Seventh Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “No,” Dora said, “But if he’s such a big shot in drugs, what’s his interest in precious metals and jewelry stores?”

  “Beats me,” Wenden said. “I thought about gold smuggling, but that doesn’t make sense; gold is available everywhere, and the market sets the price. Also, gold is too heavy to smuggle in bars and ingots. Got any ideas, Terry?”

  “Nada,” Ortiz said, and finished his beer. “I thought maybe he might be bringing in gold bars with the insides hollowed out and stuffed with dope. But that wouldn’t work because, like you said, gold is heavy stuff and someone would spot the difference.”

  “So?” John said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “This is too juicy to drop,” Ortiz said. “I think maybe I should take a look at Stuttgart Precious Metals. It could be just a front, and instead of gold, their vault is jammed with kilos of happy dust. I’ll case the joint, and if it looks halfway doable, maybe we should pull a B and E. John?”

  “I’m game,” Wenden said.

  Ortiz turned suddenly to Dora. “You got wheels?” he asked.

  “A rented Ford Escort,” she said.

  “Lovely. We may ask for a loan.”

  “If you need a lookout,” she said, “I’m willing.”

  “I love this woman,” Terry said to Wenden. “Love her.” He stood up, pulled on his jacket and a black leather cap. “I’ll check out Stuttgart and let you know. Thanks for the refreshments. You coming, John?”

  “I think I’ll hang around awhile,” Wenden said.

  The narc raised his hand in benediction. “Bless you, my children,” he said. He took two pretzels from the bag and left.

  Dora laughed. “He thinks we have a thing going,” she said.

  “I thought we had,” John said. “May I have another beer?”

  She brought him a cold can. “John, I didn’t want to say anything while Terry was here, but you look awful. You’ve lost weight, and even the bags under your eyes have bags. Aren’t you getting any sleep?”

  “Not enough. I have to go for a physical next month, and the doc will probably stick me in Intensive Care.”

  “I worry about you,” she said.

  “Do you?” he said with a boyish smile. “That’s nice. Listen, enough about me; let’s talk about the big enchilada: the three guys who got capped. You hear anything new?”

  Dora told him about her conversations with Felicia and Eleanor, and how the former planned to marry Turner Pierce. She told him nothing of what she had learned from Gregor Pinchik and his merry band of hackers.

  “You think Felicia is hooked?” Wenden asked.

  “Definitely. She should be under treatment right now.”

  “Where is she getting her supply?”

  “Eleanor says Turner Pierce is her candyman. But Eleanor is so bitter about the divorce, I don’t know if she’s telling the truth.”

  John shook his head. “We find coke under the floorboards in Father Callaway’s pad, Felicia is snorting the stuff, and now Ramon Schnabl, a drug biggie, turns out to have some connection with Starrett’s gold trading. Maybe it all fits together, but I don’t see it. Do you?”

  “Not yet,” Dora said. “Do you have anything new on the three homicides?”

  He brightened. “Yeah—we finally got a break. At least I hope it’s a break. Remember I told you we were checking out all the stores, bars, and restaurants in the neighborhood of the Church of the Holy Oneness, to see if Loftus-Callaway had been in the night he was offed. We finally got to a scruffy French restaurant on East Twenty-eighth Street, and an old waiter there says he thinks the good Father was in that night.”

  “John, it’s taken a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “You think it’s an easy job, that you just walk into a joint, flash a photo of the dear departed and ask if he was there at a certain time on a certain date, and then people tell you? It’s not that simple, Red. Clerks and bartenders and waiters have so many customers, they forget individual faces. And also, it’s hard to find out who was on duty that particular night. And then it turns out that one of the waiters has been fired, or quit for another job, or maybe moved out of the state. And then he’s got to be tracked down. Believe me, it’s a long, ass-breaking job, and chances are good it’ll turn out to be a dead end. But it’s got to be done. So as I said, we finally found this restaurant on East Twenty-eighth where a waiter remembers Callaway being in the night he was killed. The reason the waiter remembers him was that the noble padre didn’t leave a tip. The moral of that story is: Never stiff a waiter.”

