The Bind

by Stanley Ellin

  The area around the gas pump in front of the building was evidently the local parking lot. There were several cars there looking ready for the boneyard, a couple of work-worn, nearly derelict pickup trucks, and a gleaming black Cadillac convertible. There were no electric lines in sight. The only sign of communication with the outside world was a telephone line looping through treetops to the eaves of the store.

  There were no other buildings in sight either, but when Jake had followed Dobbs up the three creaking steps to the store’s porch, he could make out the roughhewn log walls and tarpaper roofs of some cabins half hidden in the undergrowth.

  The store was dimly lit by what sun the windows allowed in through their few remaining glass panes and by a kerosene lamp hanging from a rafter. There was an overpowering stench in it of kerosene, stale beer, and decayed meat.

  There were two men in the place. No question about the one with long sideburns and in white turtleneck shirt and snugly fitting, high-waisted slacks being Gela, because the other, except for the narrow-eyed shrewdness of his face, was cut to the same mold as Dobbs. That one wore overalls, gray chest hair sprouting over them, and leaned on his elbows behind the counter. On the counter lay a shotgun, its twin barrels aimed at the doorway in which Jake stood. The man’s outstretched hand rested on the narrow part of the gunstock, his forefinger on the trigger guard. When he spoke his voice had the identical twang and drawl of Dobbs’. “Took you long enough, Earl.”

  “That is the truth, Dinty. But we come in his car. And I told him—”

  “Never mind that,” Gela cut in. “It looks to me like he’s packing a gun. Get it.”

  Dobbs apologetically removed the automatic from Jake’s belt and laid it on the counter. Gela motioned to Jake. “The phone’s over there in the corner.”

  “I see it,” Jake said. “But I don’t see the girl. Where is she?”

  “She’s around. Don’t worry about her. Stick to business.”

  Jake said: “I don’t see Aiello either. Is he with her? That would be stupid, Gela.”

  “I told him to lay off her, so you got nothing to worry about. She’s all right. And the sooner that insurance money gets down here, the sooner you’re both out of this.”

  Jake leaned against the door frame and folded his arms on his chest. “No phone call to anybody until I see the girl. And not long-range. I want to see her close-up and talk to her. Then you’re in business.”

  Gela turned to Dinty. “You hear that? Go on, tell him she’s all right,” and Dinty said, “She’s all right, mister. I took them out to the hammock myself last night, and nothing could have happened to her there that she didn’t want to happen.”

  Jake looked from one to the other of them. Then he said to Dinty: “I see you’ve signed up with the team, too. How does it work? He cuts you in on this, and you cut him in on the alligator poaching?”

  “You’re stalling, Dekker,” Gela said warningly.

  “No, I’m standing pat.”

  Gela stared at him, gnawing at a hangnail on his pinkie.

  Jake said placidly to Dinty: “You’re out of your mind if you let this guy in on your alligator racket. A month from now he’ll be running it, and you’ll be skinning hides for him, a dollar an hour.”

  “Sure, mister,” Dinty said.

  “Think it over,” Jake said. “He’s already halfway to making you partners in blackmail and kidnaping, in case you don’t know the whole story. Be smart. Aim that gun his way and step out of this mess right now. Whatever he’s paying you, you can count on a lot more from me. All you have to do is say how much.”

  “Sure, mister.”

  Gela spat out the hangnail he had been working on. He said to Jake: “I already talked to that secretary in Maniscalco’s office first thing today. I told her to have him stand by for a call from you. He’s waiting, Dekker.”

  “He’ll keep. I’ll get around to him when the girl is right here where I can see her.”

  Gela started to gnaw the bothersome pinkie again. Finally he said: “You want to see her, you’ll go where she is. Not here. She stays under cover right there until this whole thing is settled. You’ll have plenty of time with her then, because you’ll be staying there, too.”

  “Dobbs Hammock?”

  “Wherever. I don’t know why the hell you’re making it so hard on yourself, Dekker. This thing would run smooth as silk if you wasn’t such a donkey. But I know you got some kind of idea to get her here and make a break for it. Then what happens? You both get gunned down. Nobody wins, everybody loses. Is that using your brain?”

