The Enchanted Isle

by James M. Cain

  “Well, at lease, you didn’t want to be.”

  “You know why I wanted out?”

  “They meant to plug you, you said.”

  “Yeah, that was nice, wasn’t it? First they’re going to plug you, then they get shot so they can’t. Then the guard starts shooting at you, and then he gets plugged so he can’t. Now it’s the gas chamber, that’s all.”

  “Rick, you want out or not?”

  “Mandy, what next? What are we going to do?”

  He was losing his nerve fast, if he hadn’t already lost it, and maybe I felt funny too, but one thing I knew, I was not going to chicken now, run off as he seemed to want, leaving the money here in the car. So I kept driving around trying to think and pretty soon saw a shopping plaza, a big place off to our right, with all kinds of stores in it. I said, “OK, Rick, how’s this? So the bag is unlocked, and we dare not go to a motel for fear of that nosy maid who’ll open it up and see the money. So how about going in here? Putting the car in their park, going in one of the stores, using some of the money, and buying a new bag to hold it, a suitcase with a lock and a key that we have, then bringing the bag to the car, putting the money in it, locking it up and taking the key, then leaving the car and taking the bag in a taxi to the bus terminal, where we check it to leave it? We keep the key and the check, and that’s that for as long as we want. We’re rid of it, so we get time to think. Then, to do our thinking in, we go to a motel like before, except I say we go to a hotel.”

  “Why a hotel?”

  “Motel’s for people with cars, and we’ll be using a cab. And besides, in a hotel they treat you better. They got bellboys that carry your bag.”

  “That new bag will be just as heavy from the money we’ll be putting in it. Suppose the guy in the bus terminal wants to know why?”

  “In the bus terminal do they care?”

  “Well? I was just asking.”

  “They handle hundreds of bags every day, and to them one bag looks like another. All they want is your money.”

  “Well, OK, I was just asking!”

  But he didn’t sound quite so peevish, and I asked, “Then is that what we’re going to do? Are we set?”

  “Then, yeah.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “And cut out the talking, you mean?”

  “That’s it, Rick, Now you’ve said it.”

  “There’s one other thing then.”

  “Which is? Let’s get everything out!”

  “We could buy ourselves a couple of bags. Suitcases, I’m talking about. If I had one, I could buy some stuff like shirts, so I wouldn’t smell so bad. I’d have something to carry them in. And your bag’s not so hot—a new one and you could leave it right here in the car. Then with new bags and stuff, even a nice hotel wouldn’t ask us to pay in advance.”

  “You mean you’re with it?”

  “Well, we might as well go in style.”

  “Then we’re set.”

  So that’s what we did, though he still didn’t sound like he had too much of a yen, and wound up a couple hours later in a big hotel downtown, which I don’t name as I mix hotels up and might get the wrong one. Anyway, it was as nice as they come, and our room was something to see, with light-green carpet real thick, fine, comfortable furniture, and a bathroom to dream about. From our shopping tour of the plaza, we each had our own small suitcase that I’d repacked my own things into and that he packed his things into, that he bought in the men’s store and I paid for out of the money I had, that I’d picked up from the floor of the car, the first one, before we switched to the blue. But he still wasn’t showing much interest, in me or anything, and while I was putting the things away, mine at first and then his, in my bureau drawer and his, he lay down on the bed. When I asked what was the trouble, he said, “Same old thing, Mandy. Thing like that, you don’t get over it quick—I mean knowing I had to die. Knowing I was helping them get rich and that then they meant to kill me.”

  “Well? So they got killed. Served them right.”

  “Yeah, that’s easy to say.”

  “Would you like to be alone? Kind of rest a while?”

  “Mandy! It’s what I wanted to ask!”

  “OK. I’ll go down and have some lunch.”

  “...Can I have a drink sent up?”

  “Well, of course. But don’t get slopped up, Rick. I don’t like guys when they’re slopped. They...just don’t appeal to me.”

  “I never take but one. But, Mandy, I need it.”

  “Then have it! Of course!”