  “Was Callaway alone or with someone?”

  Wenden looked at her admiringly. “You’re pretty sharp—you know that? I’m sorry for that crack I made about you being an amateur. But I did say you were a talented and beautiful amateur. That helps, doesn’t it?”

  “Some,” Dora said, but it still rankled. “Who was Callaway with?”

  “The waiter says he sat in a booth with a young woman. But the waiter is so old that to him a ‘young woman’ could be anyone from sixty on down.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I went to Mrs. Olivia Starrett and got photographs of Eleanor, Felicia, and Helene Pierce. They’re color Polaroids taken at a dinner party last Christmas at the Starretts’ apartment. I’m having blow-ups made, and I’m going back to that waiter and see if he can pick out one of them as the woman who sat in the booth and had drinks with the recently deceased. It’s a long shot, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “It sounds good to me,” Dora said enthusiastically. “I think you’re doing a great job.”

  “Tell that to my boss,” the detective said mournfully. “He thinks I’m dragging my feet. Actually, I’m dragging my tail. Order me to go home, Red, and get some sleep.”

  “Go home and get some sleep.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I should. Remember the night you let me crash here?”

  “Not tonight, John,” Dora said firmly.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I don’t trust either of us. Besides, you’re too bushed even to go through the motions.”

  “You’re right,” he said, groaning. “I feel like one of the undead. Well, thanks for everything, Red.”

  “John, drive carefully.”

  He stared at her with eyes heavy with weariness. “No decision yet, huh?” he said.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you’re thinking about it?”

  “All the time,” she said, almost angrily.

  “Good,” he said. “It would work for us, Red, I know it would.”

  They embraced before he left, hugged tightly, kissed long and lingeringly. Finally Dora pushed him out the door and turned her head away so he wouldn’t see the tears brimming.

  She cleaned up the pretzel crumbs, still snuffling, a little, and dumped the empty beer cans. She took up her pen and notebook but sat for several moments without scribbling a word. After a while she was able to stop brooding about John Wenden and concentrate on what she had learned from ballsy Terry Ortiz.

  She figured he’d probably go ahead with a break-in at Stuttgart Precious Metals, and John would help him, and so would she. She knew what they would find—and it wasn’t drugs. But she’d never tell the detectives what she had guessed; it would bruise their masculine egos. Let them go on thinking she was an amateur.

  41

  NUMBERS HAD ALWAYS FASCINATED Turner Pierce. He even gave them characteristics: 1 was stalwart, 3 was sensual, 7 was stern, 8 was lascivious. But even without this fanciful imaging, numbers had the power to move the world. Once you understood them and how they worked, you could exploit their power for your own benefit.

  But now, in his elegant, number-ordered universe, a totally irrational factor had been introduced. The presence of Felicia Starrett was like the “cracking” of a functioning computer by the invasion of a virus. The software he had designed to program his life was being disrupted by this demented woman.

  He was quite aware of what was ha
ppening to him. It was as if he had caught Felicia’s unreason. His linear logicality was constantly being ruptured by her drug-induced madness, and his reactions were becoming as disordered as her hallucinations and paranoia. He knew his physical appearance was deteriorating and his work for Ramon Schnabl suffering from neglect.

  Her speech was becoming increasingly incoherent. She had lost the ability to control her bladder and bowels. Her rages had become more violent. She had lost so much weight that her dry, hot skin was stretched tightly over white knobs of bones. Turner was chained to a convulsive skeleton whose paroxysms became so extreme that he was forced to restrain her with bands of cloth. But even when fettered to the bed, her thrashings were so furious he feared her thin bones might snap.

  It was only when she smoked a pipe of ice that these frightening displays of dementia were mollified. But then her body temperature rose so high, her breathing became so labored, her heartbeat so erratic, that he panicked at the thought she might expire in his bed, in his apartment. His life had not been programmed to handle that eventuality.

