Stronghold

by Stanley Ellin

  “No. You’ve seen me with her. Seen the way I try to get along with her. If you can believe for one moment—”

  “Marcus, I’m not saying this is the reality. I’m saying it’s her view of it.”

  Her view of it. But that doesn’t make it any the less real to her. All that painful distortion. Has to drug herself into abiding with this monstrously self-sufficient, flawless, unfeeling image of me she’s conjured up. If she only knew me. If, for that matter, I only knew her.

  I say in bewilderment, as much to myself as to David, “But if I’m the problem, why didn’t she just pack up and leave? She’s good at her work. She could have gotten a job in New York. Settled down there.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid to. But if you go to her yourself, ask her that—”

  Abruptly it reminds us both of something we have been close to forgetting for this moment.

  I can’t go to her. Not now.

  James Flood

  In this merry get-together of the Company—of the July Group—on the sun deck, Coco gobbling away like a turkey watching someone sharpening up an ax, Harvey chewing over everything like a cow working on its cud, Deborah taking it all in with those cute little ears, I get the feeling of compromise in the wind. No question, says Coco, that Hayworth is stalling so that he can soften us up for a cut-rate deal. No question that he has enough control over the police, the troopers, the FBI up to now so that he can keep them ringed around us in the woods until dark, when they will be able to make their strongest move. Now suppose when Hayworth shows up, he offers us the million he talked about, instead of four million? Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a man, is that bad?

  “Well now,” says Harvey, kind of liking the sound of it.

  “Very bad,” I say. “Forget it.”

  Sunset is around eight o’clock, gobbles Hubert. The night. Bad things happen in the night.

  “Forget it.”

  What the crafty son of a bitch doesn’t say is that if after collection time we wipe out Harvey and Lester according to plan, and then he wipes me out, he—Hubert Digby, all by his lonesome—will wind up with all of that million he’s getting ready to settle for. His St. Hilary boys are on a percentage, so he can live with them. The unmourned dead will be one Flood and two Shanklins.

  Forget it, Hubert.

  Because when that plane lands at St. Hilary, the only passengers aboard will be J. Flood and three hostages.

  “Eight o’clock,” says Coco, the old compromiser. “That leaves us only six hours before dark, man. How long do we wait for Hayworth to show up?”

  “That’s a good question,” says Harvey. Harvey is getting real talky lately. Obviously he is feeling his oats after the way he handled phase one. Getting right up there in the Napoleon class.

  I say to Coco, “What’s your proposal? That we pack it in now? Thank the ladies for a good time and haul ass down to Albany for a big night on the town?”

  “Very funny,” Coco says. “But what I am proposing is that you read what your options are. The way I read them, man, is that if Hayworth does not very soon contact us, we have to very soon contact him.”

  “How?” Harvey says. This is too much even for Napoleon. “Phone’s out.”

  I say, “That’s all right, Harve. There’s a couple of dozen lawmen out in those woods and at least one pair of field glasses. All we do is print up a sign that says Hayworth, please contact us and hold it up nice and high.”

  Coco says, “God damn it, do you think I am making a joke? Yes, there are possibly more than a couple of dozen men out there and for sure a pair of field glasses.” He motions at Deborah. “Now what if we scare them into showing themselves?”

  Harvey says, “You mean a put-on? Make like we’ll waste her?”

  “Yes.”

  Harvey sizes up Deborah. “I could hold her over the edge there. Could do it for five minutes easy. They ought to be all shook up before then.”

  It’s an idea. The bad part is that it’s Coco’s idea, which makes it a chip knocked off my image as boss of phase two. But it’s an idea. Coco will be attended to in good time.

  I say to Harvey, “Hold her by the ankles. Tight. You let her go, and with the three of us up here together, you’ll draw enough fire to blast this roof off.”

  Coco says, “No. I don’t like it this way. Perhaps there are not only field glasses out there. Perhaps there are cameras too. What kind of picture will that make?”

  “It’s your idea to start with,” I point out. “What the hell kind of picture do you expect to make?”

