The Boy Who Followed Ripley

  Back at Eric’s flat, Tom dialed Belle Ombre. It had the same dial code as Paris. The telephone rang six, seven times, and Tom imagined Heloise perhaps in Paris, having had an impulse to go to an afternoon film with Noëlle, and Mme. Annette sitting over a tea or a cold soda pop in Marie’s and Georges’ café, exchanging the latest gossip with another femme de ménage of Villeperce. Then on the ninth ring, Mme. Annette said:

  “’Allo?”

  “Madame Annette, c’est Tome ici! How is everything at home?”

  “Très bien, Monsieur Tome! When are you returning home?”

  Tom smiled, relieved. “Wednesday, probably, not sure. Don’t worry. Is Madame Heloise there?”

  She was, but Mme. Annette had to summon her from upstairs.

  “Tome!” Heloise came to the telephone so quickly, Tom knew she had picked it up in his room. “Where are you? Hamburg?”

  “N-no, moving about a little. Did I wake you up from a nap?”

  “I was soaking my finger in something Madame Annette made for me, so I thought I would let her answer.”

  “Soaking your finger?”

  “A vasistas in the greenhouse fell on it yesterday when I was watering. It is swollen, but Madame Annette does not think the nail will fall off.”

  Tom gave a sympathetic sigh. She meant one of the windows that propped up in the greenhouse. “Let Henri take care of the greenhouse!”

  “Ah, Henri!— The boy is still with you?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, wondering if someone had rung Belle Ombre and asked about Frank. “Flying home tomorrow maybe. Heloise,” Tom said quickly before she could put a word in, “if anybody telephones and asks where I am, say I’ve gone out for a walk in Villeperce. That I’m home—just gone out. Any long distance caller—tell him that.”

  “Why is this?”

  “Because I very soon will be home taking a walk, Wednesday, I think. I’m moving around here—in Germany—so nobody can reach me just now anyway.”

  That went down reasonably well.

  “I kiss you,” were Tom’s last words.

  Tom felt very much better. Sometimes, he admitted to himself, he felt like a married man, solid, loved, or whatever one was supposed to feel. Even though he had just lied, a little bit, to his wife. It wasn’t a lie for the usual reasons anyway.

  Around eleven that evening, Tom was in a gayer place than Kreuzberg, a men’s bar considerably more chic than the one he had gone to with Frank. This one had a glass-enclosed stairway going up to the toilets, and patrons stood on the stairs making contacts, or trying to, with other patrons below.

  “Amusing, eh?” said Eric, who was waiting for someone. They stood at the bar, there being no tables free. The place was of course a disco as well. “Easier to—” Here Eric was jostled by someone behind him.

  Tom supposed Eric had been going to say it was easier to pass things in a place like this than even on a street corner, because all the customers, except those who were dancing, were either engrossed in shouted conversation or staring with their minds on pickups and not contraband goods. Tom had to admire one boy in drag, with a long black stole—or what was it—of feathers partly around his neck and partly hanging, one end of which he wafted gently as he strolled about. Few women went to such trouble to look their best.

  Eric’s contact arrived, a tallish young man in black leather, hands jammed into the pockets of a short leather jacket. “This is Max!” Eric yelled to Tom.

  Eric didn’t say Tom’s name. Just as well, Tom thought. The package, which Eric had wrapped in gift paper with a blue ribbon, changed hands and went into Max’s leather jacket front, which he zipped up again. Max’s hair was cut very short, and his nails were painted in shocking pink.

  “No time to take this away,” Max said to Tom in English with a German accent. “Busy all day. You like it?” He grinned mockingly, meaning did Tom like his nails.

  “Drink, Max? Dornkaat?” Eric shouted at him over the throbbing music. “Or a vodka?”

  Max’s expression suddenly changed. He had seen something in a far corner. “Thanks, I think I must fuck off.” He nodded in the direction Tom had seen him look, and dropped his eyes with embarrassment. “Guy over there I don’t want to see just now. Painful. I am sorry, Eric. G’night.” He gave Tom a nod, turned and went out the door.

