“Enough games, Jerry. You know very well I won’t cheat you. So talk.”
Silence. “All right. She’s living in Madrid. Number 1402 Calle de Alcala. Apartment 510.”
Jan watched me as I hung up. “And the Big News is …”
“Eva Ryker’s in Spain.” I rose from the bed, opened the closet door and hung up my coat. “I’ll need to hop a plane tomorrow for Madrid. Do you mind staying here?”
“Doing what?”
“For one thing, you can start sniffing around and finding out what the people in Veyrier know about Ryker and his staff. The people who do business with him.”
She gave me a lopsided salute. “It shall be done.”
“One more thing. Check with the city hall here in Geneva and in Veyrier. See if they have any blueprints and floor plans of the Château de Montreux.”
11
January 28, 1962
Every Sunday afternoon in Madrid twenty thousand people gather together for ritual murder.
I was a reluctant member of the herd squeezed in the stands of the Plaza del Toros. Shading my eyes from the sun, I squinted down at the ring. The bullfight was about to begin.
Behind me a chorus of bugles blew in a great groaning fanfare. Forty thousand vocal cords roared as the six matadors starring in the day’s events strutted out into the ring.
One voice outshouted the rest. Or so it seemed. I focused my Nikon’s 135-mm telephoto lens on the source of the noise, three rows in front of me.
The blurred image sharpened into a plump, sloppy brunette slurping beer. “Olé!” she yelled, suds spilling over her mouth. “Toro! Toro!”
With an immense gravelly laugh, she slapped the backs of her two young “gentlemen callers.”
Eva Ryker had been easy to find. Unfortunately, she was equally easy to lose. I’d spent most of the afternoon following her Ferrari convertible in my anonymous rented Alfa-Romeo sedan.
My stomach began a dull ache when I saw her park near the Plaza del Toros. I hate bullfights.
But Eva was a regular aficionado. She excitedly watched the banderilleros and picadors parade into the ring. “Ole! Bravo!” She planted a foamy kiss on one of her companions.
Time had done a hack job on Eva Ryker. The jaw line, once ruthless and crisp, must have sagged a decade ago. Curves had turned to mounds and her long hair, wrapped up on top of her head, was dreadful in its Clairol blackness.
But the eyes, deep blue and troubled, were still good, even when glazed by too much beer. Implanted in twin craters of crow’s-feet, they belonged to a girl of twenty. They would taunt her—a reminder of what she’d lost.
Leaning forward, she watched the banderilleros scamper around the bull, flinging darts into the animal’s shoulders. I saw red streaks drip down the bull’s black sweaty flanks and tried to ignore the bad taste in my mouth.
“Olé!” Eva shrieked as a dart poked a new trickling hole in the bull’s back. “Bravo! Bravo!”
The bullring turned mellow orange as the sun eased westward. Through the Nikon’s view finder I watched stale brown blood splashing on the sand. Dull and weary, the eyes of the bull stared stupidly at the advancing matador. He charged and ran, sweeping past the scarlet cape.
The matador’s passes grew slower. With a jabbing flourish, he plunged the sword into black flesh. The animal lost control of its bowels in a last dying reflex as the corpse sagged into a steaming heap at the matador’s feet.
Bugles screamed along with the crowd. Hats flew into the air. Crying with delight, Eva Ryker bear-hugged her boy friends.
I endured five more events. The sunlit side of the Plaza del Toros was a dull crimson when the men came into the ring to clean up the offal. I craned my head over the crowd to watch the long black hair of Eva Ryker work its way to the exit.
By the time I caught up with her, she was already getting in the Ferrari.
“Excuse me, Miss Ryker. Could I talk with you for a moment?”
Her eyes slid up to mine. “What for?”
Eva’s boys puffed their pectorals. “Piss off, man.” A thick Italian accent. “The lady doesn’t want to be bothered.”
I held out my hand to Eva. “My name’s Norman Hall.”
The eyes flickered with mild interest. “The Big Novelist? My, my. Don’t tell me you’re doing research on a new book.”