  “A little psychodrama. We tie her to that rail, we put the gun on her, we look like business. Like a firing squad.”

  Harvey shakes his head. “I like it my way better.” This boy is hungering to show his muscles to everybody out there, whoever they are. And, for that matter, to Deborah.

  She is working herself into a panic. “Jimmy, please. This is crazy. This is so far out it doesn’t make sense. My father’ll be here as soon as he can. You know he will.”

  Harvey slaps the Uzi into Coco’s hands and then grips the back of Deborah’s neck between two of those oversized fingers. He wrenches her head around and aims it at the road. “Will he? All right, you show him to me. Just show him to me.” But he doesn’t give her a chance to show him anything right side up. He doubles her across the railing on her belly, so that she is tilted head-down over it screaming, and then with no effort at all he grabs an ankle in each hand and holds her suspended like that away from the railing. She twists and turns, clutching for the railing and manages to get a grip on one of the posts. She hangs on like a leech. It is something to see the way Harvey, belly jammed up against the railing, arms straight out, manages to drag her loose. He holds her far enough out over the slope of the mansard roof below so that there’s no chance of her now gripping anything. Too bad, at least from his angle, that she’s wearing those tight jeans. Otherwise he’d have the view of a lifetime.

  Coco is standing there, hypnotized by all this, not even realizing he’s holding the Uzi, until I say to him, “God damn it, we’re wide open from the other side. Cover the back of the house,” and he heads fast across the sun deck to keep an eye on the woods of the back slope.

  I move in close to Harvey in case some sniper out there is itching to take his chances on an easy target. I look at my watch. “You said five minutes?” I ask Harvey.

  “Five minutes. That ought to be more than enough for them.”

  It might be. I slowly make a sweep of the whole perimeter with the binoculars. I am pulled up short now and then by the sense of a bush stirring unnaturally, of something glinting on the side of a tree trunk. I fix hard on them, feeling the binoculars getting more and more slippery with the sweat on my hands. A drop of sweat suddenly stains a lens. I polish the lens carefully before resighting. A couple of dozen men out there? There could be a hundred. Two hundred. By now they could have called up the whole goddam National Guard and have it planted out there. I concentrate on each of the biggest trees along the road. If that isn’t an elbow sticking out there, a knee, the edge of a helmet, what is it?

  Deborah’s upside-down body writhes in Harvey’s grip. He says between his teeth, “You fool around like that, bitch, you are going to get hurt real bad,” and she stops writhing. I look at him. His arms are not as rigid as they were. He is starting to breathe hard.

  I look at my watch. Still two minutes to go, still no sign of life out there. Nobody flapping a white flag. What makes them so sure they won’t see that curvy little body slide head-down along the steep pitch of the roof and over its edge? Or is Duffy asking for that so that he can take the three of us out together? Give up Deborah in return for the three of us, and then try rushing the house against the one who is left?

  Harvey says to me, “How much to go?” His arms are trembling now, his face is twisted, he is sucking in each breath loudly. I look at my watch and see time is up. He said five minutes, and he’s already done better than that. />
  I keep my eyes on the watch. “Almost a minute yet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Anyone else would give up now, would say what the hell, another few seconds isn’t worth it, and lay down the barbell. Not Harvey Shanklin. Harvey knows that somebody out there is also timing him, and that when five minutes shows on the Olympic electronic timer, he wins the gold medal. “You’re getting soft,” I tell him.

  He could drop her at that. It’s what Hayworth deserves. First Deborah. Then Mamma Emily. That should really convince Marcus. Then, the best joke of all on him, he’d be stuck with Janet. Have to pay out four million for Janet, who he’d probably hate to pay a dime for.

  “Ah, man,” Harvey wheezes, “it has got to be time now,” and he hauls up Deborah, puts her on her feet, keeping an arm locked around her. Smart enough, at least, to use her for cover until he gets his wind back. She sags there in his grip, her face bright red, her eyes closed. She looks ready to pass out. Harvey says to me, “Are you real sure somebody is out there?”

  “Yes.”