  He phoned Ramon Schnabl, twice, intending to ask if an antidote existed that might return Felicia to normality. His calls were not returned. He then phoned Helene and, trying not to sound hysterical, asked her to come over and baby-sit “the patient” so he could get out of that smashed and fetid apartment for a while, have a decent dinner, and try to jump-start his brain in the cold night air.

  Helene, not questioning, said she’d be there as soon as possible.

  “Thank you,” Turner Pierce said, not recognizing his own piteous voice.

  Felicia Starrett dwelt in a world she did not recognize. It was all new, all different: colors more intense, sounds foreign, smells strange and erotic. She heard herself babbling but could not understand the words. She wasn’t aware of who she was or where she was. Her new world was primeval. She remembered a few things in brief moments of lucidity: an aching past and a glorious future when she would marry Turner Pierce and everything would be all right. Forever and ever. She stared about with naked eyes.

  Once, in Kansas City, when she had repulsed Sid Loftus, he had said to her, “You’re not deep, you’re shallow.” Then he had added, “But wide.” Helene Pierce had never understood what he meant by that. If he was implying that she was incapable of reflecting on the Meaning of Life, he was totally wrong; Helene often had deep thoughts. She was not, after all, a ninny.

  Experience had taught her that life was dichotomous. People were either staunch individuals, motivated solely by self-interest, or they were what might be termed communicants who devoted their lives to interactions with families, spouses, friends, lovers, neighborhoods, cities.

  It seemed to Helene the choice was easy. Being a communicant demanded sacrifice of time and energy—and life was too brief for that. Being a self-centered separate demanded less sacrifice but more risk. You were on your own, completely. So she began to equate the communicant with timidity and the individual with courage. She had, she told herself, the balls to go it alone. Gamble all, lose all or win all.

  Then Turner phoned and asked her to come to his apartment and watch over nutty Felicia while he took a break. Hearing the panic in his voice—she was sensitive to overtones when men spoke—Helene immediately agreed. She recognized at once that it was an opportunity that might not soon occur again.

  As she prepared to leave, she reviewed the scenario she had devised. It had the virtue of simplicity. It was direct, stark, and she figured it had a fifty-percent chance of success. But her entire life had been a fifty-fifty proposition; she was not daunted by a coin flip.

  And so she started out, excited, almost sexually, by what she was about to do.

  Turner had the apartment door locked, bolted, chained; it took him a moment to get it open.

  “My God,” he said in a splintered voice, “am I ever glad to see you, babe. Come on in.”

  Helene tried not to reveal her shock at his appearance: haunted eyes, sunken cheeks, unshaven jaw, uncombed hair. Even his once meticulously groomed mustache had become a scraggly blur. His clothes were soiled and shapeless.

  She said nothing about the way he looked but glanced about the disordered apartment with dismay.

  “Turner,” she said, “you’re living in a swamp.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said bitterly. “I’ve tried to clean up, but then she goes on a rampage again. And I obviously can’t hire someone to come in with a raving lunatic in the next room.”

  “She’s in the bedroom?”

  He nodded. “I’ve had to tie her to the bed. It’s for her own safety,” he added defensively. “And mine.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “At the moment she’s sleeping. Or unconscious; I don’t know which. She had a pipe this afternoon. If she comes out of it tonight she’ll be groggy for a few hours before she crashes. Think you can handle it?”

  “Of course,” Helene said. “Get yourself cleaned up, go have a good dinner. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “Thanks, babe,” he said throatily. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. What’s it like out?”

  “Absolutely miserable. Snow, sleet, freezing rain. Cold as hell and a wind that just won’t quit.”

  “Maybe I’ll run over to Vito’s and grab a veal chop and a couple of stiff belts. Make me a new man.”

  “Sure it will,” Helene said.