  “How about using yours, Gela. You’ve got these two rednecks here along with you and Aiello. Do you really think I’d try to make a break for it against those odds? But all right, I’ll do it your way. I’ll go where the girl is. Let’s get moving on it.”

  They left Dinty behind his counter and moved single-file along a narrow, spongy path to the waterfront, Gela bringing up the rear, shotgun in hand. Three swamp boats were moored to a dock there along with several rowboats. In the muck of the shoreline was a litter of broken oars, rusted beer cans, and empty gasoline tins. The swamp boats were flat-bottomed skiffs, square at the bow and riding low in the water. Mounted on a platform in the stern of each was a heavy-duty automobile motor powering a wooden airplane propeller of ancient vintage.

  Gela pointed Jake to a seat in the bow and then seated himself beside Dobbs, who took the controls. As Jake settled down, trying to keep his feet clear of the slimy water rolling from side to side in the boat’s bottom, Dobbs poked him in the shoulder and shoved a wad of grimy absorbent cotton into his hand.

  “What’s that for?” Jake said.

  “Noise, Mr. Dekker. Better stuff it in your ears real tight.”

  Jake was still holding the cotton in his hand when the motor kicked over. The sound was ear-shattering. It racketed through the head so violently that it was like a physical hammering on it. Jake hastily thrust a wad of cotton into each ear and wedged it in as tight as he could. It took some of the hard edge off the noise.

  The skiff moved across open water toward what looked like a solid wall of sawgrass. Jake flinched involuntarily as it dived into the grass, but there was no feeling of impact. As the boat knifed forward, the grass simply parted before it as if without substance and closed up again behind it with no signs of having been run over or through. Minute after minute of this, moving almost as fast as the speedboat had in Biscayne Bay, but here there were only occasional patches of open water, many more patches where the water was so low that they were skidding over mud flats.

  The only landmarks in sight were occasional islets rising a foot or two above the water and with stands of trees on them. At one point, after cutting sharply around one of them, they entered what looked like a man-made canal, a dark brown ribbon slicing through the endless green, but instead of traversing its length, Dobbs, as if tuned in to a directional finder, suddenly banked the boat hard right into the wall of sawgrass again. They tore through it full speed, and then were in a broad lake of comparatively deep water, judging from the way only the tips of the sawgrass showed above its surface.

  Centered in the lake was a hammock with a stand of dead pines on it. The hammock was about twenty yards long, maybe half that in width. Under the pines was a cabin. Near it was a dock in ruinous condition. Dobbs pulled the boat up to the dock, stepped ashore, and tied its line to a post. When he cut the motor the silence left the ears ringing. The heat, dispelled by the breeze raised when the boat was moving fast, closed down immediately. The sun was like an auger drilling through the skull; the dampness raised a sweat on the body which instantly saturated every inch of it. It was like trying to breathe in a steam room.

  Aiello, shirtless and badly wilted, waited on the dock, a short-barreled revolver in his hand. Elinor sat on the ground in the shadow of the cabin, her back against its wall, her knees drawn up, her hands clasped around them. She looked at the boat with no sign of interest on her face, then rested he
r forehead on her knees.

  Jake pulled the wads of cotton from his ears and stepped up on the dock, Gela’s shotgun trained on him every move he made. “Five minutes,” Gela said. “That Maniscalco’s probably already wetting his pants wondering what you want to talk to him about.” He motioned to Aiello. “Come on in the boat. You too, dummy,” he told Dobbs. When they were aboard, he said to Jake: “Get the point? You try any kind of trick, we pull out of here. Maybe we’ll be back in a couple of days with a bucket of drinking water and some eats, maybe not. I’m not pulling any bluff, Dekker. This is all salty water you’re looking at, and there’s not much to eat or drink inside there, so unless you want to see what it’s like to get by on salt water and fingernails, you be a good boy.”

  Passing the open cabin door, Jake saw that the furnishings inside consisted of a canvas army cot, and a couple of dirty mattresses on the floor, straw oozing from them, and, in lieu of a table, some boards laid across a pair of sawhorses. Even outside the place there was a reek of mildew from its interior.

