Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [33]
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