The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

  He pushed open the door. Lights were on now, and Elinor stood posed in the center of the room directly under the glitter of an ornate chandelier. She was wearing a floor-length black chiffon nightgown designed in the Empire mode, the waistline high and tight under her breasts. It was just this side of being completely transparent.

  Jake said: “Well, like hey wow.”

  “Isn’t it?” Elinor said delightedly. She pirouetted, the skirt spiraling around her legs, then leaped at him and threw her arms around his neck. “Jake, I missed you. Did you miss me? Tell me the truth.”

  “Considering it’s been all of three hours, I managed to bear up pretty well.”

  “No, you didn’t. You couldn’t wait until you saw me again.” She allowed him to detach himself and bring in the luggage from the hall. Then she said resentfully: “But that woman Magnes hired didn’t look anything like me. She’s at least as old as Sherry—”

  “Almost thirty? What did she do? Show up in a wheelchair?”

  “No, but you know how Sherry looks, and this one didn’t. She looked like a lady wrestler. A real bull dyke. Nobody’ll think she’s me.”

  “Yes, they will.” Jake carried the two valises into the bedroom, and Elinor followed with the flight bag. “She didn’t make a pass at you, did she?”

  “Well, there wasn’t time for a real pass, but when we were changing around coats and scarves, there seemed to be an awful lot of extra hands all over me.”

  Jake peeled off his jacket and shirt. The front of the shirt was damp from spray. He said: “Ever experiment along those lines?”

  “No, I don’t dig Lesbies. Besides, I was saving myself for you.”

  “From all the way back?”

  “From as far back as I can remember. I always knew you’d come along. Did you know I’d come along?”

  “Yep.”

  “You did?”

  “I did. Sometimes at the end of a bad day I’d say to myself: Dekker, your life is unbelievably complicated. What could possibly make it more complicated? Obviously, I was waiting for you to come along.”

  “Ahh, you’re a rat.” She watched him get out of the rest of his clothes. “But built. And that white part around you makes it look like you’re all lit up there. That reminds me. You know the terrace outside? Well, it’s all closed in except the front, so nobody can see you there. Now I can finally get tan all over. I always wanted to get tan all over.”

  “Watch it, sister. I’ve seen what happens when you get too much sun. This time you could fry some very important parts.”

  “I’ll be careful. But this whole place is wild. There’s a little refrigerator under the TV, and a whole stereo in the wall, and the shower stall has about forty nozzles in it, and look at this.” She stepped up on the big double bed. “I mean, this mattress. It feels hard as a rock, but watch what happens.” She hauled the nightgown up to her knees and did a series of high bounces. “It’s like a trampoline. It’s a trip all in itself.”

  “Talk about miscalculation,” Jake remarked. “I thought life at the Argyle East would have a maturing effect on the girl. Kind of polish her up. And what happens? She goes right back to the kiddie playground stage. She’ll never shape up.”

  Elinor stopped bouncing. “You sound like my grade advisor used to in high school. Jake, you know what tomorrow is? It’s Tuesday. I mean today. It’s already Tuesday.”

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t you remember? Tuesday is when we get those cleaners and gardeners and exterminators at the house. And if you didn’t mind, I could go—”

  “No, you couldn’t. They’ll all do fine without any supervision. You’ll stay right here and suntan your fanny. You’re finished with Daystar Island Number Two. That’s where the job is, and you’re done with the job.” He fished the three-thousand-dollar check from his wallet and handed it to her. “That’s it. Paid in full.”

  She looked at the check, then, with concern, at him. “You still want me to have this? Even with the way things are with us now?”

  “That was the deal, wasn’t it?”

  “I know, but, well, it’s like a paycheck. And I’m not hired help any more. I thought you just wouldn’t bother about it.”

  “Oh, in that case,” Jake said and reached for it, but she held it up away from him. She said: “Not that I won’t keep it. I need some for Mama, and there’s clothes and stuff for the kid, and most of it’ll be put away for his school later on. I’d just as soon take it out of this and not ask you for money.”