  So I went down, feeling suddenly hungry, as it was going on one and I’d had nothing to eat since the bun in the Holiday Inn. I headed for the coffee shop, which was out of this world, a beautiful place with pretty girls in pink uniforms, and had a tongue sandwich with pickles and olives, buttermilk, which I love, and, of course, apple pie a la mode. It was wonderful; the pie was so thick, and the apples kind of scrunchy, from being not quite cooked, so they were tart and tasty. So while I was eating I saw a boy come into the lobby, dump papers down by the newsstand, and go out. When I got there, the man was cutting the rope and I bought one, then bought another for Rick. Then I went back to the table and started to read. So there I was, holding the key and the check in my bag (the new handbag that I’d bought) to the $120,000 suitcase, the amount the story said had been taken in the holdup. I own up it made me feel funny, not as funny as Rick, maybe, but pretty nervous just the same, as I read all the details, which had according-tos, it-is-allegeds, and stuff like that mixed in, but corresponding in all that mattered to what Rick had said in the car. And it turned out that Bud was right in suspicioning Pal’s count of the bunch at the telephone booth—that the right number was nine instead of eight. Because the guard needed a shave, expecting to have it at lunch, but the manager made him take it at once. So that explained quite a lot, but I kept on feeling funny. Then, however, I didn’t feel funny at all but turned on in a way I’d never been in my life. And why I was turned on was the girl, the one who had handled the money, had made a positive idemnification of “the boy who held the basket,” from mug shots the police showed her, as Vito Rossi, “one of the mob.” It turned out that this was a famous four, known as the Caskets from the number of funerals they’d caused and from the name of the head bandit, Matt Caskey. His picture was there, the one who had called himself Pal, and Bud’s picture was there, over the name Howie Hyde. But two other pictures were there: the Rossi brothers, Vito and Vanny, and, sure enough, one of them did favor Rick, though if you ask me, all boys with long hair look alike. Anyway, it meant that no one had any idea, any idea at all, that Rick and I were in it, or even that a girl was driving the car, because that’s what it said in there, that the police “conjectured” that Vanny was driving the getaway car as usual, though no one had actually seen him.

  That’s what turned me on.

  I thought, “We’ve got away with it clean!”

  I thought, “You can have that mink coat; it’s yours, it’s yours! All you need do is go buy it!”

  So I did.

  I threw both papers away, passed through the lobby, went outside, and had the doorman whistle me up a cab. I’d given him a buck when we came and gave him fifty cents now, and when I got in I asked for department stores. The driver said, “There’s a whole flock of them, Miss, at Howard and Lexington streets,” and he mentioned Hutzler’s, Stewart’s, and Hochschild Kohn, though like with the hotels I’m always mixing them up, at lease the Baltimore ones, so I will not say which one it was he set me down in front of. Whichever it was, I went in and asked for the fur coat department, and, lo and behold, they were having a sale on coats, marked down fifteen percent from what they had been in winter, and I didn’t mind at all. So for the next hour I lived. I had them show me coats and coats and coats, beautiful ones in all kinds of different colors, like Scotch Mist and Pastel Beige, but I didn’t take anything fancy. I like the natural mink, and I finally took a fingertip thing, a beautiful full brown, with
wide sleeves and a collar to wear two ways, up around my neck or flat out on my shoulders. So it was $1,600 and I paid with twenties, breaking the tapes on two packs of bills. I said, “I’m spending my wedding present.” The woman stared and said, “Well, what’s your name, please? So I can have the monogram put in beside the label, in the inside pocket.” I said, “Never mind the monogram, please. I’m in a bit of a hurry and don’t want to wait while it’s done.” I didn’t give my name and got out of there pretty quick. However, nobody stopped me or tried to follow me that I could see.

  The store had a doorman too, and I gave him fifty cents to get me another cab and told the driver the address on Lombard Street, which I didn’t have to look up, as after last night I’d never forget it. But then, riding along, it all looked strangely familiar, and it turned out, when I asked the driver, that I’d been there that very morning, as Lombard Street runs into Frederick Road. It all seemed very queer, but when we got to the block the house was in, I had him stop and wait on the corner so he couldn’t hear what was going to be said. I walked to the house in the coat, thanking God the day wasn’t hot or I’d have looked like a kook. It was just a Baltimore house, two-story, of brick, with green shutters and white marble steps, and I went up and rang the bell. A child opened the door, a little boy. I said, “Mr. Vernick, please.”

  “...My father’s eating his lunch.”

  “Please tell him it’s important.”

  Then a woman was there, in housedress and gingham apron. She asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I want to see Mr. Vernick.”

  “I asked who you are.”

  “OK, but who are you?”

  “I’m Mrs. Vernick. Once more, who are you?”

  Her voice had an ugly sound all of a sudden, and maybe mine did too as I told her, “I’m Miss Vernick—his daughter, Mandy.”

  “He doesn’t have any daughter.”

  “Oh yes he has. I’m her.”

  There may have been more, I’m not sure. But in the middle of it, here a guy came in his shirt-sleeves, a youngish guy in his thirties, with long nose and eyes set close together. He put his arms around the woman, kissed her, then stepped in front of her and the child, though they both stuck around to hear. He asked, “Yes, Miss? What can I do for you?”

  “You’re Edward Vernick?”

  “That’s right. Who are you?”

  “I’m your daughter, Mandy. I talked to you last night, and you said some things I have to go further with. Like insinuating I would ask you for money.”

  “I don’t have any daughter.”

  “Don’t you think my mother knows?”

  “Who is your mother, please?”

  “Sally Vernick, your former wife.”

  “...It’s true, Sally Vernick was my wife, or at least we were married for quite a few years, though we actually lived together five days. But, Mandy, you’re not my child, as I can pretty well prove.”

  “Pretty well? What does that mean?”

  “Means until now, I don’t have actual proof.”

