The Boy Who Followed Ripley (10 page)

Frank clenched his hands suddenly—but he hadn’t seen anything. The gesture was due to his own thoughts.

Tom took his arm. “Had enough? Let’s go out this way.” Tom steered him toward what he thought was an exit room, back through still another room, where Tom had a feeling of walking past one soldier after another—the pictures—as if they were an army of variously attired fighters, somehow armed to the teeth, even though some were in evening clothes. Tom felt in a curious way conquered, and he didn’t like that. What caused it? Something besides the pictures, he was sure. He would have to send the boy away. The situation was getting a bit warm, emotional, worse.

Suddenly Tom laughed.

“What?” asked Frank, alert as ever to Tom, and he glanced around to see what might be funny.

“Never mind,” Tom said. “I’m always thinking of crazy things.” Tom had been thinking, if the detective and Johnny saw Tom Ripley with Frank, they might at first think Tom had kidnapped him, since Tom had such a bad reputation. That could still arise, Tom thought, if the detective even thought to discover his residence and learned that a boy had been staying at the Ripley’s house. On the other hand, who in Villeperce knew that, besides Mme. Annette, and also Tom had not presented any ransom demand.

They took a taxi to the garage, and were back at Belle Ombre at a little after six. Heloise was upstairs, washing her hair, which would take another twenty minutes, Tom knew, with the dryer. All to the good, because he wanted to try once again with Frank. The boy had sat down in the living room and was looking at a French magazine.

“Why don’t you ring up Teresa and tell her you’re okay?” Tom asked in a cheerful voice. “You won’t have to tell her
where
you are. She must know you’re in France anyway.”

At the name Teresa, the boy sat up a little. “I think you’d like to—you’d like me to get lost. I can understand that.” Frank stood up.

“If you want to stay in Europe, you can. That’s your affair. But it’ll make you happier if you speak to Teresa and tell her you’re all right. Won’t it? Don’t you think she’s worried?”

“Maybe. I hope so.”

“It’s around noon in New York. She’s in New York?— You dial nineteen, one, then two one two. I can go upstairs so I won’t hear a word.” Tom waved a hand toward the telephone, and walked toward the stairs. The boy was going to do it, Tom could tell. Tom went up to his room and closed the door.

Less than three minutes later, the boy knocked on Tom’s door. He came in at Tom’s word, and said, “She’s out playing tennis.” He announced this as if it were dreadful news.

Frank couldn’t imagine Teresa so unconcerned about him that she would be out playing tennis, Tom supposed, and a further agony must be that she was playing tennis with a boy she liked more than she liked Frank. “You spoke to her mother?”

“No, the maid—Louise. I know her. She told me to call back in an hour. Louise said she was out with a few boys.” Frank put the last phrase in miserable-sounding quotes.

“You said you were all right?”

“No,” the boy said after an instant’s reflection. “Why should I? I suppose I sounded all right.”

“I’m afraid you can’t call back from here,” Tom said. “If the—if Louise mentions it, the family may want to get the call traced if you ring back. Anyway it’s too likely for me to risk it. Post office in Fontainebleau is closed now, otherwise I’d drive you. I don’t think you can reach Teresa tonight, Billy.” Tom had hoped that the boy could reach Teresa tonight, and that she might have said something like, “Oh, Frank, you’re okay! I miss you! When are you coming home?”

“I understand,” the boy said.

“Billy,” Tom said firmly, “you must make up your mind what you want to do. You’re not suspected. You’re not going to be accused. Susie doesn’t seem to count for much or anything, because she didn’t see anything. Just what are you afraid of? You have to come to terms with that.”

Frank shifted and shoved his hands in his back pockets. “Of myself, I think. I already said that.”

Tom knew. “If I weren’t here, what would you do?”

The boy shrugged. “Maybe kill myself. Maybe be sleeping in Piccadilly. You know the way they hang around the fountain there, the statue. I’d send Johnny’s passport back to him, and then I don’t know what I’d do—till somebody checked on me. Then I’d be sent home—” Another shrug. “And then I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t ever
confess
—” He emphasized the word, but spoke in a whisper. “But maybe I’d kill myself in a couple of weeks. Then there’s Teresa. I admit I’m hung up—and if something goes wrong there—if something’s already gone wrong—She can’t
write
me, you know. So it’s hell.”

