Enchanted Isle

by James M. Cain

  The officer was leaning close, out there in the hall, to hear what was being said, and I could tell by how he was acting that Steve had put it across. It was a half hour before he left, as calls had to be made, to the Baltimore cops, the Hyattsville cops, and the Baltimore cops again, to set the stakeout up so we could catch Rick if he called, or at lease find out where he was. But at last he did leave, and then we could go to bed. So once more I wanted Steve there to tell me good night, and once more he came. He knelt by the bed, and I kissed him and at last told him about the island. He said, “But Mandy, you want an island, we’ll have one, lessen they cost more than I think. Next month my rig will be paid for, and the house already is. We’ll have money to buy one. And even now we can have clams. There’s a place in Washington sells them, Little Necks, on the half shell!”

  “Steve, now you’re the goof.”

  “OK, but I love you.”

  “And thanks for tonight. What you did, I mean, saving me from going to jail.”

  “That was an idea, wasn’t it?”

  Next day was Sunday, and the papers didn’t have it, but Steve said they’re printed early and don’t have the late stuff until Monday. Around ten Mother called, scared to death that I was in jail, and it turned out Mr. Clawson had called her the night before, but she wasn’t in the hotel and got in too late to give him the callback he asked for. Of course, count on Mother: Saturday night, town-painting on Saturday night as long as the red held out was what she loved most of all. So when she was calmed down, I made breakfast for Steve and me, eating it in my kimono, which I shouldn’t have done, as he could see plenty and once I caught him peeping. Then I dressed and the razzmatazz started—the same old thing, with people coming and Steve running them out, and the obscene bunch on the phone. So we started to go out for lunch, but a cop in a car stopped us and said we must stay in “to take any calls,” as he put it, meaning calls from Rick. So we did, and some canned shrimp were there, which I fixed on toast, with some vegetable soup to start and ice cream to wind up, as Mother had always had some for me. For dinner I put out steaks to thaw and cooked them in the broiler, with a baked potato apiece, peas and onion, ice cream again for dessert, and salad to start. Steve was awful nice, paying me compliments on how good I cooked. At eight Rick called again, and Steve ducked out the front door to yell at the cop in his car that he should start the tracer going, calling in on his radio phone, so the phone company would get busy on it, as they had said they would. So I commenced doing my stuff, bawling and carrying on so Rick would enjoy himself, the scare he was giving me, and hang on to hear some more. And he did, for quite some time, but then all of a sudden hung up, before the tracer was run out all the way. But they did take it as far as St. Louis, which proved he was somewhere out West, as I had thought all along. Because it didn’t look like, in Savannah, he would keep on with the trip that he and I had started. That more or less left the West. And this time Steve heard the girl say, “Deposit one dollar, please,” which seemed to mean he was closer, in El Paso or Denver or Omaha.

  So we went to bed again, and I was happy and felt safe with Steve. Monday the papers had it, Rick saying he meant to kill me, but not a big story at all, or pictures or anything. Which seemed funny, but that’s how it was. Then something had to be done to get some food in the house, as we were running low. So when Mrs. Minot came again to put her nose in it once more, right after Steve rang his replacement to take the truck to New York for still another trip, Steve got her into the act to go out and buy us some stuff. I made out a list for her and Steve gave her twenty dollars, so at last she said she would and went off in her car. Pretty soon she was back, with a shopping bag full of stuff and $6.42 in change, which Steve told her to keep “to help pay for your gas.” So that relieved on the famine and also relieved on her. Because once she’d taken his money, she more or less had to shut up, the stuff she was talking around, as people had called in to tell me. It was kind of a gain all around.

  That night the bell rang again, for the 1001st time, and when Steve opened the door it was Mother. “Seems so strange,” she said, “to be ringing the bell of this house, instead of coming right in with my key.”

  So, of course, we said she could have and was more than welcome, but she said, “It’s not my home anymore. I guess that’s why I rang. My home, my new home, my real home, means so much to me, I can’t let myself have two, even from force of habit.”

  She was dressed very quiet, for her, in a dark gray dress, with a black crepe coat that she carried. And parked out front was the Caddy. But when I asked where Mr. Wilmer was, she said, “Paris. He flew over this morning on that business he had, which would have been waiting for him on our wedding trip. He sells liquor there, you know.”

  “But why didn’t you go?” I asked. “I’d have been all right here in the house with Steve.”

  “Couldn’t. Can’t leave the country, you know.”

  “You mean on account of me?”

  “The judge ruled it out.”

  “Then, Mr. Clawson called about it?”

  “The answer was I had to stay here.”

  “Then I really loused you, Mother. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  We all went in and sat down, and she did not throw it up to me, how the mess I’d got myself in was cutting her out of the trip. So then the bell rang again, and who was there was a girl, in jeans and T-shirt and loafers, a little bit older than I was, who waved at me from the hall and said, “Hello, Mandy. I’m Esther Childs,” acting as though she knew me. I didn’t place her at all but tried to act friendly with her, as I did with all the rest, and asked her into the living room, introducing her to Mother and Steve. We all sat down and she commenced talking along. She asked how I’d been. I said fine, and I asked how she’d been. She said fine. She said, “It’s been a long time since Northwestern High.”

