The Sixth Commandment (10 page)

I was leaning forward to snub out my cigarette when I saw the lights. One, two, three of them, bobbing in line from the rear of Crittenden Hall, heading out into the pitchy grounds.

I slid from the car, leaving the door open. I went loping along outside the chain-link fence, trying to keep the lights in view. They moved up and down in a regular rhythm: marching men carrying flashlights or battery lanterns.

The fence curved around. I ran faster to catch up, happy that whoever had planned the security of Crittenden had cleared the land immediately outside the fence. No bushes, no trees. I was running on half-frozen stubble, the ground resisting, then squishing beneath my feet.

I came up to them, raised a hand to shield my mouth so they might not spot the white vapor of my breath. Another light came on, a more powerful lantern. I moved along with them, hanging back a little, the fence between us, and the bare trees on the Crittenden grounds.

Four men, at least. Then, in the lantern’s beam, I saw more. Six men, heavily muffled against the cold. Three of them were hauling a wheeled cart. And on the cart, a black burden, a bulk, a box, a coffin.

When they stopped, I stopped. Crouched down. Lay down on the frost-silvered grass. The beams of flashlights and lanterns concentrated. I could see an open grave. A mound of loose earth at one side. I had not seen that during my afternoon reconnaissance.

The load was taken off the cart. A plain box. I could hear the grunts of the lifting men from where I lay. The coffin was slid into the open hole. One end first, and then it was dropped and allowed to thump to the bottom. Shovels had been brought. Two men attacked the mound of loose dirt, working slowly but steadily. The first few shovelfuls rattled on the coffin lid. Then, as the grave filled, they worked in silence. All I could see were the steady beams of light, the lifting, swinging, dumping shovels. Then the flash of empty shovel blades.

The grave was filled, the loose earth smacked down and rounded. Squares of sod were placed over the raw dirt. Then the procession, still silent, turned back to Crittenden Hall. I watched them go, knowing a chill without, a chill within. The lights bobbed slowly away. They went out, one by one.

I lay there as long as I could endure it, teeth making like castanets, feet and hands lumpy and dull. Then I made a run for my car, hobbling along as fast as I could, trying to flex my fingers, afraid to feel my nose in case it had dropped off.

I got the heater going, held my hands in front of the vents, and in a few minutes reckoned I’d live to play the violin again. I drove away from there at a modest speed, hoping the gate guard and roving night sentinel (if there was one) wouldn’t spot my lights.

I told myself that both Thorndecker and Draper were licensed MD’s, and could sign a death certificate. I told myself that one of the shrouded figures with flashlight or lantern could have been a licensed mortician. I told myself all sorts of nonsense. The cadaver was infected with a deadly plague and had to be put underground immediately. Or, all burials were made at this hour so as not to disturb the other withering guests of Crittenden Hall. Or, the dead man or woman was without funds, without family, without friends, and this surreptitious entombment was a discreet way of putting a pauper to rest.

I didn’t believe a word of it. Of any of it. That slow procession of shadowed figures and bobbing lights scared the hell out of me. I had a wild notion of giving Dr. Telford Gordon Thorndecker an A-plus rating and, as quickly as possible, getting my ass back to the familiar violence of New York City. A dreadful place with one saving grace: the dead were buried during daylight hours.

The lobby of the Coburn Inn did nothing to lift my spirits or inspire confidence in a better tomorrow. It was almost three in the morning; only a night light on the desk shed a ghastly, orange-tinted glow. The place was totally empty. I guessed the night clerk was snoozing in the back office, and Sam Livingston was corking off in his basement hideaway.

I looked around at the slimy tiled floor, the shabby rugs, the tattered couches and armchairs. Even the plastic ferns in the old brass spittoons seemed wilted. And over all, the smell of must and ash, the stink of age and decay. The Coburn Inn: Reasonable Rates and Instant Senescence.

I didn’t have the heart to wake Sam Livingston to run me up, so I trudged the stairway, still bone-chilled, muscle-sore, brain-dulled. I got to room 3-F all right, seeing not a soul in the shadowed corridors. But there was enough illumination to see that the door of my room was open a few inches. I had left it locked.

