Read Online Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette - Free Book Online Page B

someone like Dr. Sinistrat will line up with him. And then there’s this guy DiBona, from the Dépêche de Bléville , I think—yes, that’s it. If they dig up stuff against Lorque and Lenverguez, there’ll be havoc.”
    â€œWhy should I give a shit?” demanded Baron Jules.
    â€œThe dirt—you’ve got to have it, considering all the time you’ve been observing Bléville,” said Aimée. “If you really want to vomit and destroy them, this is your moment.”
    The baron gazed at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. His laugh was painful to him. It literally doubled him up.
    â€œYou’re insane,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
    â€œI’ve said what I had to say,” replied Aimée tranquilly. She got out of the armchair with the broken springs and made for the door with her hands thrust into her pockets.
    â€œWait!” cried the baron, plunging after her. “You are a terrifyingly negative and beautiful person.” He tripped over one of the filthy rugs and fell to one knee. “Listen up!” he said. “Just what is your interest in all this?”
    Aimée was already through the hall and out the front door. She ran down the steps, mounted her bicycle, and set the dynamo for light, for night had fallen. Puffing, the baron emerged at the top of the darkened front steps. He was rubbing his knee.
    â€œWait, for God’s sake!” he cried. “What is your interest in this, for God’s sake? Don’t leave. Explain!”
    But Aimée, her tires creating a crackle and spray of gravel, was heading full-tilt for the gate, then she was through it and gone.

11
    T HAT 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.
    â€œNothing! 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?”
    â€œDon’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