The Memory of Eva Ryker

by Donald Stanwood

  “Well …”

  “… Freudian Wonder Woman, adept at untying all the knots that bind, etc., etc …?”

  Eva blushed, smiling wanly. “Something like that.”

  “Yes, Norman was always full of testimonials.” She leaned back with a deep sigh. “But I may be a little rusty for this sort of thing. One of the hazards of specialization is that it constipates you when something new turns up. I’ve spent nearly ten years in Japan, up to here in the problems of these people. First the Etas, and later studying the impulses behind their dreadful suicide mystique.” She gestured at the files and shook her head. “Page after page of learned conclusions backed up by years of meticulous research. And I sometimes still have the feeling I’m talking through my hat.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Eva asked.

  “I think Margaret is trying to scale herself down from Olympian heights.”

  “Nicely, if sarcastically put, Norman.” She removed the glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I myself prefer the allusion of cards on the table.” She polished the lenses with a stray Kleenex. “Now, Norman explained your background in some detail, including the events in Spain. I’m afraid his … stratagem of showing you that old film was unorthodox, brutal, perhaps, but it certainly jarred the mental defenses you’ve set up against your experiences aboard the Titanic.” Margaret resettled the glasses on her nose. “Do you remember anything about the ship?”

  Eva shook her head.

  “You recall the film, don’t you?”

  She squirmed in the chair. “I remember watching it. Then I blanked out, I guess. Next thing I knew, Norman was slapping me.”

  Margaret made a face as she stood and paced slowly behind the desk. “I understand that you want to undergo hypnosis. To try and recover your memories?”

  Conscious of our appraisal, Eva’s head lifted firmly. “That’s right.”

  Margaret switched on a desk lamp that filled the room with a low amber glow. “Well, there’s a number of approaches we can use. Scopolamine, Pentothal, straight hypnosis, hallucinogens. But whether it’s advisable or beneficial to you is another question. Forcing your brain to explore a past experience it’s tried to obliterate for fifty years. I’ve seen people who’ve placed themselves at the disposal of … incompetents. Some are mumbling vegetables in hospital wards.”

  I watched her resolve begin to wilt.

  “Eva,” I said, “don’t do this as some sort of obligation to me. You’re the only person you’ve got to please.”

  She smiled thanks and tightened the grip on my hand.

  Eight o’clock the following morning I walked with Eva into Margaret’s inner office.

  It was a small, square windowless room. A low modern lamp hung above a long leather couch, an expensive Sony tape recorder on a rolling stand, and two chairs.

  I sat in an unobtrusive corner while Margaret took charge.

  “Now, Eva, the first thing I want to do this morning is called a suggestibility test. It’ll give us some idea how receptive you are to a light trance state and a simple capacity to relax. Would you come over here please?”

  Dumbfounded, Eva obeyed.

  “Fine. Now, dear, just stand facing this wall. That’s perfect. Now, look straight up at the little black circle painted on the ceiling. Right over your head. Okay, Eva, please stand straight, with your feet together and your arms at your sides. Don’t take your eyes off the circle. You’re doing fine, dear.”

  Margaret quietly moved behind her. “All right, Eva. Now I want you to keep very still, and don’t move. The only thing I want you to do is close your eyes. Keep your head facing toward the ceiling, but close your eyes. That’s wonderful. Don’t be tense, dear. Try to relax. I am now going to place both my hands on your shoulder blades. Gently, very gently. You will feel a force pulling you back toward me. Don’t worry and don’t resist. We’ll catch you when you fall. You are falling, falling, falling. Drawing back …”

  Eva began swaying like a skyscraper near collapse.

  “You are falling back,” Margaret said, “back, back, all the way. We’ll catch you, dear; falling back … back …”

  Feather-light, she began to topple. I bolted upright to help Margaret cushion her fall.

  “Wow.” Eva grinned sheepishly and shook herself upright. “Are my heels round enough?”

  “That’s putting it mildly, my dear. I think we’ll make good progress.”