“A sequel to Blood and Sand. You’ve got the Linda Darnell part.”
“Shucks.” Eva didn’t smile. “I’ve always thought of myself as the Rita Hayworth type.”
“Could be. But I do want to talk.” I pointed in the car. “Preferably without the company of Romulus and Remus.”
No one spoke. Then she shrugged. “Okay.” She opened the far door. “Both of you. Out.”
“But Eva …” they sputtered.
“Take a cab.” She passed a hundred-peseta note. “Meet me at the apartment.”
They looked unhappy but went. She patted the adjacent bucket seat. “Get in.”
I walked around the back of the car, canting my head at the departing pair. “Nice boys. Are you buying or leasing?”
“Installment plans,” Eva said blankly as I slid into the seat. “I’m disappointed, Mr. Hall.”
“How’s that?”
“You don’t look like the coarse type.”
“Implying that I am.”
“I don’t like leering wisecracks about my sex life.”
“Sorry. But I do find my curiosity aroused by the bizarre.”
Eva didn’t answer. She savagely gunned out of the parking slot. My stomach slammed back in the seat as we hit the street at sixty miles an hour.
With a huge laugh she squealed a left against a honking stream of traffic.
“How did you manage to find me, Mr. Hall?”
I braced myself as we took a corner. “Don’t be modest, Eva. You’re a fixture of this town.”
Her smile was laconic. “Then you didn’t talk to Daddy?”
“I did. He said he didn’t know where you were. I thought he was lying then. I’m sure of it now.”
“Oh? How come?”
“We’re sitting in it.” I patted the dash. “New Ferraris don’t grow on trees. A present from Daddy, most likely.”
“So you’ve tracked me down.” She made a face, spinning the car onto the Avenida Generalissimo. “What’s the big deal?”
I had to yell above the roaring engine. “It has to do with the Titanic!”
“I’ll tell you all about it!” she yelled back. “It sunk!”
“You were a survivor, Eva. There are things you could tell me.”
The Ferrari parked at the foot of her apartment building. “Here’s the place.” She looked over at me. “And to answer your question—no, Mr. Hall. I was only ten at the time.”
She switched off the engine. The hood popped as it cooled in the darkness.
“I gather you don’t share your father’s enthusiasm for the Titanic.”
“Daddy and I share as little as possible.”
“… ‘she said frostily, lips pursed in long-accustomed tightness.’” My fingers made typing motions.
Her eyes appraised me. “Is that a taste of your style, God forbid?”
“No. Just winging it.”
“How very incisive. Is that supposed to peel me down to the marrow?”
“Only if you feel like it. You were discussing your father.”
“Oh, yes. Daddy.” She ran her hands through her hair, peering up at the sky. “Have you ever raised pets, Mr. Hall?”
“Mostly cats,” I said. “Hamsters, way back.”
Eva didn’t seem to have heard. “When I was a little girl we lived in a big house in Newport, and on the grounds, way in back near the boundary line, was a low swampy gully where I used to play …”
“Was this after the Titanic?”
“Of course!” Her eyebrows furrowed crossly. “Let me tell my story, will you? Anyway, in this gully in back of our house I found a baby crocodile. I don’t know how i
t got there.” She batted aside the question with her hand. “Or maybe it was an alligator. I can never tell which is which. Anyhow, I would pick up this little croc and watch it scamper through the grass. He wasn’t much more than four or five inches long, and he was so cute! He had bright yellow eyes and a wiggly tail and sort of jaunty, grinning jaws. Of course, if you got your fingers near, he’d snap, cracking his little teeth. But he was small and harmless.”
She frowned, losing herself in the ancient childhood litany. “I played with that baby crocodile all summer, pulling his tail and watching it snap at twigs. Every day his bite got a little stronger.
