A taste for sin, p.13
A Taste for Sin, page 13
“You damned well better eat,” I said. “You won’t be eating again till tomorrow.”
He really looked a mess.
“Phalen. We’ll make a deal.”
“No deals. You had to snoop—you snooped. Look what it got you.”
I waited. He began to realize. He began to eat and he cleaned the plate. He was a game son of a bitch. Then I fixed his ears again. He wanted to use the toilet. So he did that, then I taped him up again. This time, I used gauze in his mouth and plenty of tape. It was better than the necktie. I leaned by his ear.
“Now, look. You maybe can rub that tape off. But you do, and you make a sound—you’re a dead man. Because I’m right close by. Understand?”
He looked at me and nodded. I finished chaining him, then left him there. I went downstairs and smoked and drank and sat.
She wandered around the house.
Finally she said she’d try to take my mind off things. She got some sleepy music on the transistor radio, and put on a fashion show. She modeled all her clothes. Underwear, maybe just a pair of nylons; pink, blue, black. A skirt, a blouse, dresses, sweaters. It was really something to see her jouncing around in just a sweater, black or white. Swim suits. Bikinis. It wasn’t tiresome. It went on and on.
Finally, somehow, it was Thursday.
With him still up there, chained in the bathroom. Like a dog.
I waited for the mail. Those passports had to come through.
It had me half crazy.
They came.
“Well,” I told her. “I’ll be saying good-by for a while.” “You’ll be so far away.” “Switzerland,” I said.
“It’s so far.”
“That’s how it’s planned. You got things to do. You get your license, buy a car, get a real cheap one—a clunker, okay? You’ll have to, anyway. Not much money left. And something else. You stay around the house, but you don’t go near him.
Get that?”
“When’ll you be back?”
“Maybe less than three days. A quick trip.”
“It’s where we’ll go after?”
“Only for a little while.”
I fixed food, plenty of it, and took it up to Bliss. I explained to him carefully. “Now, listen,” I said. “Due to circumstances, I won’t see you for at least two days. So eat hearty,” I said. “You won’t have anything to eat till I come in this room. Get that.”
“Phalen, you know I’ll get you for this.” He looked like hell.
“Just don’t waste your breath,” I said.
He finally ate. Then I chained him good, and taped him better than usual, and left him. He’d have to work out toilet facilities himself. I locked the door.
I told Felice, “Don’t you go near that room, and keep as quiet as possible. Just leave him there. Of course, if he works loose, or starts shouting, you’ll have to go in. I don’t think he will.”
“But, Jim—three days. What’s he going to do?”
“I don’t know. It’s got to be that way.”
I was half crazy thinking about it. I finally managed to say good-by to her, and drove to Buffalo. I caught a plane to Idlewild, and then a jet, and we landed in Orly, France, Friday morning.
I carried a light bag with me, an extra shirt and some socks. I had a thousand American dollars in my shoes. I caught a plane from Orly to Zurich. Wanted to spend some time there, but couldn’t.
I kept thinking about Bliss, chained.
And Felice. All alone. In the house.
Switzerland looked great and I tried not to think of what had to come. The thing that got you was the remarkable cleanliness. From Zurich, I went to Lucerne in one of their clean electric trains.
Europe was the place for me, I knew that. There was an excitement I’d felt the moment we landed in France. The same excitement wasn’t in Switzerland, it was different, but it was good just the same. Everywhere you looked the women were terrific.
Lucerne was beautiful. The cleanliness again, but much more, too. You didn’t want to drop a cigarette butt They probably got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the streets. I know they scrubbed thresholds, because I saw them. I stopped in a bar and had a glass of delicious beer and talked with a guy. They seemed to speak English everywhere.
“You have a beautiful country,” I said.
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“The people seem fine.”
He shrugged again. “Ja.” He looked at me. “But they have forgotten one thing.”
“What’s that?”
They have forgotten how to play.” He went back to his beer.