Tom didn’t want to remark that Frank would probably be in love with seventeen more girls before he found the one he might finally marry.

W
EDNESDAY JUST AFTER NOON
, Tom was pleasantly surprised by a telephone call from Reeves. The object in question would be ready by late that night, and would be in Paris by tomorrow noonish. If Tom was in a hurry and wanted to pick it up himself, he could go to a certain Paris apartment, otherwise it could be sent from Paris to Tom by registered post. Tom preferred to pick it up. Reeves gave him an address, a name, third floor.

Tom asked for the telephone number there in case of need, and Reeves gave him this too. “Very fast work, Reeves, I thank you.” It would have been quite all right, Tom thought, to have sent it registered from Hamburg, but the airplane delivery did save one day.

“And for this little job,” said Reeves in his creaky, old man’s voice, though he was not yet forty, “two thousand, if you don’t mind, Tom. Dollars. Cheap at the price, because this wasn’t easy, sort of a new one, you know. And I should think your friend can afford it, eh?” Reeves’s tone was amused and friendly.

Tom understood. Reeves had recognized Frank Pierson. “Can’t talk anymore here,” said Tom. “I’ll get it to you via the usual, Reeves.” Tom meant via a request to his Swiss bank. “Are you going to be home in the next days?” Tom had no plans, but wanted to know this. Reeves could be wonderfully helpful.

“Yes, why? Thinking of coming?”

“No-o,” said Tom cautiously, ever fearful that his line might be being tapped.

“You’re staying put.”

Tom supposed that Reeves knew he was sheltering Frank Pierson, if not under his own roof, then somewhere.

“What’s all the trouble? Impossible to say, huh?”

“Impossible, yes, just now. I do thank you, Reeves.”

They hung up. Tom walked to the French windows and saw Frank in his Levi’s and darker blue workshirt plying the spade at the edge of a long bed of roses. He worked slowly and steadily, like a peasant who knew what he was doing, not like an amateur who would have knocked himself out in fifteen minutes of a fast attack on something. Strange, Tom thought. Maybe the work was some kind of penance in the boy’s mind? Frank had been spending his time yesterday and today reading, listening to music, and doing chores such as car-washing and sweeping out Belle Ombre’s cellar, which had involved shifting rather heavy racks of wine and putting them back in place. Frank had thought the tasks up himself.

Should they go to Venice, Tom wondered. A change of scene might shape the boy up, make him come to a decision, and Tom might be able to put him on a plane from Venice to New York, and return home himself. Or Hamburg? Same thing. But Tom didn’t want to involve Reeves in the sheltering of Frank Pierson, and Tom in fact didn’t care to involve himself much longer. Maybe with the new passport, Frank would find his courage and take off on his own, finish his personal adventure in his own style.

Thursday noon, Tom rang the Paris number in the Rue du Cirque, and a woman answered. They spoke in French.

“This is Tom here.”

“Ah, oui. I think everything is in order. You are coming this afternoon?” She didn’t sound like a maid, but like the woman of the house.

“Yes, if that is convenient. Around three-thirty?”

That would be all right.

Tom told Heloise that he was going to make a quick trip to Paris to talk with their bank manager, and would be back between 5 and 6 p.m. Tom was not in trouble with an overdraft, but one of the managers of Morgan Guarantee Trust did sometimes give him stock market advice, very general and minor, Tom considered, as Tom preferred to let his stocks ride rather than waste time in the dangerous game of playing the market. Anyway, Tom’s excuse was good enough, because Heloise’s mind was on her mother that afternoon. Her mother, a youthful fifty-odd and not inclined to illness, had had to go to hospital for an examination which might result in an operation for a tumor. Tom remarked that doctors always prepared people for the worst.

“She looks in the pink of health. Give her my good wishes when you speak with her,” Tom said.

“Billy is going with you?”

“No, he’s staying. He’s got some little jobs he wants to do—for us.”

In the Rue du Cirque, Tom was able to find a parking meter free, then he went to the house, an old well-kept edifice with the usual street door button to press, and then the door opened on a hall or foyer with a concierge’s door and window, which Tom didn’t bother with. He took the lift to the third floor, and rang the bell on the left marked Schuyler.

A tall woman with a lot of red hair opened the door slightly.

