The 1st Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  He had come so far from this, so far from AMROK II, that he was ashamed he had fallen into the same trap once again. The important thing here was to trust his instincts, follow his passions, do as he was compelled, divorced from cold logic and bloodless reason. If he was finally to know truth, it would come from heart and gut.

  And besides, there was risk—the sweet attraction of risk.

  There was a dichotomy here that puzzled him. In the planning of the crime he was willing to use cool and formal reason: the shoes, the gloves, the weapon, the technique—all designed with logic and precision. And yet when it came to the reason for the act, he deliberately shunned the same method of thought and sought the answer in “heart and gut.”

  He finally came to the realization that logic might do for method but not for motive. Again, to use the analogy of creative art, the artist thought out the techniques of his art, or learned them from others and, with patience, became a skilled craftsman. But where craft ended and art began was at the point where the artist had to draw on his own emotions, dreams, fervors and fears, penetrating deep into himself to uncover what he needed to express by his skill.

  The same could be said of mountain climbing. A man might be an enormously talented and knowledgeable mountaineer. But it was just a specialized skill if, within him, there was no drive to push himself to the edge of life and know worlds that the people of the valley could not imagine.

  He spent several evenings attempting to observe the operations of the decoys. So far as he could determine, the detectives were not being followed by “back-up men” or trailed by unmarked police cars. It appeared that each decoy was assigned a four-block area, to walk up one street and down the next, going east to west, then west to east, then circling to cover the north-south streets. And unexpectedly, hurrying past a decoy who had stepped into a shadowed store doorway, he saw they were equipped with small walkie-talkies and were apparently in communication with some central command post.

  It was, he decided, of little significance.

  Sixteen days after the attack on Bernard Gilbert, Daniel Blank returned home directly from work. It was a cold, dry evening with a quarter moon barely visible through a clouded sky. There was some wind, a hint of rain or snow in a day or so. But generally it was a still night, cold enough to tingle nose, ears, ungloved hands. There was one other factor: the neighborhood theatre was showing a movie Daniel Blank had seen a month ago when it opened on Times Square.

  He mixed himself a single drink, watched the evening news on TV. Americans were killing Vietnamese. Vietnamese were killing Americans. Jews were killing Arabs. Arabs were killing Jews. Catholics were killing Protestants. Protestants were killing Catholics. Pakistani were killing Indians. Indians were killing Pakistani. There was nothing new. He fixed a small dinner of broiled calves’ liver and an endive salad. He brought his coffee into the living room and had that and a cognac while listened to a tape of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Then he undressed, got into bed, took a nap.

  It was a little after nine when he awoke. He splashed cold water on his face, dressed in a black suit, white shirt, modestly patterned tie. He put on his crepe-soled shoes. He donned his topcoat, pulled on the black suede gloves, held the ice ax under the coat by his left hand, through the pocket slit. The leather thong attached to the handle butt of the ax went around his left wrist.

  In the lobby, doorman Charles Lipsky was at the desk, but he rose to unlock and hold the outer door open for Blank. The door was kept locked from 8:00 p.m., when the shift of doormen changed, to 8:00 a.m. the following morning.

  “Charles,” Blank asked casually, “do you happen to know what movie’s playing at the Filmways over on Second Avenue?”

  “Afraid I don’t, Mr. Blank.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll take a walk over. Nothing much on TV tonight.”

  He strolled out. It was that natural and easy.

  He actually did walk over to the theatre, to take a look at the movie schedule taped to the ticket seller’s window. The feature film would begin again in 30 minutes. He had the money ready in his righthand trouser pocket. He bought a ticket with the exact sum, receiving no change. He went into the half-empty theatre, sat in the back row without removing his coat or gloves. When the movie ended and at least fifty people left, he left with them. No one glanced at him, certainly not the usher, ticket taker, or ticket seller. They would never remember his arrival or departure. But, of course, he had the ticket stub in his pocket and had already seen the film.

