The Boy Who Followed Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

  Eric looked at Tom brightly, as if the conversation had been a success, and put back the receiver.

  “Yes, well, I’ve learned something,” Tom said. “The boy has been kidnapped and I wasn’t—mistaken.”

  “What’s the next step?” asked Eric.

  Tom poured still more coffee for himself from the silver pot. “I want to stay in Berlin till something happens. Till I know Frank is safe.”

  12

  Peter left then, promising Eric to visit the garage tomorrow morning and see that Eric’s car was delivered in front of his apartment house. “Tom Ripley—good success!” Peter said to Tom, and his handshake was firm.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” Eric said after he had closed his apartment door. “I helped Peter get out of the East, and he has never forgotten it. He is an accountant by profession. He could get a job here. He had one for a while. But just now he does so much work for me, he doesn’t need a job. He is very good also with my income tax forms.” Eric chuckled.

  Tom was listening, but thinking also that he would ring Paris again tonight, maybe at two or three in the morning, to find out if Thurlow had spoken with Frank. Sleeping pills, of course. That was to be expected.

  Eric produced a cigar box, but Tom declined. “You were right not to give my telephone number to that detective. He might give it to the kidnappers! Lots of detectives are boobs—wanting to get all the information they can, and to hell with anybody else. Boobs!— I love American slang.”

  Tom refrained from saying that boobs had another meaning too. “Must send you a book of it.— Zurich, Basel, which,” Tom mused, enjoying being able to muse out loud in the presence of Eric, because usually he had to keep his thoughts to himself.

  “You think that’s where the money will change hands?”

  “Don’t you think it’s likely? Unless the kidnappers want it in marks in Berlin for their anti-establishment activities or something. But Switzerland’s always safer—I’d think.”

  “How much do you think they’ll ask?” Eric drew gently on his cigar.

  “One, two million dollars? Thurlow might know the sum already. Maybe he’s leaving for Switzerland tomorrow.”

  “Why are you so interested in this kidnapping event—if I may ask you, Tom?”

  “Oh. Well—I’m interested in the boy’s safety.” Tom walked around the room with his hands in his pockets. “He’s an odd boy, considering his family’s so wealthy. He has a fear of money or a hatred of it.— Do you know he shined every pair of shoes I possess? These, for instance.” Tom lifted his right foot. The shine still remained on the loafer, despite the plunge through Grunewald. Tom thought of Frank’s murder of his father. Tom was sympathetic because of that. But to Eric, Tom added only, “He’s in love with a girl in New York. She hasn’t been able to write to him while he’s been in Europe, because he couldn’t give her an address. He wanted to be incognito for a while. So he’s on tenterhooks—uncertain, I mean, whether the girl still cares for him. He’s only sixteen. You know how it is.” But had Eric ever been in love? It was hard for Tom to imagine. There was something strongly selfish and self-preserving about Eric.

  Eric was nodding thoughtfully. “He was in your house when I was. I knew there was somebody there. I thought—maybe a girl—or a—”

  Tom laughed. “A girl I was hiding from my wife?”

  “Why did he run away from home?”

  “Oh—boys do. Maybe upset about his father’s death. Maybe his girlfriend too. He wanted to hide for a few days—to be quiet. He worked in the garden at my house.”

  “Did he do something illegal in America?” Eric sounded almost prudish.

  “Not that I know of. But for a while he didn’t want to be Frank Pierson, so I got him another passport.”

  “And you brought him to Berlin.”

  Tom took a deep breath. “I thought I could persuade him to go home from here, which I did. He has a plane ticket reserved for tomorrow, back to New York.”

  “Tomorrow,” Eric repeated, without any emotion.

  Why should Eric have any emotion, Tom thought. Tom looked at the buttons of Eric’s silk shirt, which were strained by the bulge of his abdomen. The buttons looked the way Tom felt. “I’d like to ring Thurlow again tonight. Maybe quite late. Two or three in the morning. I hope it won’t disturb you, Eric?”

  “Certainly not, Tom. The telephone is here at your disposal.”

  “Maybe I should ask you where I’m to sleep. Here, maybe?” Tom meant the big horsehair sofa.