  He walked up to Elinor and stood looking down at her. “How are you?” he said, and she gave him a barely perceptible shrug. She did not raise her head from her knees.

  He said: “Did that guy give you any trouble here?”

  This time she raised her head but still refused to look at him. “Yes.”

  “Bad?”

  She said tonelessly: “Soon as they left us here last night and went away, he told me I had to do what he wanted. I said no, so he tied me up, and we did it that way.

  “He’s number one on my list,” Jake said. “Gela is number two.”

  “How about Magnes? He’s the one called me up and said you were in the hospital. And that a policeman would be coming to take me there.”

  “I know,” Jake said. “But they made him do it. He held out as long as he could. He’s dead now.”

  “Dead?” Elinor looked dazed. “And I thought he sold out.” She let her head fall back against the wall of the cabin in a gesture of total exhaustion. “I got to thinking everybody sold out when the time came.”

  “Ellie.” Jake squatted down before her, trying to make her eyes meet his. He cupped her chin in his hand, but she wrenched her head away. “Ellie, don’t be like this. You know how I feel about you. It hasn’t changed any. Don’t talk as if it has.”

  She said relentlessly: “I was next to Gela when he was on the phone with you. He told you to come right over, and you didn’t want to. You knew what could happen to me, but you were thinking about the money.”

  “Ellie, he hung up while I was wondering about what move to make. If he hadn’t hung up that fast—”

  “You were thinking about the money. If you came right over, nobody would have touched me. But you knew that as soon as you said you’d do whatever Gela wanted, that was the end of the money. So you couldn’t make yourself say it.”

  “Jesus Christ, you can’t boil everything down to black and white like that. If you only think it over—”

  “I did. All night long.” Now she looked squarely at him. Her face was smeared with dirt and blotched with insect bites. “There was just too much money, that’s all.”

  “Doesn’t it mean anything that I’ve blown it all by calling in the cops before I came out here? They might even be moving into Crosscut now. Once they do, this thing’ll be all over the papers, and that’s the end of it for me. I knew that, and I still called them in.”

  “That was nice of you,” Elinor said.

  “God almighty, what do you want from me, baby? I’m trying to show you—”

  “Don’t. Just get me out of here. Not on account of us, on account of my kid. I want to be back with him. If anything happens to me, it’ll be a bad scene for him. Just get me back with him, and we’re even.”

  “And what about us?”

  Elinor slowly shook her head. “There wasn’t really any us. There was you, and there was this dumb Polack who thought you were something special. But she’ll never be that dumb again.”

  “Sweetheart, when we’re out of this bind—”

  “No. Never again.”

  Gela called from the boat: “All right, Dekker, how about it?” and Jake stood up. He took Elinor’s arm and pulled her to her feet. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He led her to the dock. Aiello was already out of the boat and standing there, the short-barreled pistol ready in his hand. He showed his teeth in a smile. “See how people learn things, Dekker? No more automatics. And this makes just as big a hole.”

  Jake disregarded him. He looked down at Gela and said: “You double-crossed me, Gela. You’d better call Maniscalco’s secretary again and tell her he won’t have to wait around for me to get in touch with him. No sense his wasting time on it.”

  “Yeah? What the hell’s this all about?”

  “You said you gave this ape orders to stay away from the girl. Either you were lying to me, or he doesn’t think much of your orders.”

  Gela squinted at Aiello. “Is that the truth, Tony?”

  “Ahh, Pooch, for chrissake, she was looking for it.”

  Gela said disgustedly: “If you ain’t something. But no more of that, you hear? This is a business deal, so you make like business only. You got that straight?”

  “Sure, Pooch.”

  Gela turned back to Jake. “All right? You heard me tell him, and you heard him say yes. Now let’s get going.”

  “Not without her,” Jake said. “Either she goes with us, or I stay here.”

  Gela stared at him, then spat into the water. “You at it again, Dekker? Still playing hard to get?”

  “Put yourself in my shoes, Gela. If it was your girl, would you leave her here alone with that horny bastard? Especially after what already happened?”

