The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

“No. Let’s say a highly emotional Polack.”

  Elinor struggled to a half-sitting position. “That’s just beautiful coming from a manic-depressive like you. You think you’re not because you always play it so cool?”

  “Was I really that rough on you?”

  “No, you were nice and smooth, like an ice cube. All you did was stop talking to me or even looking at me, but since I obviously don’t have any feelings, what’s wrong with that? I just have to remember that when everything’s so warm and cozy one minute, it could be the deep freeze the rest of the day. And if somebody gets in bed with me and doesn’t even know I’m there, well, that’s the way it is for the hired help when the boss has business on the mind.”

  “Sweetheart, there are times in a man’s life when sex—”

  “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about just lying there nice and quiet and holding people. Even just saying something to them.” She slid flat again and closed her eyes. “What’s the use? You don’t even know what I’m talking about. It’s not your fault. Men like you don’t know how women feel about things, that’s all.”

  “They’re emotional,” Jake said. “The way I felt when I hit the answer to all those annoying questions you raised about Thoren. That’s what I came in to tell you about, but if you’re not in the mood—”

  Elinor opened her eyes. “You hit the answer?”

  Jake took her hand. She made the smallest motion to pull it away, then let it rest limply in his grip. He said: “An army officer, a trained saboteur, traveling in a submarine to an important mission. A combat man who suddenly shows up in Miami with a lot of money and goes into business here right in the middle of the war. The most upright and uptight citizen of Daystar Island Number Two, but when you check him out, there isn’t one record of his existence before 1942. And none of it fitted together until I just happened to ask myself what the hell direction that submarine was traveling in on its way to that mission.”

  “Direction?” Elinor said. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Everything, sweetheart. That was a German submarine, and Walter Thoren was a German saboteur who never got home again.”

  45

  Elinor said warily: “Are you putting me on?”

  “No.”

  “Jake, it sounds crazy.”

  “Until you try it on for size.”

  She moved over to make room for him. “All right, tell me about it.”

  “After you fix me up some sandwiches and beer.”

  She squinted at the clock. “At four o’clock in the morning?”

  “Manic-depressives are always hungry in the manic phase. I talk better when I’m not hungry.”

  “You think you’re not a real case?” She got out of bed and drooped against him, her arms over his shoulders, her forehead against his chest. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Some day I’ll kill both of you.”

  At the kitchen table, watching her transport supplies from the refrigerator, Jake said: “You get a feeling sometimes—it was the feeling I got when you were telling me about Figueroa and came out with the word submarine—that a light’s been turned on, but it’s in the next room and the door to it is shut. And I couldn’t get it open because too many things in the case did look like contradictions. Then all of a sudden I had a brainstorm. I remembered something from way back that could be the answer to the whole mess. It wiped out every contradiction on the spot.”

  “Was that when you jumped out of bed and went inside?”

  “That’s when.” Jake looked at her quizzically. “You certainly take a highly personal view of this, don’t you?”

  “Well, I thought you couldn’t stand being in bed with me. I mean, because I couldn’t fall asleep and I was keeping you awake or something.”

  “Hell, no. I went in to look over everything I had on Thoren. The idea of his being a German agent during the war solved the whole mystery about his background, but it looked just too damn wild. But everything I had on him fitted in with that idea. Every single item. Anyhow, what I remembered that put me on the right track was an anniversary article about World War Two the Mirror printed a little while before it folded. A twentieth-anniversary piece about the Germans landing saboteurs on Long Island during the war. It’s funny how the mind works. When you mentioned the word submarine it put me right back at my desk on the Mirror one night, looking over a paper fresh from the press and trying not to get the ink on my fingers while I was reading a story in it. Only I couldn’t understand why I should have that kind of weird recollection right then. I was going crazy all day trying to see why.”

  “I know,” Elinor said dryly. “I was there.”

  “Well, you were a martyr to a good cause, because all of a sudden it came to me, and that opened the door wide. Operation Pretorius or Praetorius it was called. And I knew it was in early 1942, because it had to be twenty years before the paper folded, which was 1962.”

  Elinor held a bottle of beer poised over his glass. “You mean they had some fighting right there on Long Island in the war?”

  “No, the whole thing was a foul-up from start to finish. One of the Germans in it who came from America originally tipped off the FBI as soon as they landed, and they were all grabbed right away. They were all executed, too, except that one. He got a jail term.”

  “I don’t understand. If all of them were caught, where does that leave Thoren?”

  Jake took her wrist and tipped the bottle of beer into his glass. “That’s a good question. For sure, he wasn’t with the Long Island bunch, so he had to be with another unit that landed somewhere else. I know if I was running German Intelligence, I’d never put all my eggs in one basket, especially with an operation like this. I’d figure to coordinate at least two or three landings in case one was knocked out of action. Thoren had to be in one that hit the coast right around here.”

  Elinor looked pained. “But now you’re just guessing. I thought you had everything all settled for sure.”

  “Almost. You’ll be the one that settles it for sure. This morning you’re going back to the library—”

  “Again? They’re already tired of me there.”