  “Ach, I’m glad you said that! You do look tired, Tom. On this sofa, yes, but it is a bed sofa. Watch!” Eric removed a pink pillow from the sofa. “It looks like an antique, maybe, but it is the latest thing. One button—” Eric pressed something, and out zoomed the seat, the back fell flat, and it was the size of a double bed. “Look!”

  “Marvelous,” said Tom.

  Eric fetched blankets and sheets from somewhere, and Tom helped him. A blanket first to fill in the indentations caused by the sofa’s buttons, then the sheets. “Yes, time you turned in. Turn in, turn out, over, on, off, turn against and turn up. Really I think sometimes that English is just as—movable as German,” said Eric, plumping pillows now.

  Tom, taking off his sweater, realized that he was going to sleep like a top tonight, but he didn’t want to get into an etymological discussion about sleeping like a top, in case Eric was interested in the phrase, so Tom said nothing, and dragged his pajamas from the bottom of his suitcase. He was thinking that the kidnappers might have forced Frank to reveal his name. Would Mrs. Pierson trust him to deliver the ransom money? Tom realized that he dearly wanted a swat of some kind at the kidnappers. Maybe that was foolhardy, quite mad, because just now he felt vaguely angry and much too tired to be logical.

  “The bathroom is yours, Tom,” said Eric. “I shall say good night, so I don’t disturb you any more. Do you want me to set my Wecker for you at two, maybe, so you can telephone?”

  “I think I’ll make it—wake up,” Tom replied. “Thank you—very much, Eric.”

  “Oh, while I think of it, one little question. Do you say ‘waken somebody, wake somebody, or—awaken somebody’?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t think the English know.”

  Then Tom took a shower and went to bed, trying to fix in his mind the hour of 3 a.m., so he would wake up, exactly one hour and twenty minutes from now. Was it worth it to risk getting kidnapped himself, or worse shot dead, to deliver the ransom money, when anyone else could do it? The kidnappers might appoint their own man. Who? Might the kidnappers insist that Tom Ripley deliver it? Quite possible. If the kidnappers managed to seize him, they could get some more money, and Tom tried to imagine Heloise getting his ransom money together—how much, a quarter of a million?—and asking her father— Good Lord, no! Here Tom had to laugh into his pillow. Would Jacques Plisson cough up money for son-in-law Tom Ripley? Not bloody likely! A quarter of a million would certainly take all the investments he and Heloise had, and maybe even Belle Ombre would have to be sold. Unthinkable!

  And maybe none of what he was thinking about would come to pass.

  Tom awakened from an anxiety dream in which he had been trying to drive a car up an impossibly steep road, more vertical than any hill of San Francisco, and the car had been about to topple over backward before it reached the top. His forehead and chest were sleek with perspiration. But it was one minute to three, just right.

  He dialed the Lutetia number from Eric’s address book, where Eric had written also the dial code for Paris. Tom asked for Monsieur Ralph Thurlow.

  “Hello.— Yes—Mr. Ripley. Thurlow here.”

  “What’s the news? Have you spoken with the boy?”

  “Yes, we spoke with him about an hour ago. Says he’s not hurt. Sounded very sleepy.” And Thurlow sounded tired.

  “And the arrangements?”

  “They haven’t set the place. They—”

  Tom waited. He supposed Thurlow was hesitant about
mentioning money, and maybe Thurlow had had a tough day at the Hôtel Lutetia. “But they told you what they wanted?”

  “Yes, that will be coming from Zurich tomorrow—I mean today. Mrs. Pierson is having it telexed to three Berlin banks. They want three banks. And Mrs. Pierson thinks it’s safer too.”

  Maybe the sum was so big, Mrs. Pierson wanted to draw as little attention to it as possible, Tom thought. “You’re coming to Berlin?”

  “I haven’t arranged that as yet.”

  “Who’s picking it up at the banks?”

  “I don’t know. They want to know if the money’s in Berlin—first. And they’re going to tell me later where it’s to be delivered.”

  “To be delivered in Berlin, you think.”

  “I would think. I don’t know.”

  “The police are not in on this—listening to your phone?”

  “No, indeed,” said Thurlow. “That’s the way we want it.”

  “What’s the sum?”

  “Two million. USA. In German marks.”