  Gela said contemptuously: “If I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t have her hanging around me while I was on any job.” The barrels of the shotgun shifted in a small arc from Jake’s belly to Elinor’s. “That’s one reason I’m giving the orders, and you’re taking them. Anyhow, you’ll be back here right after that phone call. I think Tony can hold out until then as long as your girl don’t wave her ass too hard at him.”

  “No deal,” Jake said.

  “Then she can stay here alone.”

  “Except for the snakes and the alligators? Still no deal.”

  “You’re getting under my skin, Dekker. Who the hell are you to run things the way you want?”

  “That’s easy. I’m the guy who’s ready to help dump the jackpot in your hand. It looks to me like you’re the one who wants to do things the hard way. I don’t see why. We both know you’re coming up a winner, and all you have to do is pull the handle. Why keep splitting hairs until then?”

  Gela dug his fingers into the back of his neck as if trying to ease a stiffness there. The dead silence around them was suddenly broken by the sound of a plunge and spatter out in the middle of the water. Gela instantly wheeled in that direction, the shotgun already at his shoulder. Aiello spun halfway around in a crouch, pistol aimed at the emptiness beyond the boat. Jake took one quick step toward him, then froze in his tracks as the pistol came around to confront him again, an inch from his chest.

  Dobbs pointed at a V of ripples out in the water. “Grand-daddy alligator,” he said. “I told you they was all around here, Mr. Gela. But you leave him to me. Twelve-gauge might just tear up his hide. Sooner or later I’ll get him out all in one piece.”

  Gela followed the progress of the ripples with fascination until they disappeared among the sawgrass. Then he faced around. He took in the tableau made by Aiello and Jake: “Son of a bitch,” he said to Aiello, “you can’t take your eyes off this guy for a second, can you?” He crooked a finger at Elinor. “Get in this thing. Sit there in front of me.”

  Impassively, Elinor took the bow seat beside the one Jake had occupied. Gela rested the shotgun on the back of the seat, the muzzle thrust into her spine between the shoulder blades. With great deliberati
on he cocked both triggers, the snap of them loud in the air. “You hear that?” he said to Jake. “You make one little wrong move, and I leave it to you what happens. Now sit there next to her. That’s right. And remember, Dekker, you rock the boat, there won’t be any ladies getting out of it the other end of the line.”

  60

  There were no police to greet them at the other end of the line, only a pair of gaunt and mangy hounds who trotted down to the water’s edge, tails wagging furiously, to sniff their ankles until Dobbs sent them howling with a couple of hard kicks. The sun was directly overhead now, the humidity oppressive enough to have everyone open-mouthed and gasping as they toiled their way along the muddy path to the store. Only Dobbs seemed immune to it.

  In the store, Gela handed the shotgun to Dinty and took in its place the automatic that had been removed from Jake. He said to Dinty: “Any chance of somebody walking in on us now?”

  “Might be.” Dinty jerked his head at the few shelves of groceries along one wall. “That’s my business. Selling things to anybody walks in.”

  Gela said sardonically: “Sure it is. But I don’t want anybody doing it while we’re taking care of this. Go out on the porch and keep them away. Take along that gun to show them you mean it. Same goes if they try sneaking up to look through the windows.”

  Jake said to Dinty: “What did I tell you? You thought you were a partner in this deal. All you are is hired help.”

  “Do what I tell you,” Gela snarled at the man. “You stand there listening to this guy, he’ll talk you deaf, dumb, and blind. And close that door when you go out. Make sure it stays closed.” He waited until his instructions had been carried out, then said to Jake: “You can stall just so long, Dekker. Now let’s get to it.”

  It was an old-fashioned dial phone, an upright with the dial set into its base, which stood on a shelf in a corner, along with a tattered directory. Nearby was a small round marble-topped table surrounded by four wire-backed chairs, all looking as if they had been salvaged from a bankrupt soda parlor. On the table was a checkerboard, the checkers scattered over it. Gela swept them to the floor and planted the phone on the table. He motioned Jake into a chair with the automatic, then pointed to the chair directly opposite. “You sit there,” he told Elinor. “Keep that gun in her back,” he instructed Aiello, “and if he tries anything, don’t even give her time to be sorry about it.”