The Boy Who Followed Ripley

  “Back in a couple of minutes.” Tom went off to speak with Frank.

  Frank was in Eric’s bedroom, barefoot, holding a damp towel against his forehead. “I felt faint for a minute just now. Funny—”

  “We’re going out to lunch soon. We’ll have a good lunch and cheer up, all right, Frank?— Want a cool shower?”

  “Sure.”

  Tom went into the bathroom and adjusted the shower for him. “Don’t slip,” Tom said.

  “What’re they doing in there?”

  “Counting dough. I’ll bring you some clothes.” Tom went back into the living room, found a pair of blue cotton trousers in Frank’s suitcase, a polo-neck sweater, and he took a pair of his own shorts, not finding any of Frank’s. Tom knocked on the bathroom door which was not quite closed.

  The boy was drying himself with a big towel.

  “How do you feel about Paris? Want to go back today? Tonight?”

  “No.”

  Tom noticed that the boy’s eyes were shiny with tears under a very determined and grown-up frown. “I know what Johnny said to you—about Teresa.”

  “Well, that’s not everything,” Frank said, hurled the towel at the side of the tub, and at once picked it up and hung it properly on a rod. He took the shorts Tom was holding out to him and turned his back as he put them on. “I don’t want to go back just yet, I just don’t!” Frank’s eyes flashed with anger as he looked back at Tom.

  Tom knew: it would be two defeats, the loss of Teresa, and being recaptured. Maybe after lunch, Tom thought, Frank would calm down, see things differently. However, Tom knew that Teresa was everything.

  “Tom!” Eric called.

  Tom had to sign. Tom did look over the receipt. The three banks were listed, the sums due each. The bank messenger was now on Eric’s telephone, and Tom heard him say a couple of times that things were in Ordnung. Tom signed. The name Pierson still did not appear, only the Swiss Bank Corporation number. Much handshaking upon leaving, and Eric accompanied the two men to the elevator.

  Frank came into the living room, dressed but for shoes, and Eric returned, beaming with relief, wiping his forehead with a pocket handkerchief.

  “My apartment deserves—a Gedenktafel! How do you call it?”

  “A plaque?” said Tom. “As I was saying, lunch at Kempinski. Do we have to make a reservation?”

  “It would be wiser. I shall do it. Three.” Eric went to his telephone.

  “Unless we can reach Max and Rollo. It’d be nice to invite them. Or are they—working?”

  “Oh!” Eric chuckled. “Rollo’s hardly awake by now. He likes to stay up very late, till seven or eight in the morning. Then Max is freelance—a hairdresser when certain places need him. I never can reach them except sometimes around six in the evening.”

  He would send them a present from France, Tom thought, maybe a couple of interesting wigs, when he got their address from Eric. Eric was now making the reservation for a quarter to one.

  They went in Eric’s car. Tom had applied a flesh-colored salve—for cuts and abrasions, the tube said—from Eric’s medicine cabinet to Frank’s famous cheek mole. Somewhere Frank had lost Heloise’s pancake from his back pocket, which did not surprise Tom.

  “I want you to eat, my friend,” Tom said to Frank at the table, starting to read the huge à la carte menu. “I know you like smoked salmon.”

  “Ah, I shall have my favorite!” said Eric. “There is a liver dish here, Tom—out of this world!”

  The restaurant had high ceilings, gilt and green scrolls on its white walls, elegant tablecloths, and uniformed waiters who put on a grand air. A grill—another part of the restaurant—served people who were not quite properly attired, Tom had noticed while they were waiting to be shown to their table. This had meant a pair of men in blue jeans, though with neat enough sweaters and jackets, who had been told in German, somehow politely, that the grill was that way.

  Frank did eat, aided by a couple of Tom’s jokes, dredged up, because he didn’t feel like telling jokes. He knew Frank was under a black cloud of Teresa, and he wondered if Frank suspected or knew definitely who Teresa’s new interest was? Tom could not possibly ask. Tom knew only that Frank had begun that painful process known as turning loose, turning loose emotionally of a moral support, of a mad ideal, of what had been to him embodied, and still was, in the only girl in the world.

  “Chocolate cake, Frank?” Tom suggested, and refilled Frank’s glass of white wine. It was their second bottle.

