The Memory of Eva Ryker

by Donald Stanwood

  Harkless sat back in his chair, his have-we-made-amends face securely in place.

  “You can relax, Commissioner. A false arrest suit wouldn’t fit into my agenda. But you could do me a favor.”

  “Certainly!” He unraveled both hands, folding them serenely on the desk. “Anything within reason.”

  “I’d like to see any information on John McFarland.”

  “We don’t have very much. My men tried to obtain prints from the stolen Land Rover but haven’t had any luck. Our leads have reached an … impasse, as it were.”

  “I’m more interested in McFarland’s early background. Such as immigration papers.”

  “Yes, I have those here.” Harkless searched through his top drawer, then pulled out a slender file.

  “Could I have a copy?”

  “Of course.”

  I glanced through the forms, then raised my head. “It says he was born May 15, 1882 in Manchester. Is there anything here about McFarland’s parents?”

  Harkless craned his head across the desk, reaching out to turn a page. “There, I think.”

  My fingers ran across the entry. “‘Parents Charles and Emily McFarland. Killed in a Manchester-Liverpool train accident, August 26, 1907.’”

  “A pity.” Harkless nodded staunchly. “A fellow losing his parents at such a young age.”

  “John McFarland told me his father owned a shoestore in Brighton and left him an inheritance shortly after the armistice.”

  “Well, then.” His eyes were bland. “He must’ve lied, wouldn’t you say?”

  9

  January 23, 1962

  John McFarland, as it turned out, lied about a great many things.

  He did serve aboard the Evan-Thomas during World War I. And he was a steward for the Cunard Lines.

  Otherwise John McFarland was a cardboard man, propped up by half-truth, outright lies, and fabrication.

  The meager statistics contained in Commissioner Hark-less’ file taunted me. Sifting through the papers as my 707 pushed across the Pacific toward Oahu, I could feel the facts slipping through my helpless fingers.

  Australian Immigration had no information on McFarland’s whereabouts from April 1912 through November 1914. He didn’t serve on any of His Majesty’s vessels during that time and he had no living relatives to support him.

  Where did McFarland go from the signing of the armistice until 1932? The story of his father’s inheritance was a fairy tale almost contemptuously thrown my way. Any casual checking would have exposed the lie. But McFarland hadn’t seemed to care.

  McFarland must have known the Kleins. The Heinleys’ testimony was proof of that. But perhaps he had genuinely forgotten. I had no proof, nothing to hold on to …

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  I jumped, instinctively, the memory of Sergeant Buckley still unpleasantly fresh.

  “Yes?”

  “Your lunch, Mr. Hall.” The stewardess set up the tray. Roast beef and new potatoes and melon.

  I chucked the file and cleared John McFarland from all my circuit boards. Finishing my lunch, I spent the next hour watching thunderheads and turquoise atolls, content in my mild champagne buzz. I didn’t sober up until I started reading the Adelaide Times, the same Monday issue I’d started before my arrest.

  Banner headlines of a Sydney strike had crowded the story onto page three.

  TITANIC FILM RECOVERED

  HALIFAX (AP) A 55-year-old roll of motion picture film is the first of a remarkable series of relics obtained from the R.M.S. Titanic by William Ryker’s salvage team.

  “The 35-mm film was packed in an airtight can,” announced Harold Masterson, head of the salvage operation. “It was picked up by our bathyscaph Neptune on the upper portside decks of the Titanic.”

  Though remarkably well preserved, Masterson stated that the celluloid film is decayed, very brittle, and will require extreme care in reproduction before a print will be released for viewing.

  One rough copy has been made from the processed negative. “Another print is being flown to Geneva,” Masterson said, “for Mr. Ryker to view. I’m sure he will find it extremely interesting.”

  Masterson added that this lost film is only the first of many discoveries to be released for public inspection as the salvage operation progresses.

  I was still brooding over the article as the 707’s tires yelped on the runway of Honolulu Airport.

  The plane had an hour layover and I spent the time nursing a Michelob in the airport lounge. Beyond the tinted windows, the late afternoon sun cast orange-peel light across the city. I watched a formation of black clouds conduct a steamy saturation bombing over Alamoana and the Strip and my thoughts kept coming back to John McFarland.

