Franck climbs the staircase to the second floor. The main room is vast, a kind of atrium with small private rooms grouped around it. The smell of alcohol and sweat is still present, but it is airier. The music is not so loud.
It doesn’t take him long to find Hiscock. He is in one of the side rooms, sprawled out bare-chested between two brown-skinned women. He is wearing crimson baggy flannel pants and the gilded belt of a Roman centurion. He seems fairly stoned, with a vague look in his eyes, but looks capable of holding a conversation. Franck enters the room and greets everyone. He has recovered his composure and his smile. Hiscock straightens up, masculine and aggressive, his two hookers twittering around him.
“And who do you think you are, asshole?”
Franck doesn’t answer. He looks Hiscock straight in the eye. “Mr. Lord, rid me of my suspicion: did you murder, or have murdered, one of your drug mules, a Jimmy Henderson?”
The big man is dumbfounded, but then says, with narrowed eyes, “What kind of crap is this?”
“Did you kill him?”
Hiscock moves a hand toward his pocket. Franck forestalls the movement. He slips onto the edge of the table and with his right foot crushes the privates of the former hardcore porn star. Maintaining the pressure, he asks again, ignoring Hiscock’s agonized roars, “Did you kill him?”
“No! No way!”
Franck takes possession of the switchblade and puts it in his own pocket. Then he relaxes the pressure of his foot, stands up, and retreats to the doorway. “I believe you.”
The other is still red in the face, foaming with rage. “You’ll never get out of here alive! I’m somebody around here!”
Franck, still smiling, raises his voice. “I know who you are, Lord. And let me tell you something: you’re the one who’s going to get out of here, and fast!”
“Are you—”
“Shut up! The cops will be at your place in Fort Owl any time soon. If you don’t want Lance Le Carré to use your balls for a necklace, I advise you to get going. Understood?”
The big guy is dumbfounded. Then he catches on. Without a word, he abandons his women and sets off.
Franck grabs him by an arm, and makes him sit down. “My dear Hiscock, we’re not through yet, the two of us. I want to know if Ernest Caron is involved in the business too—”
“Caron? No! What sort of bullshit is this?”
“But you do know him.”
“The boss’s cousin—”
“You’re sure you’re not in cahoots?”
“Caron has nothing to do with the business!”
“He knew Henderson?”
“Why would they know one another?”
“Just answer my questions!”
“No—”
Franck brandishes the switchblade. “You’re quite sure?”
The fat man swallows, and begins to stammer. “Maybe they’ve met… But it’d surprise me! I don’t know…”
Franck puts the knife away and allows Hiscock to take off at a run. Then he bows and withdraws.
As he is leaving the room, Franck encounters the models, accompanied by Lyllian. The latter, suffering from the effects of ketamine, seems at the same time happy to be alive and on the point of collapse.
“Franck!” he exclaims. “Is it really you?” The models nudge each other.
“Good evening, Lyllian,” Franck answers, coldly.
The sight of the young flute player so spaced out, with dilated pupils, doesn’t have the effect on Franck that he had feared. His recent fit of sensibility – his “maudlin moment” – is past. He is no longer concerned, just a bit disappointed… disappointed, and weary. Lyllian stumbles and almost falls into his arms, then steadies himself against a wall. Franck doesn’t react.
“Say, you look—”
“Yes; I’m a bit on edge.”
Lyllian bursts out laughing. The models chuckle.
“But you came all the same! Let’s party! There’s some shit left over, you know—”
“No thanks.”
Lyllian simpers. “Oh, we haven’t had a lot, I swear!” He laughs again, and adds, “Listen to this! Stif” – one of the models – “says that one day he injected some straight into his muscles, and his buddies found him on his knees in the kitchen getting it on with his dishwasher! And Tom” – the other model – “got sucked in, literally sucked in by some film or other with Bruce Willis. It wasn’t until the credits that he came out of it! Isn’t that just too funny?”
“Not really,” replies Franck.
“What’s the matter?”
“I told you.”
