First Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  The charge was eventually withdrawn, the case dropped. The dog owner moved from the building. Blank gave Lipsky five dollars for his trouble and thought no more of the matter.

  But about six months after this incident, something of a more serious nature happened.

  On a Saturday night, lonely and jangling, Daniel Blank put on his “Via Veneto” wig and strolled out into midnight Manhattan. He wore a Swedish blazer of black wool and a French “body shirt” in a lacy polyester weave, cut to cling to the torso. It was a style called “Chemise de gigolo” and had a front that opened halfway to the waist. An ornate Maltese cross hung from a silver chain about his neck.

  On impulse, nothing else, he stopped at a Third Avenue tavern he had seen before but never entered. It was called “The Parrot.” There were two couples at the bar and two single men. No one sat at the tiny tables. The lone waiter was reading a religious tract.

  Blank ordered a brandy and lighted a lettuce cigarette. He looked up and, unexpectedly, caught the eye of one of the single men in the mirror behind the bar. Blank shifted his gaze immediately. The man was three seats away. He was about 45, short, soft, with the meaty nose and ruddy face of a bourbon drinker.

  The bartender had his radio tuned to WQXR. They were playing Smetana’s “The Moldau.” The bartender was reading a scratch sheet, marking his choices. The couples had their heads together and were murmuring.

  “You have beautiful hair.”

  Daniel Blank looked up from his drink. “What?”

  The porky man had moved onto the barstool next to his.

  “Your hair. It’s beautiful. Is it a rug?”

  His first instinct was to drain his drink, pay, and leave. But why should he? The dim loneliness of The Parrot was a comfort. People together and yet apart: that was the secret.

  He ordered another brandy. He turned a shoulder to the man who was hunching closer. The bartender poured the drink, then went back to his handicapping.

  “Well?” the man asked.

  Blank turned to look at him. “Well what?”

  “How about it?”

  “How about what?”

  Up to now they had been speaking in conversational tones: not loud, but understandable if anyone was interested in listening. No one was.

  But suddenly the man leaned forward. He thrust his flabby face close: watery eyes, trembling lips: hopeful and doomed.

  “I love you,” he whispered with an anxious smile.

  Blank hit him in the mouth and toppled him off the stool onto the floor. When the man got up, Blank hit him again, breaking his jaw. He fell again. Blank was frantically kicking him in the groin when the bartender finally came alive and rushed around the bar to pinion his arms and drag him away.

  Once again the police were summoned. This time Blank thought it best to call his lawyer, Russell Tamblyn. He came to the 251st Precinct house and, shortly before dawn, the incident was closed.

  The injured man who, it was learned, had a sad record of offenses including attempts to molest a child and to proposition a plain-clothed patrolman in a subway toilet—refused to sign a complaint. He said he had been drunk, knew nothing of what had happened, and accepted responsibility for the “unfortunate accident.”

  The detective who took Daniel Blank’s statement was the same man who had taken his testimony in the incident involving the tenant who kicked his dog.

  “You again?” the detective asked curiously.

  The attorney brought the signed waiver to Daniel Blank, saying, “It’s all squared away. He’s not making a charge. You’re free to go.”

  “Russ, I told you it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Oh sure. But the man has a broken jaw and possible internal injuries. Dan, you’ve got to learn to control yourself.”

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Because the doorman, Charles Lipsky, found out, even though nothing had been published in the newspapers. The bartender at The Parrot was Lipsky’s brother-in-law.

  A week later the doorman rang the bell of Blank’s apartment. After inspection through the peephole, he was admitted. Lipsky immediately launched into a long, jumbled chronicle of his troubles. His wife needed a hernia operation; his daughter needed expensive treatment for an occluded bite; he himself was heavily in debt to loansharks who threatened to break his legs, and he needed five hundred dollars at once.

  Blank was bewildered by this recital. He asked what it had to do with him. Lipsky then stammered that he knew what had happened at The Parrot. It wasn’t Mr. Blank’s fault, certainly, but if other tenants … If it became known … If people started talking …

  And then he winked at Daniel Blank.