  “Too bad, because they’ll have to bear with you one more time. But this time you won’t go hunting through all those files. You’ll just look up Operation Pretorius or Praetorius in the index and take it from there. What I want most of all is confirmation there were other landings. Especially one in south Florida. After that, whatever information there is on it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Elinor said. She sat down across the table, planted her elbows on it and cupped her chin in her hands. “Well, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye?”

  “I’m thinking what happens if it turns out there was no landing in south Florida. I mean, when you go around hating me for it. It makes it easier to say good-bye now before you get back in the deep freeze.”

  “Don’t worry. There was a landing.”

  “Thanks. I was hoping you’d say there wouldn’t be any deep freeze.”

  “And either Thoren voluntarily walked out on the operation and took cover as a good American citizen, or we pinned him down so tight he had to do it, which was more likely the case.”

  “We?”

  “The FBI, Army Intelligence, whoever. The way I see Thoren, he wasn’t the man to quit on a mission without good reason. He must have been jammed into a corner where he had no choice about it. That’s where Earl Dobbs enters the picture. He was there when Thoren tried to break out of his corner and killed somebody at it. A perfect witness against Thoren for the rest of his life.”

  Elinor dropped her hands to the table. “Wait a second. You’ve been saying all along Thoren killed somebody to get all that money he showed up with.”

  “I know. That was one of the things that kept misleading me. Now I’m sure he didn’t have to kill anybody for money. The top man of the squad who landed on Long Island not only had a complete set of false documents to cover his background, he also had a fortune of American
money on him. Thoren probably rated top man of his unit. He’d have had a bagful of cash on him in that case.”

  Elinor said: “So if he didn’t kill anybody for money, maybe there wasn’t any killing at all. He could just have been blackmailed for coming here as a German agent.”

  “I doubt it. Not with the kind of blackmail he was paying. And with the way he ended up killing himself. Fact is, if it came out twenty-five years after the war he had landed here as an enemy agent, he was in good shape to ride it out publicly. If he hadn’t done any damage before he gave up on his mission, he’d be as likely as not to get an amnesty. Remember, he turned into a high-class citizen, his brother-in-law is a big politician, he’d have a lot of sentiment on his side to let bygones be bygones. All he’d have to do is say how much he hated Hitler in the bad old days. Match that against giving away every penny you have as blackmail and finishing off with suicide, and I think Thoren would have gambled on riding it out. But there’s no statute of limitations on murder. And if you kill somebody when you’re out of uniform on a sabotage or spy job, you’re guilty of murder. No sentiment about it, no letting bygones be bygones. Just a life sentence in jail. And some big trial lawyers cleaning you out of whatever money the blackmailers didn’t already get.”

  Elinor picked up a soggy roll, squeezed it, and put it down with an expression of distaste. She said: “Well, I think it’s kind of sad about him, but not much. Mrs. Thoren’s the one I feel sorry for. She doesn’t have to worry about jail or anything, and she still has to pay blackmail to keep it out of the papers.”

  “And to collect her insurance,” Jake pointed out.

  “I didn’t think of that. So what do you do now? Tell her all this? Break her down and make her sign the release that way?”

  “I’ve been wondering about it. It might be worth the try, if I could pull a strong enough bluff about having real evidence to back me up. It might be the last straw for her, the extra pressure that would break her down. It would be a lot better if I could break down Dobbs first, then use him as leverage against her. The only trouble either way is that I don’t know where the hell she is right now. I can’t cash in on any of this if I can’t sit her down in a chair and stick a pen in her hand.”

  “Well, Magnes has those two men—”

  “And where is he right now, for that matter? He’s my contact with them. How do I know how they’re making out, if I can’t get in touch with him?”

  “Jake, you think maybe something happened to him?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure? I mean, an old man like that, and with a heart condition. And all that running around he’s doing.”

  “He’s getting paid plenty for running around. And he’ll still outlive us all.”

  He held out his empty glass, and Elinor took another bottle of beer from the refrigerator. She drew his foot out from under the table with hers, then sat herself down on his knee and poured each of them a glass of beer. She drank off the top of hers and emerged wearing a mustache of foam. “I like that,” she said with a small nod of her head.

  “Beer?” Jake wiped away the mustache with his thumb, and she gave him a quick, sharp nip of the teeth en passant. “Or my thumb?”

  “No, the way you’re always so sure of everything. It’s kind of like having emotional muscles to go along with these others. But you make mistakes too, so you’re not really a machine. I like that extra.”

  “Satisfied all around,” Jake said.

  “Uh-huh. And sleepy.”

  In bed, she backed up against him and drew his arm around her waist. “But just holding,” she warned. “I’m too tired for anything more exciting right now.”

  “To tell the truth,” Jake said, “I’m glad you are.”

  46

  When they pulled up before Jordan Marsh’s, Jake said: “You know the routine, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Elinor ticked it off on her fingers. “Hang around in the store awhile and buy something. Take a taxi to the library. Look up Operation Pretorius or Praetorius. Call you at the house when I’m ready.”

  “Good. But there’s one change. If you don’t get me on the phone, keep calling every now and then. But don’t go home by yourself. Don’t even walk outside the library. Take a book into the reading room and sit there until I show up.”

