The Boy Who Followed Ripley (23 page)

18

O
n the plane going to Paris, Tom noticed that Frank’s hair had grown so long, it was falling partly over his cheek where the mole was. Frank had not had a haircut since the middle of August, which was the time Tom had advised Frank to let it grow. Between noon and one o’clock, he would be delivering Frank to Thurlow and Johnny Pierson at the Lutetia. Tom had reminded Frank, last evening at Reeves’s, that he ought to see about getting a genuine passport, unless Thurlow had had the wit to bring his passport or ask his mother to send it from Maine.

“You see this?” Frank asked, showing Tom a page in a glossy little magazine donated by the airline. “That’s where we were.”

Tom read a small item about Romy Haag and its transvestite show. “I bet they haven’t got the Hump there! That magazine’s for tourists.” Tom laughed, and stretched his legs as far as the seat in front of him permitted. Airplanes were getting increasingly uncomfortable. He could travel first class, though probably with a sense of guilt about spending so much extra when the inter-European rates were already inflated, and moreover Tom would have felt embarrassed at being seen in first class. Why? He always had a desire to step on the toes of people in the roomy first class when he boarded an airplane and had to pass through their more luxurious quarters, where champagne corks started to pop before takeoff.

This time, not looking forward to the encounter at the Lutetia, Tom proposed the train from the airport to the Gare du Nord, and a taxi from there. At the Gare du Nord they queued for a taxi, the queue kept in order by no less than three policemen in white spats and with guns on their hips, and then they rode toward the Hôtel Lutetia. Frank, tense and silent, stared out the window. Was he planning his stance, Tom wondered, and what would it be? A don’t-touch-me attitude toward Thurlow? An awkward explanation to brother Johnny? A defiance even? Was Frank going to insist on staying in Europe?

“I think you’ll like my brother all right,” Frank said nervously.

Tom nodded. He wanted Frank to get home safely, resume his life, which was bound to mean school again, face what he had to face, and learn to live with it. Kids of sixteen, at least from Frank’s kind of family, could not leave home and expect to cope, as a boy from the slums might, or a boy from such a wretched home that the street might be better. They slid up in front of the Lutetia.

“I have francs,” Frank said.

Tom let him pay. A doorman carried their two suitcases in, but once inside the rather pretentious lobby, Tom said to the doorman, “I’m not staying in the hotel, so could you check mine for half an hour or so?”

Frank wanted his checked too, and a bellhop returned and gave them two tickets, which Tom pocketed. Frank came back from the desk, and reported that Thurlow and his brother were out, but due back in less than an hour.

Amazing to find them out, Tom thought, and looked at his watch. It was 12:07. “Maybe they’re out for lunch? I’m going to the next bar-café and ring home. Want to come?”

“Sure!” said Frank, and led the way to the door. On the pavement, he hung his head as he walked.

“Stand up straight,” Tom said.

Frank did so at once.

“Order me a coffee, Frank?” Tom said as they went into a bar-tabac. Tom went down some winding stairs to the
toilettes-téléphones
. He put two francs into the telephone slot, not wanting to be cut off for being a few seconds late with his money, and dialed Belle Ombre. Mme. Annette answered.

“Ah-h!” She sounded as if she were fainting at the sound of his voice.

“I’m in Paris. All goes well?”

“Ah, oui! But Madame is not here at the moment. She went out to lunch with a friend.”

A female friend, Tom noticed. “Tell her I’ll be home this afternoon, maybe around—oh, by four, I hope. By six-thirty anyway,” he added, remembering the gap between trains from a little past 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. something at Gare de Lyon.

“You do not wish Madame Heloise to fetch you in Paris?”

Tom didn’t. He went back to Frank and his coffee.

Frank, with a hardly touched Coca-Cola in front of him at the bar, spat out chewing gum into an empty and crushed cigarette packet that he took from a big ashtray. “Sorry. I hate chewing gum. Don’t know why I bought it. Or this.” He pushed the Coca-Cola away.

Tom watched the boy drift toward the jukebox near the door. The box was now playing something, an American song sung in French.

Frank came back. “Is everything all right at home?”

“I think so, thanks.” Tom pulled some coins from his pocket.

“This is paid for.”

They went out. Again the boy’s head sank, and Tom said nothing.

Ralph Thurlow, at any rate, was in. Tom had let Frank ask at the desk. They rode up in a decorated lift that suggested to Tom a bad performance of Wagner. Was Thurlow going to be cool, self-important? That at least would be amusing.