  “Do you expect a bank messenger to handle it all?” The idea made Tom smile.

  “They—they sound as if they’re arguing among themselves,” Thurlow’s American voice droned on. “About place and time. One man talks to me—German accent.”

  “Shall I call you again around nine this morning? Won’t the money be here by then?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Mr. Thurlow, I’m willing to pick up the money and take it to wherever they want it. Might be faster, in view of—” Tom stopped. “Don’t mention my name to them, please.”

  “The boy told them your name, said you were his friend, and said that to his mother too.”

  “Very well, but if they ask about me, say you haven’t heard a word from me, and since I live in France, I may have gone home. Please say the same thing to Mrs. Pierson, as I assume they’re phoning her.”

  “They’re mainly phoning me. They just let the boy talk with her once.”

  “You might ask Mrs. Pierson to tell her Swiss bank or the Berlin banks that I’m to pick the money up—if Mrs. Pierson is agreeable to that.”

  “I’ll see about that,” said Thurlow.

  “I’ll ring you in a few hours. And I’m delighted that the boy’s okay—or that he’s not suffering anything worse than sleepiness at the moment.”

  “That’s right, let’s hope!”

  Then Tom hung up and went back to bed. Eric’s quiet bustling in the kitchen awakened him, the clink of a kettle, the buzz of an electric coffee grinder, comforting sounds. It was twelve minutes to nine, Monday 28th August. Tom went into the kitchen to tell Eric the results of his 3 a.m. telephone call.

  “Two million dollars!” said Eric. “Just what you have guessed, is it not?”

  That seemed to be more interesting to Eric than the fact that Frank was alive and well enough to talk to his mother. Tom let it go, and drank his coffee.

  Tom dressed, then managed to put his bed into the form of a sofa again, and he folded his sheets neatly, thinking he might need them tonight. When the living room looked tidy again, Tom glanced at his watch, thinking of Thurlow, and then out of curiosity went to the long Schiller section of Eric’s bookcase, and pulled out Die Räuber. It really was an individual, leather-bound book. Tom had suspected that the row of Schiller’s complete works was a façade concealing a safe or a secret compartment perhaps in the books themselves.

  Tom picked up the telephone, dialed the Lutetia number, and asked for Monsieur Ralph Thurlow.

  Thurlow answered. “Yes, Mr. Ripley, hello. I have the banks’ names now, three of them.” Thurlow sounded considerably more awake and cheerful.

  “The money’s arrived here?”

  “Yes, and Mrs. Pierson is willing for you to pick it up today—as soon as you can, in fact. She’s told Zurich that this is a transfer with her approval and Zurich has done the same with the Berlin banks. The banks seem to have odd hours there for opening, but that doesn’t matter. You should phone each bank and tell them when you’ll arrive and they’ll—uh—”

  “I understand.” Tom knew, some banks didn’t open until half past three, others closed at one. “So—the banks—”

  Thurlow interrupted. “The people who—are phoning me, they’ll phone me later today to make sure the money’s been collected, and then they’ll set a place where it’s to be left.”

  “I see. You didn’t mention my name to them?”

  “Certainly not. I just said it will be picked up, it will be delivered.”

  “Good. Now the banks, if you will.” Tom had a ballpoint pen and proceeded to write. The first was the ADCA Bank at Europa-Center, which was to have a million and a half DM. The second the Berliner Disconto Bank with the same sum. The third the Berliner Commerz Bank with “not quite” a million DM. “Thank you,” Tom said as he finished writing. “I’ll try to collect this in the next couple of hours and ring you back around noon—with luck.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “By the way, did our friends say they were with any group?”

  “Group?”

  “Or gang? Sometimes they give themselves names and are pleased to tell them. You know, like the Red Saviors.”

  Ralph Thurlow chuckled nervously. “No, they didn’t.”

  “Do you think they’re phoning from a private apartment?”

  “No, mainly not. Maybe when the boy spoke with his mother. She seemed to think so. But this morning they were dropping coins somewhere. They phoned around eight to ask if the money got to Berlin. We’ve been at this all night.”