  “Well, not over a week.”

  “I graduated year before last.”

  “Yeah, I thought you looked older.”

  There may have been more, I don’t know, but if it wasn’t making much sense, I didn’t pay too much attention, as none of it did—the stuff that people got off after they got in the house. But all of a sudden Mother leaned toward her and said, like to warn her, “Watch it, Esther, please!” and pointed off to one side. When the girl’s head snapped around, Mother grabbed her handbag. The girl started to scream, but Mother stepped out in the hall. When the girl followed, Steve grabbed her. Then Mother opened the bag and took out a gun, a shiny, snub-nosed thing with bullets showing. Said Mother, “Now, young lady, who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  “Give me that gun! Give me...”

  “Come on, say something!”

  With that, Mother pointed the gun right at her and the girl started to scream, “No! No! No! Please!”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Mrs. Wilmer, I’m Esther Davis.”

  “Davis? That’s Rick’s name.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. He’s my brother.”

  I remembered then, Rick had mentioned a sister as the only one in his family who ever treated him decent. Mother went on, “He put you up to this?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. He called.”

  “He sent you to kill Mandy?”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Wilmer. I couldn’t have. He told me to get her bag, her handbag, to see if she still had the keys to the suitcase they bought in Baltimore to carry the money in.”

  “My God, Mandy! Have you?”

  That was Steve and I couldn’t answer, as it was the first I’d thought of the keys since we locked the money up in the suitcase that we bought in the Mondawmin Center in Baltimore. My bag was there on the table, and at once I opened it up and dumped it in my chair so what was in it shook out—all kinds of different things, like a coin purse and Kleenex and ballpoint and lipstick and perfume. And, sure enough, here came the keys, two of them, flat ones, but little. Mother told Steve to take them, saying, “I think we must call Mr. Clawson, an
d, frankly, I don’t know what to do next—with her, I mean.”

  “I know we have to call him.”

  So they did and, of course, spent a wonderful evening. Mother held Esther at gunpoint while the cops rang in and told us to wait, they’d be over. We did and they came after perhaps an hour, but when they got there they figured the gun was a local offense, a job for the Prince George’s police. By that time Esther was begging to call her parents, so they let her and they came, the first I met Mr. Davis or Mrs. Davis, either one. Mother let them in, and they no sooner laid eyes on Esther than they commenced bawling her out. I said, “If you’d been nicer to Rick, ’stead of bawling him out all the time, same as you’re bawling her out, it all might have turned out different. Junior Jezebel talking, if you don’t like it, who cares if you do or not?”

  “Jezebel, cool it! Father talking!”

  That was Steve, and everyone laughed, even Esther.

  Next off, Steve, Mother, and I were down in the county police station, at the building they have in Hyattsville, to sign on for the charge against Esther. By that time the papers had it, and the reporters were there with photographers, and Steve gave out for them. They took Mother’s picture, and the cops let her hold the gun, which she did, looking like one of those gunmen’s molls in a movie. Then we all went to the Cucaracha, a place in Cottage City where there was kind of a show with jokes, but they only had one joke, which was the girl scratching herself, like bit by the cucaracha. Then Mother kicked in, to her and her dancing partner, and they did the hat dance for her. So she was living once more, laughing and having fun. When she drove us home in the Caddy, she was weeping as we got out, Steve and I. She said, “I hate to go. I wish I could spend the night.”

  “Well, what’s stopping you?” asked Steve.

  “I can’t. I have to get back to the hotel.”

  “You’re still there?”

  “Yes, will be till Ben gets back.”

  Then at last, Steve asked what I wanted to ask, but for some reason hadn’t, “How did you know she had that gun?”

  “The funny way she was acting, the goofy way she talked. What was she doing there? What did she want? It seemed to me she was hugging the bag too close, so I decided to have me a look.”

  “I’ll say you did.”

  “Mother, I never once thought of it.”

  “You love someone, you think.”

  She kissed me and kissed Steve, and then he and I got out. She drove off, looking beautiful as she waved to us.

  17

  NEXT DAY WAS MORE of the same, until maybe four o’clock, when an officer rang the bell, a detective in regular clothes, from the Baltimore department. He said his name was O’Brien and was kind of a good-looking guy, friendly and pleasant and nice, except he said he must “take me out.” I said, “Take me in; is that what you mean?”

  “No, just out, not in.”

  “What’s the difference, if I may ask?”

  “Out means I just ride you around, to get you away from this house. In would mean in to jail.”

  “Like in protective custody?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  But Steve was there and got in it, of course. He asked, “What’s the idea? Why?”

  “Rick Davis is why. He’s back.”

  “Oh? How do you know?”

  “They found his car.”

  “Car? He didn’t have any car.”

  “Now he has, one that he stole or that somebody stole, with California plates. They found it down the street, on the old Hot Shoppe parking lot.”