  That knowing wink, that smirky wink, was worse than the victim’s whispered, “I love you.” Daniel Blank felt attacked by a beast whose bite excited and inflamed. Violence bubbled.

  Lipsky must have seen something in his eyes, for he turned suddenly, ran out, slammed the door behind him. Since then they had hardly spoken. When necessary, Blank ordered and the doorman obeyed, never raising his eyes. At Christmas, Daniel distributed the usual amounts: ten dollars to each doorman. He received the usual thank-you card from Charles Lipsky.

  Blank pushed the button; the door of the automatic elevator slid silently open. He stepped inside, pushed button C (for Close door), button 21 (for his floor), and button M (for Music desired). He rode upward to the muted strains of “I Got Rhythm.”

  He lived at the front end of one leg of the building’s U. It was an exceptionally large four-room apartment with living room windows facing north, bedroom windows east, and kitchen and bathroom windows west, or really down into the apartment house courtyard. The walk to his door from the elevator was along a carpeted tunnel. The corridor was softly lighted, the many doors blind, air refrigerated and dead.

  He unlocked his door, reached in and switched on the foyer light. Then he stepped inside, looked about. He closed the door, double-locked it, put on the chain, adjusted the Police Bar, a burglar-proof device consisting of a heavy steel rod that fitted into a slot in the floor and was propped into a recess bolted to the door.

  Mildly hungry, Blank dropped clothing and gear on a foyer chair and went directly to the kitchen. He switched on the blued fluorescent light. He inspected the contents of his refrigerator, selected a small cantaloupe and sliced it in half, at right angles to the stem line. He wrapped half in wax paper and returned it to the refrigerator. He scooped seeds and soft pulp from the other half, then filled the cavity with Familia, a Swiss organic cereal. He squeezed a slice of fresh lemon over all. He ate it steadily, standing, staring at his reflection in the mirror over the kitchen sink.

  Finished, he dumped melon rind into the garbage can and rinsed his fingers. Then he moved from room to room, turning the light on in the next before turning it off in the last. Undressing in his bedroom he found the note in his shirt pocket: “… Thousands of fantastic pipple …” He placed it on his bedside table where he’d see it upon awakening.

  He closed the bathroom door tightly before taking a shower so hot it filled the air with heavy steam, clouding the mirrors and sweating the tiles. He lathered with an emollient soap of cocoa butter that slicked his skin. After rinsing in cool water and turning off the shower, he rubbed his wet body with a cosmetically treated tissue claiming to “restore natural oils to dry skin” and “smooth, soften, and lubricate the epidermis.”

  His twice-a-week maid had been in during the afternoon. His bed was made with fresh sheets and pillowcases. The top sheet and sateen comforter were turned down. It was hardly 11:00 p.m., but he was pleasantly weary and wanted sleep.

  Naked, allowing water and tiny oil globules to dry on his exposed body, he moved about the apartment, drawing drapes, checking window latches and door locks. He stepped into the bathroom again to swallow a mild sleeping pill. He felt sure he would not need it, but he didn’t want to think in bed.

  The long living room was dimly lit by light from the bedroom. The end of the living room faced north
, with drapes over wide plate glass windows that could not be opened. The east wall, abutting the bedroom, was almost 25 feet long and nine feet high.

  This expanse, painted a flat white, Daniel Blank had decorated with mirrors. He had allowed a space four feet from the floor to accommodate a couch, chairs, end tables, lamps, a bookcase, a wheeled cart of hi-fi equipment. But above that four-foot level, the wall was covered with mirrors.

  Not one mirror or fitted tiles of mirrors, but more than fifty individual mirrors adorned that wall; tiny mirrors and large mirrors, flat and beveled, true and exaggerative, round and square, oval and rectangular. The wall quivered with silver reflections.

  Each mirror was framed and hung separately: frames of wood and metal, painted and bare, plain and ornate, modern and rococo, carved wood and bland plastic. Some were fogged antiques; one was a 3X4-inch sheet of polished metal: the mirror issued to Marines in World War II.

  The mirrors were not arranged in a planned pattern on this nervous wall; they had been hung as they were purchased. But somehow, haphazardly, as the wall filled, frames and reflections had grown an asymmetrical composition. His city was there, sprung and lurching.

