The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

  “Including what happens to me if somebody finds out I bugged a phone?”

  “Including that. Did you remember to get the number of the phone when you bugged it? I want to make a test run.”

  She gave him the number, then said: “How can you test it now? There’s nobody talking in that bedroom, is there? They’re all downstairs.”

  “You’re worrying again,” Jake said. “Didn’t I tell you not to?” He dialed the number and used the sonic whistle. The only response to it from the monitor was a heavy droning sound.

  “What’s that?” Elinor said. “Did I foul up something with that gimmick?”

  “No, you did a first-class job with it. That noise is what I wanted to hear. It’s Mrs. Thoren’s air conditioner. Most new models are pretty quiet, but I noticed from outside the house there that the ones in those bedroom windows upstairs aren’t that new.”

  “Noticed it?” Elinor said sardonically. “Or looked for it?”

  “Noticed it. Don’t get the wrong idea, Ellie baby. Nobody can think of everything in advance. You’d go out of your skull trying to. The real trick in this game is knowing how to use what turns up along the way.”

  “Then I’d sure hate like hell to play poker with you.”

  “Too bad, because I was thinking of playing you a few hands for that three thousand you’re getting.” Jake looked at his watch. “So what we’ll do instead is go shopping for groceries now. Then around cocktail time we’ll see if we can make friends with a lady name of Nera Ortega.”

  9

  Nera was, as Joanna had put it, something pretty special. A dark-eyed beautiful little blonde with disproportionately hefty breasts and rump, she was possibly thirty at first glance, definitely over forty at second. It was the fine lines on the upper lip and at the corners of the eyes which gave her away. That and the purpled veininess of those otherwise trim legs.

  Her husband Fons (“No, not really,” he told Elinor, “but the name Alfonso is a bit overwhelming among friends, don’t you think?”) had been the one to spot them from the window as they strolled the property line between the houses as though surveying the premises, and had cordially invited them in for a drink. The house, a Florida variation of hacienda, was almost exaggeratedly Latin-American in its furnishings, right down to the massive pair of bull’s horns mounted over the fireplace and the basketlike jai-alai cesta hung on a wall. And the drink turned out to be sangría.

  There was also another Daystar Islander on hand, a big, rawboned woman, white-haired and with skin tanned the color of old leather. Patty Tucker. Mrs. Stewart Tucker. Her husband had been Ortega’s business partner in South American export and import until his death two years ago.

  “Lung cancer, poor lamb,” she said grimly. “Obviously, I haven’t learned a goddam thing from it, have I?” She chain-smoked ferociously.

  Since she was a cheerful and opinionated talker, and since Nera Ortega irritably disagreed with almost every opinion, the conversation moved along briskly. Then Jake mentioned the name Thoren, and it froze solid on the spot. It never completely thawed after that.

  The three guests left together. Crossing the lawn to the driveway, where Patty Tucker’s bicycle was parked, Jake said apologetically to her: “I saw you shake your head at me as soon as I opened my mouth about meeting the Thorens, but it was too late. What’s it all about between the Ortegas and them? Some kind of feud?”

  “That’s what it amounts to. Damn shame, too. They were such close friends for years.”

  “And one day there was a misunderstanding and it all went bang.” Jake nodded wisely. “I’ve seen it happen. Afterward, no one could even say why.”

  “Not in this case. No, indeed,” Patty said, “we all know why. Matter of fact, I was right there when the first shot was fired.”

  “Shot?” said Elinor.

  “Figuratively speaking, pet.” Patty started to mount the bicycle, then changed her mind about it. She took her time lighting a cigarette. “What the hell,” she said through the smoke jetting from her nostrils, “Fons and Nera would kill me for blabbing to you about it, but I’d rather have it me than somebody else with his own fish to fry. The whole thing was ridiculous anyhow. It happened about three years ago. Fons was away on business, and Nera had gone to this dinner party the Thorens gave. Completely informal, family and a few friends, that sort of thing. And a good time being had by all until Nera decided to make a fool of herself, and Walter Thoren blew it up into a total disaster.”