  “Guter Junge!” Eric shouted at Tom, nodding toward the door where Max had disappeared. “Good boy! Gay but just as reliable as Peter! Max’s friend is called Rollo! You may meet him!” Eric put a hand on Tom’s forearm, and pressed him to have one more drink—anything—maybe a beer? Best if they didn’t leave right away, Eric conveyed.

  Tom consented to a beer and paid the barman in advance. “I love this crazy fantasy here!” Tom said to Eric. He meant the occasional figure in drag, the makeup, the mock flirtations, and the laughter and good humor everywhere. It gave Tom a lift, as A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture always gave him a lift before he went into battle. Fantasy! Courage was all imaginary, anyway, a matter of a mental state. A sense of reality did not help when one was faced with a gun barrel or a knife. Tom was now noticing, not for the first time, Eric’s furtive or at least anxiously observant glances over his shoulder. Eric wasn’t looking for an old or a new acquaintance among the men and boys. Or was he? No, Tom thought. Eric was a businessman, taking care of his apparently widely scattered business. Looking over his shoulder had become a habit with Eric.

  “Ever have any trouble with the police here, Eric?” Tom asked, close to Eric’s ear. “I mean this kind of bar?”

  But still Eric hadn’t heard him, thanks to a crash of cymbals in the music just now, a quivering climax of some kind that went on for several seconds before the deep heartbeat set in again, seeming to hit the walls as if they were drumheads. On the dance floor, male figures hopped up and down and twirled as if in a trance. Tom gave it up, shook his head, and picked up his fresh beer. He wasn’t going to yell the word “police” at the top of his lungs.

  14

  Berlin, the city’s lights, dwindled behind them, and Peter and Tom drove on through semi-rural, rather boring little communities, where nearly all the café lights were off now. Their direction was north. Eric had decided to stay at home, which was just as well, because Tom couldn’t imagine what good he could have done by coming, and if the kidnappers saw a third man in Peter’s car, they might suspect a police officer.

  “Now—this is the beginning of Lübars,” Peter said after some forty minutes of driving. “Now I go to the correct street and we shall have a look.” He sat up straight, as if he had an important job to do. He had drawn a little sketch, which he had shown Tom in Eric’s flat, and which now lay above his dashboard. “I think I have taken an unright road. Verdammt! But it does not matter, as we have plenty of time. It is only thirty-five minutes past three.” Peter took a small flashlight from the shelf over his dashboard, and focused it on his sketch. “I know what I did. I must turn.”

  As Peter turned, his headlights illuminated a dark field of cabbages or lettuce in rows, buttoning the earth down with their neat green dots. Tom readjusted the thick suitcase between his feet and knees. The night was pleasantly cool, and there seemed to be no moon.

  “Sure—this is the Zabel-Krüger-Damm again and I should go left up here. They go to bed so early here—get up early too!—Alt-Lübars, yes.” Peter made a careful left turn. “Up here to the right should be the village green,” Peter said softly in German, “according to my little map at home. Church and so on. And do you see those lights ahead?” His voice took on a rise of tension that Tom had not heard before. “That is the Wall.”

  Tom saw a fuzzy, whitish-yellow glow ahead, low and long, a bit lower than the road level, the searchlights on the other side of the Wall. The road sloped a little downward. Tom looked around for other cars, another car, but all was black except for a couple of perhaps obligatory streetlights in the direction of what Peter had called the village green. Now Peter’s car barely crept. The kidnappers, as f
ar as Tom could see, had not arrived as yet.

  “This little road is not for cars, which is why I am going so slowly. Now we should soon see the—Lagerhalle on the left. There, maybe?”

  The shed. Tom saw it, a low structure, longer than it was high, and it appeared to be open on the side facing the road. Tom could vaguely see a few structures that might be horse paddocks in a field to the right. Peter stopped by the shed.

  “Go ahead. Put the suitcase behind the shed. Then we’ll back out,” said Peter in German. “I cannot turn here.” Peter had dimmed his lights.

  Tom was ready to get out. “You go ahead and back. I’ll stay. I’ll make it back to Berlin, don’t worry.”

  “What do you mean, ‘stay’?”

  “Stay. I have a sudden inspiration.”

