Strangers on a Train

by Strangers on a Train (2021) (retail) (epub)

  On a snowy evening a few days later, as he and Anne came down the brownstone steps of his West Fifty-third Street apartment house, Guy saw a tall bareheaded figure standing on the sidewalk gazing up at them. A tingle of alarm traveled to his shoulders, and involuntarily his hand tightened on Anne’s arm.

  “Hello,” Bruno said, his voice soft with melancholy. His face was barely visible in the dusk.

  “Hello,” Guy replied, as if to a stranger, and walked on.

  “Guy!”

  Guy and Anne turned at the same time. Bruno came toward them, hands in the pockets of his overcoat.

  “What is it?” Guy asked.

  “Just wanted to say hello. Ask how you are.” Bruno stared at Anne with a kind of perplexed, smiling resentment.

  “I’m fine,” Guy said quietly. He turned away, drawing Anne with him.

  “Who is he?” Anne whispered.

  Guy itched to look back. He knew Bruno would be standing where they had left him, knew he would be looking after them, weeping perhaps. “He’s a fellow who came around looking for work last week.”

  “You can’t do anything for him?”

  “No. He’s an alcoholic.”

  Deliberately Guy began to talk about their house, because he knew there was nothing else he could talk about now and possibly sound normal. He had bought the land, and the foundations were being laid. After New Year’s, he was going up to Alton and stay for several days. During the movie, he speculated as to how he could shake Bruno off, terrify him so that he would be afraid to contact him.

  What did Bruno want with him? Guy sat with his fists clenched at the movie. The next time, he would threaten Bruno with police investigation. And he would carry it through, too. What vast harm was there in suggesting a man be investigated?

  But what did Bruno want with him?

  nineteen

  Bruno had not wanted to go to Haiti, but it offered escape. New York or Florida or anywhere in the American continent was torture so long as Guy was there, too, and would not see him. To blot out his pain and depression, he had drunk a great deal at home in Great Neck, and to occupy himself had measured the house and the grounds in paces, measured his father’s room with tailor’s tape, moving doggedly, stooping, measuring and remeasuring, like a tireless automaton that wavered only slightly off its track now and then, betraying the fact it was drunk and not deranged. Thus he spent ten days after seeing Guy, waiting for his mother and her friend Alice Leffingwell to get ready to go to Haiti.

  There were moments when he felt his whole being in some as yet inscrutable stage of metamorphosis. There was the deed he had done, which in his hours alone in the house, in his room, he felt sat upon his head like a crown, but a crown that no one else could see. Very easily and quickly, he could break down in tears. There was the time he had wanted a caviar sandwich for lunch, because he deserved the finest, big black caviar, and when there had been only red in the house, had told Herbert to go out and get some black. He had eaten a quarter of the toasted sandwich, sipping a Scotch and water with it, then had almost fallen asleep staring at the triangle of toasted bread that finally had begun to lift at one corner. He had stared at it until it was no longer a sandwich, the glass with his drink no longer a glass, and only the golden liquid in it part of himself, and he had gulped it all. The empty glass and the curling toast had been live things that mocked him and challenged his right to use them. A butcher’s truck had departed down the driveway just then and Bruno had frowned after it, because everything had suddenly come alive and was fleeing to escape him—the truck, the sandwich, and the glass, the trees that couldn’t run away but were disdainful, like the house that imprisoned him. He had hit both his fists against the wall simultaneously, then seized the sandwich and broken its insolent triangular mouth and burnt it, piece by piece, in the empty fireplace, the caviar popping like little people, dying, each one a life.

  Alice Leffingwell, his mother and he, and a crew of four including two Puerto Ricans left for Haiti in mid-January on the steam yacht, Fairy Prince, which Alice had spent all fall and winter wresting from her former husband. The trip was a celebration of her third divorce, and she had invited Bruno and his mother months before. Bruno’s delight in the voyage inspired him to a pretense of indifference and boredom during the first days. No one noticed. Alice and his mother spent whole afternoons and evenings chattering together in the cabin, and in the mornings they slept. To justify his happiness to himself at such a dull prospect as being cooped up on a ship for a month with an old bag like Alice, Bruno convinced himself he had been under quite a strain watching out the police didn’t get on his trail, and that he needed leisure to dope out the details of how his father could be got rid of. He also reasoned that the more time elapsed, the more likely Guy would be to change his attitude.