Frank knocked on the door of 620, and the door opened at once. Thurlow beckoned the boy in enthusiastically and without a word, then saw Tom. Thurlow’s smile remained. Frank made a gracious gesture, ushering Tom in. No one said a word until the door was closed. Thurlow wore a shirt with sleeves rolled up and no tie. He was a chunky man in his late thirties, perhaps, with rippling short-cut reddish hair and a rather tough face.

“My friend Tom Ripley,” Frank said.

“How’d you do, Mr. Ripley?— Please sit down,” said Thurlow.

There was plenty of space, and chairs and sofas, but Tom did not at once sit down. A door to the right was closed, a door to the left by the windows open, and Thurlow went to it and called to Johnny, saying to Frank and Tom that he thought Johnny was taking a shower. There were newspapers and a briefcase on a table, and more newspapers on the floor, a transistor radio, a tape recorder. This was not a bedroom but a sitting room between two bedrooms, Tom supposed.

Johnny came in, tall and smiling, in a fresh pink shirt he had not yet stuffed into his trousers. He had straight brown hair lighter than Frank’s, and his face was more narrow than Frank’s. “
Franky!
” He swung his brother’s right hand and almost embraced him. “How
are
yuh?”

Or so it sounded to Tom. How are yuh. Tom felt that he had entered America, just by stepping into room 620. Tom was introduced to Johnny and they shook hands. Johnny looked like a straightforward, happy, and easygoing boy, even younger than nineteen, which Tom knew he was.

Then down to business, which Tom let Thurlow stumble on with. Thurlow first assured Tom, with thanks from Mrs. Pierson, that the marks had been reported in Zurich by the bank there.

“Every last one, except the bank charges,” said Thurlow. “Mr. Ripley, we don’t know the details, but . . .”

You never will, Tom thought, and barely listened to what followed from Thurlow. Reluctantly, Tom sat down on a beige upholstered sofa, and lit a Gauloise. Johnny and Frank were talking fast and quietly by the window. Frank looked angry and tense. Had Johnny said the name Teresa? Tom thought so. He saw Johnny shrug.

“You said there were no police,” said Thurlow. “You went to their apartment— How did you do it?” Now Thurlow fairly laughed, maybe in what he thought was a tough guy to tough guy manner. “It’s fantastic!”

Tom felt one hundred percent turned off in regard to Mr. Thurlow. “Professional secret,” said Tom. How long could he endure this? Tom stood up. “Got to be pushing on, Mr. Thurlow.”

“Pushing on?” Thurlow had not yet sat down. “Mr. Ripley, besides meeting you—thanking you— We don’t even know your exact address!”

In order to send him a fee, Tom wondered? “I am in the book. Villeperce, seventy-seven, Seine et Marne.— Frank?”

“Yes, sir!”

Suddenly the boy’s anxious expression looked like the one Tom remembered from mid-August at Belle Ombre. “May we go in here for a minute?” Tom asked, indicating what he supposed was Johnny’s room, whose door was still open.

They could, Johnny said, so Tom and Frank went in, and Tom closed the door.

“Don’t tell them all the details of that night—in Berlin,” Tom said. “Above all, don’t tell them about the dead man—will you?” Tom glanced around, but saw no tape recorder in this room. There was a
Playboy
on the floor by the bed, and a few big bottles of orange soda pop on a tray.

“Of course I
won’t
,” said Frank.

The boy’s eyes seemed older than his brother’s. “You can say—all right—that I failed to keep the date with the money. That’s how I still had the money. All right?”

“All right.”

“And that I followed one of the kidnappers after I made a second date, so I knew where you were being held.— But don’t mention that crazy
Hump!
” Now Tom burst out laughing, and bent over.

They both laughed, with nearly hysterical mirth.

“I gotcha,” Frank whispered.

Tom caught the boy suddenly by the front of his jacket, then released him, embarrassed by his gesture. “Never anything about that dead man! You promise?”

Frank nodded. “I know, I know what you mean.”

Tom started to walk back to the other room, then turned. “I mean,” he whispered, “so far and no farther—with everything. If you mention Hamburg, don’t give Reeves’s name. Say you forgot it.”

The boy was silent, but he looked steadily at Tom, then nodded. They went into the other room.

Now Thurlow sat on a beige chair. “Mr. Ripley—please sit down again, if you’ve got just a couple of minutes.”