  Padding back to the bedroom, naked, scented, oiled, Daniel Blank looked to his mirrored wall. He was chopped and fragmented. As he moved, his image jumped, glass to glass. A nose there. Ear. Knee. Chest. Navel. Foot. Elbow. All leaped, were held, disappeared to be born again in something new.

  He stopped, fascinated. But even motionless he was minced and snapped, all of him divided by silvered glass that tilted this way and that. He felt himself and saw twenty hands moving, a hundred fingers probing: wonder and delight.

  He went into the bedroom, adjusted the air-conditioner thermostat, slid into bed. He fell asleep seeing in the dim glow of the nightlight those myriad eyes reflecting him in framed detail. Waist in steel. Shoulder in carved oak. Neck in plastic. Knee in copper. Penis in worm-eaten walnut.

  Art.

  3

  SHE HAD BEEN ONE of the first women in Manhattan to leave off her brassiere. He had been one of the first men in Manhattan to use a necktie as a belt. She had been one of the first to adopt a workman’s lunch pail as a purse. He had been one of the first to wear loafers without socks. The first! A zeal for the new bedeviled them, drove them.

  No notice of Florence and Samuel Morton was made in the long, detailed separation agreement signed by the Blanks. Gilda took the Buick sedan, the Waterford crystal, the Picasso print. Daniel took the apartment lease, 100 shares of U.S. Steel, and the Waring blender. No one mentioned the Mortons. It was tacitly assumed they were Daniel’s “best friends,” and he was to have them. So he did.

  They contradicted the folk saying, “Opposites attract.” Husband and wife, they were obverse and reverse of the same coin. Where did Samuel leave off and Florence begin? No one could determine. They were a bifocal image. No. They were a double image, both in focus simultaneously. Physically they were so alike that strangers took them for brother and sister. Short, bony-thin, with helmets of black, oily hair, both had ferrety features, the quick, sharp movements of creatures assailed.

  He, married, had been a converter of synthetic textiles. She, married, had been a fabric designer. They met on a picket line protesting a performance of “The Merchant of Venice,” and discovered they had the same psychoanalyst. A year later they were divorced, married to each other, and had agreed to have no children because of the population explosion. Both gladly, cheerfully, joyfully, submitted to operations.

  Their marriage was two magnets clicking together. They had identical loves, fears, hopes, prejudices, ambitions, tastes, moods, dislikes, despairs. They were one person multiplied by two. They slept together in a king-sized bed, entwined.

  They changed their life styles as often as their underwear. They were ahead of everyone. Before it was fashionable, they bought pop art, op-art, and then switched back to realism sooner than art critics. They went through marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, speed, and a single, shaking trial of heroin, before returning to dry vermouth on the rocks. They were first to try new restaurants, first to wear Mickey Mouse watches, first to discover new tenors, first to see new movies, plays, ballets, first to wear their sunglasses pushed atop their heads. They explored all New York and spread the word: “This incredible little restaurant in Chinatown … The best belly-dancer on the West Side … That crazy junk shop on Canal Street …”

  Born Jews, they found their way to Catholicism via Unitarianism, Methodism, and Episcopalianism (with a brief dabble in Marxism). After converting and confessing once, they found this groovy Evangelical church in Harlem where every one clapped hands and shouted. Nothing lasted. Everything started. They plunged into Yoga, Zen, and Hare Krishna. They turned to astrology, took high colonics, and had a whiskered guru to dinner.

  They threw themselves in the anti-Vietnam War movement and went to Washington to carry placards, parade and shout slogans. Once Sam was hit on the head by a construction worker. Once Flo was spat upon by a Wall Street executive. Then they spent three weeks in a New Hampshire commune where 21 people slept in one room.

  “They did nothing but verbalize!” said. Sam.

  “No depth, no significance!” said Flo.

  “A bad scene!” they said together.

  What drove them, what sparked their search for “relevance,” their hunger to “communicate,” to have a “meaningful dialogue,” to find the “cosmic flash,” to uncover “universal contact,” to, in fact, refashion the universe, was guilt.