  She smiled at him crookedly. “They weren’t just trying to scare us the other night, were they, darling? They were just aiming bad.”

  “No, those were strictly scare tactics. But there’s no reason you have to be scared like that again. You wait there until I show up, no matter how long it takes.”

  “If it takes too long, I’ll be dead from hunger anyhow.”

  “Not a chance. While you’re in the store buy a box of candy or something to hold you over. I’ll make it up to you tonight. We’ll go celebrate in some classy restaurant.”

  “You’re that sure we’ll have something to celebrate?” Elinor said.

  “If not, I’ll take you out just to show you off.” He put his arm around her, and when she raised her face to his, he said: “And husbands and wives don’t kiss good-bye with their mouths open.”

  “Only because the husbands are chicken,” Elinor said. She kissed him with abandonment, then said: “Is that the car that’s following us back there? That green one?”

  “That’s the one. Persistent but harmless.”

  “And all dirty.” She opened the door, slid out, and put her head to the window. Her smile was a little too bright. “You’d think anybody tailing a Jag like this would at least polish up his car.”

  Back in the house, he tried Magnes’ number, drew a blank, and went to work adding to yesterday’s tape his analysis of Walter Thoren’s identity. Then he ran off a duplicate of the completed tape, which he carefully wrapped and sealed and addressed to his own apartment in Manhattan.

  A little before noon the phone rang. Nera Ortega, muttering something unintelligible.

  “What?” Jake said.

  She raised her voice to a loud whisper. “Idiot, you don’t have to yell. I am telling you Fons is suddenly home. A dear friend of ours just died, and Fons came back here for the services. There’ll be no more swimming parties for a while. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  She lowered her voice again, so that he had to strain to make out the words. “But in a week—ten days at most—it’ll be all right again. Still interested in swimming?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Nera laughed under her breath. “You really are a remarkable swimmer,” and hung up.

  Five minutes later when the phone rang again Jake moved toward it without alacrity, then realized it was the unlisted phone in the study that was ringing. He almost knocked it off the desk, grabbing for it. Magnes.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jake said explosively, and Magnes cut in: “Listen, Dekker. Saturday night for your sake I had to put away so much booze I almost drowned in it. Last night I slept out in the boondocks in a house which, you’ll excuse the expression, you wouldn’t keep in the back yard for a crapper. So don’t say anything now we’ll both be sorry for. Just be grateful I found Mr. Earl Dobbs for you. You want to hear all about it?”

  “I have to get something to the post office right away. I’ll go over to your place right from there.”

  47

  On his way across town to Ocean Drive, Jake pulled up to the post office on Washington Avenue and watched the green Chevy double-park further down the block. Then, holding the package of tapes in conspicuous view, he sauntered into the post office and saw to its mailing. He walked out of the post office no less conspicuously empty-handed.

  Magnes, in bathing trunks and straw hat, was taking his ease in a beach chair outside his rooftop hutch, dripping sweat. He looked sunken-eyed and haggard. “Did you eat lunch?” he said in greeting.

  “Forget lunch,” Jake said. “What about Dobbs?”

  “I told you I found him, didn’t I? He’s holed up where we can get
to him any time.”

  “And Mrs. Thoren. Did your boy scouts turn her up yet?”

  “Sooner or later. Belle Glade is a big town, sonny.”

  “Is it?” Jake said pleasantly. “You wouldn’t by any chance be holding out on me about Mrs. Thoren, would you? Working some interesting little angle of your own?”

  Magnes said without rancor: “From anybody else that would be an insult. From you, somehow it comes natural.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “Come on inside. Maybe you can skip lunch, but I can’t. Especially after what I went through the last couple days.”

  Inside, he busied himself putting up canned soup and a pot of coffee and setting the table for two. “Saturday night,” he said, “after I phoned you, I went to that crummy bar Dobbs liked near the dog track and settled down there. Thank God, around three, four in the morning, the bartender points me out a guy who used to hang around there with Dobbs. So I made friends with the guy. Turned out he once ran a gas delivery truck that stopped at a town, Crosscut, out in the swamps, which is where Dobbs lives. He even went hunting with him a couple of times, because Dobbs got himself a little shack on a hammock near Crosscut which is a good place for hunting. I’m dying for sleep already, but the guy tells me if I’ll stop by his house in my car so he can pick up a couple of rifles, he’ll show me in Crosscut where Dobbs lives, maybe I can meet him right away. I had let on to him I was in real estate and I heard Dobbs had some nice cheap property for sale out in the boondocks, so his idea was he could help me close a deal for it and get a few bucks for himself for being middle man.”

  “Did you meet Dobbs?” Jake said.

  “No, the old geezer in the house next to his—house, shmouse, you wouldn’t keep pigs in it—said Dobbs was out in the swamps, he was staying at his shack there. You got to drive a swamp buggy out to it, and he didn’t know the way. Anyhow, he said he didn’t.”

  Jake said: “Just as well. The man tailing you might have been told to do something about it if you ever got together with Dobbs. He followed you out to Crosscut, didn’t he?”