“Speaking of Pichon, he’s back home—he was discharged today at noon. I called the hospital on behalf of Human Resources. They insisted that he won’t be returning to work for another month.”
“Damn Pichon.”
42
Tash closed the front door and threw her keys on the tray. Pierre-Gabriel was out—his first-class executive raincoat and his keys were not there.
What the hell was the bedroom remote doing on the tray? She’d hidden it in one of the storage boxes in the hallway closet—specifically on the right-hand side against the wall. She was fed up with Pierre-Gabriel’s nocturnal channel-surfing sessions. She couldn’t read or sleep.
She remembered, with mischievous irony, the first few days after the remote disappeared. He desperately looked for it all over the room, then all over the house. She’d almost caved in, annoyed by his affected manner of getting up to change the channel and lying down again, making the mattress bounce. But thank goodness everything calmed down, and the bedroom television eventually stopped being used. Pierre-Gabriel stayed up channel surfing in the living room armchair instead, with his pizza and his can of beer.
She took the remote and considered pulling out a part to make sure it would never work again, but decided it wasn’t worth it. In a few days, it wouldn’t matter whether Pierre-Gabriel flipped through the channels in bed—she wouldn’t be there to put up with it.
She left the remote on the tray without batteries, thus delaying its use, and discovered the note he’d left her.
“Excellent, another night of peace and quiet,” she said after reading it.
Led by that famous female curiosity and her sixth sense, she opened the hallway closet and pulled out the first box. As soon as she opened it, she knew something was missing.
“What happened here? It’s a mess. This goes in the second box, and this goes in the one below.”
She pulled out all the boxes and emptied them on the floor, then spent a long time putting everything back in its place.
What would Pierre-Gabriel want that horrible stun gun for? And what was it to her? He could keep it if he liked, along with everything else in the house. She was happy and didn’t need anything, except for a few things she felt emotionally attached to, such as her little box for cotton wool.
Émeraude brought her back to reality with a keen purr, and they went to the kitchen to have dinner.
Henri called around ten, and they talked for a few hours without realizing it. Tash told him about the remote and the stun gun as a side note about Pierre-Gabriel’s strange behavior, but she didn’t give it any greater importance.
43
“You’ve reached your destination!” said a nasal robotic voice.
It was a dark night. The car drove past a small prefab chalet in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Poitiers. Morgane took the next turn and parked a short distance past the chalet, under the shadow of a tree in the half-deserted parking lot of a shopping center.
“Change direction at the traffic circle and turn left.”
Morgane turned off the GPS and they sat in silence, looking around. The tight parking lot surrounded a commercial building. The metal curtains of the stores made the gray cement structure look like a bunker, leaving a lingering feeling of bleakness. They had parked near a dark box that looked blue when the headlights touched it. They saw a few cars here and there, no doubt abandoned for the night by nearby neighbors. Everything was completely still. Morgane glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 11:05 p.m. Everyone was at home, fed, and probably asleep. That’s what the deep provinces were like, and tomorrow they had to be up early for work.
Pierre-Gabriel picked up the stun gun from the floor, disconnected the charger, removed the lock, and pressed the power button. A slight spark accompanied the small blue electric arch that appeared between the two pointed electrodes.
“I don’t think we’ll need that,” said Morgane, eyeing the infernal device nervously.
“I’d rather bring it. Physical conflict is not my forte, and from what you’ve told me, we’re up against a tall and wide fatso.”
“But he’s a very nice person, and I’m sure I’ll manage to get all the information we need out of him.”
Pierre-Gabriel looked at her cynically before blurting out, “That’s because you find it particularly easy to pull down your panties. Do you like the giant, is that it? Remember the saying: the bigger the guy, the smaller the—”
The slap must have been heard all the way to Paris, and her defying glance left him petrified.
“I pull my panties down whenever and wherever I want to. Get that into your frustrated little man-head, if anything fits in there.”
“Sorry,” said Pierre-Gabriel in a tone that betrayed him.
“Don’t say you’re sorry if you’re not. Fuck! Let’s get this over with,” she said, putting on her dark wig and tucking in the blond strands that peeked out around the edges.
Then she climbed into the backseat, pulled something out of a bag, pulled her pants down, took off her professional blouse and bra, and enveloped herself in a scandalously skimpy black suit that barely covered her thighs and breasts.
Once the camouflage was complete, she turned around to him, seeking his approval. “What do you think?” she asked in a cheerful voice, with no trace of resentment about his earlier comment. That’s what Morgane was like, tolerant and forgiving. She knew who she was dealing with, and Pierre-Gabriel was a special man who was hard to please, especially in the most intimate moments.
“I think the giant is going to have to wait,” he answered, running his hands over her body and trying to engage her.
“Let’s get going: it’s already eleven fifteen.”
They circled around a block of prefab brick buildings; some were made of ancient stone, and there were a few puny three-story structures. Then there was Morgane, with her short dark wig and even shorter dress; and Pierre-Gabriel, who was dragging his left leg slightly. If there were any problems, it would be impossible to track them down with those descriptions.
