The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  “You think it will be that soon, sir?”

  “Please let me,” he said. “Please.”

  I had a sudden feeling of shame listening to him. Watching the statue crumble. Nothing was worth witnessing that destruction. I stood abruptly. He looked up at me in surprise.

  “Finished?” he said. “Well, I’m glad we’ve had this little chat, and I’m happy I’ve been able to answer your questions and clear up your doubts. Could you give me some idea of when the grant might be made?”

  He was serious. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Difficult to say, sir. I turn in my report, and then the final decision is with my superiors.”

  “Of course, of course. I understand how these things work. Channels, eh? Everything must go through channels. That’s why I … Forgive me for not seeing you out, Mr. Todd, but—”

  “That’s perfectly all right.”

  “So much to do. Every minute of my time.”

  “I understand. Thank you for all your help.”

  Again he failed to rise or offer to shake hands. I left him sitting there, staring at an erased blackboard.

  I had hoped I might have the chance to snoop around the labs unattended, but Linda Cunningham, Draper’s chubby assistant, was waiting for me in the corridor.

  “Hi, Mr. Todd,” she said brightly. “I’m supposed to show you the way out.”

  So that was that. I was in the Pontiac, warming the engine, when suddenly Julie Thorndecker was standing alongside the window. I don’t know where she came from; she was just there. She was wearing jodhpurs, tweed hacking jacket, a white shirt, ascot, a V-necked sweater. I turned off the ignition, lowered the window.

  “Mrs. Thorndecker,” I said.

  Her face was tight, drawn. Gone were the pouts and moues, the sensuous licking of lips. I glimpsed the woman underneath: hard, wary, merciless.

  “We’re not getting the grant, are we?” she said.

  “For God’s sake,” I said roughly, “get your husband to a doctor.”

  “For God’s sake,” she replied mockingly, “my husband is a doctor.”

  I was in such a somber mood, so confused and saddened, that I didn’t trust myself to speak. I watched her put a thumb to her mouth and bite rapidly at the nail, spitting little pieces of matter onto the gravel. I had the feeling that if I could look into her brain, it would not be a cold, gray, convoluted structure; it would be a live lava bed, bubbling and boiling, with puffs of live steam.

  “Well,” she said finally, “it was nice while it lasted. But all good things must come to an end.”

  “Also,” I said, “a stitch in time saves nine, and a rolling stone gathers no moss.”

  She looked at me with loathing.

  “You’re a smarmy bastard,” she said, her face ugly. “When are you leaving?”

  “Soon. Probably Monday.”

  “Not soon enough,” she said, turning away.

  I was less than a mile outside the gates when I passed a Coburn police cruiser heading toward Crittenden. Constable Ronnie Goodfellow was driving. He didn’t look at me.

  When I got back to Coburn I realized that on the big things, my mind wasn’t working. It wouldn’t turn over. But on the little things, it was ticking right along. It knew that the next day was Sunday, and liquor stores would be closed. So off I went to Sandy’s to pick up a quart of vodka, a fifth of Italian brandy, and a fifth of sour mash bourbon. The vodka and brandy were for me. The sour mash was for Al Coburn. Somehow I figured him for a bourbon man, and I saw us having a few slugs together before digging into that stew he promised. And a few shots after. I also picked up two cold six-packs of Ballantine ale. I reckoned I might need them early Sunday morning.

  I carted all these provisions back to the Coburn Inn. I stopped at the desk long enough to ask if there were any messages for me. There weren’t, but then I didn’t expect any; it was barely 3:30, too early to expect Al Coburn to call. So up I went to 3-F. I put the six-packs out on the windowsill. If they didn’t slide off and brain a passing pedestrian, I could count on cold ale for Sunday breakfast. I opened the brandy, and had a small belt with water from the bathroom tap. It tasted so good that I had another to keep it company. Then I fell asleep.

  It wasn’t that I was tired; it was emotional exhaustion. If I’ve given you the impression that investigative work is a lark, I’ve misled you. The physical labor is minimal, the danger is infinitesimal. But what gets you—or rather, what gets me—is the agitation of dealing with people. I don’t think this is a unique reaction. Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, waiters, cab drivers, and shoe clerks suffer from the same syndrome. Anyone who deals with the public.

