Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Mad and the Bad

“At Oxford,” declared Julie. “I study economics.”

“Well, that’s amazing.” the man exclaimed enthusiastically. “I’m a salesman myself. I could tell you a thing or two about economics! Aren’t you going beyond Pithiviers?”

Julie stretched in her seat. Her thigh muscles rippled.

“Are you going farther yourself?”

“I’m stopping for five minutes, just to see a customer, then going on. Where are you headed?”

“South.”

“That’s perfect. I go to Sully, then Bourges. That will get you along.”

Julie contemplated the man. He was wearing a blue pinstriped suit. His face was square and ruddy, and his brown hair fell in curls over his forehead. He had little eyes behind rectangular glasses. He was piglike.

“You are a nice man,” she said.

With her right hand she gave the motorist a friendly little tap on the shoulder, then pressed her palm against his chest and drew her nails raspingly across the material of his jacket. The man turned beet red. An idiotic smile tugged at his lips. Julie withdrew her hand. Flushed and perspiring, he kept on driving, darting frequent sideways glances at the young woman. He was wondering whether she was the genuine article. The sweat gathered like drool on his glistening curls.

“Couldn’t we stop for a moment?” asked Julie.

“Stop? What, pull over? Yes, sure. Why?”

“There!” cried Julie. “A dirt road!”

She was pointing. The 204 braked sharply, turned, and bumped onto the dirt road.

“Stop here.”

The car pulled up. The driver put the handbrake on. He looked back furtively at Peter asleep on the back seat. Julie opened her door.

The young woman got out. Through the windshield the motorist, smiling like an imbecile, watched her indecisively. He saw the girl vanish behind a hedge. Was she going to piss, the man asked himself, or insert her diaphragm? He was trembling with apprehension. Suddenly Julie reappeared. She was waving an arm in an odd fashion.

“Bring your starting handle over here!” she shouted.

The motorist opened the door on his side and reached into the back of the car.

“What’s happening?”

“Quick! Your starting handle! Bring your starting handle!”

“But what for? Oh, okay, screw it!” said the man.

With the implement in his hand, he ran over to Julie. He had short legs and his pants ballooned over his fat backside. Julie was bent double, gazing at something within the hedge. The motorist contemplated her spread legs.

“Give it here! Quick! It’s still in there!”

The motorist felt Julie wrench the starting handle from his grasp. The girl was frantically pointing to the bottom of the hedge.

“There! There!”

Discombobulated, he leant over. Julie brought the handle down on his skull. I thought so, he told himself as he fell onto all fours.

“You pig! You swine! You’re disgusting!” said Julie.

He tried to get up. Julie struck him on the forehead. His scalp split. Blood streamed down the good citizen’s face.

“Stop!” he pleaded.

Julie hit him twice more. He subsided onto the dusty track. He was moaning. Almost unconscious. He tried to grab Julie’s ankle, meaning to bring it to his lips. Or perhaps to make the girl fall-he no longer knew which. A final blow from the starting handle finished him. He stopped moving. Julie searched him. He had an opened pack of Gitanes filters on him, along with a packet of condoms, a receipt book with counterfoils, a silver ballpoint pen, and pocket change. In his wallet Julie found various papers in the name of Émile Ventrée and a five-hundred-franc note. She slipped the bill into her shorts. Then she took Émile Ventrée’s shoes off and tossed them well away. She tugged off his pants and undershorts and systematically tore them up. She returned to the car. The key was still in the ignition. Peter was sleeping deeply. Julie started the motor, got back onto the main road, and drove away quickly. Less than an hour later the 204 took the Autoroute du Sud at Courtenay and headed in the direction of the Mediterranean.

His suit still damp from the rain, Thompson had parked his Rover in a lot at Orly and taken an air taxi. The next morning another air taxi brought him back. He took a room at the Hilton for an hour or so. He had his two suits cleaned and pressed. He sat waiting in his room wearing a blue-and-brown-striped flannel robe, drank some Vittel, and promptly went and threw up in the washbowl. His face had taken on a ghastly pallor, his eyes were bloodshot, and his attacks of nausea kept degenerating into uncontrollable coughing fits, quite awful. He was shivering. His nose was stuffed up and very dry. His skin was burning hot. He took a shower and his teeth began to chatter.

As soon as his clean clothes were delivered Thompson began to hurry. He put the taupe suit back on over an iron-gray turtleneck. He settled his bill, retrieved the Rover, and sped towards Paris. Waves of nausea made it very hard for him to drive. Leaving the Paris ring road at the Porte Brancion, he drove into Malakoff. Not far from the railroad, on a grimy street with grass pushing up between the paving stones, Thompson parked in front of a crumbling villa flanked by a yard and a rusting shed. The killer got out and went to ring the bell at an ironwork gate. The potholed sidewalk was strewn with trash, textile tailings, and metal junk. Stray cats went slinking by. An old, half-illegible graffito read RIDGEWAY GET OUT! Thompson’s expression was tense.

The gate opened and Thompson did not relax on seeing Coco in front of him clad in mechanic’s overalls.

“I have to bring my car in.”

Coco checked the street with a mean look.

“The money? What’s been decided?”

“We’ll talk later.”

Thompson got back into the Rover. Coco opened the double gates and the car entered the yard, which was cluttered with wheel hubs without tires, gutted laundry boilers, a Dodge truck cabin, and a Buick Roadmaster on its rims. Coco closed the gates behind the Rover. He stood still, legs apart, arms akimbo, as Thompson climbed out of the car, coughing.

“How is your brother doing?”

“Not so bad. You want to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Ha! Ha! Always careful, aren’t we, Mr. Thompson?”

“Don’t be silly. We need to talk.”

Coco pouted skeptically, then led Thompson up a short steep stairway sheltered by a glass awning. The glass was cracked in several places. The boot scraper at the head of the stairs was buried under a thick layer of dried mud.

Nénesse greeted them at the entrance to the villa. It was obvious that he had not shaved or washed since the day before. Skintight blue jeans emphasized his considerable genital apparatus. Beneath a tank top the slight bulge of a bandage was discernible. He smelled bad, he smelled of salami, and leveled in front of him he held a sawed-off Tarzan shotgun. Thompson closed the door behind him.

“I’m here for a friendly talk,” he said. “This sort of thing I cannot accept.”

Nénesse hesitated, then placed his gun, butt downward, in an umbrella stand.

“But I’m making no promises,” he noted. “You want a little drink?”

Thompson shook his head. The three men repaired to a petty-bourgeois living room with dumpy furniture and a waxed parquet floor. The window, with its cretonne curtains, overlooked railroad tracks. They sat around a table covered with an oilcloth. Coco produced a bottle of pear brandy and three tiny glasses from a hideous sideboard. He poured for all. Thompson made no objection.

“What about your wound?”

“It’s nothing. It’s clean. And it’s not the first time.”

“I’m happy for you,” said Thompson. “Now, something is happening. I need a driver. I’m carrying on with the job on a new basis. I’ve seen my client. He is very unhappy. In fact he’s in a blind fury. We were off to a bad start in our talk, then some new developments changed things. Have you been listening to the news?”