The sky was clear and starry, but the moon had not come out. It was almost better that way. Neither of them were wearing a coat, and they could feel the night chill. It was already late June, and spring didn’t seem to want to leave.
They reached the main gate of the red giant’s front garden; the door was made of aluminum bars and prefab, like the rest of the house. Morgane pulled up the faux ancient latch, and the gate opened without a sound.
She passed the scrap of untended garden that suffocated the house and went up the little stairs to the door. She pulled off her wig with a quick gesture and signaled to Pierre-Gabriel before shaking out her smooth blond mane.
Pierre-Gabriel entered and closed the aluminum gate vigilantly, thinking that it was bad quality and wouldn’t last long, and hid against the wall beside the door.
“Remember, first let me try it. If I see it’s not working, I’ll open the door for you to come in.”
“I’m freezing my balls off—don’t be long.”
“Here! Make yourself a nest,” she whispered through gritted teeth, handing him the wig. Then she rang the doorbell.
Nobody came. She waited a minute and tried again. On the fourth try, after leaving her finger on the doorbell for a long time, she heard sounds behind the door.
“Silvano, it’s me, Éveline. Open up,” said Morgane in a gentle voice.
The door opened slightly, secured by a small safety chain, and part of the massive face of the giant appeared through the opening.
“It’s me, Éveline. Don’t you recognize me?” asked Morgane in a sweet voice.
“Why were you wearing a wig when you came in?” asked Garibaldi in a voice that was inquisitive and worried, but not at all naïve.
“Sometimes I wear it when I travel so my hair doesn’t get dirty,” Morgane managed to say. Sh
e couldn’t think of anything else, and at least she’d been spontaneous. He looked at her with half his face showing, frowning and visibly analyzing what she’d just said.
“And the guy who’s hidden to your left?”
Morgane-Éveline went pale, feeling queasy in her speechlessness.
Suddenly Pierre-Gabriel pushed her to one side clumsily and forced the door open with such strength that the safety chain burst, hitting the inquisitive half face mercilessly and projecting Garibaldi violently into the middle of the room.
44
“Get in and close the door,” yelled Pierre-Gabriel from between clenched teeth as he leapt on the giant and dug the stun gun into his chest, delivering a shock.
Garibaldi didn’t have time to react or wonder what was going on. He felt the pain of the electric shock and was paralyzed.
Morgane was already inside with the door closed, looking upset. Everything had happened in a few seconds.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she managed to say. She was looking at Garibaldi, the full length of his body spread out on the cheap laminate flooring of the entrance to the house, while Pierre-Gabriel sat breathing hard beside him, trying to recover his strength. The giant was pale and breathing heavily, and his forehead had started to bleed a little.
“Was all this necessary?”
Pierre-Gabriel didn’t answer. He was still shocked by his actions. He wasn’t the type for displays of strength for the simple reason that he had none. His forte was intelligence, and he always had the upper hand when it came to words. Because man no longer lived in the jungle, survival of the fittest now meant the most intelligent. He was amazed at what he’d just done, and he found it hard to believe. He actually felt quite proud of himself.
He looked at her severely. “What would you have done? In light of the situation, I doubt it would have worked to pull down your—”
“Don’t go down that route, Pierre-Gabriel. I wouldn’t recommend it, not now!”
Pierre-Gabriel looked at her for a while and decided it wasn’t the time to egg her on. It wouldn’t lead to anything good. He glanced at the red giant, who was passed out but slowly recovering his regular breathing.
“Let’s search through his stuff. It’s likely that as a good professional, he’ll have notes or a file for each client.”
“What if he wakes up?”
“Not with the shock I gave him! He’ll be down for a long time, but I’ll check to see if I can find anything to tie him up with.”
The little kitchen, though lovingly and tastefully decorated, didn’t offer anything useful. A small door led to the garage, which had some duct tape and latex gloves.
“Put these on,” he said to Morgane, throwing the gloves to her and taping up the giant around his ankles and wrists.
They got down to business after putting on the gloves and shower caps they found in the bathroom, stored carefully in cases among soaps, perfume, shower gels, and other hotel toiletries.
They started by the dining room, with its customary protective plastic and lace. The walls were bare, beige, and unadorned, and the curtains were almost nonexistent. The controls for a video game console were propped on the armrest of a sofa from a megastore, and a game was paused on the panoramic television.
“He was playing while he waited for you. How romantic.”
Morgane didn’t reply to such an idiotic comment. It wasn’t worth it.
They checked all the furniture and closets on the ground floor, discovering that Garibaldi liked fishing and had a baseball bat, although they couldn’t find any gloves or balls. In the garage, they discovered a large, empty fish tank, a bicycle without wheels, and a half-disassembled classic car, impossible to identify.
“Nothing here. I can’t see the computer or the files or anything.”
“I’m sure he has a laptop—he was carrying it the day before yesterday when we went for lunch.”
“Let’s check upstairs.”