  People who say there’s no such thing as coincidence are fools. About ten years ago in Las Vegas I watched a GI make twenty-eight straight passes at a Desert Inn crap table. For that matter, everytime I take the Rolls into Paris, I beat the odds by coming back alive.

  McFarland’s death and my visit could be mere happenstance. He could’ve been shot in a row over a busted flush. Maybe, years back, McFarland had sown his seed among the married women of Coober Pedy and a jealous husband commandeering a Land Rover decided to settle the score.

  Maybe. I doubted it like hell. Trouble was, I liked the alternative even less. It meant someone knew I was going to see McFarland. And that somebody wanted him shut up …

  Ah, Christ. It sounded like a bad trip through Pulpland. Faceless killers and a crooked informer and silencers going bump in the night. Starring Norman Hall as the crusading reporter, fearlessly exposing crime in time to meet the Bulldog.

  Then I remembered the one unblinking eye of John McFarland. He didn’t think it was quite so funny.

  “Your attention, please,” the Tannoy purred. “Qantas flight four twenty-eight to Los Angeles is now ready for boarding. All passengers please go to Gate eight.”

  I made up my mind. Spotting a vacant phone booth, I fed it a clanging meal of coins. It burped and buzzed and finally got Jan on the line.

  “… if it’s about the movie,” she was saying, “I can’t tell you a thing. Mike says the film will be released to the press as soon …”

  “It’s not about the film, Janice. We’ll have to get into that when I get back. I called to tell you that I’m staying over in L.A. for a day at least. I want to get more background about Ryker. You know, under-the-fingernail stuff.”

  “Why L.A., Norman?

  “I want to get in touch with Jerry Blaine. He’d be the man with the dirt.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said stiffly. “You know, Norman, this article is bringing you down to pigsty level. First murder and now Jerry Blaine.”

  We agreed to meet at the Hotel Roosevelt’s “Cinegrill.” I fumbled onto a stool, ordered a bloody mary, and waited for my eyes to dilate.

  The bartender swabbed a towel amidst the ashtrays and pretzel bowls. The towel shambled my way. What’ya think of the Rams game? I didn’t. His eyes registered mild befuddlement. He retired to his corner, drying glasses.

  I finished my drink and watched the tomato juice dregs drool down the side of the tumbler. I was about to order another when I saw Jerry come through the door.

  Jerry Blaine is tubby, sixtyish, and bald. He has a humorous potato face and canny little eyes. The past forty years of his life have been spent searching through Hollywood’s dirty laundry and saving souvenirs.

  Jerry’s memory of ancient scum dates back to the Cenozoic Era. He can tell you about Fatty Arbuckle’s bizarre passions and the strange death of Thomas Ince. Or which current popular leading man began his screen career sword swallowing in gay loops.

  In the good old days, legend has it, Cohn, Warner, and Zanuck all paid Jerry hush money to keep their stars out of trouble. Now he sells tidbits to low-class fan mags and tabloids. The kind of stories where everyone is known as “Mr. or Miss X” and all the people in the photos have black dominoes across their eyes.

 
; We shook hands, and I could see Jerry scanning his memory banks. Norman Hall: What’s in my file? What past sins are hidden from public view?

  Synapses clicked in his brain. Jerry smiled comfortably.

  “Norman, you old bastard!” He slapped my shoulder and popped onto the bar stool. “I never thought I’d see you back in town. How’s Jan?”

  “Keeping the home fires burning.”

  “Yeah?” He flagged the bartender. “Yeah, I guess she wouldn’t want to come back here. Not after the way Mayer and Schary chewed your ass and sent you packing.” He turned his head. “Hey, Jed! Jack Daniels straight!”

  “Sure, Jerry.” The shot glass slid down the counter. He snapped the whiskey into his throat. For a second I thought he had swallowed the glass. He made a great shuddering face, then blinked owlishly at me. “I knew you’d never make it out here as a screenwriter. You lacked the necessary well-fed eunuch look.”