  “That’s odd,” Jake said. “Somehow, I had a picture of him as always playing it cool, no matter what. The strong, silent type.”

  “Oh, he was all of that. A big, brooding, Scandinavian sort of man. But terribly strait-laced. No boozing it up, no dirty jokes, no fun and games with the girls. And believe me, he had his opportunities. Some of the females in these parts would have been only too willing to help loosen up those repressions.”

  “Nera, too?” said Elinor.

  “Nera, too. Although for all the good it did her or any of them, they might as well have had a letch for an iceberg. But that night, because she was feeling sorry for herself what with Fons being away so much, and because she was well-liquored when she walked into the house and completely stoned by dessert, she made a weepy, pathetic play for Walter right at the table. And, God rest his Puritan soul, instead of making a joke of it, he told her off the way you’d do a pup that had dirtied your carpet.”

  “How awful,” Elinor said. “I mean, for all of you.”

  “It was. But I’ll let you in on something, pet. I had the damnedest feeling it was worst for Walter. He looked absolutely sick at having been pawed by Nera even that little bit.”

  “And you’d never seen him like that before?” Jake said.

  “Well, there’d never been that kind of situation before. Still and all, most of us felt it would blow over in a week or two. We’d get Nera to plead drunkenness, and Walter would go along with it because he liked Fons, and so on. It didn’t work out that way. When you were with the Thorens, did you meet the son? Kermit?”

  “Yes,” Jake said.

  “What did you think of him?”

  “Well—” said Jake.

  “Exactly. That boy has been a trial to his family from the day he discovered how dim-witted adolescent girls can be. And, for that matter, some grown-up women who should have known a damn sight better.

  “So this young lump of conceit—he couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one then—having witnessed that scene at the table, decided Nera was simply demonstrating her need for some male servicing. The very next day he showed up here at the house and went to work peddling his wares. For sheer unmitigated gall—”

  Jake said: “Was she the one who told you about it?”

  “She did. She had to, because whenever I dropped in on her, there was Kermit. He hung around day after day like that. She told me that first she thought it was funny. Then it struck her that since his parents, along with the rest of us, certainly knew about it, she could drive them wild by going along with the joke. As far as she was concerned, it was a lovely way of hitting back at Walter. And, of course, she assured me, there was really nothing at all going on between her and Kermit.”

  “Was there?” Elinor asked.

  Patty made a wry face. “Well, Fons sure as hell thought so the day he walked in without notice and found them together in a highly compromising position. At least, that’s what they used to call it when I was a sweet young thing. Lucky for her, Nera can think fast. She instantly started screeching she had practically been assaulted and never gave up on that story. Even luckier for her, most of the money is hers, so Fons was not that anxious to get a divorce. A little face-saving for him, and Nera was home free. And after the smoke had cleared away, so was Kermit. Walter did all the talking for him, but it was the last time he and Fons ever went near each other.”

  Jake said: “You think he might have paid off Fons?”

  “Good heavens, no. Fons would nev
er take that kind of money. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “It was just a thought. When you’re the rich father of a stud like Kermit you could be stuck for some heavy cash payments under the table now and then. Hush money they used to call it when I was a sweet young thing.”

  Patty laughed. “Yes, I recognize the good old tabloid style. And trust a writer to think of something like that. It might not be so far-fetched either. It really wouldn’t shock me speechless to find out Walter sometimes did pay to keep that boy out of the papers. Anyhow, there it is. Now you know why Fons and Nera took it the way they did when you brought up the Thorens. But don’t let it bother you. They’re probably sorry already that they weren’t more mannerly about it.” She squeezed Elinor’s hand hard, and then Jake’s. “You are a pair of darlings, you know. I’m sure they want to be friends with you as much as I do.”