  I piled into him for that, though liking it less and less, as it was beginning to bug me bad that I didn’t like this guy or want him for a father. So I said stuff, pretty mean, finally asking, “And what does that mean, ‘until now’?”

  “Means that now at last, when I see what you look like, Mandy, there’s no resemblance at all to me or my kith or my kin.” That’s what he said, “kith or kin.” He went on: “If I ever had any doubt of the trick your mother played me in naming me as your father, I don’t have anymore. You’re not my child, Mandy, so let’s get it over with, what you came about. You said something about money. Is that what this is, a touch?”

  None of it was going as I’d hoped, and in fact I was caught by surprise by that stuff he was dishing out, which seemed to say, and in fact did say, that someone else was my father, so my tongue kind of got stuck, and words wouldn’t come, or at lease the kind of words I wanted. But now all of a sudden words did come, of the very kind I wanted. I flung the coat around, saying, “Does this look like a pauper? Does it look like I need your money?”

  “Does what look like you need my money?”

  “This coat, what do you think?”

  “Well, it’s a very nice coat.”

  “I asked if it looks like I need your money?”

  “Mandy, it doesn’t look like anything, until I know how you got it. How did you get it, then?”

  “Is that any of your business?”

  “It is if I’m to answer your question. Was it given you? And if so, by whom? Or did you steal it? Or did you get it the way your mother got hers? If she has one.”

  “What do you mean, the way she got hers?”

  “You know what I mean—in bed.”

  “How’d you like to go to hell?”

  “Was there something else?”

  8

  I MUST HAVE GOT back in the cab and ridden down to the hotel, but the next thing I really remember is bursting into the room, after opening the door with my key, and coming apart all over, right in front of Rick. He was in bed in pajamas, a highball tray beside him, reading the paper, the same one I had read, that he’d had sent up with the Scotch and seltzer and ice. And I no sooner was there that I started to whoop, weeping and wailing and bawling, so I couldn’t make myself stop. And then in the middle of it I saw tears on the coat and whipped it off so it wouldn’t get smeared up and threw it on the other bed. Then I went on with the show. He lay there staring at me, then got up to stare at the coat, then walked to the chair in his bare feet to sit and listen at me. Then after a long time he asked, “OK, what have you done? Are they on your tail or what? And where did this coat come from?” It was some time before I could speak, but then I said, “I haven’t done anything! It’s that Vernick, the things that he said! The lying things, the rotten things, to me, out there at his house!” So then I started to talk as control came at last, while he sat there, listening to what I said.

  It went on quite a while. Because I no sooner started on Vernick than I’d have to backtrack to the store to explain about the coat. And I’d no sooner get started on that than I’d have to backtrack to lunch and what I’d seen in the paper. And then, all of a sudden, I started crying again—for no reason at all, but I did. So at last he started to talk. He said, “That’s nice, I’ll say it is. Here we were inching ahead—bought ourselves bags, checked the big one to leave it, then found ourselves a pad so we could lay up and think. Then we really got a break. Mandy, did you read all the stuff in the paper? How that girl idemnified me? As Vito Rossi, one of the bandit mob? We didn’t know it, but this was the worst bunch of thugs on earth, the Caskets, and Rossi, he was one of them. And the girl, the one that forked over the money, when shown a picture of him, a mug shot by the police, said, ‘Yes, that’s the one, he held the basket.’ We were all in the clear, playing in wonderful luck, and then what do you do? Go and buy this coat, paying with twenty-dollar bills that had to be hot. The store still has them and is going to report them, sure as God made little apples, to the police, who of course report to the papers. And as though that wasn’t enough, you parade the damned coat for Vernick, and when he sees the papers, that’s it!...Christ, we had it made! It was all ours. We were in the clear. And now what? If the eight ball was there before, God knows what the number is now!” And he fell on his knees in front of the chair, burying his face in the seat.

  “You don’t have to cry about it.”

  “How stupid can you get?”

  “At lease I did something! I didn’t just lie there, drinking booze and feeling sorry for myself!”

  He got back into bed again and lay there a long time. Then, moaning, he kept saying over and over, “Mandy, how could you? How could you?”

  “...OK then, I did wrong.”

  “Here we were sitting pretty, and...”

  “I did what I had to do! It was why I got in it at all! To get this mink coat and shake it in his face, that horrible Ed Ver
nick! I told you, didn’t I? I told you, I told those bandits!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!”

  He got back into bed, then lay there a while, pressing his hands to his head and squirming under the covers. Then at last he sat up and commenced hollering again. “I have to find out! If that goddam store called the cops! I have to find out and I can’t—I can’t go out to call; I don’t have any pants! I sent them out, sent them out with the coat to be pressed, to be dry-cleaned and pressed, and here I am caught with no clothes till that valet brings them back. And I got to find out!”

  “You mean you’re going to ask them, ‘Did you call the cops?’ Oh, boy! Talk about me being dumb!”

  “No, I know what I’m going to ask, but...”