The Boy Who Followed Ripley (18 page)

Peter and Max apparently knew each other. Max told Tom that he lived so near, it was better for him to run home on foot, since the Hump was in the other direction. He would see Tom in a few minutes. Peter and Tom drove off toward Winterfeldtstrasse.

“Now what is all this? For fun?” Peter asked, a bit tense.

Had Tom detected a slight coolness in Peter? “Not entirely.” Tom realized that he could have rung Thurlow back, and hadn’t, to find out if the kidnappers would keep the date tonight. “While we have a minute—you went back to that
shed
, Peter.”

Peter shrugged or squirmed. “I went on foot, yes, not wanting to make noise with the car motor. Very dark without a light.”

“I can imagine.”

“I thought maybe you were dead there—wounded maybe, which would have been worse. Then I saw the man there on the ground—not you. So I went away. You did not shoot him?”

“I hit him with the suitcase.” Tom swallowed. He did not feel like saying that he had also bashed his temple with Peter’s gun butt. “I think the kidnappers thought I was more numerous than I was. I fired your gun twice in the air and yelled. But I think the fellow on the ground there was dead.”

Peter chuckled, perhaps nervously, but it made Tom feel better. “I didn’t stay long enough to find out. Didn’t see the papers tonight—and I wasn’t watching the news tonight either.”

Tom said nothing. For the moment, he was in the clear, Tom thought, and he had to think about the present. Did he dare ask Peter to wait again, outside the Hump? Peter could be extremely useful tonight.

“And they drove away,” Peter said. “I saw their car going away, and then I waited for you—more than five minutes, I think.”

“That was when I walked back to that avenue—the Krüger-Damm and caught the bus. I didn’t even look toward the church. My fault, Peter.”

Peter turned a corner. “All that money in Eric’s house now!—And what will they do to the boy if they don’t get it?”

“Oh, I think they would rather have the money than the boy.” They had now entered the street where the bar was, and Tom was watching for the pink neon sign which said
Der Hump
in script with a horizontal underlining on the side of a building, but he didn’t yet see it. Tom had to enlighten Peter about the possible events of tonight, and Tom with difficulty tried to get started. His drag, at that moment, made him feel silly and vulnerable, and he lifted nervously the black and red handbag on his lap: it was heavyish because of Peter’s gun. “I’ve got your gun with me. Four bullets left.”

“Now? You have the gun?” Peter asked in German, and glanced at Tom’s handbag.

“Yes. I made a date with the kidnappers tonight—and maybe just one of them will turn up, I don’t know—at the Hump—between eleven and midnight. So, Peter, if you’re willing to wait for me— It’s eleven now and a little after. I’m going to ignore them inside, and then I hope to be able to follow them. I think they may come in a car, but I’m not sure of that. If they haven’t a car, I’ll do what I can on foot by way of following them.”

“O-oo-oh,” said Peter dubiously.

Was Peter thinking of his high-heeled shoes, Tom wondered? “If they don’t show up at all, at least it’s fun tonight and nobody gets hurt.” Tom had just seen the pink
Der Hump
sign, not nearly as large as he had remembered it. Now Peter was trying to park. “There’s a place!” Tom said, having spotted a gap in a line of cars parked on the right side of the street.

Peter was taking it.

“Are you willing to wait nearly an hour? Maybe more?”

“Sure, sure,” Peter said, parking.

Tom explained: if the kidnappers kept this date, they were going to ask for “Joey,” ask the barman or a waiter, and when Joey did not appear after a while, they would leave, and then Tom wanted to follow them. “I doubt if they’ll wait till closing time at dawn. They’ll know it’s a trick by midnight or a little after. But if you have to pee, you had better go somewhere now.”

Peter’s long jaw dropped slightly and he laughed. “No, I am okay. You are alone there? By yourself?”

“Do I look so delicate? Max is coming. Probably Rollo too. Bye-bye, Peter. See you here later. If it gets to be quarter past twelve, I’ll come out and speak with you.”

Tom looked at Der Hump’s door. One masculine figure came out, two others slipped in, and the beat of the disco music came louder through the opened door. BOOM-PAH . . . BOOM-PAH . . . BOOM-PAH . . . like a heartbeat, not fast, not too slow either, but strong. A little phony too, Tom thought, artificial, electronic, not exactly human. Tom knew what Peter was thinking.

“You think this is intelligent to do?” Peter asked in German.

