Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

Author:Patricia Highsmith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Published: 2011-03-08T08:00:00+00:00

13

BECAUSE of Vincent Turoli’s uncertain state, Tom drove to Fontainebleau on Sunday to buy the London papers, the Observer and the Sunday Times, which he usually bought from the Villeperce journaux-tabac on Monday morning. The news kiosk in Fontainebleau was in front of the Hôtel de l’Aigle Noir. Tom glanced around for Trevanny, who probably bought the London Sundays habitually too, but he didn’t see him. It was n a.m., and perhaps Trevanny already had the papers. Tom got into his car and looked at the Observer first. It had nothing about the train incident. Tom wasn’t sure the English papers would bother reporting the story, but he looked into the Sunday Times and found an item on page three, one short column which Tom fell upon eagerly. The writer had given it a light touch: ‘… It must have been an exceptionally fast Mafia job … Vincent Turoli of the Genotti family, one arm missing, one eye damaged, regained consciousness early on Saturday, and his condition is improving so rapidly he may soon be flown to a Milan hospital. But if he knows anything, he is not talking.’ That was no news to Tom, that he wasn’t talking, but plainly he was going to live. That was unfortunate. Tom was thinking that Turoli had probably already given a description of him to his chums. Turoli would have been visited in Strassburg by family members. Important Mafiosi in the hospital were protected day and night by guards, and maybe Turoli would get this treatment too, Tom thought, as soon as the idea of eliminating Turoli crossed his mind. Tom recalled the Mafia-guarded hospitalization of Joe Colombo, head of the Profaci family, in New York. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Colombo denied that he was a member of the Mafia or that the Mafia existed. Nurses had had to step over the legs of bodyguards sleeping in the halls when Colombo had been in. Best not to think about getting rid of Turoli. He had probably already talked about a man in his thirties, with brown hair, a little over average height, who had socked him in the jaw and the stomach, and there must have been another man behind him too, because he had got a crack on the back of the head. The question was would Turoli be absolutely sure if he spotted him again, and Tom thought there was a good chance of this. Oddly Turoli, if he had seen him, might recall Jonathan a little more clearly, simply because Jonathan didn’t look like everyone else, was taller and blonder than most people. Turoli of course would compare notes with the second bodyguard who was alive and well.

‘Darling,’ Heloise said when Tom walked into the living-room, ‘how would you like to go on a cruise on the Nile.’

Tom’s thoughts were so far away, he had to think for a moment what the Nile was and where. Heloise was barefoot on the sofa, browsing in travel brochures. Periodically

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