A Dog's Ransom

by Patricia Highsmith

  Kenneth’s first sally from his new abode came twenty minutes after the Bellevue intern had left him. He went out to buy a Times. He bought also six cans of beer, some sliced salami, a package of hamburger rolls, and a quarter-pound of butter. When he came back, it struck him that the radiator was not hot enough, so before treating himself to a beer, Kenneth went in search of Phil. He even left his room door unlocked. The door did not lock automatically.

  Kenneth could not find Phil, and suspected that he was hiding from him. Kenneth banged on doors, called “Phil!” and “Mr. Phil!” until the unpleasant voice of a woman upstairs shouted down the stairwell:

  “Quiet! Quiet, I say!—What the hell’s going on down there?”

  And they called Bellevue a madhouse!

  Kenneth went back to his own room, churning with frustration, and felt the lukewarm radiator again. He started to open a beer, then the awareness of semi-incarceration came over him again. However, Kenneth had his own two keys, and no one had told him when to be in at night. Kenneth tore off the ring of the can, drank half the beer, then set the can on the window sill inside the room, beside the paper bag of salami and butter. There was a draught through the old ill-fitting window, no need to open it a crack. Kenneth had to go out for a walk, just to feel free. He put on his new overcoat again, and his hat.

  On the sidewalk, he looked around for police spies, Bellevue spies. Buildings, dwellings, were not so tall here as in his old neighborhood of West End. There were more trees along the pavement—they’d have been bigger, Kenneth thought, if they were not peed on hundreds of times a day by filthy dogs—and more small stores and shops. But traffic on Hudson was the same noisy mess as anywhere else, as West End, for example. Then Kenneth saw a man’s figure and slowed his steps. Kenneth slightly lifted his chin from his coat collar, and turned his face towards the man like a dog pointing. Yes, surely: it was the bastard of a cop again, the young blond fellow, in ordinary clothes and without a hat. He was on the other side of Hudson Street, on the corner of Morton, and had obviously been waiting for him to come out of his house. He must have learned his address from Bellevue.

  Kenneth walked downtown. This left the young cop behind him and on his left, on the other side of Hudson. After some twenty steps, Kenneth glanced over his shoulder. Yes, the cop was following him. Of all the appalling nerve! Kenneth stood still, again facing the distant cop squarely, and by his manner challenging the cop to cross Hudson and speak to him—or whatever he wanted to do. The clear memory of those five hundred going up in smoke in his hotel basin gave Kenneth a massive moral support.

  Dummell zigzagged southward and walked into Macdougal Street. Kenneth had barely entered Macdougal, when he saw the cop climbing some front steps, disappearing into a doorway. Kenneth waited a few minutes, then went to the doorway to ascertain its number. Was this where Dummell lived? A rather crummy place, but it was not impossible that Dummell lived here. Kenneth waited across the street, where there was a shop window he could pretend to be looking into, while it gave a fuzzy reflection of the door that Dummell had entered.

  After a few minutes, Kenneth crossed the street to read the names on the mail boxes in the open foyer. He gave them a hasty look, not wanting Dummell to come down and find him, but Dummell’s name was not among the six or eight names. Kenneth went back across the street. Fifteen minutes or so passed, and Kenneth walked to the corner and back. At last he crossed Macdougal and went into an artsy espresso and snack place almost next door to the house Dummell had entered. He addressed a wavy-haired man behind the counter.

  “Excuse me. Is there a police officer living next door? A tall blond fellow?”

  The man smiled, not in a nice way. He was arranging little white cups and saucers neatly on a shelf. “Why?”

  “You know him?” Kenneth was sure the man knew whom he meant. Kenneth also sensed that the wavy-haired man disliked him, was suspicious of him.

  “I dunno,” said the man innocently, and kept polishing his cups.

  Kenneth left. There was a delicatessen around the corner, and Kenneth entered it. Kenneth assumed a more polite air. He had to wait a few minutes until a black girl had bought and paid for a sackful of things. “I was told a policeman lives in this neighborhood,” Kenneth said. “I must talk with a policeman right away. Is there a policeman?”

  The fat man in the white apron looked at Kenneth with a calm blankness. “You in a hurry?”

  “Yes. Something about my car. Somebody broke in. Somebody said a policeman lives near here. True?”

  “There’s a policeman visits. I don’t know if he’s there now. Why doncha use the phone and call the police?” He gestured to the telephone on his counter.

  “Visits who?”

  The fat man’s expression changed. He jerked his thumb towards the door. “Listen, Mac, go call the cops somewhere. Take my advice.”

  Kenneth went.

  Kenneth was still determined to wait, and he walked left, crossed Macdougal at a corner, and as soon as he turned and looked towards the house again, he saw Dummell walking in his direction with a long-haired girl in pants. Both were talking and gesturing. Quarreling? Dummell was completely absorbed in the reddish-haired girl. His girlfriend, of course. Or was he married?