  When she had wheeled around the bend of the road and out of sight Elinor said: “She’s nice, isn’t she?”

  “No. If you’re nice you don’t go around telling dirty stories about your friends.”

  “But you practically wormed it out of her,” Elinor said indignantly. “And she was only explaining things so our feelings wouldn’t be hurt.”

  “She was doing it to put down Nera. Their husbands were partners for years. Who do you think her husband had his eyes on any time they were all together? She must have had her bellyful of Nera long ago.”

  “Oh, man,” Elinor said. “You don’t trust anyone at all, do you?”

  “Not Patty Tucker, for sure. Did you hear her say everyone around here knew what was going on between Nera and Kermit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the odds are she’s the one who let them know about it. And probably tipped off Fons, too, which is why he could catch his wife in the act.”

  Elinor said: “But he did catch her in the act. And I have news for you. If you have the least idea I could ever get to be buddies with Nera—”

  “I don’t any more. She hated you like poison from the minute we walked in there.”

  Elinor looked startled. “I didn’t think you noticed that. Most men wouldn’t have.”

  “Most men don’t have to notice things like that. But I knew right away we’d have to cross her name off your buddy list. No woman like that wants someone like you around. It would be like having a mirror in front of her all the time showing her what she looked like twenty years ago, before the wrinkles set in.”

  “Well, I’m just as glad she’s off my list,” Elinor said. “Don’t forget it works the other way around, too.”

  10

  They had an early dinner. When Elinor brought the coffee pot to the table, Jake said: “You can have your coffee in the study. The Thorens should be sitting down to eat around now. I want you to pipe in on them and get it all down on tape. Remember what I showed you about marking the tape?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, anything worthwhile you hear, mark it right there. That’s important. Otherwise, I can be stuck with reading a couple of hours of tape all about the weather.”

  “Yes, but how do I know for sure when something is worthwhile?”

  “Use your brain. And if there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt. Just mark it.”

  He remained at the table after she left, his eyes fixed unseeingly on the far wall of the kitchen. When he got around to his coffee he found it cold. He went to the stove, reheated the pot, and had a cup of it, black and bitter, while he stood there. Then he sat down at the table again.

  He blinked at the sudden brightness when Elinor walked into the kitchen and switched on the light. She looked at the wall clock. “It’s after nine. Do you mean you’ve been sitting here like that for two hours?”

  Jake said vaguely: “I suppose so. Did you know Denmark has the second highest suicide rate in the world after Japan?”

  “I didn’t even know Japan was first. Oh, I get it. I suppose Walter Thoren was Danish.”

  “His people were. According to that big obit he got in the paper here, his parents emigrated to Minnesota from Denmark. And that oversized picture on the dining-room wall over there is Red House Square in Copenhagen. It’s not that good a picture, you’d hang it up for art’s sake.”

  Elinor looked skeptical. “So what? You’re not saying people inherit the urge to commit suicide, are you?”

  “No, because when Danes and Japanese emigrate, their suicide rate drops down to the local one. But it’s interesting that Thoren’s mother and father both died the same way he did, in an auto crash. He could have had them in mind when he first started thinking about a way to kill himself that would look like an accident.” Jake got stiffly to his feet. “How’d you make out with the tape? Hear anything good?”

  “That’s what I came in to tell you. That Senator Sprague and his wife were there for dinner—her name’s Lucille—and most of the talk was just about people in the family and then some politics. But as soon as Joanna and Kermit went away, the senator came down on Mrs. Thoren about how she was spending too much money from the estate. He said—”

  “No, don’t tell me about it,” Jake said. “Let’s hear it.”

  From the armchair in the study he watched Elinor reverse the tape. “I’ll start it a little ways back,” she said. “Then you’ll get the whole thing. It’s not much altogether.”

  “—send my regards to him, Joanna.” It was Senator Sprague’s professionally mellow tone. “And remind him to write me when he gets there. Good night, dear. Good night, Kermit. Watch your driving, Kermit.”

