The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

  He carefully combed through the closets and drawers of every room without turning up anything of interest. Then in the library-music room he found an old-fashioned photograph album, its pages cracked and drying at the edges. Among the pictures in it were a few of the Thoren family, ranging from the time when Kermit and Joanna were toddlers up to their mid-teens, but none included anyone resembling Walter Thoren. Here and there, Charlotte Thoren showed up. Nowhere was there any sign of her husband.

  The investigation completed, he went down to the kitchen, made himself coffee and took his time reading the previous day’s edition of the Miami Beach Daily Sun. When he returned to the bedroom Nera was still sunk in sleep. He stretched out beside her and forced himself to stay awake until, with a gurgle and snort and a restless shifting of position, she gave the first signs of coming out of it. Then he roused her completely in traditional lover’s fashion, and she responded instantly and passionately. This time she was ready to share a cigarette and conversation afterward.

  “You’re marvelous,” she said with deep contentment. “Mother of God, what a lovely, dirty mind. I used to wonder what it would be like, doing all those things. I thought people only did them for magazine pictures.”

  “You’ve seen that kind of magazine?”

  “Yes, a friend of mine brought me one from Copenhagen. Fons would kill me if he ever got a look at it. Do you want to see it?”

  Jake said: “No, I don’t have to. Come to think of it, maybe you should have used it for Kermit’s education.”

  “Now please let’s not get started on that, darling.”

  “Does he still come around?”

  “He? It makes me sick to even think of him.”

  Jake said: “Poor Kermit. But there must be other men sometimes, aren’t there? I don’t see how you can keep them away.”

  Nera’s cigarette glowed brightly for a moment. “I don’t think I have to tell you I’m a very healthy woman. And half the time I might as well be a very healthy widow.”

  Jake said: “No, you don’t have to tell me that. Was Walter Thoren one of the men?”

  “Darling, you might get some kind of thrill from pretending I’m the neighborhood whore, but I don’t.”

  “Was he?”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Nera said shortly.

  Jake said: “But you wanted him to be, didn’t you? I heard all about that business over there where you made a pass at him right out in the open.”

  “Oho, now the light dawns.” Nera caught hold of a handful of his hair and fondly tugged at it. “You’re jealous, you idiot. And of some poor soul who’s dead and buried a month.”

  “Jealous? Of a man stupid enough to turn you down?”

  “Yes, you are. As for his turning me down—well, when I thought about it afterward I was just as glad he did. He was a pretty frightening kind of man, really.”

  “Go on. You like to be frightened that way.”

  “Only when I know I can control the situation. I don’t think it would have been like that with Walter.” Nera raised herself on an elbow and crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray between them. “I’m beginning to get the feeling it’s not like that with you either. I don’t mind now, but I’m not so sure about later on. You’re just a little bit too much like Walter in some ways.”

  “What ways?”

  “Attractive enough to make women behave stupidly. Jealous. He was impossible about any outsider having the least influence on Charlotte and the children. Cold and arrogant. Most of all”—Nera was a barely discernible paleness in the black of the room as she straddled him on her knees—“all head and no heart.” She drew a circle on his chest with her finger. “Nothing in here. A stainless-steel motor, that’s all.”

  “Thanks,” Jake said. “You’re a great little ego builder, aren’t you?”

  “As if your ego needed building. Darling, you are one great big, dangerous, calculating hunk of ego.”

  “You don’t know me yet. When you do you’ll find out what a pussycat I am.”

  “Oh, sure. The saber-toothed-tiger kind. But don’t let that upset you. I’d be the last one to deny that you do have your charms.”

  “So do you,” Jake said. “What gets me is why Thoren wasn’t hit by them as hard as I was. What did happen when you made that play for him? Granting he had to play it cool in front of everybody, he still could have patted your knee under the table to show he appreciated the compliment. Or knowing you were half-stoned, he could have passed the whole thing off as a joke. But why should he blow up as violently as he did? When a man like that loses control of himself for even a few seconds, there must be some reason for it.”

  “I don’t know any reason. And I don’t see why we have to keep picking at it this way. I’d just as soon stick with the living and let poor Walter rest in peace.”

  “Still and all,” Jake said musingly, “He’d sure make one hell of a character for a story. A natural. Start with that scene at the dinner party, go back and explore the reasons for it—”

  “So that’s it. I should have known.”

  “Well, you can’t blame a writer for seeing the story values in a scene like that, can you?”

  “I suppose not. But you can’t blame me for wanting to be more than story material at a time like this, can you?”

  He pulled her down so that she lay sprawled over him, her chin over his shoulder, her cheek against his. “You know damn well you’re a lot more than that.” He slowly ran his hands up and down her flanks and she stirred uneasily. “Better not start what you can’t finish,” she warned.

  He clasped his hands over the small of her back. “What happened? Was it something you did that might have shocked him?”

  “Oh, stop dramatizing. What I did was put my arm through his and whisper some nonsense into his ear. And it was hardly a proposition either. It was the most harmless kind of thing.”

  “You mean, what you said to him?”