Tom did so to be polite, and Frank at once joined him on the beige sofa. Johnny was still standing by the window.

“I must apologize for my brusqueness several times on the telephone,” Thurlow said. “I couldn’t know, you know—” Thurlow paused.

“I’d like to ask you,” Tom said, “what the situation is now in regard to Frank’s being missing or looked for. You told the police here—what?”

“Well—I first told Mrs. Pierson that the boy was safe in Berlin—with you. Then with her agreement I informed the police here. Of course I didn’t need her agreement to do it.”

Tom bit his underlip. “I hope you and Mrs. Pierson didn’t mention my name to the police anywhere. That wouldn’t’ve been necessary at all.”

“Not here, I know,” Thurlow assured Tom. “Mrs. Pierson—I—yes, I told her your name, of course, but I certainly asked her not to mention your name to the police in the States. There were no police in the States. This was a private detective situation. I told her to say to any journalists—whom she hates, by the way—that the boy had been found taking a holiday in Germany. Didn’t even say
where
in Germany, because that could’ve led to another kidnapping!” Ralph Thurlow chuckled, leaning back in his chair, and adjusting his brass-buckled belt with a thumb.

He was smiling as if another kidnapping might have landed him in some other comfortable spot, such as Palma de Majorca, Tom thought.

“I wish you’d tell me what happened in Berlin,” Thurlow said. “At least a description of the kidnappers. It might—”

“You’re not intending to
look
for them,” Tom said in a tone of surprise, and smiled. “Hopeless.” Tom stood up.

So did Thurlow, looking unsatisfied. “I’ve recorded my telephone conversations with them.— Well, maybe Frank can tell me a little more.— What made you go to Berlin, Mr. Ripley?”

“Oh—Frank and I wanted a change of scene from Villeperce,” Tom said, feeling like a travelogue or brochure, “and I thought Berlin was off the tourist trail. Frank wanted to be incognito for a while . . . By the way, have you got Frank’s passport here?” Tom asked before Thurlow might ask why he had sheltered the boy.

“Yep, my mother sent it by registered post,” Johnny said.

Tom said to Frank, “You’d better get rid of the Andrews one, you know? I can take it if you go downstairs with me.” Tom was thinking of returning it to Hamburg, where it could certainly be made use of again.

“
What
passport?” asked Thurlow.

Tom edged toward the door.

Thurlow seemed to give up the passport matter, and walked toward Tom. “Maybe I’m not a typical detective. Maybe there aren’t any such animals. We’re all different, not all of us capable of a physical fight, if it came to it.”

But wasn’t he the usual, Tom thought, glancing at Thurlow’s well-fed body, at his heavy hands with a school ring on one little finger. Tom thought of asking him if he had ever been on the police force, but really Tom didn’t care.

“You’ve had some experience with the underworld before, haven’t you, Mr. Ripley?” Thurlow asked this in a genial way.

“Haven’t we all,” Tom said, “anyone who’s ever bought an oriental rug.— Well, Frank, with your passport, you seem all set.”

“I’m not going to stay here tonight,” Frank said, getting up.

Thurlow looked at the boy. “What do you mean, Frank?—Where’s your suitcase? You have no suitcase?”

“Downstairs with Tom’s,” Frank replied. “I want to go home with Tom now. And tonight. We’re not leaving for the States today, are we? I’m not.” Frank looked determined.

Tom gave a twitch of a smile and waited. He had expected something like this.

“I thought we’d leave tomorrow.” With equal determination and a little puzzlement, Thurlow folded his arms. “Do you want to phone your mother now, Frank? She’s expecting a call from you.”

Frank shook his head quickly. “Just tell her I’m okay if she calls up.”

Thurlow said, “I wish you’d stay here, Frank. It’s just one night here, and I want you in sight.”

“Come on, Franky,” Johnny said. “Stay with
us
!
Natch!”

Frank gave his brother a look, as if he objected to being called Franky, made a kicking movement with his right foot, though there was nothing to kick. He walked nearer to Tom. “I want to leave.”

“Now look,” said Thurlow. “One night—”

“
Can
I go to Belle Ombre with you?” Frank asked Tom. “I can, can’t I?”

In the next seconds, everyone but Tom talked at the same time. Tom wrote his telephone number on a pad by the telephone, and added his name below.

“If we just tell my mother, it’s all
right
,” Johnny was saying to Thurlow. “I
know
Frank.”