The Enchanted Isle

by James M. Cain

  “Or next week, looks like.”

  He said if Rick surrendered and still had most of the money, “maybe they decide he was forced and panicked afterward, and they let him up easy so he pleads guilty to some minor charge, like accessory, and gets a suspended sentence, something like that. With immunity for you, that ends it.”

  “Funny, when he ducked out on me, I hated him something awful. Now I don’t. Now I feel sorry for him. It’s all backwards.”

  “Mandy, life is like that.”

  I was looking forward, I guess, to another visit from him to me in my bed as I lay there and he would kiss me good night. But that wasn’t to be for a while yet. We were no sooner home than the phone rang, and when he took it he said: “That was the Washington Post. They’re sending a man out, and he’ll have a photographer with him. So get yourself fixed up.”

  “Well? Isn’t this all right?”

  I motioned to the dress, and he said, “For me, perfect. Anything you put on always looks perfect to me, but if it’s what you want, I don’t know. That’s all I meant. Don’t change it for me.”

  “I bought a pantsuit in Baltimore.”

  “OK, put it on.”

  So I went upstairs and did, and as I came down he yelped to come quick, I was on TV. It was the evening news, and sure enough there I was, in a picture taken of me the summer before at the beach in a bikini which they dug up heaven knows where. And, brother, was I showing all I had. There was also a picture of Rick that didn’t look like him, as it showed him wearing short hair, with a little grin on his face that gave him a queer expression. But what was said wasn’t too bad, and in fact was halfway funny, as the announcer kidded the cops, the Baltimore police that is, for “the thorough and diligent way they’ve been following false leads.” When it went off Steve kissed me, and I had trouble calming him down, as he was acting the least bit balmy.

  Then the doorbell rang, and he let in the Post reporter, with the photographer he had. So he began putting questions to me, and I answered as well as I could, trying to small things down so nothing amounted to much. When Vernick was mentioned I just started to laugh and acted like it was all a joke. But it brought up the coat, and I had to get it out and pose for my picture in it, sitting and standing and walking around. So while that was going on, the doorbell rings again, and it’s a guy from the Baltimore Sun, and he had a photographer too. So I had to do it all over again. Then the doorbell rings again, and it’s a girl from the Washington Star, also with a photographer, to do a “feature” on me, though what a feature was I didn’t know then and don’t know now. So I do it again for her. And when we’re just about finished up, the phone rings and it’s for the man from the Baltimore Sun, with instructions to get dope on Mother’s marriage. So I tell what I know about that, strictly sticking to it that she was so upset at me running off that way, that Mr. Wilmer wanted to make it up to her by having a wedding. I felt I did all right, and then at last they all went. Steve fixed us a couple of drinks, beer for him, Coke for me, and then we went to bed. Then, sure enough, here he came, being himself once more, to kiss me good night again and tell me that he loved me. So I kissed him and told him the same.

  In the morning we got up real early, me still in my kimono, to grab the paper and see what it had about me. But it wasn’t at all bad, except for what Rick’s father, mother, and sister said about me, that I was a “Junior Jezebel” who had led a good boy astray “in a flagrantly immoral way.” They said he’d led an exemplary life, not giving any trouble “until this girl came along.” Why they’d put him out, why he had no home, that they didn’t say, but the paper did, putting in about his arrests. Vernick was let out with a line: “No comment. Absolutely no comment at all” was all that he had to say and all that they put in. On page one were two pictures of me, one in the bikini, the other modeling the coat, but on the page that the story jumped to was a whole picture layout: Mother, in the green linen suit; Rick, the same shot as had been on TV; and me, more shots in the coat, another in the bikini, and one in a leotard, when I was twelve years old, from gym class in junior high, the cheesecakiest one of all. And under it: JUNIOR JEZEBEL? Still and all, none of it was too bad.

