The Sixth Commandment

by Lawrence Sanders

  I also learned not to get personally involved with the people with whom I dealt, while maintaining a polite, sympathetic, low-key manner. I also learned an investigator’s job requires infinite patience, an almost finicky attention to detail, tenacity, and the ability to endure long periods of boredom.

  If I had one regret it was that circumstances never arose requiring an original investigation to uncover the truth in a case of some importance. I felt I had proved my ability to handle routine assignments that were, for the most part, matters requiring only a few phone calls, correspondence, or simple inquiries that needed no particular deductive talent. Now I craved more daring challenges.

  My chance to prove my mettle came in February of my seventh year at TORT.

  2

  EACH MORNING I ARRIVED at my office at about 8:30 A. M., carrying a container of black coffee and a buttered, toasted bagel. I liked to arrive early to organize my work for the day before my phone started ringing. On Tuesday morning, February 6th, I found on my desk blotter a memo from Leopold Tabatchnick: “I will see you in my office at 10:00 A. M. this morning, Feb. 6. L.T.”

  I postponed an outside inquiry I had planned to make that morning, and at 9:50 went into the men’s room to make certain my hair was properly combed, the knot in my tie centered, and my fingernails clean. I also buffed my shoes with a paper towel.

  The private offices of the senior partners occupied the largest (rear) suites on the second, third, and fourth floors, one over the other. Teitelbaum was on two Orsini on three, Tabatchnick on four. Mr. Tabatchnick’s secretary was seated at her desk in the hallway. She was Thelma Potts, a spinster of about sixty years, with a young face and whipped-cream hair. She wore high-necked blouses with a cameo brooch at the collar. She dispensed advice, made small loans, and never forgot birthdays or anniversaries. The bottom drawer of her desk was full of headache remedies, stomach powders, tranquilizers, Band-Aids, cough syrups, cold capsules, etc., available to anyone when needed. She kept a small paper cup among the drugs, and you were supposed to drop in a few coins now and then to help keep the pharmacy going.

  “Good morning, Miss Potts,” I said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bigg,” she said. She glanced at the watch pinned to her bodice. “You’re three minutes early.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wanted to spend them with you.”

  “Oh, you!” she said.

  “I thought you were going to find me a wife, Miss Potts,” I said sorrowfully.

  “When did I ever say that?” she demanded, blushing. “I am sure you are quite capable of finding a nice girl yourself.”

  “No luck so far,” I said. “May I go in now?”

  She consulted her watch again.

  “Thirty seconds,” she said firmly.

  I sighed. We waited in silence, Miss Potts staring at her watch.

  “Now!” she said, like a track official starting a runner.

  I knocked once on the heavy door, opened it, stepped inside, closed it behind me.

  Instead of law books here, the room was lined with aquaria of tropical fish. There were tanks of all sizes and shapes, lighted from behind. Bubbles rose constantly from aerators. The atmosphere of the room was oppressively warm and humid. There were guppies, sea horses, angels, zebras, pink damsels, clowns, ghost eels, fire fish, purple queens, swordtails and a piranha.

  They all made a glittering display in the clear, back-lighted tanks, darting about, blowing bubbles, kissing the glass, coming to the surface to spit.

  The first time I’d met Mr. Tabatchnick, he’d asked me if I was interested in tropical fish. I’d confessed I was not.

  “Hmph,” he’d said. “Then you have no conception of the comfort to be derived from the silent companionship of our finny friends.”

  This was followed by a half-hour, tank-by-tank tour of the room, with Mr. Tabatchnick expounding on the Latin names, lifestyles, dispositions, feeding habits, sexual tendencies, and depravities of his finny friends. Most, apparently, ate their young. The lecture, I discovered later, had to be tolerated by every new employee. Thankfully, it was a one-shot, never repeated.

  The man seated in the leather swivel chair behind the trestle table appeared to be in his middle seventies. He had a ponderous head set on a large, square, neckless frame, held so rigidly that you wondered if he had left a wooden coathanger in the shoulders of his jacket.

