Authors: Patricia Highsmith
‘All right, thanks.’ Jonathan was suddenly tense and alert. There was a customer in his shop, a man staring at lengths of sample frame wood on Jonathan’s wall. But Jonathan was speaking in English.
Reeves said, ‘I’m coming to Paris tomorrow and I’d like to see you. I have something for you – you know.’ Reeves sounded as calm as usual.
Simone wanted Jonathan to go to her parents’ home in Nemours tomorrow. ‘Can we make it in the evening or – around six p.m., say? I’ve got a long lunch.’
‘Oh, sure, I understand. French Sunday lunches! Sure, around six. I’ll be at the Hotel Cayré. That’s on Raspail.’
Jonathan had heard of the hotel. He said he would try to be there by 6 or 7 p.m. ‘There’re fewer trains on Sunday.’
Reeves said not to worry. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Reeves was bringing some money, evidently. Jonathan gave his attention to the man who wanted a frame.
Simone looked marvellous on Sunday in the new suit Jonathan asked her, before they left for the Foussadiers, not to say that he was being paid anything by the German doctors.
‘I’m not a fool!’ Simone declared with such quick duplicity Jonathan was amused, and felt that Simone really was more with him than with her parents. Often Jonathan felt the opposite.
‘Even today,’ Simone said at the Foussadiers, ‘Jon has to go to Paris to talk to a colleague of the Germans.’
It was a particularly cheerful Sunday lunch. Jonathan and Simone had brought a bottle of Johnny Walker.
Jonathan got the 449 p.m. train from Fontainebleau, because there had been no train convenient from St Pierre-Nemours, and arrived in Paris around 5.30 p.m. He took the M6tro. There was a Métro stop right beside the hotel.
Reeves had left a message for Jonathan to be sent up to his room. Reeves was in shirt-sleeves, and had apparently been lying on the bed reading newspapers. ‘Hello, Jonathan! How is life? … Sit down – somewhere. I have something to show you.’ He went to his suitcase. ‘This – as a starter.’ Reeves held up a square white envelope, and took a typewritten page from it and handed it to Jonathan.
The letter was in English, addressed to the Swiss Bank Corporation, and it was signed by Ernst Hildesheim. The letter requested a bank account to be opened in the name of Jonathan Trevanny, and gave Jonathan’s shop address in Fontainebleau, and said that a cheque for eighty thousand marks was enclosed. The letter was a carbon, but it was signed.
‘Who’s Hildesheim?’ Jonathan asked, meanwhile thinking that the German mark was worth about one and six-tenths French franc, so that eighty thousand marks would convert to something over a hundred and twenty thousand French francs.
‘A businessman of Hamburg – for whom I’ve done a few favours. Hildesheim’s not under any kind of surveillance and this won’t appear on his company books, so nothing for him to worry about. He sent a personal cheque. The point is, Jonathan, this money has been deposited in your name, posted yesterday from Hamburg, so you’ll be getting your private number next week. That’s a hundred and twenty-eight thousand French francs.’ Reeves didn’t smile, but he had an air of satisfaction. He reached for a box on the writing-table. ‘Dutch cigar? They’re very good.’
Because the cigars were something different, Jonathan took one, smiling. Thanks.’ He puffed it alight from the match that Reeves held. Thanks also for the money.’ It was not quite a third, Jonathan realized. It wasn’t a half. But Jonathan couldn’t say this.
‘Nice start, yes. The casino boys in Hamburg are quite pleased. The other Mafia who’re cruising around, a couple of the Genotti family, claim they don’t know anything about Salvatore Bianca’s death, but of course they would say that. What we want to do now is knock off a Genotti as if in retaliation for Bianca. And we want to get a big shot, a
capo –
a chief just under the boss, you know? There’s one named Vito Marcangelo who travels nearly every week-end from Munich to Paris. He has a girl friend in Paris. He’s the chief of the dope business in Munich – at least for his family there. Munich by the way is even more active than Marseille now, as far as dope goes …’
Jonathan listened uneasily, waiting for an opening in which he could say that he didn’t care to take on another job. Jonathan’s thoughts had changed in the last forty-eight hours. And it was curious, too, how Reeves’ very presence stripped Jonathan of a sense of daring – maybe made the deed more real. Then there was the fact that he had, apparently, a hundred and twenty-eight thousand francs in Switzerland already. Jonathan had sat down on the edge of an armchair.