  “That is good here and so is the strudel,” Eric said. “Tom, a meal to remember!” Eric wiped his lips carefully. “A morning to remember too, no? Ha-ha?”

  They were in one of the little alcoves against the restaurant wall, nothing so primitive as a booth, rather a romantic curve giving semi-privacy, yet enabling them to see what they wished of the other patrons. Tom had seen no one paying attention to them. And Tom suddenly realized, pleasantly, that Frank would be leaving Berlin under his false passport as Benjamin Andrews. The passport was in Frank’s suitcase at Eric’s.

  “When shall I next see you, Tom?” Eric asked.

  Tom lit a Roth-Händle. “Next time you have a little thing for Belle Ombre? And I don’t mean a house present.”

  Eric chuckled, pink with food and wine now. “That reminds me, I have a three o’clock date. Excuse me for this rudeness.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Only a quarter past two. I am fine.”

  “We can take a taxi back. Leave you free.”

  “No, no, it is on the way, my house. Easy.” Eric poked with his tongue at something in a tooth, and looked speculatively at Frank.

  Frank had eaten nearly all of his chocolate cake, and was pensively turning the stem of his wine glass.

  Eric lifted his eyebrows at Tom. Tom said nothing. Tom got the bill and paid. They walked the one street to Eric’s car in bright sunlight. Tom smiled and patted Frank impulsively on the back. But what could he say? He wanted to say, “Isn’t this better than the floor of a kitchen?” But Tom couldn’t. Eric was the type to come out with it, but Eric didn’t. Tom would have liked a longer walk, but he did not feel a hundred percent safe, or unnoticed, walking with Frank Pierson, so they both got into Eric’s car. Tom had Eric’s housekeys, and Eric dropped them off at a corner.

  Tom approached Eric’s house carefully, on the watch for loiterers, but saw none. The downstairs hall was empty. The boy was silent.

  In the apartment, Tom took off his jacket and opened the window for fresh air. “About Paris,” Tom began.

  Frank suddenly plunged his face into his hands. He was seated on the small sofa by the coffee table, elbows on his spread knees.

  “Never mind,” Tom said, embarrassed for the boy. “Get it out.” Tom knew it wouldn’t last long.

  After a few seconds, the boy snatched his hands down, stood up and said, “Sorry.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  Tom strolled into the bathroom, and brushed his teeth for a good two minutes. Then he went back into the living room with a calm air. “You don’t want to go to Paris, I know.— What about Hamburg?”

  “Anywhere!” Frank’s eyes had the intensity of madness or hysteria.

  Tom looked down at the floor and blinked. “You don’t just say “anywhere” like a madman, Frank.— I know—I understand about Teresa. It’s a—” what was the right word? “—a letdown.”

  Frank stood stiff as a statue, as if defying Tom to say more. Still you’ll have to face your family at some point, Tom thought of saying. But wouldn’t that be unsympathetic, just now? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to see Reeves? Have a change of atmosphere? Tom needed it, anyway. “I find Berlin a bit claustrophobic. I feel like seeing Reeves in Hamburg. Didn’t I mention him in France? Friend of mine.” Tom made an effort to sound cheerful.

  The boy looked more alert, polite again. “Yes, I think you did. You said he was a friend of Eric’s.”

  “True. I’m—” Tom hesitated, looking at the boy who, with hands still in
pockets, stared back at him. Tom could easily put the boy on a plane to Paris—insist—and say good-bye to him. But Tom had the feeling the boy would lose himself again, in Paris, as soon as he got off the plane. He wouldn’t go to the Hôtel Lutetia. “I’ll try Reeves,” Tom said, and moved toward the telephone. Just then it rang. Tom decided to answer it.

  “Hello, Tom, this is Max.”

  “Max! How are you? I have your wig and your drag here—safe!”

  “I wanted to telephone this morning and I was—stuck, ja? Not home was I. Then by Eric an hour ago nobody was home. So last night? The boy?”

  “He’s here. He’s okay.”

  “You got him? You are not hurt, nobody is hurt?”

  “Nobody.” Tom blinked away a sudden vision of the Italian type with the smashed head on the ground in Lübars.

  “Rollo thought last night you looked wonderful. I was almost jealous. Ha!— Is Eric there? I have a message.”