There were two rooms upstairs. The first was the bedroom, with a gargantuan bed (like its owner), an enormous walk-in closet, and a normal chest of drawers; the second room was his home office.
Pierre-Gabriel whistled in admiration. “This is the den of a true programmer. Look at all this: there’s a fortune in equipment here.”
“Don’t get distracted—let’s just get what we came for. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
Pierre-Gabriel sat at the desk, took charge of the keyboard connected to the desktop computer, and methodically inspected the content while Morgane went through the notebooks and files frantically.
After an hour, they still hadn’t found anything. Pierre-Gabriel had checked the files of the main and secondary hard drives. He found everything from professional folders, perfectly classified and sorted, to porn videos, also sorted neatly and classified by genre.
Morgane’s eyes were burning from the number of spiral notebooks she’d been through, filled with notes in perfect, microscopic handwriting. It was amazing that such an enormous man could have such small handwriting. Perhaps it was a way to compensate for . . .
“I can’t understand it. Are you sure that was the guy who was with Maillard?”
Morgane looked at him incredulously.
“Absolutely sure. If you’re in doubt, why don’t you go down and ask him?”
“That won’t be necessary,” thundered a voice from the doorway.
45
“Shit!” said Morgane, livid.
Pierre-Gabriel looked at the hulk who completely filled the doorway. His forehead, nose, and left cheekbone were covered in a horrific purple bruise, and blood was smeared all over his outraged face.
They discovered why there were no baseball glove or balls in the closet—they were looking at the giant’s home security system.
“Let’s make things very clear: first one to move, I’ll squash their skull,” Garibaldi said, swinging the bat with one hand and slapping it into his other palm as if it were a mere feather.
There was no naïveté in his voice or intonation. The innocent, shy, absentminded guy had disappeared. His fierce eyes expressed exorbitant rage and profound determination.
“What did you come here for?”
“I think all this has been a mistake,” started Pierre-Gabriel in an attempt to negotiate by complicating things, which was his specialty.
The baseball bat came down on the table with such force that all the pens and the keyboard, which had the misfortune of being in its path, burst with a thunderclap, causing a rainfall of splintered plastic and keys all over the room. The pieces bounced off the walls.
“Don’t take me for a fool. I don’t know you, but I do know her. She threw herself in my arms in the bank elevator the day before yesterday, determined to get me to invite her out to lunch to ask me a bunch of questions. What do you want?”
The red giant accompanied his words with a few threatening swings of the bat.
Morgane, who was on the ground a short distance away, gave a muffled scream and huddled next to a shelf loaded with newspapers and technical books, glancing sideways, ready to dodge any blows.
Inevitably, her microscopic dress, deliberately chosen for the occasion, wrinkled up and shifted out of place, uncovering part of a breast, a thigh, and her panties.
Garibaldi’s leering was unmistakable—whatever was left of his healthy face turned the same color as the bruise, and he gulped. This detail didn’t go unnoticed by the frightened Morgane, defenseless on the ground, or by Pierre-Gabriel, who immediately brought his hand to the pocket of his jacket where the stun gun was.
“I didn’t want to, he forced me,” whined Morgane as she stretched out a hand, begging for help. She separated her legs in a gesture of getting up, revealing her provocative crotch, which was covered by a piece of transparent white lace that made it even more obscene. By the time she sat up, her bre
ast had completely escaped from her black dress, revealing her smooth white skin.
Garibaldi couldn’t make up his mind about which part to ogle first. He gulped again, trying to figure out what that alarm was that rang far away in his mind, warning him of imminent danger. But it was too late, and Pierre-Gabriel, emboldened from his first victory and with a new surge of adrenaline, jumped across the table to pounce on Garibaldi, his outstretched arm brandishing the stun gun.
The giant took a step back, recoiling and raising the bat to deliver a definitive blow. But Morgane sprang up to grab the arm holding the weapon, and she pulled down with all her might.
The bat reached Pierre-Gabriel with weakened strength, and it landed on the right side of his head. He was thrown violently to one side as the stun gun reached the giant’s leg. The discharge was minimal but enough to destabilize Garibaldi and cause partial paralysis on his right side.
Pierre-Gabriel landed against the wall in a tangle of cables and random objects, trying not to give in to panic or the numbness in his head.
Morgane was still dangling from Garibaldi’s limp arm, not quite understanding what had happened.
The giant shook violently and freed himself from her grasp, his left hand seizing the bat he’d dropped after the shock. He raised it high and brought it down with all his strength and rage on the semiconscious body lying on the ground among the wreckage of things that, until recently, belonged within his beloved world of safety and stability.
Morgane reacted immediately, pushing Garibaldi with all her strength. Pierre-Gabriel barely managed to return to consciousness and tried to protect himself. The bat missed, and Garibaldi hit the thirty-two-inch screen that Pierre-Gabriel was trying to disappear behind. Hundreds of crystal fragments went flying with a piercing screech. Garibaldi fell like a colossal statue, now wounded on the left side as well, still holding on to the bat that Morgane clung to as if her life depended on it.
The Penny Thief Page 12