  When Tom hung up, he heard the click of Eric’s typewriter in Eric’s bedroom, and Tom didn’t want to interrupt him. He lit a cigarette, and thought he should ring Heloise, since he had promised to be home today or tomorrow, but now he did not want to take the time. And where might he be at this time tomorrow?

  Tom imagined Frank confined in a room somewhere in Berlin, maybe not tied with ropes, but under surveillance day and night. Frank was the kind of boy who would make a dash to escape, who might even jump out of a window if the ground were not too far away, and the kidnappers might have realized that. Tom also knew that the anti-establishment people, the groups who kidnapped, had friends among the public who would give them shelter. Reeves had spoken with Tom about this not long ago on the telephone. The situation was complex, because the revolutionaries, the gangs, claimed to be part of the political left-wing movement, although they were rejected by its majority. These gangs seemed directionless to Tom, except for their obvious efforts to create an atmosphere of disturbance, provoking the authorities to crack down and show their presumably true, that was to say fascist, colors. The kidnapping and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, who had been decried by some as an old Nazi and representative of management and factory owners, had unfortunately inspired a witchhunt by the authorities against intellectuals, artists, and liberals. And right-wingers, seizing the moment, insisted that the police were still not cracking down hard enough. Nothing in Germany was black or white and simple, Tom thought. Were Frank’s captors “terrorists” or even political in any way? Were they going to drag out negotiations, publicize them? Tom hoped not, because he simply couldn’t afford any more publicity.

  Eric came into the living room, and Tom told him about the banks.

  “What sums!” Eric looked for a moment stunned, then blinked his eyes. “Peter and I could help you this morning, Tom. Those banks are mostly on the Ku’damm. We could go in my car or Peter’s car. Peter keeps a gun in his car, but I do not. Certainly not allowed here.”

  “I thought your car was on the blink.”

  “On the blink?”

  “Kaputt,” Tom said.

  “Oh, just till this morning. Peter said he would try to get it here by ten, I remember. Nine-thirty-five now. For safety, you know, Tom, we should all go together this morning, don’t you think so?” Eric looked at his most cautious, about to approach the telephone.

  Tom nodded. �
�We collect the money and bring it here—with your permission, Eric.”

  “Ye-es—of course.” Eric glanced at his walls as if he might find them stripped in a few hours. “I’ll give Peter a call.”

  Peter’s line did not answer.

  “He is maybe seeing about my car,” Eric said. “If he buzzes me from downstairs—soon—I shall ask him if he can come with us this morning. And where does the money go later, Tom?”

  Tom smiled. “I hope to find that out by noon. By the way, Eric, I think I’ll need a suitcase for this morning’s haul, don’t you think so? Could I borrow one from you, perhaps, instead of emptying mine or Frank’s?”

  Eric was at once obliging, went to his bedroom, and came back with a medium-sized brown pigskin suitcase, not new or expensive looking, and perhaps just the right size, though Tom had no idea of the bulk of nearly four thousand banknotes of a thousand DM each.

  “Thank you, Eric. If Peter can’t come with us, we can do this by taxi, I should think. First I’ve got to ring those banks. Now.”

  “I shall ring them for you, Tom. The ADCA Bank, didn’t you say?”

  Tom put his list by Eric’s telephone, and consulted the directory for the number of the ADCA Bank. While Eric dialed the ADCA Bank, Tom wrote down the numbers of the other two banks. Eric did it calmly and smoothly: he asked for the Herr Direktor, and said he was telephoning in regard to collecting some money being held in the name of Thomas Ripley. This took several minutes, during which time Tom pocketed his passport for identification, and listened. Eric was not able to speak with each manager personally, but all three banks confirmed that money was being held. Eric said that Herr Ripley would arrive in the next hour.

  During the last telephone call, Eric’s doorbell rang, and Eric motioned for Tom to press the release button in the kitchen. Tom pressed the speaker button and asked, “Who is it?”

  “Peter here. The car of Eric is downstairs.”

  “Just a minute, Peter,” Tom said. “Here’s Eric.”

  Eric took over the speaker, and Tom left the kitchen.

  Tom heard Eric asking if Peter had some time this morning for a “very important couple of errands.” Then Eric came into the living room and said, “Peter has time, and he says also my car is downstairs. Isn’t he marvelous?”