A Dog's Ransom

by Patricia Highsmith

  He thought of the Reynoldses, of their gloom, of his failure there. That Polish turd! A couple of cops could beat the truth out of him, but psychiatrists weren’t going to bother. They’d try to classify him, to “rehabilitate” him—for what? So he could collect more handouts, and maybe start again with a ransom scheme for another dog, maybe even for a child? How long would they keep him locked up at Bellevue? There weren’t any laws, Clarence supposed, made specifically for people like Rowajinski.

  Clarence knew he should get some sleep for tonight, so he put on pajamas and got under the covers. Finally he picked up a book because he couldn’t sleep.

  At 7 o’clock, Marylyn’s telephone didn’t answer. Marylyn didn’t answer at 10 p.m. or just before midnight. Clarence suspected she deliberately wasn’t answering her telephone.

  12

  The next day, Friday, Clarence went to Marylyn’s house just before noon. He much wanted to bring her flowers, or a book, but was afraid a present would look as if he were begging her forgiveness, and Marylyn wouldn’t like that. He let himself in her front door, and at her apartment door he knocked.

  “Marylyn?—It’s Clare.”

  She opened the door. “You.” She was in blue jeans and an old shirt, a broom in her hands.

  Clarence came in. “Marylyn, I’m sorry about Manzoni. He’s a trouble-maker, and he—”

  “He’s just a pig. A real pig.”

  “That’s true. I don’t know what he’s got against me. You’d think he had something against me.”

  “And what do you think people think now, people in my neighborhood? A flatfoot arriving, staying nearly an hour. He looks like a pig even in his clothes.”

  “Nearly an hour?”

  “They’ll think I’m running a cops’ cathouse, that’s what. Well, I’m not!”

  Clarence could not calm her down. She was on one tack, one note. “Darling, you must know—it’s the worst thing in the world to me if someone’s hurt you.”

  “He didn’t hurt me, he insulted me!”

  “I’ll punch his nose!”

  “What good will that do?”

  “Marylyn, darling.” Clarence tried to put his arms around her, but she pushed him back with a strength that startled him. Her force seemed a measure of how much she had turned against him. Clarence was astounded.

  “I don’t even want to know what this fuzz said to you about me! I can imagine. A fine bunch of people you work with! And him—the pig—futzing around trying to find out from me if you took a bribe! Jesus!”

  “He knows I didn’t take it. He didn’t say anything about you to me.”

  “I wish you’d just leave,” Marylyn said.

  “Can’t we—can’t we have some lunch? Out somewhere? And calm down a little?”

  “I’m not in the mood to calm down. I’m cleaning the house. Oh, and while we’re on that subject, I wish you’d take your things from here.” She gestured to the closet.

  After a moment, Clarence moved to the closet, whose door was ajar, and stood there, not seeing. He was startled by Marylyn’s tossing two paper shopping bags at his feet.

  “These ought to hold everything. Don’t forget the ties.”

  Clarence folded his things and put them into the shopping bags: trousers, a jacket, a pair of Levis, shoes, two ties, finally some striped pajamas from a hook. He took the bags to the door.

  “To think that I’d ever get mixed up with the cops!” Marylyn said. “I’d rather get arrested than have this. No wonder people call them pigs. One thing I’m proud of, I’m not on their side!”

  “I’m not a cop when I’m with you. I’m a human being.”

  She sighed. “You’re still a cop. Would you go?”

  Clarence went, without saying good-bye, without saying he’d telephone tomorrow, because he did not want another negative word from her. He opened the door again before he quite closed it behind him. “I love you, Marylyn. Really.”

  She said nothing, didn’t even look at him.

  Were women often like this, he wondered, so damned definite-sounding and then—Couldn’t they change their minds in a few days? He had to believe she would change. He looked around for Manzoni on the street, not really expecting to see him, but he ought to be prepared for anything from Manzoni. He wondered if Manzoni had tried to get fresh with Marylyn, touched her at all? Probably he had. Clarence’s fists tightened on the shopping bags.

