Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

the guest-room for a few minutes. He did not fall asleep, and Reeves came in at 5 p.m. to say it would soon be time for Karl to drive him to his hotel. The topcoat was at Jonathan’s hotel. Reeves gave him a cup of tea with sugar, which tasted all right, and Jonathan assumed there was nothing in it but tea. Reeves gave him the gun, and showed him the safety-catch again. Jonathan put the gun in his trousers pocket.
    ‘See you tonight!’ Reeves said cheerily.
    Karl drove him to his hotel, and said he would wait. Jonathan supposed he had five or ten minutes. He brushed his teeth – with soap, because he’d left the toothpaste at home for Simone and Georges and hadn’t bought any as yet – then lit a Gitane and stood looking out the window until he realized he wasn’t seeing anything, wasn’t even thinking of anything, and then he went to the closet and got the largish coat. The coat had been worn, but not much. Whose had it been? Appropriate, Jonathan thought, because he could pretend to be acting, in someone else’s clothes, pretend the gun was a blank gun in a play. But Jonathan knew he knew exactly what he was doing. Towards the Mafioso he was going to kill (he hoped) he felt no mercy. And Jonathan realized he felt no pity for himself, either. Death was death. For different reasons, Bianca’s life and his own life had lost value. The only interesting detail was that Jonathan stood to be paid for his action of killing Bianca. Jonathan put the gun in his jacket pocket and the nylon stocking in the same pocket with it. He found he could draw the stocking on to his hand with the fingers of the same hand. Nervously, he wiped the gun of fingerprints real and imaginary with the stocking-covered fingers. He would have to hold the coat aside slightly when he fired, otherwise there’d be a bullet-hole in the coat. He had no hat. Curious that Reeves hadn’t thought of a hat. It was too late now to worry about it.
    Jonathan went out of his room door and pulled it firmly shut.
    Karl was standing on the pavement by his car. He held the door for Jonathan. Jonathan wondered how much Karl knew, and if he knew everything? Jonathan was leaning forward in the back seat, to ask Karl to go to the Rathaus U-bahn station, when Karl said over his shoulder:
    ‘You are to meet Fritz at the Rathaus station. That is correct, sir?’
    ‘Yes.’ said Jonathan, relieved. He sat back in a corner and lightly fingered the little gun. He pushed the safety on and off, remembering that forward was off.
    ‘Herr Minot suggested here, sir. The entrance is across the street.’ Karl opened the door but did not get out, because the street was crowded with cars and people. ‘Herr Minot said I am to find you at your hotel at seven-thirty, sir,’ said Karl.
    ‘Thank you.’ Jonathan felt lost for an instant, hearing the thud of the car door closing. He looked around for Fritz. Jonathan was at a huge intersection marked Gr. Johannesstrasse and Rathausstrasse. As in London, Piccadilly for instance, there seemed to be at least four entrances to the U-bahn here because of so many streets intersecting. Jonathan looked around for the short figure of Fritz with his cap on his head. A group of men, like a football team in topcoats, dashed down the U-bahn steps, revealing Fritz standing calmly by the metal post of the stairs, and Jonathan’s heart gave a leap as if he had met a lover at a secret rendezvous. Fritz gestured towards the steps, and went down himself.
    Jonathan kept an eye on Fritz’s cap, though there were now fifteen or more people between them. Fritz moved to one side of the throng. Evidently Bianca had not come on the scene yet, and they were to await him. There was a hubbub of German around Jonathan, a burst of laughter, a shouted ‘Wiedersehen, Max!”
    Fritz stood against a wall some twelve feet away, and Jonathan drifted in his direction but kept a safe distance away from him, and before Jonathan reached the wall, Fritz nodded and moved