  A long silence. A chink of cup against saucer. Then Sprague’s voice again, but now barely above ear level. “Charlotte, there is something you must explain to me. And I don’t want you to turn on the frost about this, because I have every right to bring it up. As administrator of the estate—”

  “Or what’s left of it.” Mrs. Sprague, tartly.

  “Never mind that, Lucille. What Walter did with his money is not your affair. Or mine. But this has nothing to do with him. Charlotte, just before Lucille and I left the hotel I got a call from Matthews at the bank. He was very much disturbed. Do you know why?”

  “He had no right to call.” Charlotte Thoren’s voice was cold with anger.

  “Charlotte, Charlie Matthews has not only been handling your banking for twenty years, he’s a friend of the family. When you walked in there this afternoon and calmly drew ten thousand dollars from an account that barely—”

  “That’s enough. I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “But ten thousand in cash, Charlotte. In cash, mind you. What conceivable reason on God’s earth—”

  “It is my money. I will do with it as I choose.”

  “I know it’s your money.” Sprague’s voice was growing louder. “Unfortunately, so do a lot of damned snake-oil peddlers who make a specialty of mulcting wealthy widows.”

  “Harlan, there are times when you are utterly fatuous—”

  The loud squeak of the swinging door between dining room and kitchen. The deferential voice of the houseman. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Thoren. I’ll clear away the table later.”

  “Now, Raymond, please. We’re quite finished.”

  “Only with dinner, Charlotte.” Sprague, grimly. “Not with our little talk.”

  His voice faded out of range, was replaced by a thumping of furniture, a clatter of dishes.

  Elinor switched off the recorder. “That’s all the talking there was. I tried the bedroom phone afterward, but I only got that air-conditioner noise. They must be settling the argument somewhere else in the house.”

  Jake shook his head. “They’re not settling anything. She’ll never tell Sprague what she needed that money for. Or anyone else. Not if they string her up by the thumbs and use hot irons on her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I happen to know what she needed the money for. Thoren was being blackmailed out of every dime he had in the world. In the end, he figured the only solution was to kill hims
elf and make it look like an accident. Then the blackmailer has no more customer, and the money Thoren already paid him comes back to the family by way of the insurance.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Jake said, “now it’s Mrs. Thoren’s turn to be blackmailed.”

  Elinor sat down hard on the couch. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

  “I know. It’s the one thing Thoren didn’t allow for. That whatever dirt he wanted to keep buried was still profitable merchandise as long as he had a wife around who’d want to keep it buried, too, once she was told about it.”

  “That poor woman,” Elinor said. “What she must be going through right now.” Then she frowned at Jake. “But look, doesn’t that help you? Now you’ve got someone who really knows Thoren was being blackmailed.”

  “I already told you she’ll never admit it. She’s no fool. She knows damn well that the least hint of it might not only cost her all that insurance money but could bring the dirt right out in the open.”

  “It could, too, couldn’t it? But dirt about what, I wonder. Him and a woman maybe? Jake, when he put down Nera at that party, maybe he was just covering up for them.”

  “No. And I don’t want you to start cooking up theories about it, or even thinking about it. It’ll make it that much tougher for you to play it cool when you’re around Mrs. Thoren. Right now, all I want you to do is pipe into her room and stay with it. Use your phone, not this one. Use the monitor, too. Just put it close to the recorder pick-up. That way you won’t get your ear stuck to your head.”

  Burdened with equipment, she turned to face him from the doorway. “Jake, please don’t get sore about it, but since you do know that poor thing is paying blackmail—”

  “Ellie baby, get this straight. If I let on to her I know it, I blow my cover and I’m done for. It would be different if I knew why she was paying the blackmail. Then I could put the thumbscrews on her myself and settle this whole business tomorrow. But I don’t. So for the time being, she’ll just have to suffer for her husband’s sins all’ by herself. Do you understand?”