But I haven’t got a knife! He waved his hand to show that this was a minor detail. Let me speak, we’ve got no time to lose. We’ll get you a knife. You’re going to kill Butterfly when you’re alone in the showers or in your cell, on a Tuesday or Friday night, that part’s important. It needs to be a day when the guards are doing office stuff. It has to be just Tony on the floor, do you understand? I nodded, not daring to speak. Stab him in the neck or the chest, whichever you want, but you have to do it properly, you need to be sure you kill him, okay?
I hadn’t stopped nodding my head since my last answer, so I just carried on.
Kill him and get out of there. You need to leave as soon as you’re sure he’s dead. Tony’s in on it. We’re going to set Timoune up to take the fall. I wasn’t nodding any more at all. But Timoune’s in the hole! Big Dick smiled. He’s getting out today, it’s all set up. This was a big plot with a lot of complicated details. I tried to understand all the angles. But won’t Coloffuf—
Never mind Colossus, let us handle the politics. Just focus on Butterfly, that’s plenty for you to worry about. Prepare yourself psychologically, we’ll get you your weapon by the end of the week. If you do it properly, you’ll start working for me officially. And we’ll have something big for you, something really big. He signalled the end of our meeting by answering his phone, which was vibrating non-stop in his pocket.
When I left the boss’s office, all eyes turned toward me. The other inmates couldn’t believe that Big Dick had had a private chat with me. If they’d known why, their jaws would have hit the floor. I carried my own newly recruited jaw with pride. All the attention was on me, the rising star, until Denis barked: Nobody saw anything, this meeting never happened! As everyone went back to what they were doing, Tony came out of the shower area and got back on “surveillance.”
With my gait more confident than ever, I went back to my cell. You couldn’t hear anything except the ineffective fans, the noise of my footsteps, and the washed-up TV host clinging on to his summer show. He finished his indulgent interview with Scarlett Johansson. Philippe was still needling Pedo. Look at that thigh, Pedo, look at that muscle. Just think of the pussy rodeo you’d have if she climbed on top of you! Pedo had stopped snickering, his haggard eyes lit up suddenly and he mumbled, No, Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap…
* * *
When I went back to Louis-Honoré, he seemed to feel obliged to go over the numbers again, but without any insults this time. This doesn’t change anything, you still owe us five C-notes and you’re gonna pay! Without bothering to answer him, I continued on my way just like Alexander the Great Napoleon. I got back to my cell at last, threw myself on my bed, buried my face into the pillow, and yelled with joy as I forcefully humped the mattress. Fuck yeah!
My joy was short lived. The guard who had come back for the cart with the trays had given the alert and sounded the alarm. His colleagues came running, and the section was filling up with guards. We were ordered to stand outside our cells. Right now! A butter knife was missing. Hey, we’d butter find it fast! Hahaha! The agents didn’t like my joke, nor did my fellow inmates. Hahaha, I pretended to laugh for a bit longer to hide my unease.
If the knife wasn’t returned in the next minute, we’d be entitled to a full-on shakedown. We’ll turn over every single cell, and body search every inch of your guts if we have to! Jocelyn yelled. He was the kind of guy who really liked his lunch break. Having to organize an internal purge because of a premeditated murder was totally not a valid reason to deprive him of it.
This was a big deal. They even cut short Butterfly’s meeting. Butterfly came out just before I, his would-be assassin, did. Nothing would ever be the same again. He was dragging his feet and grumbling. The fear he inspired in me, the pains in my ass and in my soul, hatred, resentment—all that was making way for impatience. My enthusiastic impatience about stabbing him to death.
Butterfly got back to his cell and stood in front of it. Philippe came to stand next to me. What’s going on? With my mysterious silence and knowing looks, I showed him that I was in the loop about what was going on. Big Dick and Denis came out of their cell last. As soon as they set foot outside, Colossus burst out at Big Dick, You’re gonna have some explaining to do!