“Tom.”

“Ah, come in! This way, please.” She led him toward a living room which was across a hall. “You have met before, I think.”

In the living room stood Eric Lanz, smiling, hands on hips. There was a coffee tray on a low table in front of a sofa. Eric was standing. “Hello, Tom. Yes, me again. How are you?”

“Quite well, thanks. And you?” Tom was also smiling with surprise.

The redheaded woman had left them. There was a low drone of sewing machines from another room of the flat. What went on here, Tom wondered. Maybe another fence depot, as was Reeves’s Hamburg apartment? With a couturière cover?

“And here we are,” said Eric Lanz, opening a beige cardboard portfolio, which had strings to close it. He produced a white envelope from among other thicker envelopes.

Tom took the envelope, and glanced over his shoulder before he opened it. No one else had come into the room. The envelope was not sealed, and Tom wondered if Eric had already looked at the passport? Perhaps. Tom did not want to look at it in Eric’s presence, but at the same time wanted to know if Hamburg had done a good job.

“I think you will be pleased,” Eric said.

Frank’s photograph had the official stamp which raised the surface, plus
PHOTOGRAPH ATTACHED DEPARTMENT OF STATE PASSPORT AGENCY NEW YORK
partly on and partly below it.
BENJAMIN GUTHRIE ANDREWS
was the name, born in New York, and height and weight and date of birth corresponded well enough to Frank’s, though the date made him seventeen now. No matter. The job looked good to Tom, who had some experience, and maybe only a magnifying glass could detect that the raised stamp on the photograph might be a bit off from the stamp on the page—or was it? Tom couldn’t tell. Inside of front page, full address was apparently that of parents in New York. The passport was some five months old, with a Heathrow entry stamp, then France, then Italy, where the unfortunate bearer must have been relieved of it. No current French entry, but unless a passport control officer’s suspicions were aroused by Frank’s appearance, no one was going to peer at entry and exit stamps, Tom knew. “Very good,” Tom said finally.

“Nothing to do but sign it across the photograph.”

“Do you happen to know if the name has been changed, or is the real Benjamin Andrews going to be looking for his passport?” Tom hadn’t detected any sign of erasure in the typewritten name inside the front cover, and any previous signature fragment had been neatly obliterated from beside the photograph.

“It has been changed, the last name, Reeves told me.— Coffee? This is finished, but I can ask the maid to make some.” Eric Lanz looked slimmer, even of better social class since Tom had seen him three days ago, as if he were a miracle man who could effect a transformation just by thinking about it. Now he wore the trousers of a dark blue summer suit, a good white silk shirt, and the shoes which Tom recognized. “Sit down, Tom.”

“Thanks, I said I’d be home soon.— You travel a lot, it seems.”

Eric laughed—rosy lips, white teeth. “Reeves always has work for me. Berlin too. I am selling hi-fi gadgets this time,” he said in a lower tone and glanced at the door behind Tom. “
Supposed
to be. Ha-ha!— When are you coming to Berlin?”

“No idea. No plans.” Tom had put the passport back into its envelope, and he gestured with it before sticking it into his inside jacket pocket. “I’ve arranged to settle for this with Reeves.”

“I know.” Now Eric pulled a billfold from his blue jacket which lay on the sofa. He extracted a card and handed it to Tom. “If you are ever in Berlin, it would be a pleasure to see you, Tom.”

Tom glanced at the card. Niebuhrstrasse. Tom didn’t know where that was, but it was in Berlin, with a telephone number. “Thanks.— You’ve known Reeves a long time?”

“Oh—two, three years, ja.” His rosy, neat mouth smiled again. “Luck to you, Tom—and to your friend!” He moved to the door with Tom to see him out. “Wiedersehen!” said Eric, softly but clearly.

Tom went down to his car and drove homeward. Berlin, Tom was thinking. Not for the presence of Eric Lanz at all, if he ever was at home, but because Berlin was off the beaten tourist track. Who wanted to visit Berlin, except perhaps scholars of the World Wars, or as Eric had said, businessmen invited to conferences. If Frank wanted to hide out a few days longer, Berlin might be an idea for him. Venice—more attractive and beautiful, but also a place where Johnny and the detective might spend a couple of days, looking. What Tom didn’t want was that pair to knock on his own door in Villeperce.

