Mortal Sins

by Anna Porter

  She lay with her face toward the window, her eyes shut against the last remnants of daylight. David had pulled the covers over them, and held her, spoon-fashion, close to his chest, as though he had guessed her thoughts. “Would you like to get married?” he asked suddenly, his lips brushing her ear.

  It was not the first time he had asked her. It was his substitute for saying “I love you,” an expression he assiduously avoided. “It’s debased coinage,” he’d told her once. “Doesn’t mean anything. Suffers from overuse.” He never even condescended to an innocuous “me too” over the telephone.

  It had been Myrna’s way of holding on, her constant cry of need, knowing he had no option but to go on with the ritual of “I love you”s. It would have taken a peculiar kind of bastard to attack such an exposed throat. Myrna was certain that David didn’t have it in him, and she was right. The constant mix of pity and guilt—because he had stopped loving her years ago—kept him parroting the words through clenched teeth long after she had already transferred her own cravings to the all-forgiving arms of the Roman Catholic Church.

  Being Catholic had imbued her with a new sense of purpose, a secondhand aura of self-worth, an implied superiority she wore like a mantle. Not only did she no longer need his forced expressions of love, they had become an obscenity, as had any attempts at even formal sex. She took to arranging flowers at the drop-in center run by Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, knitted long scarves for the poor, and did penance by handing out warm bowls of Lipton’s Noodle Soup at the Jarvis soup kitchen. David used to hope she would find a part-time job, police salaries being what they were, but she treated the suggestion with the scorn it deserved. Doing the Lord’s work left no time for such frivolities.

  “Maybe,” Judith replied. That, too, was as before. She was not yet ready for another kick at the can. Marriage still meant the steady subjugation practiced by James. “Why? Has Myrna agreed to the divorce?”

  The telephone spared him a complicated reply. It was Sergeant Levine. He told David that the lab report on Singer’s shoes was in. They had found traces of paper fiber in the toe section of one shoe. Singer must have been carrying some document that the killer or killers wanted. The Indian swore on his mother’s grave there had been no paper in the shoe when he found it, though he could barely recall finding them in the first place.

  “Will you be coming in tonight, sir?” Levine inquired respectfully.

  “Why?”

  “The Chief was looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Search me, sir.”

  “Smart-ass,” David mumbled under his breath when he hung up the phone. “Thinks he knows everything.”

  “And does he?” Judith asked injudiciously.

  David was struggling into his trousers, which had been bunched up around his ankles when he fell onto the bed. One shoe was wedged into the end so tight he had to push and shove to remove it. He made small, unhappy grunting noises.

  “For example,” Judith continued needling him, “how did he know where to find you?”

  “They always know where to find me...” Another grunt... “That’s the damn rules...shit.” The trouser cuff ripped with a loud fart of a sound, and David sat on the bed again. The rip had finally released the shoe. “Going to look really spiffy for the Chief,” he said, dejected.

  Judith offered to fix the trousers for him, but he was in a hurry. He said he’d call later and left.

  But the only call that evening was James announcing he had reached a new plateau in his relationship with his children, that they had begun to communicate without the mechanisms of false projection they had all leaned on before. Deep down, all three of them understood—which put them all ahead of Judith, who didn’t.

  “When must they be returned?” he asked petulantly.

  “School on Tuesday,” Judith said, feeling like the wicked stepmother who had never taken an interest in analysis. “That gives you three more days, probably enough to assuage any remnants of guilt you may still harbor about ignoring them all these years.” Could she have tried to be a better sport?

  James sighed. “Jude, oh Jude,” he lamented, “there was no need for that. None, and you well know it. A little understanding can go a long way to healing wounds, if only you’d try to sublimate your feelings of inadequacy and forgive yourself. Dr. Murdoch says the heaviest burden we each carry around is our own sense of deficiency. You could do a lot worse, Jude, than spend a day or two in Chicago and go see him. Be happy to set it up for you.”

