Missive #38 – Master of Suspense

sent from: Russell Street, London, UK. destination: Los Angeles, California, USA
I must have picked up this card on a trip to New York, I’m guessing in the early 2000s. This is going to an aspiring filmmaker friend of mine in Los Angeles.
The vignette here continues the Man With The Briefcase story, as I try and evoke a bit of Hitchcock-ian suspense. I ran out of space at the end and I’m not too happy with the end of it. It’s barely even first-draft material, but it’s fun to sketch these thoughts out and then try to figure out what I should have done. I’d like at least to append to the end something like: Still, it wasn’t all bad news; they’d seen him and knew where he was. They’d be on his tail soon, and he had no idea. 
The postcard text reads as follows:
– So, what are we doing? – the short one said to his taller colleague, who had to shuffle around to turn and talk to him in the crush of people.
– We’re supposed to follow this bloke.
– Which one?
The tall one, who had an air of breeding and the menace that went with knowing what it took to break someone’s knees, showed him the photo.
– He looks fairly ordinary – the short one said in response. He felt the jab of someone’s paperback in his ribs. If they were somewhere else, an alley for instance, he would have a knife in the reader’s guts by now.
– He must have done something, to get his attention. Look out for the briefcase.

As the train pulled away they had time to observe a man still on the platform, looking a little bemused, clutching his briefcase. It took the men a moment to realise who they had just seen, the man they were supposed to find and capture, had already managed to evade them.

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