9

“B
enjamin. Ben. I like that name,” Frank said, beaming now as he sat on the edge of his bed, gazing at his new passport.

“I hope it gives you courage,” Tom said.

“I know this cost something. You can tell me how much, and if I can’t—do it just now, I can do it later.”

“Two thousand dollars. . . . Now you’re free. Keep letting your hair grow. You’ve got to sign that passport across the photograph, you know.” Tom made him try the entire name on a sheet of typewriter paper. The boy had rather quick and angular handwriting. Tom told him to round the capital B of Benjamin, and made him write the whole name out three or four more times.

At last the boy signed with one of Tom’s black ballpoint pens. “How is this?”

Tom nodded. “All right. Remember when you sign anything else—take it easy so you’ll round everything.”

It was after dinner. Heloise had wanted to watch something on television, and Tom had asked the boy to come upstairs with him.

The boy looked at Tom and his eyelids blinked quickly. “Will you come with me, if I go somewhere? To another town, I mean? City?” He wet his lips. “I know it’s been a pain having me—hiding me. If you’d come with me to another country, you could just leave me.” Now he looked with sudden dismalness toward the window, and back at Tom. “It’d be so awful, somehow, leaving from here,
your
house. But I could, I suppose.” He stood up straighter, as if to illustrate that he could stand on his own feet.

“Where’re you thinking of going?”

“Venice. Rome, maybe. They’re big enough to get lost in.”

Tom smiled, thinking Italy was a hotbed of kidnappers. “Yugoslavia? Doesn’t appeal to you?”

“Do you like Yugoslavia?”

“Yes,” Tom said, but not in a tone that implied he would like to go there now. “Go to Yugoslavia. But I wouldn’t advise Venice or Rome—if you want to stay free for a while. Berlin is another possibility. Off the tourist track.”

“Berlin. I’ve never been there. Would you go to Berlin with me? Just for a few days?”

The idea was not unattractive, because Tom found Berlin interesting. “If you promise to go home after Berlin,” Tom said quietly and firmly.

Frank’s face was smiling again, as broadly as when he had received the new passport. “All right, I promise.”

“Okay, we’ll go to Berlin.”

“Do you know Berlin?”

“I’ve been there—twice, I think.” Tom suddenly felt picked up. Berlin would be all right for three or four days, fun in fact, and he would hold the boy to his promise to take off for home from there. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to remind the boy of that promise.

“When shall we go?” Frank asked.

“The sooner the better. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll see about plane tickets in Fontainebleau tomorrow morning.”

“I’ve still got some money.” Then the boy’s expression changed. “Not much, I suppose, only about five hundred dollars’ worth of francs.”

“Never mind about money. We’ll settle up later. I’ll say good night. I want to go down and speak with Heloise.— Of course you can come downstairs again if you want to.”

“Thanks, I think I’ll write to Teresa.” Frank looked happy.

“All right, but we’ll post it from Düsseldorf tomorrow, not from here.”

“Düsseldorf?”

“Planes to Berlin have to touch down somewhere inside Germany first, and I always aim for Düsseldorf instead of Frankfurt, because you don’t change planes at Düsseldorf, just get out for a few minutes—passports. One other thing, most important, don’t tell Teresa you’re going to Berlin.”

“All right.”

“Because she might tell your mother, and I assume you want to be let alone in Berlin. The Düsseldorf postmark will let her know you’re in Germany, but tell her you’re—going to Vienna. How about that?”

“Yes—
sir.
” Frank sounded like a newly promoted soldier, delighted to take orders.

Tom went downstairs. Heloise was lying on the sofa, watching a news program. “Look,” she said. “
How
can they go on killing each other?”

A rhetorical question. Tom looked blankly at the television screen, which showed an apartment building blowing up, darts of red and yellow flame, an iron beam tumbling in the air. He supposed it was Lebanon. A few days ago it had been Heathrow, the aftermath of an attack on the Israeli airlines. Tomorrow the world, Tom thought. He was thinking that Heloise would have news of her mother tomorrow morning maybe by about ten, and Tom hoped the hospital tests would not mean surgery. Tom intended to go to Fontainebleau before ten, get the tickets, and tell Heloise that it was a most urgent job for Reeves Minot, which he had learned about by telephone during the night, something like that. There was no telephone in Heloise’s room, and with her door closed, she could not hear the telephone in his room or in the living room downstairs. Awful news continued on the television set, and Tom postponed any kind of speech to Heloise.

