Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette

back of the front seat. With the other, he rubbed an eye energetically. He yawned.
    â€œI was dreaming of the old man.”
    â€œTaylor?”
    â€œTaylor’s not old. No, the other one. The old man the other day.”
    The other day, the two hit men had gone into the old man’s office. First, they told him what was what. Then, as White Streaks held him, Carlo hit him repeatedly across the neck with the blackjack, effectively crushing his throat. Finally, the two threw the old man out of the window, and he crashed onto the pavement three stories below.
    â€œThe broad and the brats have just left for the beach,” said Carlo. “He’ll be out, too, any minute now.”
    â€œCarlo, I tell you I don’t think he’s in the house.”
    â€œLet’s not have that discussion again, okay?”
    â€œLast night there was only the wife and little girls in the main room, and no lights on anywhere else. So since he hasn’t come back….”
    â€œHe must have been in the john,” Carlo asserted—and he smirked as though he had said something funny.
    White Streaks shook his head. He seemed about to argue the point, but he thought better of it.
    â€œHere comes the mailman.” he said.
    Indeed, a telegraph messenger on a bicycle was just then braking in front of the Gerfauts’ rental house. He leaped from his machine and in the same motion leaned it against the hedge, then he hurried into the garden and mounted the front steps with a martial air. He rang the bell. As though by magic a telegram had appeared in his hand. After a moment he rang again and then again. He hammered loudly on the door with his fist. Eventually, he slipped the telegram half under the door, returned to his bike, and pedaled off.
    â€œHe sleeps like a log, the asshole,” said Carlo. “Perhaps we should just go in there and fix his wagon.”
    White Streaks was instantly halfway out of the car.
    â€œHey, no!” said Carlo. “I didn’t really mean it. Don’t screw up, Bastien.”
    But Bastien was already on his way to the house. Carlo started the Lancia up, but Bastien turned around, still walking, and motioned him to silence. Carlo cut the engine and let himself sink into the back of his seat with a sigh of exasperation. His back hurt; the two men had spent the night in the car.
    Bastien reached the front of the house, pushed open the wooden gate into the garden, and went and retrieved the telegram, which he opened delicately. His lips moved silently as he read the message. Then he replaced the telegram under the front door and returned to the car.
    â€œIt’s from him,” he reported. “From Gerfaut. It’s signed Georges and it’s a telegram sent by telephone, sent by Georges Gerfaut from his address in Paris. He isn’t here—he went home. So? Who was right?”
    â€œFuck you!”
    â€œCome on. Who was right? Tell me who was right!”
    â€œYou were, dickhead.”
    Bastien got back in the car—in the front this time and at the wheel. He started up.
    â€œWhoa!” said Carlo. “Where are we going?”
    â€œParis, you prick.”
    The Lancia revved into motion and vanished into the distance. A few moments later, one of the Gerfaut girls appeared and went into the house. She failed to notice the telegram. After a while she reemerged with a set of plastic balls for pétanque in an openwork plastic carrier. This time she spotted the wire. She picked it up, read it, and sped off toward the beach.

11
    It was the telephone that woke Gerfaut. He sat up with a grunt, almost fell off the couch, and caught himself by grabbing the back of it with one hand as he rubbed his eyes with the other, clenched-fisted, rather as the hit man Bastien had done an hour and a half earlier. It took Gerfaut a moment to remember where he was. His eyes were crusted, his breath fetid, his tongue dry. He went toward the telephone,