Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Author:Jean-Patrick Manchette
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781590175729
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011-12-07T10:00:00+00:00

11

THAT SAME evening, as he returned home a few minutes before midnight, the journalist DiBona found Baron Jules waiting for him on the stairs of his apartment building. As DiBona told it the next day, he had the impression at the moment that the man was drunk, although you never really knew with the baron. What is certain is that the impecunious nobleman was highly excited and vexed. DiBona invited him into his apartment and they had a conversation. (At some point during their exchange, DiBona telephoned the Dépêche’s printshop; and later that night, after the conversation was over, he left his home once more and went to reset the entire front page of the next day’s paper and made some changes to the inside pages.) As the two men were talking the baron drank a great deal of red wine that DiBona poured for him and repeatedly buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms hard against the area just below his eyes, then abruptly moving them downwards, still applying pressure, as though seeking to wipe away deep stains, or perhaps tattoos, from his cheeks. He was also continually rising from his chair and then sitting down again. He paced back and forth across the dull parquet floor. At times he was voluble, at others information had to be dragged out of him. Throughout the interview he displayed a quite remarkable animosity towards DiBona, for after all the baron had come of his own accord, no one had forced him and nothing obliged him to reveal things to the reporter or to talk to him as he chose to do.

For example, after evoking Bléville’s past in a vague and abstract manner, and after DiBona asked him what was so special about that past, Baron Jules well-nigh shouted.

“Nothing! Nothing special at all! Corruption, influence peddling, swindles of every stripe, sexual turpitude—just like anywhere else. But do you want the wherewithal to destroy Lorque and Lenverguez, or don’t you give a shit?”

“Don’t get angry,” said DiBona. He was setting up an enormous, dusty, ancient tape recorder on a round table covered with an oilcloth. “It wasn’t me who brought you here,” the journalist pointed out. “Anyway, we’ll record what you have to say, in case it is of interest.”

“Interest?” repeated the baron. “You little twerp, I tell you I know everything about this town. I know everything about you too, DiBona. I know what you did in 1943.”

DiBona cast an inscrutable glance at the baron.

“If you don’t mind,” said the journalist, switching on his recorder, “let’s stick to Lorque and Lenverguez...”

The next day, in a town already roiled by the furor over the rotten fish, the mood deteriorated even further, and quickly. THE TRUTH ON LORQUE AND LENVERGUEZ was the headline in the Dépêche de Bléville, while the subtitle read: “Deadly Canned Goods Just the Latest in a Long Series of Scandals.” From that point on, the peace that usually reigned in Bléville was irremediably shattered, and things only got worse over the following days.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.