Dog's Ransom, A by Highsmith Patricia

Author:Highsmith, Patricia [Highsmith, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, Crime, Modern Classics, Novel, Psychopaths
ISBN: 9780393345698
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1972-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

15

On Friday—not at 3 p.m. as promised but after four—a serious, dumpy brunette of about forty called on Kenneth at his Morton Street room. She had a large brown leather handbag, and a large notebook of the kind called ledgers. Her tone was distant and polite, and the words that came out of her might as well have been those of a recorded message.

“You are settling down? . . . What have you been doing?”

“I read. I keep busy.”

“You are unemployed now.” She sat on the edge of the arm-chair’s seat, and kept consulting her notes and writing notes of her own, seldom even looking at him.

“I have not been employed in five years. I had an injury to my foot. My toes.”

“Do you get along all right with your landlord?”

Kenneth thought it best to say he did.

“Where do you have your meals? . . . Do you go out a few times a day?”

Kenneth had been going to complain about the lack of a stove, but he thought it might up his rent if they moved him to another room or to another place with a kitchen.

Soon she looked at her wrist-watch and said she would be going, and would he sign on this line? Kenneth signed in slow but jerky and angular handwriting below the notes she had just taken. He tried to read them, but the writing was difficult and full of abbreviations, and the woman rudely pulled the ledger from him.

“I will call on you again on Tuesday at three. Will you make a note of that so you won’t forget?”

She was gone.

No mention of Macdougal Street! So much for Dummell’s threats!

In good spirits now, Kenneth put on his hat and overcoat and headed towards Macdougal Street. He had a plan. At the first liquor store he came to, he bought a bottle of wine—not an expensive bottle, only a dollar twenty-nine plus tax, and anyway he intended to keep it. He took one of the business cards of the store, which were in a little box on the counter. On Macdougal he walked more slowly, watching for the girls who might be on the street. He hoped she was on the street, walking away from her house. Then as he stepped on to the curb of the girl’s block, he saw her coming out of her house door, with a dark-haired fellow. She was in blue jeans. From the way the fellow was looking at her, he was another boyfriend. A popular girl! Kenneth at once went into the street where the delicatessen was, and walked as quickly as he could, while still doing his best to conceal his limp. Kenneth circled the block, and when he again approached the house, the girl and the young man were not in sight.

He peered at the names beside the bells in the foyer, and chose one to ring: Malawek. This resulted in a buzz, and Kenneth entered the house.

“Who is it please?” a woman’s voice called down.

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