  I made coffee and toast for us, and while we ate on the breakfast room table, we read the paper, taking turns. Then Steve said get dressed, we were going to Baltimore to get there quick for whatever was in the works for me. So we rode over feeling close, but when we got to the hotel he didn’t go up to the suite. He said he’d finish his breakfast and wait in the coffee shop. So when I went upstairs Mr. Wilmer looked kind of funny and said I’d better go in and see how my mother was doing. I knocked on the door of the bedroom, and when she told me come in I did and found her in bed, with papers all over the covers, not only the Baltimore Sun but the Washington Post and another Baltimore paper. And when she saw me she held out her arms and gathered me in and kissed me. She was in a beautiful black nightie, with a black bow in her hair and looking prettier than I’d ever seen her. She kissed me all over the face and back of the ears, and asked, “Have you seen them?” meaning the papers.

  “I saw the Post. I thought it was pretty OK.”

  “OK? OK? It was perfect. That Ed Vernick, I shut him up! Did you see what he had to say?”

  “He had nothing to say, just ‘no comment.’”

  “Keeping his head down from my brick!”

  “You’re just a sweet, crazy goof!”

  So then she was laughing and Mr. Wilmer was there, sitting on the bed, patting her. “The sun’s coming up,” he said.

  “And I can go home again!”

  “Mother? You mean, to Hyattsville?”

  I omit I was somewhat surprised, because why she’d be going back there I didn’t exactly see. But she said, “Home to me now is Lacuvidere, the place Ben took me to Thursday, when we got married—the house he built by his lake, up there in Frederick County, the house we both built by the lake, those beautiful golden days when Steve would be in New York and we could do things together. Mandy, he phoned one friend from Dover, telling the news, but that one friend was enough. When we got there and he carried me over the threshold, suddenly music started, and then there they all were with candles, his friends, bringing us into our home. For three hours they warmed us and cheered us and loved us. I couldn’t have faced them again if Ed Vernick had shot off his mouth. That’s what I mean, that ‘I can go home again!’”

  “Well, Mother, he didn’t shoot it off.”

  “That’s right, thanks to me.”

  She gave me a little hug, then jumped up and whipped off her nightie, so except for the bow in her hair, she had nothing on at all. She was simply beautiful. She opened the closet and took out a dress, a dark red one of gros-grained silk. But then she took out another, a dark blue with black binding on it at neck, sleeves, and hem. She said, “Mandy, I got it for you yesterday, after you left.” Then she undressed me, so except for the ribbon in my hair, I was as naked as she was. We both stood in front of the mirror, she giving me kisses and slaps and slaps and kisses, a lot. And two funny things I noticed: first, except in the face and hair, I was practically her twin in height, size, and shape, something I hadn’t known. And second, Mr. Wilmer just sat there and smiled, making no move to go, and she let him. That seemed the funniest of all, when I thought about it later. I mean he didn’t go and I didn’t mind; I didn’t know why. I didn’t have a stitch on, and yet it seemed all right that he should be there looking on. Of course, not for long. I slipped into fresh underwear and the beautiful dress, feeling quite proud of myself at how I was going to look, going to sign my confession. When we were all dressed and breakfast was on the way up, she said, “Mandy, when this is all over, we’ll have a surprise for you, one I think you’re going to like. But first things first. Let’s wind this awful thing up before we start something else.”

  We all three went down soon as we finished breakfast, said hello to Steve in the coffee shop, walked around to Mr. Clawson’s, and then taxied to City Hal
l, where Mr. Haynes’s office was. When we got there the same girl was there, the one who had worked the stenotype, as well as the tape recorder. Mr. Haynes brought us all in his private office and she handed him some papers, not yet stapled together, that seemed to be my confession. He read it, though pretty fast, as though he’d seen it before, and then gave it to me, saying, “Yes, Mandy, I think it’s in order now. Will you sign it, here at the end, on the line she’s marked with an X. Then initial each page.”

  But, like I told Mrs. Minot, curiosity killed the cat, and I wanted to read what I’d said. It was not what I’d said at all! It was all different and left out about the gun and how scared Rick and I were. It had in about the mink coat, but nothing about Rick backing out, or trying to, before being made at gunpoint. It was loused from beginning to end, and I yelped, “It’s not what I said. It’s been doctored!”

  “Yes, Mandy? In what way doctored?”

  Mr. Haynes was very cold, but I told him. More than I’ve put in here. By that time Mr. Clawson had had a look, and he chimed in too: “What’s the big idea, Jack? Having Mandy’s statement rewritten?”

  “Well, we generally do. You have to pull it together so it makes some kind of sense.”

