Ripley's Game

1 'There's no such thing as a perfect murder,' Tom said to Reeves. 'That's just a parlour game, trying to dream one up. Of course you could say there are a lot of unsolved murders. That's different.' Tom was bored. He walked up and down in front of his big fireplace, where a small but cosy fire crackled. Tom felt he had spoken in a stuffy, pontificating way. But the point was, he couldn't help Reeves, and he'd already told him that. 'Yes, sure,' said Reeves. He was sitting in one of the yellow silk armchairs, his lean figure hunched forward, hands clasped between his knees. He had a bony face, short, light-brown hair, cold grey eyes-- not a pleasant face but a face that might have been rather handsome if not for a scar that travelled five inches from his right temple across his cheek almost to his mouth. Slightly pinker than the rest of his face, the scar looked like a bad job of stitching, or as if perhaps it had never been stitched. Tom had never asked about the scar, but Reeves had volunteered once, 'A girl did it with her compact. Can you imagine?' (No, Tom couldn't.) Reeves had given Tom a quick, sad smile, one of the few smiles Tom could recall from Reeves. And on another occasion, 'I was thrown from a horse--dragged by the stirrup for a few yards.' Reeves had said that to someone else, but Tom had been present. Tom suspected a dull knife in a very nasty fight somewhere. Now Reeves wanted Tom to provide someone, suggest someone to do one or perhaps two 'simple murders' and perhaps one theft, also safe and simple. Reeves had come from Hamburg to Villeperce to talk to Tom, and he was going to stay the night and go to Paris tomorrow to talk to someone else about it, then return to his home in Hamburg, presumably to do some more thinking if he failed. Reeves was primarily a fence, but lately was dabbling in the illegal gambling world of Hamburg, which he was now undertaking to protect. Protect from what? Italian sharks who wanted to come in. One Italian in Hamburg was a Mafia button man, sent out as a feeler, Reeves thought, and the other might be, from a different family. By eliminating one or both of these intruders, Reeves hoped to discourage further Mafia attempts, and also to draw the attention of the Hamburg police to a Mafia threat, and let the police handle the rest, which was to say, throw the Mafia out. 'These Hamburg boys are a decent batch,' Reeves had declared fervently. 'Maybe what they're doing is illegal, running a couple of private casinos, but as clubs they're not illegal, and they're not taking outrageous profits. It's not like Las Vegas, all Mafia-corrupted, and right under the noses of the American cops!' Tom took the poker and pushed the fire together, put another neatly cut third-of-a-log on. It was nearly 6 p.m. Soon be time for a drink. And why not now? 'Would you' Mine. Annette, the Ripleys' housekeeper, came in from the kitchen hall just then. 'Excuse me, messieurs. Would you like your drinks now, M. Tome, since the gentleman has not wanted any tea?' 'Yes, thank you, Mine. Annette. Just what I was thinking. And ask Mine. Heloise to join us, would you?' Tom wanted Heloise to lighten the atmosphere a little. He had said to Heloise, before he went to Orly at 3 p.m. to fetch Reeves, that Reeves wanted to talk to him about something, so Heloise had pottered about in the garden or stayed upstairs all afternoon. 'You wouldn't,' Reeves said with a last-minute urgency and hope, 'consider taking it on yourself? You're not connected, you see, and that's what we want. Safety. And after all, the money, ninety-six thousand bucks, isn't bad.' Tom shook his head. 'I'm connected with youin a way.' Dammit, he'd done little jobs for Reeves Minot, like posting on small, stolen items, or recovering from toothpaste tubes, where Reeves had planted them, tiny objects like microfilm rolls from the unsuspecting toothpaste carriers. 'Highsmith, Patricia is the author of 'Ripley's Game', published 1993 under ISBN 9780679745686 and ISBN 0679745688.