The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

  “If I tell him it’s because I’m working against the cops, yes.”

  “All right,” Jake said, “sound him out.” He dug into the attaché case and came up with a set of photographs. He handed a couple to Magnes. “Maniscalco had these made from that old picture they had of Thoren in the paper along with his obit, but it’s probably a fair likeness. Show it to the guy and see if he can make any identification. If Thoren dropped into his place now and then, it’ll give us something to go on.”

  “I’ll take care of it along with the rest. I’ll phone you as soon as I have anything at all to report.”

  “Your calls don’t go through the hotel switchboard, do they?”

  “Do I look that foolish?” Magnes said. “I’m on a direct outside line from the day I moved in here thirty years ago. And there wasn’t even bugs in those days. Only taps.”

  “Do you check the phone for bugs now and then?”

  “Every morning, even before I put my teeth in,” Magnes said.

  16

  Elinor, lobster-red but not quite so swollen of feature, was fetchingly attired in a bedsheet loosely draped around her like a toga. She said: “What did you tell Milt Webb and his wife about me when they were here this morning? That I was dying of sunstroke or something?”

  “No, just the facts,” Jake said. “Why?”

  “Because they must have really laid it on over the grapevine, the way people dropped in after lunch. That poor maid did hardly any cleaning, it was mostly running around and serving them coffee.”

  “What people?”

  “Oh, first it was the Thorens and that sister-in-law of hers, then Mrs. McCloy and some of her friends. And for the big finish, Patty Tucker walked in with Nera while the Thorens were still here.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, Patty took one look around and got Nera out quick. She said something about a lot of shopping to do, so they couldn’t stay. But for five seconds it looked like World War Three was getting ready to start right here. I didn’t even know Mrs. Thoren could look as murderous as she did when she saw Nera.”

  “How’d Kermit take it?”

  “He looked pretty nasty, too. And that sister-in-law. The only one of them who didn’t was Joanna. I think she kind of digs Nera. Nera looked great all right. Especially next to those dried-up females they have around here. Say, where were you while all this was going on?”

  “Signing on some extra help. Name’s Abe Magnes. An old-time investigator who knows his way around town. Must be way over seventy and comes on like forty. Matter of fact, everybody I saw around that downtown section of the Beach where he lives looks like the Ancient Mariner or his wife. If you’re under sixty down there, they call you sonny.”

  Elinor said with disappointment: “You mean that’s what Miami Beach is really like? I thought it would be real swinging, like those airline commercials.”

  “Well, the further uptown you go, the younger it gets. At least, some places it does. I did some sightseeing as far up as the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway, and it really swings around there. I’ll show it to you some day when you can wear more than that sheet.”

  “You weren’t just sightseeing,” Elinor said. “Not you. It had something to do with the job, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. But my end of it, not yours. What did your coffee klatsch talk about? Anything worth filing?”

  “Maybe. You know all about the shooting last night, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, that was what they talked about mostly. None of them really believe Milt Webb about it. Kermit says he was probably shooting at a sea serpent that came out of a vodka bottle. But I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?” Jake said.

  “I think a boat did come in at the Thorens’ dock last night. Only there wasn’t any crook on it, there was a blackmailer looking to collect from Mrs. Thoren. And I can tell from that superior little smile on your face that you already thought the same thing as soon as you heard about it.”

  Jake said: “It’s not a superior little smile. It’s a complimentary little smile because you’re a smart girl. How did Mrs. Thoren take it while they were on the subject? Show signs of strain?”

  “Total. That’s what started me thinking about it, how shook up she looked. Jake, it felt so awful, watching her and knowing what she was going through.”

  “Then you’re not as smart as I thought. Suppose Thoren had walked into Guaranty’s office with a gun and stolen their payroll and stashed it away somewhere? And now Mrs. Thoren was trying to get her hands on the loot. Would you feel the same way?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing. Just remember that whenever you feel yourself getting all teary over Mrs. Thoren.”