  “It made plenty of sense as she said it.”

  “Not to a jury it wouldn’t.”

  “Since when is a jury so dumb?”

  That was Mother, sounding like ground glass in a blender. By that time she’d had a look too, and she went on, “I’ve had to sit in court while cases were being tried, and my observation was not that juries were dumb, but that they weren’t—that that was the trouble with them, from the lawyer’s point of view. Could it be that you rewrote Mandy’s statement as a way of convicting that boy?”

  “I’ve said why I had it rewritten.”

  “You have indeed.”

  “You doubt my word?”

  He was pretty ugly about it, but she said, “Come here.”

  He didn’t move, and she went over to him. She leaned close, patted his cheek, and said, “You don’t look like no lion tamer.”

  “Just like a lying son of a bitch?”

  He laughed and she laughed, telling him, “You go wash your mouth out with soap! Why, the very idea, saying something like that in mixed company! And good-looking as you are, and truthful-looking! You stop cutting your eye at me, or I’ll be falling for you! Where’s the typescript? Of the tape? From the recording machine? She’ll sign that, and that’s all she’ll sign, or we’re starting all over again.”

  “Mr. Wilmer, you have a persuasive wife.”

  “Oh, she generally gets her way.”

  “And a damned beautiful wife.”

  “She’ll pass in a crowd, no doubt.”

  “Pass in it? She’ll light it up like a star shell.”

  By that time he had motioned to the girl, who got another paper out of her dispatch case, a thick one, all stapled up in a blue cover. Mother took it, glanced through it, flipping the pages over, and said, “OK, this is it. Mandy? Do you have a pen?”

  So I signed, the girl stamped her notary seal on and signed, after having me raise my right hand and asking did I solemnly swear that the statement I had given here was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That seemed to be it. Mr. Haynes looked at Mother and said, “Mrs. Wilmer, since you are so very good-looking, and since your eyes do turn me to putty, I’ll kick in with some very good news. It made the A.P. wire.”

  “What did? And what’s the A.P. wire?”

  “The story was sent out by the Associated Press. It hit them funny, the rude awakening you got on your wedding night.”

  “OK, but what’s good about it?”

  “It means that papers have it all over the country, so that boy will see it and, if he has any sense, surrender.”

  “Oh. Yes, I guess that would help.”

  “It’ll be the end of this thing!”

  “Or maybe not, Mr. Haynes.”

  “What makes you say that, Mandy?”

  “He doesn’t have any sense.”

  So then we all had lunch—Mr. Clawson, Mr. Haynes, Mr. Wilmer, Mother, and I—at Marconi’s again, but I kept thinking of Steve, and when I mentioned him, Mr. Wilmer called the hotel, had him paged, and invited him. And he came. And Marconi’s is a wonderful place, which did it big for Mr. Wilmer, and I loved the dishes they served but don’t remember their names. So once again Mr. Wilmer begged me to stay and said we’d paint the town red, he, Mother, and I, “for a real Saturday night” and “when I say red I mean red. If there’s one thing Baltimore has, it’s bucketfuls of red paint.” But Steve’s face spoke to me, and I said I’d go back with him. Then, from the look on Mother’s face, I knew she still had hopes that I would fall for him in more than a daughterly way. But Mr. Wilmer was frowning, not seeming to like it so much.

  Anyhow, Steve and I drove home and hardly were in the house before things commenced to happen. First, of course, was the phone, and that was my first experience with the obscene call from some guy. You’ve no idea what they said, and you know you ought to hang up, and yet what you do is hang on from not believing what they’ll say next. Then the doorbell, with people there you hadn’t seen in a year, or thought of in all that time—beginning with Mrs. Minot, still nosing around for some dirt, asking if Mother got married and why I’m not held in jail. I told her, “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” and Steve told her, “You’ll have to excuse us, please, we’re awfully tired.”

  So I’d ask them in and talk a few minutes and Steve would shoo them out, saying, “We have to put in some calls” or “We have some friends coming in” or “We have to darn some socks” or whatever popped in his head. It went on all afternoon, and then at night we went out to the Bladensburg place for dinner. We got home around nine o’clock, and when the phone rang Steve took it. Then he handed me the receiver, saying, “Some guy calling you long-distance.”