  CLARENCE DID NOT CALL MARYLYN the following day, believing it was wiser not to telephone for several days so that she might begin to miss him, to feel she had been too harsh. However, Clarence was not sure these were the right tactics.

  Saturday night after midnight, when he was walking a patrol post that included some of Riverside Drive, a drunk was scraping along the wall of an apartment building, mumbling, ready to fall if the building hadn’t held him up. He threw off Clarence’s hands and swung a fist at him, missing, and Clarence retaliated with a hard right to the man’s jaw. Clarence knocked him out. The act exhilarated Clarence, as if it were some kind of triumph. A passer-by or two stopped to look for a few seconds, then walked on. Clarence’s partner that night, a thirty-five-year-old man called Johnson, merely laughed. Clarence radioed for a patrol car and took the man to the station house like a trophy, where he booked him for public drunkenness and resisting arrest.

  Sunday noon, Clarence telephoned Bellevue to ask about Rowajinski. It took nearly ten minutes to get through to the right ward or department. Clarence said it was his precinct house telephoning.

  “He’s to be released Wednesday as an out-patient,” a man’s voice said. “He’ll have an out-patients’ counselor visiting him twice a week. To keep an eye on him, y’know.”

  “Released? You’re talking about Kenneth Rowajinski?”

  “Yes. It’s him you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  “Do you know where he’s going to be when he’s out?”

  “The out-patients’ department does that. They find these people a room somewhere.”

  “We’ve got to know where that is,” said Clarence.

  “You could call back Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.” The man hung up.

  Released. Probably the station house would be informed of Rowajinski’s future address as a matter of course, Clarence thought, because surely the law wasn’t finished with him. Weren’t they going to make him pay the missing eight hundred dollars? Or were they going to believe that he, Clarence, had taken five hundred? Was the precinct waiting for the Bellevue report before bringing that matter up?

  It would be a fine thing to tell Mr. Reynolds, Clarence thought, that Rowajinski was going to be back in the world again on Wednesday.

  Clarence’s mother telephoned around five. Was he coming out Tuesday and Wednesday, or one of those days? Clarence told a small lie and said that his precinct house wanted him closer.

  “Oh, Clary! You’re just as close if you come to see us. Ralph’ll treat you to a taxi to New York, I know.”

  Clarence was simply too distressed to go. His mother would keep asking him what was the matter. He emphatically did not want to tell his parents what had happened with Marylyn, even if his mother might, just might give him some sound advice as to how to handle her. “I can’t, Mother, I can’t.”

  “What’s happened now, Clary? I wish you’d tell me.”

  “Nothing’s happened. Don’t make me feel like a child, Mother.”

  When they had hung up, Clarence at once telephoned Marylyn.

  “It’s me,” Clarence said. “How are you? . . . When can I see you, darling. Please.”

  She sighed. “I don’t think I want to see you.”

  He could not get anywhere with her.

  He tried to sleep, or at least to rest, until he had to leave the house at 7:15. Now it was hardly 5:30. He wanted to see
the Reynoldses. Yes. He’d try to see them for a few minutes before he went on duty tonight. He dialed the Reynoldses’ number. There was no answer, and this depressed Clarence further. Around six he tried again, let the telephone ring ten times, and on the eleventh it was answered by Greta.

  “Oh, Officer Duhamell!”

  “I wonder if I can come and see you? Before I go on duty at eight. Now I mean.”

  “Yes, of course you can. We have someone coming for dinner. That is why I am out of breath. I was just running in from shopping when I heard the phone. Ed is out seeing an author but he is due any minute.”

  Clarence felt happier when he had hung up. What a nice woman she was! A really nice, warm-hearted woman. Clarence took a taxi.

  Greta Reynolds opened the door. Clarence was delighted to see that Mr. Reynolds had arrived.

  “Hello. Good evening.” Ed was stacking a manuscript on the coffee-table. “So what’s the news?”