The wardens pulled on their latex gloves while Jocelyn, his watch in his hand, announced the countdown. We’d earned ourselves the works: a minute search of the cells and a full body search for each of us. Using cutlery is a privilege, not a right! We can take it away from you, and that’s exactly what we’ll do if nobody has returned that knife in the next forty-five seconds…thirty…twelve… You asked for it!
What should have happened didn’t happen. The knife was conspicuous by its absence, all the cells had been searched. They’d found loads of stockpiled medicine, a few precious amphetamines, Gilbert’s brand-new batch of hooch, and Philippe’s tattooing machine, a more significant loss. But we saved the essentials, the big-ticket items: mobile phones and the famous knife that hadn’t shown up for roll call. A weapon inside a prison is worth more than the American Constitution to a Texas redneck. Priceless.
Just the body searches left. Luckily, I saw Fat Mireille heading over to look after me. I’d have preferred having Edith service me, but at least it wouldn’t be a man fiddling with me in public. Fat Mireille made the most of this rare chance to touch young flesh. She palpated me vigorously from my heels to the top of my head. The only thing she could have found was my enormous pride at being part of Big Dick’s gang. But she didn’t discover anything.
I noticed that Tony was searching Denis—Denis, who never sweated, who never talked to Tony. And I noticed a droplet trickling down his temple. And I saw his lips moving. And I knew then that he was my weapons guy. No doubt he’d given the corrupt agent an order. Tony immediately finished and announced that his body search was over. Often the best way of seeing things is to not see anything at all.
Each of the agents involved in the searches affirmed the same thing one by one. Jocelyn was fuming, convinced that something big was being planned in his section. A metal knife, even a butter knife, could become a fearsome weapon in the hands of a skilled craftsman. There’d already been one murder and two attempts in the prison since the beginning of the year, he didn’t want one in his section. We’re not going to drop this—everybody in confinement!
Colossus clenched his teeth and his fists, angry at having been relieved of his personal stash of medicine and the tattoo machine. Gilbert was congratulating himself on having distributed his rotgut the previous week. Big Dick and Denis were staying stoic. Pedo was still snivelling, wanting to go back into his cell. And Butterfly was yawning like an idiot, completely oblivious to the fact that all this commotion was directly related to him. As for me, I was rejoicing.
* * *
They’d gone to a lot of trouble to get hold of a weapon for me. I’d been promoted at the speed of light. I would no longer just be an impulse killer, an almost accidental murderer, and with extenuating circumstances on top of that. I was becoming a hit man, with all the notoriety that comes with it. The best movies and the coolest video games are based on a hit man. Or two. Or a whole bunch if it’s Tarantino.
Hit man or no hit man, I was still going to be confined to my cell. Jocelyn was promising us some bad conditions, he was prepared to go as far as he could within the legal limits. And for as long as the knife remained missing, our meals would be served with plastic cutlery.
Before we went back into our cells to hole up, all of us inmates observed, assessed, and suspected each other. Who had the knife? Why? Denis and I exchanged a quick, complicit wink, but he didn’t look at me. Along with everyone else, I took one last lungful of air before going inside. Clang! All the doors were locked at once, with a heavy metallic ringing sound, controlled from the sentry box.
Now, though, they were no longer locking up a beast in a cage, but a free man, a man free to reach his desti
ny.
7
Love
I dreamed about Edith. I read in Reader’s Digest or some such scientific journal that hearing other people’s dreams is basically one of the most boring experiences for a human being. But that won’t stop me from telling you about mine.
The scene was taking place in my childhood bedroom, the one I had between four and four and a half. We moved a lot. Edith was lying naked on my bed—a mattress right on the floor—wearing just a red garter belt and torn silk panties. She was aiming a pump-action shotgun at her waxed genitals and screaming, My pussy, my pussy, don’t kill my pussy! I tried to reassure her, to shout that I loved her, but my mouth was full of butter knives that slashed my tongue every time I attempted to speak. This went on for hours, this impossibility of communicating that was as good as any contemporary autofiction. I shouted and she threatened her pussy. Then I yelled and she aimed the gun closer. Eventually she shot herself in the vagina bellowing, Everything is possible! And then I woke up. I wondered if a psychologist would find anything worth analyzing in it.
