Authors: Patricia Highsmith
‘No. But then I didn’t ask him to.’
‘“… cannot tell if this represents a worsened condition, not having seen a former – diagnosis … sufficiently dangerous in view of the length of time –
et cetera”.
I’ll go through it word for word, if you like,’ said Reeves. ‘One or two words I’ll need the dictionary for, these compound words, but I’ve got the essentials.’
‘Then just tell me the essentials.’
‘I must say they might’ve written this out for you in English,’ Reeves said, then scanned the page again. ‘“… a considerable granulation of cells as well as – of the yellow – matter. As you have had X-ray treatment, this is not to be advised again at the moment, as the leukemia cells become resistant to it…”’
Reeves went on for a few moments. There was no prediction of remaining time, Jonathan noticed, no hint of a deadline.
‘Since you couldn’t see Wentzel today, would you like me to try to make an appointment for you tomorrow?’ Reeves sounded genuinely concerned.
Thanks, but I made an appointment for tomorrow morning. Ten-thirty.’
‘Good. And you said his nurse speaks English, so you don’t need Rudolf. – Why don’t you stretch out for a few minutes?’ Reeves pulled a pillow to the corner of the sofa.
Jonathan lay back with one foot on the floor, the other foot dangling over the sofa’s edge. He felt weak and drowsy, as if he could sleep for several hours. Reeves strolled towards the sunny window, talking about the zoo. He spoke of a rare animal – the name went out of Jonathan’s mind as soon as he heard it – that had recently been sent from South America. A pair of them. Reeves said they must see these animals. Jonathan was thinking of Georges tugging his wagon of pebbles.
Cailloux.
Jonathan knew he would not live to see Georges much older, never by any means see him grow tall, hear his voice break. Jonathan sat up abruptly, clenched his teeth, and tried to will his strength back.
Gaby came in with a large tray.
‘I asked Gaby to make a cold lunch, so we can eat whenever you feel up to it,’ Reeves said.
They had cold salmon with mayonnaise. Jonathan could not eat much, but the brown bread and butter and the wine tasted good. Reeves was talking about Salvatore Bianca, of the Mafia’s connection with prostitution, of their custom of employing prostitutes in their gambling establishments, and of taking 90 per cent of the girls’ earnings from them. ‘Extortion,’ Reeves said. ‘Money’s their objective – terror’s their method. See Las Vegas! For example, the Hamburg boys want
no
prostitutes,’ Reeves said with an air of righteousness. ‘Girls are there, a few, helping at the bar, for instance. Maybe they’re available, but not on the premises, no indeed.’ Jonathan was hardly listening, certainly not thinking about what Reeves was saying. He poked at his food, felt the blood rise to his cheeks, and held a quiet debate with himself. He would try the shooting. And it was not because he thought he was going to die in a few days or weeks, it was simply because the money was useful, because he wanted to give it to Simone and Georges. Forty thousand pounds, or ninety-six thousand dollars or – Jonathan supposed – only half of that, if there wasn’t another shooting to do, or if he got caught on the first shooting.
‘But you will, I think, won’t you?’ Reeves asked, wiping his lips on a crisp white napkin. He meant fire the gun this evening.
‘If something happens to me,’ Jonathan said, ‘can you see that my wife gets the money?’
‘But —’ Reeves’ scar twitched as he smiled. ‘What can happen? Yes, I’ll see that your wife gets the money.’
‘But if something does happen – if there’s only one shooting —’
Reeves pressed his lips together as if he didn’t like replying. ‘Then it’s half the money. – But there’ll likely be two, to be honest. Full payment after the second. – But that’s splendid!’ He smiled, and it was the first time Jonathan had seen a real smile from him. ‘You’ll see how easy it is tonight. And later we’ll celebrate – if you’re in the mood.’
He clapped his hands over his head, Jonathan thought as a gesture of jubilation, but it was a signal to Gaby.
Gaby arrived and took away the plates.
Twenty thousand pounds, Jonathan was thinking. Not so impressive, but better than a dead man with funeral expenses.
Coffee. Then the zoo. The animals Reeves had wanted him to see were two small bearlike creatures the colour of butterscotch. There was a small crowd in front of them, and Jonathan never got a good view. He was also not interested. Jonathan had a good view of some lions walking in apparent freedom. Reeves was concerned that Jonathan did not become tired. It was nearly 4 p.m.
Back at Reeves’ house, Reeves insisted on giving Jonathan a tiny white pill which he called a ‘mild sedative’.
