From his height of one meter seventy, Tête watched his stream of urine land in rapid spurts in the toilet bowl of Le Bar des Sportifs in Endoume. He looked up at filthy, yellow, badly joined tiles which covered the urinal’s walls. It was then that he heard a conversation start up on the other side of the partition.
“Gopher will be in La Madrague around noon. You take the two parcels he gives you, then come and drop them off here, like I told you. Don’t drive too fast. Especially not on the Corniche—there are police speed controls there all the time. O.K.?”
“No problem.”
Tête went on pissing. With all the beers he had got through that evening, there was no end to it. But now the stream was beginning to peter out.
“And you, Richard, you leave the bar around 2:00. You know where to go?”
“You’ve told me at least four times.”
Tête recognized the voice of Laurent, a.k.a. “Lolo,” the owner of Le Bar des Sportifs. He knew the other voice too, but couldn’t put a name to it. His brain was in a spin, as though the mistral had just blown up and was now whistling through the empty corridors of his poor little neurons. It sounded like Féli, but it couldn’t be him—he should have been in his pizzeria, filling his redbrick oven with oak logs.
Lolo was a great guy, a big man in the mob. After twenty years behind bars for various crimes, he had finally seen the error of his ways and taken over a small café in Endoume, right by Anse de la Fausse-Monnaie. Recently he had been calling up his childhood friend, Gérard Mourain, a.k.a. “Tête,” to offer him odd jobs. Sometimes Tête had to be on the lookout for police, at other times he had to tail someone. Lolo never explained to Tête what was going on, he just gave him a precise task and then paid him handsomely, cash up front. Mourain could not have asked for more.
“Is Tête in this evening?”
“Yeah, I called him up and he arrived about 8:00. Since then he’s been knocking back beer after beer. If he goes on like that, he’s gonna be completely pissed. You want to see him?”
“No, just see if he can do the job. As usual … Just get it sorted!”
“Shit, now I’ve pissed myself,” Tête said out loud. All this thinking meant that he had lost control of his stream of urine and had now wet his trousers; a dark line stretched from his crotch to his left knee.
“Fuck it … shit and fuck it!” he yelled.
The conversation on the other side of the wall came to a halt.
When Tête emerged, Lolo was back behind the bar as though nothing had happened. He walked sideways to get to his seat, pretending to look at the pétanque championship trophies lined up along the far wall so that no-one would see the piss mark on his leg.
“Hey, Gérard, come here.”
Tête stood up awkwardly and walked over to the bar as quickly as he could. Lolo didn’t notice a thing. And there was no-one else in the bar.
“Tell me, Gérard, are you free next Wednesday, around midday?”
“Um, sure …”
“O.K., good. You know that restaurant in La Madrague overlooking the harbor? I can never remember its name. Anyway, it’s the only one.”
“Yeah, I know it. What about it?”
“Drive up there for lunch at about 11:30. Order whatever you want, but take a seat near the window, where you’ve got a good view. If you notice anyone dodgy, call this number from your mobile and let it ring three times. If the guy then leaves, call back and let it ring twice. Got that? Fine. Take a good look around, even below the rocks to the left of the port. You can stop at around one o’clock.”
“And then?”
“And then you quietly finish your lunch and go home. I’ll call you. Want a drink?”
“Sure, a beer.”
Tête and Lolo raked over a few childhood memories. They talked about the Endoume football club, in which Lolo had been goalkeeper and Mourain the left winger.
“You know, they’re having a really good year. If things go on like this, they’ll end up replacing l’Olympique!”
“Be serious, Lolo, people have been saying that for the past thirty years. With O.M. it’s different. Can you imagine the Endoume players with their broken legs on the pitch at the Vélodrome? You know damn well they wouldn’t last ten minutes.”
“Don’t talk shit, Gérard. This year, they’re playing really well. I reckon they’ll get promoted to the second division. You’ll see.”
“You can always hope. But if the Endoume players are that good, why don’t they go and play for O.M.? It’s because a whole bunch of them are called but only a few are chosen. And O.M. are professionals, not a load of shitty amateurs like we’ve got here.”
“Come on, Gérard, we’re not going to fight about it, are we? Do you want to make a bet?”
“No, I never bet.”
“’Cos you’re shitting yourself?”
“Nope, it’s just a principle.”
The last time Tête had betted on anything, he had ended the evening at police headquarters before spending two years in Les Baumettes. The bet was as follows:
“I’ll bet you’re too much of a chicken to get your piece out and make some music.”
“You wanna bet?” Tête had replied.
He had got out of the car, crossed the road, opened the door of a jeweler’s, drawn his gun and pointed it at the manager. Unfortunately, a hysterical customer had started screaming. As the jeweler’s was only ten meters from the local station, the police had shown up within a minute. That was the bet: to hold up a jewelry store ten meters away from a commissariat. Only Tête had been daft enough to do anything like that. Age had taught him that he was no genius and now he had settled for being a lookout for the big boys. Sometimes he did a bit of grassing too, to keep himself out of Les Baumettes for as long as possible.
He ordered a final beer and picked up La Provence to see what had been going on. On the local news page, he saw a photograph of a woman.
… according to police sources, Christine Autran was hanged then thrown into the water. The investigation has been entrusted to the murder squad under the direction of Commissaire Paulin …
Tête peered more closely at the black-and-white photograph.
“Jesus Christ!” he said. He looked up at Lolo, whose wife was yelling at him down the phone. The landlord was not looking in his direction.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he repeated, then closed the paper.
He had just recognized the woman he had tailed for days on boulevard Chave.