  “Jolly good of you,” Judith said breathlessly, but the irony was lost on him—psychiatry does not encourage humor. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to my daughter.”

  “As you wish... Till Monday night, then.” And he dropped the receiver against some hard object so it thundered in Judith’s ear.

  After a minute Anne came on. “You okay, Mom?” James must have warned her that she wasn’t in a relating mood.

  “Just fine,” Judith said with forced brightness. “I’m going to Paris tomorrow. Only for a couple of days, but it ought to be exciting.”

  “Oh wow, can I come?”

  “Wish you could, darling, but not this time. It’s all work and when I finish the story I’ll get you the Roots boots. Next week. The suede lace-ups. That’s how much money this one’s going to bring in.” What she meant to say was that she missed them and hoped Anne missed her, but the boots were as close as she could get to saying that sort of thing at a distance.

  Anne shrieked with delight. “Great, Mom. Holy! Love ya!” she yelled easily, then went into a long and enthusiastic account of how she’d “bombed” some hill called the Bluff, and it was a cinch, so she was going to try the Rattler tomorrow. She was bringing her feet together now and sashaying down, instead of the abominable snowplow the new guys were still doing, not that there’s anything wrong with the snowplow, it’s just that only nerds did it; after three days anyone can learn to parallel. She’d made a bunch of new friends and met this gorgeous guy in the clubhouse who goes to Upper Canada College and doesn’t have a single zit and dresses in jean jacket and blue jeans and skis better than anyone else at all, even Daddy. He’s 18 and they were going to go up the first lift together tomorrow.

  Jimmy had gone swimming in somebody’s indoor pool but he was in great shape for a slob. He’d told Dad he wanted to be a pilot, which was an outright lie because we all know he’s afraid of heights, but he was forever trying to impress the hell out of Dad with all kinds of manly talk, like flying and football, and the two of them went down to the hockey rink last night so Jimmy could show off his great skating. “Neither of them can skate worth a damn, but they were both trying so hard they didn’t notice.”

  “Did Jimmy tell him about the marijuana?”

  “Not yet. But he said he would. I don’t think he had anything to do with it, Mom. If he was on something, I’d know about it. I know everything else he does.”

  She bubbled on for another minute or two, warming Judith with her enthusiasm, then said goodbye in a flurry of haste to join some new friends at the door.

  In preparation for the Paris trip, Judith read through her now voluminous notes on Zimmerman and the people around him, then set out a series of questions for further interviews. Philip Masters wasn’t due back from Bermuda till tomorrow. There was no use trying to see Brenda again for a while. But on an impulse, she called American Airlines to see what it would cost to fly to Paris via New York and found it was about the same. Then she called Arthur Zimmerman and made an appointment to see him the next day at 11 o’clock, at his place on Riverside Drive.

  She put her notes away, finished packing, and collapsed into bed. If the airspace over LaGuardia wasn’t crammed and if there wasn’t a traffic jam over the Triborough Bridge, that left room for breakfast with Marsha, and she might even catch up with David in the afternoon.

  Eighteen

  AT FIRST SHE DIDN’T know why she woke up. One minute she had been wandering in a drea
m with an interminable maze of soft sycamore trees placed too close together, the next she was lying in bed, stiff, her eyes open, listening. It was very quiet. She could hear herself breathe. Short, shallow breaths, as though she had been running, which, indeed, she had been in the dream. She had panicked when she couldn’t find her way through the peeling bark, and there had been a sound following her, someone close behind, but not yet in sight.

  Then she heard it again: the sound of scraping steps, the sound from the dream, except she wasn’t dreaming now. She sat up and listened harder, her whole body intent on the noise, trying to hear it more clearly, wanting it to become something familiar, like the kitchen tap, the neighbor’s cat pursuing his fickle love, the Persian from across the street, a late-night stroller—anything she’d recognize, so she could blame her imagination and go back to sleep. But the sound remained mysterious. She could now identify it as coming from outside, near the back of the house where the small yard housed the wet wood for the fireplace. The sound of scraping was a rolling log. Then more steps on the back porch, near the door that thank God was stuck and she knew no amount of shoving could open because she and David had both tried.