Adrenaline flowed; I moved cautiously. The room was dark. I kicked the door open wider, reached around, flicked the light switch. Someone had paid me a visit. My suitcases and briefcase had been upended, contents dumped on the floor. The few things I had stowed away in closet and bureaus had been pulled out and trashed. Even my toilet articles had been pawed over. The mattress on that hard bed had been lifted and tipped. Chairs were lying on their sides, the bottom coverings slit, and the few miserable prints on the walls had been taken off their hooks and the paper backing ripped away.

I made a quick check. As far as I could see, nothing was missing. Even my case notebook was intact. My wallet of credit cards was untouched. So why the toss? I gave up trying to figure it, or anything else that had happened that black night. All I wanted was sleep.

I restored the bed to reasonable order, but left all the rest of the stuff exactly where it was, on the floor. I started undressing then, so weary that I was tempted to flop down with my boots on. It was when I was taking off my jacket that I found, in the side pocket, the folded paper that Mary Thorndecker had slipped me just before I left Crittenden Hall.

I unfolded it gingerly, like it might be a letter bomb. But it was only a badly printed religious tract, one of those things handed out on street corners by itinerant preachers. This one was headed:
WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY
?

Not, I hoped, at the Coburn Inn.

C
ONSTABLE RONNIE GOODFELLOW STOOD
with arms akimbo, surveying the wreckage of my hotel room.

“Shit,” he said.

“My sentiments exactly,” I said. “But look, it’s no big deal. Nothing was stolen. The only reason I wanted you to know was if it fits a pattern of hotel room break-ins. You’ve had them before?”

Sleek head turned slowly, dark eyes observed me thoughtfully. Finally …

“You a cop?” he said.

“No, but I’ve had some training. Army CID.”

“Well, there’s no pattern. Some petty pilferage in the kitchen maybe, but there hasn’t been a break-in here since I’ve been on the force. Why should there be? What is there to steal in this bag of bones? The regulars who live here are all on Social Security. Most of the time they haven’t got two nickels to rub together.”

He took slow steps into the room, looking about.

“The bed tossed?” he asked.

“That’s right. I put it straight so I could get some sleep last night.”

He nodded, still looking around with squinty eyes. Suddenly he swooped, picked up one of those vomit-tinted prints that had hung on the tenement-green wall. He inspected the torn paper backing.

“Looking for something special,” he said. “Something small and flat that could be slid between the backing and the picture. Like a photo, a sheet of paper, a document, a letter. Something like that.”

I looked at him with new respect. He was no stupe.

“Got any idea what it could be?” he asked casually.

“Not a clue,” I said, just as off-handedly. “I haven’t got a thing like that worth hiding.”

He nodded again, and there was nothing in that smooth, saturnine face to show if he believed me or not.

“Well …” he said, “maybe I’ll go down and have a few words with Sam Livingston.”

“You don’t think—” I began.

“Of course not,” he said sharply. “Sam’s as honest as the day is long. But maybe he saw someone prowling around late at night. He’s up all hours. You say you got in late?”

I hadn’t said. I hoped he didn’t catch the brief pause before I answered.

“A little after midnight,” I lied. “I had dinner with the Thorndeckers.”

“Oh?” he said. “Have a good time?”

“Sure did. Great food. Good company.” Then I added, somewhat maliciously: “Mrs. Thorndecker is a beauty.”

“Yes,” he said, almost absently, “a very attractive woman. Well, I’ll see what I can do about this, Mr. Todd. Sorry it had to happen to a visitor to our town.”

“Happens everywhere,” I shrugged. “No real harm done.”

I closed and locked the door behind him. He hadn’t inspected that lock, but I had. No sign of forced entry. That was one for me. But he had seen that the object of the search had been something small and flat, something that could be concealed in a picture frame. That was one for him.

I knew what it was, of course. My visitor had been trying to recover that anonymous note. The one that read: “Thorndecker kills.”

With only a half-dozen regulars and me staying at the Coburn Inn, the management didn’t think it necessary to employ a chambermaid. Old Sam Livingston did the chores: changing linen, emptying wastebaskets, throwing out “dead soldiers,” vacuuming when the dust got ankle-deep.

I was still trying to set my room to rights when he knocked. I let him in.

“I’ll straighten up here,” he told me.

“You go get your morning coffee.”

“Thanks, Sam,” I said gratefully.