  “Yes. I was sitting next to him at the table and hadn’t been able to get more than two words out of him all evening. Anyhow, they were all talking about this murder that had happened around here the week before—some millionaire named Farber or Farbstein or something was pulled out of the bay with a bullet in his head, and nobody knew who did it—and I got this Scotch-and-soda impulse to lean over to Walter and say to him: ‘I know you’re the murderer, but if you’re nice to me I won’t tell anybody.’ I’ll admit it wasn’t the brightest remark in the world, but it certainly didn’t deserve what he handed me for it. You’d think I stuck a knife into him, the way he reacted.”

  Jake said casually: “And all because of a murder case that didn’t mean a thing to any of you. Life’s little ironies. I suppose the case was solved right afterward, just to add to the irony.”

  “I think it was. No, I’m not sure. Anyhow, what difference did it make one way or the other after the damage was done?” Nera suddenly raised her head and looked around. “Am I developing night vision, or is it getting light in here? What time is it?”

  Jake strained to make out the hands of his watch. “About twenty to six.”

  Nera scrambled off him. “Time to go. Ahora. Pronto. I mean it. Don’t settle down and make yourself comfortable there.”

  “How about sharing the sunrise first?”

  “No.” She hauled him upright. “Please. You don’t know what this place is like.”

  “Bright, shiny eyes everywhere?”

  “Everywhere. Your wife’s big blue ones included.”

  He left through the back door. As Nera started to close it behind him he said: “That word you used—padrillo. What’s a padrillo?”

  Nera patted his cheek. “What you are, thank God,” she said, then quickly pulled the door shut.

  18

  When he slipped into the house he found Elinor, in robe and slippers, huddled in an armchair in the living room. She looked on the verge of tears as she came out of the chair. “Oh, Jake, I could kill you. Where were you? What happened to you?�
�

  “You can see nothing happened to me. How long have you been waiting up like this, anyhow?”

  “All night, practically. I knew you were somewhere around here because you didn’t take the car. And once I started thinking about that and blackmailers and guns, I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You should have had more sense. Did Maniscalco call?”

  “Nobody called. How about some breakfast?” She was already on her way to the kitchen. “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  “Don’t bother. I have to make a call, and then all I want to do is catch up on my sleep. You’d better do the same. You look dead on your feet.”

  “I am.” She trailed after him into the study and immediately went to work hauling his bedding out of the closet. “I’ll make up the couch for you first.”

  He dialed Magnes’ number, and while waiting for an answer, got out of his shirt and worked off his sandals against a leg of the desk. Magnes finally answered in sleepy bad humor.

  “Yes, I know what time it is,” Jake told him, “but I just came across something very big. I want you to get on it right away.”

  Magnes was instantly wide awake. “You tried the boat again, after all? You found a letter there?”

  “No, it’s something else. There was a big murder case down here around two to three years ago. Some wheel named Farber or Farbstein who was hauled out of the bay with a bullet in his head. You know about it, don’t you?”

  “Farber or Farbstein?” There was a long silence on the phone. “Offhand, I don’t remember such a case. I’ll have to look it up.”

  “But quick,” Jake said. “And not only in the newspapers. The police reports, too. And whatever off-the-record stuff you can dig up.”

  “Everything. Come over here about noon. I’ll have it ready for you.”

  Jake said: “No, I don’t want to be seen at your place too often. Pick some tourist place where we can have lunch.”

  “Wolfie’s,” said Magnes. “Lincoln and Collins. I’ll be at a back table, twelve o’clock sharp.”

  Jake put down the phone. He turned and saw Elinor looking at him with an expression that suggested she had just bitten into something strange and wasn’t sure how it tasted to her. She said without emotion: “I don’t think it was Joanna you were in bed with. She keeps her fingernails too short to claw up anybody’s back that bad. So I guess it was Nera, wasn’t it?”

  “A very keen deduction,” Jake said.

  “A very easy one. It makes it seem kind of funny, too, the way I was sitting here worrying about you all that time. I should have known it was like worrying if Frankenstein’s monster carries an umbrella in the rain.”

  “Well,” Jake said, “now you know.”

  He went down the hallway to the bathroom, and she followed close on his heels. Shoulders hunched, hands thrust into the pockets of her robe, she watched him plug in the electric razor and go to work with it. Then over the whine of the razor she said: “Was it Nera who told you Walter Thoren was mixed up in that murder?”

  “Not in so many words. It happened to come out while she was talking.”

  “I see. And is that how you get women like that to talking so free and easy? By sleeping with them?”

  Jake studied his jaw in the mirror, then worked the razor under it. “What do you mean, women like that?”

  Elinor said: “I mean women her age. Do you have any idea how old she must be? She probably takes those change-of-life pills just to keep going.”

  “They must be some pills,” Jake said.

  He turned on the water in the glass-enclosed shower, and steam billowed out into the room. He removed his slacks and underwear shorts and draped them over Elinor’s arm. “One’s for the tailor, one’s for the laundry bag,” he said, but when he emerged from the shower she was still standing there with the slacks and shorts over her arm. He pointed, and she mechanically handed him a towel.