  She reached for the bedside lamp but stopped in mid-motion as she realized she’d be visible once the light was on, and if whatever it was did get into the house, it would know she was aware of it, and that seemed more dangerous than pretending she was asleep or out. She could hide. Her mind raced around the closet spaces, but she made no movement to climb out of bed. She listened as the steps—yes, they were definitely steps— came around toward the side, where a thin alleyway separated her space from Stevie’s. How she wished Stevie were out there, that the night prowler was her, hoping that Judith was awake but not wanting to intrude until she was sure.

  Her eyes found the electric clock on the table next to the typewriter. It was 3 A.M.

  The body outside heaved against the giant garbage pail she shared with Stevie and knocked it over; must be a heavy body because she knew the pail had been full. Its metal top clattered to the sidewalk. A bag of bottles smashed onto the concrete. Then it was coming around to the front. Up the creaky steps, not softly, not hesitating, pounding, purposeful boots making directly for the door. They stopped.

  She leaped from the bed and ran toward the curtains. She’d hide behind the curtains and keep listening. She couldn’t go into the closet. If someone was coming into the house she wouldn’t be cornered in the dark with no means of escape. For some obscure reason, she suddenly remembered a prairie dog she’d seen when she was a child of eight visiting relatives in Saskatchewan. It had drowned in its burrow when the local boys had poured water into its hole. “Usually they come out,” her cousin explained, “and we can bag ’em.”

  Its nose was black and its tiny red tongue hung out from between its furry lips.

  The curtain was long enough to hide her feet but not thick enough to hide her shape if someone turned the light on in the bedroom. The phone. She’d have to get to the phone.

  The steps started up again. She peered out from behind the curtain, still hoping it was Stevie. It wasn’t. The shoulders were too broad. The distant yellow streetlight didn’t illuminate much of his frame, but it was a man, and he was wearing some sort of peaked cap. He was on the porch now and she lost sight of him. There was a rustling noise. Was he trying the lock?

  She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled toward the phone. She sensed rather than saw where it was, next to the bed. She felt along the small table till she touched its familiar plastic shape, lifted the receiver, and almost dropped it, the dial tone seemed so loud. Could he hear it? She dialed by feel, trying for 911, Emergency, and got it wrong. Then tried again and this time succeeded. The ringing shrilled into her ear. Once. Twice. The operator came on, a bored and sleepy voice.

  “This is an emergency. Give me the police.” Judith’s voice came in a shallow whisper.

  Downstairs there was an explosion of shattering glass. Something thudded into the living room, rolled, rattled along and came to a stop—thump—at the foot of the stairs. It had sounded like metal when it hit the floor, something hollow. It bounced once.

  The voice at the other end of the phone was asking if he could help her. Yes. She gave her name and address and something about there being a man trying to break into her house, then dropped the receiver and stood, listening and waiting.

  With the window broken the outside sounds were clearer now. Long strides on the porch, receding. Down the steps, thumping along the path, toward the street. The soft banging of boots on concrete. Still going farther away. A car door opened. Slammed shut. The engine started and the car rolled quietly toward Bloor Street. No light through the windows as it passed. He must have left his headlights off.

  It was intensely quiet, so still she heard the blood thumping in her ears. Gingerly, she crept toward the banister at the top of the stairs and peered down. A faint yellow light fell onto the sheer curtains in the corner of the living room. A shrill buzzing from the phone. She had suddenly become aware of it—or had it just begun?

  In the distance, a dog barked. Under her hand, the wood felt hot and clammy. She slid her hand along and down slowly toward where the hollow object had stopped. Her other hand touched the wall, its shiny smoothness comforting as she homed in on the light switch. She turned it on, took a long deep breath to calm herself, then descended.

