The third Deadly Sin exd-3

by Lawrence Sanders

  "Oh wow," he said, "what a crush! That's madness!"

  "Yes," she said. "Could I have another glass of wine, please?"

  They didn't try to dance again, but they didn't want to leave.

  "They're not so much younger than we are," Zoe said.

  "No," he agreed, "not so much."

  They sat at their table, drinking white wine and looking with' amusement, fear, and envy at the frenzied activity around them. The things they saw, flashing lights; the things they heard, pounding rhythm-all stunned them.

  They glanced at each other, and their clasped hands tightened. Never had they felt so alone and together.

  Still, still, there was an awful fascination. All that nudity. All that sexuality. It lured. They both felt the pull.

  Zoe saw one young woman whirling so madly that her long blond hair flared like flame. She wore a narrow strip of shirred elastic across her nipples. Her jeans were so tight that the division between buttocks was obvious… and the mound between her thighs.

  She danced wildly, mouth open, lips wet. Her eyes were half-closed; she gasped in a paroxysm of lust. Her body fought for freedom; she offered her flesh.

  "I could do that," Zoe Kohler said suddenly.

  "What?" Ernest shouted. "What did you say? I can't hear you."

  She shook her head. Then they sat and watched. They drank many glasses of wine. They felt the heat of the dancers. What they witnessed excited them and diminished them at once, in a way they could not understand.

  Finally, long past 1:00 a.m., they rose dizzily to their feet, infected by sensation. Ernest had just enough money to pay the bill and leave a small tip.

  Outside, they stood with arms about each other's waist, weaving slightly. They tasted the cool night air, looked up at stars dimmed by the city's blaze.

  "Go home now," Ernest muttered. "Don't have enough for a cab. Sorry."

  "Don't worry about it, dear," she said, taking his arm. "I have money."

  "A loan," he insisted.

  She led him, lurching, to Park Avenue. When a cab finally stopped, she pushed Ernest into the back seat, then climbed in. She gave the driver her address.

  "Little high," Ernest said solemnly. "Sorry about that."

  "Silly!" she said. "There's nothing to be sorry for. I'll make us some black coffee when we get home."

  They arrived at her apartment house. He tried to straighten up and walk steadily through the lobby. But upstairs, in her apartment, he collapsed onto her couch and looked at her helplessly.

  "I'm paralyzed," he said.

  "Just don't pass out," she said, smiling. "I'll have coffee ready in a jiff. Then you'll feel better."

  "Sorry," he mumbled again.

  When she came in from the kitchen with the coffee, he was bent far forward, head in his hands. He raised a pale face to her.

  "I feel dreadful," he said. "It was the wine."

  "And the heat," she said. "And that smoky air. Drink your coffee, darling. And take this…"

  He looked at the capsule in her palm. "What is it?"

  "Extra-strength aspirin," she said, proffering the Tuinal. "Help prevent a hangover."

  He swallowed it down, gulped his coffee steadily. She poured him another cup.

  "Ernie," she said, "it's past two o'clock. Why don't you sleep here? I don't want you going home alone at this hour."

  "Oh, I couldn't-" he started.

  "I insist," she said firmly. "You take the bed and I'll sleep out here on the couch."

  He objected, saying he already felt better, and if she'd lend him a few dollars, he'd take a cab home; he'd be perfectly safe. But she insisted he stay, and after a while he assented-but only if she slept in her own bed and he bunked down on the sofa. She agreed.

  She brought him a third cup of coffee. This one he sipped slowly. When she assured him a small brandy would help settle his stomach, he made no demur. They each had a brandy, taking off their shoes, slumping at opposite ends of the long couch.

  "Those people…" he said, shaking his head. "I can't get over it. They just don't care-do they?"

  "No, I suppose not. It was all so-so ugly."

  "Yes," he said, nodding, "ugly."

  "Not ugly so much as coarse and vulgar. It cheapens, uh, sex."

  "Recreational sex," he said. "That's what they call it; that's how they feel about it. Like tennis or jogging. Just another diversion. Isn't that the feeling you got, watching them? You could tell by the way they danced."