  “Do you want to meet that gang?” Peter’s hands twisted on the steering wheel. “Fight them? Don’t be crazy, Tom!”

  Tom said in English, “I know you have a gun. Can I borrow it?”

  “Sure, sure, but I can wait for you too—if—” Peter looked puzzled, pushed the knob of his glove compartment, and took a black gun from under a cloth. “It is loaded. Six shots. Safety here.”

  Tom took the gun. It was smallish and did not weigh much, but looked lethal enough. “Thank you.” Tom put it in the right side pocket of his jacket, then peered at his watch. Three-forty-three. He saw Peter glance nervously at the clock in the dashboard, which was one minute fast.

  “Look, Tom. You see that little hill of land over there?” Peter pointed behind them and to the right, toward the village green. “Where the church is. I shall wait for you there. With my lights out.” Peter said it like a command, as if he had compromised enough by letting Tom take his gun.

  “Don’t wait. There’s even a bus running all night on this Krüger-Damm, you told me.” Tom opened the door and took the suitcase out.

  “I just mentioned the bus, I didn’t mean for you to take it!” Peter whispered. “Don’t shoot at them! They will only shoot back and kill you!”

  Tom closed Peter’s door as softly as he could, and headed for the shed.

  “This!” Peter whispered through his window. He was handing Tom his small flashlight.

  “Thanks, my friend!” The torch was certainly a help, because the ground was rough. Tom felt he had left Peter bereft—of gun and torch. Tom clicked off the little torch when he was behind the back corner of the shed, and lifted his arm to Peter in a sign of farewell, whether Peter could see him or not. Peter backed, slowly and straight, on the dirt road that Peter surely could not see well if at all with his parking lights. Tom saw Peter’s car reach Alt-Lübars, then turn slowly to Tom’s left, headed for the village green. Peter was going to wait.

  Now there was a faint, but very faint sign of dawn coming, though Lübars’ sparse streetlights remained on. Peter’s car was not in sight. Tom heard distant dog barks, and realized with a slight chill that they were the barks of the East German attack dogs beyond the Wall. The dogs did not sound excited. A breeze blew from the Wall’s direction, and perhaps he had heard merely a bit of dog conversation as the animals slid along their wires. Tom turned his eyes from the eerie glow of the Wall’s searchlights, and concentrated on listening.

  He listened for the sound of a car motor. Surely the collector of the money wouldn’t come via the field behind him?

  Tom had set the suitcase against the wooden back of the shed, and he shoved it gently even closer with his foot. He took Peter’s gun from his jacket pocket, pushed the safety off, and stuck it back in his pocket. Silence. It was so silent, Tom felt he could have heard the breathing of any person who might be in the shed, on the other side of the boards. Tom felt of the wooden planks with his fingertips. There were a few chinks in the rough wood.

  He had to pee, and it reminded him of Frank in Grunewald, but he went ahead and relieved himself anyway, while he could. And what did he want? Why was he staying here? To get a look at the kidnappers again? In this darkness? To scare them off and save the money? Certainly not. To save Frank? His staying was not necessarily a help in that direction, maybe just the opposite. Tom realized that he hated the kidnappers, and that he would relish a blow back at them. He also knew this was illogical, since he would probably be outnumbered. Yet here he was, vulnerable, an easy target for a bullet, and it would be an easy getaway for the kidnappers too, most likely.

  Tom straightened up at the sound of a car’s motor from the Alt-Lübars direction. Or was it Peter departing? The car purred forward, however, Tom could see its dim parking lights. Very slowly the car entered the unpaved road on which the shed stood, and lumbered on, swaying with the lane’s irregularities. The car stopped about ten yards to Tom’s right. The car looked to be dark red, but Tom was not sure. Tom was now pressed against the back of the shed, and peering around the back corner, because the car’s lights did not reach the shed.

  The left side back door of the car opened, and one figure got out. The car’s lights went off, and the man who had got out switched on a torch. He looked sturdy and not tall, and he walked on with assurance, but slowed when he left the road and stepped onto the field. Then he paused, and waved a hand at his chums in the car, as if to say that all looked well so far.

  How many were in the car, Tom wondered? One? Two? Maybe there were two others, since the man had got out of a backseat.