  People exert a pressure, deliberately or unconsciously. They force their wills. Their passion, wants, angers, lies, and fears come on like strong winds. Deal with people, and inevitably you feel you’re being buffeted. No, that’s no good. You feel like you’re in a blender, being sliced, chopped, minced, ground, and pureed.

  The problem for me was that I could appreciate the hopes and anxieties of everyone in Coburn I had interviewed. I could understand why they acted the way they did. I could be them. And everyone of them made sense to me, in a very human way. They weren’t monsters. Cut anyone of them, and they’d bleed. They were sad, deluded shits, and I had such empathy that I just couldn’t take any more pain. So I fell asleep. It’s the organism’s self-defense mechanism: when stress becomes overwhelming, go unconscious. It’s the only way to cope.

  I awoke, startled, a little after five. It took me a moment to get oriented. It was early December. I was in Coburn, N.Y. I was staying at the Coburn Inn, Room 3-F. My name was Samuel Todd. After that, everything came flooding back. I grabbed up the phone. The desk reported no messages. Al Coburn hadn’t called.

  I splashed cold water on my face, dried, looked at my image in the bathroom mirror. Forget it. The Monster Who Ate Cleveland. I went downstairs and told the baldy on duty that I’d be in the bar if I got a call. He promised to switch it.

  The bar was almost empty. But Millie Goodfellow was sitting alone at one end.

  “Join you?” I asked.

  “Be my guest,” she said, patting the stool alongside her.

  She was wearing a white blouse with a ruffled neckline cut down to her two charlotte russe. She had obviously gussied up after getting off work; her hair looked like it had been worked on by a crew of carpenters, and the perfume was strong enough to fumigate a rice warehouse. She was trying.

  She drank crazy things like Grasshoppers, Black Russians, and Rusty Nails. That night she was nibbling on something called a Nantucket Sleighride. I don’t know exactly what it was, except that it had cranberry juice in it and enough spiritus frumentum to give the 2nd Airborne Division a monumental hangover.

  I ordered her a new one, and a vodka gimlet for me.

  “Millie,” I said, gesturing toward her tall glass, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “and I don’t care.”

  “Oh-ho,” I said. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asked.

  I took out my cigarettes and offered her one. She shook her head. She waited until I lighted up, then took out her own pack of mentholated filtertips. She put one between her lacquered lips and bent close to me.

  “Light my cold one with your hot one,” she said.

  It was so awful, so awful. But obediently, I lighted her cigarette from mine.

  “How can you drink those things?” I asked, when Jimmy brought our drinks.

  “One is an eye-opener,” she said, swinging around to face me, putting a warm hand on my knee. “Two is a fly-opener. Three is a thigh-opener.”

  Oh God, it was getting worse. But I laughed dutifully.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Right now? Waiting for a phone call. Haven’t seen Al Coburn around, have you?”

  “Not since this
morning. You’re waiting for a phone call from him?”

  “That’s right. I’m supposed to have dinner with him.”

  “Instead of me?”

  “It’s business,” I said. “I’d rather have dinner with you.”

  She wasn’t mollified.

  “You say,” she sniffed. “What if he doesn’t call?”

  “Then I guess I better call him. Right now, in fact. Excuse me a minute.”

  I used the bar phone. It went through the hotel switchboard, but I couldn’t see any danger. Anyway, Al Coburn didn’t answer. No one answered.

  I sat at the bar with Millie Goodfellow for another hour and two more drinks. I called Coburn, and I called him, and I called him. No answer. I was surprised that I wasn’t alarmed, until I realized that I never did expect to hear from him.

  “Millie,” I said, “let’s have dinner together. But I’ve got an errand to run first. Take me maybe an hour. If I can’t get back, I’ll call you here at the bar. You’ll be here?”

  “I may be,” she said stiffly, “and I may not.”

  I nodded and turned away. She grabbed my arm.