  “Jerry, don’t try to bait me with that what-price-Hollywood routine. I was at Metro exactly three months, writing the first draft for From the Ashes. They took the script and threw it in a pot that every hack on the lot peed in. I packed my bags and never looked back.”

  “So speaks His Holiness. The picture made a lot of bucks at the box office, you know.”

  “Yeah. Tab Hunter and Mona Freeman really pulled them in.”

  He laughed shortly, looking over his shoulder. “My place is down the street, just off Cahuenga. What’ya say we head down there?” He pointed at the walls. “This dump’s no place to do business.”

  “Fine by me.” I let Jerry lead the way.

  Twenty years ago the architect of the Casa Alfredo tried to give the building the flavor of an old Spanish inn. Now it resembled one of Mexico’s more inhospitable prisons. The stucco-adobe was peeling in big scabs and the salmon pink roof tiles were falling out like the teeth of an old woman.

  A second-story tenant had a radio up fall volume, blasting Jan and Dean out into the street. Surf City, Here We Come. Jerry fumbled with keys and climbed the creaking staircase, swearing in a thin stream. Those goddam kids were ruining this town. The flea-ridden little bastards should be shipped to Siberia, where they belong.

  He shut and locked the door behind me, muting the blare of KFWB.

  “Okay, Norm.” He leaned against the door jamb. “Business talk.”

  I held out a fifty-dollar bill and watched it vanish. “That’s for your time. There’s more for any information.”

  “What sort?” The eyes were noncommittal.

  I treaded through the heaped newspapers and magazines and settled in a musty overstuffed chair. “Do you know about my article for World?”

  Jerry’s eyelids blinked in assent. “Proctor hopes you’ll help get World out of hot water.”

  “With my little story? You mean people are going to flock to the newsstands?”

  “Proctor got a good deal of money from William Ryker to cover the Titanic story.”

  “Every magazine and newspaper in the U.S. would’ve jumped at the chance for an exclusive feature. Ryker wouldn’t need to pay anyone off.”

  “Ordinarily not.” His smile was bland. “But the money had strings attached. Ryker wanted you to write the story.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say and I watched him laugh at my expression.

  “I’ve never met the man before! Exactly how much did he pay Proctor?”

  “About a half million. Ryker’s coffee money, you might say. Not to mention all your expenses. Proctor’s sending the tab to him.”

  “The whole thing’s crazy. Not to mention dishonest and probably illegal.”

  “Want to call a cop?”

  “What I should do is fly to New York and wring Geoffrey Proctor’s neck. Maybe, in his last dying gasp, he could supply the whys behind his little business deal.”

  “Can’t help you there. I try to know what people are doing. Why they’re doing it is their own business.”

  I smiled briefly. “Is that a Goldwynism?”

  “Of a sort. I really don’t know anything else about it, so don’t corrupt me with more money. For right now, just say that with William Ryker you have one hell of a fan.”

  I leaned forward, hands folded. “I want to know more about him. Something besides the Who’s Who statistics.”

  “Jesus!” He grimaced painfully. “Do you have any idea how many years ago all of that was? Ryker goes back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”

  “Come on, Jerry. Two months ago Ryker was just a rich old man waiting to die. But he’s made the Titanic news. And he’s brought himself into the headlines. Just tell me what you know, without the accompanying greasy con.”

  He chewed on a lower lip. “There’s not much to tell. Not that anyone can find out. William Ryker started with a modest nest egg from a well-to-do aunt from Topeka. By age twenty-one he’d made the egg hatch into a couple of million. That became twelve by the turn of the century.

  “In nineteen hundred one, Ryker married Clair Austin, daughter of a prominent but financially on-the-skids Baltimore family. Mostly it was a cool business relationship. Ryker supplied the niceties of life. In return, Clair was expected to spread her lily-white loins and moan and groan on cue.”

  “Quaintly put.”

  “Not surprisingly, this system resulted with Clair Ryker being ‘with child.’ Eva arrived in 1904 and seemed to shore up the marriage. For a few years, anyway. Ryker became very possessive over his wife and daughter. As a result, Clair got very indiscreet with those loins. Gardeners, dishwashers, chauffeurs—the common denominator seems to have been men who were all gonads and no brains. Word got out among polite society, and Clair Ryker found herself living a hermetically sealed life. If not for Eva, I doubt if the Rykers would’ve been received into any home from Manhattan to Newport.

