The Boy Who Followed Ripley (22 page)

“Jumping?” Frank shook his head quickly, and took a step back from Tom, as if he were shy about standing so close to him. “Certainly not. . . . Okay if I wash?”

“Go ahead. Reeves is out, but Gaby’s here, the housekeeper. Just say ‘Guten Morgen’ to her. She’s very friendly.” Tom watched the boy take his trousers and go across the hall. He thought perhaps he had been wrong to be anxious. Frank had a purposeful air this morning, as if the pills had worn off.

By mid-morning, they were at St Pauli. They had taken a look at the sex-shop windows in the Reeperbahn, at the garish fronts of the nonstop blue-film cinemas, at shop windows with astounding underwear for all sexes. Rock music poured from somewhere, and even at this hour there were customers browsing and buying. Tom found himself blinking, maybe with amazement, maybe at the glaring colors that seemed circus-like in the clear sunlight. Tom realized that he had a prudish side, maybe due to his childhood in Boston, Massachusetts. Frank looked cool, but then he would make an effort to look cool, confronted by dildoes and vibrators with price tags.

“Place must be hopping at night,” Frank remarked.

“Doing all right now,” Tom said, seeing two girls approaching them with intent. “Let’s hop a streetcar—or a taxi. Let’s go to the zoo, that’s always fun.”

Frank laughed. “The zoo again!”

“Well, I like zoos. Wait till you see this zoo.” Tom saw a taxi.

The two girls, one of whom looked in her teens and rather attractively unmade-up, seemed to think the taxi might be for all four of them, but Tom waved them away with a polite smile and shook his head.

Tom bought a newspaper at the kiosk in front of the Tierpark entrance, and took a minute to glance at it. He went through it a second time, looking now for a small item that might have to do with the kidnappers in Berlin, or Frank Pierson. His second search was not thorough, but he didn’t see anything. This was
Die Welt
.

“No news,” Tom said to Frank, “is good news. Let’s go.”

Tom bought tickets which came in orange-colored perforated strips. These enabled them to ride the toylike trains that traveled all over the Carl Hagenbeck Tierpark. Frank looked enchanted, and Tom was pleased. The little train had perhaps fifteen carriages; one stepped aboard from the ground without opening a side door, and the train had no roof. They rolled along almost noiselessly past adventure playgrounds where kids hung from rubber tires that slid along cables from a height, or crawled in and out of two-story plastic constructions with holes, tunnels, and slopes. They passed lions and elephants with, apparently, no barrier between them and the human race. In the bird section, they detrained, bought beer and peanuts at a stand, then got aboard another passing train.

Then a taxi to a big restaurant on the harbor which Tom remembered from a previous trip. Its walls were glass, and one could look down at the port where tankers, white cruise liners, and barges lay moored, being loaded and unloaded, while water poured from their automatic pumps. Seagulls cruised, and occasionally dived.

“We go to Paris tomorrow,” Tom said after they had begun their meal. “How about that?”

Frank at once looked on guard, but Tom could see him collecting himself. It was either Paris tomorrow, Tom thought, or the boy would blow up in another day and insist on striking out somewhere from Hamburg on his own. “I don’t like to tell people what they should do. But you’ve got to face your family at some point, haven’t you?” Tom glanced to right and left, but he was speaking softly, the wall of glass was just to his left, and the nearest table was more than a yard away behind Frank. “You can’t hop one plane after another for months to come, can you?— Eat your
Bauernfrühstück
.”

The boy fell to again, more slowly. He had been amused by “Farmer’s Breakfast” on the menu and ordered it: fish, home-fried potatoes, bacon, onions, all mixed on a king-sized platter. “You’ll be coming to Paris too tomorrow?”

“Sure, since I’m going home.”

After lunch, they walked, crossed a Venice-like inlet of water bordered by beautiful old peak-roofed houses. Then on the pavement of a commercial street, Frank said, “I want to change some money. Can I go in here for a minute?”

He meant a bank. “Okay.” Tom went into the bank with him and waited while the boy stood on a short queue and made a transaction at the window marked “Foreign Exchange.” Frank hadn’t his Benjamin Andrews passport with him, as far as Tom knew, but he wouldn’t need it if he was changing French francs into marks. Tom did not try to see. Tom had put some other kind of cream on Frank’s mole that morning. Why was he always thinking about that damned mole? What if anybody
did
recognize Frank now? Frank came back smiling, pushing marks into his billfold.