  The thing lay on the worn brown carpet, smack up against the bottom step. It was wrapped in white paper, and something bright red was oozing from it, spreading over the carpet. The same red ooze streaked across the room from the front window, in splotches and random stripes, and series of drops, like thick blood. As she approached the object, she saw it was cylindrical. She sat on the bottom step and examined it closer. One end was shiny, flat, a silvery surface; the other was open, black and red. That’s where the oozing red spread from. All around the can—no doubt it was a can—a folded piece of thick white paper splattered in red, like the carpet. It was held on by a rubber band.

  She touched the can, tentatively at first. When nothing happened, she picked it up and, looking inside it, decided it was a can of red paint. She traced its passage from the foot of the stairs back to the window it had been thrown through. The splotches of red along the way were bits of soft paint where the tin had bounced and rolled, before coming to rest. Shards from the broken window lay scattered about on the carpet—large jagged pieces, edged in red. Only one of the panes was broken.

  She turned the can in her hands to see if there were any marks on the paper that gave a hint as to why it was there. She loosened the rubber band, her hands now covered in the red paint and sticky. When the piece of folded paper came away, it revealed a perfectly ordinary label on a perfectly ordinary can of Corona red paint. She smoothed out the paper. Inside, where it had been folded over, there was something painted with a brush in crude red letters, all capitals. As she held it under the light the letters formed into a message: STAY AWAY FROM JEWS.

  Underneath, there was a second piece of paper glued to the first. It looked as if it had been clipped from a medicine bottle. It was printed in bold type and it read: WARNING. Just below was a skull, the universal sign for poison.

  Judith sat in her favorite chair and continued to study the paper. The letters were formed with a thin brush, thin on the down-strokes, flabby on the cross-strokes. Where the brush had been lifted off, little pools of hardened paint had formed. She felt it with her fingers. The writing was dry. Whoever threw the can into the house must have prepared the message hours previously. Corona takes almost a day to dry.

  For the first time since she awoke she noticed the cold. She was wearing only a flannel shirt and no slippers and the paint had dribbled onto her toes. They looked unnaturally white against the splotches of crimson. An icy wind blew in the flimsy curtains where the shattered glass was. A car came down the street, much too fast, and stopped in front of her house. Doors opening.

  She raced upstairs for
her pink and beige bathrobe, before opening the door for the two amazingly young policemen who had already been there once, investigating a break-in, barely three days ago. Her first impulse was to apologize for getting them out again, in the middle of the night, this time with no more excuse than some maniac dropping cans of paint into her living room, and after they had been so kind and let Jimmy off a marijuana charge.

  “What happened here?” the older one asked, before she had a chance. Neither of them was looking at her. When she followed their eyes, she noticed there was some dark paint on the outside of her door—that’s what they were studying. They both reached for their flashlights at the same time.

  What they saw in the glare of the two flashlights was something out of a World War II movie, something so out of place here, so out of sync with the times, that for a minute or two no one said anything. They just stared at it in disbelief: a big painted swastika. It was bright red, like the rest of the paint, glistening wet and streaking downward. It looked as though it had been dipped in blood.

  Nineteen

  “THERE ARE KOOKS and crazies everywhere,” David said, still trying to reassure her. “These guys aren’t dangerous.”

  “What do you mean they’re not dangerous? They blow up synagogues in Turkey, slaughter people in coffeehouses in Paris, they’ve even built some kind of armed camp in Iowa, for Chrissakes—and you’re telling me they’re not dangerous?” Her voice came in a harsh whisper that only David was supposed to hear, but the man above her bent his knees a little and slouched toward them. She had taken an aisle seat in the back of the DC-9, which meant that the lineup for the toilets started at her shoulder.

  “They’re not dangerous in Canada,” David asserted irritably. He hadn’t had much sleep. At 2 A.M. he’d had to interrogate a biker because the Chief insisted there was some connection between his fire-bombing the Golden Palace on Queen Street West and an obscure territorial battle being waged by the parvenu Hong Kong Chinese gangs against entrenched Sicilian interests in the area. After two hours of listening to obscenities and inhaling undiluted body odor, David remained unconvinced.