  Coco slides across to us, moving fast, keeping low, the Uzi ready to sight on the white flag which, as it happens, is not showing in the woods. If he turns on that Eye-lond whine about unpredictables, if he even uses the word unpredictable, I will finish him off here and now. But all he says is, “Nobody showing?”

  “Nobody,” Harvey says. He grabs a handful of Deborah’s hair and pulls her head back. “What the hell is your daddy trying to do?”

  The savage grip on her hair distorts her face. “I don’t know,” she says. “He’ll be here. Please. He’ll be here.”

  “God damn, you better make him know that.” Harvey yanks hard, and Deborah yelps. He yanks again. “You better sing out so he can hear that.”

  “Let her be,” Coco says. He sounds disgusted. “This is not getting us anywhere.”

  A challenge. J. Flood is not getting us anywhere?

  Harvey lets her be. We stand there. We wait. Not a sound. Nothing. Not even a bird, and this is bird country. If there are men in that cover, wouldn’t the birds sound off? Or would they take off?

  Quiet.

  All I hear is a pulse banging in my head, fast and loud.

  Coco says, “There is something very peculiar going on.”

  Another challenge?

  “You know what?” Harvey says. “I don’t think there is anybody out there. At least, nobody that gives a good goddam.”

  And now this?

  First the old blacksnake, now the new Napoleon? Next thing, Lester will be heading a committee to investigate phase two.

  “Downstairs,” I say. “We’ll have a little meeting and settle with Mr. Hayworth fast.”

  “How?” Harvey says.

  “I told you we’re having a meeting. You be there and you’ll find out. Meanwhile, get Lester up here to take over. You can do the voting for both of you at the meeting.”

  Lester reports for duty on the sun deck with instructions from Harvey. The women downstairs heard Deborah howling, they are all freaked out about it, we better bring Deborah down there and show her to them so that they can see she’s still all in one pretty piece.

  “Take her down,” I tell Lester, “but bring her right back.”

  When they’re back, Lester says to me, “Nothing on the radio. You know, I was wondering. Suppose the man didn’t make it to town? Suppose he cracked the car up along the way, so nobody even knows about this?”

  “He made it,” Coco says. “So you just stick to business up here. And hands off the girl.”

  Watch it, Hubert, you are thinking out loud again. The headline when all the smoke clears away: DIGBY SAVES WOMEN FROM SEX-CRAZED GANG. At St. Hilary, the microphone shoved into Deborah’s face. “Oh, yes, if it wasn’t for Mr. Digby, who knows what those monsters would have done to us? Besides, he comes from an oppressed minority. And probably from a broken home.”

  Saint Hubert the Rip-off.

  Lester says to Saint Hubert, “Yeah, sure, stick to business,” because while Lester might be smarter than one of those alligators in his back yard at home which can just about tell wet from dry, he is not that much smarter. A willing worker, not a student of the classical rip-off.

  We sit around the table in the kitchen for the meeting, Mamma Emily still a little shook up from Deborah’s howling, Janet on a bummer, overdue for her next dose of jet fuel, Harvey and Coco itching for the shuffle and deal, J. Flood presiding. The transistor makes background music and sells soap powder. The next regular news report is due at four o’clock, but there could be a news special cutting in any time.

  I say to Emily, “I don’t have to tell you Marcus is a damn fool stalling like this, because sooner or later he is going to deliver. But what I want to know is this. Before he got out of here, did he tip you off to this double-cross? Did he say anything about making a move after it gets dark?”

  “Jimmy, you were here. You know he didn’t say anything to me.”

  “I wasn’t watching that close. Nobody was.”

  “He didn’t, Jimmy. I give you my word.”

  It makes sense. From Hayworth’s angle, the less she knows, the less we can get out of her, no matter what pressure we put on. He has simple values, Friend Hayworth. His money first, his women afterward. Ship him a set of ears and fingers as a warning, he’d hold on to his money that much tighter. Who needs a wife without ears and fingers?

  Coco, the old blacksnake, is no Lester. He moves in fast. He says to Emily, “Do you understand what your husband is doing, lady? He is risking your lives with his nonsense. Now why would he do that?”