  “And when this is all gone?”

  “Then I’ll ask for more, and you’ll be glad to give it to me because all you’re interested in is my happiness, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Yes, I am. You know, it certainly saves a lot of trouble, the way you handle both ends of our conversation. Now come down off there like a nice big girl, put that check away, and get the hotel operator on the phone. Put in a call for me at quarter of five.”

  “Oh, Jake. So early?”

  “Darling, I am the one who’ll be getting up and getting out. If I know you, you’ll be sound asleep with your head under the pillow when the phone rings.”

  “But you’ll wake me up if I am, won’t you?”

  “It depends on how energetic I feel. You are not an easy waker.”

  Elinor stepped off the bed. “I will be this time. I know what. I’ll take the side with the phone. Then I’ll have to be the one who answers when it rings.”

  So, when the call came, he had to reach across her to get to the phone. He left her still sleeping while he gathered his clothes together and went into the bathroom to dress there. She came in as he was toweling himself after a hasty wash. She stood swaying, head down, chin on her chest hair fallen forward over her eyes like a sheepdog’s. “Did the phone ring?” she said in a blurred voice. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It rang. Ask not for whom—”

  “How can you be so happy and wide awake this time of night?” She blindly found her way to the sink, parted the hair on each side of her face, and then, with a stifled shriek, dashed water into it. She turned, dripping, toward Jake and pulled the towel from his hand. She mopped her face with it and emerged with her cheeks pink and her eyes wide open. “So that’s how you do it. Cold water.”

  “What won’t they think of next?” Jake said. “That terrace here faces the bay, doesn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh.” She trailed after him through the bedroom to the terrace. “Jake, when will you be back? What time?”

  “After it’s dark. Good and dark.” From the terrace he could make out the speedboat docked below, the white hair of the man at its wheel. “Looks like my cab is already here, sweetheart. Put the chain back on the door when you let me out and get back to bed. What’s the most important thing not to do while you’re here?”

  “Not to do? Get sunburned on any of my important parts.”

  “Try again.”

  “Not to go out of the door. I know that. Jake, is it all right to call you up at the house?”

  “No calls to me through the hotel switchboard. Write me a card instead. I’ll read it when I get back here tonight.”

  “I’ll write you a whole letter. It’s a shame not to use up all that expensive stationery they’ve got in that desk inside.” She folded her arms around his neck. “But it wouldn’t say anything you don’t know. And it would be spelt all wrong. Jake?”

  “I’m still here, sweetheart. But I shouldn’t be.”

  “Yes you should, because there’s something I want to ask you, and it’ll only take a second. I mean, it’s something I made up my mind never to ask you, because I know how uptight you are about saying it, but maybe you’re not any more. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Despite your tongue-tied way of putting it, I know what you mean.”

  “And you won’t mind if I ask it?”

  “Try me.”

  “All right, I will. Do you lov
e me, Jake? You don’t have to say it exactly like that, if you don’t want to. You can just say yes or no.”

  “What if it’s no?”

  “Then I won’t believe you, because I think you do.”

  “I think so too,” he said.

  55

  In the boat, as it moved out into the bay, he said to the skipper: “Know anything about the Everglades? Ever do any cruising around there?”

  “Done a little alligator poaching in my time, when the competition wasn’t so stiff. Can’t say it’s a place to go cruising around in. Swamp buggy’s not much of a pleasure craft.”

  “What about a town called Crosscut there? Ever hear of it?”

  “Been there. But it wasn’t what you’d call a town then, and I got my doubts if it is now. Dozen of them cabins like Daniel Boone’s, general store, gas pump, and that’s it. Mostly old-timers there, and none of them friendly. Kind of inbred.”

  Jake said: “What about a place near it called Dobbs Hammock?”

  “Don’t know it by name. Outside of some of the big ones, one hammock is like another. Patch of dirt sticking up out of the sawgrass with a couple of trees on it. Only difference is some are hardwood, some are pine. Why? You interested in getting to this Dobbs Hammock?”

  “I might be.”