I handed him a five-dollar bill. He stared at it.

“Abraham Lincoln,” he said. “Fine-looking man. Good beard.” He held the bill out to me. “Take it back, Mr. Todd. I’d clean up anyways. You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t
have
to do it,” I said. “All I
have
to do is pay taxes and die. I
want
to do it.”

“That’s different,” he said, pocketing the bill. “I thank you kindly.”

I took another look at him: an independent old cuss in his black alpaca jacket and skullcap. He had a scrubby head of grayish curls and a face as gnarled as a hardwood burl. All of him looked like dark hardwood: chiseled, carved, sanded, oiled, and then worked for so many years that the polish on face and hands had a deep glow that could only come from hard use.

“Live in Coburn all your life?” I asked him.

“Most of it,” he said.

“Seventy-five years?” I guessed.

“Eighty-three,” he said.

“I’ll never make it,” I said.

“Sure you will,” he said, “you lay off the sauce and the women.”

“In that case,” I said, “I don’t want to make it. Sam, I want to come down to your place sometime, maybe have a little visit with you.”

“Anytime,” he said. “I ain’t going anywhere. The French toast is nice this morning.”

I can take a hint. I left him to his cleaning and went down for breakfast. But I skipped the French toast. Juice, unbuttered toast, black coffee. Very virtuous. On my way out, I looked in at the bar but Al Coburn wasn’t there. Just Jimmy the bartender reading the
Sentinel.
I waved at him and went out to the lobby. I stopped for cigarettes. I really did need cigarettes. Honest.

“Good morning, Millie,” I said.

“Oh, Mr. Todd,” she said excitedly, “I heard about your trouble. I’m so sorry.”

I stared at her glassily, trying to figure which trouble she meant.

She was wearing the same makeup, probably marketed under the trade name “Picasso’s Clown.” But the costume was different. This morning it was a voluminous shift, a kind of muumuu, in an orange foliage print. It had a high, drawstring neckline, long sleeves, tight cuffs. The yards and yards of sleazy synthetic fell to her ankles. Hamlet’s uncle could have hidden behind that arras.

Strange, but it was sexier than the tight sweater and skirt she had worn the day before. The cloth, gathered at the neck, jutted out over her glorious appendages, then fell straight down in folds, billows, pleats. She was completely covered, concealed. It was inflammatory.

“Your trouble,” she repeated. “You know—the robbery.”

“Burglary,” I said automatically. “But the door didn’t seem to be jimmied.”

“That’s what Ronnie said. He thinks whoever did it had a key.”

So the Indian had caught it after all. That pesky redskin kept surprising me. I resolved never to underestimate him again.

Millie Goodfellow crooked a long, slender forefinger, beckoning me closer. Since the glass cigar counter was between us, I had to bend forward in a ridiculous posture. I found myself focusing on the nail of that summoning finger. Dark brown polish.

“A passkey,” she whispered. “I told Ronnie it was probably a passkey. There’s a million of them floating around. Everyone has one.” Suddenly she giggled. “I even have one myself. Isn’t that awful?”

I was in cloud-cuckoo land.

“You
have a hotel passkey, Millie?” I asked. “Whatever for?”

“It gets me in the little girls’ room,” she said primly. Then she was back in her Cleopatra role. “And a lot of other places, too!”

I think I managed a half-ass grin before I stumbled away. My initial reaction had been correct: this lady was scary.

Wednesday morning in Coburn, N.Y.…

At least the sun was shining. Maybe not exactly shining, but it was there. You could see it, dull and tarnished, glowing dimly behind a cloud cover. It put a leaden light on everything: illumination but no shadows. People moved sluggishly, the air was cold without being invigorating, and I kept hoping I’d hear someone laugh aloud. No one did.

Around to River Street and the First Farmers & Merchants Bank. It had the flashiest storefront in Coburn, with panels of gray marble between gleaming plateglass windows, and lots of vinyl tile and mirrors inside. The foreclosure business must be good.

There were two tellers’ windows and a small bullpen with three desks occupied by New Accounts, Personal Loans, and Mortgages. There was one guard who could have been Constable Ronnie Goodfellow fifty years older and fifty pounds heavier. I went to him. His side-holstered revolver had a greenish tinge, as if moss was growing on it.