“I want to find out where the boy is.” Tom took up his handbag. “If you don’t want to wait, Peter, I don’t blame you. I can try to get a taxi in time to follow them.”

“I’ll wait.” Peter smiled, tense. “If you have trouble—I’m here.”

Tom got out and crossed the street. The evening breeze made him feel naked, and he glanced down to make sure he wasn’t, that his skirt hadn’t blown up. His ankle turned as he stepped onto the curb, and he warned himself to take it easy. Tom touched his wig nervously, and with slightly parted lips pulled open the door of Der Hump. The disco pulse engulfed him, created echoing vibrations in his eardrums. Tom moved—under the gaze of at least ten customers, many of whom smiled at him—toward the bar. The air smelled of pot.

Again there was no room at the bar, but it was amazing how four or five men stepped aside so Tom could finally touch the round, shiny chromium rim of the bar.

“And who are you?” asked a young man in Levi’s so worn out, they revealed the absence of any underwear.

“Mabel,” Tom said, and fluttered his eyelashes. Coolly he opened his handbag, in order to get at the loose marks and change at the bottom for a drink. Tom suddenly realized he had not thought of nail polish, and neither had Max. The hell with it. It seemed masculine to dump coins on the counter in the English manner, so Tom didn’t.

Men and boys on the dance floor twisted and jumped to the din of pounding rock, as if the floor were exploding or undulating beneath them. Figures hovered, gazed, drifted up the glass-enclosed stairway which led to the loos, and as Tom watched, one figure fell down the stairs, was righted by two other men, and walked on down apparently undamaged. There were at least ten other figures in long-dress drag, Tom noticed, but now Tom was looking around for Max. With infinite slowness, Tom extracted a cigarette from his handbag and lit it, in no hurry to catch the eye of a barman and order a drink, for the nonce. It was now a quarter past eleven, and Tom looked around—especially at the bar where it would be logical for someone to ask a barman about a Joey—but so far Tom did not see anyone who could by any stretch of the imagination be called straight, and he assumed the kidnappers were.

And here came Max in a Western white shirt with pearl buttons, black leather trousers, and boots still, from the back part of the establishment where most of the dancing was going on. He was followed by a tall figure in a long dress that seemed made of beige tissue paper, and with crew-cut hair that had slender yellow ribbons somehow tied in it above both ears.

“
Good
evening,” Max said, smiling. “Rollo.” He gestured to the tissue paper figure.

“Mabel,” said Tom, smiling merrily.

Rollo’s thin red lips turned up at the corners. Otherwise his face was a floury white. His blue-gray eyes seemed to glitter like cut diamonds. “You wait a friend?” asked Rollo. He was carrying a long black cigarette holder without a cigarette.

Was Rollo kidding or not? “Ja-a,” said Tom, letting his eyes roll again over what he could see of the fellows against the walls in the tables department. Tom could hardly imagine one of the kidnappers or even two of them dancing, but perhaps anything was possible.

“What to
drink
?” Rollo asked Tom.

“I shall do it. Beer, Tom?” Max asked.

Beer seemed unladylike, but Tom at once thought this absurd, was about to say yes, when he noticed an espresso machine behind the bar. “
Kaffee, bitte!
” Tom took some of the loose coins from the bottom of his handbag and put them on the counter. He had not brought his wallet.

Max and Rollo wanted Dornkaats.

Tom maneuvered himself so that he could face the door, lean against the bar, and chat with Max and Rollo who were now facing him. Chatting was a bit difficult in the noise. Every few seconds, a male figure or two came in the door, and fewer seemed to depart.

“Who are you standing up?” Max shouted into Tom’s ear. “Do you
see
him?”

“Not yet!” Just then Tom noticed a young man with dark hair in the very corner or end of the bar which curved to Tom’s right and stopped against the wall. This one could be straight. He looked in his late twenties, wore a tan canvas-like jacket, and he held a cigarette in his left hand which rested on the bar. He was drinking beer, and he kept looking around, slowly and alertly, glancing at the door too. But many other people were also looking at the door, so Tom didn’t know what to think. Sooner or later the man Tom wanted would ask the barman—possibly for a second time, if he had already done it once—if he knew or saw or had a message from someone called Joey.

“
Dance?
” said Rollo, bending politely toward Tom, because Rollo was even taller.

“Why not?” He and Rollo forged their way to the dance floor.