  He went into the bathroom, and a moment later she heard the sound of his electric shaver. She didn’t go into the bedroom but made a small effort to straighten up the living room, picking books and magazines from the floor, setting chairs upright, carrying used glasses and plates back to the kitchen. She took a look in the refrigerator. Nothing much in there: two oranges, a package of sliced ham, some cheese going green. There was a bottle of Absolut in the cupboard under the sink, but she didn’t touch it. She didn’t need Dutch courage.

  Turner appeared looking a little better. He had shaved, washed up, put on a fresh shirt, brushed his hair and mustache.

  “Two things,” he said. “Keep the front door locked and don’t, under any circumstances, untie her. She may beg you to turn her loose, but don’t do it. You just don’t know what she’ll do. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Take your time,” Helene said.

  After he left, she bolted the front door and glanced at her watch. Then she went into the bedroom. It was a malodorous place, furry with dust, and overheated. Illumination came from a dim bulb in the dresser lamp. The rug was littered with scraps of torn cloth, newspapers, a few shards of broken glass. And there were great, ugly stains.

  Felicia Starrett, eyes closed, lay under a thin cotton sheet despoiled with blotches of yellow and brown. Her breathing was shallow and irregular; occasionally little whimpers escaped from her opened mouth, no louder than a kitten’s mewls. Her wrists were bound together with a strip of sheeting. Her ankles were similarly shackled, and a long, wide band of cloth had been run under the bed, the two ends knotted across her waist.

  Helene thought she looked in extremis, that her next small breath might be the last. She pulled a straightback chair to the bedside, touched one of those bound claws lightly.

  “Felicia,” she said softly.

  No response.

  “Felicia,” she repeated and stroked a blemished, shrunken arm. “Felicia, dear, can you hear me?”

  Eyelids rose, not slowly but suddenly; her eyes just popped open. Helene leaned closer.

  “Felicia,” she said gently, “it’s Helene. Do you recognize me, darling?”

  Eyes swung to her, but the focus was somewhere else.

  “Water,” Felicia said, trying to lick dry lips.

  Helene went back to the kitchen, found a plastic cup, filled it with tap water, brought it to the bedroom. She held it to those parched lips while the fettered woman gulped greedily. She finished it all, turned her head aside and spewed it all over the pillow, bed, floor.

  “Never mind,” Helene said, contro
lling her own nausea at the sight, “we’ll try again a little later. Is there anything you want, Felicia?”

  Rheumy eyes turned to her. “Helene?” the woman asked.

  “Of course! I’m Helene, dear, here to help you. How do you feel?”

  “I’m sick.”

  “I know, Felicia, but you’re going to be better real soon.”

  “Where’s Turner?”

  “He had to go out for a little while, but he’ll be back before you know it.”

  Felicia looked down at her bound hands lying atop the soiled sheet. “Untie me,” she said in a scratchy voice.

  “Not right now, dear. Maybe when Turner gets back. Would you like to try a little more water now? Maybe an orange would taste good. There’s a nice cold orange in the fridge. I’ll get it and peel it for you.”

  She returned to the kitchen again, and, after searching a few moments, found where Turner had hidden the knives: on the top shelf of the cupboard over the range. Helene selected the long, pointed carving knife, the one Felicia had used to slash the furniture. She brought the knife and orange back to the bedroom.

  She sat calmly, slowly slicing rind from the orange with the sharp blade, letting the peelings drop to the floor. She was aware that Felicia was watching her every move.

  “There we are!” Helene said brightly, holding up the naked orange. “Doesn’t that look nice? Would you like a piece right now?”

  “Where’s Turner?” Felicia repeated.

  “He had to go out for a little while,” Helene said again, “but he’ll be back soon. You love Turner, don’t you, darling.”

  Felicia blinked her eyes, tried to moisten her cracked lips. She attempted to speak, once, twice, and finally croaked, “We’re going to get married.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Helene said, hunching closer. “Now listen to me, dear, and try to understand what I’m saying.”