Джеймс Кейн - The Enchanted Isle

The store had a doorman too, and I gave him fifty cents to get me another cab and told the driver the address on Lombard Street, which I didn’t have to look up, as after last night I’d never forget it. But then, riding along, it all looked strangely familiar, and it turned out, when I asked the driver, that I’d been there that very morning, as Lombard Street runs into Frederick Road. It all seemed very queer, but when we got to the block the house was in, I had him stop and wait on the corner so he couldn’t hear what was going to be said. I walked to the house in the coat, thanking God the day wasn’t hot or I’d have looked like a kook. It was just a Baltimore house, two-story, of brick, with green shutters and white marble steps, and I went up and rang the bell. A child opened the door, a little boy. I said, “Mr. Vernick, please.”

“...My father’s eating his lunch.”

“Please tell him it’s important.”

Then a woman was there, in housedress and gingham apron. She asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I want to see Mr. Vernick.”

“I asked who you are.”

“OK, but who are you?”

“I’m Mrs. Vernick. Once more, who are you?”

Her voice had an ugly sound all of a sudden, and maybe mine did too as I told her, “I’m Miss Vernick — his daughter, Mandy.”

“He doesn’t have any daughter.”

“Oh yes he has. I’m her.”

There may have been more, I’m not sure. But in the middle of it, here a guy came in his shirt-sleeves, a youngish guy in his thirties, with long nose and eyes set close together. He put his arms around the woman, kissed her, then stepped in front of her and the child, though they both stuck around to hear. He asked, “Yes, Miss? What can I do for you?”

“You’re Edward Vernick?”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“I’m your daughter, Mandy. I talked to you last night, and you said some things I have to go further with. Like insinuating I would ask you for money.”

“I don’t have any daughter.”

“Don’t you think my mother knows?”

“Who is your mother, please?”

“Sally Vernick, your former wife.”

“...It’s true, Sally Vernick was my wife, or at least we were married for quite a few years, though we actually lived together five days. But, Mandy, you’re not my child, as I can pretty well prove.”

“Pretty well? What does that mean?”

“Means until now, I don’t have actual proof.”

I piled into him for that, though liking it less and less, as it was beginning to bug me bad that I didn’t like this guy or want him for a father. So I said stuff, pretty mean, finally asking, “And what does that mean, ‘until now’?”

“Means that now at last, when I see what you look like, Mandy, there’s no resemblance at all to me or my kith or my kin.” That’s what he said, “kith or kin.” He went on: “If I ever had any doubt of the trick your mother played me in naming me as your father, I don’t have anymore. You’re not my child, Mandy, so let’s get it over with, what you came about. You said something about money. Is that what this is, a touch?”

None of it was going as I’d hoped, and in fact I was caught by surprise by that stuff he was dishing out, which seemed to say, and in fact did say, that someone else was my father, so my tongue kind of got stuck, and words wouldn’t come, or at lease the kind of words I wanted. But now all of a sudden words did come, of the very kind I wanted. I flung the coat around, saying, “Does this look like a pauper? Does it look like I need your money?”

“Does what look like you need my money?”

“This coat, what do you think?”

“Well, it’s a very nice coat.”

“I asked if it looks like I need your money?”

“Mandy, it doesn’t look like anything, until I know how you got it. How did you get it, then?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“It is if I’m to answer your question. Was it given you? And if so, by whom? Or did you steal it? Or did you get it the way your mother got hers? If she has one.”

“What do you mean, the way she got hers?”

“You know what I mean — in bed.”

“How’d you like to go to hell?”

“Was there something else?”

I must have got back in the cab and ridden down to the hotel, but the next thing I really remember is bursting into the room, after opening the door with my key, and coming apart all over, right in front of Rick. He was in bed in pajamas, a highball tray beside him, reading the paper, the same one I had read, that he’d had sent up with the Scotch and seltzer and ice. And I no sooner was there that I started to whoop, weeping and wailing and bawling, so I couldn’t make myself stop. And then in the middle of it I saw tears on the coat and whipped it off so it wouldn’t get smeared up and threw it on the other bed. Then I went on with the show. He lay there staring at me, then got up to stare at the coat, then walked to the chair in his bare feet to sit and listen at me. Then after a long time he asked, “OK, what have you done? Are they on your tail or what? And where did this coat come from?” It was some time before I could speak, but then I said, “I haven’t done anything! It’s that Vernick, the things that he said! The lying things, the rotten things, to me, out there at his house!” So then I started to talk as control came at last, while he sat there, listening to what I said.

It went on quite a while. Because I no sooner started on Vernick than I’d have to backtrack to the store to explain about the coat. And I’d no sooner get started on that than I’d have to backtrack to lunch and what I’d seen in the paper. And then, all of a sudden, I started crying again — for no reason at all, but I did. So at last he started to talk. He said, “That’s nice, I’ll say it is. Here we were inching ahead — bought ourselves bags, checked the big one to leave it, then found ourselves a pad so we could lay up and think. Then we really got a break. Mandy, did you read all the stuff in the paper? How that girl idemnified me? As Vito Rossi, one of the bandit mob? We didn’t know it, but this was the worst bunch of thugs on earth, the Caskets, and Rossi, he was one of them. And the girl, the one that forked over the money, when shown a picture of him, a mug shot by the police, said, ‘Yes, that’s the one, he held the basket.’ We were all in the clear, playing in wonderful luck, and then what do you do? Go and buy this coat, paying with twenty-dollar bills that had to be hot. The store still has them and is going to report them, sure as God made little apples, to the police, who of course report to the papers. And as though that wasn’t enough, you parade the damned coat for Vernick, and when he sees the papers, that’s it!.. Christ, we had it made! It was all ours. We were in the clear. And now what? If the eight ball was there before, God knows what the number is now!” And he fell on his knees in front of the chair, burying his face in the seat.

“You don’t have to cry about it.”

“How stupid can you get?”

“At lease I did something! I didn’t just lie there, drinking booze and feeling sorry for myself!”

He got back into bed again and lay there a long time. Then, moaning, he kept saying over and over, “Mandy, how could you? How could you?”

“...OK then, I did wrong.”

“Here we were sitting pretty, and...”

“I did what I had to do! It was why I got in it at all! To get this mink coat and shake it in his face, that horrible Ed Vernick! I told you, didn’t I? I told you, I told those bandits!”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up!”

He got back into bed, then lay there a while, pressing his hands to his head and squirming under the covers. Then at last he sat up and commenced hollering again. “I have to find out! If that goddam store called the cops! I have to find out and I can’t — I can’t go out to call; I don’t have any pants! I sent them out, sent them out with the coat to be pressed, to be dry-cleaned and pressed, and here I am caught with no clothes till that valet brings them back . And I got to find out!”