  “Well—annoying news to me. Bellevue is releasing Rowajinski Wednesday. He’s going to be under surveillance. By an out-patients’ counselor.”

  “Um. Well. Excuse me a sec.” Ed carried some papers and books into another room.

  Mrs. Reynolds had gone into the kitchen. The table was set for three, with red candles not yet lighted. Clarence hoped he could stay a few minutes without annoying the Reynoldses, wished in fact that he could be the third person at the table, but he supposed he was the most unwelcome person among the Reynoldses’s acquaintance.

  The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Reynolds crossed the living-room to answer it. “Do sit down, Mr. Duhamell.”

  Clarence sat down in order to be less conspicuous.

  “You know Eric, I think,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “Professor Schaffner, Officer Duhamell.”

  Clarence stood up. “Good evening, sir.”

  “Good evening. What’s the trouble? Any trouble?”

  “Oh, no, sir. No trouble.” Clarence was sorry Eric had arrived so soon.

  Ed Reynolds came in. “Hello, Eric, how are you?”

  “The same.”

  Clarence felt that Eric was equally annoyed by his presence. It was the fact he was a cop, even out of uniform. No one would be completely relaxed until he was gone. Cops stood for trouble. Greta was making a drink for Eric—something like Cinzano. Clarence declined a drink.

  “We’re going to move,” Ed said to Eric.

  “To move?”

  “It’s”—Greta looked at Clarence. “We have been through too much here, you see.”

  Ed was looking also at Clarence, at his earnest young face. How bright was he? Ed was inclined to think he was honest, and that counted for something. He was well-meaning and not tough. And how long would that last?

  “I think I understand why you move,” said Eric.

  “You see,” Ed began in a deliberately easy manner to Clarence, “my daughter Margaret—She was living here with us when she died. A year ago.”

  “Oh,” said Clarence.

  “It’s too much, my husband’s daughter, and now this,” Greta said.

  “Your daughter,” Clarence said to Ed, “was ill?” She must have been very young, Clarence was thinking. He imagined a child with some incurable illness.

  “No, no,” said Ed. “She was shot.”

  “Eddie!” said Greta.

  “She was eighteen,” Ed went on. “My only child—of my first marriage. She was going around with a rather wild bunch. You know—trying drugs. There was a raid down in the Village. Sort of a nightclub. A police raid. But it wasn’t a police bullet that killed her. Someone had a gun, and when the police came in, in the confusion—” Ed stopped with a shrug.

  “Eighteen,” Clarence said.

  “She was in college,” said Greta. “Eddie, you mustn’t talk about all that.”

  “I’m finished,” Ed said. “This young man is a patrolman. He knows about such things.”

  Clarence saw that Eric, as well as Greta, wanted Ed to stop. What a shame, Clarence wanted to say. How long had Ed and Greta been married, he wondered. Mr. Reynolds’s only child. And now that Mrs. Reynolds was at least forty, they probably weren’t going to have any children. “Yes, I can understand that this apartment would depress you,” Clarence said.

  “You found another place?” Eric asked.

  “We did. Greta did. Down on East Ninth. Practically the Village,” Ed said. “I was never crazy about this neighborhood, anyway. It’s like a big cemetery.”

  A silence.

  Clarence composed his farewell, and said, “By Tuesday I’ll be able to find out where Rowajinski’s going to live. I intend to keep an eye on him.”

  “The one who killed the dog?” Eric asked.

  “Yes, sir. He’s being released from Bellevue Wednesday. They’re going to find a—”

  “Released from Bellevue? Then he goes to prison, you mean,” Eric said in his clear, emphatic way.

  “I hope so, sir. I’m not sure.”

  “You mean, he might not go to prison? What kind of justice is that?” Eric asked rhetorically, swinging his arms so that his drink nearly spilled. “Out on the streets again?”

  “So? He’s just a little odd,” Ed said and laughed.

  “I’m going to do what I can, sir,” Clarence said to Mr. Reynolds.