  Late that afternoon I joined Margaret in her outer office. We had gone through three reels of tape. Eva lay asleep in the other room.

  Margaret opened the drapes behind her desk. Tokyo was turning into a neon firecracker in the fading light. Winking Kanji and Hirigana signs blinked their unfathomable sales pitches our way.

  She lit a cigarette, then waved the pack. “Smoke?”

  “No thanks. You got me to quit, remember?”

  “Oh, yes. Sorry. I wasn’t enticing you.”

  “Sometimes I resent it. The tobacco cure, I mean. There are times when it gives you … something to hold on to.”

  “I thought you were beyond crutches, Norman.”

  “Not yet. Probably never.”

  We watched a high silver plane searching through the smog for Haneda Airport.

  “You’ll get duplicates of the tapes,” Margaret said. “I want you to understand I would never allow such a thing if Eva hadn’t requested it. I’d like her to stay with me for a while. A couple of weeks at least. Together we can talk this thing out. Put it together a piece at a time.” She smiled, patting my shoulder. “It’s called Crawling before Running.”

  “Of course.” I watched her drag deep from the cigarette. “Margaret, you better be sure what you’re doing, every step of the way. If she breaks down over this …”

  “Don’t underestimate Eva. A very resilient lady. She’ll survive.”

  I took refuge in the glorious view and tried to ignore my misgivings.

  Two days later the last of the seven hours of tape flipped onto the take-up reel of the recorder in my den.

  Jan struggled up from the leather chair by my desk and turned it off.

  I didn’t say anything. She nervously fiddled with my letter opener while trying to collect her wits.

  “My God, Norman. How could you stand it?”

  “I couldn’t. But I did.” I reached for the flask in the bottom drawer. “Join me?”

  Jan grabbed our empty coffee mugs. “A double.”

  I poured two fingers of Jack Daniels into her cup and three for myself. “Well? What do you think?”

  She touched bottom with one giant swig, then came up for air. “I wish I knew. The tape raises two questions for every answer.”

  The phone rang. I tried to shake off my mental storm clouds as I picked up the receiver.

  “Tom Bramel, Norman. Good news! We scrounged up a picture of Albert and Martha Klein!”

  “You’re kidding! Where?”

  “Well, the FBI and State Department were dry wells. But the Cunard Line came through, if you can believe it. Their London office has some of the old White Star Line’s records in storage. They came across a company duplicate of the Kleins’ original passport!”

  “Have you seen it yet?”

  “It’s on its way over. I’ll mail you a copy.”

  “Jesus, Tom, I can’t wait that long! Can’t you speed it up somehow?

  “Well …” The receiver crackled thoughtfully. “Do you know how to get to the Sûreté Nationale’s headquarters in Paris?”

  “At the Ministry of Interior? Sure.”

  “All right. Be there as soon as you can. Within the hour if possible. Ask for Chief Inspector René Bresson. I’ll phone ahead. The Sûreté can pick up the picture by facsimile and give it to you.”

  “Thanks very much. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “… again. Yes, I know. After a while I lose count. ’Bye.”

  I hung up and intercepted Jan’s question. “Not now. I’ll explain in the car.”

  We wer
e courting disaster with the traffic cops by the time we got to the Ministry on the rue des Saussaies.

  If Chief Inspector Bresson noticed that both Jan and I were out of breath, he gave no sign. After polite formal introductions, he led us up an elevator and down a corridor to a telex room filled by two teletypes, a phone connected directly with Interpol’s radio station, and a Phillips facsimile printer. The phone, I noticed, was off the hook.

  Attaching the receiver into the printer’s cradle, the operator waited a moment, then pushed a button. A paper cylinder about the size of a piano roll started spinning beneath the glass cover of the machine. The scanning head started at the left side of the roll and moved slowly along the length of paper, receiving signals from the identical machine transmitting across the English Channel.

  Complete transmission took two minutes. Its task completed, the machine sighed gently to a stop.