  “Tell me something,” she said abruptly. “Do you ever do anything just for kicks? I mean, balling, getting drunk, even talking to somebody—do you ever do any of that because you feel like it, not because it would help on a case? You’re not always on a job, are you? So what are you like between jobs? You can’t be the same as this.”

  “Maybe not. But I can’t really say what I’m like then.”

  Her tone softened. “Jake, if it’s a question of trying to understand yourself—”

  “It isn’t that. Between jobs, Dr. Frankenstein unplugs my electrodes and leans me against the laboratory wall. I’m in sort of a coma then.”

  Elinor opened her mouth, then closed it. She gave him a sad, sweet smile. “I happen to believe every word of that,” she said, and walked out of the bathroom with dignity.

  When he got back to the study he found his pants and shorts had been flung on the floor there, and had to step over them to reach the couch.

  19

  He had trouble rousing himself when the alarm went off at eleven, and even more trouble getting Elinor awake. When she finally managed to raise her head and look at the clock on her night table she said unbelievingly: “But I’ve only been asleep four hours. Why do I have to get up now? I can’t even think straight.”

  “Don’t think. Just get dressed. I’m having lunch with Magnes in an hour, and I want you to meet him. If things tighten up later on, you’ll have to be my contact with him.”

  That opened her eyes wide. “Tighten up?”

  “Relax. All it means is that if some busybody starts taking too much of an interest in my business down here, I can’t afford to be seen with Magnes. Then you’ll be the one to contact him if it’s necessary.”

  “What good would that do? Everybody thinks I’m your wife. It would be the same as if you met him, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, because I’m the one they’d keep an eye on, especially if you come on strong as my wife. Now rise and shine.”

  Elinor sat up, then collapsed forward like a rag doll, her head almost touching her knees. “I’ll rise,” she said faintly, “but I sure as hell won’t shine.”

  He waited until she had dragged herself out of bed before he left her. Ten minutes later a loud wail of despair brought him back into the bedroom. She was sitting at the dressing table, staring at her image in the mirror. “Jake, look at me. I’m peeling like a leper. It shows right through the make-up. I can’t go out looking like this.”

  “Look, I’m not arranging for us to meet a movie producer. Just get rid of that make-up and rub a lot of cold cream into your face. When you wipe it away it’ll take most of those flakes off.”

  She started to protest, then saw his expression in the mirror. She sulkily went to work following instructions. “You sound like you made this scene before,” she said. “Are you married, by any chance?”

  “I was. Twice.”

  “Two lucky girls, no less. What happened with them?”

  “Her. It was the same one both times. The first time out, she couldn’t stand poverty. The second time, I guess she couldn’t stand prosperity. And you can wear that mini you came down here in. That way, nobody’ll notice your face.”

  Magnes did. Somehow, despite the crowd in the place and the line waiting outside its door, he had managed to obtain for himself a large semicircular booth in the back of the restaurant. He looked Elinor over appraisingly as she seated herself on the banquette between him and Jake. “A real tsatskeh,” he said with approval. “But that’s some burn you caught yourself there, girlie. That wasn’t so bright, was it? Look how you’re peeling.”

  “Well, thanks,” Elinor said coldly.

  “And another little thing, girlie. A bagger should not dress so conspicuous that even these old kvetchers around here turn and look. In this business, the trick is to make people not look.”

  “A beggar?” Elinor said in bewilderment.

  Jake said: “A bagger. A female investigator. What did you get on that Farber or Farbstein killing?” he asked Magnes.

  Magnes said: “The works. It was a ki
lling all right, except the name wasn’t Farber or Farbstein. That’s what threw me off when you told me about it over the phone. Who gave you those names anyhow?”

  “The Ortega woman.”

  “Well, she was wrong about it. Did she also tell you Thoren did the killing?”

  Jake said: “She described his reaction when she mentioned it to him. The way he reacted, he must have had something to do with it.”

  Magnes shook his head. “I don’t see how. It was an open-and-shut case. The guy’s name who got killed was Garfein. Murray Garfein. A nice old guy—a widower—made himself a fortune in cloaks and suits and retired down here to take care of a heart condition. His luck, on his way back from fishing in Key West he picked up a junkie kid hitch-hiker, and the kid put a bullet in his head and dumped him in the bay here. They got the kid a week later driving around Jacksonville in Garfein’s car and with the gun still on him. They gave him the chair last year. Like I said, open and shut. Could it be the Ortega woman was just talking through her hat?”

  “I don’t think she was wearing a hat at the time,” Elinor remarked.

  Magnes cocked his head inquiringly at Jake. “The girlie’s a comedian?”

  “She’s a million laughs. Are you sure Garfein was the one Mrs. Ortega meant? Remember, that wasn’t the name she gave me.”

  “You said between two and three years ago. I covered from last year to almost five years ago, and there was no Farber or Farbstein case. But this Garfein murder matched up every way with what you gave me. It absolutely had to be him.”

  The waitress came to take their orders then, and Magnes frowned at Elinor’s choice. “Pancakes for lunch?”

  “Will you please stop nagging me?” Elinor said. “And this happens to be my breakfast.”