Lyllian thinks for a few moments. The models whisper together. “I’ve got it, Franck!” he exclaims joyfully. “You’re judging me! You think it’s improper for a young guy like me to get stoned in a place like this! What? Isn’t that it?”
“Improper? No. But vulgar.”
The virtuoso seems hurt. “I noticed something already, at the Le Carrés’. You like to preach! Anyway, you look just like a clergyman… But, you see, I don’t live with Mommy and Daddy anymore. And I don’t like people preaching at me.”
The models are still chuckling.
“It’s not a question of morals, but of purity.”
The models howl with laughter. Lyllian is also tittering. “Purity! Franck! You’re amazing! You thought I was a virgin?”
“Sensible would have been a start.”
“So? It makes you an idiot to have some fun?”
“You have to understand that kind of thing; it can’t be explained. As for me, I’m leaving. I’m worn out.”
Franck goes downstairs. He makes his way through the mob in its state of fusion. As he leaves the club it is snowing heavily. The sidewalks are white. Two paramedics are busy around a girl having spasms on the pavement. He goes to the 300C. It’s better that way, he tells himself. He doesn’t feel sad. His affection for Lyllian remained alive as long as he wasn’t close at hand. But he has seen his real face: the face of a stupid, naive provincial. The attempt to redeem mankind in general through a singular being always ends in disappointment. It’s probably too heavy a load for one pair of shoulders: the person eventually gives way, comes crashing down. So it was with Lyllian. So it was with the others. Faced with universal mediocrity, Franck has sometimes tried to erect the excellence of the particular in opposition to it. But his hopes have always been dashed. So, when he appreciates someone, he prefers to keep well away from that person’s physical manifestation and content himself with a memory, a word – or less: a pout of the lips, a glance, the shadow of a nose falling across a cheek. It’s less a matter of getting to know the other person than of sculpting a mask and applying it forcefully, unsparingly – and leaving it in place for a long while. That is when admiration, friendship, and love become possible. If the mask falls apart, thinks Franck, it’s not only the fantasy that is destroyed: the entire person is demolished. The Jaguar’s night owls follow the opposite path. They attempt to merge, to become one, to be consumed in the indefinite – even if it is only for a single evening, a single trip. As for Franck, he tries to deny that part of the other that he has not fashioned himself, the part out of his reach, that escapes him, that exceeds him – the part he cannot control. A loner resists him, pushes him off, tries to forget him (and sometimes succeeds). A misanthrope on the contrary appeals to him endlessly. He needs him. Sometimes he tries to like him. But it is a mistake, for what he desires is the other without his otherness.
The eruptive frenzy of the crazed patrons of the Jaguar Club, as well as the egoism they display during the rest of the week, is a product of contemporary society. Some experts explain this trend by the entry of Western societies into a new phase of capitalism that is less productive, more emotional, more festive. But that explains only the general trend, not the unbridled ferment of recent years. Other specialists put it down to the recent popularity of certain aggressive drugs such as crystal meth or N-bomb. Others attribute it to the colossal success of social n
etworks and their almost daily use by several billion users, and the virtualization of the exchanges that result. In the late nineteenth century several writers deplored – while simultaneously celebrating – a phenomenon of decadence that marked the end of a civilization. Very possibly causes accumulate, or overlap. In any case, Franck tells himself, there can be no doubt that we’re coming to the end of something. They, me, Lyllian. Everyone. But this time it may be that nothing new will begin, that the end will just continue to repeat itself. That we’ll keep careering farther into the dark.
