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 have 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.

“Hey, look at this! Psst! Hey!”

White Streaks sat up in the back where he had been dozing and locked one hand onto the back of the front seat. With the other, he rubbed an eye energetically. He yawned.

“I was dreaming of the old man.”

“Taylor?”

“Taylor’s not old. No, the other one. The old man the other day.”

The other day, the two hit men had gone into the old man’s office. First, they told him what was what. Then, as White Streaks held him, Carlo hit him repeatedly across the neck with the blackjack, effectively crushing his throat. Finally, the two threw the old man out of the window, and he crashed onto the pavement three stories below.

“The broad and the brats have just left for the beach,” said Carlo. “He’ll be out, too, any minute now.”

“Carlo, I tell you I don’t think he’s in the house.”

“Let’s not have that discussion again, okay?”

“Last night there was only the wife and little girls in the main room, and no lights on anywhere else. So since he hasn’t come back….”

“He must have been in the john,” Carlo asserted—and he smirked as though he had said something funny.

White Streaks shook his head. He seemed about to argue the point, but he thought better of it.

“Here comes the mailman.” he said.

Indeed, a telegraph messenger on a bicycle was just then braking in front of the Gerfauts’ rental house. He leaped from his machine and in the same motion leaned it against the hedge, then he hurried into the garden and mounted the front steps with a martial air. He rang the bell. As though by magic a telegram had appeared in his hand. After a moment he rang again and then again. He hammered loudly on the door with his fist. Eventually, he slipped the telegram half under the door, returned to his bike, and pedaled off.

“He sleeps like a log, the asshole,” said Carlo. “Perhaps we should just go in there and fix his wagon.”

White Streaks was instantly halfway out of the car.

“Hey, no!” said Carlo. “I didn’t really mean it. Don’t screw up, Bastien.”

But Bastien was already on his way to the house. Carlo started the Lancia up, but Bastien turned around, still walking, and motioned him to silence. Carlo cut the engine and let himself sink into the back of his seat with a sigh of exasperation. His back hurt; the two men had spent the night in the car.

Bastien reached the front of the house, pushed open the wooden gate into the garden, and went and retrieved the telegram, which he opened delicately. His lips moved silently as he read the message. Then he replaced the telegram under the front door and returned to the car.

“It’s from him,” he reported. “From Gerfaut. It’s signed Georges and it’s a telegram sent by telephone, sent by Georges Gerfaut from his address in Paris. He isn’t here—he went home. So? Who was right?”

“Fuck you!”

“Come on. Who was right? Tell me who was right!”

“You were, dickhead.”

Bastien got back in the car—in the front this time and at the wheel. He started up.

“Whoa!” said Carlo. “Where are we going?”

“Paris, you prick.”

The Lancia revved into motion and vanished into the distance. A few moments later, one of the Gerfaut girls appeared and went into the house. She failed to notice the telegram. After a while she reemerged with a set of plastic balls for pétanque in an openwork plastic carrier. This time she spotted the wire. She picked it up, read it, and sped off toward the beach.