  “Not here because he has a three o’clock date. Can I take a message?”

  Max said no, he would call back.

  Tom then consulted the telephone book for the Hamburg code, and dialed Reeves’s number.

  “’Allo?” said a female voice.

  This was Reeves’s Putzfrau and part-time housekeeper, Tom supposed, a figure more portly than Mme. Annette, but equally dedicated. “Hello—Gaby?”

  “Ja-a?”

  “This is Tom Ripley. How are you, Gaby?— Is Herr Minot there?”

  “Nein, aber er—I hear something,” she went on in German. “One minute.” A pause, then Gaby came back and said, “He comes in just now!”

  “Hello, Tom!” said Reeves, breathless.

  “I’m in Berlin.”

  “Berlin! Can you come and see me? What’re you doing in Berlin?” Reeves’s voice sounded gravelly and naïve as usual.

  “Can’t say now, but I was thinking of coming to see you—even tonight, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course, Tom. You’ve always got priority and I’m not even busy tonight.”

  “I have a friend with me, an American. Could you possibly put us up for one night?” Tom knew Reeves had a guest room.

  “Even two nights. When’re you arriving? Got your plane tickets?”

  “No, but I’ll try for this evening. Seven, eight, or nine. If you’re in I won’t ring you again, just turn up. I’ll ring you if I can’t make it. Okay?”

  “Okay and I’m very pleased!”

  Tom turned to Frank, smiling. “That’s settled. Reeves is glad to have us.”

  Frank was sitting on the smaller sofa, smoking a cigarette, unusual for him. The boy stood up, and he seemed suddenly as tall as Tom. Had he grown in the last few days? That was possible. “I’m sorry I was in the dumps today. I’ll pull out.”

  “Oh, sure you’ll pull out.” The boy was trying to be polite. Maybe that was why he looked taller.

  “I’m glad about Hamburg. I don’t want to see that detective in Paris. Good Christ!” Frank whispered the last, but with venom. “Why don’t they both go home now?”

  “Because they want to be sure you’re coming home,” Tom said patiently.

  Tom then telephoned Air France. He made two reservations for a takeoff at 7:20 p.m. for Hamburg. Tom gave their names, Ripley and Andrews.

  Eric arrived while Tom was on the telephone, and Tom told him their plans. “Ah, Reeves! A nice idea!” Eric glanced at Frank, who was folding something away in his suitcase, and motioned for Tom to come into his bedroom.

  “Max rang up,” Tom said as he followed Eric. “Said he’d ring you back.”

  “Thank you, Tom.— Now this.” Eric closed his bedroom door, pulled a newspaper from under his arm, and showed the front page to Tom. “I thought you should see this,” Eric said with one of his twitching smiles, more full of nerves than amusement. “No clues, it seems—now.”

  The front page of Der Abend had a two-column photograph of the Lübars shed with the Italian type just as Tom had seen him last, prone, head turned slightly to the left, and the left temple a darkened mass of blood, some of which had run down the face. Tom read quickly the five-line comment below. An as yet unidentified man wearing clothing made in Italy, underwear made in Germany, had been found dead early Wednesday in Lübars, his temple crushed by blows of a blunt instrument. Police were trying to identify him, and were making inquiries among residents of the region to find out if they had heard any disturbances.

  “You understand it all?” asked Eric.

  “Yes.” Tom had fired two shots into the air. Surely a resident was going to remark hearing two shots, even if the man had not been killed by a bullet. Some neighbor might describe a stranger with a suitcase. “I don’t like to look at this.” Tom folded the newspaper and put it on a writing table. He glanced at his watch.

  “I can drive you to Tegel. Plenty of time,” said Eric. “The boy really doesn’t want to go home, does he?”

  “No, and he had some bad news today about a girl he likes in America. The brother told him that she has a new boyfriend. So there’s that. If he were twenty, it might be easier for him.” Or would it? Frank’s murder of his father was keeping him from going back home too.

  17

  As the plane began its descent to Hamburg, Frank waked from a doze and caught between his knees a newspaper that had nearly slipped to the floor. Frank looked out of the window on his side, but they were still too high for anything but clouds to be visible.

