Strangers on a...

What do you do when a stranger confesses to having committed a crime?  Proceed to execute a citizen's arrest, call the cops, shrug and walk away? There is no statute of limitations on murder. And there is a million of unsolved crimes in the naked city.

I took a train downtown to pick her up at the end of her shift.  What I didn't know was that her relief telephoned the theater to report that he'd be two hours late due to family problems.  She had to stay at work, and I had two hours to kill.  She was working at one of the three movie theaters remaining downtown, three out of eight, during the days when there were no VCRs, no DVDs, plenty of parking and people drove to the center to shop and seek entertainment.  Two out of three have been split up into multiple screens and the third one with the most screens was built anew on the site of a former department store, so in the number of screens it's all evened out. Some of the auditoriums are as small as the screening rooms in Hollywood where the producers and actors watch the dailies each evening, and that's not too bad for viewing films either.

I told her she'd find me after she gets off work either in the city library next door or at the cafe on the corner across the street.  I went to the library first.  Whenever I visit the library with nothing in particular in mind, my mind goes completely blank, I forget the names of my favorite authors and wander aimlessly until something catches my attention or the memory improves.  I spotted on a moving cart a tape of a Hitchcock film which made me think of Patricia Highsmith  and her stories, which I had stopped reading years earlier after becoming bored and irritated by their sameness.  All genre stories are, I discovered, formula driven and predictable,  even those written by better authors.

And so, I picked up a copy of  Patricia Highsmith's novel "Strangers on a Train" and took it to a row of tables located in the wide open area in between the stacks.   There was only one person there at those six tables , a Chinese student with a laptop, it was quiet, good light right at the table, I sat down and began to read. My peace didn't last long, as a man about 45 sat down opposite me, holding a magazine, said 'How ya doin'", opened the magazine,  and apparently finding nothing of interest inside, asked, "Whatcha readin'?"  I showed him the cover.   "Ah," he said, "a movie was made from it. Good one too."  I nodded, hoping to return to my book, but he continued.

"Done it once myself." he said. "Before I ever saw the movie or read the book. But it wasn't strangers on a train, only on a bus!" He laughed.  "Greyhound bus in Nebraska. I'll tell you more,  but this is a library, silence is the law here, and I try to avoid breaking the law."

"Let go to the cafe across the street," I suggested, suddenly interested in the man's story.  I set Patricia down on the table, no need to return her to the shelf, the library staff will do it, we walked out, crossed the street, ordered two cappuccinos at the cafe, sat down on stools by the window counter, and he continued his tale.

"I don't know if the fellow who proposed this deal had seen the movie or read the book, I couldn't ask about something I didn't know existed, and when it was all over, and I discovered the source of the idea, he was long gone. I was a greenhorn, 19 years old, he was about 30.  We did it and we got away with it.  I was to kill his wife's brother in New York City, who encouraged her to divorce him, and he was to kill my girlfriend's new beau, a jock who stole her from me, a geek at the time.  The jock, a football player, died first, under suspicious circumstances that might have been an accident, and eventually was judged by investigators to have been an accident,  but my "partner" claimed it was his doing.  I had to keep up my end of the bargain, and I traveled to New York where I shot this man in a fake street robbery which brought me nothing except 50 dollars, a cheap watch and an American Express card both of which I threw away.   Did you ever do terrible things because of a woman?"

"I don't know, if I've ever done terrible things it wasn't because of a woman, as far as I can remember."

It was at that moment when my date showed up, called me by my first name, interrupted our conversation, and the man, who never introduced himself, quickly got up, said Goodbye and left.

"Who is he?" she asked.
"I don't know, I've just met him at the library"

We went to dinner at a downtown restaurant as planned.

Exactly two weeks later on a Wednesday,  she called me at work to say that "This friend of yours came to the theater looking for you, asking that you call him back, left a number, and explained it was about your father."

Yes, it was the man I had spoken to at the cafe, she confirmed, and, as I told her, no friend of mine.

"About my father? What did you tell him about my father?" I asked
"Nothing," she said, "You've never told me anything about your father."
"Did you tell him my last name?", I asked, remembering that the man had heard my first name spoken.
"Nope!"

When I saw her that evening, again for dinner, she handed me the business card the man left with her.  It showed nothing but a telephone number which looked like it was handwritten, but turning it to light I saw that it had been printed using a cursive font.  The area code indicated the suburban county behind the hills.

"Is there something to be concerned about?" she asked me as I examined the card.
"No, nothing at all", I lied.

What to do? What could he want?  Is the man bluffing? Or did he recognize my close resemblance to my late father?  If he had not known where Donna worked, I could safely ignore him, but now, without realizing it,  she became involved, like it or not.   I could probably find her another job somewhere, except that this job was at her uncle's theater.  I had a few things to consider  before deciding.