  “In the summer of nineteen eleven, Clair was vacationing on the Riviera, with Eva in tow. Endless parties, with Clair entertaining in her matchless Earth Mother fashion. Eventually she decided to go back to her husband. Guilt, maybe. Or dwindling funds. The people who would know have either one or both feet in the grave. Clair and Eva, along with her bodyguard and maid, booked passage on the Titanic for New York.”

  Jerry stood and opened the window. The neighbor’s music had stopped. Distant tires hissed along Hollywood Boulevard.

  “As you probably know, only Eva was picked up. Clair and her servants never surfaced.”

  “The maid’s body was recovered,” I said.

  “Could be.” He shrugged heavily. “You got me there. When they picked her up, Eva was a complete mess. Ryker sent her from one institution to another for nearly ten years. You know, those classy country club places with rosebushes growing up around the padded bars. Gradually she came out of it. But she swung high and low.”

  “Manic-depressive?”

  “I guess. When she was high, Deanna Durbin charm. Then came the lows. Razor blades and piano wire and sleeping pills. In nineteen twenty-three, an Atlanta nurse struggled with Eva for a pair of scissors. Eva lost the scissors and the nurse lost an eye.”

  Jerry watched my face shrivel in distaste. “You wanted the facts, Norm.”

  “There’s no law that says I have to like what you’re saying.”

  “Anyway, the doctors in Atlanta contacted Ryker. They recommended a lobotomy to make her easier to manage.

  “Ryker had other ideas. He’d been bitten by the health bug. Dandelion tea and nutmeg outlets and sitz baths. Eva went to Switzerland then stayed under lock and key at Baden-Baden for six months. They got her flying on at least a half-even keel.

  “When she turned twenty-one, Eva flew Daddy’s coop and took up residence in Vienna. Then Naples and Lisbon and Paris. She made the rounds through the continent, living a very fast and physical life on her old man’s financial cushion. Plenty of sleek lovers. Parties and pot and the hard stuff. An abortion in Rome that went sour. She climbed out on the fifth-story ledge of Celio Hospital, clawing the police who grabbed he
r through an open window. The fascists permanently banished her from Italy. But Eva outlived Mussolini. She came back after the war. Italy, Portugal, Greece. Daddy’s money and men kept scraping her off the pavement. But Ryker had lost heart in Eva. A bad little bitch dog he could never housebreak.”

  Jerry fumbled for a cigar and chomped on the stub. Puffing it to life, he spit wet tobacco leaves into a coaster perched on the sofa’s arm.

  “Big Daddy had his own problems. Like everyone else, he was scared shitless by the Crash. In thirty-eight, Ryker went to Switzerland to visit Eva. He never came back. An army of very expensive accountants and lawyers played musical chairs with Ryker’s holdings, and when the band stopped playing, his assets were cozy and safe in numbered Swiss accounts. In no time he moved into the Château de Montreux outside Geneva. It seemed to suit him. The feudal baron and all. In June nineteen forty, he went for a morning dip in a stream running through the estate. Three days later he woke up gasping for air. Doctors in the ambulance had to cut open his throat, and even then he was nearly gone when they got to a hospital. He had the partial use of one leg and could leave his iron lung at least four to five hours a day. Many polio survivors made do with a lot less.”

  He blew smoke into a mushroom over his head. “Ryker went back to his château. He’s never been out since.”

  Silence. The red cigar ash glared like a third eye. “So you’re going to interview the Big Bad Ryker?”

  “As soon as I can swing it.”

  “That could be never.”

  “I’d quit. Besides, Ryker must know that he has to come out of his burrow. I also want to talk to Eva. Do you have any idea where she is?”

  “Spain, France, Denmark, who knows?” He threw up his hands. “The exploits of an aging fucked-out heiress aren’t going to boost anyone’s circulation. Even if her old man is making headlines.”

  Jerry grinned and licked his lips. I suddenly felt very ill.

  “Thanks for the information.” I handed him five hundred dollars and made for the door. “If you find out where Eva’s living, let me know.”