  The operator passed the picture to Inspector Bresson, who gave it to me. I took one glance, blinked, then looked again. My stomach had a curious sinking feeling.

  “Norman? What’s the matter?”

  I numbly passed the photo to her.

  “It can’t be!”

  “I quite agree. Now, if we rip this up, we can pretend it never happened.”

  The left side of the photocopy was marked “Albert Cassius Klein,” the right “Martha Vanella Klein.”

  Albert Klein was a handsome fellow with thin, narrow cheekbones.

  His wife was a pert, cute girl with a short nose and a full face.

  Mr. and Mrs. Klein were black.

  21

  May 9, 1962

  “Norman, you aren’t going to solve anything by crying into your popcorn.”

  Jan’s words and the accompanying “shushes” from surrounding theatergoers did little to break my shell shock. She had suggested staying in Paris and going to see West Side Story in an effort to cheer me up, but so far the doomed Super Panavision romance of Maria and Tony wasn’t doing the trick.

  At intermission we loitered outside the main entrance of the Gaumont Palace to avoid the hubbub and cigarette smoke. On the Champs-Elysées Citroëns and Peugeots zipped insanely through the chrome-plated night.

  “Janice,” I finally said, “I don’t understand any of it. Why would Martha Klein lie to me about she and her husband being aboard the Titanic?”

  “What makes you think she did? We saw both of them in the Masterson film.”

  “What we saw was a good-looking blond couple who matched the description Mrs. Heinley gave me. ‘Handsome as two figures on a wedding cake!’” I laughed grimly. “Hardly a definitive portrait.”

  Blinking lobby lights beckoned us back to the further adventures of the Jets and Sharks. Through the rest of the film thoughts of Rykers and Kleins circled through a muddled holding pattern in my head. Driving home, I grew obsessed with a mental image of a great gray snake twisted into a loop and biting its own tail, swallowing its way to self-extinction.

  I had just veered the Rolls off the Autoroute onto D-98 when the Gestalt hit me.

  “Norman? Norman!”

  With a start, I steered us out of the soft shoulder.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay alive! Are you all right?”

  “Janice,” I said slowly, “when we get home, I want to go over the HPD files.”

  Jan made coffee while I pawed through the rubble in my desk drawer. It took only a moment to locate the photocopied passports of Albert and Martha Klein picked up by the HPD in 1941. By the time she entered with the cups and cream pitcher, I already had long distance on the line.

  “Who are you calling this time of night?”

  I didn’t answer. The phone was ringing on the other end.

  “H’lo?”

  “It’s Norman, Tom. Were you asleep?”

  “Until you called. I think your initial charm is beginning to wane.”

  “I apologize. I really do. But something big has come up.”

  “You mean the Kleins in blackface? I’ve already had my belly laugh for the day.”

  “Not that, exactly. But it got me thinking.” I flipped through the HPD file on my desk. “When you get to work in the morning, look through the original Honolulu report on the Klein murders. You should see a passenger list of Pan American Clipper Flight 208 from Los Angeles to Honolulu on November 24, 1941.”

  “That’s the flight the Kleins took, isn’t it?”

  “Right. I’ve got my copy in front of me now.” I read down the column of nineteen names, hoping for a clue, but none was forthcoming. “It’s a tall order, I know, but I need an FBI check of everyone on that list.”

  “Norman …”

  “… it’s crucial. Trust my hunch.”

  A tired sigh. “What is the FBI looking for?”

  “A missing person. Someone who flew to Hawaii and never came back.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Neither do I, really.” I rubbed my eyes. “But I need the information yesterday. To simplify things, start with the men’s names first.”

  “All right, Norman. I’ll be getting back to you.”

  “Jan can take a message if you call in the next week. I won’t be here.”

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “Honolulu.”

  “To do what?”

  I plugged my ear against Jan’s sputtering protests. “Something I should have done months ago.”