  And now they were parting at the corner. The girl waved him away. Dummell shoved his hands into his pockets and walked on uptown, looking down at the sidewalk. Kenneth drifted downtown. The girl was not in sight on the side street. Had she gone into the delicatessen? Would that rude swine behind the counter mention him to the girl?

  The girl came out of the delicatessen, carrying a bag.

  Kenneth crossed Macdougal and followed her. She went up the steps of her house. “Excuse me, miss,” Kenneth said.

  She turned, a little scared looking.

  Kenneth limped halfway up the steps. “You’re a friend of the cop’s?”

  “Who’re you?—Get out of here! Leave me alone!”

  Kenneth had never seen such fear so quickly. He smiled, excited and pleased. “I’m the one who gave your friend five hundred dollars! You’re his girlfriend?” Kenneth added a phrase and licked his lips, stammering from his own sudden laughter.

  She almost screamed: Kenneth could see her tongue in her open mouth. She looked to right and left, but at that instant there was no one near them. Kenneth stepped backward carefully, holding to the stone balustrade. He didn’t want her to scream and cause someone to grab him, question him.

  “He’s a crook!” Kenneth said. “He says I’m a crook! He’s a crook!”

  Kenneth slipped away quickly, limping southward, away from the girl and from the young cop—just in case Dummell might have turned back, Ha! Ha! Dummell’s girlfriend. He could make her feel uncomfortable, all right. Just by being on the sidewalk, for instance, when she came out of her house. The cops couldn’t arrest him for that. He had as much right to take a walk on Macdougal as on any other street.

  Would the girl call up Dummell now and tell him she’d seen—What did they call him? Rowajinski? The Pole?

  The day was beginning in a very satisfactory manner.

  14

  It was Clarence’s day off, Wednesday, meaning he had the evening off and didn’t have to work until Thursday evening, but now he was without Marylyn. She was adamant, absolutely unbending. However, today at least he had not made himself a bore, hadn’t stayed too long in her house. The point was, he had been unsuccessful. “Can’t you get it through your head, I don’t like cops? I can’t stand the life!” she had said, as if “the life” had some special, horrible meaning for her. Clarence hadn’t mentioned the Pole, that he was out today, on the loose again. He had mentioned seeing the Reynoldses Sunday evening. He wished Marylyn could meet the Reynoldses, but he didn’t know how that could be arranged. Was he a friend of theirs? Hardly. Could he ever make them his friends? It was awful to be in t
he predicament he was in with them, having let them down in the only service he could have rendered—saving their dog. Clarence was on his way home on the Lexington Avenue bus as these thoughts went through his head. Marylyn’s stubbornness had left him feeling stunned and tired. He wanted to put on more comfortable clothes, then go to the library on East 23rd Street and change some books.

  His telephone was ringing. On the floor below he heard it and went flying up the stairs, thinking it might be Marylyn with a cataclysmic change of mind.

  “Hello!” It was Marylyn, speaking before he spoke. “Listen, that creep—that Pole—He was just on my doorstep!”

  “What? You’re kidding!”

  “The hell I am! He has a limp?”

  “Yes.”

  “He nearly followed me into the house!” she yelled, her voice cracking. “Where is safe, I’d like to know? Where? You the great police force!”

  “Darling—What did he want?”

  “He said you took the five hundred dollars, if you want to know.”

  “Marylyn—you’re not joking, are you? You’re serious?”

  “He spoke to me. He was almost coming in the door. What’ve I got to do to be safe, move from here? And you wonder why I don’t want to see you again?”

  “I—I’ll report him. The Pole.”

  But the next thing Clarence heard was the gentle hum of a dial tone. He put the telephone down, and slammed the back of his fist against his forehead in an agony of shock and shame. “God!” He took off his tie and opened his collar. He’d go straight to the Pole’s pad and scare the hell out of him.

  Clarence took a taxi and had the taxi drop him at Hudson and Barrow Street. He glanced around for Rowajinski on the streets, and didn’t see him. At Rowajinski’s building, one of the five bells (most of them with illegible names) said SUPER, so Clarence pushed this. No answer, and he pushed another, waited a few seconds and tried a third.

  Someone buzzed him in.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice yelled from upstairs.

  Clarence leapt up the stairs three at a time. He was confronted by a woman of about sixty in a pale-pink dressing-gown. “I’m looking for the new tenant. The new lodger. Rowajinksi,” Clarence said. “Just moved in today.”

  Silence for several seconds. “Somebody moved in on the second floor.”

  “Thanks,” Clarence ran down one flight. There were two doors. He knocked on both. There was silence.

  Then a big dark-haired man climbed the stairs slowly behind Clarence. He was in shirtsleeves and houseshoes.

  “Excuse me, is this where Rowajinski lives?” asked Clarence.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the police,” Clarence said, pulling out his billfold.

  The man looked at his police card. “What’s the trouble? Listen, if he’s a screwball, I don’t have to take him, see? What’s the trouble? They told me there wasn’t gonna be no trouble.”