  He walked eastward, toward the river, both hands now thrust through the coat’s pocket slits. On a deserted stretch of street he carefully slipped the leather loop off his left wrist. He held the ax by the handle with his left hand. He unbuttoned his coat, but he didn’t allow the flaps to swing wide, holding them close to his body with hands in his pockets.

  Now began the time he liked best. Easy walk, a good posture, head held high. Not a scurrying walk, but not dawdling either. When he saw someone approaching, someone who might or might not have been a police decoy, he crossed casually to the other side of the street, walked to the corner and turned, never looking back. It was too early; he wanted this feeling to last.

  He knew it was going to be this night, just as you know almost from the start of a climb that it will be successful, you will not turn back. He was confident, alert, anxious to feel once again that moment of exalted happiness when the eternal was in him and he was one with the universe.

  He was experienced now, and knew what he would feel before that final moment. First, the power: should it be you or shall it be you? The strength and glory of the godhead fizzing through his veins. And second, the pleasure that came from the intimacy and the love, soon to be consummated. Not a physical love, but something much finer, so fine indeed that he could not put it into words but only felt it, knew it, floated with the exaltation.

  And now, for the first time, there was something else. He had been frightened and wary before, but this night, with the police decoys on the streets, held a sense of peril that was almost tangible. It was all around him, in the air, in the light, on the mild wind. He could almost smell the risk; it excited him as much as the odor of new-fallen snow or his own scented body.

  He let these things—power, pleasure, peril—grow in him as he walked. He opened himself to them, cast off all restraint, let them flood and engulf him. Once he had “shot the rapids” in a rubber dinghy, on a western river, and then and now he had the not unpleasant sensation of helplessness, surrender, in the hands of luck or an unknown god, swept along, this way, that, the world whirling, and, having started, no way to stop, no way, until passion ran its course, the river finally flowed placid between broad banks, and risk was a happy memory.

  He turned west on 76th Street. Halfway down the block a man was also walking west, at about the same speed, not hurrying but not dallying either. Daniel Blank immediately stopped, turned around, and retraced his steps to Second Avenue. The man he had seen ahead of him had the physical appearance, the feel, of a police decoy. If Blank’s investigations and guesses were accurate, the man would circle the block to head eastward on 75th Street. So Blank walked south on Second Avenue and paused on the corner, looking westward toward Third Avenue. Sure enough, his quarry turned the corner a block away and headed toward him.

  “I love you,” Daniel blank said softly.

  He looked about. No one else on the block. No other pedestrians. All parked cars dark. Weak moon behind clouds. Pavement dry. Oh yes. Walk toward the approaching man. Pacing himself so they might meet about halfway between Second and Third Avenues.

  Ice ax gripped lightly in fingertips of left hand, beneath his unbuttoned coat. Right arm and gloved hand swinging free. Then the hearty tramp down the street. The neighborly smile. That smile! And the friendly nod.

  “Good evening!”

  He was of medium height, broad through the chest and shoulders. Not handsome, but a kind of battered good looks. Surprisingly young. A physical awareness, a
tension, in the way he walked. Arms out a little from his sides, fingers bent. He stared at Blank. Saw the smile. His whole body seemed to relax. He nodded, not smiling.

  They came abreast. Right hand darting into the open coat. The smooth, practised transfer of the ax to the free right hand. Weight on left foot. Whirl as smooth as a ballet step. An original art form. Murder as a fine art: all sensual kinetics. Weight onto the right foot now. Right arm rising. Lover sensing, hearing, pausing, beginning his own turn in his dear pas de deux.

  And then. Oh. Up onto his toes. His body arching into the blow. Everything: flesh, bone, sinew, muscle, blood, penis, kneecaps, elbows and biceps, whatever he was…giving freely, completely, all of him. The crunch and sweet thud that quivered his hand, wrist, arm, torso, down into his bowels and nuts. The penetration! And the ecstasy! Into the grey wonder and mystery of the man. Oh!

