Mermaids on the Golf Course by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page B

boomed.
    Craig smiled, pleased, “Human interest. That’s what Ed Simmons said my photo had.”
    And Craig didn’t think any more about that picture of Lizzie Davis until ten days later, when on one of his visits to the Evening Star office with a batch of new photographs, Ed Simmons told Craig that the New York Times had telexed, wanting to use Craig’s photograph in a series of articles about crime in America.
    “You’d better be pleased, Craig.”
    “With a credit?” Craig was nearly speechless with surprise.
    “Well, natch.—Now let’s see what you’ve got here.” Ed looked over Craig’s offerings: three photos of the Kyanduck Boy Scouts’ annual picnic at Kyanduck Park, and three of current weddings. Ed showed no visible interest. Tom Buckley had probably topped him on these events, Craig was thinking. “I’ll look ’em over again. Thanks, Craig.”
    That was Ed’s phrase when he wasn’t going to buy anything.
    Still, Craig’s dazed smile at the news about the New York Times lingered on his face as he left the office. He’d never yet had a photo in the New York Times! What was so great about that picture?
    Craig found out some five days later. His photograph was one of three in the first of a three-part series of articles in the New York Times called “Crime in America’s Streets.” His photograph had been cleverly cut to show it to better advantage, Craig noticed. The text beneath said:
    A young woman in a small town in Wyoming rushes towards her parents, seconds after being held hostage under threat of rape by one of a three-man armed holdup team who robbed bus passengers in midmorning.
    And there was his name in tiny letters at one side of the picture: Craig Rollins.
    When Craig showed the article to his parents that evening, he saw real joy and surprise in their faces. Their son with his work in the New York Times!
    “That girl Lizzie’s a changed girl, you know, Mart?” Craig’s father addressed his mother.
    “Yes, I’ve heard,” said his mother. “Edna Schwartz was talking about Lizzie just yesterday. Told me Lizzie’s broken off her engagement. You know, she was supposed to get married in late June, Craig.”
    Craig hadn’t known. “Was she really raped?” he asked, as if his parents might know the truth, as indeed they might, because his mother worked behind the counter of Odds and Ends, a shop that sold dry goods and buttons, and his mother chatted with nearly every woman of the town, and his father certainly saw a lot of people in the hardware store.
    “She’s saying so,” his mother replied in a whisper. “At least she’s hinting at it. And nobody knows if she broke off her engagement or her boyfriend did. What’s his name, dear? Peter Walsh?”
    “ Paul Walsh,” corrected his father. “You know, the Walshes up on Rockland Heights,” his father added to Craig.
    Craig didn’t know the Walshes, but he knew Rockland Heights, a neighborhood famous for fine houses and the well-to-do minority of the populace of Kyanduck. Snobs, he thought, to break an engagement these days because a girl’s virginity might have been lost. Like prehistoric times!
    Craig looked with interest at the two following articles in the New York Times, which he was able to see daily at the office of the Evening Star. The series was about car thefts, robberies of apartments, muggings, plus the efforts of the police in big cities to control such crime, of course, but also about the danger of its increasing, now that unemployment was spreading among the under-twenty-fives. A couple of photographs Craig admired very much: one a night-shot of a teenager picking the lock of a Chinese laundry; another of a mugging in the South Bronx, in which an elderly man had been flung to the ground, his grocery bag spilled beside him, while a boy in shorts and sneakers was diving into the inside pocket of the man’s jacket. Now these were damned good photographs! Why had they liked his so much, Craig wondered.