  His hands were wide, with spatulate fingers, the skin discolored with keratosis. His arms seemed disproportionately long, and since he tended to lumber as he walked, with hunched shoulders, heavy head thrust forward, and a fierce scowl on his fleshy features, he was referred to by the law clerks and paralegal assistants as “King Kong.” In very small voices, of course.

  But there was nothing simian about his face. If anything, his were the features of a weary bloodhound, all folds and wrinkles, wattles and jowls, with protruding, rubbery lips (always moist), and eyes so lachrymose that he always seemed on the point of sobbing. His normal expression was one of mournful distress, and it was said that he used it with great effect during his days as a trial lawyer to elicit the sympathy of the jury.

  “Good morning, Mr. Tabatchnick,” I said brightly.

  He bestowed upon me the nod of sovereign to serf, and gestured to a club chair at the side of the table.

  “Sol Kipper,” he said. His voice was stentorian, rumbling. An organ of a voice. I wished I had been in the courtroom to hear his summations.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” I said.

  “Sol Kipper,” he repeated. “Solomon Kipper, to be precise. The name means nothing to you?”

  I thought desperately. It was not a name you would easily forget. Then it came to me…

  “I remember,” I said. “Solomon Kipper. A suicide about two weeks ago. From the top floor of his East Side townhouse. A small story in the Times.”

  “Yes,” he said, the folds of skin wagging sadly, “a small story in the Times. I wish you to know, young man, that Sol Kipper was a personal friend of mine for fifty-five years and an esteemed client of this law firm for forty.”

  There didn’t seem any fitting reply to that.

  “We shall be handling the probate,” Mr. Tabatchnick continued. “Sol Kipper was a wealthy man. Not very wealthy, but wealthy. Cut and dried. I anticipated no problems.”

  He paused, leaned forward, punched a button on the intercom on the table.

  “Miss Potts,” he said, “will you come in, please? Bring your notes on the conversation I had late yesterday afternoon with that stranger.”

  He settled back. We waited. Thelma Potts entered softly, carrying a spiral-bound steno pad. Mr. Tabatchnick did not ask her to sit down.

  “Occasionally,” he said in a magisterial tone, “I deem it appropriate, during certain telephone communications, to ask Miss Potts to listen in on her extension and make notes. Very well, Miss Potts, you may begin…”

  Thelma flipped over a few pages and began to translate her shorthand, peering through rimless spectacles and speaking rapidly in a flat, precisely enunciated voice:

  “At 4:46 P.M., on the afternoon of Monday, February 5th, this year, a call was received at the main switchboard downstairs. A male voice asked to speak to the lawyer handling the Kipper estate. The call was switched to me. The man repeated his request. I asked him exactly what it was he wanted, but he said he would reveal that only to the attorney of record. As is usual in such cases, I suggested he write a letter requesting an interview and detailing his interest in the matter. This he said he would not do, and he stated that if the lawyer refused to talk to him, he would be sorry for it later. Those were his exact words: ‘He will be sorry for it later.’ I then asked if he would hold. He agreed. I put him on hold, and called Mr. Tabatchnick on the intercom, explaining what was happening. He agreed to speak to the caller, but requested that I stay on the extension and take notes.”

  I interrupted.

  “The male voice on the phone, Miss Potts,” I said. “Young? Old?”r />
  She stared at me for a few seconds.

  “Middle,” she said, then continued reading her notes.

  “Mr. Tabatchnick asked the purpose of the call. The man asked if he was handling the Kipper estate. Mr. Tabatchnick said he was. The man asked his name. Mr. Tabatchnick stated it. The man then said he had valuable information in his possession that would affect the Kipper estate. Mr. Tabatchnick asked the nature of the information. The caller refused to reveal it. Mr. Tabatchnick said he assumed then that the information would be available at a price. The caller said that was correct. His exact words were: ‘Right on the button, baby!’ Mr. Tabatchnick then suggested the caller come to his office for a private discussion. This the man refused to do, indicating he had no desire to have his conversation secretly recorded. But he said he would meet with Mr. Tabatchnick or his representative in a place of his, the caller’s, choosing. Mr. Tabatchnick asked his name. The caller said ‘Marty’ would be sufficient. Mr. Tabatchnick asked his address, which Marty would not reveal. Mr. Tabatchnick then said he would have to give the matter some thought but would contact Marty if he or his representative wished to meet with him. Marty gave a number but the call had to be made within twenty-four hours. If Marty did not hear from Mr. Tabatchnick by five o’clock, Tuesday afternoon; February 6th, he would assume Mr. Tabatchnick was not interested in his, quote, valuable information regarding the Kipper estate, unquote, and he would feel free to contact other potential buyers. The conversation was then terminated.”

