“You bet your sweet ass they did, my friend!” agreed Charançon distractedly.
Back in his office, tidying up, Gerfaut was subjected to the usual erotic provocations of Mademoiselle Truong. She was continually crossing the room, bending over as far as she could to reach things, ostentatiously removing specks of dust from her eye, or standing on tiptoe, thighs and buttocks and breasts and arms all straining upward, to straighten the Air France calendar or the work schedule or one of the glass-mounted prints. At the same time, Gerfaut felt certain, had he grabbed her ass she would have screamed, made a scandal, or scratched her aggressor’s cheek with those vicious-looking scarlet nails.... Gerfaut sent her out for France-Soir (Béa always made sure to pick up the more serious Le Monde).
The paper’s suggested lottery numbers were three, seven, and twelve. Tanks and air power had been deployed against six thousand rebellious Bolivian peasants. An Eskimo had been shot and killed while trying to divert a Boeing 747 to North Korea. A Breton trawler had gone missing with its eleven-man crew. A woman had celebrated her hundredth birthday and announced her intention of voting for the left. Extratrerrestrials had abducted a dog in full view of its master, a crossing guard in the department of Bas-Rhin. And, in emulation of a recent fad on America’s West Coast, a couple had tried to fornicate in public on a French Mediterranean beach, only to be restrained and arrested by the local police. Gerfaut glanced at the funnies, then tossed the newspaper into the wastebasket.
“I’m leaving now,” said Mademoiselle Truong.
“See you tomorrow, then.”
“What do you mean, tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. Until the first of August, then. Have a nice vacation.”
“You, too, Monsieur Gerfaut.”
She left. Gerfaut left soon after. It was about seven—too late to join Béa at the screening of the Feldman film. Gerfaut didn’t want to see it, anyway. He could easily have left the office a couple of hours earlier, but he had wanted to show that, even the day before leaving on vacation, he had worked hard, gone beyond the call of duty.
After forty-five minutes of very slow progress through blocked traffic, with Lee Konitz accompanied by Lennie Tristano on the cassette player, Gerfaut left the Mercedes in its slot in the underground parking garage of his building in the thirteenth arrondissement and went up to his apartment. The little girls were there watching the regional news. (They watched anything that appeared on a television screen; for them there was no significant difference between the regional news and, say, The Saga of Anatahan.) The girls’ bags and Béa’s were almost packed. Gerfaut showered, changed, and did his own packing with the feeling that he was forgetting everything important, and served the girls cold roast beef with Heinz salad dressing and Bulgarianstyle yogurt. Then he sent them off to bed; they left the room, insulting him in a muted but earnest way.
Soon Béa arrived, in good humor. As the two of them sat in the kitchen eating cold roast beef with Heinz salad dressing, she told him that Maria had that morning begged for the key to their apartment while they were away. Supposedly, Maria had broken off with her Berber boyfriend, who was looking for her and meant to kill her. Wasn’t he the one who wanted to put her to work on the street? asked Gerfaut. Wiping the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin, Béa replied that that had been a joke. Maria’s real plan, according to Béa, was to get the run of their place so she could bring the guy over, clean out their liquor cabinet, and screw. But, all the same, protested Gerfaut, what if the guy really was stalking her, the poor kid? Poor kid, poor kid!—she was big enough to take care of herself! was Béa’s last word on the subject.
After dinner they tossed their paper plates into the trash, washed the other dishes and left them on the drainer, finished the packing, brushed their teeth, got into bed, read a few pages, she of Edgar Morin’s latest book, he of an old John D. MacDonald, and went to sleep. Gerfaut awoke shortly after two in the morning and fell prey at once to an inexplicable and terrifying insomnia. He went and took half a sleeping pill with a glass of milk. He fell asleep again with no difficulty about three. Early the next morning, they all got up and left for their vacation. Gerfaut having had the forethought to take off work as from the twenty-ninth of June, traffic was free-flowing. This, and the invention of superhighways, enabled them to reach their destination in under seven hours, including a stop for lunch and without speeding. And so, on the night of the twenty-ninth of June, the family slept at Saint-Georges-de-Didonne.
The next day was the day they tried to kill Georges Gerfaut.
6
At eleven-fifty on the night of the twenty-ninth of June, one of the men who on the following day would try to kill Georges Gerfaut sat in the Lancia Beta 1800 sedan, which was parked fifty meters from Gerfaut’s apartment building. In the back of the car were two metal suitcases. The first contained clothes, toiletries, a science-fiction novel in Italian, three very pointed and well-honed butcher knives, a sharpening steel, a garrote made of three strands of piano wire with aluminum handles, a blackjack, a 1950 model Smith & Wesson .45 caliber revolver, and a Beretta 70T automatic with silencer. The second case contained clothes, toiletries, six meters of nylon cord, and a SIG P210-5 9mm automatic target pistol. In a canvas bag on the car floor were highpower binoculars and an over-and-under M6 like those used by the U.S. Air Force, with a folding butt, one barrel being .22 caliber, the other a .410 shotgun. There were munitions, too, of various kinds, in thick wooden boxes in the Lancia’s trunk. Should such an arsenal be considered impressive or simply grotesque?
The man in the car was at the wheel, with his chin sunk into his chest, his back against the back of the driver’s seat, and a monthly comic book propped against the wheel’s leather cover. The comic was called Strange, and it recounted the adventures of Captain Marvel, the intrepid Daredevil, the Spider, and various other characters. The man was reading with great concentration, moving his lips. A succession of emotions registered on his face; he was identifying to the hilt.
After a moment, the other guy, the one with the wavy black hair and pretty blue eyes, emerged from Georges Gerfaut’s building, walked back to the Lancia, and got in beside his companion. The latter put his Strange into the cubbyhole in his door and wrinkled his nose with curiosity.
“I smell fat.”
“Cooking fat, yes,” said the other. “The concierge was making fries. Georges Gerfaut has left on vacation for a month. I have the address. It’s in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne; the department number is 17.”
First, the hit men consulted the dark one’s diary to see what department had the number 17, and found out that it was Charente-Maritime. Then they took down a small atlas of French main roads that was attached to the right sun visor with an elastic band, perused it, located Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, and mapped out their route.
“I drive fast,” said the one with the white streaks in his hair. “We can be there by this evening.”
“Well, fuck that! Shit, no!” replied the dark man bitterly. “Let him wait. First, we’ll have a big meal. Then we’ll do a little sightseeing. Come on, why shouldn’t we?”
“Mister Taylor said fast, Carlo.”
“Taylor? What’s he got to say about it? He’s got nothing to say about it. Anyway, he’s cool, totally cool.”
The nostrils of the man with the white streaks flared tautly.
“Carlo, you really do smell of greasy food.”
“What a pain in the butt you are!” Carlo reached into the back and opened one of the metal cases, took out a toilet bag and produced a bottle of Gibbs aftershave. He poured lotion into his palm and dabbed himself with it about the cheeks and under the arms. Then he put his tackle away.
“If we don’t have to hurry,” said White Streaks, “we can stop at Le Lude. It’s charming, Le Lude. It has a delightful castle.”
“All right then, if you say so. Start the car, for Christ’s sake!