  Plucking the ax free even as the body fell, the soul soaring up to the cloudy sky. Oh no. The soul entering into Daniel Blank, becoming one with his soul, the two coupling even as he had imagined lost astronauts embracing and drifting through all immeasurable time.

  He stooped swiftly, not looking at the crushed skull. He was not morbid. He found the shield and ID card in a leather folder. He no longer had to prove his deeds to Celia, but this was for him. It was not a trophy, it was a gift from the victim. I love you, too.

  So simple! It was incredible, his luck. No witnesses. No shouts, cries, alarms. The moon peeped from behind clouds and withdrew again. The mild wind was there. The night. Somewhere, unseen, stars whirled their keening courses. And tomorrow the sun might shine. Nothing could stop the tides.

  “Good movie, Mr. Blank?” Charles Lipsky asked.

  “I liked it,” Daniel Blank nodded brightly. “Very enjoyable. You really should see it.”

  He went through the now familiar drill: washing and sterilizing the ice ax, then oiling the exposed steel. He put it away with his other climbing gear in the front hall closet. The policeman’s badge represented a problem. He had tucked Lombard’s driver’s license and Gilbert’s ID card under a stack of handkerchiefs in his top dresser drawer. It was extremely unlikely the cleaning woman, or anyone else, would uncover them. But still…

  He wandered through the apartment, looking for a better hiding place. His first idea was to tape the identification to the backs of three of the larger mirrors on the living room wall. But the tape might dry, the gifts fall free, and then…

  He finally came back to his bedroom dresser. He pulled the top drawer out and placed it on his bed. There was a shallow recess under the drawer, between the bottom and the runners. All the identification fitted easily into a large white envelope, and this he taped to the bottom of the drawer. If the tape dried, and the envelope dropped, it could only drop into the second drawer. And, while taped, it was a position where he could easily check its security every day, if he wanted to. Or open the envelope flap and look at his gifts.

  Then he was home free—weapon cleansed, evidence hidden, all done that reason told him should be done. He even saved the ticket stub for the neighborhood movie. Now was the time for reflection and dreaming, for pondering significance and meaning.

  He bathed slowly, scrubbing, then rubbing scented oil onto his wet skin. He stood on the bathroom mat, staring at himself in the full-length mirror, unaccountably, he began to make the gyrations of a strip-tease dancer: hands clasped behind his head, knees slightly bent, pelvis pumping in and out, hips grinding. He became excited by his own mirror image. He became erect, not fully but sufficiently to add to his pleasure. So there he stood, pumping his turgid shaft at the mirror.

  Was he mad? he wondered. And, laughing, thought he might very well be.

  4

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING he was having breakfast—a small glass of apple juice, a bowl of organic cereal with skim milk, a cup of black coffee—when the nine o’clock news came on the kitchen radio and a toneless voice announced the murder of Detective third grade Roger Kope on East 75th Street the previous midnight. Kope had been promoted from uniformed patrolman only two weeks previously. He left a widow and three small children. Deputy Commissioner Broughton, in charge of the investigation, stated several important leads were being followed up, and he hoped to make an important statement on the case shortly.

  Daniel Blank put his emptied dishes into the sink, ran hot water into them, went off to work.

  When he left his office in the evening, he purchased the afternoon Post, but hardly glanced at the headline: “Killer Loose on East Side.” He carried the paper home with him and collected his mail at the lobby desk. He opened envelopes in the elevator: two bills, a magazine subscription offer, and the winter catalogue from Outside Life.

  He fixed himself a vodka on the rocks with a squeeze of lime, turned on the television set and sat in the living room, sipping his drink, leafing through the catalogue, waiting for the evening news.

  The coverage of Kope’s murder was disappointingly brief. There was a shot of the scene of the crime, a shot of the ambulance moving away, and then the TV reporter said the details of. the death of Detective Kope were very similar to those in the murder of Frank Lombard and Bernard Gilbert, and police believed all three killings were the work of one man. “The investigation is continuing.”