  Miss Potts closed her steno pad with a snap, and looked up.

  “Will that be all, Mr. Tabatchnick?” she asked.

  He raised his heavy head. “Yes, thank you.”

  She drifted from the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He stared somberly at me.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged. “Impossible to say, sir. Not enough to go on. Could be attempted blackmail, or attempted extortion, or just a cheap chiseler trying to make a couple of bucks on a fast con.”

  “You think I should communicate with this man and arrange to meet him?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I think I should. He said you or your representative.”

  “I don’t like it,” Leopold Tabatchnick said fretfully.

  “I don’t like it either, sir,” I said. “But I think it wise to meet with him and try to find out what this ‘valuable information’ is he thinks he has.”

  “Mmm… yes… well…” Tabatchnick said, drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop.

  Then he was silent a long moment, and I had the oddest impression that he knew something or guessed something he hadn’t told me, and was debating with himself whether or not to reveal it. He finally decided not to.

  “All right,” he said finally, bobbing that weighty head slowly, “you call him and arrange to meet. Try to find out exactly what it is he’s selling. Refuse to buy a pig in a poke. And don’t commit the firm for any amount, large or small.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Inform him you will deliver his terms to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Inform him that only I can authorize payment under these circumstances.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “And endeavor to ascertain his full name and address.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, suppressing a sigh. Sometimes they still treated me like a mailroom boy.

  3

  WHEN I CAME OUT of Mr. Tabatchnick’s fish-lined sanctuary, I stopped at Thelma Potts’ desk to get the telephone number of the mysterious Marty, then proceeded down the main staircase.

  Mr. Romeo Orsini was holding court on the third-floor landing, surrounded by aides, most of them women. He was in his middle sixties, tall, erect, with thick, marvelously coiffed snow-white hair. He carried himself with the vigor and grace of a man one-third his age, and his pink complexion, dark, glittering eyes, hearty good health, meticulous grooming, and self-satisfaction produced the image of the perfect movie or TV lawyer.

  Romeo Orsini specialized in divorce actions, and was enormously successful in obtaining alimony and child support payments far in excess of his clients’ most exaggerated hopes. It was also said that he was frequently the first to console the new divorcée.

  I was hoping to slip around his group on the landing without being noticed, but his hand shot out from the circle and clamped on my arm.

  “Josh!” he cried gaily. “Just the man I wanted to see!”

  He drew me close and, not for the first time, I became aware of his cologne.

  “Heard a joke I think you’ll appreciate,” he said slyly, grinning at me.

  My heart sank. All the jokes he told me involved small men.

  “There was this midget,” he began, looking around his circle of aides. They were preparing their faces to break into instant laughter, several of them smiling already.

  “And he married the tallest woman in the circus,” Orsini continued. He paused for effect. I knew what was coming.

  “His friends put him up to it!” he concluded, followed by guffaws, giggles, roars, and thigh-slapping by his assistants. To my shame, I laughed as loudly as any, and finally broke free to continue my descent, cursing myself.

  On the ground floor, I was confronted with the bristling presence of Hamish Hooter, the office manager.

  “See here, Bigg,” he said.

  That’s the way Hooter began all his conversations: “See here.” It made me want to reach up and punch him in the snoot.

  “What is it, Hooter?” I said resignedly.

  “What’s this business about a private secretary?” he demanded, waving a sheet of paper in my face. I recognized it as a memo I had forwarded the previous week.