  Tom finished a cigarette covertly. The stewardesses bustled up and down the aisle, collecting last glasses and trays. Tom saw Frank lift the German newspaper from his lap and look at the picture of the dead man in Lübars. To Frank it would be just another newspaper photograph. Tom had not told Frank that his date with the kidnappers had been in Lübars, he had simply said that he stood the kidnappers up. “Then you followed them?” Frank had asked. Tom had said no, he had got on their trail via the gay bar and the message passed to the kidnappers by Thurlow to ask for Joey there. Frank had been amused, full of awe at Tom’s daring—maybe his courage too, Tom liked to think—in crashing in on the kidnappers single-handed. Tom had found nothing in this newspaper about any of the three kidnappers having been caught in the vicinity of Binger Strasse or anywhere else. Of course no one but Tom knew them as kidnappers. They might have criminal records and no fixed addresses, but that was about it.

  Their passports were rather quickly glanced at and handed back, then they got their luggage and took a taxi.

  Tom pointed out landmarks to Frank, what he could see in the gathering darkness, a church spire that he remembered, the first of the many filled-in canals, or “fleets,” which had little bridges over them, then the Alsters. They got out in the upward sloping driveway leading to Reeves’s white apartment house, a large, formerly private house which had been partitioned to make several apartments. It was Tom’s second or third visit to Reeves. Tom pressed a button downstairs, and Reeves at once let him in after Tom said his name into the speaker. Tom and Frank went up in the elevator, and Reeves was waiting outside his apartment door.

  “Tom!” Reeves kept his voice low, because of at least one other apartment on the same floor. “Come in, both of you!”

  “This is—Ben,” said Tom, introducing Frank. “Reeves Minot.”

  Reeves said “How do you do” to Frank, and closed his door behind them. As ever, Reeves’s flat struck Tom as spacious and immaculately clean. Its white walls bore Impressionist and more recent paintings, nearly all in frames. Rows of low bookcases, containing mostly art books, bordered the walls. There were a couple of tall rubber plants and philodendrons. The two big windows on the Aussenalster’s water had their yellow curtains drawn now. A table was set for three. Tom saw that the pinkish Derwatt (genuine) of a woman apparently dying in bed still hung over the fireplace.

  “Changed the frame of that, didn’t you?” asked Tom.

  Reeves laughed. “How observant you are, Tom! Frame got damaged somehow. Fell in that bom
bing, I think, and cracked. I prefer this beige frame. The other frame was too white. Look now, put your suitcases in here,” Reeves said, showing Tom to the guest room. “I hope they didn’t give you anything to eat on the plane, because I have something for us. But now we must have a glass of cold wine or something and talk!”

  Tom and Frank set their suitcases in the guest room, which had a three-quarter bed with its side against the front wall. Jonathan Trevanny had slept here, Tom remembered.

  “What did you say your friend’s name was?” Reeves asked softly, but he did not bother to be out of the boy’s hearing as he and Tom went back into the living room.

  Tom knew from Reeves’s smile that Reeves knew who the boy was. Tom nodded. “Talk to you later. It was not—” Tom felt awkward, but why did he have to hide anything from Reeves? Frank was in a far corner of the living room now, looking at a painting. “It was not in the papers, but the boy was just kidnapped in Berlin.”

  “Ree-eally?” Reeves paused with the corkscrew in one hand, a wine bottle in the other. He had an unpleasant pink scar down his right cheek almost to the corner of his mouth. Now with his mouth open in surprise, the scar looked even longer.

  “Last Sunday night,” Tom said. “In Grunewald. You know, the big woods there.”

  “Yes, I do. Kidnapped how?”

  “I was with him, but we were separated for a couple of minutes and— Sit down, Frank. You’re among friends.”

  “Yes, sit down,” Reeves said in his hoarse-sounding voice, and drew the cork.

  Frank’s eyes caught Tom’s, the boy nodded his head as if to indicate that Tom could tell the truth if he wished. “Frank was released just last night. The men holding him gave him sedatives and I think he’s still a bit drowsy.” Tom said.

  “No, I hardly notice it now,” Frank said politely and firmly. He got up from the sofa he had just sat down on, and went to look more closely at the Derwatt over the fireplace. Frank shoved his hands in his back pockets and glanced at Tom with a quick smile. “Good, yes, Tom?”