‘But I don’t need a sedative,’ Jonathan said. He felt quite calm, in fact, quite well.
‘It’s best. Please take my word for it.’
Jonathan swallowed the pill. Reeves told him to lie down in the guest-room for a few minutes. He did not fall asleep, and Reeves came in at 5 p.m. to say it would soon be time for Karl to drive him to his hotel. The topcoat was at Jonathan’s hotel. Reeves gave him a cup of tea with sugar, which tasted all right, and Jonathan assumed there was nothing in it but tea. Reeves gave him the gun, and showed him the safety-catch again. Jonathan put the gun in his trousers pocket.
‘See you tonight!’ Reeves said cheerily.
Karl drove him to his hotel, and said he would wait. Jonathan supposed he had five or ten minutes. He brushed his teeth – with soap, because he’d left the toothpaste at home for Simone and Georges and hadn’t bought any as yet – then lit a Gitane and stood looking out the window until he realized he wasn’t seeing anything, wasn’t even thinking of anything, and then he went to the closet and got the largish coat. The coat had been worn, but not much. Whose had it been? Appropriate, Jonathan thought, because he could pretend to be acting, in someone else’s clothes, pretend the gun was a blank gun in a play. But Jonathan knew he knew exactly what he was doing. Towards the Mafioso he was going to kill (he hoped) he felt no mercy. And Jonathan realized he felt no pity for himself, either. Death was death. For different reasons, Bianca’s life and his own life had lost value. The only interesting detail was that Jonathan stood to be paid for his action of killing Bianca. Jonathan put the gun in his jacket pocket and the nylon stocking in the same pocket with it. He found he could draw the stocking on to his hand with the fingers of the same hand. Nervously, he wiped the gun of fingerprints real and imaginary with the stocking-covered fingers. He would have to hold the coat aside slightly when he fired, otherwise there’d be a bullet-hole in the coat. He had no hat. Curious that Reeves hadn’t thought of a hat. It was too late now to worry about it.
Jonathan went out of his room door and pulled it firmly shut.
Karl was standing on the pavement by his car. He held the door for Jonathan. Jonathan wondered how much Karl knew, and if he knew everything? Jonathan was leaning forward in the back seat, to ask Karl to go to the Rathaus U-bahn station, when Karl said over his shoulder:
‘You are to meet Fritz at the Rathaus station. That is correct, sir?’
‘Yes.’ said Jonathan, relieved. He sat back in a corner and lightly fingered the little gun. He pushed the safety on and off, remembering that forward was off.
‘Herr Minot suggested here, sir. The entrance is across the street.’ Karl opened the door but did not get out, because the street was crowded with cars and people. ‘Herr Minot said I am to find you at your hotel at seven-thirty, sir,’ said Karl.
‘Thank you.’ Jonathan felt lost for an instant, hearing the thud of the car door closing. He looked around for Fritz. Jonathan was at a huge intersection marked Gr. Johannesstrasse and Rathausstrasse. As in London, Piccadilly for instance, there seemed to be at least four entrances to the U-bahn here because of so many streets intersecting. Jonathan looked around for the short figure of Fritz with his cap on his head. A group of men, like a football team in topcoats, dashed down the U-bahn steps, revealing Fritz standing calmly by the metal post of the stairs, and Jonathan’s heart gave a leap as if he had met a lover at a secret rendezvous. Fritz gestured towards the steps, and went down himself.
Jonathan kept an eye on Fritz’s cap, though there were now fifteen or more people between them. Fritz moved to one side of the throng. Evidently Bianca had not come on the scene yet, and they were to await him. There was a hubbub of German around Jonathan, a burst of laughter, a shouted
‘Wiedersehen,
Max!”
Fritz stood against a wall some twelve feet away, and Jonathan drifted in his direction but kept a safe distance away from him, and before Jonathan reached the wall, Fritz nodded and moved diagonally away from the wall, towards a ticket gate. Jonathan bought a ticket. Fritz shuffled on in the crowd. Tickets were punched. Jonathan knew Fritz had sighted Bianca, but Jonathan didn’t see him.
A train was standing. When Fritz made a dash for a certain carriage, Jonathan dashed too. In the carriage, which was not particularly crowded, Fritz remained standing, holding to a chromium, vertical bar. He pulled a newspaper from his pocket. Fritz nodded forward, not looking at Jonathan.