They walked on to the museum of Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte, where Tom had been once before. Here were table models of fire bomb implosions that had flattened much of the Hamburg dock area in World War II: nine-inch-high warehouses on fire, sculpted yellow and blue flames. Frank poured over a model of ship-raising, the little ship three inches long resting on sand and under what appeared to be meters of sea. As usual, after an hour of this, including oil paintings of Hamburg Burgermeisters signing this and commemorating that, all in dress of the Benjamin Franklin period, Tom was rubbing his eyes and longing for a cigarette.

Minutes later, in an avenue of shops and pushcarts of flowers and fruit, Frank said, “Will you wait for me? Five minutes?”

“Where’re you going?”

“I’ll be back. By this tree.” Frank pointed to a plane tree near the curb beside them.

“But I’d like to know where you’re going,” Tom said.

“Trust me.”

“All right.” Tom turned away, walked slowly several paces on, doubting the boy, and at the same time reminding himself that he couldn’t play nursemaid to Frank Pierson forever. Yes, if the boy disappeared—and how much money had he cashed at the bank, how much had he left in French or American?—Tom would take Frank’s suitcase to Paris and deliver it to the Lutetia. Had Frank possibly taken his passport with him this morning? Tom turned back and walked toward the plane tree, which he recognized from others only because of an elderly gentleman sitting on a chair and reading a newspaper under it. The boy was not there, and more than five minutes had passed.

Then Frank reappeared through a trickle of pedestrians, smiling, carrying a big red-and-white plastic bag. “Thanks,” Frank said.

Tom was relieved. “Bought something?”

“Yep. Show you later.”

Next, the Jungfernstieg. Tom remembered the name of the street or promenade, because Reeves had once told him it was where the pretty girls of Hamburg strolled in the old days. The sightseeing boats set off for round-the-Alsters cruises from a quay at right angles to the Jungfernstieg, and Tom and Frank boarded one.

“My last day of freedom!” Frank said on the boat. The wind blew his brown hair back and whipped his trousers against his legs.

Neither wanted to sit down, but they were not in anyone’s way, hanging onto a corner of the superstructure. A jolly man in a white cap spoke through a megaphone, explaining the sights they were passing, the big hotels on sloping green lawns overlooking the water, where he assured everyone the tariff was “among the highest in the world.” Tom was amused. The boy’s eyes had focused on some distant point, maybe on a seagull, maybe on Teresa, Tom didn’t know.

When they got back to Reeves’s at just after six, Reeves was not home, but he had left a message in the middle of the neatly made bed in the guest room: “Back at seven or before. R.” Tom was glad Reeves was still out, because he wanted to speak with Frank alone.

“You remember what I told you at Belle Ombre—in regard to your father,” Tom said.

Frank looked puzzled for an instant, then said, “I think I remember everything you ever said to me.”

They were in the living room, Tom standing near the window, the boy sitting on the sofa.

“I said, never tell anyone what you did. Don’t confess. Don’t entertain for a minute the idea of confessing.”

Frank looked from Tom to the floor.

“Well—are you thinking about telling someone? Your brother?” Tom threw it out in the hope of eliciting something.

“No, I’m not.”

The boy’s voice was firm and deep enough, but Tom was not sure he could believe him. He wished he could take the boy by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. Did he dare? No. And what was he afraid of, Tom wondered—failure to shake any sense into the boy? “This you ought to know. Where is it?” Tom went to the little heap of newspapers at one end of the sofa and found yesterday’s. He opened it to the front page on which was the picture of the dead man in Lübars. “I saw you looking at this yesterday on the plane. This—this man I killed in Lübars, north Berlin.”

“
You?
” Frank’s voice rose an octave with astonishment.

“You never asked me where the meeting place was for the ransom. Never mind. I hit him over the head. As you can see.”

Frank blinked and looked at Tom. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Sure, I recognize this fellow now. He was the Italian in the apartment there!”

Tom lit a cigarette. “I tell you this because—” Because, why? Tom had to pause to collect his words. There was no comparison, really, between pushing one’s father off a cliff, and bashing the skull of a kidnapper who was walking toward you with a loaded gun. But both involved the taking of a life. “The fact that I killed this man— It’s not going to change my life. Granted he was probably a criminal himself. Granted he wasn’t the first man I ever killed. I don’t think I have to tell you that.”