“One morning, I ran my hand along its back and it turned and bit me. Really hard.” Eva flinched at the memory. “Later, the doctors had to take twelve stitches. I can still remember looking into the eyes of that croc as it licked my flesh out of its teeth with a pale pink tongue. The eyes weren’t friendly anymore. They were wide and greedy for another bite, deciding what place to strike next. I ran screaming across the yard into the house. I suppose the servants found the crocodile or alligator or whatever it was and had it …”
Eva’s body tensed, halting her descent over the unforeseen precipice. “Later, of course, I realized that the crocodile hadn’t changed,” she said with wintry composure. “Merely grown. I simply hadn’t recognized him for what he was.”
Her hands drooped off the wheel. “No doubt you found my father charming.”
“In a heavy-handed way.”
“Really?” She straightened in genuine surprise. “He used to be quite subtle. His victims were still smiling when he dragged them under the mud.”
“You said ‘victims,’ Eva. Who were they?”
Her lips puckered defiantly. “For a start, my mother was Victim Number One.”
“How so?”
“Mother was unlucky enough to be the primary object of my father’s affection. He used to call her his little ‘pet.’” Eva recoiled at the word. “Daddy kept her groomed and well-fed and cozy in the doghouse. He also found her useful for warming up his bed on cold nights. But Daddy grew tired of sleeping with his pet and sent it to other beds. Mostly belonging to his business partners, where she would do the most good.”
“And your mother obeyed?”
“Oh yes. She was well-trained. You see, she loved Daddy helplessly, and besides, he had a nasty habit of violence when he was crossed.”
“That’s quite a story, Eva. How’d you come across it?”
“It wasn’t just a story,” she blinked defensively. “I was there and I saw it happening all around me.”
“You weren’t more than eight or nine at the time.” I rested my arm on the back of the driver’s seat. “As I remember it, at that age, I still believed babies were grown by Mr. and Mrs. Cabbage Head out in their vegetable patch.”
She shied away from my arm. “I was very unsheltered.”
“Downright precocious, I’d say.”
Eva didn’t respond. A radio played from a third-story window. Volare … O-O-O-Oh.
“Don’t patronize me, Mr. Hall. In spite of what you may have heard, I’m not a child. I didn’t know about my mother and father until much later,” she muttered coolly. “I simply put things together I’d seen for years.”
“All right, Eva. But all your woolgathering about your mother seems rather pointless. After all, she’s been gone for fifty years.”
“So she’s gone now!” Eva turned on me with narrow eyes. “She was alive then!”
“I don’t believe I’ll have room in my story for the Parable of the Crocodile and Dog.” I went on, sensing her stiffness. “You have much more in common with your father than you realize. Both of you like to kick those sleeping dogs just to hear them growl.”
“Certain things you can’t forget. But the Titanic isn’t one of them. God knows why Daddy wants to dig around down there.” She scowled in little-girl petulance. “It was the ship that killed my mother. I never want to think of it again.”
“Eva, I’ve read all the accounts of the sinking and I’ve never figured out what happened to your mother. She was a first-class passenger who had first crack at the lifeboats. Why’d she stay behind?”
She fumbled for the door handle. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hall, but it’s getting very late. I’m going inside. You’re not invited because I have nothing more to say.”
I climbed out onto the sidewalk, then leaned down into the cockpit. “Eva, too many people are interested in you. Or your past, to be precise. Three of your fellow passengers have been killed. That’s a fact, not something you can wash away with cheap beer. And whoever killed them might not be as obliging about your lack of memory as I am.”
Eva faced me, harshly pale under the street lights. Without another word, she jumped from her car and ran into the apartment building. She didn’t look back.
I hailed a taxi to get back to my car at the bullring. Leaning back in the old mohair cushions, I watched street lights streak past the windows, remembering that last glimpse of Eva Ryker.
I’d seen something I hadn’t noticed before. Eva had a faint but long scar over her right eye.
Another crocodile bite, no doubt.
12
January 29, 1962
Jan was waiting for me at Geneva Airport. On our way to the Hotel Richemond I filled her in on Eva Ryker.
“She and her daddy sound like quite a pair.”