  But he looked at me kind of queer, and when I answered I knew why. A boy’s voice said, “Mandy Vernick, please.”

  “This is Mandy Vernick.”

  “Mandy, this is Rick.”

  “Oh! Well, hello and how are you, Rick?”

  I tried to make it sound friendly, but he snarled when he said, “What’s it to you how I am?”

  “Rick, that’s not very nice.”

  “Who says it’s supposed to be nice?”

  “OK. What do you want?”

  “To tell you what you’ve got coming.”

  “What do you mean coming?”

  “What do you think I mean? For what you’ve done to me, that’s what I mean.”

  “Done to you? I did you a favor, that’s what I did, putting them on your trail so you can be taken in before you do something else as silly as the last thing you did. Rick, are you listening to me? If you give yourself up, right away, wherever you are, and turn that money in, they may not do much to you. I did everything I could to make it that you were forced at gunpoint against your will, and that’s on my statement, sworn. But if you keep on being a jerk, that won’t hold water at all, what I put in my statement. It’ll be that you do want that money, that maybe once you were forced, but now you’re hanging on all of your own free will. Rick, are you listening?”

  “Bitch, are you?”

  “Rick, that’s no way to talk.”

  “OK. I’ll knock off the talk and say what I mean to do. What I mean to do to you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Listen, I don’t go for riddles.”

  “Then, I’ll make it plain. I’m killing you, Mandy. That’s what I mean to do. You’re going to wake up dead.”

  “And how can you kill me?”

  “By shooting you through your lying, double-crossing, rotten little heart.”

  “Rick, will you listen to me?”

  “No, Mandy, I don’t have time.”

  Then came the dial tone and I knew he had hung up. Steve
had been leaning close and said, “I heard it. That means we must call the cops.”

  16

  SO THE NEXT THREE hours were nice. I’ll say they were, the kind of a nightmare you dream about all the rest of your life. After talking it over with me, holding my hand and telling me not to be scared, regardless of what Rick had said, Steve decided to call the Baltimore cops, not the Prince George’s County cops or the Town of Hyattsville cops, though, of course, they were just down the street. So he did, first getting the number from information. He had to argue about it, first with one guy, then with another, till he finally got one who was actually in charge of the case. He was told to hold everything, to “keep the girl there in the house,” and an officer would be over. Sure enough, the officer came, after a couple of hours, and heard us both tell our tale. But Steve’s, it turned out, was just as important as mine. Because he was the one who heard it, what the girl had said, what the operator told Rick, before the connection was made: “Deposit a dollar and a half, please.” That told it, not much but a little, where the call had come from—at lease in a general way, Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona, or New Mexico. It wasn’t much, but as the officer said, more than nothing. The main thing was Rick couldn’t get there that night.

  But that was just the beginning. Next off, the officer had to call Baltimore, “the Chief,” as he called him, for orders on what to do next. So the Chief said take me in, to jail seemed to be the idea, “protective custody” so I wouldn’t get shot. That’s when Steve hit the roof, refusing to let me go for the reason I already was in custody, custody of my mother, and he was acting for her. Then he called Mr. Clawson, whose number he already had, and had him talk to the officer. The officer said orders were orders but that he would wait while Mr. Clawson called the Chief and the Chief called him back. So then we sat around and Steve put out some beer, when the officer kind of relaxed and wasn’t so bullheaded to us. Then the Chief called and they talked, first the officer and then Steve. And Steve said, “Chief, who am I to tell you your business and how to run it? Just the same, it makes no sense, taking this girl in. In the first place it’s wrong, and in the second place it’s dumb. Because, look, suppose he calls again? Suppose he’s stolen a car and is on his way to her? Or suppose he’s traveling by bus? Or plane? Or however he’s fixing to get here? And he puts in another call? Tonight? Tomorrow? Or tomorrow night? If she’s here she can string it out, hold him on the line while the call is traced, which takes a few minutes, remember. If she’s not here that does it, and nothing more can be done. If she is here we got a chance. And so far as him killing her goes, it won’t happen, that I promise you. I have a gun, right here in this house, in the downstairs table drawer. I keep it under a permit. Have to; I drive a truck. So no one’s going to shoot her.”