Philippe kept me company for the rest of the night. My scream of terror had alarmed him. I’d have taken the chance to get another tattoo, but his tool had been confiscated. I was willing to bet that Jocelyn had no intention of giving it back.
I don’t know who nicked the knife, but he’ll have to settle accounts with Colossus. Usually I get a warning when there’s going to be a shakedown, and I have time to take my machine apart and get it all hidden away. My tongue was itching to taste the secret. After all, I could allow myself a little indiscretion, he was my roommate, my tattoo artist, and even kind of my friend: he’d given me cookies.
I think the flight of the butterfly will be scythed down by the wind… I sat back to enjoy the effect.
What? Are you writing poetry?
No, I hate poetry! It’f more of an allegory, I wav anfering your queftion.
Hey? What question? Philippe rubbed his eyes, sleep and lack of culture stopping him from figuring out what I was saying.
You were wondering what wav going on, who ftole the knife. I wav juft giving you a clue, that’f all. And I stretched out on my back, hands behind my head, with just the right amount of emphasis in my sigh.
You’re going to kill Butterfly? My sidekick jumped up and leaned over me, well and truly awake now, more excited than Pedo at a public swimming pool. You! You’re going to kill Butterfly?
That’f not what I faid, but you can believe what you like.
Disbelievingly, he said, Yeah, right.
I squashed his doubts when I revealed that I’d been promised a place in Big Dick’s organization. Now he wasn’t looking at me the same way anymore. He sat down, rattled. This guy, who’d witnessed this brute being so violent toward me, who had to sleep in a cell that stank of sex, who thought I could never get things turned around, he now realized that he’d underestimated a potential killer. He’d judged me all wrong.
Our closed minds are prisons where truth gets away from us.
Man…I’m freaking out… You? Come on, man… Philippe was trying to take the information in. He lay back on his bunk and tried to search out the meaning of life in the concrete ceiling.
He didn’t have to look that far. Tell me who you hate and I’ll tell you who you’ll kill. In my case, it all fitted together. Butterfly. If affection is the desire to stab someone in the face, then I had a lot of affection for him.
Getting rid of him. It was all I could think about, apart from Edith, and my mother, and Big Dick, and freedom. But mainly about crushing the insect under my blade. I knew I was capable of assassinating and I was keen to set to work. It’s the first murder that gets stuck in your conscience, after that it gets easier. I had a spiritual vocation for it, a calling for bumping people off. I would kill again, it was decreed. Once a tiger has tasted gazelle flesh, he doesn’t want to eat grass anymore, it’s too late. He becomes a natural-born killer. I was that wild beast on the rampage, pacing in his cage, full of rage. Did you pick up on my awesome rhymes there, by the way?
Through the small rectangular grille of our window, dawn was turning the sky purple. A new day was rising, along with my reign. I practised a few ninja moves in the middle of the cell. Cha! Kyakai! Takata! Hmmph! My voice was more confident, my body moved with the grace of a Siamese cat. I trained for hours under Philippe’s perplexed gaze. I went right to the end of the night, right to the end of my strength, until Edith came to take me out of the cell.
* * *
She was beautiful that day, more beautiful with every day that passed. She had her hair down, which was unusual and a pretty big signal. She asked me again, personally, how I was doing. A woman in love is an open book, open at the heart page. I could read inside her. She was torn—she didn’t know how to pursue our relationship without wrecking her career aspirations. She was becoming attached, and I was going to tie the knot.
I truft you, Edith, but it’f hard for me. My mother wav taken away from me when I wav very young by agentf of the ftate, like you…and my father used to beat me.
She was touched, opened her mouth a little and let out a compassionate little oh.
Fometimef he tied me up and forfed me to crawl acroff the floor to my plate, which he put nekft to hiv bulldog’f bowl. If I wanted to eat I had to prive my tiny porfion out of hiv mouth. And devvert wav alwayf a thraffing.