  The man approached the shed slowly, torch in his left hand, and his right hand moved to his trousers pocket and pulled out what might have been a gun. He came on to Tom’s right, toward the back of the shed.

  Tom picked up the suitcase and gripped its handle, and as the man rounded the corner, Tom swung the suitcase and caught him on the left side of his head with it. The impact made not a loud thud but a solid one, and there was a second bump as the man’s head hit the back of the shed. Tom brought the suitcase down once more, aiming at the left side of the man’s head as he was falling. The paleness of the shirt collar above what might have been a black sweater guided Tom as he brought the butt of Peter’s gun down on the man’s left temple. Now the man was not stirring, nor had he cried out. The torch beamed to Tom’s left on the ground. Tom gripped Peter’s gun in a firing position and pointed it upward.

  “Got the swine!” Tom yelled hysterically, or maybe, “Gott, das Schwein!” and at the same time he fired two shots into the air.

  Tom yelled again, shouted another phrase of nonsense, maybe a curse, and kicked the shed’s back. He realized that his voice had gone shrill, that he was yelling at nothing.

  Behind the Wall the dogs yelped, excited by the shots.

  The click of a car’s door closing startled Tom as if he had been shot himself. He looked around the shed’s corner just in time to see a man in the driver’s seat draw his leg in. The interior light had been on for a moment. This door then closed, and without parking lights, the car moved backwards to Tom’s right, and the parking lights came on. The car backed to the left in Alt-Lübars, then went off at faster speed toward the bigger avenue.

  The kidnappers were abandoning their chum. They could of course afford to abandon him and even the money just now, because they still had Frank Pierson. They had probably thought it a police trick, with no money on the scene. Tom breathed through his mouth, as if he had been in a fight. He pushed the safety onto Peter’s gun, stuck it in his right trouser pocket, picked up the fallen torch and shone it for a couple of seconds on the man on the ground. His left temple looked all blood, was perhaps crushed, and to Tom he looked indeed like the Grunewald Italian type, though now his mustache was gone. Search his pockets? With the torch still on, Tom felt quickly in the one back pocket of the man’s black trousers, found nothing, then with difficulty reached into the left front pocket, which yielded a box of matches, a couple of coins, and a key which looked like a house key. Tom pocketed the key quickly and almost absently, and avoided looking at the red splotch of the man’s temple and face, which was making him feel faint, or so he thought. The right front pocket felt flat
and empty. Tom took the man’s gun from the ground near his hand, stuck it into a corner of the suitcase, and zipped the suitcase shut again. He rubbed the torch against his trousers, cut it off, and dropped it on the ground.

  Then Tom made his way to the road without putting on Peter’s small torch—tripping once badly—and walked toward Alt-Lübars, backed by the yelps of attack dogs. Tom didn’t as yet see anyone who had ventured out of his house to investigate the shots, so he dared to put on the little torch for a second or two at a time, so he could see his footing. Once at Alt-Lübars, he didn’t need the torch as the road was smoother. Tom did not look to the left, where Peter might still be, because he did not want to run into an inhabitant of the village who might just be coming out his door.

  Behind him somewhere, a window opened, a voice cried something.

  Tom did not look back.

  What had the voice said? “Who is there?” or “Who is that?”

  The dog’s barks had faded out, and Tom wet his lips as he rounded the corner to the right into Zabel-Krüger-Damm. The suitcase suddenly seemed weightless. Here cars were parked, a couple of cars even zoomed past. Dawn was definitely rising, and as if to confirm him half the streetlights went out. In the distance, not more than a hundred yards away, Tom saw what he thought was a bus-stop sign. Peter had mentioned a number 20 bus going to Tegel. That was the airport area, in the direction of Berlin at any rate. Tom dared to lift the suitcase and to glance at its corners for the red or pink of blood. He could hardly be sure in the dim light, and what was earth or mud might have looked the same as blood, but he saw nothing to be concerned about. He made himself walk at a moderate pace, as if he had somewhere to go, but was not in a hurry. There were only two other people on the pavement now, both men, one elderly and a bit stooped. They seemed to pay him no attention.