Then Jonathan saw the Italian, closer to Jonathan than to Fritz – a dark, square-faced man in a smart grey topcoat with brown leather buttons, a grey homburg, staring rather angrily straight ahead of him as if lost in thought. Jonathan looked again at Fritz who was only pretending to read his newspaper, and when Jonathan’s eyes met his, Fritz nodded and smiled slightly in confirmation.
At the next stop, Messberg, Fritz got off. Jonathan looked again at the Italian, briefly, although Jonathan’s glance seemed in no danger of distracting the Italian from the rigid stare into space. Suppose Bianca didn’t get off at the next stop, but rode on and on to a remote stop where there’d be almost no people getting off?
But Bianca moved to the door as the train slowed. Steinstrasse. Jonathan had to make an effort, without bumping anyone, to stay just behind Bianca. There was a flight of steps up. The crowd, perhaps eighty to a hundred people, flowed together more tightly in front of the stairway, and began to creep upward. Bianca’s grey topcoat was just in front of Jonathan, and they were still a couple of yards from the stairs. Jonathan could see grey hairs among the black at the back of the man’s neck, and a jagged dent in his flesh like a carbuncle scar.
Jonathan had the gun in his right hand, out of his jacket pocket. He removed the safety. Jonathan pushed his coat aside and aimed at the centre of the man’s topcoat.
The gun made a raucous
‘Ka-boom!’
Jonathan dropped the gun. He had stopped, and now he recoiled, backward and to the left, as a collective ‘O
k-h-a – Ah-h-h!’
rose from the crowd. Jonathan was perhaps one of the few people who did not utter an exclamation.
Bianca had sagged and fallen.
An uneven circle of space surrounded Bianca.
‘
…
Pistole
...’
‘.
..
erschossen .
..
!’
The gun lay on the cement, someone started to pick it up, and was stopped by at least three people from touching it. Many people, not enough interested or in a hurry, were going up the stairs. Jonathan was moving a little to the left to circle the group around Bianca. He reached the stairs. A man was shouting for the
‘Polizei!’
Jonathan walked briskly, but no faster than several other people who were making their way to pavement level.
Jonathan arrived on the street, and simply walked on, straight ahead, not caring where he walked. He walked at a moderate pace and as if he knew where he was going, though he didn’t. He saw a huge railway station on his right. Reeves had mentioned that. There were no footsteps behind him, no sound of pursuit. With the fingers of his right hand, he wriggled the piece of stocking off. But he did not want to drop it so close to the underground station.
‘Taxi!’ Jonathan had seen a free one, making for the railway station. It stopped, and he got in. Jonathan gave the name of the street where his hotel was.
Jonathan sank back, but he found himself glancing to right and left out the windows of the cab, as if expecting to see a policeman gesticulating, pointing to the cab, demanding that the driver stop. Absurd! He was absolutely in the clear.
Yet the same sensation came to him as he entered the Victoria – as if the law must have got his address somehow and would be in the lobby to meet him. But no. Jonathan walked quietly into his own room and closed the door. He felt in his pocket, the jacket pocket, for the bit of stocking. It was gone, had fallen somewhere.
7.20 p.m. Jonathan took off the topcoat, dropped it in an upholstered chair, and went for his cigarettes which he had forgotten to take with him. He inhaled the comforting smoke of Gitane. He put the cigarette on the edge of the basin in the bathroom, washed his hands and face, then stripped to the waist and washed with a face towel and hot water.
As he was pulling on a sweater, the telephone rang.
‘Herr Karl waits on you below, sir.’
Jonathan went down. He carried the topcoat over his arm. He wanted to give it back to Reeves, wanted to see the last of it.
‘Good
evening, sir!’ said Karl, beaming, as if he had heard the news and deemed it good.
In the car, Jonathan lit another cigarette. It was Wednesday evening. He’d said to Simone that he might be home tonight, but she probably wouldn’t have his letter till tomorrow. He thought of two books due back Saturday at the Bibliothèque pour Tous by the church in Fontainebleau.
Jonathan was again in Reeves’ comfortable apartment. He handed the topcoat to Reeves, rather than to Gaby. Jonathan felt awkward.
‘How
are you, Jonathan?’ Reeves asked, tense and concerned. ‘How did it go?’
Gaby went away. Jonathan and Reeves were in the living-room.
‘All right,’ Jonathan said. ‘I think.’
Reeves smiled a little – even the little making his face look radiant.
‘Very
good. Fine! I hadn’t heard, you know? – May I offer you champagne, Jonathan? Or scotch? Sit down!’