Read Online A Dog's Ransom by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online Page A

followed, and had taken the envelope out of the basket. Thus he had learned Reynolds’s name. This enabled Kenneth to write letters to Reynolds. Letters gave Kenneth pleasure, because he knew he got his message across, and knew he upset people. He was also aware that the letters were dangerous for him, but Kenneth’s attitude was that the pleasure that letters gave him made them worth it. He had written thirty or forty letters, he supposed, to a dozen people. Some of these people he had watched afterwards, as they came out of their apartment houses, and it amused Kenneth to see their frightened expressions as they looked around on the street, sometimes looking right at him. He got some names by seeing them on parcels being delivered to apartment buildings. He assumed the people were well-to-do, which meant any kind of threat could scare them.
    Now, Kenneth knew that since Reynolds had spoken to the police at the local precinct house, it was dangerous for him to cruise in that neighborhood, yet Kenneth knew that he would take walks, just around there. Would they put any extra police on to watch out for “suspicious characters”? Kenneth doubted that. The police had other jobs to do—yes, indeed, like sitting on their asses in the hamburger shop on Broadway, guns, notebooks, nightsticks and asses draped on either side of the stools as they slurped coffee and gobbled banana pie à la mode.
    Sunday evening, Kenneth strolled westward towards Riverside Drive around 8 p.m., the time when Reynolds or his wife had used to air Lisa. Maybe tonight he’d see Reynolds and wife, walking along the Drive in a melancholic way, without their Lisa. On either side of him, on 106th Street, the yellow squares of light in people’s windows were coming on. Castles, fortresses of snobs. You couldn’t get past their doormen to get at them, a thief couldn’t, or someone who might want to murder them. However, some thieves did. Kenneth smiled to himself, his pink lips curling up at the corners. Murder wasn’t his dish. He liked more subtle means. Slow torture.
    There was a cop. The tall blondish fellow Kenneth had seen three or four times before. Kenneth deliberately did not look at him as they passed each other on the east side of the Drive, only six feet apart on the pavement. But Kenneth felt the cop’s eyes on him. Kenneth much wanted to cross the Drive, to stroll down to 100th Street before making his way home, and there was no reason not to cross the Drive, in fact. Kenneth hesitated with one foot off the curb, his good foot on it, and the light was with him, but he hesitated. He was at 108th Street now, and he looked to his left, down the Riverside Drive pavement, to see if the policeman was going on southward. The policeman had stopped and was looking back, at him, Kenneth thought. Kenneth turned and walked east into 108th Street.
    Mustn’t go straight home, Kenneth thought, in case the cop decided to follow him. The street was rather dark. Kenneth concealed his limp as much as possible. He wanted to kill some time in a coffee-shop, or by buying beer and eggs in a delicatessen, but these places had lights, and if the cop did come in, he didn’t want the cop to have a good look at him. He wished very much to know if the cop was following him or not.
    Kenneth reached Broadway and turned downtown, walking on the east side of the street. At 105th Street, Kenneth stopped and casually looked behind him. There were at least eight people on the sidewalk, but no cop. Good. Kenneth decided to head for home. He had a sense of fleeing now, but also a sense of being in the clear. He let himself in the front door and slammed it, then limped to his own door and unlocked it.
    He was safe.
    Kenneth went to his table and hastily folded the page he had written to Reynolds. He put it in the top drawer of his chest of drawers under some articles of clothing. He looked at the unmade bed, thinking of the money. Relax, he told himself. Have a beer. But