  I rose to my feet when Claudine Jarmon entered M’s Smoke House to keep our luncheon date. The reaction was more than mere chivalry. Mrs. Jarmon, née Claudine Maurois, was one of the most self-possessed, formidable young women I’d ever seen. Clad in a beige suit cut in unrelenting good taste, she walked with the assurance of a lady who expects the cosmos to part in twain at her approach.

  “Mr. Hall.” A cool, white-gloved handshake and a cultured smile which accented her Eurasian eyes. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Have you been waiting long?”

  “Not at all.” I let the host lead us to our table on the mezzanine. Drinks arrived and I watched Mrs. Jarmon lunge for the martini as if it was heavenly manna.

  “Christ, that’s good.” She sighed in demure heartiness. “Ever spend the morning with ten Eastern Star biddies?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She squeezed my palm. “You didn’t fly nine thousand miles to talk about me.” She blinked oddly. “Or did you?”

  “Not exactly. I …”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say you want to talk about my mother. Am I getting warm?”

  “Amazingly so.”

  She swirled the ice in her glass. “I can’t claim any ESP powers, Mr. Hall. Just ordinary common sense. And a pretty fair memory. You see, when I was a young girl, I distinctly remember reading about a certain HPD patrolman who resigned under a very dark cloud just about the time my mother flew the coop.” Mrs. Jarmon held the martini aloft. “Ready for a refill?”

  “An excellent idea,” I said unsteadily.

  When the second round arrived, she smiled and patted her lips. “Enough cat and mouse, don’t you think? What do you want to know?”

  “Where is your mother, Mrs. Jarmon?”

  An impatient frown. “She was declared legally dead in 1948. No one’s arisen to dispute it.”

  “I’m not prepared to debate the point. But your mother vanished into limbo. What did the police do to find her?”

  The waiter arrived with two salads. I sensed her body coiling tight as she spread the napkin on her lap.

  “Mr. Hall, I will synopsize my mother’s life as concisely as possible. You will not interrupt and we will get this unsavory business out of the way. Agreed?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Very well. My mother, Catherine Maurois, was a very drab lady to possess so aristocratic a name. Not, as you might imagine, a descendant of some French plantation baron but a laundress from Montreal. She moved here in 1922 to improve her fortune, without much success. A
fter a series of odd jobs, she hired on as a maid at the Moana Hotel in 1924.

  “Mother lived just off Hotel Street, and it was a rowdy place even then. Soon she found herself supplementing her income by entertaining men. Not exactly a prostitute but a very talented amateur.” Her lips drooped mordantly. “You see, I grew up with an astonishing variety of ‘uncles’ in the family tree. I don’t know which one was my father.” The almond eyes glinted. “Although I can make some pretty shrewd guesses.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course. Mother was always pretty careful at work, but she wasn’t above calling in sick if she could get away with it. And on that November afternoon she told the boss, Mr. Pendergast, that she had to go home. Menstrual cramps was the standard excuse.” Her eyes crinkled with mischief. “Men are so terrified of women’s trouble. He always let her go, like she was carrying the plague.” Mrs. Jarmon sprinkled pepper on her salad. “So she left work and I never saw her again.”

  “But you must’ve worried. You reported her missing to the police.”

  “She never turned up. HPD had no leads. And once December seventh rolled around, they had other things on their minds. After Pearl Harbor, I resigned myself to the fact that she was dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “One of my mother’s friends lived on McCully Street. ‘Uncle Tashima.’ She spent a good deal of time there. And on that December morning an antiaircraft shell from the Nevada missed its intended target and landed on that McCully Street apartment. Uncle Tashima’s room was ground zero.”

  “But no bodies were ever recovered.”

  “No. But perhaps you can see why I never pursued the matter.” She beamed at our approaching steaks. “Ah, ambrosia! Now maybe we can change to a different topic of conversation?”

  “If you wish.” I cut into an improbably tender porterhouse.

  “How about the upward climb from poor little poor girl to my present happy state?”

  I trimmed away some fat. “To be honest, my interest is marginal.”

  “I can sum it up in two words.” She chewed thoughtfully. “‘Marry rich.’”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Also, I have a favor to ask.”