  On shipboard, he detailed two or three key plans for the murder of his father, of which any other plans laid on the estate would be mere variations. He was very proud of his plans—one with gun in his father’s bedroom, one with knife and two choices of escape, and one with either gun or knife or strangulation in the garage where his father put his car every evening at 6:30. The disadvantage of the last plan was lack of darkness, but it had compensations in comparative simplicity. He could all but hear in his ears the efficient click-click of his plans’ operations. Yet whenever he finished a careful drawing, he felt obliged to tear it up for safety. He was eternally making drawings and tearing them up. The sea from Bar Harbor to the southernmost of the Virgin Islands was strewn with the subdivided seeds of his ideas when the Fairy Prince rounded Cape Maisi bound for Port-au-Prince.

  “A princely harbor for my Prince!” cried Alice, relaxing her mind in a lull of conversation with his mother.

  Around the corner from them, in the shade, Bruno fumbled up the paper he had been drawing on and lifted his head. In the left quarter of the horizon, land was visible in a gray fuzzy line. Haiti. Seeing it made it seem more distant and foreign than when he had not seen it. He was going farther and farther away from Guy. He pulled himself from the deck chair and went over to the port rail. They would spend days in Haiti before they moved on, and then they would move farther south. Bruno stood perfectly still, feeling frustration corrode him internally as the tropical sun did externally now, on the pale backs of his legs. Abruptly, he ripped the plan to pieces and released them by opening his hands over the side. The wind perversely carried the pieces forward.

  As important as the plans, of course, was to find someone for the job. He would do it himself, he thought, if not for the fact Gerard, his father’s private detective, would nail him no matter how carefully he planned it. Besides, he wanted to put his no-motivation scheme to the test again. Matt Levine or Carlos—the trouble was he knew them. And it was dangerous to try to negotiate without knowing if the person would agree. Bruno had seen Matt several times, and hadn’t been able to mention it.

  Something happened in Port-au-Prince that Bruno would never forget. He fell off the gangplank coming back aboard ship the second afternoon.

  The steamy heat had stupefied him and rum had made it worse, made him hotter. He was on his way from Hotel La Citadelle to the ship to get his mother’s evening shoes, when he stopped in a bar near the waterfront for a Scotch with ice. One of the Puerto Ricans of the crew, whom Bruno had disliked since the first moment he saw him, was in the bar and blind drunk, roaring around as if he owned the town, the Fairy Prince, and the rest of Latin America. He called Bruno a “wite bum-m” and a lot of other things Bruno could not understand but which made everybody laugh. Bruno left the bar with dignity, too tired and disgusted to fight, with a quiet determination to report it to Alice and get the Puerto Rican fired and blacklisted. A block away from the ship, the Puerto Rican caught up with him and kept on talking. Then, crossing the gangplank, Bruno lurched against the handrope and fell off into the filthy water. He couldn’t say the Puerto Rican had pushed him, because he hadn’t. The Puerto Rican and another sailor, also laughing, fished
him out and dragged him in to his bed. Bruno crawled off the bed and got his bottle of rum. He drank some straight, then flopped on the bed and fell asleep in his wet underwear.

  Later, his mother and Alice came in and shook him awake.

  “What happened?” they kept asking, giggling so they could hardly talk. “What happened, Charley?”

  Their figures were fuzzy but their laughs were sharp. He recoiled from Alice’s fingers on his shoulder. He couldn’t talk, but he knew what he wanted to say. What were they doing in his room if they didn’t have a message from Guy?

  “What? What guy?” asked his mother.

  “G’way!” he shouted, and he meant both of them.

  “Oh, he’s out,” said his mother deploringly, as if he were a hospital case nearly dead. “Poor boy. Poor, poor boy.”

  Bruno jerked his head this way and that to avoid the cool washcloth. He hated them both and he hated Guy! He had killed for him, dodged police for him, kept quiet when he asked him to, fallen in the stinking water for him, and Guy didn’t even want to see him! Guy spent his time with a girl! Guy wasn’t scared or unhappy, just didn’t have time for him! Three times he had seen her around Guy’s house in New York! If he had her here, he would kill her just like he had killed Miriam!

