hundred meters from the house. After making a hesitant tour of the premises, Anne had merely slipped on her wolf-skin coat and taken the cognac. She pulled out the cork and brought the neck to her lips, but then she put the bottle back on her lap.

  “Not that thirsty,” she said. She corked the bottle and put it on the floorboard, between her feet. She looked at Terrier. “Would you rather people didn’t talk to you while you’re driving?”

  “That doesn’t bother me.” They had now reached a main road. Terrier slowed down, switched on his turn indicator, and took the junction leading to the highway. His broken finger did not seem to impede his driving.

  “Did you really kill people all those years?”

  “Oh,” said Terrier. “You heard that.”

  “Of course,” Anne said deliberately. “I didn’t black out or have a fit when I rolled on the floor. I wanted to get closer to that damn fork.” She shivered. “Somebody had to do something. They would have killed us, right?” She frowned. Her face was no longer expressionless. On the contrary, it was serious: she seemed to be concentrating. “I’ve never seen such people,” she said. “Are you like them? Or not?” Suddenly, her voice and her look became uncertain again.

  “I’m like them. Not only. But I’m like them.”

  “They weren’t only like that, either, I suppose,” said Anne. She chuckled out of pure nervousness. “What I just said was very philosophical.”

  “No doubt.”

  Road signs announcing the proximity of the highway went by very quickly to the right of the DS. In fact, out of the night appeared a zone of orange half-light where the curves of an empty interchange meandered beneath overhead traffic signs. Entry to the toll road was not automated: there was a glass booth.

  “Turn up your collar, turn toward your door, and don’t move,” Terrier ordered.

  Anne obeyed. The DS halted near the glass cabin. A yawning, ruddy-faced employee gave Terrier a ticket through the driver’s window. The car started up, went down the ramp, gathered speed on the access lane, then, its turn indicator flashing, slipped onto the highway nearly devoid of traffic. It was almost midnight.

  “Are you, uh, what they call a crook?” Anne asked after a few minutes.

  “A crook?” repeated Terrier. “I don’t think you say that much anymore. Well, no. No, I’m not a bandit.” He hesitated. “Listen, I was a soldier of fortune—a mercenary, if you like.”

  Anne remained silent for so long that Terrier believed that she had no comment to make. But then she spoke:

  “Not necessarily within the framework of normal military operations and not necessarily in uniform, is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And who is this American named Cox?”

  “Forget that,” said Terrier. “Forget that right now.”

  “Fine,” said Anne. “As much as I can. Do you plan to stop somewhere, or are we going to keep on charging along until we fall into the Baltic and drown?”

  “We’re heading for Paris.”

  “Don’t you think they’ll set up roadblocks?”

  “The police? It’ll take them quite a while to identify me and the car,” said Terrier. “If they are very efficient and act very quickly, they’ll be in the know around midday. We’ll arrive long before.”

  “And then?”

  “There are any number of places that I can take you if you want to come along.”

  “For example?”

  “Well,” said Terrier, “what I had in mind at the beginning—I mean, before things went to hell, when I just thought I would show up and take you away, and that was all. . . . ”

  “That’s what you thought?” Anne interrupted. “After ten years. Very impressive.”

  “Think so?” Terrier glanced at her, then looked back at the road. “What I had in mind was a rather primitive country, with a good climate, a weak currency, and easygoing relations between people.”

  “That sort of thing exists, then?” asked Anne. She seemed amused, sardonic.

  “My preferences tended toward Ceylon,” Terrier explained calmly. “Because in Africa or Latin America, it’s over, it’s completely ruined. Completely!” he repeated, nodding his head with conviction. “But a place like Ceylon or Mauritius, or even more remote places, that would be really quiet.” He frowned. “But maybe they’re going down the drain, too. There’s the Tamils in Ceylon, and there’s trouble every now and then. I don’t know.” He shook his head worriedly. “And there’s tourism. It’s the same thing. Maybe worse.”

  “A desert island is what you need,” said Anne.

  Terrier shrugged.

  “An island where they don’t even know about money.” He grunted weirdly. “But right now there’s a different problem. Either a desert island or the exact opposite. I mean a place where you can get lost in the crowd. I don’t know,” he said again. “I’m fucked up. I’ll think about it. I’m going to lower the back of your seat so you can sleep.”

  “I’m not a bit sleepy,” said Anne. “If you want to sleep, though, I could drive.”

  Terrier gave her a perplexed look, as if she had something strange that didn’t fit into his perspective. They spoke little after that. Around two-thirty in the morning they pulled up to a refreshment area. They drank cups of coffee from a machine. On Terrier’s orders, Anne had pulled a woolen cap over her head after piling her hair up. When they left, the young woman took three long swigs of cognac.

  “I’m not thirsty, but I should still get some sleep,” she explained. But she did not sleep.

  The DS left the highway and entered the Paris ring road at the Porte d’Orléans at six-fifteen Sunday morning. Terrier and Anne took a room at an expensive hotel in the seventh arrondissement, not far from the Esplanade des Invalides, under the name of Monsieur and Madame Walter.

  “Generally,” said the clerk, “we ask our guests to provide us with a credit card when they have no luggage.” He looked politely at Terrier.

  From inside his jacket, Terrier produced a bundle of ten thousand francs, in five-hundred-franc bills.

  “Can you deposit this in the safe?” he asked.

  “The cashier does
n’t arrive till nine,” said the clerk.

  “I don’t have a credit card,” said Terrier. “Do you want an advance?”

  “Please! Please!” exclaimed the clerk. “You’ll be shown to your room.” He rang. “Excuse me, monsieur,” he added. “You understand.”

  Terrier did not reply. They were shown to their room.

  “Maybe you think we’re going to fuck,” said Anne, when the door was closed.

  “Pardon?”

  Anne repeated what she had said.

  “No,” said Terrier. “Rest.” He picked up the telephone.

  “Yes,” murmured Anne in a hesitant tone. She stopped for a moment, then she began to move and went into the bathroom.

  Terrier dialed a number: there was no answer. The man frowned. He finally hung up. From the bathroom came the sound of water vigorously filling the tub. Anne had closed the door, but Terrier didn’t hear her lock it. He approached the door.

  “I’m going out for an hour or two,” he said. “Go to bed and get some sleep.”

  In the bar downstairs he quickly drank two double espressos. Taking the DS from the hotel parking lot, he slowly headed north. It was eight-fifteen, Sunday morning: the streets were not very lively. When Terrier spotted an open service station, he parked a short distance away, then walked back to the place and made some purchases. He got back behind the wheel, then rushed into a vast underground parking structure near the Opéra. He deliberately descended to the lowest level, where there were few vehicles and less risk of being disturbed by a new arrival. He put on his gloves. Using a rag, he did his best to wipe down the interior of the DS and part of its exterior, particularly the door handles and the adjoining areas. Then he detached the license plates. With a can of spray paint acquired a few minutes earlier, he covered the license plate areas with black, applying just one coat; it was insufficient but would dry quickly. He used the detached plates as masks so that the four sides of the rectangle would be rectilinear and clearly set off.