  Ed looked at the young policeman. “Frankly, I don’t care where he lives. I don’t think I want to know. So don’t bother finding out for my sake.”

  Clarence nodded. “All right, sir.”

  “I don’t deny I’d rather hear he was locked up,” Ed added.

  “What kind of justice,” Eric repeated, shaking his head.

  “Of course it has hurt us. But it is not the same as if a child was kidnapped—or killed,” Greta said, speaking both to her husband and to Eric. “It just isn’t.”

  Why wasn’t it the same, if people suffered the same from it, Clarence thought. The evil of the deed seemed exactly the same, whether it was a child or a dog. “Good night, sir.—Mrs. Reynolds.” Clarence took his leave awkwardly, feeling Mr. Reynolds’s eyes on him until the door was closed. Mr. Reynolds must think him a complete ass. Inefficient, stupid—and now hanging around, perhaps.

  By the time Clarence had walked to the precinct house, his anger against Manzoni had begun to boil again. He wondered if Manzoni was on duty. Manzoni was in the locker room, changing into civvies. Clarence waited for Manzoni in the front hall. When Manzoni came out, Clarence nodded a greeting which was barely acknowledged by Manzoni, then Clarence followed him out on to the pavement.

  “Pete?”

  Manzoni turned, and a grin started to spread over his face. “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to ask you something. Just what’ve you got against me? Just tell me straight.”

  “Against you? How do I know? If somebody says you took five hundred dollars, I try to find out about it, don’t I? That’s my business, ain’t it?” Manzoni sounded proud of being a cop, confident of his duties.

  “You know who said it, that psycho. You go around believing psychos?” Clarence went on calmly. “There was no reason for you to question my friend, the girl in the Village. It was annoying to her.”

  “Aw, college boy! Annoyin’!” Manzoni laughed.

  If you speak to her again, I’ll report it to MacGregor, Clarence wanted to say, and at once realized that he did not dare do that. He didn’t want MacGregor to know that he stayed on Macdougal many nights, though Manzoni might already have told MacGregor this. There might be an actual law against it, though Clarence had never seen such a law. “Just knock it off, would you, Pete? Check with Bellevue. Maybe the guy’s telling the truth now.” Clarence was moving off, back to the precinct house door.

  “Aw, bullshit,” said Manzoni.

  It reminded Clarence of Rowaji
nski.

  13

  Kenneth Rowajinski, with his suitcase, was escorted from Bellevue to his new lodging on Morton Street near Hudson Street on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. He rode in a white ambulance with two stretcher bunks, on one of which he sat with arms folded, facing a plump intern, or male nurse, in white. Kenneth took an amused attitude towards it all. What a lot of attention he was getting! Really VIP treatment. They’d found a suitable room for him, and they were driving him there, free of charge. But the fact remained they had attached fifty per cent of his compensation, and were taking three hundred dollars of his savings to repay Reynolds, and Kenneth had more or less been compelled to sign a paper saying he was in agreement with this. So Kenneth’s sense of importance, of having really won in this story (he wasn’t after all behind bars) was in conflict with a certain sense of being hamstrung, supervised, spied upon. A man from Bellevue was going to call on him Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. and see how he was doing, see if he was living in the way Bellevue thought people ought to live.

  His second-floor room in the red brick house was medium-sized with a high ceiling, and smelled of dusty carpets, although there was only one small worn-out carpet down, the rest of the floor being covered with linoleum. He had no private toilet, but had to use the one down the hall. There was a basin in the hall with a semi-soiled towel hanging by it. The bathroom door was locked, and one had to ask the landlord, a man named Phil, for the key, Kenneth was told. Under the intern’s eye, Kenneth paid out twenty dollars, a week’s rent, to the creature called Phil. Now Kenneth had a little bookshelf about two feet long over his bed, but no books to put in it. And no stove. He’d have to eat all his meals out, or eat cold food. Expensive. Kenneth decided he would write a letter on the subject of no stove, and have it ready to present to the Bellevue man on Friday.