  “It’s all spelled out in there,” I said. “I’ve been typing all my own correspondence up to now, but the workload is getting too much. I can’t ask the secretaries and typists to help me out; they all have their own jobs.”

  “Dollworth didn’t need a secretary,” he sneered.

  “Dollworth was a notoriously poor record-keeper,” I said. “He admitted it himself. As a result, we have incomplete histories of investigations he conducted, no copies of letters he may have written, no memos of phone calls and conversations. Such records could be vital if cases are overturned on appeal or reopened for any reason. I really have to set up a complete file and keep it current.”

  “I can’t believe you’re so busy that you can’t handle it yourself,” he said. Then he added nastily, “You seem to have plenty of time to gossip with Yetta Apatoff.”

  I stared at him. He really was a miserable character. What’s more, he looked like a miserable character.

  He was of average height, but with such poor posture (rounded shoulders, bent back, protruding potbelly) that he appeared shorter. He had an extremely pale complexion, with small, watery eyes set too far apart. His lips were prim, and his nose looked like a wedge of cheddar. He had jet-black, somewhat greasy hair, and he was, I was happy to note, going bald in back. He combed his slick locks sideways in an attempt to conceal the tonsure.

  His voice was high-pitched and reedy, somewhere between a whine and a yawp. He also had the habit of sucking his teeth after every sentence, as if he had a little fiber of celery in there and couldn’t get it out. Let’s see, what else… Oh yes, he had eyes for Yetta Apatoff (hot, beady eyes), and that alone was enough to condemn him as far as I was concerned. I knew they lunched together occasionally, and I could only conclude that she accompanied him out of pure kindness, as one might toss a peanut to a particularly disgusting, purple-assed orangutan in the zoo.

  “So I gather I’m not getting a secretary,” I said.

  “You gather correctly,” he said, sucking his incisors noisily.

  I looked at him with loathing. But if I couldn’t outwit that beast, I’d turn in my Machiavelli badge. I spun away from him, marched down to my office, slammed the door.

  The first thing I d
id was call Marty’s number. I let it ring ten times, but there was no answer. So I gathered up my notebook, stopwatch, and coat, and started out on a routine investigation.

  Yetta Apatoff was at her desk, but she was busy with an elderly couple who were trying to explain something to her in heavily German-accented English. Yetta waggled her delicious fingers at me as I went by. I waggled back.

  I spent the morning establishing that a young client could not have robbed a camera store in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue at 40th Street at 12:06 P.M. and travel nineteen blocks in time to be positively identified at an electronics trade show at the Coliseum on Columbus Circle at Eighth Avenue and 59th Street at 12:14.

  Three times I traveled from the Bus Terminal to the Coliseum by taxi, three times by subway, three times by bus (making the return trips by cab in all cases). I used the stopwatch and timed each northbound run to the split second, keeping very careful notes.

  I completed the time trials at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I had a hamburger and dialed Marty’s number from a pay phone. Still no answer. I was getting a little antsy. Marty had said the deadline was 5:00 P.M.

  Yetta Apatoff was on the phone when I entered the TORT building at approximately 3:20. She smiled up at me (a glory, that smile!) and still speaking on the phone, handed me a small sheet of paper. Another memo. This one was from Mr. Teitelbaum’s secretary. I was to call her as soon as I returned.

  I went into my office, took off my coat, dialed Marty’s number. Still no answer. I then called Ada Mondora, Teitelbaum’s secretary. She said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, but was busy with a client at the moment; she’d buzz me as soon as he was free.

  Then I took off my jacket, sat down at the typewriter, and began to bang out a report on the time trials.

  My office, on the first floor, was not quite as small as a broom closet. There was room for one L-shaped desk, with the typewriter on the short wing. One steel swivel chair. One steel armchair for visitors. One steel file cabinet. A wastebasket, a coat tree, a small steel bookcase. And that was it. When Roscoe Dollworth, with his explosive girth, had occupied the premises, this cubbyhole seemed filled to overflowing. I provided a little more space, but the room was still cramped and depressing. No windows. If I succeeded in obtaining a secretary, my next project would be larger quarters to accommodate the secretary. My ambition knew no limits.