Before he went to bed that night, Tom knocked on Frank’s door and handed him some booklets on Berlin and a map. “Might interest you. Tells you about the political situation and so forth.”

B
Y BREAKFAST TIME
, Tom had altered his plans somewhat. He would use a Moret travel agency for the ticket—his own—and telephone the airport in regard to Frank’s ticket. He told Heloise that Reeves had rung in the small hours and wanted him to come to Hamburg at once to lend both his presence and his advice on an art deal.

“I spoke with Billy this morning. He wants to come with me to Hamburg,” Tom said, “and he’ll be going back to America from there.” Tom had told her that Billy had not made up his mind Monday in Paris where he wanted to go.

Heloise was visibly pleased that the boy would be going off with Tom, as Tom had thought she would be. “And you’ll be coming back—when?”

“Oh—I’d say in three days. Maybe Sunday, Monday.” Tom was dressed and having a second coffee and toast in the living room. “I’ll take off in a few minutes to see about the tickets. And I hope the news is good, darling, by ten.”

Heloise was supposed to ring a doctor at a Paris hospital at ten in regard to her mother. “Merci, chéri.”

“I have a feeling there’s nothing wrong with your mother.” Tom meant that, because her mother looked very fit. Just then Tom saw that Henri the gardener had arrived—today being neither Tuesday nor Thursday but Friday—and was lazily filling big metal pitchers with rainwater from the tank by the greenhouse. “Henri’s here. That’s nice!”

“I know.— Tome, there’s nothing dangerous about Hamburg, is there?”

“No, dear.— Reeves knows that I know about a Buckmaster sale that’s a little like this one in Hamburg. A nice launching place for Billy too. I’ll show him a bit of the city. I never do anything dangerous.” Tom smiled, thinking of shoot-outs, which he considered he had never been in, but he also recalled an evening at Belle Ombre, when a Mafia corpse or two had been lying on the marble floor right here in the living room, oozing blood, which Tom had had to wipe up with Mme. Annette’s sturdy gray floor rags. Heloise hadn’t seen that. Not a shoot-out, anyway. The Mafiosi had had guns, but Tom had bashed one over the head with a piece of firewood. Tom did not like to remember that.

Tom telephoned Roissy from his room, and learned that there were seats available on an Air France flight taking off at 3:45 p.m. that afternoon. He reserved a place for Benjamin Andrews, the ticket to be picked up at the airport. He then drove to Moret and bought his round-trip ticket in his own name. When he came back, he informed Frank. They would leave the house around one o’clock for Roissy.

Tom was glad that Heloise did not ask for Reeve’s telephone number in Hamburg. On some other occasion, Tom had certainly given it to her, but maybe she had mislaid it. If she found it and rang Reeves, it would be awkward, so Tom thought he should telephone Reeves once he got to Berlin, but somehow Tom didn’t want to do it now. Frank was packing. And Tom was casting an eye over his house as if it were a ship he would soon abandon, although the house was in good hands with Mme. Annette. Only three or four days? That was nothing. Tom had thought of taking the Renault and leaving it at the Roissy garage, but Heloise wanted to drive them or at least accompany them in the Mercedes, which was now running well. So Tom drove the Mercedes to Roissy–Charles de Gaulle Airport, and thought how friendly and convenient Orly airport had been a year or so ago, between Villeperce and Paris, until they opened the north-of-Paris Roissy and routed everything from there, even flights to London.

“Heloise—I thank you for putting me up so many days,” Frank said in French.

“A pleasure, Billy! And you have been a help to us—in the garden and in the house. I wish you luck!” She extended her hand through the car’s open window, and rather to Tom’s surprise she kissed Frank on both cheeks as he bent toward her.

Frank grinned, embarrassed.

Heloise drove off, and Tom and Frank went into the terminus with their luggage. Heloise’s affectionate good-bye reminded Tom that she had never asked him what he was paying the boy for his work. Nothing. Tom was sure the boy would not have accepted anything. Tom had given the boy five thousand francs this morning, the maximum one was allowed to take out of France, and Tom had the same amount himself, though he had not as yet ever been searched by the French on departure. If they should run out in Berlin, which was unlikely, Tom could wire for money from a bank in Zurich. Now he told Frank to go and buy his ticket at the Air France counter.