  “But you’re taking for granted she’s deliberately going along with a swindle because she knows he committed suicide. And there isn’t anything to prove she does.”

  Jake said: “Except she’d have to be pretty goddam stupid and insensitive not to know what her husband was capable of doing for her sake after being married to him for twenty-five years. You’ve seen her close up. Do you honestly believe she is that stupid and insensitive?”

  It took time for Elinor to come out with it. “No, I guess not,” she said unhappily.

  “All right. Then any time you find your heart bleeding for her, remember she’s trying to commit criminal fraud. Maybe that’ll ease the pain a little.”

  “So what about the fraud we’re pulling here?” Elinor said. “Setting up a phony front, bugging phones, listening in—”

  “There’s only one answer to that, baby. If Mrs. Thoren had been on the level—if she had kissed off that insurance money as soon as she realized she wasn’t entitled to it—we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Blame it all on her, not me.”

  During the evening he drifted in and out of the darkened kitchen, keeping an eye on the Ortega house from its window. Two cars were parked in the driveway there behind the Ortega Cadillac, another was parked at the curb. At eleven he saw that the car at the curb had departed. He waited, and a few minutes later the other two cars pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down Circular Drive.

  He went into the bedroom where Elinor was on duty, tuned in to the transmitter she had planted in Charlotte Thoren’s bedroom. From the monitor came a voice predicting tomorrow’s weather in Dade and Broward counties.

  “Get anything from her end besides television?” he asked.

  “No. How long should I stay with this?”

  “Allow ten minutes after she turns the set off. And don’t be surprised later on if that phone in the study wakes you up. Maniscalco’s supposed to have some information for me today or tomorrow. If he does call, tell him I’ll ring him up first thing in the morning. Leave a note on my desk about it.”

  “All right,” Elinor said. “But where will you be?”

  “Out reconnoitering the neighborhood. I don’t know for how long, so don’t worry about the time it takes.”

  Elinor said: “With blackmailers coming around here in boats, what’s to worry about? Anyhow, before you go would you please do me a favor? Smear that benzocaine glop on my back again? It still feels like I’m being barbecued when I try to lie down.”

  She handed him the bottle, and without any display of self-consciousness about her parboiled nakedness, undraped the sheet from around herself and stretched out, face down on the bed. She gasped when he ruthlessly splashed cold oil along her spine and started to rub it in hard. “Hey, that hurts,” she protested. “Can’t you do it nice and easy like last time?”

  “No, nice and easy can get to be too much fun. Let’s stick to straight therapy.”

  She submitted, groaning, to the therapy. Then with her voice half-muffled by the pillow, she said: “Jake, when I was talking to the company about you I got to wondering. How much of that résumé stuff you made me memorize is true?”

  “As much as can be checked out wit
hout too much trouble.”

  “You mean you really were a reporter on the Daily Mirror back in New York?”

  “Until it folded. A whiz kid on the crime beat. And with a by-line sometimes.”

  “Then I might have even read news stories you wrote. I used to like the Mirror a lot when I was a kid. It had the best jokes of any paper.”

  “There are a lot of good jokes in the newspaper business,” Jake said. “The best one is trying to make a living from it.”

  17

  Nera Ortega answered her doorbell in glittering hostess pajamas and one high-heeled slipper. The other slipper she held in her hand. When she saw Jake looking at it she laughed. “No, it’s not a defensive measure. I just sent some company home and you caught me on my way upstairs. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “Nothing serious. A problem I’d like to talk over with you. May I come in?”

  She hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s past visiting hours.” Her speech was flavored with the faintest Latin accent. “And Fons isn’t home. Or the maid. I’m all alone here right now.”

  “I know. I’d just as soon Fons doesn’t hear any of this. Or the maid.”

  “Oh?” She regarded him quizzically, her lower lip pinched between her teeth. “And your nice little wife?”

  “My nice little wife has been coated with a soothing lotion and stuffed with sleeping pills. She’s not in shape to hear much of anything right now. You know, the one bad thing about this Miami climate is that you can’t remark how cold it is out and get invited inside on that account.”