I started searching outside. Well, I came along and there was the lake. It was a dark mirror, with trees and buildings nearby, a fine sight; the water still and so darkly gleaming.
I came along and there was a green treed park near the water. Everything looked as though it had been very carefully fashioned. A street was next to the park, and houses shoulder to shoulder, colorful, overlooked the lake. I began to inquire about a room to rent.
It seemed strange. Felice so far away, and the thirty-first of May coming up, and Bliss there in that bathroom, chained. And here I was in Switzerland, Lucerne, overcome with the beauty of the place, the serenity.
It took time, but I found what I wanted. Somebody had passed the word. A crazy American was searching for a room. It had to be just such a room. They were right. I didn’t want a large rooming house. I didn’t want a house, or a hotel. The people I rented from would have to live there, and they’d have to look right.
The house was just across from the park where the lake took a little dip in toward the street. There was a wall, a garden and a gate. Not a large place.
A kind looking old woman stopped me. Her name was Mrs. Martha Swartzer.
“You are looking for a room?”
“Yes.”
“Would you please to see what I have?”
“Yes.”
“Come, then.”
Mrs. Swartzer wore a pinkish dress with an apron of white frilled cloth and her gray hair was in a bun, with black-headed pins stuck in it. We went through the gate and along a little walk and up to the house. There were shutters on the windows, and they were open. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Wisteria grew over the small porch. We went inside, into the gloom.
“Franz?”
Franz came out A tall man, carrying a newspaper, smoking a clay pipe, frowning above glasses with an adhesive tape patch at the temple. I knew this had to be it.
“Franz. This young man is looking for a room.”
She beamed at me and dry-washed her hands happily.
“This man, he is my husband. Good, eh?”
“Yes. Fine.”
We went to the room. It was a small room with a big bed and a mattress about four feet thick. I sat down and sank almost to the floor, fighting to recover myself. They stood in the doorway and laughed.
“Feathers,” she explained. “You did not know?”
I said I would take the room. They were kindly old folk and I liked them, the Swartzers. “But I won’t be here for a while yet. Then my wife and I will come.”
“Oh, your wife.” They nodded knowingly at each other.
“Before we come, we’ll be mailing some things here, from the United States.”
“Oh?”
“That’s all right, isn’t it? Mostly packages. The thing is, I must be certain you’ll receive them and put them here in my room, for us. Okay?”
“Okay.” They beamed and chuckled again.
Frank patted Martha’s shoulder, puffing wildly on his pipe, which looked much too hot to touch.
“I must make certain,” I said.
I thought how absolutely certain it must be.
“We’d better go to the post office and tell them, all right?” I said.
Franz and I went to the post office and everything was arranged. Packages would be mailed to me, Howard Stevens, in care of the Swartzers. Then we came back to the house, and they insisted I stay for coffee. I did. Then I asked how much the rent was and told them I’d take the room for six months. “You never can tell,” I said. “We might be delayed. I have business everywhere. And we want to live in Lucerne for a time, and just rest when we get here. Want to be sure of having a place, just like this.”
They nodded understandingly.
“Which would you rather have?” I said. “Francs, or
American dollars?”
I knew the answer. There was always a market for the All American buck, anywhere in Europe. A good market. I took off my shoes, and paid them. They were excited and they liked me.
As I started to leave, a young woman came in. She was maybe thirty-five.
“Our daughter, she comes but seldom.” She smiled.
“Jeanette,” Mrs. Swartzer said. “This is Mr. Stevens, from the
United States.”
Jeanette was something, all right. She had heavy blonde hair and excellent clothes and a hard wise eye. I was leery of her right away. I knew what she was and wondered what she charged. She’d just come in from Basle and she was tired. But she couldn’t stay long. She was pleased to meet me.
“You stay?” she said. She had a nice voice. “Tonight, we go dancing.”
“Mr. Stevens has a wife,” Mrs. Swartzer said.
