The Prone Gunman (13 page)

22

“So what does this mean: ‘we're canceling everything'?” Terrier asked when Blue Suit brought him up to date. “What does this mean: ‘we're dropping it'? Shit!” he yelled. “I've practically learned this damn book by heart for my testimony!”

“There won't be any testimony,” said Blue Suit. His face was haggard, and his blue suit was rumpled; he had cut himself shaving. “Everything has been canceled. The operation has been terminated. You have been declared legally incompetent. On the judicial level, your case has been dismissed. It will be said that you have been committed to a psychiatric clinic in the United States. Don't interrupt me, you little shit—I've had it up to here with you!” he shouted when Terrier protested vociferously. “In fact, we're going to put you back in circulation, tucked away somewhere with a false identity. We don't want to hear any more out of you. You should be glad to be so lucky.”

“Lucky?” Terrier yelped.

“You massacre three dozen people, and we're nice enough to put you back on square one!” the other man yelled. “You don't call that luck?”

“I don't know,” said Terrier said slowly in an undertone.

23

Anne left him in the autumn of that year. At first, she had agreed to live with Martin Terrier, to start a new life under a new identity in a town in the French Ardennes. The fact that the man had sustained a passion for her for so long, combined with the violent experiences they had shared, had made a deep impression on her, or at least so we may surmise.

But she soon tired of an existence entirely lacking in adventure—not to mention money, for Martin Terrier, under his new identity and with his current abilities, could find work only in the restaurant business: he was now a waiter in a brasserie. She also grew tired of three-minute coitus, or so we may surmise. In any case, she left suddenly and without explanation. And she has not reappeared in Nauzac, although she owns property there. May we surmise that she is running around the world and leading a passionate and adventurous life? We may; it's no skin off our nose.

24

Martin Terrier had no visible reaction when he grasped that Anne had left for good (if indeed he grasped it). During the night, he had audible reactions: he moaned or maybe groaned in his sleep, making that noise that others had called blabbering and had even tried to decode.

Every now and then, these days, Terrier still blabbers in his sleep. Otherwise, as a waiter in a brasserie, he is normal. He performs his duties properly, even if he is sometimes physically clumsy. It has recently been noted that this clumsiness increases when he drinks. Late at night, young people occasionally have fun buying him drinks until he behaves in an eccentric manner. He has even climbed up on a table and bleated like a sheep, interspersing this with grand operatic arias. Each time he is brought to such extremes, he gets angry and violent immediately afterward. But he is not dangerous, for he has indeed become so very clumsy that when he tries to hit someone, he succeeds only in falling on his face.

He lives in a small apartment.

25

And sometimes this happens: it's winter, and it's dark. Coming down directly from the Arctic, a freezing wind rushes into the Irish Sea, sweeps through Liverpool, races across the Cheshire plain (where the cats lower their trembling ears as it howls and passes over); this freezing wind crosses England and the Straits of Dover; it traverses gray plains and comes knocking directly on the windowpanes of Martin Terrier's small apartment, but these windowpanes do not vibrate, and this wind has no force. On such nights, Terrier sleeps quietly. In his sleep, he has just assumed the prone firing position.

Paris, 1979–1981

Jean-Patrick Manchette (December 19, 1942, Marseille – June 3, 1995, Paris) was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the 1970s and early 80s, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that time. His stories are violent, existentialist explorations of the human condition and French society. Jazz saxophonist and screenwriter, Manchette was also a left-wing activist influenced as much by the writings of the Situationist International as by Dashiell Hammett.