  Nera looked amused. “That shows how much you know about the Miami climate. Well, if you can state your problem in twenty-five words or less—”

  The huge living room with the bull’s horns over the fireplace and the jai-alai cesta on the wall was littered with the residue of a party.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Nera said, plainly indifferent to it. She switched on a small table lamp and turned out the bright overhead light. “If you can’t clean it up, hide it. Drink?” She leaned against the portable bar to fit the other slipper on her foot.

  “Whatever you’re having,” Jake said.

  “I’ve already had my quota for the evening. But it was Scotch and soda. Not too much soda.”

  Jake watched her take out the decanter and a glass and place them on top of the bar. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t drink alone.”

  Nera weighed this briefly, then took out a second glass. She measured off two stiff drinks, added a splash of soda to each, and handed one to Jake. A pair of couches faced each other across the fire place. He sat down in one; Nera perched on an arm of the other, barely within the circle of light made by the lamp.

  Jake raised his glass to her. She mockingly returned the gesture, then downed half her drink in a series of quick gulps like medicine, her face screwed up against the taste of it. With eyes tight shut and mouth wide open, she drew a deep, luxurious breath, savoring its impact. She opened her eyes and fixed them on Jake. “And your problem?”

  “Oh, that. Well, it was how to work things out so that I could wind up here alone with you. And with the lights dimmed and a drink in my hand. Seems to me the problem has now been happily solved.”

  “Very funny,” Nera said dryly.

  “It wasn’t intended to be.”

  “In that case,” Nera said, “please finish your drink and go. I suppose all you writers naturally picture yourselves playing gay caballeros, but this isn’t the time or place for any such performance.”

  “The best time is always now. The best place is always where you happen to find yourself. Nera, what the hell is your husband thinking about?”

  “My husband?”

  “Or any husband who’d leave a woman like you alone for weeks at a time while he’s off peddling some foolish merchandise. What kind of man is that? If I owned something like you—”

  “Oh, this is just too ridiculous.” Nera stood up abruptly and motioned toward the door with her glass. “Will you kindly get out of here right now? Come back some time when you’re not drunk.”

  “I’m not the one who’s been drinking,” Jake said.

  “Then what you’re doing—what you’re trying to do—is completely inexcusable.”

  Jake slid lower on the couch and stretched his legs out comfortably. “That isn’t what you told Kermit Thoren,” he said.

  The glass in Nera’s hand jerked convulsively. She started to put it down, then changed her mind and drained it with that same quick thirstiness and shuddering distaste before she placed it carefully on the end table beside her. “So they’re still talking about that,” she said.

  “They are. Loud and clear.”

  “I can imagine. And I suppose it gave you the impression I’d be delighted to jump into bed with the next comer on demand. And you’re not one to waste time putting in your application, are you?”

  Jake said: “Don’t play games with me. When we got our first look at each other a couple of days ago you knew as well as I did what was going to happen to us sooner or later. And I didn’t need stories about you and Kermit to tell me you’re more woman than I’ve come across in a long time. Or to know what to do about it.”

  Nera stared at him. Then she dramatically pressed a hand to her breast. “It’s true,” she said. “From the moment we met I’ve dreamed only of being in your arms. But now I’m afraid the reality can never live up to that dream. So I think the only thing left to do is call the security man at the gate and have you tossed out of here before I’m terribly disillusioned.”

  She walked, a little unsteadily, to the desk across the room and picked up the phone there. She waited, a finger poised over its dial. “Well?” she sat at last.

  “Well what?” Jake said placidly. “Do you think anybody believes Kermit invited himself in here and assaulted you? Or that they’ll believe it about me? That includes the security man. What he’ll tell you is that if you really don’t want to keep getting assaulted every time your husband leaves town, you ought to have the maid sleep in for a change. Or keep a dog on the premises.”