  “How did they know it was his?”

  Until then he’d been pleasantly shifty, like to tell no more than he had to. But now he seemed to change his mind. After studying Steve he said, “OK, hold on to your hat.”

  “I’m holding it. Shoot.”

  “By the money that was in it.”

  “You mean they got it back?”

  “All of it except, of course, the five grand they knew about that Mandy found on the floor of the getaway car when they switched and split up with Rick at Mondawmin Center.”

  “How much, actually?”

  “Hundred and fifteen grand.”

  “Then, I was of real help, wasn’t I?”

  “I’ll say it was real, Mandy, plenty.”

  By now he was enjoying the sensation he’d caused and really wanted to talk. He went on to explain “how the job was done right here by the Hyattsville police, after they called us about it.” He said, “Even if he was watching, which they think he was not, he’d hardly have known his car was being worked on.” He told how they got their locksmith, the one near the county building, to come and bring his depth gauge, whatever that was, to take a reading with it of the car, of the lock on the trunk of the car, then go back to his shop real quick and file a key. Once they had that they opened the trunk, and, sure enough, there was the suitcase, which they opened with the keys I had turned in. Soon as they had the money, they put phone books in the suitcase, locked it up like it had been, and then locked the trunk, so everything was just as it had been when he came back to the car. Then they posted their stakeout to wait until he would come.

  But Steve wasn’t done with him yet. He went to the table drawer and took out his gun, a blue one, pretty big, and showed it to him. Then he got out two papers in envelopes, one his permit to carry it, the other his certificate, from the Silver Spring Small Arms Range, of how good he could shoot. He said, “OK, Mr. O’Brien, look them over. There’s a gun good as yours, and there’s my certificate that says I shoot good as you do. Then, why can’t I protect her? Why must you take her away?”

  “This girl means a lot to you?”

  “She means everything to me. I love her. I’m practically a father to her.”

  “Then, get with it. Her life is in danger. I don’t care how good you shoot; she could be killed, before you could draw, before you could even take aim, by a shot through the window, or some other cockeyed way. But if she’s not here...!”

  “I got it now. OK.”

  “The stakeouts are on everywhere, outside this house, outside his parents’ house, around the car. And the dragnet’s on too, with two officers going around with kids who know him by sight, to lunchrooms, stores, and bars. We’ll get him, but until we do, let’s watch out for her.”

  “I said OK. So OK.”

  “Then, OK.”

  “How long is this going to take?”

  “Till we get him.”

  “That could go on quite a while.”

  “Not like the grass on her grave.”

  “How about dinner?”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s not dinner time yet.”

  Steve looked at me, then took out his wallet and slipped me a twenty-dollar bill. He said, “When dinner time comes, ask Mr. O’Brien if he’ll have dinner on me.” He thought, then slipped me ten dollars more. “And ’stead of riding around, a picture show might be better. If you invite him he might accept.”

  “OK, Steve, I will.”

  I kissed him and whispered, “I love you,” the last words on this earth I ever said to him, and I’m glad they were the ones, the last ones he heard from me.

  We got in Mr. O’Brien’s car, which had no police markings on it, and commenced driving around. But that wasn’t too much fun, so I remembered what Steve had said and asked would he like to see a movie, “as Steve’s guest, my foster father.” So he said OK, and I figured out he had no way to charge it up as expense and at the same time didn’t care to spend his own money on a girl who meant nothing to him. Then we parked and walked to the Riverdale Plaza, and the picture was Fool’s Parade. But we didn’t like it much and walked out, when from the booth in the lobby I called Steve to find out how things stood. But who answered was Mother, as she’d driven over again, like the day before, to keep company and help out marking time. And she was all excited I’d called, telling me stay away, that the officers felt my life was in danger, so I mustn’
t attempt to come home until Rick was caught. That I already knew, but I thanked her and asked when Mr. Wilmer would get home. She said he was flying back next day, “when I hope this whole thing will be over, and we can relax and be happy.”

  “You heard about the money?”

  “Oh my, and was that a relief. Because to get immunity for you, he had to pledge to make good the whole shortage, the heist as everyone calls it. And, Darling, he’s very well off, but a hundred and twenty thousand would have been a terrible blow, even to him. But five thousand isn’t so bad.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “Oh, yes, I called him at once.”

  She asked where she could reach me, and I said, “You can’t. I’ll be moving around with the officer. I’m in a theater now, calling from the lobby, and where we go next I don’t know. But I’ll keep in touch. I’ll be calling you.”

  “OK, but not before nine. I’d say around ten would be better. Steve has asked me to dinner, and he’s been so nice in this thing, to you and Ben and me, that I want to act friendly to him. And besides, by ten it could all be over. The police think Rick will wait until dark and then make his move against you, or try to.”

  “OK. Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

  “What did you say, Mandy?”

  “The surprise—can’t you give me a hint?”

  “Oh, Darling, don’t spoil it for Ben. It means so much to him. I promise you it’ll be big, and I think you’re going to like it.”