Jeanette winked at me and patted her mother’s arm. “And I have a husband in Marseilles,” she said. “Does this mean I can’t go dancing?”
I managed to leave.
At the gate Mrs. Swartzer said, “Jeanette, she’s a lovely girl but—” she shrugged—”troubles, troubles, all the time.”
“She spend a lot of time with you?”
She made a sound like a Bronx cheer. “We haven’t seen her for three months. We had a call this morning. This afternoon she leaves for Paris. She made a big amount of money in
Basle.”
“That’s good.”
“No, that’s bad.”
“You’ll be sure to take good care of all mail, now,” I said.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Stevens.”
I left. I’d given them twenty-five dollars extra, just to make certain. It doesn’t hurt to pay your way.
It was a beautiful little old house and they were a nice couple, Mr. and Mrs. Swartzer. Just the people to take care of a million dollars mailed to them in small packages. They would probably pile the packages on the bed.
I wanted to stay in Lucerne. It became suddenly the most beautiful, the most peaceful spot I’d ever been in, or maybe even ever would be in. Entire sides of buildings were hand painted. Pretty girls walked in the park, with bright bold eyes, along the lake. They nodded and smiled on the streets.
But I had a date with a bank vault.
Twenty-Two…
“It’s tonight,” Felice said. “Yes.”
“I can hardly stand it.”
“Me, too. All I can see is that vault.”
“I’ve stood in it, Jim. I told you, you can smell the money. I mean it. Like something cooking.”
We were lying on the bed, waiting for time to leave.
Everything was ready. All I had to do was get Bliss downstairs into the car. He had survived my trip to Switzerland, all right. As soon as I’d got back, I went to see him, and fed him. The animal. But he was really mad and raging now. With his clanking chains and his beard. He’d bumped and knocked himself plenty, reeling around the bathroom tripping.
I tried to ignore what was in my mind, the pictures that thronged.
We figured to make it exactly eight-thirty at the bank. It would be dark.
“I know you said George will be there,” I said. “But suppose he’s not. It worries me.”
“It’s worried you ever since you came back. Don’t. And listen, I don’t see why you had to take another name—this Howard Stevens, to rent that room from those Swartzer people. You could’ve used Roy Taft. It would’ve been better.
Suppose you’d had to show your passport.”
“Not going to be a single link,” I told her. “Not one. Don’t you see? We’re going to vanish. Absolutely and for good and forever. When we get to Switzerland, we’ll pick up the money.” The excitement had me again. I got up and paced the room, smoking. “Then we’ll go to Paris, or Marseilles. Marseilles, I think. And on the way, those Roy and Gertrude Taft passports will be burned. We’ll become somebody else, because believe me, we’ll be able to get false passports, don’t you worry.”
“Jesus.”
I made endless lists.
◊ ◊ ◊
I made more lists. I checked everything. I could only find one loophole and I’d taken care of that. I’d told Ned Webster I’d be in Davenport, Iowa. If I never showed up after my vacation, there was the almost invisible chance that he would try to contact me in Davenport. Of course, Bliss might check that. But I took care of it, anyway. I called Webster, said I was in Davenport, and was taking my mother someplace else.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. Let you know, Ned. Anyway, see you in about a week and a half.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Well, she’s far from doing even the low hurdles.”
“Give her my best, Jim. Tell her she has a fine son.”
“Thanks. I will.”
That should screw everyone up, once Bliss got his finger in things.
We had four large suitcases for the money. I hadn’t been able to sleep, or eat, but Felice slept fine and ate like a horse. I was keyed up, ready to fly apart. Felice bought an old car, a Stude.
We spent days going through everything.