Frank was looking at him with wonder. “Did you ever kill a woman?”

Tom laughed. That was just what he had needed, a laugh. Tom was aware of relief also, because Frank had not asked him about Dickie Greenleaf, the one murder Tom felt a bit of guilt about. “Never—a woman. Never had to,” Tom added, and thought at once of the joke about the Englishman who told a friend he had had to bury his wife, simply because she was dead. “Situation never arose. A woman. Surely not on your mind, Frank. . . . Who?”

Now Frank smiled. “Oh, no one! Gosh!”

“Good. The only reason I bring this up—” Tom was again at a loss, but plunged on. “It—I mean the—” He gestured toward the newspaper. “The act shouldn’t be devastating—to the rest of your life. There’s no reason to collapse.” Did the boy, could he, know the meaning of collapse at his age? To collapse from a sense of total failure? But many adolescents did collapse, even committed suicide, because they had met a problem they couldn’t cope with, sometimes just schoolwork.

Frank was brushing the knuckles of his right fist against the sharp corner of Reeves’s coffee table. Was the top made of glass? It was black and white, but not marble. Frank’s gesture made Tom nervous.

“Do you understand what I mean? You either let some event ruin your life or not. The decision is yours.— You’re lucky, Frank, in your case the decision
is
yours, because no one is accusing you.”

“I know.”

And Tom knew that part—how much?—of the boy’s mind was on the apparently lost love, Teresa. That was a sickness Tom felt unable to deal with, quite another subject than murder. Tom said nervously, “Don’t hit your knuckles against that table, will you, because it won’t solve anything. You’ll only get to Paris with bleeding knuckles.
Don’t be silly!
”

The boy had made a downward swipe at the table, but not quite hit it. Tom tried to relax, and looked away.

“I wouldn’t be that stupid, don’t worry, don’t worry.” Frank stood up and pushed his hands into his pockets, walked to a window, then turned to Tom. “The plane tickets for tomorrow. Shall I do it? I can make the reservations in English, can’t I?”

“I’m sure. Go ahead.”

“Lufthansa,” said Frank, picking up the telephone directory. “What time, around ten tomorrow morning?”

“Even earlier.” Tom felt much relieved. Frank seemed to be standing on his feet at last, or if he wasn’t quite, he was trying.

Reeves came in as Frank was fixing the time for tomorrow: 9:15 takeoff. Frank gave the names, Ripley and Andrews.

“Did you have a nice day?” Reeves asked.

“Very fine, thanks,” Tom said.

“Hello, Frank. Got to wash my hands,” Reeves said in his croaky voice, at the same time displaying his palms, which were visibly gray. “Handling pictures today. Not a dirty—”

“A real day’s work, Reeves?” said Tom. “I admire your hands!”

Reeves cleared his hoarse throat in vain, and began again. “I was about to say not a dirty day’s work, but a day’s
dirty
work. Did you make yourself a drink, Tom?” Reeves went off to his bathroom.

“Would you like to go out for dinner, Reeves?” Tom asked, following him. “It’s our last night.”

“I really don’t, if you don’t mind. Always something here, you know. Gaby sees to that. I think she made a casserole or something.”

Reeves never liked restaurants, Tom remembered. Reeves probably kept a low profile on the Hamburg scene.

“Tom.” Frank beckoned Tom into the guest room, and pulled a box out of the red and white plastic bag. “For you.”

“For me?— Thank you, Frank.”

“You haven’t opened it yet.”

Tom untied some blue and red ribbon, then opened the white box, which had a lot of white tissue paper inside. He found something reddish, shiny, golden, pulled it out, and it became a dressing gown with a belt of the same dark-red silk, with black tassels. The red material was flecked with gold in the form of arrowheads. “Really pretty,” said Tom. “Very handsome.” Tom took his jacket off. “Shall I try it on?” he asked, trying it on. It fitted perfectly, or would with pajamas underneath instead of his sweater and trousers. Tom glanced at the sleeve length and said, “Perfect.”

Frank ducked his head, and swung away from Tom.

Tom took the dressing gown off carefully and laid it across the bed. It made a fine and impressive rustle. The color was maroon, the same as the kidnappers’ car in Berlin, a color Tom didn’t like, but if he made himself think of it as Dubonnet, maybe he could forget that car.