Within seconds, Tom had to remove his high-heeled shoes, which Rollo gallantly took and began to clap together over his head like castanets. Whirling skirts, everybody laughing, but not at them, and in fact no one paid any attention to him and Rollo.
DEW-IT . . . DEW-IT . . . DEW-IT . . .
Or the words might have been
CHEW IT
or
PEE WIT
or
BLEW IT
,
it didn’t matter. The floor felt good under Tom’s bare feet. Now and then he put his hand on the top of his head to straighten his wig, and once Rollo did it for him. Rollo had had the good sense to wear flat sandals, Tom noticed. Tom felt exhilarated and stronger, as if he were having a workout in a gym. No wonder Berliners liked disguises! One could feel free, and in a sense like
oneself
in a disguise.

“Shall we go back to the bar?” Tom knew it was 11:40 at least, and he wanted to have another look.

Tom didn’t put his shoes back on till he got to the bar, where his unfinished coffee still stood. Max had been guarding his handbag. Tom resumed his place from which he could watch the door. The man Tom had noticed was no longer at the end of the bar, and Tom glanced around, looking for a tan jacket among the men milling around the tables, or those standing and staring at the dance floor or the stairway. Then Tom saw him just a couple of yards behind him at the bar, nearly concealed by the customers between, trying to catch the attention of a barman. Max started to yell something at Tom, and Tom silenced him with a wave of a finger, and watched the man through his nearly closed false eyelashes.

The barman leaned forward—he wore a curly blond wig—and shook his head.

The tan-jacketed man was still speaking, and Tom stood on tiptoe to try to see his lips. Was he saying “Joey”? It looked like it, and now came a nod of the barman’s head, a nod that might mean, “I’ll tell you if he turns up.” Then the man in the tan jacket slowly made his way through standing groups and solitary figures toward the wall opposite the bar. Here he spoke with a blondish man in a bright blue open-necked shirt who was leaning against the wall. The blue shirt said nothing in reply to whatever the other man had said to him.

“What were you saying?” Tom asked Max.

“
That
your friend?” Max asked, grinning, nodding toward the tan jacket.

Tom shrugged. He pushed his pinkish ruffled sleeve back, and saw that it was eleven minutes to midnight. Tom finished his coffee. He leaned toward Max and said, “I
may
have to leave in a minute. Not sure. So I’d better say good night and
thank
you, Max—in case I have to run—like Cinderella!”

“You want a taxi?” Max asked, puzzled, polite.

Tom shook his head. “Another Dornkaat?” Tom signaled for two by pointing at Max’s glass, holding up two fingers, then put out two ten-mark notes over Max’s protest. At the same time, Tom was watching the tan-jacketed man make his way back to the bar, aiming for the same place by the wall, which was now occupied by a man and a boy, deep in conversation. Then the tan jacket seemed to give up the bar idea, and moved nearer the door. Tom saw him lift an arm to get the eye of a barman who happened to be near the end of the bar just then. The barman shook his head at once, and then Tom knew that the man in the tan jacket was the one looking for Joey. Or Tom felt sure enough of it. The man looked at his wristwatch, then at the door. Three teenaged boys came in, all in Levi’s, all eyes, all swinging empty hands. The man in the tan jacket looked in the direction of the blue shirt, and gave a movement of his head in the direction of the door. The tan jacket went out.

“Good night, Max,” Tom said, picking up his handbag. “Lovely to meet you, Rollo!”

Rollo gave a bow.

Tom saw the blue shirt moving toward the door, and let him go out first. Then in an unhurried manner, Tom made his way to the door and out. Tom saw both men on the pavement to his right, the tan jacket waiting as the blue shirt walked toward him. Tom went left, toward Peter’s car, which was headed in the wrong direction, Tom realized. Some more fellows were entering the Hump, and one whistled at Tom, and the others chuckled.

Peter had his head back, but snapped to attention when Tom tapped his half-closed window.

“Me
again
!” said Tom, and went round the car and got in. “You’ll have to turn. I just saw them. On this street. Two men.”

Peter was already turning. The street was darkish, full of parked cars, but there was no traffic just now.

“Go slow, they’re on foot,” Tom said. “Pretend you’re looking for a parking place.”

Tom saw them walking, not looking behind them, and apparently engaged in conversation. Then they stopped at a parked car, and at a gesture from Tom, Peter slowed still more. A car was behind Peter’s but had room to pass, and it did. “I’d like to follow them without being noticed,” Tom said. “Give it a try, Peter. If they suspect we’re following them, they’ll give us a bum steer or zoom off somewhere—one or the other.” Tom tried to put bum steer into German, but Peter seemed to understand well enough.