  “I don’t think that’s what he is doing,” Emily says. She looks frightened at letting that much out, then clamps her mouth shut.

  “Go on, tell them,” Janet says.

  Coco looks from one to the other of them. “Tell us what? What the devil are you talking about?”

  “A thought I had,” Emily says. “An idea. I don’t know if you’ll understand.”

  “We will make a large effort to understand, lady,” Coco says.

  “All right, it’s the idea that nothing will happen tonight. Nothing at all. I think my husband is trying to see that nothing happens to any of us. You men as well as the girls and Sarah Frisch and myself. Then after a while you’ll understand nothing will happen, and you’ll go away.”

  “Go away?” Coco says. He leans toward her, his face screwed into one big black question mark. “Just go away? Like that?”

  “Yes.”

  This is too much for Coco. He sits back, slowly shaking his head. “Lady, do you know you are crazy?”

  Janet says, “The phone’s been cut off. There’s no news about this on the radio. Nobody has showed up. Not my father, not the police, not anybody else. Nobody. Do you really believe it’s because they’re waiting for the dark to do something? Why? What difference does it make what time of day or night it is, as long as you’ve got us locked up in here with you?”

  I can see the wheels in Coco’s head spinning hard. Whatever else Janet is, she is no simple soul like her mamma. He says to her, “Are you serious?”

  “Why not?” Harvey cuts in. “I told you up on the roof I don’t think anybody’s out there, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” I say. “So how would you like to take a walk out there and make sure of it? If you’re right, you can bring us back some flowers.”

  “How about you doing it?” Harvey says. “You’re running phase two, aren’t you? Not that I can figure where the hell you’re running it to right now.”

  Napoleon.

  Is he asking for Waterloo right here in front of the ladies?

  I slide the gun out of my belt under the table, but he catches sight of the motion and grabs my wrist. His grip is paralyzing. He lifts my arm above the table and pulls the gun out of my hand. There is no use trying to hang on to it, I just let him have it. But I look at him. He understands that look. He says uneasily, “You rile too easy, you know that?”r />
  I say, “Give me the gun.”

  Everybody is watching. Everybody knows he doesn’t want to give me the gun. They see him fight this out with himself and lose. He shoves the gun in front of me on the table. I don’t reach for it, and that makes him happy. “You know how you are, Jimmy,” he says. “You let every little thing rile you up.”

  “You damn fool,” Janet says to him. “He knows what I’m saying makes sense. He knows my father. And you just blew a chance to walk out of here and take him along with you.”

  Coco says to her, “What does he know about your father? What are you getting at, woman?”

  I say, “What she’s getting at is that she thinks her daddy is a true believer in non-violence. Hallelujah, man. He went to jail as a C.O. in the World War. He doesn’t swat flies or bad guys. He even takes in dangerous charity cases to reform them.”

  That hits Mamma Emily where it hurts. “Jimmy, you weren’t taken in here as a charity case. You were never treated like one. You know you weren’t.”

  “Emily baby, my old man sweated his whole miserable life away in that bank on Front Street, and for how much? So when he hit bottom, what could be sweeter for the boss than to take in the kid, have him do the dirty work around the place to keep him out of trouble. Don’t give the old man what’s coming to him, just give the kid a handout. Get the whole meeting in on it too. Then Sunday morning they can all sit there and think how fucking noble they are.”

  Emily can’t believe her ears. “Jimmy, we never thought anything like that!”

  Coco slaps his hand on the table. “What difference does any of this make? What does it have to do with getting some action going here?”

  “The action is starting now,” I tell him. “This is a big news story. The biggest. If it got out, you’d hear it on that radio every five minutes. That means it didn’t get out. I don’t know how Hayworth is working it, but so far he’s keeping Duffy bottled up. Now we pull the cork.”

  “How?” Coco says.

  “You answered that upstairs. Hayworth won’t come to us? All right, we go to him. Take one of the women in the car and drive right down to the bank. Let him know fun time is over. It is now showdown time.”