‘. .. on a moving train, a day train, the Mozart Express.’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘Sorry, Reeves. I really don’t think I’m up to it.’ Reeves could block the cheque in marks, Jonathan thought suddenly. Reeves could simply cable Hildesheim. Well, so be it.
Reeves looked crestfallen. ‘Oh. Well – so am I sorry. Really. We’ll just have to find another man – if you won’t do it. And – I’m afraid he’ll get the better part of the money too.’ Reeves shook his head, puffed his cigar and stared out the window for a moment. Then he bent and gripped Jonathan’s shoulder firmly. Jon, the first part went so well!’
Jonathan sat back, and Reeves released him. Jonathan squirmed, like someone forced to make an apology. ‘Yes, but – to shoot somebody on a train?’ Jonathan could see himself nabbed at once, unable to escape anywhere.
‘Not a shooting, no’ We couldn’t have the noise. I was thinking of a garrotte.’
Jonathan could hardly believe his ears.
Reeves said calmly, ‘It’s a Mafia method. A slender cord, silent — A noose! And you pull it tight. That’s all.’
Jonathan thought of his fingers touching a warm neck. It was revolting. ‘Absolutely out of the question. I couldn’t.’
Reeves took a breath, going into another gear, shifting. ‘This man is well guarded, two bodyguards as a rule. But on a train – people get bored sitting and walk in the aisle a bit, or they go to the bog once or twice, or the dining-car, maybe alone. It might not work, Jonathan, you might not – find the occasion, but you could try. – Then there’s pushing, just pushing him out the door. Those doors can open when the train’s moving, you know. But he’d yell – and it might not kill him either.’
Ludicrous, Jonathan thought. But he didn’t feel like laughing. Reeves dreamed on silently, looking up at the ceiling. Jonathan was thinking that if he were caught as a murderer or in an attempt at murder, Simone wouldn’t touch any of the money from it. She’d be appalled, ashamed. ‘I simply cannot help you,’ Jonathan said. He stood up.
‘But – you could at least
ride
the train. If the right moment doesn’t present itself, we’ll just have to think of something else, another
capo
maybe, another method. But we’d love to get this guy! He’s going to move from dope to the Hamburg casinos – organizing – that’s the rumour, anyway.’ Reeves said on another note, ‘Would you try a gun, Jon?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘I haven’t the nerve, for God’s sake. On a train? No.’
‘Look at this garrotte!’ Reeves pulled his left hand quickly from his trousers pocket.
He held what looked like a thin, whitish string. The end slipped through a loop, and was prevented from going all the way through by a small lump at the end of the cord. Reeves tossed it round the bedpost and pulled, jerking the cord to one side.
‘You see? Nylon. Strong as wire almost. No one can even grunt more than once —’ Reeves broke off.
Jonathan was disgusted. One would have to touch the victim with the other hand – somehow. And wouldn’t it take about three minutes?
Reeves seemed to give it up. He strolled to a window and turned. Think about it. You can ring me up or I’ll ring you in a couple of days. Marcangelo usually leaves Munich noonish Fridays. It would be ideal if it could be done next week-end.’
Jonathan drifted towards the door. He put his cigar out in an ashtray on the bed-table.
Reeves was looking at him shrewdly, yet he might have been gazing far behind him, thinking already of someone else for the job. His long scar looked, as it did in certain lights, thicker than it was. The scar had probably given him an inferiority complex with women, Jonathan thought. Yet how long had he had it? Maybe just two years, one couldn’t tell.
‘Like a drink downstairs?’
‘No, thanks.’ Jonathan said.
‘Oh, I have a book to show you!’ Reeves went to his suitcase again, and pulled a book with a bright red jacket from a back corner. Take a look. Keep it. It’s a wonderful piece of journalism. Documentary. You’ll see the kind of people we’re dealing with. But they’re flesh and blood like everyone else. Vulnerable, I mean.’
The book was called
The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America.
‘I’ll telephone you Wednesday,’ Reeves said. ‘You’d come to Munich Thursday, spend the night, I’d be there at some hotel also, then you’d return Friday night to Paris by train.’
Jonathan’s hand was on the door-knob, and now he turned it. ‘Sorry, Reeves, but I’m afraid it’s no go. Bye-bye.’