But, we ask ourselves, why do people choose decadence? It’s far from certain that it is in fact a choice. What can the impact of personal choice possibly be? The individual encounters a powerful machine which is beyond him, which transcends him – which destroys his will, fragments it, vaporizes it. Liberalism (in its most aggressive form) posits liberty as a theoretical basis, as a fundamental value, but then goes on to deny it in reality, in practice. Likewise, the use of drugs depends up to a certain point, up to a certain threshold, on the will. But once that threshold is crossed the drug becomes the rule, it transcends the will. Social networks certainly depend on the user’s willingness to open an account and use it. But to what extent does the will remain in control? Unless, thinks Franck, the cesspit we are falling into does reflect exactly what we want. And unless our politico-economical framework, far from repressing our desires, actually stimulates and directs them. The night owls of the Jaguar having a blast are fiery, eruptive. The power they enlist to shatter their selves, the passion with which they enrich Le Carré, the way they contain themselves throughout the week so that they can break loose on Saturday nights, all display an incredible expenditure of energy – as well as the intense effort required to channel it.
Franck takes out a Davidoff, slips it between his lips, lights it, and drives off.
16
It is 5:00 a.m. “Strangers in the Night” is coming softly from McCarthy’s computer speakers. He leans back in his chair, lit only by the glow from his screen. His features are drawn, concerned. If the Foxtraps offers the sheriff security (and order and meaning at the same time), he is especially apprehensive of these silent hours when the abysses of insanity and alcoholism begin to open up yet again beneath his feet. They devoured his parents. He knows they threaten him as well. My life, he sometimes tells himself, is basically a struggle against my own leaning toward disorder, my own heredity. The drug dealing, the organized crime, are secondary.
The neatly trimmed hedge, the mailbox, and the shiny floor are a valid defense, but there are times when this approach no longer seems adequate – hours of trepidation, perilous hours when he wakens up in a sweat, with everything slipping from his grasp. He looks at his wife – is she still there? Is that really her in that modest nightdress, in this impeccably tidy bedroom? Was it he who painted those watercolors on the wall? He doesn’t know. The walls open up; they call to him. “You have no business here,” whispers a voice as he struggles, staggering, over to his desk, to his work, curbing his thoughts, controlling himself, warding off all his demons, overcoming them once again, in extremis.
The narcs must be about to raid Lord’s place, he tells himself. Then he thinks of the whole Henderson case, from old Jim’s bloody grimace up to the most recent discoveries in his daybook. The sheriff isn’t exactly surprised that his neighbor of thirty years should have been murdered. People tend to think that kind of thing only happens to others, but in his daily activities he doesn’t have to deal with distant tragedies. Far from it: the families he rubs shoulders with are caught up in the storm, no longer able to say that that kind of thing only happens to other people. No, what is literally beyond his comprehension is the fact that someone carved up Jimmy’s face and made off with his tongue. In police logic, and considering the medical examiner’s initial report, that is something scandalous: there had to be two aggressors known to one another but pursuing different ends, or two aggressors unknown to one another, or a single killer with two faces (in other words, two different motives), someone so disturbed that he could savagely cut his victim’s throat and then calmly mutilate the corpse. Anyway, in human terms, it makes no sense. It’s hopeless, McCarthy tells himself. It means admitting that a person can commit evil for its own sake, with no other motive. You can explain it as the act of someone deranged, of a madman, but madness and sexuality become convenient scapegoats when you have to account for something unspeakable. This perfectly gratuitous act offends McCarthy not only in his humanistic idealism, but also in his conception of the world: it suggests that an act can be meaningless, take place by chance, in disorder. It means admitting that there is a flaw in the machine – a flaw that infallibly points back to himself.
“That’s Life” is beginning. McCarthy closes his eyes. He thinks of his wife, his daughters, and his life here at 52 Peacock Street. Together they form a cell of resistance against the outside world. Against cretins who kill, mutilate, and steal tongues. Against the gratuitous. Against delirium. Here, everything is grounded, justified, reasonable. Yet it is no cold construction, ordained by propriety and religion alone. On the contrary: it glows with the love its members feel for one another. But what if this stability is illusory? How long can the family cell resist adversity? How long before it is swept away in the turmoil? Will that turmoil come from within, like the one that swept away the quiet household formed by his parents? Or what if one of those cretins decided to take his revenge, broke into the sheriff’s house and went for his wife, his daughters, or himself?