  “You won’t stand me up, will you?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “And if you can’t make it, you’ll call?”

  “I promise.”

  “You promise a lot of things,” she said sadly.

  That was true.

  So there I was, back in the Grand Prix, heading out toward Crittenden for the third time that day. I felt like a commuter. My low beams were on, and I drove slowly and carefully, avoiding potholes and bumps. I had the bottle of bourbon on the seat beside me.

  It was a sharp, black night, and when I thought of complaisant Millie Goodfellow waiting for me back in that warm bar, I wondered just what the hell I thought I was doing. I knew what I’d find at Al Coburn’s place.

  I’ve read as many detective-mystery-suspense paperbacks as you have—probably more—and there was only one ending to a situation like this:

  I’d walk into Coburn’s house and find him dead. Bloodily dead. Horribly mutilated maybe, or swinging on a rope from a rafter in a faked suicide. His home would be turned upside down because his killer would have tossed the place for that letter left by Ernie Scoggins.

  I knew that was what I’d find. The only reason I was going out was the skinny hope that the old man had done what he promised: left the Scoggins letter or a copy in the glove compartment of his pickup. If he had the strength to withstand the vicious torture he had undergone.

  Dramatic? You bet. Maybe I was disappointed, because it wasn’t like that at all.

  I could have driven past Al Coburn’s farmhouse a dozen times without picking it out of the gloom if it hadn’t been for that flagpole in the frontyard. Old Glory was hanging listlessly, barely stirring. I pulled into a gravel driveway and looked around. No lights anywhere. And no pickup truck.

  I left my headlights beamed against the front door and got out of the car, taking the bourbon with me. I found my new flashlight, switched it on, started toward the house. I got within a few yards before I noticed the door was open. Not yawning wide, but open a few inches.

  I pushed the door wider, went in, switched on the lights. It was a surprisingly neat home, everything clean and dusted. Not luxurious, but comfortable and tidy. And no one had turned it upside down in a futile search.

  I didn’t find the Scoggins letter. I didn’t find evidence of murder most foul. I didn’t find Al Coburn either. I found nothing. Just a warm, snug home with an unlocked door. I went through it slowly and carefully, room to room. I looked in every closet and cupboard. I poked behind drapes and got down on my knees to peer under beds and couches. I opened the trap to the unfinished attic and beamed my flashlight around in there. Ditto the half-basement.

  Nothing.

  No, not quite nothing. In the kitchen, on an electric range, a big cast-iron pot of stew was simmering. It smelled great. I turned off the light.

  I went outside and made three circuits of the house, each one a little farther out. I found nothing. I saw nothing that might indicate what had happened to Al Coburn. He was just gone, vanished, disappeared. I came back into the house and lifted his phone. It was working normally. I called the Coburn Inn, identified myself, asked if anyone had called me. No one had.

  I stood there, in the middle of the silent living room, looking around dazedly at the maple furniture with the cretonne-covered cushions. “Al Coburn!” I yelled. “Al Coburn!” I screamed. “Al Coburn!” I howled.

  Nothing.

  I think the quiet of that empty house spooked me more than a crumpled corpse. It was so like what had happened to Ernie Scoggins: now you see him, now you don’t. Only in this case there wasn’t even a blood-stained rug as a tip-off. There was nothing but a pot of stew simmering on a lighted range.

  What could I do—call the cops and tell them a man hadn’t phoned me as he promised? Ask for a search, an investigation? And then have Al Coburn waltz in with two quarts of beer he had gone to buy for our dinner?

  But I knew, I knew, Al Coburn was never going to waltz in on me or anyone else, that night or any night. He was gone. He was just gone. How it had been managed I couldn’t figure. It had to be some kind of a scam to get him out of the house. To get rid of him and his pickup truck. If the man he met had threatened, Al Coburn would have fought; I was convinced of that. And I would have found evidence of violence instead of just a pot of simmering stew. So he had been tricked. Maybe he had been conned to drive his truck himself to some other meeting place, some deserted place. And there …

  I left the unopened bottle of bourbon in the kitchen. To propitiate the Gods? I turned off the lights inside the house. I closed the door carefully. I looked up at the flag still drooping from the staff. Patriotic Al Coburn. His folks had founded the town.