Jonathan walked out of the hotel and directly across the street to the M6tro. On the platform, awaiting a train, he read the blurb on the book-jacket. On the back of the jacket were police photographs, front and profile, of six or eight unpleasant-looking men with downturned mouths, faces loose and grim at once, all with dark, staring eyes. It was curious, the similarity of their expressions, whether the faces were plump or lean. There was a section of five or six pages of photographs in the book. The chapters were titled by American cities – Detroit, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and at the back of the book, besides an index, was a section of Mafia families like family trees, except that these people were all contemporaries: bosses, sub-bosses, lieutenants, button men, the latter numbering fifty or sixty in the case of the Genovese family of which Jonathan had heard. The names were real, and in many cases addresses were given in New York and New Jersey. Jonathan browsed in the book on the train to Fontainebleau. There was ‘Icepick Willie’ Alderman, of whom Reeves had spoken in Hamburg, who killed his victims by bending over their shoulder as if to speak to them and sticking an icepick through their eardrum. ‘Icepick Willie’ was photographed, grinning, among the Las Vegas gambling fraternity of half a dozen men with Italian names and a cardinal, a bishop, and a monsignore (their names also were given) after the clergy had ‘received a pledge of $7,500 to be spread over five years’. Jonathan closed the book in brief depression, then opened it again after a few minutes of staring out the window. The book held facts, after all, and the facts were fascinating.
Jonathan rode the bus from the Fontainebleau-Avon station to the
place
near the chateau, and walked up the Rue de France to his shop. He had his shop key with him, and he went in to leave the Mafia book in the seldom-used drawer with the hidden francs before he walked to his house in the Rue St Merry.
9
T
OM
R
IPLEY
had noticed the sign
FERMETURE PROVISOIRE POUR RAISONS DE FAMILLE
in the window of Jonathan Trevanny’s shop on a certain Tuesday in April, and had thought that Trevanny might have gone to Hamburg. Tom was very curious indeed to know if Trevanny had gone to Hamburg, but not curious enough to telephone Reeves to ask. Then on a Thursday morning around 10 a.m. Reeves had rung from Hamburg and said in a voice tense with repressed jubilation:
‘Well, Tom it’s done! It’s all — Everything’s fine. Tom, I thank you!’
Tom for the nonce had been wordless. Trevanny had really come through? Heloise had been in the living-room where he was, so there had been little Tom could say except, ‘Good. Glad to hear it.’
‘No need of the phoney doctor’s report. Everything went fine! Last night.’
‘So – and – he’s coming back home now?’
‘Yes. Due tonight.’
Tom had made that conversation short. He had thought of Reeves’ substituting a report of Trevanny’s condition that would be worse than die truth, and Tom had suggested it in jest, although Reeves was the type to have tried it – a dirty, humourless trick, Tom thought. And it hadn’t even been necessary. Tom smiled with amazement. Tom could tell from Reeves’ joy that his intended victim was actually
dead.
Killed by Trevanny. Tom was indeed surprised. Poor Reeves had so wanted a word of praise from Tom for his organization of the coup, but Tom hadn’t been able to say anything: Heloise knew quite a bit of English, and Tom didn’t want to take any chances. Tom thought suddenly of looking at Mme Annette’s
Le Parisien Liberé
which she bought every morning, but Mme Annette was not yet back from her shopping.
‘Who was that?’ Heloise asked. She was looking over magazines on the coffee-table, weeding out old ones to be thrown away.
‘Reeves,’ Tom said. ‘Nothing of importance.’
Reeves bored Heloise. He had no talent for small talk, and he looked as if he did not enjoy life.
Tom heard Mme Annette’s steps crunching briskly on the gravel in front of the house, and he went into the kitchen to meet her. She came in through the side door, and smiled at him.
‘You would like some more coffee, M. Tome?’ she asked, setting her basket on the wooden table. An artichoke toppled from the peak.
‘No, thank you, Mme Annette, I came to have a look at your
Parisien,
if I may. The horses—’
Tom found the item on the second page. There was no photograph. An Italian named Salvatore Bianca, forty-eight, had been shot dead in an underground station in Hamburg. The assassin was unknown. A gun found on the scene was of Italian manufacture. The victim was known to be of the Di Stefano family of Mafiosi of Milan. The account was hardly three inches long. But it might be an interesting beginning, Tom thought. It might lead to much greater things. Jonathan Trevanny, the innocent-looking, positively square Trevanny, had succumbed to the temptation of money (what else?), and committed a successful murder! Tom had once succumbed himself, in the case of Dickie Greenleaf. Gould it be that Trevanny was one of
us?
But us to Tom was only Tom Ripley. Tom smiled.