But there is no need to think of such an extreme example, for the nuclear family is at risk every day. Around the dinner table, like yesterday evening, they do indeed make up a family. McCarthy is the father. Charlene the mother. Paola and Anna the children. But once McCarthy goes off to work he is no longer a father: he becomes a sheriff. Once his daughters go to school they become students. What threatens the family, thinks McCarthy, is not so much that gays can marry, not so much that marriage may be viewed as a practical arrangement for settling questions of taxation and inheritance, not so much the way that such half-baked theories spread from universities into the ramifications of daily life. No, the threat is everything that transforms its component parts, making McCarthy a cop instead of a father, Charlene a part-time secretary instead of a loving mother, Paola and her sister future lovers, mothers, and citizens.
As “That’s Life” ends, the sheriff has tears in his eyes. He sees a For Sale sign on his front lawn. He sees his daughters gone from him. His wife somewhere else, God knows where. Can’t we remain together forever? he asks. In the middle of the night, deprived of his family, of his home, he feels the ground give way, begin to shift. So many neighbors, acquaintances, and friends have already been swallowed up… not to mention the ones he picks up every day in the Bellams. Without the order of a stable domestic situation, McCarthy knows he is lost. Many cops have nothing left but their job. It’s even a recurrent theme in contemporary detective novels. He, McCarthy, has nothing left but his family. He knows, for instance, that for Jaspers it’s not the same. Nor for Hendrix. But in his case he would like his life to be more solid than an illusion, more stable, destined to endure.
As “It Could Happen to You” is beginning, his phone vibrates. Jaspers.
“Good morning, Sheriff.”
“Have the narcs finished?”
“The guys searched Hiscock’s fitness club and house. All they found was a little powder hidden inside one of those dumbbells that come apart. As for Lord…”
“He got away?”
“He was lying in his garage, dead, with the contents of a submachine gun magazine in his belly.”
McCarthy shakes his head. “Anything else?”
“Yes, the narcs want to go over Henderson’s truck…”
“We’ve done that already.”
“I know, but they say it was treated as the vehicle of a victim, not of a drug mule.”
The sheriff reflects for a few moments. �
�Tell them we’ll do it ourselves and keep them posted.”
THIRD DAY
17
When he puts on his uniform, McCarthy forsakes his family; he is no longer a father, but a sheriff. As such, he has to fit into a different set of relationships, admit different unknowns, assume different functions. It is no longer “my wife,” “my daughter,” no longer Paul, Charlene, Paola, no longer “How was your day?” or “Have you done your homework?” New faces appear: Gomez, Jaspers, Hendrix. An entire universe that he left behind the previous evening re-emerges and takes shape again: the police station, the Ford Cruiser, the murky alleyways, the hostile pimps, an old acquaintance murdered on a street corner, and – God only knows where – a killer who may be preparing to kill again. When he is at home McCarthy tries to set aside any conflict with the outside world, but when he is on the job he is absorbed by it, so he answers his wife sharply when she disturbs him for some trivial reason. “When he’s on duty my husband becomes a different man,” Charlene sometimes tells her friends, not without some pride. McCarthy himself doesn’t see his two sides. He isn’t a different man. He is just playing a different part, wearing a different mask – and behind this mask is a sincere, profound actor, who fears a lack of order and a loss of meaning. Whether listening to Sinatra in the squad car with Gomez or on his cheap computer speakers at home, McCarthy confronts the same anguish, the same uncertainties; he obeys the same logic, responds to the same demands. He is a single whole – implying that beneath the sum of his own various manifestations there exists a nucleus that has not yet been shattered. Gomez and Charlene sometimes tease him. They say, “You’re a bit of a dork, Sheriff,” and “You worry about us so much, honey!” And McCarthy laughs. “You’re so precious to me,” he tells them. “You make me laugh, and that’s something! You love me. And, above all, you help me to know who I am, why I’m alive.” Then, in response to this rather pompous little speech, Gomez kids him even more, while Charlene blushes and gives him a hug.
Three Drops of Blood and a Cloud of Cocaine Page 9