  "All that bare flesh!"

  "And the way they moved! So suggestive."

  "I, ah, suppose they have-they make-they go to bed afterwards. Ernie?"

  "I suppose so. The dancing was just a preliminary. Did you get that feeling?"

  "Oh yes. The dancing was definitely sexual. Definitely. It was very depressing. In a way. I mean, then making love loses all its importance. You know? It means about as much as eating or drinking."

  "What I think," he said, looking directly at her, "is that sex-I mean just physical sex-without some emotional attachment doesn't have any meaning at all."

  "I couldn't agree more. Without love, it's just a cheap thrill."

  "A cheap thrill," he repeated. "Exactly. But I suppose if we tried to explain it to those people, they'd just laugh at us."

  "I suppose they would. But I don't care; I still think we're right."

  They sat a moment in silence, reflectively sipping their brandies.

  "I'd like to have sex with you," he said suddenly.

  She looked at him, expressionless.

  "But I never would," he added hastily. "I mean, I'd never ask you. Zoe, you're a beautiful, exciting woman, but if we went to bed together, uh, you know, casually, it would make us just like those people we saw tonight."

  "Animals," she said.

  "Yes, that's right. I don't want a cheap thrill and I don't think you do either."

  "I don't, dear; I really don't."

  "It seems to me," he said, puzzling it out, "that when you get married, you're making a kind of statement. It's like a testi-monial. You're signing a legal document that really says it's not just a cheap thrill, that something more important is involved. You're pledging your love forever and ever. Isn't that what marriage means?"

  "That's what it's supposed to mean," she said sadly. "It doesn't always work out that way."

  She pushed her way along the couch. She sat close to him, put an arm about his neck. She pulled him close, kissed his cheek.

  "You're an idealist," she whispered. "A sweet idealist."

  "I guess I am," he said. "But is what I want so impossible?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Something that has meaning. I go to work every day, come home and fry a hamburger. I watch television. I'm not complain-ing; I have a good job and all. But there must be more than that. And I don't mean a one-night stand. Or an endless series of one-night stands. There's got to be more to life than that."

  "You want to get married?" she asked in a low voice, remembering Maddie's instructions.

  "I think so. I think I do. I've thought a lot about it, but the idea scares me. Because it's so final. That's the way I see it anyway, I mean, it's for always, isn't it? Or should be. But at the same time the idea frightens me, I can't see any substitute. I can't see anything else that would give me what I want. I like my job, but that's not enough."

  "An emptiness," she said. "A void. That's what my life is like."

  "Yes," he said eagerly, "you understand. We both want sorne-thing, don't we? Meaning. We want our lives to have meaning."

  The uncovering that had started that afternoon in Central Park had progressed to this; they both felt it. It was an unfolding, a stripping, that neither wanted to end. It was a fearful thing they were doing, dangerous and painful.

  Yet it had become easier. Intimacy acted on them like an addictive drug. Stronger doses were needed. And they hardly dared foresee what the end might be, or even if there was an end. Perhaps their course was limitless and the
y might never finish.

  "There's something I want," she said. "Something. But don't ask me what it is because I don't know, I'm not sure. Except that I don't want to go on living the way I do. I really don't."

  He leaned forward to kiss her lips. Twice. Tenderly.

  "We're so alike," he breathed. "So alike. We believe in the same things. We want the same things."

  "I don't know what I want," she said again.

  "Sure you do," he said gently, taking her hand. "You want your life to have significance. Isn't that it?"

  "I want…" she said. "I want… What do I want? Darling, I've never told this to anyone else, but I want to be a different person. Totally. I want to be born again, and start all over. I know the kind of woman I want to be, and it isn't me. It's all been a mistake, Ernie. My life, I mean. It's been all wrong. Some of it was done to me, and some of it I did myself. But it's my life, and so it's all my responsibility. Isn't that true? But when I try to understand what I did that I should not have done, or what I neglected to do, I get the horrible feeling that the whole thing was beyond my…"

  But as she spoke, she saw his eyelids fluttering. His head came slowly down. She stopped talking, smiled, took the empty brandy glass from his nerveless fingers. She smoothed the fine hair, stroked his cheek.