  “I just want to talk with him,” Clarence said. “Let me in.”

  The man looked at him oddly, then knocked. “Mr.—”

  “Rowajinski,” Clarence said.

  “Rozinski?” the man yelled at the door.

  No answer.

  “I would like you to open the door,” Clarence said, with an effort at calmness.

  The man pulled a batch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door, but it didn’t open. “Bolted on the inside.”

  Clarence wanted to smash it with his shoulder, but restrained himself, because the man was calling:

  “Mr. Rozinski? Would you open the door, please? It’s the police!”

  Silence. And the man was about to shout again when the bolt slid.

  “Police?” said Rowajinski, all innocence.

  “Thank you,” said Clarence to the super.

  “What’s going on?” the man asked the Pole.

  Clarence said, “It’s routine. I had to make sure he was here.”

  “Are you taking him away?” asked the man.

  “No.”

  “Not that I’d mind much. I don’t have to have weirdos, y’know. I’m doing people a favor. But I don’t have to do people no favors.”

  “I know. I just have to speak with him for a minute,” Clarence said, pushing his way into Rowajinski’s room. He closed the door.

  “And what’s the idea of this intrusion?” asked Rowajinski.

  Clarence tried to back him, by walking forward, into the far side of the room, in case the super was outside the door listening, but Rowajinski circled. “Among the things you’re not supposed to do,” Clarence began, “is to hang around people’s houses and pester them. I just heard about Macdougal Street, Rowajinski. Would you rather be in Bellevue permanently locked up?”

  “I got a right to go to Macdougal Street,” said Rowajinski, unruffled. His fists were on his hips.

  “I’ve got the right to book you for loitering and verbal assault!”

  Kenneth smirked. “She’s your girlfriend, right? Not your wife, is she?”

  Clarence pulled his right fist back.

  Kenneth dodged. But obviously the cop wasn’t going to hit him. The cop was afraid to. “You can’t come into my house and menace me like this! This is my property here. Get out!”

  “Oh, stuff it,” Clarence said. He glanced around quickly at the room—the Pole’s cruddy suitcase open on the floor, everything in the room worn out, the seat worn out in the green armchair, metal ashtrays with black gook stuck to them, a bed worse than a cage bed. But it was a trifle cleaner than the Pole’s last place.

  “I asked you to leave my house!” said Rowajinski.

  “Rowajinski—” Clarence spoke between his teeth”—if you hang around Macdougal, I’m going to bust you wide open. I’ll fix you. Don’t think I can’t. It’d be easy for me.”

  “Sure, you’re a crook! A crook with a gun!” Kenneth said in a proud but martyred tone. “But I’ve got you fixed! You take bribes! You—”

  Clarence grabbed the Pole’s shirtfront and shook him so that his head bobbed this way and that. “You can shove that crap right back up your ass, you lousy pollack!”

  Kenneth jerked back and squirmed, but could not break the cop’s hold on his shirtfront, though the shirt was tearing. “Crook!”

  Clarence gave a shove, and Rowajinski’s head banged the wall, then Clarence swung him around the thrust him away. Kenneth fell backward, and sat down on the floor with a thump. Clarence went to the door and out. At first, Clarence did not see the big man at the head of the stairs that went down.

  “Now listen, what’s all this? What’s he done?”

  Clarence kept on going, quickly, down the stairs, silent. He went out and turned east, crossed Hudson and had to leap to avoid a taxi that nearly hit him. The taxi driver honked in fury. Clarence wanted to go straight to Marylyn’s house. But what good would it do, even if he told this, what had just happened?

  Kenneth Rowajinski, still on the floor, was finding it impossible to control his bowels. He tensed himself, but it was of no use. At last, miserable, he got up and carefully removed his trousers. No basin in the crummy room! Such a horrible thing! He had heard of such things—due to fright—but it had never happened to him before. He removed his underpants, put on other trousers, and went to ask Phil for the key to the bathroom. He would have to wash his underpants in the bathtub, not at the hall basin where anyone could see him.

  “Phil!—Mr. Phil!” Kenneth shouted in the hall. He went part way downstairs.

  “Listen, Mr. Rowajinski,” came Phil’s voice from the dark hall below. “I want to know what’s going on!” Phil was coming up.

  “There is nothing going on. I would like the key to the bathroom,” Kenneth said stiffly.

  “Why did that cop want to see you? What’ve
you done? What was all the noise?”

  “Mr. Phil—the key to the bathroom and I will speak with you later.”

  “Oh, yeah? I’m going to speak with Bellevue!”

  “Mr. Phil!—The key! I want to wash!”

  Finally he got the key. Phil fetched it from his own apartment. Kenneth’s ablutions took fifteen minutes. And was Phil calling up Bellevue? It was probably an empty threat.

  But no doubt Phil would snoop on Friday when the Bellevue bastard arrived.

  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?”