  Then I drove slowly back into Coburn.

  When I entered the lobby of the Inn, a gaggle of permanent residents was clustered about the desk, chattering excitedly. As I walked by, the clerk called out, “Hey, Mr. Todd, hear the news? They just found Al Coburn and his truck in the river. He’s deader’n a doornail.”

  They had heard about it in the bar. “You won’t be having dinner with Al Coburn,” Millie Goodfellow said. “No,” I said. “He probably had one too many and just drove in,” Jimmy said. “Yes,” I said. “Another gimlet?” he asked. “Make it a double,” I said. “Just vodka. On the rocks.”

  That’s where I was—on the rocks. I won’t pretend to remember all the details of that Walpurgisnacht. But that’s how it began—on the rocks. Millie and I drank at the Coburn Inn for another hour or two. I wanted her husband to come in and catch us together. I don’t know why. I think I had some childish desire to bend his nose.

  “Why don’t we go out to Red Dog Betty’s for dinner?” Millie suggested.

  “Splendid idea.”

  I drove, and not too badly. I mean I wasn’t swarming all over the road, and I didn’t exceed the limit by more than five or ten. Millie snuggled against me, singing, “You Light Up My Life.” That was okay with me. I might even have joined in. Anything to keep from thinking.

  Betty’s joint was crowded, but she took one look at us, and hastily shoved us into a booth in a far dining area.

  “Get your car all right?” she asked me.

  “Did indeed,” I said. “For which much thanks.”

  I leaned forward to kiss her.

  “If you can ditch Miss Tits,” she said, “I’ll be around.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Millie protested, “I saw him first.”

  Betty Hanrahan goosed her, and went back to the bar. Millie and I ordered something: skirt steaks I think they were. And we drank. And we danced. I saw people from Crittenden, including Linda Cunningham. I waved at her. She stuck her tongue out at me. I like to think it was more invitation than insult.

  We kept chomping a few bites, finishing our drinks, then rushing back to the dance floor when someone played som
ething we liked on the juke. Millie was a close-up dancer. I mean she was close.

  “Carry a Coke bottle in your pocket?” she asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “Come on,” she yelled gaily in my ear. “Have fun!”

  “Sure,” I said.

  So I had fun. I really did. I drank up a storm. Told hilariously funny stories. Asked Betty Hanrahan to marry me. Sang the opening verse of “Sitting One Night in Murphy’s Bar.” Bought drinks for Linda Cunningham’s table. And threw up twice in the men’s room. Quite a night.

  Millie Goodfellow must have seen worse. Anyway, she stuck with me: conduct above and beyond the call of duty. She’d leave occasionally to dance with a trucker she knew, or with the tall, skinny gink from Mike’s Service Station. But she always came back to me.

  “You’re so good to me,” I told her, wiping my brimming eyes.

  “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?” she asked anxiously.

  Betty Hanrahan came back to persuade me to switch to beer. I agreed, but only, I told her, because she had bought me four “radical” tires. I may have kissed her again. I was in a kissing mood. I kissed Millie Goodfellow. I kissed Linda Cunningham. I wanted to kiss the black bartender, but he said he was busy.

  Millie drove us back to Coburn.

  “What a super car,” she said.

  “Super,” I said.

  “You need some black coffee,” she said.

  “Super,” I said. “Millie, you drop me at the Inn, and then you go home.”

  “You really want me to go home?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Super,” she said.

  It was then, I estimate, about 2:00 A.M. The lobby of the Coburn Inn was deserted, but the bar was still open. Millie sat me down in one of the spavined armchairs and disappeared. I sat there, content and giggling, until she returned with a cardboard container of black coffee. She helped me to my feet.

  “Up we go,” she said.

  “Up we go,” I said.

  We took the stairs. It didn’t take long, no more than a month or so, but eventually we arrived in Room 3-F. Millie locked the door behind us.