“Benjamin Andrews, flight seven-eight-nine,” Tom reminded him, “and on the plane we won’t sit together. Don’t look at me. See you in Düsseldorf maybe, otherwise Berlin.” He started for the luggage check-in, then found himself lingering to see if Frank was going to get his ticket without difficulty. One or two people were ahead of Frank, then the boy was at the counter, and Tom saw from the girl’s scribbling and the money exchange that all was well.

Tom checked in his suitcase, then proceeded to one of the upward sloping escalators which eased him toward gate number six. These gates, called simply gates in England or anywhere else, were here absurdly labeled “Satellites,” as if they were somehow detached from and whirling around the airport proper. Tom lit a cigarette in the last hall where one could smoke, and looked over his fellow passengers, nearly all men, one concealed behind a copy of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine
already. Tom was among the first to board. He did not look back to see if Frank had even come into the lounge. Tom settled himself in his smoking-section seat, half closed his eyes, and glanced at the passengers bumping up the aisle with attaché cases, but he did not see Frank.

At Düsseldorf, the passengers were told they could leave their hand luggage on board, but everyone had to get off. Here they were herded like sheep toward an unseen destination, but Tom had been here once before, and knew they were destined for nothing worse than a passport checking and stamping.

Then came a small waiting area to which they were also herded, and Tom saw Frank negotiating for a stamp for his letter to Teresa. Tom had forgotten to give the boy some of the German paper money and coins which Tom had in his pocket, left over from earlier trips, but the German woman was smiling now, apparently accepting Frank’s French money, and the letter changed hands. Tom boarded the plane for Berlin.

Tom had said to Frank, “You’ll love the Berlin-Tegel airport.” Tom liked it, because it looked like an airport of human size: no frills, no escalators, triple levels, or eye-dazzling chromium, just a mostly yellowish-painted reception hall with a round bar-café counter in the center, and a single WC in evidence without a kilometer’s walk to it. Near the circular refreshment counter Tom lingered with his suitcase, and gave Frank a nod when he saw him approaching, but Frank was evidently so dutifully obeying orders that he did not look at Tom, and Tom had to intercept him.

“Fancy seeing you here!” said Tom.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said Frank, smiling.

The forty or so passengers who had debarked at Berlin seemed to have dwindled to less than a dozen now, which was another treat to the eye.

“I’ll see about a hotel room,” Tom said. “Wait here with the luggage.” Tom went to a telephone booth a few yards away, looked up the number of the Hotel Franke in his business address book, and dialed it. Tom had once visited an acquaintance at this middle-category hotel, and had noted its address for possible future use. Yes, they had two rooms to offer, said the Hotel Franke, and Tom booked them under his name, and said he would be arriving in about half an hour. The few persons left in the homey-looking terminus appeared so innocuous to Tom that he risked a taxi together with the boy.

Their destination was the Albrecht-Achillesstrasse off the Kurfürstendamm. They rode at first through what seemed kilometers of flat plains, past warehouses, fields and barns, then the city began to show itself in a few very new-looking buildings, beige and cream near-skyscrapers, a bit of chrome on aerial-like spires. They were approaching from the north. Tom slowly and rather uncomfortably became aware of the pocketlike, islandlike entity called West Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-controlled territory. Well, they were within the Wall, and protected at least for the nonce by French, American, and British soldiers. The one jagged, not new edifice made Tom’s heart leap, rather to his own surprise.

“That’s the Gedächtniskirche!” Tom said to Frank with almost proprietary pride. “Very important landmark. Bombed, as you see, but they let it stand the way it was.”

Frank was looking out the open window, rapt, almost as if it were Venice, Tom thought, and in its way Berlin was just as unique.

The broken, reddish-brown tower of the Gedächtniskirche passed by them on their left, then Tom said, “All this was flattened around here—what you’re looking at. That’s why everything looks so new now.”

“
Ja,
and
kaputt
it was!” said the middle-aged driver in German. “You are tourists? Just here for pleasure?”

“Yes,” said Tom, pleased that the driver wanted to chat. “How’s the weather?”