Jackpot! She was touched, her eyes were wet. All upset about my father’s mistreatment of me. Ha! If only she’d known that the reality was far worse: I’d never even known my father.
She picked up a tissue, blew her nose, and pulled herself together. She couldn’t let her emotions get any more hold on her, her mascara was too cheap. She changed the subject. You need to understand that some things can stay between us, even if it could have a big effect on stuff in this prison. We said we could trust each other. I noticed that she was wearing pink nail varnish on her short nails. The flirt. The naughty little flirt.
Yef, I like knowing that you truft me, Edith.
I want to tell you that if there are things that you might say or admit to me here, I would never use them against you, quite the opposite. She wanted me to make the first move, to make our connection official. I could already picture the scene: when she found out that I wanted her too, she’d stand up, go over and lock the office door, and in the same movement take her clothes off slowly while she danced for me. I wondered if she’d have a waxed pussy like she did in the dream.
I think there’v fomething fpeffal you want me to admit, babe. I flashed all my teeth at her in a smile, or at least all the ones I had left.
Where’s the knife? Straight in there for the shot. Like a eunuch, it was impossible to see it coming. Her plan must be to use me first as an informant before taking me as a lover. Nice strategy, I liked it.
The guard in the box saw you going into Big Dick’s cell with Denis. You’ve never had much to do with those guys before. Did you steal the knife for them?
Whoa, Colonel Mustard, I didn’t take the knife, I didn’t kill anyone in the living room. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I decided to play the game, hardball. I dug my heels in, crossed my arms, and my legs, and everything else, to underline my inflexibility. If she wanted foreplay straight from the pages of a crime novel, I’d give it to her. You’re barking up the wrong tree, I’m not a fnitch, babe.
First off, you’re not in a situation where you can call a guard “babe.” Second, I just want to help you, keep you out of trouble. I know deep down you’re not a bad boy.
Women, hey? There’s nothing like a nice mix of bad boy and intellectual—like me—to get their hearts thumping right down to their G-strings.
You’re not a bad boy, you’re just impulsive. You have a gift for finding trouble. It’s like you plow right into it. Those guys aren’t exactly choirboys, they can be really dangerous. I nodded.
Why
were you in Big Dick’s cell when his bodyguard wasn’t there?
She wasn’t playing. I felt dizzy, breathless, all the clichés. Her voice had trembled on the last words, her gaze was full of worry. She was afraid something bad would happen to me. I could have kissed her.
I’m going to give you the intel, but it’s juft becauve it’f you and we have a relationfip. I’m not a fnitch, I hate rats.
Her face lit up so much it was practically fluorescent. Yes, I understand, but you’re right, we have a relationship based on trust, you can tell me anything.
She reminded me of those high school chicks, those unattainable nymphettes who used to write wise sayings in the margins of their agendas: “Love without trust is like a flower without perfume.” I was going to give her a little spritz of perfume. If she wanted to have her cake and eat it, and get the butter knife with a cherry on top, that’s what she would have. Without compromising myself, I was going to give her just enough hints so she could seem in the know around her superiors.
I can tell you that the butterfly iv going to go back to being a poor little caterpillar. I let a silence fall so she could read between the lines.
But she read faster than I was expecting. You’re going to kill Butterfly for Big Dick? Fuckety fuck, she was like the lovechild of Agatha Christie and Columbo.
No, no, that’f not what I faid! I didn’t fay that at all. I’m not gonna kill anyone!
She was leaning toward me, intrigued, her enormous ass barely perched on the edge of her chair. Why would you go into the boss’s cell then, were you taking him the knife to kill Butterfly? You clearly have something to do with it.
I hated myself. I should have known that any woman interested in me would have to be intelligent, astute, and perceptive. I had to get myself out of this tough spot fast but protect myself at the same time. Timoune’f going to do it! It’f got nothing to do with me, they juft wanted to warn me that Coloffuf iv going to try and pin it on me.
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