  "Beddy-bye," she said softly.

  He murmured something.

  She got him into the bedroom, half-supporting him as he stumbled, stockinged feet catching on the rug. She sat him down on the edge of the bed and kneeled to pull off his socks. Small, Pale feet. He stroked her head absently, weaving as he sat, eyes closed.

  She tugged off his jacket, vest, tie, shirt. He grumbled sleepily as she pushed him back, unbelted and unzipped his trousers, peeled them away. He was wearing long white drawers, prac-tically Bermuda shorts, and an old-fashioned undershirt with shoulder straps.

  She yanked and hauled and finally got him straightened out under the covers, his head on the pillow. He was instantly asleep, didn't even stir when she bent to kiss his cheek.

  "Good night, darling," she said softly. "Sleep well."

  She washed the coffee things and the brandy glasses. She swallowed down a salt tablet, assorted vitamins and minerals, drank a small bottle of club soda. After debating a moment, she took a Tuinal.

  She went into the bathroom to shower, her third that day. The wound on her thigh was now just a red line, and she soaped it carefully. She lathered the rest of her body thickly, wanting to cleanse away-what?

  She dried, powdered, used spray cologne on neck, bosom, armpits, the insides of her thighs. She pulled on a long nightgown of white batiste with modest inserts of lace at the neckline.

  She crawled into bed cautiously, not wanting to disturb Ernie. But he was dead to the world, breathing deeply and steadily. She thought she saw a smile on his lips, but couldn't be sure.

  Maddie had instructed her to determine Ernest's attitude toward marriage, and she had done it. She thought that if she were a more positive woman, more aggressive, she might easily lead him to a proposal. But at the moment that did not concern her.

  What was a puzzlement was her automatic response to Maddie's advice. She had obeyed without question, although she was the one intimately involved, not Maddie. Yet she had let the other woman dictate her conduct.

  It had always been like that-other people pushing her this way and that, imposing their wills. Her mother's conversation had been almost totally command, molding Zoe to an image of the woman she wanted her daughter to be.

  Even her father, by his booming physical presence, had shoved her into emotions and prejudices she felt foreign to her true nature.

  And her husband! Hadn't he sought, always, to remake her into something she could not be? He had never been satisfied with what she was. He had never accepted her.

  Everyone, all her life, had tried to change her. Ernest Mittle, apparently, was content with Zoe Kohler. But could she be certain he would remain content? Or would the day come when he, too, would begin to push, pull, haul, and tug?

  It came to her almost as a revelation that this was the reason she sought adventures. They were her only opportunity to try out and to display her will.

  She knew that others-like the Son of Sam-had blamed their misdeeds on "voices," on hallucinatory commands that overrode their inclinations and volition.

  But her adventures were the only time in Zoe Kohler's life when she listened to her own voice.

  She turned onto her side, moved closer to Ernie. She smelled his sweet, innocent scent. She put one arm about him, pulled him to her. And that's how she fell asleep.

  During the following week, she had cause to remember her reflections on how, all her life, she had been manipulated.

  The newspapers continued their heavy coverage of the Hotel Ripper investigation. Almost every day the police revealed new discoveries and new leads being pursued.

  Zoe Kohler began to think of the police as a single intelligence, a single person. She saw him as a tall, thin individual, sour and righteous. He resembled the old cartoon character "Prohibition," with top hat, rusty tailcoat, furled umbrella. He wore an expression of malicious discontent.

  This man, this "police," was juiceless and without mercy. He was intelligent (frighteningly so) and implacable. By his deductive brilliance, he was pushing Zoe Kohler in ways she did not want to go. He was maneuvering her, just like everyone else, and she resented it-resented that anyone would tamper with her adventures, the only truly private thing in her life.

  For instance, the newspapers reported widened surveillance of all public places in midtown Manhattan hotels by uniformed officers and plainclothesmen.

  Then a partial description of the Hotel Ripper was published. She was alleged to be five-seven to five-eight in very high heels, was slender, wore a shoulder-length wig, and carried a trenchcoat.