  “In three minutes, Mr. Dekker, you will find out exactly what he has to tell me.” Her attempt at hauteur was somewhat spoiled by the slight blurriness of the words. “And, more to the point, what I have to tell him.”

  Jake took a long drink. It was not very good Scotch. He said: “You must be a lousy poker player, beautiful. You should know better than to pull a bluff if there’s a fair chance somebody’ll call it. It just leaves you standing there with a phone in your hand and egg all over your face.”

  Nera made a choked sound. It might have been a strangled cry of outrage, a suppressed sob, or a violent hiccup. Jake put down his drink, crossed the room, and without resistance from her, gently removed the phone from her grasp and placed it on its stand. She did resist, but only momentarily, when he drew her against him. His hand slid over well-rounded buttocks, up under the silk pajama blouse, and beneath the taut strap of the brassiere. She made that choked sound again. “Please don’t,” she said. “Please go away.”

  “You know you don’t want me to.”

  “I do. You’re frightening me.”

  “But not very much,” Jake said.

  “No, I mean it.”

  “Fine. Since I’m forcing you to do this, you don’t have a thing to blame yourself for.” Jake unsnapped the brassiere, and its straps fell apart. Nera shivered, her breath quickening as he lightly ran his fingertips back and forth over the marks the straps had left. He said: “You can see you’re my helpless victim. Relax and enjoy it.”

  “Mother of God,” Nera moaned, her forehead pressed hard against his chest, “I have a husband.”

  “And I’ll bet he’s a saint on wheels. Right this minute he’s probably sitting in that lonely hotel room in Rio reading his Bible.”

  “Don’t laugh. He’s such a good, kind man. And your wife is such a sweet, pretty child.”

  “And you are one hell of a beautiful, grown-up wo
man. Hold up your arms.”

  Nera obediently held them up so that he could draw the pajama blouse over her head. Then with a shrug of the shoulders she released the brassiere into his hand. Her swollen, slightly pendulous breasts looked enormous in contrast to the girlishly slim waist. Jake cupped a hand around one, and Nera caught hold of his wrist and futilely tried to thrust it aside. “No,” she said breathlessly. “Please don’t. Not like this.”

  “But definitely yes. Like this.”

  “I don’t mean that.” There was a note of impatience in her voice. “Let me go upstairs first. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

  Whatever went on upstairs gave him more than enough time before her summons to install a transmitter in the phone, open the drawers of the desk with a picklock to find nothing in them worth finding, check the doors of the house to make sure they were tightly secured, and still finish what was left of his corrosive Scotch and soda without haste.

  When he entered her room he found its darkness relieved only by the rosy glow of a night light on her dressing table. The bed was a canopied, beruffled four-poster, and Nera, unclothed, had arranged herself on it like a small, blond Maja Desnuda. “Turn out the light,” she whispered.

  He did, then blindly felt his way across the room in the direction of the four-poster, kicking off his sandals and peeling off his clothes as he went. He found the bed by barking a shin against it.

  “Clumsy,” Nera said tenderly. Her hands touched his chest, moved down exploringly. “Mother of God,” she said with awe. He bent over her, held painfully tight in her grasp, and his nostrils were filled with a scent of flowery perfume, of citron soap, of under-arm deodorant, and, as his lips brushed hers, not of low-quality Scotch, but of a peppermint-flavored toothpaste or mouthwash. Nera’s arms circled his neck and dragged him down full length on her. “Ay, mi padrillo,” she moaned, and then engulfed him in peppermint.

  Afterward she was in no mood to share either conversation or a cigarette with him despite his prodding, but lay in a stupor of repletion, her hand clutching his. Resignedly, he waited until the increasingly loud, rasping inhalation and bubbling exhalation of her breath signaled she was asleep. Then he detached himself from her and padded out to investigate the upper floor of the house. It had a separate bedroom arrangement; the room adjoining hers was Fons’ bedroom. Besides that, there were a couple of guest rooms and a combination library-music room where an extravagant stereo setup occupied most of one wall.