Neither of us had a single item that could be traced to either Felice Anderson, or James Phalen. Absolutely everything, we went over. We put everything we owned in one pile, stripped to the bare skin, then carried each piece to another pile and you’d be surprised the number of things that point directly at you. Initialed rings, or a belt buckle. Old cards in a wallet Letters. Initials inside a ring. Charm bracelets. Laundry marks. We burned everything down by the river, every label on clothes from Allayne came off, shoes were torn apart. When we were finished, there was nothing. We even checked the cars.
So now we were ready.
“We’ll take the Buick. It’s a good car and it’ll stand up.”
She had the Buck Rogers gun in her basket purse. I had a kit I’d made up of an ordinary hammer, a small sledge, chisels, jimmies; everything we could possibly need for the tellers’ vaults. She kept insisting all I’d need was my fingernail, but I knew different.
She would hold the gun since I’d be busy, and George had to be kept quiet. I was nervous.
“We’ll get in,” I said. “I’ll put the gun on him, and get that back door open. You park the car out back—no, we’ll park there to begin with, then walk around. Then, you’re going to have to somehow get the suitcases in the bank.”
“Don’t you worry. I can do it.”
“It’s better, working back there, than from the front.”
“It’s a big steel door, the back door.”
“We’ll have to be careful. But it’s got to work.”
I went up and unfastened Bliss from the toilet. I had him really wrapped in those chains. He grunted, but I didn’t give him a chance to say anything. I fastened the bathing cap on him good and tight, saw that his ears were plugged, his mouth gagged, and his eyes covered. Then I loosened his feet enough so I could lead him downstairs to the car. He kept moaning softly, now. It was a hell of a sound. When I got him in the car, I tied him securely again.
I told Felice, “Now, don’t talk much, till we get rid of him. If you do, talk quiet—and close to my ear. We’ll dump him in the country someplace between Riverport and Bridgedale. I’ll leave him tied, everything but his feet. He’ll be able to get someplace. I’ll take the covering off his eyes. And don’t worry, he’ll never find us.”
“It worries me, Jim.”
“Don’t let it.”
We took off. Felice wore a black dress and carried the big basket purse in her lap with the gun inside. We left Riverport at three in the afternoon, which should put us in Allayne almost on the dot of eight-thirty. I wanted no standing around.
“Listen,” I said quietly. “Any chance he’s not there, we just drop it till next time.”
“He’s got to be there, you fool! What about him!”
“Yeah.”
George would have to be there. Because Bliss would be wandering around the country. Still, he knew nothing of the bank.
“Anyway,” she said. “He’ll be there. I know my George.”
“If he happens to be by the door, you signal him. He’ll open up fast enough. If he’s back by his desk, like we figure, then we unlock the door and go in. Then you call him, right off, before he sets off an alarm, or flips, or something. This is ticklish. It’s got to work.”
I began to shake. I had to stop the car. I began to realize for the first time, the bad shape I was in. I’d been drawing on resources until I was overdrawn. There was very little left. Just nerve, that was all. I sat there. She was calm.
“Easy, Jim.”
“I’ll be all right.” I finally drove on.
“When we make it when we get to the car,” I said. “We drive straight back here. We’ve got all the wrapping paper, the boxes, the stamps, the twine, the labels, everything.”
“Yes, Jim.”
“Did we get those labels that read Books?”
“Certainly.”
“Getting so I can’t remember. The twine. Air-mail stamps. Regular stamps. Thick wrapping paper, various sized boxes. Small magazines. Light books. Labels. The weighing machine.
The rubber stamp.”
“Take it easy, Jim. Don’t go and blow up now.” She snuggled close to me, rested one hand on my thigh, and put her head on my shoulder. “You don’t see me all tight and crazy, do you.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“I’ve always known everything would go okay. This is a natural. It’s simple. I’ve known it for over a year. I’m excited.” She squeezed next to me, her leg pressing mine. “But, oh-h-hh-hhhh. When we get that money.”
“Easy.”
“We’ll leave the country tomorrow?”
“Yes, right after we wrap and mail everything. And that’s not going to be easy, Felice. We’ll have to travel around some