  She also wore a gold link bracelet with the legend: why not? Her last costume was described as a tightly fitted dress of bottle- green silk with spaghetti straps.

  These details flummoxed Zoe Kohler. She could not imagine how "police" had guessed all that about her-particularly the gold bracelet. She began to wonder if he had some undisclosed means of reading her secret thoughts, or perhaps reconstructing the past from the aura at the scene of the crime.

  That dour, not to be appeased individual, who came shuffling after her told the newspaper and television reporters that the Hotel Ripper probably dressed flashily, in revealing gowns. He said her makeup and perfume would probably be heavy. He said that, although she was not a professional prostitute, she deliber- ately gave the impression of being sexually available.

  He revealed that the weapon used in the first four crimes was a Swiss Army Knife, but it was possible a different knife was used in the fifth killing. He mentioned, almost casually, that it was believed the woman involved was connected, somehow, with the hotel business in Manhattan.

  It was astounding! Where was "police" getting this information? For the first time she felt quivers of fear. That dried-up, icily determined old man with his sunken cheeks and maniacs glare would give her no rest until she did what he wanted.

  Die.

  She thought it through carefully. Her panic ebbed as she began to see ways to defeat her nemesis.

  ***

  On the night of June 24th, a Tuesday, Zoe Kohler was awakened by a phone call at about 2:15 a.m.

  At first she thought the caller, a male, was Ernest Mittle since he was sniffling and weeping; she had witnessed Ernie's tears several times. But the caller, between chokes and wails, identified himself as Harold Kurnitz.

  She was finally able to understand what he was saying: Maddie Kurnitz had attempted to commit suicide by ingesting an overdose of sleeping pills. She was presently in the Intensive Care Unit of Soames-Phillips-and could Zoe come at once?

  She showered before dressing, for reasons she could not comprehend. She told herself that she was not thinking straight because of the shocking news. She gave the
night doorman a dollar to hail a cab for her. She was at the hospital less than an hour after Harry called.

  He met her in the hallway on the fifth floor, rushing to her with open arms, his face wrenched.

  "She's going to make it!" he cried, his voice thin and quavery. "She's going to make it!"

  She got him seated on a wooden bench in the brightly lighted corridor. Slowly, gradually, with murmurs and pattings, she calmed him down. He sat hunched over, deflated, clutching trembling hands between his knees. He told her what had happened…

  He said he had returned to the Kurnitz apartment a little before 1:30 a.m.

  "I had to work late at the office," he mumbled.

  He had started to undress, and then for some reason he couldn't explain, he decided to look in on Maddie.

  "We were sleeping in different bedrooms," he explained. "When I work late… Anyway, it was just luck. Or maybe God. But if I hadn't looked in, the doc says she would have been gone."

  He had found her crumpled on the floor in her shortie pajamas. Lying in a pool of vomit. He thought at first she had drunk too much and had passed out. But then, when he couldn't rouse her, he became frightened.

  "I panicked," he said. "I admit it. I thought she was gone. I couldn't see her breathing. I mean, her chest wasn't going up and down or anything."

  So he had called 911, and while he was waiting, he attempted to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But he didn't know how to do it and was afraid he might be harming her.

  "I just sort of blew in her mouth," he said, "but the guy in the ambulance said I didn't hurt her. He was the one who found the empty pill bottle in the bathroom. Phenobarbital. And there was an empty Scotch bottle that had rolled under the bed. The doc said if she hadn't vomited, she'd have been gone. It was that close."

  Harry had ridden in the ambulance to Soames-Phillips, watching the attendant administer oxygen and inject stimulants.

  "I kept repeating, 'Don't do this to me, Maddie.'" he said. "That's all I remember saying: 'Please don't do this to me.' Wasn't that a stupid, selfish thing to say? Listen, Zoe, I guess you know Maddie and I are separating. Maybe this was her way of, uh, you know, getting back at me. But I swear I never thought she'd pull anything like this. I mean, it was all friendly; we didn't fight or anything like that. No screaming. I never thought she'd…"