  “Charley, Charley, hush!”

  Guy would get married again and never have time for him. See what sympathy he’d get now when this girl played him for a sucker! He’d been seeing her in Mexico, not just visiting friends. No wonder he’d wanted Miriam out of the way! And he hadn’t even mentioned Anne Faulkner on the train! Guy had used him. Maybe Guy would kill his father whether he liked it or not. Anybody can do a murder. Guy hadn’t believed it, Bruno remembered.

  twenty

  “Have a drink with me,” Bruno said. He had appeared out of nowhere, in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “I don’t care to see you. I’m not asking questions. I don’t care to see you.”

  “I don’t care if you ask questions,” Bruno said with a weak smile. His eyes were wary. “Come across the street. Ten minutes.”

  Guy glanced around him. Here he is, Guy thought. Call the police. Jump him, throw him down to the sidewalk. But Guy only stood rigidly. He saw that Bruno’s hands were rammed in his pockets, as if he might have a gun.

  “Ten minutes,” Bruno said, luring him with the tentative smile.

  Guy hadn’t heard a word from Bruno in weeks. He tried to summon back the anger of that last evening in the snow, of his decision to turn Bruno over to the police. This was the critical moment. Guy came with him. They walked into a bar on Sixth Avenue and took a back booth.

  Bruno’s smile grew wider. “What’re you scared about, Guy?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Are you happy?”

  Guy sat stiffly on the edge of his seat. He was sitting opposite a murderer, he thought. Those hands had crushed Miriam’s throat.

  “Listen, Guy, why didn’t you tell me about Anne?”

  “What about Anne?”

  “I’d have liked to know about her, that’s all. On the train, I mean.”

  “This is our last meeting, Bruno.”

  “Why? I just want to be friends, Guy.”

  “I’m going to turn you over to the police.”

  “Why didn’t you do that in Metcalf?” Bruno asked with the lowest pink gleam in his eyes, as only he could have asked it, impersonally, sadly, yet with triumph. Oddly, Guy felt his inner voice had asked him the question in the same way.

  “Because I wasn’t sure enough.”

  “What do I have to do, make a written statement?”

  “I can still turn you over for investigation.”

  “No, you can’t. They’ve got more on you than on me.” Bruno shrugged.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “What do you think they’d get on me? Nothing.”

  “I could tell them!” He was suddenly furious.

  “If I wanted to say you paid me for it,” Bruno frowned self-righteously, “the pieces would fit like hell!”

  “I don’t care about pieces.”

  “Maybe you don’t, but the law does.”

  “What pieces?”

  “That letter you wrote Miriam,” Bruno said slowly, “the cover-up of that job canceling. The whole convenient trip to Mexico.”

  “You’re insane!”

  “Face it, Guy! You’re not making any sense!” Bruno’s voice rose hysterically over the jukebox that had started up near them. He pushed his hand flat across the table toward Guy, then closed it in a fist. “I like you, Guy, I swear. We shouldn’t be talking like this!”

  Guy did not move. The edge of the bench cut against the back of his legs. “I don’t want to be liked by you.”

  “Guy, if you say anything to the police, you’ll only land us both in prison. Don’t you see?”

  Guy had thought of it, even before now. If Bruno clung to his lies, there could be a long trial, a case that might never be decided unless Bruno broke down, and Bruno wouldn’t break down. Guy could see it in the monomaniacal intensity with which Bruno stared at him now. Ignore him, Guy thought. Keep away. Let the police catch him. He’s insane enough to kill you if you make a move.

  “You didn’t turn me in in Metcalf because you like me, Guy. You like me in a way.”

  “I don’t like you in the least.”

  “But you’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

  “No,” Guy said between his teeth. Bruno’s calm amazed him. Bruno was not afraid of him at all. “Don’t order me another drink. I’m leaving.”

  “Wait a minute.” Bruno got money from his wallet and gave it to the waiter.

  Guy sat on, held by a sense of inconclusiveness.

  “Good-looking suit.” Bruno smiled, nodding toward Guy’s chest.