  Later that evening Blank walked over to Second Avenue to buy the early morning editions of the News and the Times. “Mad Killer Strikes Again,” the News’ headline screamed. The Times had a one-column story low on the front page: “Detective Slain on East Side.” He brought the papers home, added them to the afternoon Post and settled down with a kind of bored dread to read everything that had been printed on Kope’s death.

  The most detailed, the most accurate report, Blank acknowledged, appeared under the byline “Thomas Handry.” Handry, quoting “a high police official who asked that his name not be used,” stated unequivocally that the three murders were committed by the same man, and that the weapon used was “an ax-like tool with an elongated spike.” The other papers identified the weapon as “a small pick or something similar.”

  Handry also quoted his anonymous informant in explaining how a police decoy, an experienced officer, could be struck down from behind without apparently being aware of the approach of his attacker or making any effort to defend himself. “It is suggested,” Handry wrote, “the assailant approached from the front, presenting an innocent, smiling appearance to his victim, then, at the moment of passing, turned and struck him down. It is believed by the usually reliable source that the killer carried his weapon concealed under a folded newspaper or under his coat. Although Gilbert died from a frontal attack, the method used in Kope’s murder closely parallels that in the Lombard killing.”

  Handry’s report ended by stating that his informant feared there would be additional attacks unless the killer was caught. Another paper spoke of an unprecedented assignment of detectives to the case, and the third paper stated that a curfew in the 251st Precinct was under consideration.

  Blank tossed the papers aside. It was disquieting, he admitted, that the term “ax-like tool” had been used in Handry’s report. He had to assume the police knew exactly what the weapon was, but were not releasing the information. He did not believe they could trace the purchase of an ice ax to him; his ax was five years old, and hundreds were sold annually all over the world. But it did indicate he would be wise not to underestimate the challenge he faced, and he wondered what kind of a man this Deputy Commissioner Broughton was who was trying so hard to take him by the neck. Or, if not Broughton, who Handry’s anonymous “high police official” was. That business of approaching from the front, then whirling to strike—who had guessed that? There were probably other things known or guessed, and not released to the newspapers—but what?”

  Blank went over his procedures carefully and could find only two obvious weak links. One was his continued possession of the victims’ identification. But, after pondering, he realized that if it ever came to a police search of
his apartment, they would already have sufficient evidence to tie him to the murders, and the identification would merely be the final confirmation.

  The other problem was more serious: Celia Montfort’s knowledge of what he had done.

  5

  EROTICA, THE SEX boutique owned by Florence and Samuel Morton was located on upper Madison Avenue, between a gourmet food shop and a 100-year-old store that sold saddles and polo mallets. Erotica’s storefront had been designed by a pop-art enthusiast and consisted of hundreds of polished automobile hubcaps which served as distorting mirrors of the street scene and passing pedestrians.

  “It boggles the mind,” Flo nodded.

  “It blows the brain,” Sam nodded.

  Between them, they had come up with this absolutely marvy idea for decorating their one window for the Christmas shopping season. They had, at great expense, commissioned a display house to create a naked Santa Claus. He had the requisite tasseled red cap and white beard, but otherwise his plump and roseate body was nude except for a small, black patent leather bikini equipped with a plastic codpiece, an item of masculine attire Erotica was attempting to revive in New York, with limited success.

  The naked Santa was displayed in the Madison Avenue window for one day. Then Lieutenant Marty Dorfman, Acting Commander of the 251st Precinct, paid a personal visit to Erotica and politely asked the owners to remove the display, citing a number of complaints he had received from local churches, merchants, and outraged citizens. So the bikini-clad Saint Nicholas was moved to the back of the store, the window filled with miscellaneous erotic Christmas gifts, and Flo and Sam decided to inaugurate the extended-hours shopping season with an open house; free Swedish glug for old and new customers and a dazzling buffet that included such exotic items as fried grasshoppers and chocolate-covered ants.