“Yes indeed.” I swung the Fiat around a slowpoking Saab sedan. “A rather frightening woman. There’s too much churning beneath the hood.” I blinked absently. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”
“I take it you haven’t read the papers.”
I felt new knots in my stomach. “Not another bombshell. I can’t take any more.”
“Just a little one. Ryker released the Titanic film.”
“The hell you say!” The Fiat swerved on the pavement.
“The film was blank. Just like Mike Rogers told the press.”
“Surprise, surprise. I guess it’s taken that long for Mike to find some old thirty-five millimeter film stock, expose it to light, age it convincingly, then make duplicates for release.”
“That’ll be hard to prove, Norman.”
“I’m not about to try.” I glanced away from the road. “Did you turn up anything new on Ryker?”
“You might say so.” Jan had her canary-swallowing look. “I’ve got a working blueprint of the Château de Montreux, for starters.”
“Seriously?”
“I paid a visit to Clement and Versoix, the contractors in Geneva who helped renovate the château when Ryker moved in. One of their draftsmen, a Mr. Besançon, was very cooperative. For a few francs.”
“Exactly how many?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand.”
I made a rude noise. “You were had, Janice.”
“So you had to dish out some money. You’ve still got the blueprint.” She passed a large folded sheet to me. “Take a look”
“Later, dear.” I handed it back. “I’d rather stay on the road. What about Ryker’s staff?”
“I don’t get you.”
“Butlers. Maids. Bodyguards,” I said impatiently, wheeling onto the rue de Granges. “They must have some time off. And they must spend some of it in Veyrier.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think …” Jan snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute! Does Ryker own a black Rolls limousine?”
“A Phantom V,” I nodded. “Why?”
“I saw it parked in the village. In front of a tavern. The chauffeur comes into Veyrier on errands.”
“Do you remember the name of the tavern?”
“No, but I can show you where it is.”
“Jan,” I said, kissing her full on the mouth. “You’ve just answered my prayers.”
Her eyes were wary. “What were you praying for?”
“A way to visit the château. Without an invitation.”
“There’s the place,” Jan pointed later that evening.
A zippy accordion polka played behind the door. Swinging in the wind, the gold letters of a wood sign flashed at me in the yellow light.
“THE EICHOF,” I read, pointing at the cars hugging the curb. “The place looks packed.”
“Maybe there’s a parking spot down the street.”
We went down a half block before discovering a car taking its lion’s share of room. Sandwiched between two Volkswagens, Ryker’s Phantom V sat in huffy silence. Stray snow-flakes perched like shy pigeons on the black sheet metal.
I braked the Fiat, listening to the exhaust echo between the buildings.
“This is where I get out. Think you’ll have any problems driving?”
“No. Why should I?” Jan wouldn’t meet my gaze.
I reached for the leather briefcase lying between the front seats. “Do you remember where to meet me?”
“On the road to Annemasse,” she recited, “about a quarter mile past the château’s entrance gate, at the soft-shoulder turnout. I’ll be there at eleven-thirty and stay until two. If you’re not there by then, I’ll cross the border into France and call Tom Bramel as soon as I can.”
“Fine.” I tried to kiss her good-bye but she wasn’t cooperating. “Come now, Janice, you can do better than that.”
Her eyes grew grave. “I’m not sure you’re worth it.”
“At least wish me luck.”
She squeezed my hand. “Just be sure you’re there by two.”
She rolled up the window. Gears ground and the Fiat moved on into the darkness, its tail lights shining through the exhaust to form a swaying red cloud that disappeared around a corner.
For the moment, at least, the street was empty. Casually, like a man who knows exactly what he is doing, I walked to the Rolls and stashed my briefcase behind the left rear tire.
People were packed into the Eichof like transistors in a Japanese radio. Dodging a snow-tanned young lady who possessed a rather improbable chest, I tried to spot Ryker’s chauffeur.
My eyes scanned along the bar, then skidded to a stop. It had to be him. He was too good to be true. About thirty-five, with an Alan Shepard crew cut and a pale freckled face.
The Memory of Eva Ryker Page 9