  The man steadied the wheel as the boat bounced over a heavy chop in the deep-water channel past Dodge Island. He said: “Got anything to do with Cubans?”

  “No. Why Cubans?”

  “Because a bunch of them’s out training again in those parts, looking to get even with Castro for the Bay of Pigs. Friend of mine might take on the job of finding this Dobbs Hammock for you, but not if it’s in a training area. Last time, he rode some TV news people out to see what them Cubanos was up to and got his buggy shot full of machine-gun bullets by mistake. Almost got his ass blowed off. But if you’re not heading into that kind of territory, he’ll take you on. You just tell Mr. Magnes when and where.”

  Jake said: “I’ll keep it in mind. And how about you? Available for another taxi job tonight? Same run, but earlier. Say about ten o’clock?”

  “And pickup next morning at five?” The light suspended over Milt Webb’s lawn showed clearly from far out in the middle of the bay. The man switched off the boat’s searchlight and cut the motor down.

  “Pickup at five,” Jake said.

  As soon as he got into the house, he looked over every door and window carefully, checked the phones for bugs, and then caught up on his sleep until eight o’clock when the Daystar service help arrived to take over the house and gardens. He cajoled a cleaning woman into making him breakfast, then retired behind the locked door of the study with the morning paper. At nine he phoned the architect in New York who was contracted to convert his recently acquired brownstone to high-rental apartments and told him to hold off on all plans.

  “Changes, Mr. Dekker?” the architect said in the tone of someone prepared for the worst. “Or selling the place for a quick turnover? Remember, my contract specified—”

  “No, I’m not selling. But instead of all five floors being rentals, I want two of them for myself. A duplex layout.”

  “A duplex? Mr. Dekker, I’ve already put in a month’s work on those plans. We’ll have to sit down together about this. If you’re at the building now—”

  “Not now,” Jake said. “I’ll set up a meeting with you in a week or so.” He put down the phone, and an instant later it rang. Magnes said: “That you, Dekker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, what did that Spanisher tell you about the house in Belle Glade? That it was absolutely for sure a present to Mrs. Thoren from her father?”

  “Not absolutely or for sure. She just mentioned it. Why?”

  “Because now I got three guys working over the territory there. And this new one I put on got a brainstorm to look through deeds on file there to see what property is listed under either Sprague, which was the father’s name, or Thoren, which is hers. No dice. Could it be your Spanisher told you the wrong town altogether?”

  “No, she sounded too sure of herself for that. She said Belle Glade, and she said the house was a gift to Mrs. Thoren from her father. Wait a second. There is one thing she might have had wrong. The kind of thing she might assume. Papa’s usually the one to give gifts like this, but suppose in this case it was mama? The house could be listed under her mother’s family name, not her father’s.”

  Magnes said: “So what name is that?”

  “I don’t know. But if Mrs. Thoren was brought up around there, there’ll be school records with the information on them. She might have even been born there, so it would be worth looking up birth records too.”

  Magnes sighed. “Dekker, you live two doors from these people. If you could get the kids talking, or if you could maybe get in and take a look at the family Bible or something—”

  “I don’t trust this Raymond Beaudry enough to go snooping around there. And the kids are over at the university until late afternoon. You have to get on it now, Magnes. Tell two of your men to move on it right away. The other one can keep scouting around.”

  “If that’s how you want it. How does our girlie like it at the Argyle?”

  “Our girlie likes it fine. Call me back as soon as you have anything to report, good or bad. I’ll be waiting here.”

  The call came a little after two o’clock. Magnes said: “We got her. Like you figured, there was a birth certificate for Charlotte Sprague, and the mother’s name was on it. Hoagland. And this property out by the lake is registered in that name. So my boys snooped around it, and there was the Mercedes locked up in the garage. The aggravating part, they already been by this place, but there was a jeep parked in front of the garage, and the name was Hoagland, so they just kept going.”

  “Have they got it staked out?”

