Found in the Street by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

thought, and for an uncountable number of nights to come.

5
    At a little past 4 in the morning, Ralph Linderman went into the office of the garage where he worked, and without thinking pulled open a table drawer where lay two guns, one in a holster and on a belt. Ralph did not carry a gun on duty, but he was to know where the gun or guns were when he arrived, and when he left.
    â€œTakin’ off, hey Ralph?’’ said Joey Fischer, a lanky young man in mechanic’s coverall who happened to be in the office just then.
    â€œWhat else? What’s new?” Ralph said as if he didn’t expect an answer. He glanced at his wristwatch, then wrote the time and signed his name in a ledger on the desk. “No sign—”
    An ambulance screamed by just then beyond the little glass­walled office on West Forty-eighth Street. A passing pedestrian turned to gawk after the ambulance, and collided with another man walking in the opposite direction. Then a car’s bright lights swept Joey’s young face and the office as a big car entered the garage.
    â€œNo sign of Conlan I was about to say,” Ralph went on. Conlan, the next security guard on duty, was supposed to take over at 4.
    â€œAh, he’ll turn up in a minute,” said Joey, and went out of the office into the semi-darkness of the garage to take care of the car that had come in, show the fellow where to park.
    Now if somebody wanted to do a heist on Midtown-Parking, any time before Conlan came on, now was the time, Ralph thought. Conlan to Ralph was an example of what not to be, as a security guard. The old guy must be sixty-four if he was a day, and he’d really let himself go, dragging around and looking as if it would take him five minutes to draw a gun if he had to, and always ten or fifteen minutes late. The least a man could do, Ralph thought, was haul himself out of bed or wherever in good time, extra time, to make it to a job he was being paid for. Now, for instance, while Joey Fischer was dealing with this new customer who might be a crook himself, the office was unlocked and theoretically unmanned, except that he himself stood here, and a gun was within reach. You never knew who was passing by on the sidewalk just ten feet away outside, day or night, you never knew. Drug addicts needed their fix, needed dough, at any hour of the day or night. Ralph eyed the passersby critically, not really expecting any trouble, but intending to wait until Conlan got here. Joey returned with one end of the card he had given to the man who had just come in, and stuck it on a board.
    â€œStill here?” Joey said, turning, lighting a cigarette.
    â€œNot for long,” said Ralph, having just seen Frank Conlan crossing the street from the uptown direction. “Here he comes. G’night, Joey.” Ralph managed a rare smile. Joey Fischer was a decent young fellow, honest and hard-working, recently married too. “Morning, Mr. Conlan.”
    â€œHell-o-o,” said Conlan breezily. “Little late, I know. I had a bitch of a wait for my bus this morning. How you, Joey?”
    â€œOh, just perky,” said Joey with a smile at Ralph.
    Ralph nodded a good-bye to Joey and left. He glanced at the sky which showed no promise of dawn, but would by the time he got down to Sheridan Square on the bus. He loved the very early mornings like this, walking God who was always so glad to see him after eight hours or so, breathing in the air that was a lot less polluted at 5 a.m. than it would be at 9 a.m., for instance. Be grateful for small things, Ralph thought.
    He had got off the Seventh Avenue bus at Sheridan Square and taken a few steps into Christopher Street, when a yelp of drunken voices rent the air. Ralph saw them, three or four fellows and a couple of girls on the other side of Christopher, heading eastward, staggering, laughing, shoving one another. They’d been up all night, of course, in one of those sordid dens in