Three to Kill

by Jean-Patrick Manchette

  Gerfaut had entered the cold water without pleasure, advancing in stages as first his penis and balls, then his belly button, were immersed. At that point he had doubled up and plunged headlong into the drink. He was now swimming in slightly over a meter of ocean mixed with hydrocarbons, empty Gauloise packs, peach pits, orange peel, water from the Gironde River, and a trace amount of urine; all around him was a mass of little children, giggling teenage girls, beach-ball lobbers, spry old folks—there was even a black African in a bright red swimsuit. There were people at every point of the compass. In Gerfaut’s ambit, the closest were at least three meters away and the most distant some twenty-five meters in any given direction. When the two hit men in shorts approached Gerfaut, he paid no attention. So he was much taken aback, as he touched bottom long enough to catch his breath, to be punched matter-of-factly in the solar plexus by the younger of the pair.

  Gerfaut fell forward slowly; his mouth was open and the water rushed into it. The young assailant grasped his torso with both hands and held the middle of his body under the water. White Streaks grabbed Gerfaut’s hair with his left hand and clamped the right on his throat, forcing his fingers into the flesh around the larynx and trying to strangle Gerfaut while simultaneously stopping him from getting his head out of the water.

  As the first punch landed, Gerfaut’s solar plexus had been just level with the surface. Since the blow had been delivered at a tangent to the water, its force had been mitigated. Consequently, Gerfaut’s capacity to react was now not so compromised as it might otherwise have been.

  Blindly, sensing the water running freely into his bronchial passages and his epiglottis quivering in the grasp of attacker number two, Gerfaut fumbled around in the filthy sea, brushed a pair of thighs, seized someone’s nylon-clad genitals, and did his very best to tear them off.

  His throat was released. He got his face above the water. He was struck on the top of the head and the temple and forced back under once more. He had barely been able to gasp a little air. He had been vouchsafed a brief water-streaked vision of the children, the giggling adolescent girls, the ball players, and the black African. An eruption of laughter, shouting, and ocean spray (and a guy braying hysterically—“Pass, Roger, pass!”). A whole tiny universe oblivious to the fact that Georges Gerfaut was being murdered! He deliberately directed his head downward instead of trying to come up for air as one might have expected. Wrenching his body from the grasp of the blue-eyed hit man, he performed an underwater somersault and resurfaced throwing up bile, and butted the younger assailant hard on the jaw. Someone delivered a hammer blow to his kidney. A single scarlet thread of a thought occupied Gerfaut’s mind: gouge their eyes out and tear their balls off—kill these sons of bitches that are trying to destroy you!

  8

  And then, after a long-drawn-out minute, the two hit men decided to flee. Because they weren’t finishing off their prey. Because their prey had turned into a kind of hysterical machine hurling masses of water around and threatening at any instant to scratch one of their eyes out. And because at any moment now Gerfaut would get enough air into his lungs to cry out, and the people around, who for the time being were peacefully playing their little games and minding their own business, would inevitably realize that something was amiss. Escaping would then entail fighting a way through a veritable throng while waist-high in water. The prospect did not fill the hit men with enthusiasm. So, for all these reasons, the pair decided to flee.

  For a few seconds, Gerfaut continued thrashing about, groaning and moaning and unaware he was all alone. By the time he got his wind back and realized that he had really been released, his two attackers were already on dry land. It took Gerfaut a moment to spot them trotting back up the beach. A trickle of blood was visible on the small dark one’s leg, and he was hobbling. Then they left the beach and crossed the road and were lost to Gerfaut’s view. The beachfront road was elevated above the sand; there was a balustrade; and parking on the beach side of the street was forbidden. A minute or so later, Gerfaut saw a red sports car start up in a hurry and head off. He pointed vaguely, but he couldn’t even be sure that it was the aggressors’ car. His arm fell limply to his side. He cast a glance at the bathers around him.

  “Murderers!” he yelled, but his cry lacked conviction.

  The black African looked at him suspiciously, then swam off with an impeccable crawl. The others carried on throwing themselves into the water, playing ball, cackling and yelping. Gerfaut shook his head and waded slowly back to the beach, doing breathing exercises. As he made for Béa and the girls, his legs felt distinctly wobbly and his throat was burning. He sat down in his deck chair.

  “How was the water?” asked Béa without raising her eyes from her book.

  “Tell me this,” said Gerfaut abruptly in a hoarse voice. “Have you been pulling some kind of stupid practical joke on me?”

  “What are you talking about?” Béa turned toward Gerfaut and pushed her sunglasses down onto the end of her nose. Over the frames, she contemplated her husband with wide eyes and not a little impatience. “What’s that on your neck? It’s all red.”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing,” replied Gerfaut in a tone that discouraged further inquiry.

  Béa raised her eyebrows and plunged back into her Kollontai. Gerfaut whistled a few bars of “Moonlight in Vermont,” broke off, and looked uncertainly at Béa. Twisting in his chair, he scanned the beach and the sidewalk of the beachfront, narrowing his eyes, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary. In point of fact, the two hit men were now four kilometers away in a café-restaurant. They were grumbling and bickering and had just ordered two dozen oysters and a bottle of Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine as consolation for their recent pitiful failure. Once again, Gerfaut shifted his position in his deck chair, leaning down to root in Béa’s beach bag for a book by someone called Castoriadis that dealt with the historical experience of the workers’ movement. For a while he pretended to read. A bit later, with the sun a little lower in the sky, Gerfaut, Béa, and the girls returned to their rented house to change and freshen up. Then they went out again and made their way to a Breton crêperie near the seafront between the amusement park and the bikerental store. Béa hated cooking. They ate quickly because the girls wanted to be back in time for a film showing that evening on television. The movie was Pickup on South Street, directed by Samuel Fuller. Gerfaut could no longer stand the feelings he was having. About eight-twenty-five, he announced that he was going out for cigarettes. As night slowly approached, he wandered around Saint-Georges-de-Didonne. Gerfaut almost wished that the two men would reappear and attack him again—if only to put an end to his uncertainty. He found himself on the beachfront, and when a bus came by on its way to Royan, he caught it. Once in Royan he resumed his strolling. At ten o’clock, he boarded a train from Royan to Paris. Afterward, curiously, the only thing he recalled from his walk around Royan that evening was the sign in the window of a store called Fairy Fingers: LINGERIE—GENTLEMEN’S SHIRTS—HOSIERY—NOTIONS—SPECIALISTS IN DELUXE UNDERGARMENTS—BABY WEAR—LACE—KNICK-KNACKS—BIBS—FINE HANDKERCHIEFS—BUTTONS—FORM-FAST AND REDUCING CORSETS (NEVER RIDE UP—NO NEED FOR GARTERS). ALSO ALL TYPES OF GIRDLES AND BRAS—PLEATING—OPENWORK EMBROIDERY FOR BED LINEN—BUTTONHOLES—STOCKING REPAIR—BUCKLES.

  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 ha
ve 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.