  Their great talent, the gift they denied because it was so vulgar, was simply this: both had a marvelous ability to make money. The psychedelic designs of Florence sold like mad. Samuel was one of the first men on Seventh Avenue to foresee the potential of the “youth market.” They started their own factory. Money poured in.

  Both, now in their middle 30s, had been the first with the new. They leeched onto the social chaos of the 1960s: the hippies, flower children, the crazy demand for denim jeans and fringed leather jackets and pioneer skirts and necklaces for men and Indian beads and granny glasses and all the other paraphernalia of the young, taken up so soon by their elders.

  The Mortons profited mightily from their perspicacity, but it seemed to them a cheesy kind of talent. Without acknowledging it both knew they were growing wealthy from what had begun as a sincere and touching crusade. Hence their frantic rushing about from picket line to demonstration, from parade to confrontation. They wanted to pay their dues.

  In further expiation, they sold the factory (at an enormous profit) and opened a boutique on Madison Avenue, an investment they were happily convinced would be a disaster. It was called “Erotica,” based on a unique concept for a store. The idea had come to them while attending religious services of a small Scandinavian sect in Brooklyn which worshipped Thor.

  “I’m bored with idleness,” he murmured.

  “So am I,” she murmured.

  “A store?” he suggested. “Just to keep busy.”

  “A shop?” she suggested. “A fun thing.”

  “A boutique,” he said.

  “Elegant and expensive,” she said. “We’ll lose a mint.”

  “Something different,” he mused. “Not hotpants and paper dresses, miniskirts and skinny sweaters, army jackets and newsboy caps. Something really different. What do people want?”

  “Love?” she mused.

  “Oh yes,” he nodded. “That’s it.”

  Their boutique, Erotica, sold only items related, however distantly, to love and sex. It sold satin sheets in 14 colors (including black), and a “buttock pillow” advertised merely “for added comfort and convenience.” It carried Valentines and books of love poetry; perfumes and incense; phonograph records that established a mood; scented creams and lotions; phallic candles; amorous prints, paintings, etchings and posters; unisex lingerie; lace pajamas for men, leather nightgowns for women; and whips for both. An armed guard had to be hired to eject certain obviously d
isturbed customers.

  Erotica was an instant success. Florence and Samuel Morton became wealthier. Depressed, they turned to blackstrap molasses and acupuncture. Making money was their tragic talent. Their blessing was that they were without malice.

  And the first thing Daniel Blank saw upon awaking Sunday morning was the note on his bedside table, the invitation to brunch from Flo and Sam. They would, he remembered fondly, serve things like hot Syrian bread, iced lumpfish, smoked carp, six kinds of herring. Champagne, even.

  He padded naked to the front door, unlocked chains and bars, took in his New York Times. He went through the ritual of relocking, carried the newspaper to the kitchen, returned to the bedroom, began his 30 minutes of exercise in front of the mirror on the closet door.

  It was the quiet Sunday routine he had grown to cherish since living alone. The day and its lazy possibilities stretched ahead in a golden glow. His extensions and sit-ups and bends brought him warm and tingling into a new world; anything was possible.

  He showered quickly, gloating to see his dried skin had softened and smoothed. He stood before the medicine cabinet mirror to shave, and wondered once again if he should grow a mustache. Once again he decided against it. It would, he felt, make him look older, although a drooping Fu-Manchu mustache with his glabrous skull might be interesting. Exciting?

  His face was coffin-shaped and elegant, small ears set close to the bone. The jaw was slightly aggressive, lips sculpted, freshly colored. The nose was long, somewhat pinched, with elliptic nostrils. His eyes were his best feature: large, widely spaced, with a brown iris. Brows were thick, sharply delineated.

  Curiously, he appeared older full-face than in profile. From the front he seemed brooding. Lines were discernible from nose creases to the corners of his mouth. The halves of his face were identical; the effect was that of a religious mask. He rarely blinked and smiled infrequently.

  But in profile he looked more alert. His face came alive. There was young expectation there: noble brow, clear eye, straight nose, carved and mildly pouting lips, strong chin. You could see the good bones of cheek and jaw.