“I got a tip over the phone while you were scrubbing yourself; I was told Berthet still has a bunch of stuff to spill. And fast. After that, he’s gone. He’s in the neighborhood, apparently. That’s lucky, don’t you think? We could ask him to meet us here. Do you have some way of reaching him?”
Hélène Bastogne looks at the soft buttocks of Lover #2. Hélène Bastogne wants to send this lousy fuck packing. But this lousy fuck is sometimes a good journalist. Not often, but sometimes. So Hélène Bastogne says: “I have his cell number, I’ll call him.”
7
“Moreau?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re still at the Brady?”
“Where, sir?”
“At Mocky’s, moron.”
“At whose place?”
“Fuck, in your movie theater.”
“Yes, sir, and there are still black guys jerking off, sir.”
“You’re dismissed now, Moreau. You’re to go to an apartment on Place Franz Liszt, number seven. It’s near a bar called l’Amiral. The entry code is 1964CA12. Top floor. The apartment belongs to Hélène Bastogne.”
“And?”
“You clean up. If Berthet isn’t there, clean up anyway and wait. Until Berthet arrives.”
“Okay, sir.”
“Say, Moreau, what’s the film at Mocky’s?”
“What?”
“The film playing on the screen.”
“Something with the young Bourvil who filches from church collection boxes. I don’t understand anything. The actors are all terrible. Plus, with all these black guys jerking off—”
“Moreau, you don’t understand anything about film. And this nonsense about black guys jerking off — are you racist or what, Moreau? Or did you forget to take your Haldol? Forgetting to take Haldol makes you do stupid things, you know.”
“I took my Haldol, sir, and there really are black guys jerking off.”
“Okay, fine, though I don’t see why anyone would jerk off watching Un drôle de paroissien, unless they’re really serious film buffs. So, your mission?”
“Top floor, Place Franz Liszt, code 1964CA12. I clean up.”
“Good, Moreau. All right, get moving.”
8
In his pay toilet at the Gare du Nord, Berthet puts his cell phone back into his pocket. Hélène Bastogne. Who wants to see him. Maybe it’s a trap, maybe not. Actually, Berthet doesn’t care. Berthet has a headache. Berthet looks at the bum’s dis-figured corpse. Maybe they’re right at The Unit, maybe he’s gone totally rotten. The fact that he lost it just by skipping one dose of Haldol proves it. Shit.
Might as well go see Hélène Bastogne. Berthet leaves the john. Two people are waiting. Berthet takes out a red, white, and blue official ID card.
“Health services, closed for the moment.”
And Berthet smiles. And Berthet signals with a broad, competent, and pleasant gesture that everybody must go back down, that he’ll be coming down too, right after them.
Berthet leaves the café. Berthet leaves the station.
The 10th arrondissement is falling into the warm November night. Global warming. Heading back home to the suburbs, the commuters are starting to flock in. Since Berthet has been bipolar — no, actually, since he’s become completely psychotic — Berthet remembers all the figures he sees. It’s terrifying.
Just today, for instance, glimpsed on random posters and newspapers, Berthet will always remember:
Portugal’s debt, which is sixty-three percent of their GNP;
dial 08 92 68 24 20 to talk uninhibited with very hot babes;
349 euros per month, no money down, for a Passat Trend TDI;
sixty percent of the young Senegalese woman’s skin was burned after the bus attack in the projects outside Paris.
So Berthet, who is moving against the human flow, almost automatically converts everything into numbers, and it’s no longer people he sees entering the Gare du Nord but:
180 million travelers annually
27 tracks
2 metro lines
3 regional railroad lines
9 bus lines
247 surveillance cameras
1 special police precinct
All this because a few years ago The Unit named Berthet head of a study group to mastermind terrorist attacks on the Parisian transportation system.
People bump into Berthet. Berthet wants to vomit now. Berthet’s headache is getting worse and worse.
Berthet avoids rue de Belzunce, taking a different route along boulevard de Denain, rue de Valenciennes, rue Lafayette. Berthet is hot. But it’s November. Shit. The end of the world is coming.
You might wonder what’s the point of still playing cat-and-mouse in this arrondissement sinking into twilight now, what’s the point of this squabble between the Service, The Unit, the Old Man, the Pretender.
To take over a country doomed to defeat, on a planet in its terminal phase?
Berthet remembers another lunch with Morland at Chez Michel, maybe a year ago. Then, too, figures, secret numbers. Berthet doesn’t want all these numbers to come back to him. Berthet takes another Haldol.
A pink pill against the apocalypse. Poor fucker.
Berthet reaches Place Franz Liszt. Berthet thinks of knocking back a glass at l’Amiral before going up to see Hélène Bas-togne. Berthet hesitates, gives up the idea even though the Haldol is making his mouth terribly dry.
The code. The stairs. He draws the Glock and then bends down to take the Tanfoglio from its holster on his left ankle. An intuition. The intuition of an operative. The intuition of a psychotic.
Top floor. Berthet gives a small push to the half-open door. Hot light from a lamp. He says, “Hélène Bastogne?” No answer.
Berthet gives the door a hard kick.
Berthet does a roll, head first.
Berthet hears the flatulent noise of a silencer. Berthet feels bullets going into his abdomen, his thorax, and also ripping the lobe off his left ear.
Berthet sees a Combas reproduction on the wall — that’s thirty-year-old taste for you! — and fires blind. To his right with the Glock, to his left with the Tanfoglio. It sounds like badly adjusted speakers, a broken stereo. Berthet empties his clips.
Berthet gets up. Berthet is spitting blood. Berthet is coughing in the smoke.
Berthet stumbles into a living room furnished in secondhand chic and sees Hélène Bastogne on a ratty club chair with her throat cut, and an aging Romeo he’s noticed at the newspaper as he vaguely recalls. He’s had his throat cut as well, and he’s been emasculated for good measure. His balls are in a vintage Ricard ashtray, on a low table, Vallauris style.
That’s why Berthet is hardly surprised to see Moreau stretched out on a threadbare kilim, with two round openings in his forehead, the Tanfoglio’s signature bullet holes. Moreau was also taking Haldol, but Moreau was probably skipping pills. Otherwise, Moreau wouldn’t have screwed up the job at the restaurant like that. Moreau wouldn’t have castrated the Romeo guy. Moreau would not have left the door half open.
Berthet coughs. Clots of blood. Not to mention his ear that’s hurting like hell.
Well, at least Berthet got Moreau. Berthet sits down in another club chair. It’s night now in the 10th arrondissement. Berthet sees the tops of the trees in Cavaillé-Coll park, the top of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul’s façade.
Berthet is afraid. Berthet is in pain. He hopes it won’t be too long now.
He seems to hear the wind in the trees. But that would be surprising, with all the traffic and all those sirens down below.
Two minutes later, Berthet dies.