  His new gray flannel chalk-stripe suit. Bought with the Palmyra money, Guy thought, like his new shoes and the new alligator brief case beside him on the seat.

  “Where do you have to go?”

  “Downtown.” He was to meet a prospective client’s representative at the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 7. Guy stared at Bruno’s hard, wistful eyes, feeling sure Bruno thought he was on his way to meet Anne now. “What’s your game, Bruno?”

  “You know,” Bruno said quietly. “What we talked about on the train. The exchange of victims. You’re going to kill my father.”

  Guy made a sound of contempt. He had known it before Bruno said it, had suspected it since Miriam’s death. He stared into Bruno’s fixed, still wistful eyes, fascinated by their cool insanity. Once as a child he had stared at a mongoloid idiot on a streetcar, he remembered, like this, with a shameless curiosity that nothing could shake. Curiosity and fear.

  “I told you I could arrange every detail.” Bruno smiled at the corner of his mouth, amusedly, apolegetically. “It’d be very simple.”

  He hates me, Guy thought suddenly. He’d love to kill me, too.

  “You know what I’ll do if you don’t.” Bruno made a gesture of snapping his fingers, but his hand on the table was carelessly limp. “I’ll just put the police onto you.”

  Ignore him, Guy thought, ignore him! “You don’t frighten me in the least. It’d be the easiest thing in the world to prove you insane.”

  “I’m no more insane than you are!”

  It was Bruno who ended the interview a moment later. He had a 7 o’clock appointment with his mother, he said.

  The next encounter, so much shorter, Guy felt he lost, too, though at the time he thought he had won. Bruno tried to intercept him one Friday afternoon as he was leaving his office on the way to Long Island to see Anne. Guy simply brushed past him and climbed into a taxi. Yet a feeling of having physically run away shamed him, began to undermine a certain dignity that had up to them been intact. He wished he had said something to Bruno. He wished he had faced him for an instant.

  twenty-one

  In the next days, there was hardly an evening when Bruno was not standing on th
e sidewalk across the street from his office building. Or if not there, standing across the street from where he lived, as if Bruno knew the evenings he would come straight home. There was never a word now, never a sign, only the tall figure with the hands in the pockets of the long, rather military overcoat that fit him closely, like a stovepipe. There was only the eyes following him, Guy knew, though he did not look back until he was out of sight. For two weeks. Then the first letter came.

  It was two sheets of paper: the first a map of Bruno’s house and the grounds and roads around it and the course Guy would take, neatly drawn with dotted and ruled ink lines, and the second a typed, closely written letter lucidly setting forth the plan for the murder of Bruno’s father. Guy tore it up, then immediately regretted it. He should have kept it as evidence against Bruno. He kept the pieces.

  But there was no need to have kept them. He received such a letter every two or three days. They were all mailed from Great Neck, as if Bruno stayed out there now—he had not seen Bruno since the letters began—writing perhaps on his father’s typewriter the letters that must have taken him two or three hours to prepare. The letters were sometimes drunken. It showed in the typing mistakes and in the emotional bursts of the last paragraphs. If he were sober, the last paragraph was affectionate and reassuring as to the ease of the murder. If he were drunk, the paragraph was either a gush of brotherly love or a threat to haunt Guy all his life, ruin his career and his “love affair,” and a reminder that Bruno had the upper hand. All the necessary information might have been gotten from any one of the letters, as if Bruno anticipated he might tear most of them up unopened. But despite his determination to tear up the next, Guy would open it when it came, curious as to the variations in the last paragraph. Of Bruno’s three plans, the one with a gun, using the back entrance of the house, came most often, though each letter invited him to take his choice.

  The letters affected him in a perverse way. After the shock of the first, the next few bothered him hardly at all. Then as the tenth, twelfth, fifteenth appeared in his mailbox, he felt they hammered at his consciousness on his nerves in a manner that he could not analyze. Along in his room he would spend quarter hours trying to isolate his injury and repair it. His anxiety was unreasonable, he told himself, unless he thought Bruno would turn on him and try to murder him. And he didn’t really. Bruno had never threatened that. But reasoning could not alleviate the anxiety, or make it less exhausting.