“I’m sorry, I don’t have anybody with that name.”
“I was told he was still here yesterday.”
She typed on her keyboard, consulted several pages of listings. “No, no Hernandez over the past few weeks... None.”
Mattéo slid his police card over the varnished wood. “I can’t explain, but it’s very important... This Hernandez may have registered here under another name. Very elegant, fairly short, round face, a slight Spanish accent...”
“That doesn’t ring a bell.”
Mattéo pointed his forefinger at his temple. “He has a birthmark right there, which he tries to hide by pulling his hair over it...”
Her face lit up with a smile.
“That’s not Monsieur Hernandez, it’s Monsieur Herrera! You have the wrong name. He’s been a guest here for a week. Room 227, third floor. Do you want me to call him?”
He stopped the hand about to pick up the phone.
“Absolutely not. Hand me the duplicate keys for his room, I’m going to give him a little surprise.”
When the lieutenant reached the floor, he drew his revolver before opening the lock. Hernandez was stretched out naked on his bed watching TV; he jumped when he heard the click. To Mattéo’s surprise, instead of trying to grab a weapon, he clapped his two hands over his penis.
When the manager opened the safe under the name Herrera in the hotel strong room, Mattéo recovered Carvel’s computer and palm pilot stolen from his temporary apartment above the offices of Tristanne Dupré. Fidel Hernandez wasn’t really named Herrera either, but Miguel Cordez. Originally from Mexico, he had been in France for about ten years, living lavishly through a series of swindles, each one more clever than the last. The development of sites like Flickr, Dailymotion, Starbucks, and YouTube, with pay-per-view amateur videos on them, had attracted his attention. Too big for him. He had then set his sights on a little upstart, NewsCoop, created a few months back by Flavien Carvel.
“I knew a lot of guys who worked in planes. As soon as there was a disaster somewhere, I’d run off to Roissy or New York to get the photos or video tapes from the first people coming back from the place. I was able to buy exclusive coverage of the tsunami and Katrina for next to nothing...”
“Where does the one filmed by the surveillance camera of the Pentagon come from?”
“A cousin who works for a security company in Washington... He pirated it before the FBI picked up every piece of material and embargoed it. He was asking a hundred thousand dollars for it. Carvel agreed right away, except I later found out that he was secretly negotiating to resell it for six times that much.”
“Is that what you were talking about in the Mauvoisin? He didn’t want to back off, or return the tape...?”
“Correct.”
At the end of the day, a special adviser from the State Department came to pick up the video showing the impact of AA Flight 77 on the Pentagon and return it to the American authorities. The only thing Lieutenant Mattéo was still wondering about was what the wino on rue du Gaz was going to do with all the loot she inherited from her son.
Dead memory[12]
by Patrick Pécherot
Les Batignolles
I’m going to kill him and I don’t know why. Wait — “know” isn’t the right word. I certainly know what led me to hold a pistol to his chest. You don’t just do things like that accidentally. To anyone at all. At least that’s what I think. Unless you weren’t brought up right. Which is not the case with me. Or you’re a serial killer. That’s what they’re called now, right? Whatever. I’m not a serial killer. Being like that must leave traces in you — an aftertaste of blood, a smell of death.
The smell comes up without warning, like bile rising after you’ve been on a binge. It’s morning. These moments are always mornings. Dawns, to be precise. Precision is important. So it’s dawn. You wake up out of a troubled sleep, all nauseous. Opening your eyes is sometimes like a sudden need to throw up. In the half-light, the shape lies on the floor. A heap. Soft, of course. Soft? The idea came to you because you thought of a pile of laundry. Each time, you think of a pile of laundry. There; you took that from a bad book and you kept it. Otherwise, why? The body curled up at the foot of the bed is completely rigid, and you know it. And cold. Its muscles hardened, its tendons petrified. Its veins too. Blue under the ivory skin, they’re like ink cartridges in a pen with the ink dried out.
You murdered him before you went to bed. You’d never seen him before, but some nights you have to do it just to get some sleep. There’s nothing to be done about it. At least you know why you’ve killed him. In order to sleep. That’s a reason, right? And a good one too. When you’ve watched the clock going around for days without getting any sleep, it’s understandable.
But him — I don’t even remember why I’m going to kill him.
A memory! That’s the word. There is a reason why he has to die, but I no longer remember what it is. His death is a necessity. Still, it’s embarrassing — his being there at one end of my pistol with me at the other. All the same, I can’t decently ask him why I’m killing him.
“You want to kill me, Monsieur Robert? And why?”
There, you can’t count on anyone. It’s not like I’m asking him for the moon. He’s going to die, so a little piece of information just in passing wouldn’t cost him much.
“No big deal, really.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, don’t make it worse.”
“Make what worse, Monsieur Robert?”
“Everything. The situation, your dazed expression, your idiotic questions...”
“Ah, I understand...”
“You sure took your time...”
“He’s tired, isn’t he?”
“What?”
“He’s not his best today...”
“Who?”
“It happens to everyone. Does he want to rest a little?”
“For God’s sake, who are you talking about?”
“Take my arm, I’ll help you over to the armchair. And give me that revolver—”
“Pistol!”
“That pistol. It must be very heavy.”
“Not at all. Eight hundred and fifty grams. It’s clear you don’t know anything about weapons.”
“Right.”
“Obviously, you have to add the bullets, which takes us — with eight grams per bullet, at twelve per clip — to around a kilo.”
“Bravo!”
“Good! I can still carry that.”
“No, I was saying ‘bravo’ because of your memory...”
Maybe I have to kill him because he’s so irritating. It’s astonishing how irritating he is. Look at him, he’s happy with himself now. The guy is a moron. That’s another reason!
“You see, Monsieur Robert, when you concentrate, your memory works. It’s important to exercise it. Do you want us to do some exercises?”
He really is very dumb.
“Shooting exercises?”
“Ah! I like you better like that. When he jokes, it’s because he’s feeling good.”
“But who the hell are you talking about? There’s only you and me in this room!”
“Come close to the window. And your revolver—”
“Pistol!”
“Sorry. I’m not very sharp on this subject.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Okay, fine. Your pistol, then, weighs more than eight hundred grams...”
“One kilo plus ten grams. Don’t forget, it’s loaded.”
“Can you point it in a different direction?... Thank you. What make is it?”
“The make? It’s a Luger. Parabellum P-08.”
“Perfect!”
“Yes, it’s a fine weapon. A little capricious, but it passed the test.”
“A collector’s piece...”
“The Americans would give a truckload of chewing gum for one.”
“The Americans?”
“The guys who didn’t have the luck to get one off a dead Kraut.”
“A Kr — Are you talking about the war?”