  “One of them is laying low in a car on the road between the house and the town. The other two got themselves a boat like they’re fishing, because it’s the same as where you are on Daystar, the house is right on the water, and all the action is in back of it, away from the road. So they spotted this back porch with long-range glasses, and that’s where we got a problem. There’s not one woman. It’s three of them, and two ain’t easy to tell apart. The third one is dumpy and always running in and out, so she’s probably help around the house. But both of the others are like you described the Thoren woman. Skinny, rundown-looking, gray hair, wearing big sunglasses. Does she have a sister maybe?”

  Jake said: “I don’t know. She might have. Or it could be some old friend from around that neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, but whichever it is, Dekker, the boys don’t know who to move with or stay with. They want a couple of recent photos to work from. You got anything in the file that’ll do?”

  “No, all Maniscalco could get me in that line was the newspaper picture taken at Thoren’s funeral, and she was wearing a veil. Mrs. Ortega has some snapshots of her in an album, but they’re from way back when.”

  “Still and all—”

  “Still and all, we can waste too much time hunting up a worthwhile picture, if there is one around. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You said the town is only seventy or eighty miles from here. I can be there in less than two hours and spot the woman myself for your boys. If she’s out of sight when I get there, I’ll try again first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “No,” Magnes said. “This is, tokkeh, too much of a gamble. The one thing those hoods ain’t caught on to yet is we know where the woman is hiding out. Blow that, and they’ll move her some place else. We took this much time to get where we are? So let’s take a little more time and see if we can’t get identification without you going up there. The way they’re watching you, the minute you drive past North Miami they’ll know you’re heading upstate, and they’ll have a good idea why.”

  “I didn’t figure on driving. We’ll charter a small plane, make the jump in no time, and be back here for supper. We arrange the charter for a jump
to Key West or the Bahamas, but when we’re off the ground we head for Belle Glade. You can fix me up with a plane and a hungry enough pilot for that, can’t you?”

  “I can, but I’d just as soon not. What is this, Dekker? You’ve been playing it so beautiful all along. Now all of a sudden it’s panic time? Maniscalco told you you had to deliver the goods tomorrow?”

  Jake said: “If I can, I will. We’ve got every piece lined up on the board, Magnes, and I’m not sitting around for the next few days waiting to jump them. I’ll identify the woman for your guys today or tomorrow. Right after that, we put the crunch on Dobbs, and then get him together with her. Then she either signs a release, or he signs a detailed statement about Walter Thoren—meaning Walther Stresemann—for the newspapers. It’ll all be done a lot quicker than if we waste time hunting up pictures of the woman.”

  “It’s your case, Dekker, so we’ll do it your way. But tell me only one thing. Are you positive that when it comes to the showdown—when the woman has to pick up a pen and sign away two hundred grand—she’ll do it? Are you so sure she’s that much scared about everybody finding out about Thoren? After all, he’s already dead and rotting in hell, the momser. And what he was and what he did before she ever met him is not her fault.”

  “She’ll sign. She must know by now she’ll never see anything of that two hundred grand. It’s all earmarked for Gela now, and it doesn’t hurt that much to sign away somebody else’s money.”

  “I only hope so,” Magnes said. “All right, I’ll meet you at Opa-Locka airport in an hour. That’s where the plane is. And hungry pilots more than you can count.”

  The identification was made from a cranky little outboard moored on the lake a quarter mile away from the house and pitching wildly in the wake of passing speedboats. Jake sat in the bow, trying to mask the binoculars as much as possible with his hands and to keep a fix on the house despite the bobbing of the boat. Magnes gloomily sat amidships, an unlit cigar in his mouth and a fishing rod in his hand. The brisk, collegiate-looking young man who had picked them up at the Belle Glade airstrip sat at the motor, trying to keep the boat headed into the wavelets coming at them from what seemed every direction. Almost an hour of this, and then a woman came through the screen door of the house and stood on the veranda, looking down at the newspaper she was holding. The veranda soared out of view, back into it briefly, and out again. Jake braced his elbows on the side of the boat and steadied the glasses on target. Charlotte Thoren. But not merely haggard now. More like a death’s-head.